Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  “Oh,” Paul said, while she lowered the melon into her cart. So it was for the husband, not for him. He felt stupid. But if she didn’t mean anything, she had no right to look at him that way.

  “There’s just one more thing I’ve got to have for this dinner,” Ceci said. “Wild rice. I think it’s over here.” Paul followed the tail of gold hair, brooding. Wild rice as a sop to her husband and her conscience, maybe; but he was going to have her first, whatever she thought. Still, wasn’t it rather—“Jesus Christ, one seventy-nine for that measly little box! Oh no, uh-uh. Hey, Paul.” Using his name for the first time, Ceci also moved a step nearer to him, so that their bodies were touching.

  “Put it in your pocket,” she said in a low voice. “Come on, you’ve got lots of room.” Leaning up against him as they stood side by side in front of the shelves, Ceci began shoving the box of wild rice down into Paul’s jacket pocket.

  “What’re you doing? For God’s sake.” Paul pulled the rice out of his pocket. “You want me to go to jail?”

  “Aw, don’t be chicken. Nobody’s going to see you.” Both Paul and Ceci continued to hold the box of rice. It had a picture of an ugly Indian in a canoe on it. “I thought you were a good guy,” she went on. “What’s the matter: haven’t you ever lifted anything before?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Paul said. “And I’m not going to start now.” He put the box back on the shelf. Not only is she married, he thought—she’s a kleptomaniac. How did I ever get into this? Her kitten face, soft mouth and snub nose answered him.

  “Listen, you shouldn’t steal from stores,” he said. “You’ll get into trouble.”

  “You run your own life, pal.” Ceci took the box off the shelf. “Don’t look if it scares you,” she added, pressing more closely up against him, and began to pull her black jersey out from the wide leather belt.

  “There.” Holding her sweater up, Ceci shoved the box of wild rice down between her skirt and the soft, white skin of her stomach. “Okay.” Paul dared to look along the aisle; no one seemed to have noticed anything.

  Letting the jersey down over the skirt, Ceci stepped aside. “Does it show?” Paul shook his head. “Great.” She put her hand on the shopping cart again. “Anybody looks at me, they’ll think I’m pregnant. With a real square baby.” She grinned, and Paul could not help smiling.

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  He was pleased with this explanation, and repeated it to himself several times as he and Ceci passed slowly through the checkout stand, left the Joy Superdupermarket, and loaded her groceries into his car. She was crazy. It formed an important part of the legal defense he was composing in his head in the expectation of being picked up at any moment for shoplifting. When they turned out of the parking lot onto National Boulevard, he let out a sigh.

  Ceci turned in the seat to look at him. “That really bugged you, didn’t it?” she asked.

  “You’re goddamned right it did.” Half-consciously he was trying to use her language. “I was waiting for them to grab us the whole time. Listen, you’d better not try anything like that again.”

  “Oh? Will you stop me?” Ceci smiled at him, but rather coolly. Paul did not answer. “Will you turn me in if I do?” Aware that he was being mocked, Paul looked away and continued driving. He began to feel that he had not been on an exciting assignation with a beautiful, crazy beatnik girl, but instead that he had been coldly used as a taxi by a married kleptomaniac waitress.

  Following Ceci’s directions, Paul pulled up in front of a two-story shack on an alley in the beach slum of Venice. He got out of the car and began unloading her bags of groceries onto the sidewalk. One. Two. Three.

  “There you are,” he said flatly.

  “It’s upstairs.” Hardly glancing at Paul, Ceci picked up a carton of beer and began climbing a rickety stairway at the side of the building. Paul stood and looked at the three bags sitting on the dirty, cracked sidewalk, each printed in large letters with the name of the Superdupermarket: JOY, JOY, JOY. Then, furious, but a gentleman to the last, he picked them up and followed her.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened directly onto a kitchen, shabby and dim. There was a big bowl of fruit and vegetables on the table, dishes stacked in the sink; the walls were covered with paintings and drawings and photographs. There was no sign of her husband. He set the bags on a table.

  “Hey, you brought them all. Great. Thank you.” In Paul’s suspicious mood, it sounded like a dismissal.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Well; see you next week, probably.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. At the restaurant.”

  “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”

  “Was I supposed to stay for dinner?”

  Ceci released the groceries she was holding, two cans of soup and a head of lettuce. They fell on to the table. “Don’t put me down, man,” she said. “Don’t do that. I know you’re bugged because I scammed off with that rice. All right, but you don’t have to walk out on me.”

  “I’m not walking out on you,” Paul protested, confused again. “I didn’t know you expected me to come to dinner. Honestly. Anyhow, I can’t come to dinner. I have to go home.”

  “For Christ’s sake. What’d you think I got all this stuff for?”

  “I don’t know. For you and your husband to eat, I suppose.”

  “Christ. I wouldn’t buy crab meat and stuff like that for him. We’re separated. I mean he doesn’t live here any more.” She laughed shortly, then widened her eyes and looked at Paul warmly. “So come on. Stay.”

  “I’d love to. But I can’t, really. I have to go home.”

  Now Ceci narrowed her eyes: sexy kitten into watchful cat. “I get it,” she said finally. “You have to go back and have dinner with your wife. Great.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said.

  “So we blew the whole afternoon dragging around in that market, and now you have to go home. Or maybe you want to go home?” She spoke steadily, but Paul saw the slope of her shoulders, the way her mouth remained open at the end of the question, and knew that she was as tense and disappointed as he.

  “God, no.” He extended his arms; immediately, or so it seemed, Ceci was pressed up against him, kissing him lightly all over the face; he was kissing her.

  “Wow,” she said. “Ow. Wait a minute.” She stepped back, lifted her jersey, and pulled the box of wild rice out of her skirt. She laughed: “I forgot about this; I thought for a second it was some crazy thing you had on.” She leaned against Paul and began kissing him again, rubbing up against him very gently with her arms, breasts, legs, and belly. The blood ran into Paul’s head and private parts. He clutched at Ceci and bit her on the shoulder, getting a mouthful of cotton jersey. She put her feet on his feet, stood on tiptoe, and looked into his eyes.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” Paul remarked inanely.

  “Listen.” Very gently, Ceci brushed her breasts across his shirt. She had no bra on; he could feel the nipples lifted to hard points. “Do you have to go home to dinner now or not?”

  “I have to go home to dinner eventually,” Paul murmured, stroking her bottom, “but now—”

  “Okay. Cut out, then.” She stepped back, and put her hands behind her head, where the hair was beginning to come loose.

  “No, I was going to say I could be half an hour late.” Automatically, Paul looked at his watch: he was half an hour late already.

  “Uh-uh. I don’t go for that, man. I need a lot of time the first time. Or like it won’t really swing. You know.”

  “But I want you.” Paul grasped Ceci again; she pulled back, half-resisting.

  “Okay, okay. When do you want me?” She smiled.

  “Now. I can stay about an hour.” What would he tell Katherine? It was after five already, he saw.

  Ceci shook her head. “Yeah, with your eye on the clock,” she said. “Make it some other time, huh?”

  “Whenever you say. T
omorrow?” With the remaining fraction of his brain, Paul began to think how he might possibly explain being absent on Thanksgiving.

  “No good. I’m on all day. How about Friday? I don’t have to be at the place till four. You dig lunch on Friday?”

  The image came to Paul of himself digging lunch, in the form of a great hole in Venice Beach, in which Ceci was half-buried, naked. “Yes,” he said. “About when?”

  “Let’s make it noon.”

  “Good.” He began to construct his excuses for Friday.

  “Okay.” Disengaging herself from Paul, Ceci walked over and opened the door for him, with a succinctness that he found disconcerting. Surely there should be more conversation, more hesitation over a thing like this.

  “You’re right near the beach here, aren’t you?” he said, moving slowly in the direction of the door. “Maybe if it’s still warm we could go for a swim; what do you think? Shall I bring my suit?”

  “We won’t have the time, man.” Ceci gave him a cat’s half-smile.

  Paul paused in the doorway. “Well,” he said. He bent to kiss her good-bye; the door was between them, and only their mouths met; warm, wet. Now, he thought, and started to go round the door; but Ceci leaned against it and pushed, hard. Thrown off balance, he staggered back and outside, on to the porch.

  “Ceci—”

  “Later,” she said, and shut the door on him.

  In a state of mild shock, Paul went down the stairs, got into his car, and began to drive home. It was because things were happening too fast, he thought, too soon, that he felt this way. He was used to having to force his way through a lengthy routine of flirtation and discussion, first base and second base; used to beating down a series of defenses with all the sensual, emotional, and intellectual energy he had. This lack of resistance threw him off balance. From an ugly, desperate girl he might have expected such directness, but not from Ceci O’Connor. Maybe she was a nymphomaniac.

  What to tell Katherine? Well, he could say something about a special project at N.R.D.C. A rush job, so he had to go in on Friday. She would believe it, because she had no idea of the real situation. In fact, no one at Nutting ever asked him to do anything. Executives from the top offices came by sometimes with visitors and he was introduced as a Harvard historian who was writing the history of the company. Even that wasn’t true yet. He was trying to write it, but the trouble was he still couldn’t find the data he needed in all those piles of paper on his desk: the basic facts and figures like the names of the original stockholders and the size of their investments. And nobody seemed to have the time to help him. They didn’t care about the past: they were only interested in the present and the immediate future.

  “So why worry?” Fred Skinner had said. “You’re pulling down your salary.” Katherine would have understood why he worried, but since Katherine already despised Nutting, he hadn’t told her. Which as it now turned out was just as well.

  Only he would be crazy to get mixed up with a girl like Ceci. She was unbalanced; must be. A nymphomaniac, a kleptomaniac; a psychopathic personality. She was very pretty; beautiful. Her hair, breasts. Probably she slept with everybody she knew. She might even have something catching. It would be crazy to go back there on Friday.

  Paul started down the other side of the hill into Mar Vista, and the sun set behind him; the rosy flush on the stucco dimmed, the smog among the palm trees in the middle distance turned from blue to gray. On his street, the outlines of the houses were beginning to blur, and the colors of the flowers shone softly: great white roses, yellow chrysanthemums, and many more that he could not name, fantastic in shape and color.

  He had suggested to Katherine that she might find out something about these flowers. She had always liked that sort of thing: when they visited in the country in New England, she would come in from a solitary walk on the coldest, wettest day with a handful of damp leaves or twigs in bud, crying out their names with joy. Why shouldn’t she take an interest in the local vegetation? There must be hundreds of new plants here. So he had thought and said, but to no use.

  Their lawn was as green now as the neighbors’, Paul thought as he pulled into the driveway. Green, lush, long—in fact, it needed to be mowed again. And it was getting into the flowerbeds, he noticed as he crossed the yard. Long runners of grass had leapt the trench between lawn and garden and were spreading spiderlike towards the house. What was more, as if in reprisal the flowers were getting into the grass: white flecks of alyssum spotted the lawn, and some heliconia had sprouted near the front door, breaking the ground like moles. He should cut and weed at once; it was too late tonight, but he would have plenty of time over the weekend, if he didn’t go to Venice.

  The house was dark. “Katherine?” he called, and walked through to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. Katherine’s kitchen was as clean and tidy as an office, unadorned except for an engagement calendar and a shelf of herbs. The pots and pans that should have held his supper hung on the wall, their copper bottoms shining.

  Paul went into the bedroom. The blinds were drawn down, and his wife was lying in bed in the dark.

  “Hello!” he said.

  His wife groaned, or sighed.

  “It’s late. Don’t you want to get up?”

  Katherine heaved herself up in bed, a white shape lit vaguely from the hall. She was wearing a cotton flannel nightgown with flannel ruffles. Paul raised the Venetian blind. It clattered up over a view of Los Angeles evening: a smoky dark blue mist decorated with blurred lights—red, white, green. The branches and leaves of the peach tree outside the window were close and black. Above, hazy blades of searchlights crossed and recrossed the sky. It was spectacularly fine, Paul thought, and was going to say so, when Katherine remarked flatly:

  “Hell. That’s what it looks like: hell.” She sat up, the sheets twisted round her shoulders. Paul looked at her, and found her not attractive. Maybe his standards of comparison had changed—the good-looking girls here were all deeply sun-tanned, outdoor types, glowing with light and life. Or maybe she had changed. But anyhow, it was as if the pale flame that had burned so steadily in the gray, damp New England air had become invisible—extinguished in a blaze of sun.

  “I suppose you want something to eat,” Katherine added.

  “Well, I was thinking of it,” Paul said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have sinus again?”

  “Yes.”

  A moment of nothing to say followed. Paul looked at Katherine; Katherine looked at the floor.

  “I’m sorry, I simply don’t feel up to cooking,” she said finally.

  “That’s all right. I’ll find something in the icebox.”

  “There isn’t anything in the icebox, really. I meant to go to the store today, but I didn’t feel up to it. ... Why don’t you go out and get something, and I’ll try to sleep. I’ve been trying for hours, and I’d just dropped off when you woke me up. It really wasn’t very considerate of you.”

  “Well, it wasn’t very considerate of you not to get anything for supper,” Paul said, in what he intended for a humorous tone.

  “If you had any idea of how I feel,” Katherine said, not humorously, “you wouldn’t ask me to get up and cook. I’m so dizzy, and I have pains shooting through my head like long needles. All through my head. Or maybe you would ask me, I don’t know,” she concluded in a dull shrewish voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said flatly. Katherine might have managed to buy him a pound of hamburger, considering that she had practically nothing to do all day. Which was probably part of her trouble.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said. “Did you call up U.C.L.A. yet? Skinner asked me about it, you know.”

  “I know.” Katherine raised her eyes briefly. She was suspicious of Fred Skinner: she would not believe that he had thought she had been “really great” at his party; she was convinced that he had deliberately tried to make her drunk out of boorish malice. Suspecting some similar trick, perh
aps, she kept putting off investigating an apparently good job he had heard about at U.C.L.A. “Susy called today. She wants us to go to the beach with them and some friends on Friday. I said I didn’t know. I really don’t want to go, but I thought you might.”

  It occurred to Paul that going to the beach with the Skinners would prevent him from being crazy enough to see Ceci O’Connor again, so perhaps it was a good idea. Besides, he had been trying for weeks to show Katherine the sea, the sun—“We ought to go,” he said. “It’s insulting to keep turning down invitations all the time. Fred and Susy will think you don’t want to see them.”

  “I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to go to the beach.” Katherine lay down again, pulling the sheet with her. She tugged it into position with weak gestures. “I don’t mind seeing her, but I can do that any time.”

  “You should go. Maybe you’ll be feeling all right by then. You haven’t been to the beach at all yet.”

  “If I feel all right, I’ll have better things to do than go and sit in the dirty sand with a crowd of vulgar people.” Katherine half sat up, twitched the blanket over herself, and fell back. “Would you mind putting the blind down again?” Paul looked at her; then he looked for the cord of the Venetian blind, and let it down. “Thank you. Why don’t you go by yourself if you want to?” she added.

  “I can’t,” Paul said. “I have to go back to the office on Friday. I have to finish a special project.”

  6

  ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST Highway, in an unsteady stream of cars, moved the pink station wagon in which Katherine Cattleman, Susy Skinner, and Susy’s two children were going to visit the G.J. Putty mansion, art museum, garden, and private zoo. Katherine and Susy were in front; Mark, aged three, lay on his stomach in the cargo area, digging up the rubber matting with a toy bulldozer, and Viola, aged six, sat primly in front of him holding a plastic purse in white nylon gloves.

  The Putty estate is not open to the general public, but it may be visited on certain days by those who have made previous arrangements, and Fred Skinner had made such an arrangement through someone he knew in the U.C.L.A. Art Department. Katherine admitted to herself that it was thoughtful of him to have done so. She had no interest in the mansion, the garden, or the zoo, but the collection included paintings by Rubens, Renoir, Matisse, etc. which few people had ever seen, and she felt (or rather knew she ought to feel) gratitude to Fred for this opportunity. In the same way, she owed him gratitude for the job she had just accepted at U.C.L.A. which would start next week. It had turned out not to be a trick at all, but a bona fide position: research assistant on a project two professors in the Department of Social Sciences were starting under a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Yes, she owed gratitude to Fred Skinner, but it irritated her to pay him; she preferred to deliver it to his wife.