Checker and the Derailleurs

by Lionel Shriver

  “You said never to play with the glass,” Checker chided.

  “I wasn’t playing. This is serious.”

  “Yeah?” Checker studied her face, full of all kinds of expressions now, laughter, anxiety. It was an angular face, unusually long, almost Indian, already lined here and there, but not symmetrically—from years of sarcasm and lopsided cracks, the crease on the left side of her mouth was longer and deeper than the one on the right; the corner of her left eye was noticeably more crow’s-footed than the other. He loved the lines in her face (a guy could suffocate) no, he loved the lines in her face. But what they told him flickered so quickly from invitation to mockery that whatever he might do now, he clearly ran the risk of her ridicule. He felt her midsection harden, supporting his weight. Though over her he could tell how amazingly narrow she was, Checker thought in a clear animal way: This is a creature of terrific resilience and resource, and you tangle with it on its own terms; beware.

  Gripping her wrist, his right palm pulsed. “This”—he squeezed—“is a lot hotter than any punty. And a lot more dangerous.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and his only warning was an extra gathering underneath him; she flipped him over and with a twist held his wrists.

  He wrapped his leg around hers, and rolled; to get her hands off his wrists he grabbed her hair. When he pulled hard enough she let go. That was fighting dirty, but this was dirty. The floor was littered with cullet; the sweat on their bodies picked up grit and bits of glass.

  Yet with his hands in her hair he left them there. It was so thick, not just in quantity—each individual strand was strong, and even these, the thinnest extensions of her body, were disinclined to snap. When he tugged at single hairs they sprang back. He fingered into her scalp and involuntarily said, “Ah.”

  She whispered quietly, “And what about Rahim?”

  Something gave way. A wave of anarchy broke over him, a release, a relief, a tide. Running over his own banks, Checker felt his waterline rise.

  “I don’t care” came from a place he didn’t know very well.

  So he kissed her, but with shrieking terror—not because of Rahim, who no longer existed, whom Checker had in the last three seconds deported to Iraq if not to another planet altogether, but because while he was a man who savored even the smallest moments he had never before done anything he could not lose a taste for; kissing this woman threatened to be the last thing he did in his life. In that recoil we all feel from the perfect drug to which we are perfectly susceptible, menacing us with a perfectly inextricable addiction, Checker had to pull out of her mouth for now and breathe. Any longer and she would have swallowed him whole, and he would have, gladly, let her.

  He hid from the woman in her own hair, launching into the black forest where strands clung to his face in the dark like spiderwebs. He discovered her ear unexpectedly, and curled his way into the cave of it with his tongue. A salt mine. The shaft led him deeper in, pitch dark now and with that interesting flavor of ear wax, sharper than the salt, a little punishing, but he liked it. He tunneled out again and licked down her neck, lunging at the muscle strung at the top of her shoulder—good God, it was strong, and here the salt was even thicker. He laughed into the back of her neck. “This is like going through a whole bag of Doritos.” He knew to get the jokes in now, since there might not be time later. She’d said this was serious. She’d promised this was serious. Syrious, he spelled to himself, and that was it. That was the last joke.

  The two buttons still fastened on that green shirt both sprang off to ping in far corners like cane breaking. Getting it off her was another matter. She wasn’t going to help, no, this wasn’t a here, let me scene, so he had to force her on her stomach and pull the shirt off her back, wrenching her arms far enough behind her that it must have hurt; but he wasn’t worried about her, not even when she flipped him off and he saw that one of her breasts was beginning to bleed; he met the red streaks with his tongue just before they dripped to the snap of her jeans. All the way up he licked toward the cut; this, too, salty, but more nutritious, until he sucked the wound itself, checking for glass.

  She tried to tear his T-shirt in two. Though she pulled until the tendons stood out on her arms, she couldn’t rip the collar; she laughed, leaving the tatters straggling around his neck.

  He tugged off her boots and threw them into the dark; something crashed.

  The jeans struck him first as an enemy, but that was before he started in with them. The sound the snap made was so promising that he tasted the copper riveting; the nap of his tongue stood on end like hair rising. As he pulled the zipper down he followed what it revealed with his mouth—a dark line on her abdomen of short V-shaped fur, as if there were another zipper under this one, with softer teeth.

  He drew her across his lap and wrangled with the Levi’s, the denim stiff and crackling with dirt. She was still fighting him, but Checker was finally the stronger of the two; in fact, he was much more powerful than he knew, for he was surprised to find how easily he could lift and twist her entire body with one hand while he worked the jeans down her legs, noting with a smile that she didn’t bother with underwear.

  They were in front of the furnace now, and as he lay on her stomach she worked his own jeans off with her thighs. Naked at last, they took a moment, panting, to look each other in the eye. They stopped fighting. She slicked her hands down his sides and perspiration whipped into the air, like stroking the body of a well-waxed sports car after a rain.

  “You,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d had a vasectomy and the knife slipped.”

  “You know how easy this is going to be? I could do this in my sleep. Because every night, I do.”

  “Do what? What do you think you’re going to do?”

  “This,” said Checker, and he slid through the pool between their stomachs. When he raised up on his hands, their skins loudly sucked apart, the sweat having thickened, beginning to glue. He tangled through a smaller version of her hair, a thicket just as unmanageable and wild. Lodged between her thighs, he pushed back up again, his punty poised at the open furnace. Listening to the roar of the flame overhead, Checker looked up and inside, without dark glasses for once. The glass shifted uneasily; it was hard to focus, as always impossible to tell where the fire stopped and the liquid began. The only way to tell, he remembered, was to gently slide your pipe into the cavity, and at a certain point there was a tug; that meant you’d struck glass. If you were going to blow a big piece, like one of Syria’s bones, you kept going, and the glass got thick and heavy and you rolled the pipe in the heaving red batch, collecting, pulling out, seeing how much you’d dragged, dipping back down, gathering again.

  Checker stared at the furnace as it undulated; the image was so bright that it began to distort. The glass threatened to slosh out of its tank, the roar seemed to get louder, though he realized it was their own breathing instead, at so much the same pitch that the sounds blended into the breath of a single animal.

  She eased him over on his back, but there was a chunk of cullet right underneath his spine; to avoid it, he had to rise from the concrete as he pushed into her. Between them their stomach muscles rolled like water, rippling in a yellow shimmer like the East River at sunset as a tanker ground by. Checker felt its wake roil up from his groin to his shoulders, where she dug between his muscles as if trying to get in.

  Yet it was like doing hundreds of sit-ups, and he began to tire; while he didn’t mind this being hard, he didn’t want to think of it as work. With Syria still on top of him, then, Checker heaved to a stand, somehow managing not to leave her altogether. Her thighs around his waist, he pulled her ass tighter to him—a small muscular thing, about exactly a handful on each side—and carried her a few feet to the wall, where she could lean back on the cinder block.

  They were right beside the furnace, where it was hotter than ever. Flames licked toward them and sweat ran down their bodies as if trying to put out the fire. The entire studio was pumped w
ith gas now, a furnace; Checker imagined the cullet on the floor must be melting around him. In the other room Syria’s life work was slumping, losing its detail. The window in the door was dripping from its frame. The scatter of their clothing burst spontaneously into flame. The coffee was boiling, ruined, and the pot would break. The doorknob glowed a dull red; punties and blowpipes drooped in their barrels. The thick iron slab of the marvering table bent toward the floor. The Sheetrock by the sink was ablaze. The air itself was on fire; steadily the whole studio glowed from scarlet to carmine to vermilion, then, losing red, to amber, brighter, saffron now, though even the yellows were going, weakening in the heat. It was too hot for color itself and the air went to cream. One by one objects disappeared, counters, benches, armchair. The whole picture overexposed until the walls themselves dissolved; Checker pulled Syria forward and assumed her weight, because there was no cinder block to lean back on anymore; he was afraid she would fall. The building bleached away, they were both outside now, on the beach. As the very last trace of color faded, the wide horizon went completely white. Suddenly there wasn’t any heat left, either; the fire had consumed everything and had finally devoured itself, and Checker felt a delicious wash of cool like a breeze off the ocean. Despite the fact that the studio was ninety, maybe even a hundred degrees, he shivered.

  21 / A Cappella in the Underpass

  Leaving Carl to watch the equipment, The Derailleurs trailed the pedestrian ramps, breaking into twos and threes, ranging the bridge like a posse. The ramps were deserted, and despite the luminous lights of the span and Manhattan behind her, the Triborough seemed desolate and forlorn. What have you done? Where is the dark boy and his bicycle? Their steps were secret; when Howard sent a bottle skittering, they started. The band spoke quietly, as if afraid of being overheard. Where is the boy who laughs by himself and plays Steely Dan on my rail—? With relief, they scuttled back down the stairs.

  Plato’s was a wasteland. No one had seen Checker. When they went by his apartment, his mother responded hazily that she didn’t know if he was home, which seemed crazy, since it wasn’t as if she lived in a mansion or something. She left them in the outside hall for five minutes or more; J.K. was sure that she’d forgotten what she was looking for. Finally J.K. knocked again and she said, “Oh,” and then, “No,” and with an aimlessly friendly smile shut the door.

  So they headed for Vesuvius, Rahim claiming they should have gone there first, since Checker went to Syria for advice, Eaton agreeing readily and Rahim not liking that.

  Rahim warned that Syria didn’t like to be interrupted and stood on the same barrel he had climbed months ago to look in the window, checking if she was in the middle of a piece.

  She was certainly in the middle of something.

  “We find Sheckair,” the Iraqi reported numbly, climbing down.

  Caldwell reached for the door and Rahim grabbed his hand. “Don!”

  “Why not?” As he started for the window, Rahim cried, “Don look there!” but Caldwell looked anyway, a casual glance at first, but then he cupped his hands over the pane and watched for as long as the band would let him.

  “I don’t think we need to make Check feel better, guys,” said Caldwell as he stepped down. “The kid really knows how to console himself.”

  Once J.K. took his turn, he shook his head and whispered to Eaton, “Okay, Strike. You got my vote. Man, did you ever get Secretti’s number.”

  “Jesus!” A virgin in need of helpful tips, Howard had to be dragged from the barrel to give Eaton a crack.

  It took a moment for his eyes to focus, but gradually, amid the wreckage of broken glass, splayed rods, and barrels on their sides, Eaton located the two bodies, upright beside the furnace, shimmering in gold sweat. Here is the party? Not in this alleyway, no way. The party’s in there, Irv, and we weren’t invited.

  “What is it?” Rachel insisted.

  “I don’t think Rachel should look,” said Eaton.

  “Why not?”

  “Cause Check fuckin her brains out, Jackless,” said J.K. gently.

  Rachel shoved past Eaton, anyway, and though no one would have predicted she’d have a taste for this spectator sport, Rachel watched longer than anyone.

  Taxi collected in the street to confer.

  “Man, this is the limit,” said J.K.

  “I’m beginning to get the creeps,” said Caldwell bitterly. “Here the kid screws Hijack’s wife to the wall—”

  “Literally,” said Eaton.

  “—and treats us all like plant lice; meanwhile, he gets the woman and a contract and Manhattan gigs, while we’re stuck in Astoria like a wad of used chewing gum at Plato’s. Where does the punishment come in? Justice, like?”

  Eaton looked down the alleyway for a minute. “The bicycle.”

  “What?”

  They approached the familiar machine as she leaned against the wall, jealously eavesdropping. “Look,” Eaton pointed out. “Its wheel is locked, but it’s not secured to anything. We can’t get through to Irv, that’s obvious, but we might teach his bike a thing or two.”

  “I don’t know…” said Caldwell.

  “What going down in there he get shot for, Sweets. Rough up his bike, let him off light, you ask me.”

  So Caldwell hoisted the bike on his shoulder. “You coming, Hijack?”

  “I wait for Sheckair.”

  “Lucky guy.” Caldwell laughed. “Rache?”

  “I think I want to be alone.”

  So the three of them carried Zefal off to the park, laughing in the dark, Howard dribbling after them, feeling very confused.

  Gradually the wide, white, undefined air filled in again with furniture, the lines draining into the room; there, a cullet barrel, a coffee cup, a shirt on the floor, like a Polaroid snapshot developing as they watched. Checker let the slippery body slide down his thighs. She was surprisingly light, and seemed smaller without the big green work shirt and heavy black boots. Soaked, her hair had relaxed down her shoulders. She was so much bluster—all that material, the aggressive strands, pushing you away. But look, a narrow, winsome woman, sinewy, but not so tough. He laughed, and she didn’t ask him to explain. For a moment he felt victorious; he’d undressed her, called her bluff. Yet when she was standing in front of him only inches away, she suddenly seemed terrifyingly distant, and he pulled her back and held her. He didn’t want this to be over. Much as he loved them, he didn’t want the colors back yet, the shapes, the walls around him, the people and the neighborhood outside; he didn’t want to find out not just all she might have meant by “This is serious” but what she might not have meant, not by a long shot; he didn’t want to remember the leftover oysters spoiling in the park, the end of The Derailleurs, and all the accusations that might be true, and, most of all, he didn’t want this small but sharp little worm beginning to tunnel into his middle, singing Checker’s own little tune: Maybe you see it now: / I am a garbage scow. / I’m not a hero, I’m a sleaze.

  “Water,” said Syria.

  Checker put on his tennis shoes and crunched through the cullet to the kitchenette to return with the gallon of water she kept there and a glass. She skipped the glass and emptied the commercial mayonnaise jar a full third before breathing. Taking his turn, Checker thought how fine eating and drinking were, to be able to take things in. Women were lucky. He finished the jar.

  They weren’t talking. Checker swabbed Syria’s body with a wet towel, wiping the long back with the low-slung waist, the small hollow buttocks, the legs taut but surprisingly thin, with slender thighs. She stood patiently as he wet down her forehead and swept back her hair, stroked around her cordy neck and bony shoulders, and cupped each unexpectedly full breast with his towel. Her nipples hardened under the cool cloth. Her stomach was flat, but with tiny horizontal creases—an older woman. He wiped down the black triangle and was about to clean between her legs when she said, “No. Leave it.”

  A drip traced the inside of her thigh, thicker than sweat, just turning
from milky to clear.

  He brought her more water; she sloshed the jar in his face. She laughed. She splashed his back and threw him a towel. “You’re daintier than I am,” she said. It was true.

  But they didn’t say very much. Just small things, even trivial. Syria remarked about the mess, with no particular concern. She said he looked funny in only his tennis shoes. Wearing shoes was a studio rule, he recited, retrieving her own; and he’d never forget the picture of Syria Pyramus closing the furnace, completely naked except for those calf-high army-surplus boots.

  Checker swept in front of the furnace and spread her sleeping bag on the floor. He laid Syria out just as neatly on top of it, smoothing her wrinkles, straightening her sides. He unlaced the boots, somehow surprised she let him; then, a rare wild animal will sometimes eat out of your hand. He liked taking care of her, a switch. Checker studied the artisan in the dim light. She looked like herself naked, and everyone didn’t; but her corners were routered. Those eyes were wider than usual, all aperture, no iris—he’d found the door. At last her expression was symmetrical. He realized that for the first time he could remember she wasn’t angry.

  But as Check stretched beside her he thought: This is dangerous, sick because he didn’t want to think that or to think anything; he didn’t want consciousness or relationships or his future, and the best he could come up with now was sleep, though he didn’t want dreams.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Syria mumbled, and pulling his arm to nestle between her breasts, she pressed her back to his chest and went immediately to sleep.

  Checker lay still, not daring to move his arm. The furnace purred while flames licked quietly around its door, as if cleaning its mouth, its paws. Yet the murmur kept hitting unsettling chords. Once or twice he began to fall asleep, but started awake again, catching himself: don’t let it get light.

  “Do you hear anything?” he whispered.

  “Mm?” She turned over.

  He heard it again—a scuffle, something. “There.”