by Mark Fishman
Her eyes were partially closed and the glow of the setting sun was blurred. She had enough change in her pocket to take the bus. She waited at a bus stop for fifteen minutes, a bus arrived, and then she was taking it to a stop near the river. She got off at the intersection of Winthrop and Front Street, and she kept on going at a careful pace away from the river, avoiding cigarette butts, discarded beer cans and puddles of urine on the sidewalk.
She walked until she got to Jackson. She continued on Jackson Street, and then to Fourteenth Street, and saw a battered red car parked in front of Burt Pohl’s apartment building. She stepped around broken glass from a smashed bottle of cheap wine and went up to the entrance to ring the buzzer.
She’d thought of Pohl while she’d had only time to think when she was tied up between sessions with Fitch, and she decided because of Pohl’s patience with her that he was the only man she could trust to have a useful conversation about what had happened with her plan to have herself kidnapped and kept away from the world and to follow a particular kind of therapy she’d invented with Fitch.
She pressed the button on the intercom. She waited for a voice to speak to her. She pressed the button again. She raised each leg one leg at a time to look at the filthy soles of her feet. The sky showed its twilight, there was a faint breeze that blew against her flushed cheeks. For the first time in several hours, she noticed she was hungry.
“Who is it?” Pohl’s voice crackled through the speaker at her.
“Me, Angela.”
There was a long silence.
The front door buzzed to let her in.
[ 75 ]
Shimura sat with Aoyama in the car parked beneath the branches of a tree on Lavergne Terrace, either watching the clock on the dashboard or staring blankly at the small garden opposite them. Eto had gone home. It was five-fifteen. There were at least six cigarette butts on the ground outside Aoyama’s window on the passenger side of the car. Shimura didn’t feel like smoking. The sky was the color of burnt orange with streaks of red reaching through it like faraway clouds.
“What do you think? Will he bring her out?” Aoyama said, looking down at his shoes.
“Of course he’ll bring her out.”
Fitch’s car was parked nearby in front of the garden.
“When?”
“We’ve got fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t come out with her in fifteen minutes we go in.”
“Okay.” He lit another cigarette.
“It’s going to kill you.”
“What is?”
“Smoking like that.”
Aoyama didn’t answer him, he stared out the window. One-story four-room wooden houses that weren’t in such a bad state as the houses on Nightingale Lane stared back at him. Every now and then someone came out of a house to walk a dog, collect mail and a newspaper from a mailbox or stand on the porch and gaze up at the sky.
“It’s a sad place, Pigsville,” Aoyama observed, throwing his cigarette out the window.
It was five-thirty.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Shimura said. “Let’s go.” He got out of the car, waited for Aoyama to do the same, locked his door, then locked the door on the passenger side.
When they got to 4 Nightingale Lane they automatically went around the house to the back because making an entrance at the front door was out of character for them, and they always followed the guidelines of the Kawamura Agency. Shimura yawned before he grasped the door handle, he hadn’t slept very well the night before with Tomiko in town. Aoyama thought he was professionally dispassionate.
The back door wasn’t locked. Shimura gave it a gentle shove with his shoulder and pushed it all the way open with his foot. They went into the house, smelled the stale air, passed through the kitchen and into the hallway. A faint light sprayed out from the bathroom. It was the only light on in the house.
Shimura stood in front of Aoyama who peered over his shoulder at the bathroom door, looking down at the figure of Fitch sprawled on the floor unconscious or sound sleep. His feet in their polished shoes were pointing awkwardly south.
[ 76 ]
Angela didn’t wait for the elevator, she climbed the stairs slowly, feeling the smooth, worn-out carpet beneath her bare feet.
After Pohl let her into the building, he hurried to the bathroom to get dressed, tripped over a pair of shoes, and fumbled nervously with his clothes. He put on a T-shirt, buttoned his jeans. He had forgot that Violet was in his bed until he heard her voice shout at him from the bedroom.
“Who was it?” she said, her head propped up by a couple of pillows.
“What?”
“Who was at the door?”
“Nobody.” He straightened his hair in front of the mirror. “Fuck,” he said to himself. He searched the hamper for a pair of socks.
“What?”
“Nothing, please,” he pleaded. “I’ve got to get dressed.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you, nothing.”
“That’s exactly what you’ve told me — nothing.”
“Leave me the fuck alone.”
It just came out without prior consideration and Pohl was sorry the minute he’d heard himself say it.
“What did you say to me?”
Before he could answer her, Violet was out of bed and walking quickly on bare feet out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, and if she’d been wearing something she would’ve been rolling up her sleeves, but she wasn’t wearing anything, just her supple body marching toward him on strong slender legs, her nipples hard because they were out in the air from beneath the bedcovers, her hands clenched into fists ready for a fight.
A sock dropped from Pohl’s hand when he saw her coming. He hopped backward in the direction of the bathtub on the foot with a sock already on it while Violet advanced until she was standing right in front of him. He tripped, and he was falling backward through the shower curtain into the bathtub when she caught him by the wrists and pulled him out and upright.
“So much for your acrobatic skills,” she said with her teeth clenched.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, just don’t talk to me like that.”
She’d got herself into the same act and rhythm as Burnett had used when he played with her, and she liked it.
“Tough, aren’t you?” Pohl said.
He grabbed her bare shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. The doorbell rang. He searched the floor for the sock he’d dropped, found it, put it on and went to answer the door. Violet walked back to bed with her hips swaying only a little because she figured he wasn’t watching her.
Pohl unlocked the door, opened it as far as the chain allowed, and saw Angela standing in front of him with a tired expression on her face, out of breath from climbing the stairs. He shut the door on her, heard her mild voice say his name, then unhooked the chain to let her in. Even barefoot, she was a couple of inches taller than Pohl. She walked past him into the living room.
Pohl shut the door, locked it. He followed Angela into the living room. She looked around at everything in the room as if she’d never seen it before.
“You’ve been here a dozen times. What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Something’s changed,” she said.
“Nothing’s changed.” He almost choked on what he’d said.
“Well, I want to talk to you about what’s been going on.”
“You’re worn out. Why don’t you sit down?”
She sat down in an armchair, stretched her legs out in front of her. “I’m thirsty.”
“What do you want to drink?”
“Water. A glass of water with plenty of ice.”
Pohl went into the kitchen. Angela stared at her feet, wiggled her toes, and saw the filth between them that came from walking barefoot on the street.
Pohl gave her a tall glass of ice water. She drank it down in one gulp.
“I’ve got to wash my feet, they’re disgusting.”
“You can use the tub.”
She stood up and gave the glass back to him.
“I’ll need a wash cloth.”
Pohl led the way to the bathroom, she followed him. He handed her a clean towel from the towel rack next to the sink.
“You can leave me alone, I’ll be right out.” She shut the bathroom door.
Pohl stood facing the door, scratched his head, coughed, thought of having a cigarette, then remembered Violet. The bedroom door was ajar, he opened it and went in. Violet was snug under the covers with her black hair spread out behind her head, resting on three white pillows. She held a magazine open in her hands, turning the pages slowly.
“Well, who is it?” she said, without looking up at him.
“A woman I’ve known for a long time.”
“You mean a girlfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
“An ex-girlfriend?”
“No.”
“What then?” She set the magazine down beside her and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“I can’t exactly say.”
“Why can’t you exactly say?” She imitated his voice. “What do you think I’m going to do, scratch your eyes out or something like in the movies? I’ve been around the block.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“What kind of remark is that?”
“Nothing, I didn’t mean anything.”
“I’m beginning to think you never mean anything you say.”
Pohl sat down on the edge of the bed, next to her.
“Listen, Violet — ” He reached out and stroked her silky hair.
“Quit playing lovesick adolescent and tell me what’s on your mind.”
“You’re impossible, that’s what’s on my mind.”
“And don’t forget that’s exactly why you want to fuck me.”
She pulled him toward her, let him kiss her, then drew back the covers to give him a place in bed and the magazine fell to the floor. She ruffled his hair, he moved closer to her and sniffed her skin, kissed her lips and neck, then he buried his face between her breasts and began sucking her nipple.
She suddenly felt a tingling sensation in her body that wasn’t familiar and which she didn’t understand because maybe this was starting to feel like the kind of sex she didn’t think existed on earth, and maybe she was falling in love.
She wondered if it was a kind of brainwashing, and then decided that whether or not it was brainwashing she didn’t care. She pulled the T-shirt over his head and tossed it past the side of the bed, dragged him under the covers, unbuttoning his jeans and biting him.
While he was thinking that this might just turn out to be something on the order of what Shimura had said Kawamura and Asami had together, a kind of true love, but their own particular version of it, she was busy with what she knew how to do, which was wrapping her lips around his cock and swallowing him until his pubic hair tickled her nose. He smiled, his face hurt because it was a hard, broad smile that nearly shut his eyes and he didn’t know if it was going to make him laugh or cry.
They didn’t hear Angela come into the room. They were listening to something else, and it was something on the order of two people holding hands swimming deep underwater against the current without the drag of the effort and paying attention only to the very important sound of blood pounding in their ears that came from a pair of like-minded hearts.
Angela was barefoot and the door was open and all she had to do was walk in because it was as if Pohl and Violet were saying: “Come on in the water’s fine,” when in fact they weren’t saying anything at all because they were too busy fucking.
And while she was standing in the doorway looking at Pohl tangled in bed with a woman she didn’t know and had never seen before, she thought about how she’d always taken for granted that he loved her and that he’d always love her and that she’d used that love like she did with every other man she’d known, and here he was with somebody else, so instead of talking to him about what she’d had in mind, the point of love in her life, or the pointlessness of it, a topic there was no longer any need to waste time talking about, she took off her clothes and got into bed with them.
The mattress suddenly weighed more than it had a few seconds ago and the downward slant it took was enough to make Pohl and Violet turn their heads and see Angela climbing in for some of the action.
Violet gave Pohl a little shove with her warm hands, Pohl pulled himself out of her, dropped gently alongside her lean body, bent his elbow and the palm of his hand propped his head up while Angela, perched above them on her knees on the other side of Violet, hands flat on the bed sheet, looked them both up and down. Violet was shaking, she was angry.
“No matter how many lovers a woman has there’s always one she can’t bear to lose to another woman,” Angela said, winking at Violet.
Violet’s face was flushed, she’d heard that line before. She said: “Who’s she? And what the fuck is she doing here?”
Pohl didn’t have an answer for her, and since he couldn’t find anything to say it told him that he didn’t know what to do and the fact that he didn’t know what to do seemed to inform him there was a big problem here. He sat up and stared at Angela. A pulse beat in her throat. She was so beautiful he wanted to shut his eyes.
There was love that had everything to do with fucking, and there was another kind of love and fucking was part of it, and it was that other kind of love he felt for Angela Mason, a love that no matter how hard he tried he’d never get away from it because it was something that had burned and burrowed into him and it went deeper than logic and was on the order of a permanent fire working its way from the inside out.
“You better go,” he said, looking at Violet.
Violet sat straight up in bed, her hair fell across her face, she caught a few strands with her fingertips and put them in her mouth, ignored Angela, clenched her fists, and her slanted green eyes looked searchingly at Pohl. Angela rocked backward and pushed herself off the bed, found an armchair and sat in it with her legs crossed, waving her bare foot at the scene on the bed.
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Now more than ever.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“I thought — ”
“Please, don’t think. Just get out of bed and get dressed. It’s the right thing to do. Trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“Okay, don’t trust me. It’s not important. Good-bye.”
“Yes, good-bye,” Angela said from the armchair.
“You’ve got change coming,” Violet said, without looking at Angela, and she slapped Pohl hard on the face.
“You have every right — ”
“Don’t talk about rights,” Violet said, climbing out of bed, gathering her clothes in her arms. She felt two pairs of eyes give her a shove out of the room.
[ 77 ]
The apartment door slammed shut, they were alone. Pohl reached for the bed sheets to cover his embarrassment, but the embarrassment went a lot further than his nakedness because he didn’t know how to handle the situation now that he’d got rid of Violet Archer. He’d been waiting a long time for an opportunity to see Angela, and the opportunity had come and he felt the weight and size of it on his shoulders, and it was a weight that came from the fact that he’d been wanting her for what seemed like a lifetime, and the size of it was on the order of something very big because here she was without any clothes on, sitting in a chair with her right foot waving at him, telling him to come up with something good or she’d disappear again.
He thought of how badly he’d wanted to see her, and he remembered how happy he thought he’d be when finally she was sitting with him in some restaurant or bar and they were talking, and when they were talking they’d be having a conversation about nothing and everything because nothing and everything meant something to them, and
laughing, too, it was important that they’d be laughing, and then he’d know that something on the order of intimacy was getting under way between them. And so he used this particular memory to give him courage.
Now he was pretty sure it was going to be all right, and it was easier to breathe, easier to think. The whole thing was leaning toward his side of it. It was going along with him. Everything and everybody was going along, and what he told himself now was that even if he didn’t know the reason why she was here at least he knew that she wanted to be alone with him, she had something to say or do that had to be said or done between the two of them alone. The surprise he’d felt at first was wearing off, he wasn’t completely in the clear, but now he knew what he was going to do about it. He stared at Angela but she wasn’t looking at him. Her sea-blue eyes were darting around the room, studying it.
“This place needs some straightening up,” she said. “You ought to keep things neater in here.”
And everything positive he’d been feeling a minute ago collapsed in a heap on the floor and he went down into a black pit and he couldn’t feel a thing.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” he said, looking away from her at the disorder in the room.
He tried to climb out of the hole, got his head a few inches above it, saying: “Don’t you have something you want to tell me?”
“There are a lot things I’d like to tell you, but you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. I might not understand, but I’d like to know anyway.”
“How long have you been living here?”
“Oh, Jesus — you know how long I’ve been living here.”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“What is it, Angela? Why don’t you talk to me?”
“I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? What’s wrong with talking about it?”
“Because there’s no point in it now. And there probably wasn’t a point in it when I did what I’d done in the first place. At the beginning. That’s what I’ve learned. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing like that matters now. You believe me, don’t you?”
