by John Enright
“I came to get my things,” he said. He felt foolish standing there holding a pillow and blanket like some sort of refugee.
Morgan shut down what she was doing and closed the laptop. “Car okay?” she asked, turning around.
“Four hundred dollars later.”
“Ouch. That’s an investment. Why not stay another day or two as compensation? Maybe you can even get an apology out of Susan.”
“She’s back?” Dominick walked over to the bed and dropped the blanket and pillow there.
“Oh yeah, she’s back. Probably gone back into hiding now that you’re here. Those from your car?”
“Yes.”
“She was sleeping there. I think she likes you. How many girls steal a guy’s car just so they can sleep in it?”
“I wouldn’t know. You ever done it?”
“Honey, I’ve stolen better things than cars to sleep in. It’s always a compliment. No, seriously, stay another day or two. You haven’t even said but hello-good-bye to Amanda, and she needs to talk with you. You may not owe her that, but she needs it. She just lost her mother, for God’s sake. And I’d like to show you at least some of what we want to do here, just to prove it’s not all bullshit.”
“That’s all very good, Morgan, but …” Dominick couldn’t come up with an immediate but. He was back in the light-filled room he had felt so comfortable in. He sat down on the bed.
“Where you going to go tonight? Back to some dumpy motel room?” Morgan asked. “And besides, you can help me out. I got a contractor coming out now to scope out the foundation job. He’ll act more professional if there’s a big white guy like you along for his inspection. You won’t have to say anything, just come along.”
Dominick noticed that he still had shirts hanging in Morgan’s closet. Or had she hung them there? “Where would I stay?” he asked.
“Why, here, of course. I can bunk with Amanda, no problem. You want something to eat? Would you like some good leftover homemade rice and beans? Do you know anything about house foundations? Come on down to the kitchen.” Morgan got up and left the room. Dominick followed her. As they headed down the staircase she said, “Drainage seems to be a big deal. I don’t know why. The basement here is perfectly dry. You like your beans spicy? I’ll add some heat. Those girls.”
Dominick followed Morgan into the kitchen. “Yes, about those girls,” he said.
“I like having a man in the house,” Morgan said, getting things onto the stove. “For me a house is not a home without a man in it. How about a couple of tortillas with that? We finally went grocery shopping yesterday. You didn’t leave us much.”
The contractor arrived as Dominick was finishing his lunch. Morgan and he were discussing ways to cook catfish. Morgan introduced Dominick as their architect.
“Not from around here, are you?” the contractor said. Dominick had already forgotten his name. He looked like a contractor.
“No, the Washington area,” Dominick said.
“Virginia. Saw your plates. Lots of preservation work down there I bet.” As they toured the outside foundations of the house, the contractor made several attempts to draw Dominick into shop talk. Dominick just made positive sounds and let him talk.
On their way down the outside cellar stairs to the basement, Dominick held Morgan back to ask for the man’s name again. “Bill,” she said, “like what we’ll get for this consultation.” The man was making notes and taking measurements. He had some sort of laser gun that he flashed and consulted every now and then. Dominick wondered how much of that was show, but he said nothing. There were no electric lights in the basement, no windows. Morgan went off to find some flashlights, and Bill went back to his van for his own. Dominick stood on the basement’s dirt floor at the edge of the light from the outside door and inhaled. It was an ancient smell, as familiar as it was foreign, the smell of another time. Morgan and Bill returned with lights.
“Dry as a pharaoh’s tomb,” Bill said. “No problem here. They knew how to build them back then, didn’t they, professor?” Bill had decided to call Dominick professor. “I’d take a real close look at each of these beams, though,” he said, aiming his flashlight along the ceiling. That’s where your real problem’s going to be. A hundred and eighty years is a long time for a floor beam.”
Morgan had brought Dominick his own flashlight, and he wandered further into the dark cavern. Along one long roughhewn rock wall were lines of narrow plank shelves that once must have held put-up preserves, and there were large empty wood boxes for potatoes or turnips or apples. Further on he was surprised to find raised wooden platforms that looked like they could have been made for sleeping, and a short, crude three-legged stool. Beyond that chamber was another, empty except for a pile of metal barrel hoops lying one on top of another in the dust and dirt as if the barrel they had once held together had vanished from inside them.
“Dominick, we’re going back up,” Morgan called from somewhere behind him.
“Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute,” he said. At the far end of this chamber was what looked to be a low door of unfinished timber set into the wall. There was a simple hammered metal lever latch. When he lifted the latch, the door swung slowly open on a push of warmer, fresher air that smelled more of the present. The beam from his flashlight revealed another long room, empty except for two old trunks, wooden and round-topped with metal hasps, set up on stone ledges along one wall.
“Dominick, are you alright?” Morgan’s voice seemed far away.
“Coming,” he called, and he closed and latched the door behind him. As he walked back he played his flashlight beam along the floor, where his footprints were all that had disturbed the dirt and dust for as long as it could remember.
Chapter 9
It was Morgan’s idea, but Amanda approved. They would go out to dinner, the three of them. There was that Italian place run by Chinese up on 9W. Nemo was resting in Morgan’s room. The others were not back from work yet, but would be soon.
“Your brother hasn’t been fully exposed to them yet. I’m afraid they might spook him off,” Morgan said. “I think this place may be growing on Captain Nemo. After that contractor left today, Nemo had a bunch of questions about the house. He sat out in that chair on the back porch and smoked a cigar and looked, swear to God, like he was to the manor born, surveying his holdings. I’ll get him up. We’ll go in his car.”
Nemo was receptive, and they left just as the first of the girls’ cars was pulling up to the house. Nemo drove. Amanda sat in the back. The car had a complicated smell—cigar smoke, leather upholstery, something earthy and strange, and something feminine, the hint of a fragrance like shampoo or lotion. Morgan sat in front and kept up a constant chatter with Nemo. Amanda leaned back and tuned them out.
To the manor born, that’s what she said, as if you weren’t. As if you are just a sharecropper, a renter, an unlanded house-flipper, itinerant riffraff. Why do you care what she thinks of you? Just look at her up there, sucking up to the master, flashing that … What is it but openness? What is it called in chemistry? Valence, yeah, valence. Flashing her valence, that she is a free attachable … thing. Look at her slap him on the shoulder as they laugh. That is your brother up there, not hers. Maybe she wants to fuck him. It’s been a while since Morgan’s last man, at least as far as you know. She would have to be on top. He more than twice outweighs her. Black on white, well, more chocolate on cream. You would like to watch, wouldn’t you? Watch her slip his thing into her and ride him. It’s been too long, girl. Why did you ever give up on that? Skin on skin, all your muscles aching to get to that one spot.
The meal was unmemorable, pasta in red clam sauce with red wine. Amanda had more than her usual one glass. Morgan and Nemo spent much of the meal telling anecdotes about Washington, a city both of them seemed to know well, and Amanda couldn’t compete. They lingered at the table over coffee and aperitifs long after their plates had been removed. The restaurant was almost empty. Morgan was delaying their
return to the house as long as possible. Amanda decided to get drunk. She wasn’t driving. She ordered the quickest way she knew to get there, a Long Island Iced Tea—vodka, rum, gin, tequila, lemon and Coke—the express train.
It was Amanda who convinced them to stop for a nightcap at The Hill Top. Her inner voice was jabbering away, but she wasn’t listening. She had never been inside The Hill Top, though she had passed it many times. It was a local hangout with as many pickup trucks and motorcycles as cars in the gravel parking lot. But, it being a weekday night, the parking lot wasn’t crowded. The bar was full, but there was a choice of empty tables and they took one. A younger crowd—jeans and boots and tattoos. A waitress came over and took their order. There was country and western music playing, or maybe it was just bad rock and roll. What was the solvent in alcohol that wiped out years? Amanda felt like dancing. In the soft amber saloon light Morgan and Nemo sitting across from her looked like a much younger couple than they were. Even Amanda’s hands looked young.
The Hill Top’s decor, while minimal, was unique. It consisted primarily of items of women’s underwear stapled to the ceiling above the back bar—many colored, fancy panties and bras like stalactites in a lingerie cave. “Beneath the unmentionables,” Nemo called it. Amanda was tapping her foot to the music, sipping her drink—a draft beer now—and watching the young bucks at the bar. It was like a show on the Nature Channel: “The young adult males, having been turned out from their mother’s care, congregate together until rutting season when nature dictates that they compete against each other and the alpha males for procreative rights.” Summertime garb—work shirts with the sleeves cut off, wifebeater tank tops in either white or black, biceps and attitude. They seemed most relaxed leaning on something.
“The earliest history of bars? Who knows?” Nemo was answering one of Morgan’s constant questions. “They go back so far and were such a given that no one really paid them much attention. Fraternal gatherings with libations, no big deal. The archaeologists keep pushing back the date when alcohol became involved. You can buy ales now concocted from recipes derived from the residue found in cups from King Midas’s tomb.”
“Did they have gold in them?” Amanda asked.
“No, but they were spiced and probably sweet.”
A young man had caught Amanda’s nature-watching and strolled over from the bar. Maybe he was coming to ask her to dance; she could use that. He wasn’t unattractive, though his smile was a little funny. “We don’t get many of your type in here,” he said. He was carrying a bottle of beer.
“What type is that?” Amanda asked, smiling, expecting some sort of compliment.
“We’re not used to mixed company. Know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t know what you mean,” Amanda said.
“I mean we ain’t got nothing against blacks per se, but black and white together is sort of strange to us. Where you from?”
“Diligence,” Amanda said. “What’s your problem?”
“No, no problem. I was just wondering if the lady’d like to dance,” and he turned to Morgan. “Miss? I ain’t never danced with a black girl before, and the guys at the bar bet me I wouldn’t ask.”
Morgan turned to Nemo. “What century is this?” she asked. Then she turned back to the guy still standing there. “Well, lover boy, you asked. Now go back and collect your bet.”
“But I asked you to dance. There’s another ten in it for me if you do. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I think she already answered your question,” Nemo said.
“Nobody’s talking to you.”
“I’ll dance with you,” Amanda said. “How’s that?”
“No, I want to dance with the dinge, not you, mom. Come on.” The guy made a grab for Morgan’s arm, and she jerked it away.
“Fuck off,” Morgan said.
“I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I think fuck off means good-bye,” Nemo said, standing up.
“Stuff it, old man. What are you doing with this fine piece of ass anyway?”
When Nemo stood up he was much bigger than the young man. “Back off,” was all he said. “Back off, please.”
As the young man swung the bottle it spewed beer across Amanda and the table. The bottle shattered against Nemo’s temple and he fell backwards. He took out an empty table and chairs behind him as he fell. It was a very loud noise. Now Morgan was on her feet, and she took a kick at the man’s groin but caught him only on the knee. He was about to take a swipe at her with the broken neck of the bottle still in his hand when someone from the bar grabbed him from behind and pulled him away. Amanda went to her brother, who was sprawled out among the broken pieces of furniture. One half of his face was already painted with blood.
***
Without his reading glasses Dominick had trouble making out the name of the drug on the prescription bottle label, Oxy-something. His eyesight was blurrier than usual. Oxycodone maybe? He knew nothing about drugs, but Morgan said they would help. It was her prescription. There was only a handful of white tablets left in the bottle. He took two then lay back down. Whenever he changed elevations the room spun. He was back in Morgan’s room, her bed. He tentatively touched the bandage on his throbbing left temple. He had never been clocked like that before. He vaguely remembered being helped to sit up on the floor of the saloon and the waitress coming with a wet towel to wipe the blood off his face. When she bent over him he could see her tits inside her blouse—nice young tits, no bra, in spite of all the empty bras dangling above the bar.
Morgan and Amanda had helped him to the car, where he talked them out of taking him to an emergency room. They couldn’t agree on where the nearest one was anyway. Dominick had a phobia about hospitals. He had never been in one except to visit people dying. Amanda drove, and Dominick stretched out on the back seat, the outside world moving in pre-Copernican orbits around him. He pressed the blood-soaked towel against his forehead. If any of the other girls were up when they got home—all their cars were there—none of them bothered to pop out of their room to say hello. Morgan and Amanda had gotten him cleaned up in the bathroom. He had to sit on the closed toilet to hide his dizziness. Amanda went to find him a clean shirt while Morgan applied a butterfly bandage to his broken skin, then a larger gauze pad on top of that to absorb the blood that still seeped out. Ah, a night out with the girls. Always enjoyable.
Dominick had no idea what time it was. It was dark out. A lamp was lit on the bedside table. He had drifted off after they got him to bed. There was no clock in the room, and he didn’t own one or a watch. Not a sound came from inside or outside the house. The table he had fallen on had done something to his back. It was just beginning to cramp up. One bright spot was that at least he hadn’t hurt his hands by hitting anyone back. He couldn’t even remember what the guy who hit him looked like. Years before, Dominick had learned how to put himself to sleep by slowing and deepening his breathing. The pills, whatever they were, seemed to help. Being exhausted helped as well. He dreamed about getting lost in a city he knew perfectly well and losing his luggage. He dreamt that Vernon showed up to help him.
In the morning he felt old. His back was stiff; his head throbbed. The room was bright, but there was still no sound inside the house. Sitting up brought on a dizzy spell, but it passed quickly. He went to the bathroom to take a piss, dutifully raising then lowering the seat. He ran cold water on his wrists and splashed some onto his old man’s face. “Old man,” that’s what that kid had called him, very prophetic. Or is it properly prophecy when you then make what you prophesied happen? He needed a cup of coffee and some more of Morgan’s white pills.
The bottle of pills was on the bedside table, and downstairs there was coffee still hot in the Mr. Coffee pot on the counter. From the thick look and smell of it as he poured himself a mug he judged it to be several hours old. There was also a note from Amanda: “We have to go to Albany on business. Back this afternoon. Go back to bed and stay there.”
He
took her advice, but after a while the pills kicked in and he felt better, at least the pain seemed less personal. He went back downstairs. Morgan had left the electric torches out on the counter by the kitchen door. He took the biggest one and went down the outside stairs into the cellar. He couldn’t get those trunks off his mind. The trunks had looked as old as the house, and if someone had gone to the trouble of furtively hiding them they might hold something worth hiding. He had some trouble finding the room with the low door. The cellar was more of a maze than he had realized, or maybe he was just addled. But he did find it. Behind the door were the two trunks, draped in a gray blanket of undisturbed dust.
The hammered metal clasps on each of the trunks were closed but not locked. The trunks were made of cedar, were the type you saw at the foot of beds in the re-enactments of colonial homes. The first one he opened was half filled with carefully folded fabric, which when he pulled it out proved to be articles of clothing—hand-sewn and roughly tailored jackets and trousers of home-woven wool, unbleached muslin shirts and jerkins. Nothing fancy or fine—warm and worn nineteenth century work clothes. The second trunk was full with much the same contents, only here there were also women’s clothes—linsey-woolsey Mother Hubbards and a nicely knitted woolen shawl. They were like costume trunks for a Quacker play, even the smell of them was from another time, camphor and cedar. Also in the second trunk, tucked against one wall, was a long leather case with papers inside and behind it a green-covered ledger. Dominick carefully replaced all the clothes and closed the trunks, latching them as he had found them, but he took the satchel of papers and ledger with him when he left. He couldn’t replace the dust to hide his visitation. He relatched the door behind him.
When Dominick got back to Morgan’s room his head was pounding again and his back muscles were competing having spasms. He took two more of Morgan’s pills. All he had in his stomach was that one cup of coffee, and that couldn’t be good, but he was too exhausted to do anything about it. He slipped his purloined finds into an outer zippered pocket of his garment bag and lay back down on the bed. He had bumped his bandaged forehead on the lintel of the low door when he exited, and it was bleeding again. Wasn’t that always the way? Blows to bruises, sore spots attracting attacks? He fell asleep before he could find a comfortable position.
