She knew she would never get an answer. “You can’t marry her,” she said. “I’m not going to let you marry her.”
Again he said nothing.
“I can’t stop you from meeting her,” she said, “If that’s what you want to do. If you really want somebody like that. But it’s not worth it, is it? Suppose Chic caught you? Wouldn’t he kill you?”
“No,” Roger said. “That doesn’t happen.”
“I thought that happened.”
“He’s just a bag of hot air.”
“I think he’d kill you,” she said.
Roger got up from the couch. “Let’s forget it,” he said.
“You better not see her,” she said. “For your own safety. Can’t you find some girl who isn’t married? If he did anything to you, the law would be on his side. He’d know that. What would you do if he caught you with her? Suppose he had come home early tonight? You know she’s too stupid to be able to cover up very long. Look what she said when I called. Of course, there wasn’t much else she could say. If Chic had come home, what would you have done? Run out the back door?” The image of it made her sick with distress. “How awful,” she said. “I don’t think it would be worth it. I really don’t.”
Roger said, “He always drives Gillick home first. Gillick lives on the way. Then Gillick’s wife calls Liz.”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t understand. Does she have a system all worked out? Has she been doing it for years?”
He didn’t answer.
“I guess,” she said, “I shouldn’t ask you any more about it.”
“No,” he said.
“Is that why you changed your mind and decided to put Gregg in the school? Because you met her?”
“No,” he said.
“But that’s part of it.”
“No,” he said.
She knew that he had reached the point where he would say nothing, answer nothing. “I want to tell you one thing,” she said. “Since Chic stopped by here, he knows you weren’t home this evening. So you better be extra careful. He knows she was alone this evening, too. So if he gets to thinking, that might be enough. You better not call her or talk to her for a while. When Chic gets home he’ll undoubtedly tell her he was by here, and then she’ll figure out—I guess she will—how I knew for certain that you were over there. I assume she has enough practice in this kind of thing to see she has to keep away from you for a while.” She listened, but Roger said nothing. So she said, “I’ll do this, I’ll call her for you if you want. Not tonight, but sometime tomorrow.”
“Christ no,” he said, with such vehemence that she gave up the idea.
“It’s up to you,” she said. Sitting at the kitchen table, she listened; she waited for him to do something or say something. Off in the other room he was waiting, too, she realized.
The next morning, after breakfast, Roger said, “I’m going to take the Olds down to work today.”
“Where’ll you park it?” she said.
“In the lot around the corner.”
“You almost never do that,” she said.
He said, “I feel beat-out, today.”
“I need the car,” she said. “I have to pick up Marion at noon. We’re going downtown shopping and to have lunch.”
“The hell with that,” he said. “I worked until ten o’clock last night; I’m beat-out. I need that car. My work comes first.”
“I’ll drive you to work,” she said.
“What about after work?”
“I’ll pick you up and drive you home.”
He had no answer for that; his forehead wrinkled and twisted, but he could not answer her.
At eight-thirty she got in the car and started up the engine. Roger appeared on the front porch of the house, in his suit and tie, glaring at her.
“Come on,” she said. “Or you’ll be late.”
With sleepy, embittered reluctance, he got into the car beside her. She drove him down to the store. Along the trip neither of them had much to say.
“Have you met Gillick?” she asked, once.
“No.”
“He impressed me. He’s a contractor, Chic says.”
In front of the store she let Roger off.
“Thanks,” he murmured, starting onto the sidewalk. A shaft of early-morning sunlight caught the side of his face, and she saw that he had shaved badly; a tuft of bristle discolored his cheek, near his ear. He always had trouble with that spot.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said. At the sidewalk he lingered, waiting to be released, his back to her.
She drove away.
19
On his left, merchants rolled down their awnings with elaborate arm-motions. By the doorway of the West Coast Savings and Loan a group of secretaries clustered. Warm sunlight shone on his face, early-morning sunlight; the damp sidewalks had already begun to steam upward toward the sky. Debris from the night lay scattered in the entrance of his store and he kicked it out onto the sidewalk and then into the gutter. As he did so he took his key from his pocket. He unlocked the door and entered.
A Zenith sign clicked on and off above the row of television sets, but otherwise the store was dark; it smelled of cigarettes and furniture polish and fabric, a stale smell, the absence of life, cold and deserted, an uninhabited place. He put on the overhead fluorescent lights, opened the skylight, and illuminated the big R.C.A. display sign over the doorway. His hands in his pockets, he stood in the entrance, watching the street through the closed door.
At nine o’clock Pete Bacciagalupi appeared, jaunty in his blue single-breasted suit and pastel tie. “Hi,” he said, opening the door wide, to let in the morning air. “You look like you’ve got a hangover.” He passed Roger, on his way to hang up his coat.
Several minutes later the store truck slowed and entered a parking slot; the door flew open and Olsen jumped out. He spat on the pavement, grimaced, picked up a screwdriver that had fallen from the truck onto the street, and then sauntered toward the doorway of the store.
“Greetings,” he said to Roger.
Roger said, “I want to take the outside calls, today. I want you on the bench.” When Pete returned from hanging up his coat he said to him. “Don’t let anybody take the truck out today. I want to use it. I told Olsen to stay down at the bench.”
“Suit yourself,” Pete said, “but a lot of those calls have to be taken care of today.”
“I’ll take them,” Roger said.
“You’re sure grumpy today,” Pete said. He put his hand on Roger’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go over to the drugstore and have a Bromo?” He peered at him.
“Maybe so,” Roger said. But he stayed by the front counter.
“Can I do anything?”
“No,” Roger said. “Except wait on the customers.”
On and on he stood, doing nothing, ignoring the people who came into the store and the phone and what Pete was doing. Just before ten o’clock he made out on the far side of the street a familiar flash of coat. At once he started from the store.
“I’ll be back,” he said to Pete, who was on the phone. Without pausing he started along the sidewalk in the direction that she was going. He reached the corner and crossed, against the light, and arrived as she did.
She had on little high heels and her checkered coat; her hair was up in a kerchief and her face was heavily made-up. Her lips were almost brown. When she recognized him her eyes filled up, strong and dark and wet, so that passers-by noticed her and some of them glanced back at her. She had stopped; when he reached her and took hold of her arm she did not budge. “No,” she said. “I just wanted to go by and look in at you.”
“Come on,” he said, propelling her into motion.
“She might see us.”
“Let’s go down here,” he said, leading her around the corner and onto a side street.
Liz said, “I came downtown to get a watch I left. I have to go by the jewelry store.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“I lay awake thinking about it all night,” she said. “I kept thinking maybe she’d call again, or even come over. I kept listening for the phone or the doorbell.” Two businessmen came out of an office doorway, and she had to step behind him for them to pass. Both men had fat, pink faces, chinless; they looked enough alike to be brothers. One picked his teeth, and both of them glanced at her in their fashion.
“Where’s the jewelry store?” Roger said.
“In the next block, I think.” From her coat pocket she brought out a small purse; as they walked she rummaged in it. “I have the claim check; the address is on it.”
When she found the check she passed it to him to read.
“We should stop,” she said. “Shouldn’t we?” She took the claim check back from him. “Good-bye,” she said. Pulling away, she hurried off, between two parked cars, onto the street; a taxi slowed for her and she crossed to the other side and disappeared among a group of people, women shoppers at the entrance of a clothing store. He followed after her. No you don’t, he said. I know you. I knew you’d show up and then run off.
In the middle of the block he caught up with her. She had the claim check held up and she was reading the numbers of the storefronts.
“Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll find it.” He walked along with her.
“I have to get right back home,” she said. “I have a lot of cleaning-up to do around the house; I have to vacuum and wash the windows and this afternoon I have to go see about a chair. Chic wants me to get one of those big smoking chairs for the living room, those green leather ones. Not the old-fashioned ones; they make a new kind. It looks a lot better. It’s like an office chair.”
He said, “Are you going to deny me?”
“No,” she said. “I love you. But I came to say good-bye. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime later on, and even if I don’t see you for a long time I’ll be thinking about you; I won’t forget you. Good-bye.” Her fingers brushed his face, over his lips and chin. “I’m not sorry,” she said. “It was fine. Wasn’t it for you, too?”
Sayings, he thought. The commonplaces which she had picked up here and there, from books and movies and TV and magazines.
“I know I’ll see you again,” she said, still close to him, touching him. “You can’t keep two people apart when they really belong to each other.”
Her words. Everybody’s words. Deliberate emptiness, prepared in advance. As if he were hearing an edict of some council, read aloud to him. A group of persons who continued on and on, with nothing else in mind, sorting the phrases. Reciting them back and forth among one another in their cold voices. At the end they had sent her out to deliver it to him; she was a clerk.
Now, he thought, he either accepted this nonsense or he tossed it up in the air, right now, with no delay. Nothing else was fair to her. If he strung along, listening to her, nodding and responding, trying to argue, he would find himself laughing. I can’t take you seriously, he said to himself. Now I’m hearing what the rest of them hear, the scatterbrained talk, the ridiculous conversation you turn on them. You’re turning it on me. Aren’t you? I’m getting it, too. And I can see how it feels. In just a second—in the barest fraction of a second—I’ll be able to view it the way they view it. I’ll slip over. It isn’t far. I can almost do it now, he thought. Damn near.
He said, “Liz, when I woke up this morning I lay in bed awhile and I said to myself, I’m in love with Liz Bonner.”
She accepted that calmly. She seemed to take it for granted. “I know,” she said. “But I wonder if that’s what it really is. Last night after your wife called I got to thinking about it. Maybe it’s just that we just stimulated each other physically. Couldn’t that be?”
Only from a book, he thought. From a textbook or an article. From a popular magazine she had picked up in a bus.
“Sex is a complicated thing,” she said. “Nobody really understands it. Even when you’re asleep it works on you. When you have a dream, it has to do with sex; did you know that? The different things that happen in a dream are sexual symbolism. The other night, for instance, I dreamed about a long low building, like a courthouse. That represents a female sexual organ, according to this book I read on psychology. It was a book I had when I first got married, before Chic and I began to have intercourse. According to the doctor who wrote it, a woman should always be careful to take an active part during marital relations. He said that most women are frigid because they don’t realize that they have to really participate in the act. So I always tried to participate. I mean, maybe because I was trying to live a healthy marital life I somehow over-stimulated you or something. I don’t know.”
“Did he say anything else?” Roger said.
“He explained about different muscles. Most of them lie dormant during the woman’s entire life and she isn’t even aware that they exist. I used to know the names.”
She walked on a few steps, along the sidewalk. He followed her. People hurried past them in both directions.
“Chic has never been much good,” she said. “Concerning marital relations. He always wanted to put it in immediately, if you understand what I mean. Does this bother you, my talking like this? I’ve been thinking… I wanted to talk about it openly with you. He never liked any of the foreplay. I guess that’s what it’s called. But to a woman that’s terribly important. If a woman is going to reach climax she needs that. Actually the lining inside a woman isn’t sensitive beyond a certain point. So once it actually enters her she may stop responding. There’s a place that’s very sensitive but I forget what it’s called. Do you know?”
“No,” he said.
“It’s a sort of bone and if you go in right it’s stimulated at the same time. You can reach that with your hand. If a woman, especially a young girl, one who isn’t married, wants to stimulate herself she usually does it that way. And that’s outside. A lot of men think that isn’t the way it is, but it is. Sometimes afterward, after a climax, a woman can’t bear having that touched. I wish I could remember the name of it. It starts with s or c. Anyhow, they actually scream if it’s touched. But a woman can go on—most of them—and have climax after climax and a man can’t. So if a man comes too fast then it isn’t fair to the woman. He’s all done and she’s hardly started. So very seldom, maybe not ever, a woman gets anything out of the act.”
“Meaning?” he said.
She said, “It’s usually just for the man. For his enjoyment. The woman sort of submits to it, to please him. But that isn’t right. A woman shouldn’t do it if she doesn’t get something out of it. Don’t you agree? If she realizes that she’s not, even if she wants to, very often she can’t. It isn’t her fault. In most cases it’s the man’s fault. It all depends on how he is, and if he doesn’t care about her enough then naturally she can’t get anything out of it.”
At the corner she started down a side street. He held onto her arm; she allowed him to.
“It’s bright,” she said. “I should have brought my dark glasses.”
In a yard, a plump Pomeranian dog yapped at them and Liz started away from him, toward it, with her hand out.
“I love dogs,” she said, bending. “What’s your name, little fellow?”
“Watch out,” Roger said.
Kneeling, she patted the dog’s sides. “He won’t bite me. See?” The dog’s tongue lolled, a small red tongue, like a cat’s. The animal’s ears were pointed. Liz flicked them.
“He’s cute,” she said, as Roger started on.
Across the street, in a fenced yard, a vast dahlia plant with shaggy cactus blossoms, yellow and thick, as large as dinner plates, caught Liz’s attention. Before he could stop her, she had started across the street. When he caught up with her she had reached the fence and had broken one of the blossoms from its stalk. An elderly, heavyset woman in a print dress was sweeping the walk and when she saw that she hurried toward them.
“What do you mean?” she shouted. “I’m going to call the police and hav
e you arrested; you have no right in the world to pick flowers from other persons’ yards!”
Liz held onto the dahlia. “Give her a dollar or something,” she said to Roger, as if she did not really see the woman. “I want to keep it.” To the woman she said, “It was practically ready to fall off anyhow. And look, you have plenty of them; you have a whole bushful of them.”
Feeling conspicuous, Roger paid the woman for the flower. Without a word she grabbed up the money and returned to her sweeping. Dust flew in clouds from her broom.
As they continued on, Liz fitted the stalk of the blossom into her belt. “How does it look?” she asked.
“That was a lousy thing to do,” he said.
“She has more.”
“Do you have to do dumb things like that?” he said.
Liz gave a snort, a suppressed noise, deep in her throat. Without warning she ran on ahead of him, breaking away from him and leaving him behind.
He thought, she’s in no condition. He hurried after her and she jerked away. Shaking her head she ran; her arms flailed and then she had fallen. Crying, she rolled with her coat flapping; her fingers caught at the pavement and her purse bounced open and hurled out its mirror and lipstick and papers and pencils in all directions. He got down by her and pinned her to the pavement, halting her rolling motion. Ludicrous, he thought. Horrible and ludicrous; how could such a thing happen? He gathered her up in his arms, clutching her against him. Her face was scratched. A drop of blood shone on her cheek and she smeared it away. Her eyes were glazed.
“It’s okay,” he said.
A few people halted to peer. Furiously, he waved them to go on. They went, but still glancing back.
Sitting on the sidewalk he held her tightly. She breathed irregularly and now she was staring at him; her face was flaked and without color.
“You’re okay,” he said. He began to collect the things that had spilled from her purse. Some had rolled a long distance.
Helping her to her feet he started to lead her back in the direction that they had come. She seemed to remain stunned, and he realized that she was limping. Maybe, he thought, she was physically hurt.
Puttering About in a Small Land Page 25
