There it is: all the proof that Zelda doesn’t need Elisa.
But Zelda wants Elisa. She’s headstrong about it, like a teenager forbidden to see a friend. Except she’s not a teenager. She’s the one, not Brewster, not her family, not her church, who gets to say when her pride has taken too much stomping. If she wants to give one more chance to a friend who’s out of chances, she will. Besides, a woman goes crazy when a man’s involved—men, too, go just as crazy—and that’s her working theory: Elisa Esposito is having herself an affair. If F-1 is the rendezvous point, then it has to be Dr. Hoffstetler, doesn’t it? That man who’s been so nice to them? Who so often works such late hours? Who doesn’t wear a ring?
Zelda doesn’t hold it against her. Heck, she’s tempted to offer congratulations; Elisa hasn’t had a man since Zelda’s known her. True, the affair could get her fired, but also true is that, if it works out, maybe she and Dr. Hoffstetler could leave Occam together. Can you imagine it? Elisa married to a doctor?
Tonight, though, after seeing Elisa hurrying away from Strickland’s office, Zelda isn’t sure. No doubt Strickland also has a key card to F-1. What if that nasty man with his rusty Howdy-do, who, come to think of it, had gotten himself an eyeful of Elisa’s legs when they met in his office, had made some sort of move? Elisa’s smart, but she’s got squat for experience when it comes to men. And if Zelda’s ever met a man who’d take advantage of a woman like that, it’s Mr. Strickland.
A metal rigidity screws into Zelda’s jaw, fists, and feet, all parts that could get a meek janitor in trouble at a place like Occam. She makes a choice. She only has to skip two rooms, storage spaces rarely dirty to begin with, to trail Elisa for the final half hour of the graveyard shift. Zelda feels like a creep. Worse, her detective work turns up nothing concrete. Neither Elisa’s uniform or hair seem ruffled from a physical encounter. Something, though, happened in Strickland’s office; Elisa fails to hang a feather duster upon its cart peg three straight times.
The shift bell rings. The janitors rebound to the locker room. Zelda keeps her watch on Elisa, speeding up her clothes change so she can make it to the punch cards right behind her. Only when they are outside, beneath the melon orange of a sunrise scar, waiting in the bus stop’s calf-high gravel dust, does Zelda send up a prayer, snag the startled Elisa by the sleeve, and pull her over to the trash can, spooking a raid of squirrels. Elisa’s eyes, red and tired at this hour, flash with caution.
“I know, hon. I know. You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t want to talk at all. Then don’t. Just listen. Before the bus comes, just listen.”
Elisa tries to dodge away, but Zelda exploits something she rarely does, her size and strength, and pulls Elisa back by the cuff hard enough that Elisa’s hip gongs the trash can. Elisa begins to sign with an angry energy, and Zelda gets the gist of the points and slashes. They are excuses, justifications, pretexts. It’s telling that not one of them is an apology. An apology would be admitting that she’d done something wrong.
Zelda brings both of her hands atop Elisa’s, gentling them like tussling pigeons and bringing them into the comfort of her bosom.
“You’re not signing anything worth my time, and we both know it.” Elisa quits resisting, but her face stays hard. Not unkind, just hard, as if holding a wall before a secret too big to show. Zelda exhales. “Haven’t I always tried to understand whatever bothered you? From the first day you came? I remember that poster Fleming hung up in the locker room when you first started. Picture of some Marilyn Monroe type with a mop, all these arrows pointing out her attributes. Hands willing to help. Legs ready to run the extra mile. Remember that? Remember how we laughed and laughed? That’s when we became friends. Because you were so young and so shy and I wanted to help. That’s still all I want.”
Elisa’s forehead ripples in turmoil. She starts at the crunch of gravel, a half-dozen workers adjusting their feet while digging out bus tokens. That means the bus is in sight. Zelda can’t hold her friend here much longer. She constrains Elisa’s hands as tightly as she can in the cage of her own hands; she can feel the rustles of Elisa’s delicate pigeon wings.
“If you’re in some trouble, don’t be frightened. Don’t be scared. I’ve seen all sorts of trouble in my life. And if it’s a man—”
Elisa’s eyes dart back toward Zelda’s. Zelda nods, tries to encourage her, but Elisa’s pulling away, and the snort and hiss of the bus can’t be ignored. Zelda’s eyes go bleary all at once, a sluice of tears that she despises; it’s every emotion she doesn’t want to show when trying to display strength. Elisa breaks away, but Zelda calls out. Elisa stops, half-turns. Zelda wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I can’t keep asking you, hon,” she moans. “I’ve got my own problems. My own life. You know one of these days, I’m leaving this place and starting my own thing. And I always pictured you coming along. But I got to know—do we just clean together? When we take the uniforms off, are we still friends?”
The swelling sun brings glistening definition to the tears that, in perfect match to Zelda’s, begin rolling down Elisa’s cheeks. Elisa’s face twists, as if she wants to speak, but she clenches her hands, her method of biting her tongue, and can only shake her head before breaking toward the bus. Zelda turns away, purposefully blinding herself with the sun, and wipes her wet face with a quaking arm, then leaves it there, cover against the glare, the grief, the loneliness, all of it.
24
TAKE YOUR PICK of the city’s army of ad men, and after a tough day they’ll have their bellies to a bar, washing down the hard luck, cursing the iniquities of their chosen racket. But what is Giles Gunderson doing? First off, he’d delayed mourning until the following day because he was old and tired. Second, it’s not beer he’s throwing back, it’s milk. Third, he’s alone.
He thought he’d never get out of bed again. No work, no money, no food, no friends if Elisa remains furious. Why elongate the inevitable? Then morning light had crystalled through his bedroom window, the resultant rainbows remindful of the chromed display cases at Dixie Doug’s. If anything could extricate Giles from the briar patch of doom, it was the attentions of Brad—unless the alternate name tag was correct and he was actually JOHN. Giles had dressed in clothes that, for the first time, seemed not permeated with character but simply old and put on his toupee, an exercise in disgrace. Then he’d attempted to ignore the Pug’s mortal chokes and tape together the shredded ribbons of his pride so that he might enter Dixie Doug’s with a soupçon of his usual verve.
But Brad wasn’t there, and the queue, a rattlesnake, had him coiled. Forced to order, and mindful of his destitution, he smiled wanly at a perky young woman name-tagged as LORETTA and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, a pitiful glass of milk. Now he sits at the counter, despite how stools play hell with his hip. Gulp down the milk, make a quick getaway, get on with the business of dying.
He swivels to the right so he might distract himself with the black-and-white TV lodged between tureens of plastic utensils. The reception is snarled, but ropes of static can’t hide the familiar contrasts of Negroes toting signs in circles. Milk goes sour on Giles’s tongue. Oh, this is just what he needs! Giles considers calling for Loretta to turn the dial, but she’s in high flirt, transmogrifying winks and wiggles into whole fleets of ordered pies. At least Dixie Doug’s blares country-western music; he can make out only snatches of the news report. Something about William Levitt, the pioneer of “suburban” living. Something about how Levitt won’t sell plots to Negroes. Giles aches at the file footage of Long Island’s Levittown. He imagines himself in one of the pastel abodes, exiting each dewy morning in a snug house robe to water magnolias. It’ll never happen; he’ll serve a life sentence in that mice-ridden shoebox above the Arcade, and that’s if he’s lucky.
Elbows fold themselves onto the counter. Giles looks up and there he is, an angel floated in from short-order Elysium. Even Brad’s comfy hunch can’t hide a height that must be taller than Giles’s p
revious estimates. Six-foot-three. Six-foot-three at least! Brad leans across the counter, smelling of sugar and dough. He loosens one big, lazy finger from the knot of his arms to indicate a plate of bright green pie that has manifested alongside the milk.
“Remembered how much you like that key lime.”
Brad’s fake Southern accent is back, and Giles melts. Fake accent, fake hair, what’s the difference? Are we not allowed our little vanities, especially when they please someone about whom you care?
“Oh!” Giles pictures his emptied wallet. “I’m not sure I brought enough cash to—”
Brad scoffs. “Forget it. It’s on the house.”
“That is far too kind. I won’t hear of it. I’ll bring by the money later.” An idea strikes him, a deranged one, but if this, his lowest point, isn’t the time for insane acts, what is? “Or … you could give me your address, and I could swing it by?”
“Now who’s being too kind? Shucks, working here, it’s like tending bar. You get to know people. Hear their stories. And I can tell you, mister, most people? They hold a conversation about as well as I can hold a bag of cats. We don’t get a lot of customers like you. Smart, educated. All that stuff you told me about the big food launch whatchamadoodle? You got a lot of real interesting things to say, and I’m obliged. So eat up, partner.”
Bernie must be right, Giles thinks. He’s old, he’s sentimental, he’s trapped in a different time. Why else is it that, at this meagerest generosity, tears have begun to gather along his eyelids.
“I can’t tell you what it means to … I work alone, you know, and conversation … I talk to my friend, of course, my best friend, but she’s…” Elisa’s parting signs are still branded into the flesh of his back. “Well, she’s not much of a conversationalist. So … I thank you. From the bottom of my heart. And you must call me Giles.” He forces a smile, and it feels brittle, his whole skull feels brittle, a thing as shatterable as Andrzej. “You can’t be bankrolling my key lime habit and calling me ‘partner.’”
Brad’s laugh is sunshine, lemonade, mowed grass.
“Heck, I never knew a Giles before, if you want the truth.”
Giles can see it in the purse of Brad’s lips, his real name about to be divulged with the same easy affection with which he’d confessed his Canadian heritage. After this, thinks Giles, there will be no more prying for clues; there will be no more paging through phone books like a lovesick schoolboy; there will be no more humiliation in this life that has been filled with nothing else. On this worst morning of his life, all will be saved.
“I do want the truth,” he says, and it sounds profound.
Here is Giles’s truth. He has alienated his one confidant. The ad campaign he’d lied to Brad about “captaining” ended with a hack-job painting he’d given to a merciful receptionist. He has no future. He has no hope. All of this is why, he will postulate later, he succumbs to his long-delayed desire, as delirious as a child electrified by too much sugary pie. The last time he spoke to Brad, he’d explained the etymology of tantalize, how Tantalus had reached for fruit and water forever just out of range. Now Giles reaches, too.
He settles his hand atop Brad’s wrist. It’s as warm as fresh bread.
“I like talking to you, too,” Giles says. “And I’d like to get to know you better. If you’d like it as well. Is the name really … Brad?”
The merry twinkles of Brad’s eyes wink out, as quietly and completely as if he’d passed away. He stands up, not six-foot-three or six-foot-four, but ten feet, one hundred, one thousand, pulling away from the counter and into the stratosphere. Giles’s hand slides off the warm skin and drops to the cold counter, a withered, blotched, veiny, wobbling thing. From the god lording above comes a voice leached of its butter-and-syrup accent.
“What are you doing, old man?”
“But I … you…” He is effete, adrift, isolated in bright lights like a specimen. “You bought me pie.”
“I bought everyone pie,” Brad says. “Because I got engaged last night. To that young lady right there.”
Giles’s throat clenches. The same thick, hairy finger of Brad’s that had pointed at the suggestive free pie now points at Loretta, that smooth young thing, jiggling and giggling, the apogee of normalcy. Giles looks at Loretta, then Brad, then Loretta, back and forth, a helpless geriatric. Next in the queue is a black family—mother, father, and child—who stare at the overhanging menu, whispering to one another their pie-related plots. Brad’s face, Giles observes, is bright red from the disgrace of Giles’s touch, and such anger has to go somewhere.
“Hey!” Brad shouts. “Just takeout for you. No seats.”
The family’s chatter peters out. Their heads turn, as does every head in Dixie Doug’s, to look at the fuming Brad. The mother in the queue gathers her child into her hands before she replies.
“There are plenty of seats…”
“All reserved,” Brad snaps. “All day. All week.”
The family’s eager expressions curl away from Brad’s fire. Giles is overcome with nausea. He grips the counter to halt his stool from spinning only to find that it isn’t moving. Behind Brad, Giles sees the TV’s blur, and Giles, because he deserves it, accepts its contempt. People see blacks protest on the news every day, probably while ironing laundry, and feel nothing. Giles, though, can’t stand the sight. It’s not due to some swell of compassion. It’s out of self-preservation. He has the privilege—the privilege—of being able to hide his minority status, but if he had any pride at all, he wouldn’t be making furtive touches across a diner counter. He’d be standing alongside those who are unafraid of getting their skulls cracked open by batons. Disgracing himself is one thing; letting it spill onto these innocents just trying to purchase saccharine, overpriced, so-called pie is unacceptable.
“Don’t talk to them like that,” he says.
Brad angles his sneer at Giles. “You better leave, too, mister. This is a family place.” The doorbell dings, and Brad looks up. The father, likely familiar with the taste of a busted lip, is herding his family out of harm’s way. Brad plants onto his face a radiant grin, one Giles used to think Brad baked up special just for him, and dollops the accent on thick: “Y’all come back now!”
Giles glares down at the key lime pie. The color is identical to that of his painted gelatin, a synthetic, otherworldly green. He runs his eyes across Dixie Doug’s. Where have the pulsing colors and chrome liquescence gone? This is a graveyard of cheap plastic. He stands and finds himself firmer on his feet than expected. When Brad again looks his way, Giles is surprised to see that the object of his fantasies isn’t so tall after all. Indeed, they are the same height. Giles adjusts his bow tie, straightens his glasses, brushes cat hair from his jacket.
“When you told me about your franchising,” he says, “I was impressed, I admit it. The decorations, how they truck in the pies, everything.”
Giles pauses, in awe of the inflexibility of his voice. Other diners, too, look on as if they feel the same. Vain though it might be, Giles wishes that the family of three was still there to hear him. He wishes his father was there to hear, too. He wishes Bernie Clay, Mr. Klein, and Mr. Saunders were there. He wishes everyone who’d ever dismissed him was there to witness this.
“But do you know, young man, what franchising really is?” Giles makes a sweeping gesture across the diner. “It is a crass, craven, vulgar, piggish attempt to falsify, package, and sell the unsellable magic of one person sitting across a table from another person. A person who matters. You cannot franchise the alchemy of greasy food and human affection. Perhaps you have never experienced it. Well, I have. There is a person who matters to me. And she, I assure you, is far too intelligent to be caught in here.”
He pivots on a heel, Brad’s face joining the TV’s smear, and marches through the diner, silent now but for the country crooning. He’s at the door before Brad can rally a retort.
“And it’s not Brad. It’s John, faggot.”
The word has
chased him home before, after he’s offered some promising fellow the delicate bait of a double meaning, plus the fail-safe of a third meaning should the double meaning be understood and rejected, except today the word does not chase so much as it does fuel, propelling him through Baltimore streets, into his parking space behind the Arcade, up the fire escape, past his own door, and inside Elisa’s apartment after the alert of a quick knock. He sees the second he enters that she isn’t asleep as she should be; he keels toward the beacon of the lit bathroom, where he finds her on hands and knees, partner to a sudsy bucket, paused from the perplexing activity of scrubbing the bathtub so vigorously that the surface gleams like marble, casting Elisa, the whole room, probably the whole theater below and the city’s entire metropolitan grid in a new, bright, better light.
“Whatever this thing is doesn’t matter,” Giles says. “What matters is you need it. And so I will help you. Just tell me what to do.”
25
ELISA GLANCES AT her friend as he fusses his paintbrush within the hand-cut stencil taped against the sliding door of the Pug. After dislodging plates of caked dirt, the two of them loosened decades of exhaust grit with citrus-based dish soap before scrubbing the van with clay—a janitor’s trick. Giles has done all this wearing the same houndstooth vest he wears when vultured over his drafting table, and he’s making the same squint. Seeing him released, however, into the sweet fresh air of spring is like seeing him released from dungeon shackles. The late Sunday sun warms the top of his bald scalp, and when was the last time he went outside without his toupee? It makes Elisa happy. Giles has been different this weekend; all hesitance has been cored from him. If this, Elisa thinks, is their final day together, before they enact her plan, before arrest, before sentencing, maybe before being shot dead, it has been a good day indeed.
The Shape of Water Page 20
