The Wanting

by Campbell Armstrong

  She pushed her hands into the pockets of her pale blue jeans. Cold air cut through the folds of her plaid flannel shirt.

  She continued along the wash and wondered if she’d gone off in the wrong direction. But she’d tracked the hollow in the land religiously—so how come she didn’t hear the sound of the stream Frog had mentioned?

  She slithered over pebbles. The wash was becoming narrower the farther she walked. There were more tiny stones inside her sneakers and they rolled under the soles of her feet, but she didn’t stop now to remove them.

  She wished the sun would fill this landscape with the comfort of warmth, but it remained a cold flat cloudy disk of white on the horizon.

  She kept moving. The wash, although deeper, was now so narrow that it was little more than a gash in the earth. Then she thought she heard the distant noise of sluggish water. A rattling, a slow sloughing over stones.

  Quite abruptly the trees thinned out and she found herself on the low bank of a stream. Green, opaque water, its surface scummy against the bank, flowed slowly past. Water beetles skidded back and forth and some kind of swift birds—more bats than birds, she thought—darted against the dark surface before they disappeared.

  East. West.

  She followed the bank for a while. The VW was parked on an incline, thirty or forty feet away from the stream, an incongruous contraption out here in the pines.

  She went toward it and called out Frog’s name. The side doors of the van were open and some of Frog’s belongings lay around the vehicle. A Coleman stove and some cooking utensils and a plastic container of Dove dishwashing liquid.

  “Frog?”

  She went around to the front of the van.

  “Frog?”

  She looked in, seeing tattered upholstery. Some kind of charm hung from the rearview mirror—a small fuzzy thing on a string. It was a frog—what else?—with large protruding eyes. A child’s toy.

  “Frog?”

  She stuck her head inside the van.

  There was a pile of blankets, a pillow, a couple of flies buzzing in the white sunlight that streaked inside the van. She saw a bottle of Old Spice, hair conditioner, Head & Shoulders Shampoo, toothpaste.

  And for a moment she had the bizarre, unsettling feeling that she was taking an inventory of a dead man’s estate. That Frog was somewhere nearby, lying dead and neglected, maybe facedown in the stream.

  She stepped away from the van.

  Some aspect of the sun slanted at broken angles through the trees. She called Frog’s name again. She heard a sound close to her and she swung around.

  Frog was coming up the bank from the stream, moving toward her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  At the top of the bank he paused, looking in her direction. Then he moved again, silent in such a way that the quiet he carried hung around his body like an extra shadow.

  “Hi there,” she said again.

  Now he was only a few feet away.

  “Louise,” he said.

  His face was thin and his eyes vacant and his smile odd—it might have been someone else’s expression fixed there.

  “Are you okay, Frog?” she asked. His appearance surprised her.

  He gazed at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” and she shrugged, because she didn’t really know—there was just something out of synch. His face lacked color and his hair—usually held back neatly in a ponytail—fell without luster over his shoulders. Strands were matted, unwashed. Streaks of dirt smeared his T-shirt and his bare feet were grubby. He looked as if he’d fallen into the stream.

  Now he poked around inside his van, stuck a tape into his cassette deck. The music was loud and Neanderthal—it was an old recording of The Who.

  He increased the volume and the whole van vibrated. He sat down on the ground beside the passenger door and beat his fingertips in the soil in time to the music.

  He lay back now, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes fixed to the sky. His voice a flat monotone, he said, “I got sick, Louise. I got pretty sick. But I’m okay now.”

  He turned his face toward her and smiled and she thought she’d seen that look before—way back, back when she’d been a student and everybody around her was dropping this or that kind of drug and people went around in a haze for day after goddamn day. Was that it? Had Frog taken a bad drug? The music blasting out of the van drowned her thoughts. She wanted to go inside and turn the damn thing off so that she could talk to him.

  “How did you get sick?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you got sick, Frog! How?” Louise was shouting to be heard.

  He cupped a hand to his ear. “I guess it was something I ate.”

  “Maybe we could get Max to take a look at you, Frog.”

  He shook his head. “I’m okay now. I’m in prime condition.”

  “You might have food poisoning,” she said. “You ought to let Max examine you.”

  “Uh-huh,” and he dismissed the suggestion. He lay flat on his back and looked up at the sky. Louise thought, I came up here to see him, I came this way for sympathy, for friendship—and somehow he’s lost to me. She had wanted, even in an indirect fashion, to talk to Frog about Max and Connie Harrison, her suspicions, her fears, that whole bit. But now … her sense of loneliness was suddenly an acute thing. She stared bleakly toward the trees. The music from the van throbbed through her.

  Frog coughed. He sat up and covered his mouth with his hand. When the spasm was over he lay back down again. I don’t exist for him, Louise thought. I might as well not be here. She glanced at him, dismayed by his appearance. Even the lids of his eyes seemed transparent to her now—she saw frail blue veins beneath the surface of the skin.

  “I don’t care what you say, Frog. Somebody ought to examine you.”

  The music stopped. The forest was silent.

  Suddenly Frog said, “I went to see the Summers. And you know something? They’re really okay people.”

  Louise looked at the man. She had the impression of somebody locked into a fever, somebody whose train of thought was forever being derailed. She saw Frog lick his lips, which were dry and pale. How gaunt he looked—he seemed more bone than flesh. She had the urge to cradle him against her body and nurse him back to health.

  “We drank tea,” he said.

  “Tea?”

  “Dandelion tea.” Frog smiled in a thin way. “They told me they would have all kinds of work for me to do around their place. At the end of summer, they said. When they return.”

  Louise was silent. She plucked a blade of grass from the ground and held it against her lips. Tea with Dick and Charlotte. Dandelion tea yet.

  Frog tugged on his little beard, cleared his throat. “They’re really okay. I could learn a lot from them, Louise. They know this forest. They know an incredible amount about all this.…” He gestured with his hand, indicating the vast reaches of the trees.

  She looked into his eyes. His pupils were dark and enormous. The irises were mere pale rims. Learn what? she wondered. And where was the Frog who’d used the term “Wrinkle City”? The Frog who’d entertained her with his banter? Where was that man now?

  Dandelion tea. She stared toward the trees.

  Frog said, “Good people. Let me tell you. They make fine tea.”

  Fine tea and excellent cookies and amazing apple pies and fudge and it doesn’t stop there with their culinary wonders—no, they baby-sit at the drop of a hat and they cut Denny’s hair and they give little presents like photographs and Wonder Bait and they dance, God they dance, Frog, how they dance, you should see them.

  “They’re going on a honeymoon,” Frog said.

  “A honeymoon?”

  “They’re in love.”

  “I don’t doubt that. But a honeymoon?”

  “Love has no age, Louise,” and Frog grinned in a beatific way. It was a look she’d seen on one of her old girlfriends, Sally Haskowitz, who’d given up her studies
at UCLA and followed the Maharishnu and had panhandled, for the greater good of the guru and his fleet of Rolls-Royces, in airport terminals and on street corners. Poor Sally. Poor Frog. What in the name of God had he eaten?

  “Love has no age,” he said again. “The Summers are living proof of that.”

  The old Frog would have been skeptical, mocking himself for uttering such a thing. The old Frog—what did that mean? Who was this person she was sitting with now? She reached out and rubbed his arm. A honeymoon? The idea was preposterous, and yet she wasn’t quite sure why—Charlotte, the dancing Charlotte, had looked like a girl, for God’s sake. And Dick, in his darkly formal suit—what else did he resemble but the beau who came calling? The Summers. Dick and Charlotte. Why did she find herself suddenly disliking them? It had something to do with Denny, how Denny had looked back at their house, anxious to please them, scurrying up and down the stairs to change their music for them, his voice hoarse and his breathing labored. Something to do with that. He looked like some pale facsimile of himself. Just the way Frog does right now. She turned the thought aside. The Summers would be gone soon. Away. On their absurd honeymoon.

  “Why don’t you walk back with me to my house?” she asked. “We can sit down and have some of that good coffee you like.” She paused. Why was she talking to him the way she’d talk to a very small kid?

  “I don’t feel like moving.”

  “Please, Frog.”

  He shook his head.

  She was silent for a long time. Frog goes to see the Summers. They drink dandelion tea. And then Frog gets sick. Was that the sequence of events? Why would she think that? She gazed across the stream and into the trees.

  Something was churning at the back of her mind, something inarticulable, a movement of specters. She saw once again the sight of Dick and Charlotte caught up in their frenzied polka. Then she remembered the slow-motion old couple they’d been when she’d first met them.

  How did you effect such a transformation? Love has no age, Louise. Blah blah blah—what had turned Frog into such a Pollyanna? Now she thought of her son going up the stairs in the Summers’ home, shuffling as he moved, his hand squeaking on the rail while he climbed. What had happened to all his energy?

  She took a cigarette out of her jeans and lit it, gazing down to the stream, watching the steady flow of slow water.

  Frog stared up at the sky, saying nothing. And Louise thought how lonely she really was with Frog acting like this. How alone. How empty.

  And very unhappy.

  Frog watched her lazily.

  “I’m going home,” she said. “When you feel up to it, Frog, come over.”

  “How’s Denny?”

  “Okay …” she lied.

  “Dick and Charlotte really like him, you know. They have this picture of him in their living room. What they call their parlor.”

  “Picture? You mean a photograph?” Louise asked.

  “Like one of those school shots. You know the kind? It sits on the mantelpiece. It’s framed.”

  A school photo? Louise wondered.

  Where would Dick and Charlotte get a picture of Denny? How could they possess something like that? Puzzled, she gazed into Frog’s face. “You sure it’s Denny?”

  “Hey, I know what I saw, Louise.”

  “You said it looked a school picture, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. The kind that makes the kid look like he’s made out of plastic,” and Frog smiled.

  She shook her head. “They must have taken it themselves,” she said.

  “I doubt it. Looks like a studio job to me,” Frog replied. “Looks professional. Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me. Anyhow, what’s the big deal?”

  Louise moved away. A photograph of Denny, what’s the big deal? echoed in her throbbing brain.

  She walked close to the stream, which trapped murky images of the sky. A framed photograph of her son. Why did that bother her?

  She turned to look back at Frog. Sitting cross-legged beside his van, he wasn’t even gazing in her direction.

  40

  Charlotte sat in front of the big dressing-table mirror inside her bedroom. Before her lay a variety of tubes and pots and little brushes: creams, lipsticks, eye makeup. She leaned close to her reflection and then, with lavish care, began to paint her face. She puckered her lips, applied the tube of lipstick, drawing a thick red line. And then, using a small brush, she dusted her cheeks with pink blush.

  Dennis watched all this. Sometimes he caught his own reflection in the mirror. He shuffled his feet in the rug.

  Fetch this. Do that. Change the record. Make tea.

  All morning long the Summers had talked to him the way they might have ordered a servant around. And now he was simply standing there waiting for further instructions. Why weren’t they being kind to him the way they usually were? Why were they treating him like this? If it hadn’t been for the lousy way he felt in general—his aching chest, the odd numbness in his hands, the way his eyes hurt—he might have had the strength to be even more offended than he was. Maybe they just didn’t want him hanging around today, although he couldn’t think why that would be the case. Maybe they were tired of him—after all, he’d been coming here every day. People needed a break from company at times, didn’t they? They wanted to be alone. It was as if he didn’t exist except as a somebody to perform little tasks for them.

  But they’d always been good to him and he felt he owed them something and so he stood around waiting for them to impose a function on him.

  Charlotte looked at him in the mirror.

  Dennis turned his eyes down to the floor. He could hear Dick coming up the stairs. Dennis pulled on his fingers, cracking the bones in his knuckles. A few flakes of his dried skin floated to the floor.

  Dick appeared in the doorway, humming a quiet tune through his closed lips. He stared at Dennis. “There’s some final things need doing to the truck, boy.”

  Dennis moved his body slightly. There was a short stabbing pain in his hips.

  “Let’s get out there and take a look.”

  “Sure,” Dennis answered.

  He followed Dick down the stairs. Charlotte, her face covered with makeup, her lips bright red and her eyes dark with shadow and her cheeks glowing, descended after them.

  All three went out onto the porch, where the potted flowers bloomed richly and the leaves of plants were waxen and healthy. Dennis looked out at the Dodge.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” Dick said.

  Dennis rubbed his fingers together and slowly followed Dick across the yard to where the pickup stood—gleaming and white and wonderful and as waxy as any of the plants on the porch.

  Charlotte stood watching her husband and the boy as they dickered around under the upraised hood of the truck. After a moment there was the satisfying sound of the motor turning over. She smiled, clasping her hands in front of her white gown.

  She felt it happen suddenly. She had been expecting it, but even so it took her by surprise.

  It was moist and warm between her legs. She felt it trickle against her inner thighs. The warm discharges of her womb.

  She shut her eyes. Bliss.

  She went back indoors, locking herself inside the bathroom.

  41

  It was not the best of ideas, Max told himself. It was not the most worthy of notions—stepping out of the empty house and getting inside the Volvo and driving to Carnarvon and searching for the place known as the Huckleberry Inn, but he was doing it anyhow. Floating along on a cocktail of Valium and Darvon, washed down by a double scotch, he felt he could keep the situation at bay with these fortifications. His driving was a little erratic. He almost ran the station wagon into a ditch near the Ace of Spades and when he hit Carnarvon he failed to see a stoplight and he ran through the intersection quickly, drawing harsh stares from pedestrians who were milling around all the nifty little boutiques of the town. And then he became confused, losing himself in cobbled streets, beda
zzled by colored parasols outside shops selling iced yogurt and fashionable ice creams and little terraced pubs where tourists sipped their drinks and breathed the good air inside their city lungs. It was not, he told himself again, a wise notion to be here. What was he going to do anyhow? What was he going to say to Connie?

  Dazed by his chemical imbalance, he found the Huckleberry Inn beyond the shopping precinct, a squat building constructed mainly of glass and erected on stilts, so that it seemed to perch precariously in midair, looking rather like a surreal oceangoing liner. He parked the Volvo, squeezing it with some difficulty between a Jaguar and a Porsche, and he got out—unsteady on his feet, he noticed, his motor reflexes functioning at a low level.

  Inside the lobby of the inn, a grand foyer with a fountain trickling in the middle of the floor and a uniformed doorman scrutinizing everything that moved, Max went to the reception desk and asked for Connie’s room number. He was instructed to call her on the house phone because it was the policy of the Huckleberry—so the red-faced clerk told him—not to give out room numbers to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who asked.

  He found a white telephone and asked for Mrs. Harrison and after a moment he heard Connie’s voice on the line.

  “I’m downstairs,” Max said.

  “Come on up. Room one zero seven. Second floor. And hurry.”

  Hurry, Max thought. Indecent haste. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and when he found room one zero seven he paused. What the fuck was he doing, running to this woman who had threatened to tear his goddamn marriage apart? What am I but a simple GP, happily married, with some kind of career ahead of me? What am I doing, rushing like a schoolboy to his first encounter in a hotel? Writing prescriptions for myself? What the hell am I doing with my life?

  Connie opened the door before Max had time to knock. She was wearing her hair up on top of her head, piled there in a series of little curls; he’d never seen it that way before. She was dressed in a black mini-skirt and knee-length black boots and a string of red glassy gems hung around her neck. She had very little makeup on her face. It was subtle—a touch of eyeliner, a dim suggestion of shadow, and that was it. Max was filled with an old hunger, despite himself and any good intentions he might have had. He reached out and drew her toward him and when they kissed he lost himself in her touch.