by Lynn Coady
Good afternoon, said Marco as Sam stalked past all four of them.
HE ASKED TO use her phone in the car, and then had to ask how to use it, and Sam wondered if he was one of those people who held up cellphone usage as an example of how the world was going to hell and vowed to never succumb, unlike the brainless masses, to such foolishness. Like the courtly CEO where Sam worked who had never not had secretaries to make his phone calls anyway. She tried not to stare at Marco while he spoke to whomever he was speaking to, but she wasn’t succeeding. She just gave in and stared at him. She was getting the feeling that everything Marco said — be it to interviewers or the editor or the party on the other end of the phone — was the same thing. Was part, that is, of one long, unspooling thought that never ended, that had no paragraph breaks, that refused to naturally conclude, as in polite conversation. And nobody asked him to give it a rest, nobody ever said, Yeah, okay, Marco, but we are talking about going to the beach now. Nobody broke in to ask what he wanted on his pizza.
Or if they did, Marco did not let himself get sidetracked.
Marco was saying, Don’t give him that. Lovey, don’t give him that. I know he wants it, but don’t give him that. It’s bad for him. No, it’s up to you. You are the one in charge and it is bad for him. Don’t argue with me, lovey, this is your responsibility. No, no, no. Okay? No. No no no.
Now Marco was noticing how Sam was neglecting to pretend not to listen to him. She was driving, but she kept looking over at every other word.
I hope that was okay, said Marco when he was finished, holding the phone out to Sam. It was on my calling card.
Can you just stick it in my purse, please?
Marco opened her purse.
Look at all your hot sauce! he exclaimed.
SHE DROPPED MARCO off after battling the traffic and negotiating countless new detours, and now only had an hour until she picked him up again. So Sam walked to the back of the hotel, where there was a park with benches for people to sit and watch the ferries chug back and forth across the lake.
She brought Marco’s book along because she was supposed to have read it weeks ago.
She found a free bench and texted Marie.
Someone is messing with me. Someone is rattling my cage.
Then Alex wrote, as if in response, I thought I’d go to the Marco thing tonight.
He was one of those men who didn’t wear deodorant and somehow got away with it. Or maybe he wore some kind of natural deodorant that didn’t really mask his sweat. The point was, Sam could always smell him. It was not a bad smell; it was just entirely him, his bodily self-announcement. It was his presence; fulminating beneath his skin and emerging from his pores. You knew when he was there, and when he had been there.
Whenever that smell hit Sam, her uterus would contract with sudden violence. Like it was hurling itself against her abdomen in mute, uterine frenzy.
At the next bench, a man was seducing a woman and Sam could hear the occasional low-voiced inanity. I am the kind of person, he was saying to the woman, who is very aware of his energy.
A policeman on an actual horse appeared out of nowhere and clopped his way past Sam, claustrophobically close, a liquid wall of chestnut haunch.
This world brings entities together so they can feel joy, the man on the bench was saying.
The cop on the horse slowed its clop as he approached the couple. He was wearing a helmet, which Sam thought made good sense. It struck her that probably everyone who rode horses should wear helmets. Because who knew what a horse might do?
A text from her brother read: Unfortunately it looks like — before Sam stopped reading it and put her phone away.
She picked up Marco’s book and opened to the first page. The cop was murmuring something to the man — the seducer — and what the cop was saying was making the man surprised. The seducer started speaking in high-pitched exclamations. Sam held the book in front of her face. After a moment or two she saw from her peripheral vision that the man, still exclaiming and gesturing, was getting to his feet.
The cop made some small, indeterminate movement — Sam couldn’t say if it was a gesture or if the cop had physically made contact of some kind. Either way, the seducer sank back onto the bench.
SHE ORDERED ONE glass of red wine and one glass of white and carried them across the room to Marco. Then she had to stand there awhile and wait for him to distinguish and differentiate Sam’s expectant presence from all the other expectant presences that had clustered around him after his talk.
Eventually his eyes did a tour of the circle of faces. Sam! he greeted.
Red or white? she mouthed.
Very kind, said Marco, allowing his soupy brown eyes to pour appreciation into hers. He reached for the white.
Sam blank-smiled and brought the red to her own lips, holding his eye as she receded from the cluster. Marco, looking stymied, watched her go. He was paying extra attention now because of the way she had behaved in the car and in the restaurant. She hadn’t said much. But she’d said enough to let him know her feelings toward him were taking on a purplish tinge of the unprofessional.
Sam, called Marco before she had completely receded from the circle. You don’t have to disappear.
The members of Marco’s conversational klatch were now gazing like cows back and forth between Marco and Sam with a total lack of interest. Waiting brainlessly for the exchange to be over.
I’m not going anywhere, Sam assured Marco.
She turned and walked directly into Alex’s looming chest. Her wine sloshed and some of it splattered to the floor, but somehow didn’t get anywhere on him, which was so typical. The smell — like fresh pelt — hit her hard. She craned her neck to peer up at him and her uterus shook itself awake like a dog.
Clumsy, said Alex, whose one-note mode of flirtation had always been personal insult. She understood then the whole affair had been about efficiency. This was how you sinned and took your punishment all at once.
He smiled down at Sam, allowing his smell to settle all around her.
What? Sam said.
What? said Alex back.
Here was yet another easy way out — like stepping off a cliff. Sam cleared her throat in order to be heard.
“When can we fuck?” she said.
Alex’s eyes actually bulged and he hunched forward, abruptly telescoping his height in a way that appeared spastic and involuntary. Whoa, whoa, whoa! he whispered. If he had been carrying some kind of sack around with him, he might have thrown it over Sam’s head.
She turned away from him to check her phone, ignoring the howls from her lower abdomen. There was another text from her brother, starting Did you — so she put it away and moved toward the bar.
MARCO IS AN animal, she had texted Marie during the talk. She’d been thinking he had eyes like moose: puzzled and stupid and bulgy. And his silky curls shining under the spotlight made her think of the poodle she had growing up; a poodle named Arfer. Do tell! Marie wrote back. Marie had her own interpretation of everything. Transmitting her thoughts to Marie was like cutting the string off a kite, allowing the wind to yank it around in any and every direction; relinquishing ownership.
And after they arrived at the dinner, the blowsy editor had approached her and said, Sam, I was trying to get in touch with you for the last hour to drop off something for Marco but I wasn’t able to get through on your phone.
And Sam, who’d had her ringer turned off since the moment on the park bench with the police horse clopping past, stared at the editor’s swelling jowls and told her, My father was having his heart taken out. And that was all she had to say, the editor didn’t even let her finish. The editor’s jowls drooped another couple centimetres — she was almost not middle-aged anymore, Sam abruptly realized; the editor was almost actually old — and she terrified Sam by lurching forward and holding Sam in her billowy arms a moment.
IT WAS VERY late in the evening when Marco sought her out. He had made it clear all day he wanted to be res
ted for the flight tomorrow morning. Don’t let me linger too long, he instructed. And for the love of God, don’t let me drink too much. Two, three glasses of wine. Don’t let anyone put a glass of scotch in front of me, or I’m toast. I can’t handle the jet lag the next day — at my age it’s just crippling.
And Sam had ignored him for most of the night.
He found her at a table drinking with a couple of interns from another house. He had to lean past her chair and insert himself into the frothy, college-girl conversation, which was mostly gossip about older — but not too much older — colleagues where they worked. I think it’s time to go, said Marco, sounding as if he was the one minding Sam instead of the other way around. She got up without a word — busily draining her drink as she stood — and followed him to the parking lot.
I shouldn’t drive, I am completely shit-faced, explained Sam. But how about I call you a cab.
She grabbed her phone and saw there was a voicemail from her brother.
Actually, she told Marco, it’s pretty easy to flag one down.
He gazed down the street. The hotel sign was blazing in the distance like a signal fire. It might be nice to walk, he said.
Oh, they’d kill me if I let you walk home by yourself.
Then, Sam, said Marco. Please don’t let me walk home by myself.
They walked. Sam hobbled along for a moment, taking off her high heels, and went from being about even with Marco’s armpits to meeting him at mid-chest. Now she was at nipple height. Psychic text to Marie — Hey Marie: nipple height.
I want to say, Marco told her once Sam had worked her shoes off. I appreciate your care these past couple of days. I’m sorry, if I ever seemed distant at all.
Oh — distant, repeated Sam.
These junkets, continued Marco, they actually require a great deal of energy and concentration for me. I’m an introvert by nature. To be chauffeured around, speaking into microphones, getting up in front of crowds — it’s wearing. I feel I have to conserve energy at every spare moment.
Uh-huh, said Sam.
Marco turned his liquid eyes toward the looming hotel sign, which didn’t seem to be getting much bigger as they advanced. I’m saying if I was rude to you at any point. Or inconsiderate.
Sam waited. But Marco had stopped talking. He was just stopping there. He wasn’t even going to finish the sentence.
Rude, repeated Sam.
Or inconsiderate. Of your feelings.
Sam sounded a giddy little snort.
Then I apologize, finished Marco at last, frowning like invisible fingers were actually pulling at his face; like it was painful, but he was helpless not to do it.
Sam noticed they were walking alongside a police fence. She fell against it briefly just to feel the metal and hear it jangle.
There is insult, Marco, said Sam. Insult is no problem. I am insulted every day, by all sorts of people, because that is what it is to be short. That is what it is to be human, as you would say — ha ha. There is insult, and then of course there is full-scale attack.
Attack, repeated Marco.
I shouldn’t say full-scale attack, no. I should say covert attack. Which is secret and dirty and vicious. And cowardly.
You think I, said Marco.
Sam’s phone jumped in her purse, nuzzling away at her thigh through the leather.
It’s all couched, Sam shrieked, piercing the night with the chipmunky, short-woman’s voice she acquired whenever she became upset. She jerked a little when she shrieked, bouncing against the fence again and causing the three bottles of hot sauce, which she still hadn’t taken out of her purse, to clack together like bones. Now Marco looked like he wanted to throw his hands over his ears. You sit there, said Sam, on the other side of the glass, accusing me while pretending I’m not there.
Not at all, said Marco, blinking his great eyes as rapidly as someone with such big eyes was capable.
And I started reading your book. I know I was supposed to read it before now, but I didn’t. But I started just today, once I realized what you were doing. And I just can’t believe it, Marco.
Something wet and warm fell into her cleavage. Sam knew it was her own saliva. She was drooling. She was drooling she was so angry.
Can’t believe what? Marco pleaded, sounding distant and terror-struck.
He’d never imagined, perhaps, that Sam would ever settle down to thinking long enough to put it all together. He never dreamed she’d hold her ground, let alone come rampaging at him through the fences in full revolt.
TAKE THIS AND EAT IT
Well, I keep seeing this girl now. The first time I saw her was terrible — her parents brought her in because she had stopped eating and she was in one of the rooms having a tube worked down her nose. I had paused on my way down the hall to visit Sylvia Embree dying of lung cancer because I could hear the doctors and nurses shuffling around, barking orders and crying out whenever one of her flailing limbs connected. And the girl, this little fourteen-year-old girl was shouting with great authority that Our Lord would bring down his wrath upon all their heads. She had such a deep and outraged voice for a child. I have to say I was impressed and stopped to take a peek.
The moment I stuck my nose in the door, young Dr. Pat looked up and told me, “Sister, you could help.”
They’d never asked me to help before. I stepped over the threshold like a kitten.
“No, really, Sister,” said Dr. Pat. “Please.” He took his hand off the girl for a quick instant to wave me over. “Now this is Sister Anita!” he yelled down at the girl, who was trying to yank the tube out of her face as Dr. Pat and a nurse kept hold of her arms.
She stopped struggling for a moment to take me in. Then nodded, all business. “Jesus is Lord,” she said. Tried to butt the doctor with her forehead, then.
How about that, I couldn’t stop my mind from saying.
Now she’s a regular, like Sylvia Embree. I keep seeing her laid out there like an invalid, taking up one bed after another — in and out all the time. “For pity’s sake, Catherine,” I tell her, “this is getting ridiculous, a young girl like yourself. Have a bite to eat and get on with it.”
For the most part, she ignores me. We spoke a little the first time she was admitted, and I think she’s decided I’m a fraud or some such thing. Too low on the totem pole for the exalted likes of her. She told me she was fasting, just like the nuns do, and I asked did she want to become a nun. She just snorted at me like I’d asked did she want to become a clown in the circus, like she was insulted. Well, I was insulted too so I got up to go talk to Sylvia. Sylvia needs a machine to do her breathing for her and still she wouldn’t quit the smokes if she had anything left to say about it. In a way, she and the girl are the same sort of specimen.
“Now, Sylvia,” I tell her sometimes. “There’s a girl down the hall who won’t take a bite, she’s starving herself. Killing herself deliberately.”
“Well, the foolish thing.”
“Yes, but will you look who’s talking?”
But I only say that sort of thing when Sylvia’s going on and on about her cigarettes.
“Why don’t you just ask me to bring you a gun?” I’ll tell her.
“One of these days I might,” she’s answered once or twice.
I should leave Sylvia alone about it. She’s old and she’s dying. But a fourteen-year-old girl — there’s little excuse.
Still, it’s none of my business. I don’t want it to be. Once every few months I’ll pass a room and there she’ll be and I will call as I go by: “Not again!” But that’s about all I have to say to her these days. I didn’t particularly like her after that snort.
But then Dr. Pat takes me aside one day when Catherine’s back on the ward and asks if I’ll meet with him and the social worker, a woman named Hilary. I dart my eyes around for a moment, perhaps in the hope that someone else is going to step forward and say, No, no, no, I’ll do it — what in God’s name are you asking Anita for. But nobody does, so I
say I suppose that I could.
This Hilary and I pass each other in the hall at different hours of the day. She carries her folders and I have my beads. She’s young, but wears her glasses on a chain like someone’s grammy. We nod on occasion.
“Catherine’s condition is fairly bound up with her religion,” Dr. Pat explains like I’m some kind of simpleton. Hilary and I sit side by side in front of his desk. Hilary swivels her chair around and looks at me the moment he says religion.
“So it would seem,” I remark. Even though I don’t need to, I untuck a piece of tissue from my sleeve and lightly blow my nose before the two of them. I suppose I’m a bit nervous.
“Have you spoken to her at all?” the social worker wants to know.
“I told her I found it ridiculous.”
“Really?” says Hilary.
“Yes — and I do,” I say.
“Well, would you mind talking to her a bit more?”
“I’d be happy to talk to her,” I say. “But I thought that was your job.”
“I thought it was your job too —” says Hilary.
We smile at each other. Two nice women.
“Well,” interrupts Dr. Pat. “She’s really quite obsessed with religion. We’re hoping you could explain things to her. That, you know, God doesn’t require she starve herself, basically.”
“Well, I told her I thought it was nonsense. To be honest, she doesn’t seem to have much respect for me. I expect she sees me as a bit of an anachronism.” I look at Hilary and smile again.
“To be honest, Sister,” she says, echoing me, “I find I just can’t speak to Catherine on that level. I don’t have the background. I don’t have your expertise. She challenges me on all these points of doctrine, and what am I to say?”
“You’re not Catholic,” I say.
“I’m not religious at all,” says Hilary. And the quick way she straightens her back shows me a woman who was baptized, took communion and knows the Act of Contrition by heart. She might as well be making the sign of the cross.
“In that case,” I say — and I don’t know why I am making this so hard for poor Hilary — “why not just tell her it’s a bunch of hokum?” I twiddle my beads.
