Some People Talk with God

by John Enright

  “You were moaning pretty loud,” she said. She left her hand there. He appreciated that.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Were you asleep? Just a few hours, I guess. I was watching TV. You sounded in pain. Does it hurt or was it a bad dream?”

  “I tossed you out of your bed. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I like the couch. I have the TV. Sissy said you broke your ribs. That sounds bad.”

  “Sissy?”

  “She had to leave, go back to work, I guess. Are you going to die?”

  “Not from a few cracked ribs I’m not.”

  “You want more pills? These are supposed to be really good.” Susan was holding the bottle of oxycodone in her other hand.

  Dominick really didn’t want more pills. It was too soon to take more, and he was suspicious of them. As long as he didn’t move, the pain was just an ache. But it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave them with Susan. “Yes,” he said, putting out his hand for the bottle. “Could you get me a glass of water?”

  Funny thing about pain, how it becomes your companion. The two of you sort of work things out, chained together as you are. It is an unequal relationship, as you do all the accommodating. But even pain has to sleep; unconsciousness is its maximum refuge after all. And sleep is now your best friend, too—friend of your friend. Pain is a tutor as well. It teaches simplicity, how meaningless everything else is. It insists on meditation, on inward searching, the perfection of stillness. Pain takes vague, abstract time and messes with it, vividly colors it, can make it crawl and stop and even run backwards. Dominick’s fitful slumbers were busy with intense dreams. He dreamed of marching and flying, of being lost in the fog of gunpowder smoke in the battle at Little Round Top as a rifleman in the 20th Maine. He dreamed he was wounded and spent the night dying all alone in an open field, his pain and the stars above him all that he knew, his uniform jacket and shirt yanked aside to confirm the gut shot that would kill him. He dreamed about time as a book with its final pages flipping over all by themselves. He dreamed he was sleeping in that basement room at the Van Houten place, hearing bloodhounds off in the distance, unable to move or escape.

  Dominick saw little of Sissy over the next few days. She was busy covering arts festival events, and some scandal was breaking over a local politician. It all meant nothing to Dominick and mattered less. Susan he saw a lot of. She made it possible for him not to have to go down the stairs, so he didn’t. She fixed and brought him simple meals—toasted English muffins and instant oatmeal for breakfast, peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch, iced tea to drink. He had no appetite anyway. Susan never left the house. She spent her days watching the big TV downstairs, which was always on like another housemate.

  Susan also took a lot of showers, several a day. The weather had turned hot, and either Sissy’s house had no air-con or it wasn’t turned on. Dominick would wake up from a nap and hear the shower going in the bathroom across the hall. He had to wonder what Susan did for so long in the shower. When she would finally emerge from the bathroom a lovely aroma was released into the hallway and through the open door of his room. He would see her pass on the way to the stairs, her long wet hair combed down her back, dressed just in one of the over-large long T-shirts Sissy had brought her from Walmart, barefoot, no underwear. The skin on her thin limbs sticking out of the T-shirt was just a shade pinker than the shirt’s pure-white cotton. She was a vision of simplicity, the beauty of plainness. He took to calling her nurse. She liked that.

  The second day Dominick was at Sissy’s house, Vernon showed up with the rest of his luggage and things from his hotel room. “Sissy said there was no point in you paying for a room you weren’t using. So she checked you out. I think I got everything, but I’m not much at packing. You alright here?” Vernon had brought two other things he thought Dominick might need—a cane and a bottle of vodka. “You’ll have to keep it hidden from Sissy, of course, but I find a few drinks help the pain pills along considerably, and you won’t be operating any heavy equipment in here.”

  Dominick had lost all track of what day of the week it was, so Sunday came as a minor surprise. Sissy was not up and off to work early but had some time before heading off to church. She came in to chat. With the help of a couple of white pills and Vernon’s cane, Dominick had taken a shower and shaved that morning and found fresh clothes. His suspicion of the pain pills had vanished with the pain. He had taken another with the breakfast of toast and orange juice that Susan had brought him. It was from Susan he learned it was Sunday. Following Vernon’s advice, he had turned his orange juice into a screwdriver. He was feeling a bit more human and was sitting up in an armchair by the open window of his room reading a book about the Iroquois, which he had found in a hallway bookshelf.

  When Sissy came in she gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Look at you,” she said. “You don’t look like a patient at all, but like a man of leisure.”

  “My vocation, ma’am. Back on the job.”

  “You must have thought I’d forgotten you were here, or didn’t care. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’ve just been very busy, and whenever I got home and looked in, you were asleep.”

  “My other job.”

  “Well, you haven’t been off my mind for a minute, or your being here, or why the Lord would bring you into my life then keep bringing us closer and closer, until here you are, sharing my house, brightening my life. The Lord put you in my care for a reason, you know.”

  Dominick had absolutely nothing to say. Sissy was seated on the side of the bed, smiling one of her more beguiling smiles, her head tilted to one side and her full lips slightly parted.

  “You know, I have never had a man stay in my house before, and it feels so right because it is you. And to think Daddy introduced us,” she said and laughed. “Well, I’m off to church. I’m going to pray to the Lord and ask everyone else to pray to the Lord for us, to let us know what course He wants us to follow.” Sissy got up and gave him another kiss on the cheek. “You smell so good,” she said. “I’ll make us a proper Sunday dinner when I get back.”

  A while after Sissy left Susan came up to see if he wanted anything, and he asked for another glass of orange juice for a second screwdriver. When she came back with it she asked what he was reading.

  “A book about the Iroquois,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Indians who once lived around here,” he said, handing her the book.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Susan said, just glancing at the cover illustration and handing it back. “I don’t read.”

  “You don’t read?” Dominick asked. He had never met an adult who couldn’t read.

  “Maybe I could once, but I don’t any more.”

  “Oh,” Dominick said. He took a big sip of orange juice to make room in the glass for the vodka he would add after Susan left. “I don’t hear the TV this morning. None of your shows on?”

  “It’s Sunday,” Susan said. “Just guys playing golf and those stupid Christian shows.”

  “Stupid Christian shows?”

  “Just guys stomping around hollering, talking gibberish. Boring. And awful music. You want anything else? I’m going to take a shower.”

  Looking at the maps in the book, Dominick discovered that the land hereabout had not been Iroquois but Mohican country, as in the last of.

  Chapter 18

  When Amanda woke up the next morning in her room at the St. George her head ached, her mouth was dry, and her cell phone was dead. She didn’t have a toothbrush or a change of clothes, but at least she had undressed before going to bed, and she had gone to bed alone. Look at the bright side. She found two Aleve in her emergency pill stash. As she washed them down with tap water in a plastic cup, she winced, remembering the closing-time pass she had made at the bartender, which he had rebuffed with a laugh and a kiss on her cheek and a “Not tonight, honey.” But all in all she wasn’t sorry she had taken a night off from her usual boring life. There wa
s a good reason why people drank. She was still horny in that vague morning-after way.

  Nemo was not in his room, and his car was not in the parking lot. Amanda checked out of the hotel and had a big greasy breakfast at a café down Warren Street, pretending to read the morning paper as she studied the other customers, all regulars who knew one another and the waitress. She gave them each stories—jobs, families, disappointments. It was as if a night drinking had cleared her head of herself and she could notice things again. An old man with a cane stymied her. She couldn’t imagine his life alone. The newspaper she’d picked up was the Hudson Register Star. She noted Sissy’s by-line on a story about the local arts festival and another about county politics. She didn’t read them. She read newspapers the way she had read her textbooks in school—mainly just the headlines and photo captions. Well, Sissy was for real anyway.

  On the drive back to Diligence, Amanda buzzed-up the windows, opened the sun roof, and turned on the air-con in her new Camry. She found the Albany oldies FM station on the radio, cranked the speakers up high, and drove home singing along with the Beach Boys and Rod Stewart. She stopped in a convenience store outside Catskill to buy a pint of orange juice, a pint of cheap vodka, and a cup of ice. She had decided she was going to grant herself a break. She would jump off the wagon, take a vacation, and just drive away somewhere for a while in her beautiful new car. Hell, she could afford it now. She’d buy some new clothes, stay in good hotels, maybe get laid. There was nothing for her to do here besides hold down the fort until things worked out. Morgan, up with her mystery man in Albany. Nemo gone. Denise and her hostile tribe still at the house. She had to dig in her purse to find her cigarettes and then the lighter. This car didn’t have a cigarette lighter? No ashtray either, though there was a holder for her cup. She turned up the bass on the sound system. She’d bring her passport, maybe drive up to Montreal. She could shop there, new lingerie. French men. She loved her new car, the way it smelled.

  At the place where the creek had washed out the road, there was a barrier across the whole road with a crew of men and machines working behind it. A man in a Day-Glo vest and a hard hat told her the obvious—that the road was closed for repairs. He couldn’t say when it would be reopened, maybe tomorrow. She could try the old dirt road around. Not in her new Camry she couldn’t. She turned around and drove all the way to the St. George to check back in, along the way buying a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some good shampoo. She would start her vacation anyway.

  As Amanda pulled in to the parking lot beside the St. George she saw Sissy coming out of the hotel. She was so unmissable. Sissy didn’t see Amanda. She parked off on the side where she could watch. Following Sissy was an old black man, who looked somehow familiar, carrying what looked like Nemo’s black leather bags. They spoke for a moment, then Sissy walked off and the man took the luggage to an old taxicab by the entrance and put them in the back seat, then drove off. This scene made no sense to Amanda. When she asked at the desk, she was told just that the gentleman had checked out. “But who are they?” Amanda asked, gesturing toward the outside door.

  “I believe they are his servants,” the small foreign lady behind the desk said with an accent that made the statement sound matter-of-fact. “He had given them instructions and the key to his room. A nice gentleman, very quiet. All paid up. You are coming back to us? No bags?”

  ***

  The cracked ribs were on his right side, so Dominick had to sleep on his left. He seemed to be sleeping a lot. That probably had to do with broken bones and the pain making him tense and the pills and vodka. Besides, there was little else to do but read, and that made him drowsy. After dinner on Sunday—a fine vegetarian lasagna, which lacked only a glass of Chianti to be perfect—he went up to his room for a nap. It was another hot, still summer afternoon. He stripped down to his shorts before getting in bed. A loud sigh escaped him as he stretched out and his tensed-up muscles relaxed. The house was still. He had been taught to think of the rib cage as a fort, a palisade of bone selected by evolution to protect the precious life-giving organs within. Of course, if the enemy—a blow from a war club, the hoof or horn of some prey, the unfortunate fall—broke the defenses strongly enough, the bones themselves would pierce the vitals they were there to protect—defenses destroying what they were meant to defend. He knew from the X-rays that his lung was not hurt, but breathing had become a quite conscious act. He practiced his breathing—long, deep exhalations—pretending he was long-distance swimming. Perhaps that was why his first dream was of sailing.

  Dominick never noticed Sissy slipping into bed beside him. He awoke to her soft touch and the warmth of her body pressing against his back. He said nothing. He felt her breath on the back of his neck. She shifted slightly, tucking her knees into the hollows of his and placing a hand gently on his upper arm.

  “Dominick?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “It’s like we never have a chance to be alone together.”

  “Umm.”

  “And sometimes I want you all to myself.” Her hand slid down his arm in a possessive caress. “I want to get to know you better because everything I do know makes me want to know more.”

  Her hand came dangerously close to his tender ribs, and he reflexively rolled toward her so that her hand landed on his hip instead. Sissy took this as a positive sign, and her fingers moved on to his inner thigh. “I prayed for direction today, and I had the others pray over me.” Her lips touched his shoulder. “Do you know what the Lord told me?”

  Dominick didn’t answer. He didn’t dare for fear he would say the wrong thing and she would stop. He didn’t mind any of this. His cock was already unfolding and stretching against his boxer shorts. His nipples wanted to be touched.

  “The Lord said that you were a good man, and that I should get to know you better. The Lord, who is love, said that I should follow my heart.” Sissy got up on her elbow and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed her back. He had wanted to do that for some time now.

  He kissed her again. “Easy,” he said as he rolled slowly onto his back with a brief grimace at the shot of pain in his side. She was gentle. She cooed and she laughed as their mouths and bodies got to know one another. There was that smell and that taste to it all that said this was real, that nothing had to be faked or pretended. Beneath her thin chemise Sissy was naked. Her breasts were full and young and beautiful, her nipples like black gumdrops.

  With happy sounds she carefully freed him of his boxer shorts. “Oh, oh,” she said, as with one hand she grabbed his thickening dick while the other cupped and fondled his balls. The happy sounds continued deep in her throat as she took him into her mouth. Her eyes were closed with pleasure, and her broad bare butt was sticking up in the air. She was very good at what she was doing.

  Dominick was not a fan of fellatio, the passiveness of it. In order to keep himself aroused he fondled Sissy’s breasts, pinching her nipples taut, then with a gasp of pain at the effort he reached for her pelvis, making her move so that his fingers could find her wet and swollen slit beneath her thick pubic bush. Three fingers inside her, she ground her groin down on his fist and groaned. Now they were that most ancient of impersonal beasts—a couple in reproductive heat. Millions of years of mammalian practice perfected again, a nameless Adam and an anonymous Eve in thrall to what must be done, to the reason why they were alive.

  With a final lick to his now rigid dick, Sissy rose up and, stroking his shaft with one hand, swung a leg over Dominick so that she was now straddling him, positioning her dripping and wide-open cunt above her hand holding his cock. A rage of pain invaded Dominick’s side. “Sissy, I …,” he started, gasping for breath. She settled herself down onto him, taking him smoothly inside in one joyous thrust and groan. Dominick’s pain was intense, but, god, it felt good inside her, as if the slippery sides of her vagina were milking his erection, trying to pull him further inside her. She pushed backwards, grindin
g her clit against his shaft, then rose up and thrust back down on him again. “Oh, Jesus,” she exclaimed.

  This time the pain was so stark and sudden that an involuntary gasp escaped from Dominick. His hands went to Sissy’s waist, as he tried to lift her off of him, but he was still firmly inside her, gripped in a spasm of vaginal muscles. Sissy’s head was thrown back. She too was gasping as her pelvis pumped above him.

  “Stop! Stop! Get off him. You’re hurting him.” It was Susan’s voice from the doorway.

  Sissy didn’t seem to hear. She fell forward so that she was on her hands and knees above Dominick, just their genitals engaged now, locked together like two dogs as she shivered and shivered and pressed her mouth onto his, her hair around his face. For Dominick there had never been a clearer battle between pleasure and pain, but pain was winning.

  “Stop it, stop it,” Susan said, now beside the bed. “You’re killing him.” And with one hand she grabbed Dominick’s cock and pulled it out of Sissy’s cunt, while with the other she pushed Sissy off of him. At the squeeze of Susan’s fingers Dominick came, shooting his spunk onto Sissy’s thigh and Susan’s arm and hand.

  Dominick was not sure of what happened next. He had rolled back onto his side to huddle with his pain, which pretty much blocked out whatever else was happening. No further words were spoken, but Sissy left and someone pulled a sheet up over him, covering his naked ass. It took a while for the pain to subside and his breathing to return to normal. Then Susan was there with a glass of water and two of his pain pills. “Are you going to live?” was all she said.

  ***

  With the help of a salesgirl with many piercings and a tattoo on her neck, Amanda bought a new outfit at a boutique on Warren Street. It was not like anything she normally wore, but Amanda had never been good at buying clothes, and the girl—Feather she called herself—was very helpful and found things that fit her. There was a long black skirt and a peasant vest and a couple of revealing blouses to choose between, a pair of sandals and some very feminine panties. Amanda never even looked at the bill; she just signed the credit card receipt.