Come Destroy Me

by Packer, Vin

  “What evening is convenient for you?” she said. She reached up and fluffed her hair back and leaned against the books, not looking at him. Charlie wondered why he could not smell the lilacs.

  “Gee, tomorrow?” Why hadn’t he said tonight? What made him think he’d live, waiting for tomorrow?

  “Fine.”

  Say tonight, fool.

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” Jill Latham said again.

  Lord, he could wait. He wasn’t completely off his rocker. He smiled and said, “Good,” and then he stood there, not knowing what to say. He said, “Swell.”

  She walked over behind the counter, leaving him there, and Charlie put the book under his arm. He glanced over at her and she was standing there with her head bowed, as though she were completely unaware of his presence now. Golly, she was the most mysterious woman he had ever known.

  He said, “Well, so long then.”

  “Au revoir,” she said, looking up at him. She tittered and then bit her lip. It was strange, her expression then. She looked bewildered and embarrassed. Charlie stared back at her for a moment and then walked to the door.

  He turned and looked at her and she was looking at the opposite wall of books, rubbing her cheek slowly, thoughtfully. He called again, “So long,” and he did not wait for an answer.

  The door shut behind him and the heat came at him in the streets. He walked fast and whistled and he was smiling. He was thinking, well, she is! She is the most mysterious woman I know.

  That’s because you never knew any. Never!

  Aw, for the love of Pete. Get off my back.

  Chapter Nine

  Woman, single, wanted for inventory work. Temp. Red Clover Bookshop.

  — Advertisement in the Azrael Gazette, July 25, 1953

  “LOOK,” CHARLIE SAID, “who said I was listening?”

  He stood with his arms akimbo, his face flushed, his lips a hard line as Russel Lofton confronted him in the entranceway to the living room. Lofton was dressed immaculately in a cocoa-colored linen suit, a slim yellow cotton tie, white shirt, and brown and white shoes with natty brown striped socks. His hair was slicked back neatly, and as he looked at Charlie, his mouth smiled in that patronizingly courteous way.

  He said, “We don’t mind if you listen, Chucker. Evie and I aren’t talking over anything secretly or anything like that. It just isn’t nice to linger outside in the hall as though you were spying.”

  “Spying? Pfff — spying.” Charlie smirked and brushed his hair back from his forehead with his hand. He heard Evie say:

  “Don’t pretend that’s not what you were doing either!”

  Charlie could not see Evie. She was sitting inside the living room in the red stuffed chair behind the door. It was the second night in a row that Lofton had come for dinner, the second night in a row he and Evie had cooped themselves up in the living room talking while Charlie’s mother got dinner in the kitchen. It made Charlie sick to his stomach, for the love of Pete. He had nicknamed Lofton in his mind. Old Daddy Lofton. Phooey.

  “I’ve got better things to do with my time,” Charlie said.

  “I’m sure you have,” Lofton answered.

  “I have!” Charlie was indignant and angry. Now Old Daddy Lofton was telling him what he could do and what he could not do in his own house.

  “And any time you want to join in the conversation, you are most welcome to come in and pull up a chair.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said sullenly. He turned and walked back down toward his bedroom to wait for dinnertime. He didn’t give a damn what they talked about, and the only reason he had stopped to listen was because he heard Jill’s name mentioned. He heard Lofton read the advertisement that had appeared in the Gazette that afternoon, and he heard Evie say she would go in and see about it. Some kettle of fish, eh? Christmas!

  Ah, he was going to read. Read and pay no attention to this crazy house and all the crazy people in it. Poor Mom getting dinner in the kitchen. But she liked to get dinner in the kitchen. Russel Lofton and Evie liked to talk in the living room while she was getting dinner in the kitchen. Everyone liked to do something and Charlie liked to read. That’s exactly what he was going to do. But Christopher, do you know what night it is? he thought. Crrrr-is-to-pher, he was going to see her tonight!

  “Hi, Jill sweetie.”

  “Good evening, Charlie Wright.”

  “Je t’adore.”

  “Charles Wright. Charles Wright. Charles Wright.”

  Curtain.

  Read something, you awful idiot, Charlie told himself as he shut the door to his bedroom, read something. Get an appetite for dinner. Pretend it isn’t happening. Don’t look at the clock because the hands are heavy and they don’t go fast.

  Divert your mind from this excruciating problem, he thought, and he chuckled aloud, slapped his knee, and sank down on the bed depressed.

  • • •

  Evie stared into Russel Lofton’s dark eyes when he came back and sat on the footstool beside her. She leaned forward so that she was almost touching the sleeve of his coat with her arm and she could feel the excitement inside of her at this close contact.

  She said, “Why did you say you thought it was silly?”

  Lofton frowned and scratched his chin, looked down at the floor as he answered. “I didn’t mean silly. I meant untrue. It’s untrue that growing older is sad. Every year is better, Evie.”

  They were having a philosophical discussion, Evie thought, and she had grown to depend on him for this. She had grown to depend on him to be near, to answer her questions, to talk with her. Miraculously. Suddenly. He was invaluable in her life. She thought, He looks so boyish, so cute and serious, and she checked a strong impulse to reach out with her fingers and stroke his cheek, fluff back his hair and mess it up.

  “I don’t want to get any older than I am now. It’s horrid to be old.”

  “Then you must find older people horrid.”

  Lofton wondered why in the dickens he was defending old age. In the past week he felt younger than springtime, he thought, younger than springtime. She was like a shot in the arm and he realized it was because of her youth. Youth was introspective without apology. Youth still asked questions, sought reasons, and believed in change. Geehosopher, youth was blue and green and age was purple. Now look at that, will you, he thought. Now look at that. A week ago I never would have bothered to think something like that.

  “Some older people I do.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “Well,” she said, “not horrid. Just sad — like I said.”

  “Who’s sad, E-venus?”

  “You promised, remember?”

  “All right, I’m sorry. Who’s sad, Evie?”

  Evie leaned back in the soft-cushioned chair and put her arms over her head, stretching, her forehead furled in frowns. She answered slowly, “Mom, for one.”

  “Em?”

  “Sure. I mean, what’s Mom got? What love?”

  “You love her. Chucker loves her.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  Lofton could not keep himself from blushing self-consciously. Sometimes youth was too damn introspective. Lordy, she was talking about s-e-x, and the next thing you knew, she’d be telling him he was sad. And maybe, geehosopher, she was right. It shamed him to hear her speak of Em that way. It made him feel he had to rationalize for Em, and that was a fine state of affairs. She was like a storm on the waters, Evie was, rousing up all the things underneath until a man didn’t know what would come floating to the surface.

  He said, “Now never mind, E-venus. Never mind.”

  “You just don’t want to remember to call me Evie.”

  “Silly girl.” He reached over to pat her cheek and she took his hand in her own. For a moment she merely held it and he wanted to pull it back sharply but he could not offend her. He thought, Lordy, what’s she doing? Then he saw her bend her head and he felt her lips brush against his knuckles and suddenly he couldn’t think anything.
His stomach somersaulted and his neck felt hot and wet near his collar, and it was a lucky thing that at that precise moment Em called, “Dinner!”

  Evie stood up without saying anything and walked in front of Lofton through the hall into the dining room. For some reason it made Lofton darn mad when Em appeared in the kitchen doorway in her apron, smiling, and said, “Well, you two had a nice cozy chat?”

  “You ought to let us help you more,” Lofton mumbled. “Lordy, Em, you ought not to try to do everything by yourself!”

  • • •

  It was past seven when Charlie was ready to leave. He wore his clean blue linen slacks, a white shirt, and a blue tie. He slicked his hair back and put on black cotton socks under his thick-soled white shoes. He did not want anyone to know where he was going, and he grabbed his math book and the book of poetry that he had bought at the Red Clover Bookshop yesterday, and carried them under his arm. His library card was in the top of his desk drawer, but as he paused in the hallway before leaving, he called to his mother and asked her where it was.

  “Are you leaving now, honey?”

  “Yeah. Do you know where it is?”

  “I haven’t seen it, Charlie. You usually watch out for it yourself.”

  “I don’t really need it, I guess.”

  His mother came out and looked at him. She raised an eyebrow when she saw his tie and she said, “My, my.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “A tie?”

  His mother still wore the peach-colored apron tied behind her flowered silk dress, and her short hair was uncombed and straggly from the heat. Charlie found himself thinking, She is really stupid, my mother, stupid, really, and colorless. He was very ashamed suddenly for his thought. Damnit, he ought to love his mother. When he was a young boy once years ago in a summer camp he had written her a letter late at night. It was just a plain old newsy letter, the same kind he wrote her every week. At the end of the letter he had written, “I love you, Charlie.” Usually he wrote, “Love, Charlie,” but that evening he had written, “I love you.” He had walked down to the Main Hall and mailed the letter and it was not until he was practically back to his tent that he had known he could not allow that letter to reach her. Not signed that way. Frantically he had turned and run back to Main Hall, and dug his hands into the white canvas mailbag that hung there on the white hook in the hall. When he found the letter he ripped it into a thousand little pieces and a great sensation of relief overcame him. He thought, I’ll write her another letter tomorrow, and when he reached the front of his tent, he did a cartwheel and forgot the incident.

  God, the things a person remembered at odd times. He could swear sometimes he was nuts. It was all because he had such a penetrating mind.

  “Why the tie?” His mother repeated her surprise.

  “Aw, you know. Next year I’ll be going to Harvard.”

  His mother pinched his cheek. That was a dumb gesture, he decided. Aw, poor Mom. Christmas, he was a dirty louse if there ever was one.

  “That’s my big boy,” his mother said. He thought, All my life she has called me her little man and her big boy. It’s a strange idea she has of her own son.

  “I’ve got to hustle,” he told her.

  “Study hard.”

  “I will.”

  “ ‘By, honey.”

  “ ‘By, Mom.” He opened the door and then he remembered something. He said, “I might be a little late. I might stop in and see some of the boys at Jake’s. Talk over things.”

  Mrs. Wright looked pleased. “Surely,” she said. “You won’t be seeing a great deal more of your old schoolmates.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  His mother said, “Be good, honey.”

  “Good-by,” he answered, and he thought. When the hell have I ever been bad? Be good!

  The trouble with me, he decided as he walked across the lawn, is that I’m getting too stinking belligerent toward the whole spinning universe. I got to pick on everything. These are the times that try men’s souls. Who said that? What would he say when he got there? “Hi, Miss Latham. Nice night.” Corny. “Good evening, Miss Latham. How are you?” Real original. Ah, well … He knew who said that. Thomas Paine said that.

  Nice going, kid. You’re a walking Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

  Thanks.

  Where you going, Charlie boy?

  I’m on my way to see Jill. You know!

  Wow! Huh?

  Yeah, wow, Charlie thought. Can’t I learn to walk along like an ordinary human being without talking to myself all the time?

  Everybody talks to themselves.

  Shut up, for Pete’s sake, I don’t feel like a philosophical discussion. All I want to do is walk and smell the wind. Listen, I know where I’m going. I know, all right, and all I want to do while I’m going there is walk and smell the wind.

  Have it your own way, Charles, Charles.

  God, she was sweet to ask me!

  At the foot of Sock Hill, Charlie caught the southbound bus to save time. He rode in the front seat watching the streets and the people in the streets as he passed them. A funny picture of himself came to his mind. It was as though he had lived invisibly in Azrael all his life. He had been born there and schooled there and had reached manhood there, ostensibly a boy named Charlie Wright, son of Emily Wright. Quiet. Actually, he was disguised. Invisible to everyone else was the real man, the careful observer, the knower. He was a knower.

  He just knew more than anyone. It was as if he came down from another world. There was someone like that in every town, a knower in every town, and he was the knower in Azrael. It wasn’t an entirely enviable position. Sometimes it got damn lonely.

  When he got off the bus the street lights were on, and walking down the street he felt conspicuous as he passed each one. He had an idea she could see him coming and she was watching him. If she was so silly that she had to hang in the window and watch him come down the street, then why should he care what he looked like? He did care. He tried to appear extremely nonchalant. If his lips hadn’t been as dry as caked powder, he would have whistled. Instead, he snapped his fingers. Blithely.

  He saw an ant and crushed it with his foot. Death to all ants out after seven-thirty. Death to all the crawling ants out after the street lights were on. Ants couldn’t feel it, anyway; they had no nervous system.

  He’d simply say, “Hello, Miss Latham. How’s goddamn tricks?”

  Creepers, he was a real comedian sometimes. Aw, God help him, he was sick and lonely and afraid. He was in love and he was only a kid. He was too stinking young to have this older woman on his neck. Sometimes the things that happened to a kid nobody would believe if they were written in a book by Einstein.

  When he got to the house, he went up the steps calmly, thinking that he really did not care whether he was visiting Jill Latham or calling on a great-aunt. It was simply not exciting any more. She lived in an old tumble-down house that had moth-eaten furniture and she was nothing to get goose bumps over. As a matter of fact, Miss Jill Latham, venerable owner of the Red Clover Bookshop, was an odd duck, if Charlie Wright had ever seen one. Pfff, what was all the fuss about? He rang the bell and felt the sweat trickle down his knees.

  It took her sixteen hundred years to answer.

  Jill Latham was wearing a royal-blue silk wrapper that came to her ankles. It had a white lace neck, cut low, and it was short-sleeved with white lace cuffs. She was barefoot, smiling, her eyes sleepy-looking, golden. She held the door open for him.

  “Good evening, Charles Wright. My, you do look tall when I am barefoot as I am. I do want to apologize right this moment for an-swering the door in my bare feet.”

  “S’O.K.,” Charlie said. “Think nothing of it.”

  “I do think of it, though. It is most unladylike.”

  “I don’t care,” Charlie said. It was silly for her to run around without shoes. Ah, god, he would like to fall down and kiss her toes.

  “Won’t you come in a
nd sit down and I will put some ladylike footwear on and we will commence our evening.”

  “Thank you,” Charlie said, following her into the living room. As he sat down on the shaggy red sofa he could smell the lilacs. He was glad he was there. He was glad he had the whole evening ahead of him with her. He was so terribly glad. Hell, what had he ever done to deserve this?

  She left him alone in the room and he looked around him, embarrassed as he had been the first time to see the scorched green lamp shade on the bowl lamp next to him. The worn furniture. The old rug. At the screen in the window, night bugs hugged the wire and danced in the light, and a moth flapped its wings vainly seeking entrance. It was hot. Charlie noticed the heat for the first time, a muggy heat that made his body feel sticky and wet. There was perspiration on his forehead, but that was all right. He liked the thought of Jill Latham’s seeing the perspiration on his forehead. Maybe it made him look older, for God’s sake, he didn’t know. She was a short little thing, barefooted. He could have slammed his shoe down on her feet and rocked her whole body with pain, and then grabbed her in his arms and kissed her and told her, “Darling, darling, I’m sorry.”

  Look at all the books. She was smarter than he was, actually. Books didn’t mean that necessarily, but she was. He knew that. She could teach him anything. Charlie sat and thought, and when he was done he decided he was a dirty jackass, he had the dirtiest mind in Azrael…. Gee, he didn’t really. A fellow couldn’t help it if he had a sister like Evie who was older and had yammered all that stuff at him for years.

  “Well, now. Well, now.” Miss Jill Latham reappeared in the room carrying a tray with two glasses on it, and a round yellow bowl of potato chips. She had put on a pair of heelless white sandals. She looked short still.

  “Well, now, we will just make our-selves comfortable.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said.

  “I have brought a Coke for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She set the tray on the table beside the sofa and sat down next to Charlie, leaning across him for her glass of ginger ale. She laughed in that nervous way and said, “I have a ginger ale for myself. It is a very cool-ing drink.”