“Hubris, Freddy,” said Chandra. “Unadulterated hubris.” He abandoned the gray hairs and the puffiness for a later and more private audit. “Besides, when was the last time you talked to your brother, Herbert? The few times he’s managed to catch you on the phone, you told him that Call Waiting had beeped and that you were expecting an important call.”
“How was the boycott?” he asked. Chandra squinted again.
“Where was the damn sun yesterday?”
“Did you get rained on?” He leaned against the doorjamb, his head tilted, listening to the musical language coming up from the computer. He was reorganizing the hard disk in order to speed up the computer’s performance. When it finished, he would begin updating his newest client, Patti’s Poodle Parlor. He canted his head further, catching the soft ticking music. Chandra stared at him.
“You know, you and that computer are beginning to remind me of something from the Twilight Zone. It’s unnatural. It’s like you speak some occult language to that thing, and it answers you.”
“I believe you’re jealous,” said Frederick.
“One day that computer will come up the stairs with a cup of coffee, and you’ll have disappeared. Just your shoes and socks left behind in your office.”
“And you’ll still be getting your coffee in bed,” he said. “The happy widow. Now tell me about the boycott.”
“If you’ll stop holding your head like some hawk, I’ll tell you,” said Chandra. She sipped more coffee. “Eighteen people turned up,” she said. “And the excuses from the ones who promised to be there were the same excuses as twenty years ago. You remember those, don’t you?”
“Let’s see,” he said. “If I remember correctly, that would include sprained ankles, sick children, sudden family deaths, mysterious automobile problems such as car wrecks and flat tires, unexpected business trips, and weren’t there two Hare Krishnas who claimed to hyperventilate on the interstate?”
“You can add a new one to the list,” Chandra said. She was sitting up in bed now, examining her toes. “Those new tennis shoes, the ones without the leather tops, have given me blisters.” She pointed at the watery bumps on the tips of both big toes.
“What’s the new excuse?” Frederick asked. He reached for her left foot and began to massage it.
“Colleen Pratt called Sukie to report that she had just gotten her hair done that morning,” Chandra said. “Got it done for the boycott, mind you, and as it was raining she couldn’t bear to see her ’do spoiled.” Frederick laughed.
“How did she end up in the group in the first place?” he asked. “Doesn’t sound like one of the sincere to me.”
“She paid for all our printing costs,” Chandra said. “Her husband owns Down East Printing.” She slid her legs over the side of the bed.
“I wonder who does their accounting,” Frederick said. Chandra stared at him.
“Must you see a potential client everywhere?” she asked.
“Well,” said Frederick, suddenly defensive. “You saw her as printing costs. Why can’t I see her as a client?”
“There’s a difference, Freddy,” Chandra said. “Just don’t ask me to define it.”
“I take it the boycott didn’t go well?” He canted his head again, hoping Chandra wouldn’t notice. It sounded as if the computer had finished the weekly rearranging of its contents, moving much of the data to areas of its electronic brain that were more quickly accessible. Frederick often wished he could do the same thing to his own brain.
“It went well enough,” Chandra said. She put her cup on the nightstand and got out of bed. She was wearing her flannel pajamas.
“Aren’t those hot for this time of year?” Frederick asked.
“I got chilled yesterday,” she said. Their eyes met. He wasn’t sure, even after all these alike mornings, if the eyes were asking, Where were you? When I was getting chilled, when I was getting sunburned, when the snow was piling up on my head, when the leaves were orange under my feet, where, pray tell, were you?
“The business is doing so well that I may be able to add on to the den by fall,” he said. “You’ve been wanting a larger room for your seminars.”
“That would be nice,” she said. She leaned against the wall to execute some stretching exercises, the way runners work their muscles. “We walked for two hours,” she explained when she noticed his look of inquiry. “As I said, the new shoes aren’t very good.”
“Oh, by the way,” Frederick said. “I bought some more cat food, for the stray cat.”
Chandra smiled, and then leaned over to give him a kiss. “Thanks, Freddy.”
“I am allergic, remember,” he added, but she ignored this.
“Just until I find it a good home,” she said.
“And now that I’m making a little money, you’ll always, you know, have cat food, and dog food, and we can go later this afternoon and buy you some new shoes.” Christ, he hated to hear himself rant on! At times like that, after each of Chandra’s “civil protests,” Frederick felt like Isabella financing ships for Columbus so that he could chance sailing out and off the flat edge of the world, while she, Isabella, remained within the walls of her palace, partying no doubt. But somebody had to finance the dreamers, didn’t they? How far would Columbus have gotten without the Nina, the Pinta, the goddamn Santa Maria? How far could Chandra walk in her next protest—saving the tropical rain forests, or so he had read between the magnets on the fridge—without new and better shoes? Frederick had learned that the backers of Great Expeditions and Important Movements are misunderstood and lonely people.
“I’ll be in my office if you need me,” he said.
Three
As Frederick watched from behind the curtains of his office window, they arrived one at a time, and then in scraggly bunches. These would be Chandra’s clients, the “Psychology of Names” seminar about to fall into full swing. The last group, two women and two men, were dressed in cowboy hats, handkerchief chokers about their necks, Texas-style boots. Frederick wondered if perhaps a square dance was happening somewhere along the street and they’d missed the right address. What problem could these people have with names? He imagined their conversation after an evening with Chandra. “Howdy, I’m Tex, formerly Norman Weingart. Meet Pecos Slim here, the erstwhile Milton Sweeny.” For the second time since the first client had rung the doorbell, Frederick checked the knob to his office door. It was locked. Let Chandra call him a chicken—living on the outskirts of humanity—as she often did. He had great suspicions about the demented souls who turned up for her Seminars of the Mind. He wished she could find an office in downtown Portland, but she had a strong argument against that: she would end up spending all her “money of the mind” on an exorbitant earthly rent. Enlarging the den was their best bet. But Frederick feared that robbery might result one day, being facilitated by some burglar getting an inside look at the Stone residence, casing the joint rather than changing his Karma. And this point was finally brought home when Frederick snuck out of his office one night for a little snack and found an abnormally tall man in his kitchen, a man bent like a question mark as he inspected the contents of the Stone refrigerator. Frederick could hardly contain himself as he’d waited for the seminar—“Psychometry as Science”—to end so that he could report the indiscretion to Chandra.
“I wouldn’t call taking an apple from the refrigerator stealing,” Chandra had defended her client, Joseph Peters, a man who supposedly could tell where things had been from simply touching them. “He’s one of our leading psychometrists,” she’d added. Well, he, Frederick Stone, might not be one of the world’s leading psychometrists, but, by God, he knew where that apple had been before Joseph Peters had eaten it. It had been in his, Frederick Stone’s, goddamn refrigerator! And he didn’t even have to touch the bloody thing to know that!
Frederick looked at the clock. Seven fifteen. That month’s seminar
would finish at nine. By then, everyone would know how psychologically damaging it is to grow up being called “Ernest” in a world catering to “Seans.” And Chandra would be fifty dollars richer per person. Seminars of the pocketbook. Frederick had counted twenty sheep. If she kept that up, she might easily be able to afford office space somewhere more appropriate. Near a mental hospital with a handicap ramp would be a good start.
Frederick sat down at his computer and concentrated again on the letter he had started. Mr. Arthur Bowen, of Arthur Bowen Developers, Inc. Dear Sir: As the largest real-estate developer in this part of the state, you could benefit greatly from my services and…and…and…I happen to know your wife, Doris. Frederick stopped typing and stared at the words. Of course, he wasn’t going to mention his and Doris’s supermarket relationship. He went back and put a period after services. He wished there was some tactful way to mention that he did, indeed, know Mrs. Bowen, and therefore could be rescued from the dregs of anonymity. I am a Certified Public Accountant with a degree in accounting, as well as a degree in English from Boston University. I offer a complete computerized accounting service. He envisioned Doris Bowen’s firm brown thighs just then and wondered if she was lounging at that very moment in a white string bikini by the Bowen pool. Doris. Not really an appropriate name anymore, when he thought about it, not a name to imply a sexy image. But that’s just what Doris Bowen did, with her silky blond hair and that cute little whisper in her voice. This concept would blow Chandra’s Psychology of Names philosophy right out of the water, wouldn’t it? I would be more than eager to meet with you…
“Or with Doris,” he said aloud. Or I can mail you recommendations from clients who have been thoroughly satisfied with Stone Accounting since its inception. Could he satisfy Doris Bowen? he wondered, and then abandoned the thought. He was a married man, after all, over twenty years, something most of his friends couldn’t dangle in the face of statistics. My services would include taking care of your weekly payroll, filing monthly and quarterly taxes, and, of course, preparing state and federal income tax forms. Frederick remembered the image of Doris’s white breasts as she leaned over her shopping cart. My services could also include taking care of Doris. Would Joseph Peters be able to tell Arthur Bowen where those breasts had been, just from holding them? Arthur would probably pay top dollar to know. Frederick considered dashing off a letter to Monsieur Peters. The man was in the wrong line of work.
By the time the last client had driven away from the house at the end of the cul-de-sac on Ellsboro Street, Frederick had put the finishing touches on his letter to Arthur Bowen. He also had enough time to run the utility software that would perform a low-level format on his hard disk. This would guard against the hard drive crashing. Frederick could not afford for any data to become irrevocably lost. Most people thought that computers were either glorified typewriters with an adding machine attached or—and Chandra was in this second group—that some self-sufficient form of intelligence resided inside the CPU, waiting to spit out answers to complex questions. But Frederick knew the truth, as did his computer brothers and sisters: it took a lot of human time to keep a computer functioning efficiently.
Just as he was about to print out his letter to Arthur Bowen Developers, making sure that he’d not mentioned Doris’s breasts anywhere in it—Word Search quickly took care of that—he heard a soft rapping on his door. It was Chandra.
“A couple of us are going out for coffee,” she told him. She seemed in a great hurry. Out of curiosity Frederick followed her down to the den. She looked lovely in a cotton dress with a flowing skirt, all pastel colors. Her thick hair had been swept back with combs, the better to show off her heart-shaped face. Frederick was about to suggest they have coffee alone, in front of the TV, maybe seek out an old movie on cable, something they rarely did anymore, when he saw a young man settled comfortably on the sofa.
“I’m Chandra’s husband,” he said, holding out a hand to shake. The young man smiled.
“You remember Robbie,” said Chandra. Frederick heard sarcasm in her voice. But why should he remember Robbie, or any of her assembled lunatics? Robbie stood up then, and Frederick saw that he was at least three inches taller, just over six feet. He looked around for the rest of the kaffeeklatsch but saw no one else. A couple of us? Were the others meeting them there, maybe the cretins in the cowboy hats?
“Where are you from, Robbie?” Frederick was following them to the door. Robbie had those muscular tanned looks one sees on surfers. Frederick wanted to hear him talk, wanted to hear that effeminate slur in his words, to assure himself that this was another of the young gays so attracted to Chandra’s aggressiveness. Let Chandra chide him all she wanted about there being no stereotypical gay. “Are you from the Portland area?” He saw Chandra frown her little frown, the one that began on her forehead and ended up around the corners of her mouth.
“You’re kidding, right?” Robbie asked. Damn. He sounded far too masculine. Frederick now hoped that Chandra was right, that there was no stereotypical gay.
“Are you a student?” Frederick asked. Please say you’re majoring in clothing design or interior decorating.
“You’re kidding, right?” Robbie asked again. When it came to the 158,000 words in Webster’s New World Dictionary, Robbie was downright penurious, see stingy.
“Would you like to come along, Freddy?” Chandra asked. The impatience he heard was now the kind she reserved for her mother, impatience laced with annoyance. Frederick waved his hand, pooh-poohing the idea. Robbie was now grinning, a grin anchored in mockery.
“Have you known my wife for very long?” Frederick felt a disturbing sensation in his temples, a thumping.
Chandra had found her sweater and purse and was now waiting for him to shut up so that she could leave. Frederick knew this, but he wasn’t finished yet.
“Have you and I met before?”
“A few times,” Robbie answered. Frederick nodded, a fatherly nod.
“I try to remember Chandra’s clients,” he said. “But there are so many of them.”
“Actually,” Robbie said, but Chandra stopped him.
“We’ll be at Panama Red’s,” she said. Frederick considered this. Another of those renovated yuppie restaurants that Portland was so famous for—barn boards, Boston ferns in big brass buckets, dim lights, Joan Baez and Dylan on the sound system. Carpe diem was rampant in a joint like that.
“Is that the place with the forty-watt bulbs?” he asked, hoping to keep his tone lighthearted. Chandra gave him a tough little stare.
“Nice to see you again,” said the well-tanned Robbie. Was there more mockery in the “again”? Frederick was just about to consider this as Chandra closed the door in his face.
He went immediately to his office and looked up couple in the dictionary. It meant a few; several; now often used with adjectival force, omitting the of (a couple cups of coffee). He was surprised it didn’t mention Panama Red’s in there as he tried not to consider the next word: coupler, a person or thing that couples. Robbie the Coupler.
• • •
Frederick lay awake, trying not to stare at the blue-green numerals of the alarm clock. He knew without looking that it was almost midnight. All of his life he had been able to clear his mind of the day’s problems and doze off quickly. It was a knack that often annoyed Chandra, but the old ability was failing him tonight. He examined the ceiling, awash in the blue-green light from the clock. Jealousy was an emotion he hadn’t experienced in years, hadn’t thought much about. Chandra had said often that his only real contact with the world in a decade was through the keys of his computer. Had he been blind? No, he wasn’t blind. He was being foolish. Chandra was still deeply affected by people, still wished to help them out during their time on the planet. Sure, she took a bit of money for doing so, but most of that went into advertising, phone bills, pamphlets, and the paraphernalia that comes with protest. And she did offer
a service, even if it was to the mentally beleaguered of the world. Robbie was probably just a young man with a big problem—that it was a heterosexual problem was a bit unfortunate. But Chandra was just doing what Chandra does best: helping the idiot, the crackpot, and the imbecile.
Frederick turned on his side, determined to forget about Robbie, knowing that if he was ever going to get the monthly payroll taxes filed for his clients by tomorrow’s deadline, he’d need some sleep. He tried again to make a vast desert of his mind, but things kept popping up there, growing, hateful things, like the get-together at the Renaissance Teahouse after the veal boycott in Augusta. “To discuss factory farming,” she’d told him. And then there was the night she’d not come home at all, calling instead to say that she and Cindy Huggins would be up until dawn designing a poster for the Planet Earth exhibit, so she might as well hole up in Cindy’s spare bedroom. Another time, she’d spent the night with Amy Lentz, when that quick, heavy snowfall had caught her unawares on the other side of town.
“In control, in control, in control,” Frederick repeated the mantra. But each time he was about to float off to sleep, that vague feeling overtook him, that voice from his subconscious, that finger poking out into his conscious world.
It was just past midnight when he heard Chandra’s little Toyota rumble into the yard. He needed to take it to the local garage soon to get that muffler fixed. He listened as her car door slammed and then, silence. He knew she was out there in the driveway, staring up at the stars, looking for planets, as she always did on starry nights. And it was a starry night. Frederick had gone out to his own car at ten o’clock and sat in it for a few minutes. He’d planned to drive rapidly past Panama Red’s, hoping for a quick glimpse in the window, in among the Boston ferns and dimly lit bulbs. Feeling foolish, he’d gotten out of the car and stood for a few minutes looking up at Chandra’s stars. He would tell her about this, and they would share a laugh. And then, maybe then, he could sleep. The IRS demanded that those payroll taxes be deposited in the bank tomorrow, and Frederick didn’t relish facing the task with stinging eyes.
A Marriage Made at Woodstock Page 4
