by Owen Thomas
“Morning big guy,” Hollis said, tousling his hair. “Did we wake you up?”
Ben shook his head. A broad smile spread across his face and his small eyes closed to a squint and he bounced a little on his toes.
“Love her,” he said, the flat, white dish of his face threatening to crack from one end to the other from smiling. Then he hugged Hollis again, this time with enough force to squeeze out a grunt.
“Whoa, Benster, not so hard, fella. I do love her. We were just talking. That’s all.”
“No, I love her! I love her! I love her!” Ben bounced and clapped and did an impromptu dance in front of the stove.
“I love you too, Sweetheart,” said Susan. “Aren’t you a love bird, this morning?”
“Neck, neck, neck. On the neck, neck, neck!”
Hollis and Susan looked at each other, mutual anger temporarily preempted.
“Baby, what are you talking about?”
“Mae, Mae, Mae! Kissed her on the neck, neck, neck! Lover, lover, lover on the neck, neck, neck! Mae, Mae, Mae! Smooth and soft! Smoooooth and soffffft.”
Ben continued on about his older brother’s freshly concussed girlfriend, pirouetting out of the kitchen with his arms around an imaginary person. Susan sputtered, doing her best to stifle a laugh.
Hollis did not look at her. He was close to laughing himself. But he did not want to laugh. He did not want all of this – all of what she had said to him, all that she had thrown up in his face – to be whisked away with a laugh. Doppelganger! He turned and scrubbed a dish that did not need scrubbing.
“Hollis,” she said, softness in her tone. Reconciliation in her tone. “Really…”
“You and Gayle go have a fine time doing whatever it is you intend to do. Ben and I will be great. Better than great. We’ll invite David over and have a bachelors’ night for ourselves. Go sow your oats. Stop the war. Change the world. Whatever in the hell it is that you want to do.”
“Hollis…”
…ministration continues to link the war in Iraq to global terrorism dating back to Sept. 11, 2001, saying insurgents were striving to turn the Middle East into a "launching pad for attacks against free people.” And… Coming up in the next half hour, we’ll take a look at the supermodel health crisis. Just how thin is too thin?
He marched out of the kitchen without looking at her, and when he heard her ask where he was going, he did not answer. She knew where he was going.
He went downstairs to his study and closed the door. The silence sealed itself in tightly around him and he stood for a moment, arms crossed, just being still. Eventually, he sank down heavily into his chair and stared blankly at the walls lined with all of his books, each its own course of study; each its own leather-bound diploma. Albert Einstein: Life and Times. Selected Works of the Great Thinkers, vols. I and II. Vibrational Meditation. Seven Gateways to Harmony. I Ching. The Tao of Modern Life. Increasing Awareness. Daode Jing Unlocking the Mind. Zhuangzi. The Enlightened Path. The School of the Madhyanika. Contemplating the Inscrutable. The Quiet Man. Secrets of Zen Gardening. Knowing Buddha. The Art of War. The Connoisseur’s Guide to Fine Wine. The Tao of the Guitar. Grillmaster: The Tao of Cow.
On the shelf above the desk sat the stereo, in all of its black, gleaming miniaturized sleekness. At opposite ends of the same shelf, two small mahogany-encased speakers served as bookends, pressing the volumes up against the sides of the stereo.
Hollis stared at the little green sliver of light on the volume knob. Wagner came instantly to mind and for a moment he was filled with the impulse to play Ride of the Valkyries very loud. Very, very loud.
But the impulse passed. Not because Wagner did not suit him. Wagner certainly did suit him, now more than ever before in recent memory. But then what? Would it really make him feel any better? When the last symbols had crashed – when the last sonic explosions had drifted off through the walls – would he feel as though the demons had been exorcised, or even just pushed away temporarily? Will Wagner have taken up the fight on his behalf? Perhaps. But just as likely it would all come to nothing. Susan would not hear. Oh, she would hear alright, but she would not listen. She would ignore him – he was always ignored; no one cared what he did, what he said, what he thought – and, in the end, when all was silent once again, he will have accomplished nothing but the emasculation of Richard Wagner. If Wagner could not lay waste and leave only ruin in his wake, then there was really no point.
Below the stereo, the bonsai sat quietly on the desk in its glossy green planter. So perfect. So tidy. A study in symmetrical harmony. Its three major branches, although leafy and dotted with small white flowers, were each knotted and gnarled and scarred showing its age in the way that crags and wrinkles in a human face would show the same seventy-five years of life. The branches each twisted their way outwards from the thick, crenellated trunk, sweeping slightly clockwise around the center of gravity so that, looking directly down upon the tree lent to a kind of slow, swirling effect. On some late evenings, Hollis had been able to see the arms of a spiral galaxy, their soft, leafy fuzziness a function of billions of points of ancient starlight wrapped loosely in ribbons of interstellar gas, and each flower a hundred billion suns too powerful for time and distance to obscure, all in slow orbit around an invisible center. The illusion was most effective when he placed the pot on the floor, turned off the overhead lights – using the desk lamp for softer, indirect illumination – and stood on his chair to obtain the right perspective and distance. When the conditions were right, after a minute of staring directly down onto the center of the tree with its three spiraling branches, the universe unveiled itself to him.
Hollis stood up and grabbed the old and tiny tree by the edge of its ceramic containment, pulling it towards him across the desk. He looked straight down over its center, closing one eye to at least partially compensate for what he knew to be a lack of perspective and distance.
He did not see the soft arms of a living, green spiral galaxy. He saw, instead, for the countless time that morning…water. He saw a whirlpool. Not of interstellar gasses and ancient light, but of water. Common, instantly replenishing … water. He saw a great flushing of water. A flawless whirlpool down the shithole of a toilet. Hollis could almost hear the sound in his head: phooosh. And when the tank refilled, it refilled with rage – messy, common, unproductive, unthinking, undignified rage. He felt himself filling with an amorphous, undisciplined anger that chose no one and spared no one, coating all of creation like a sticky, toxic fog.
Hollis sat down violently, snatching open the front drawer of the desk and extracting the shears. He unsnapped the blades from their leather, special edition designer holster and, without the hesitation of a single thought, sliced through the lowest of the major branches. The severed limb glanced off the side of the pot, rolled along the desk for half its wooden, leafy, flower-strewn coil, and fell to the floor. Hollis kicked the branch with his foot, first unintentionally, and then with swift deliberation, back towards the heat register into a tangle of extension cords and speaker wire. He shoved the shears and then the leather holster back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
He threw himself against the back of his chair and regarded the tiny tree with a hot, there, are you happy now sort of disgust. He cocked his head derisively, concluding that it was absolutely the ugliest, hacked-up, ill-conceived, asymmetrical, bonsai he had ever seen. Two-thirds spiraling gracefully outwards and upwards, while one-third was a barren, unharmonious disgrace to the laws of universal balance.
A thumping sound filtered down through the ceiling. Then a laugh. Susan’s laugh. She was teasing Ben in that sing-song voice of hers. Ben jumped again and rattled the miniature bamboo chimes on the shelf above the stereo.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” they shouted in unison. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” The toilet tank of rage, filling his subconscious, now spilled over. He knew it was not a taunt. He knew they were still carrying on about Ben’s secret love for Mae Chang. But it felt like a taunt. Inside, wh
ere he was gasping for breath beneath oceans of anger, he heard it as a taunt. In his heart, now molten, it was Susan yelling down at him through the floorboards; yelling down at him through all the years of their marriage. In his heart he knew that she had allowed him to misjudge her – allowed him to underestimate her – and that she had been observing him, judging him, from the beginning. She had secretly preserved enough of her old, reckless, foolish, self-involved, oh-look-at-me-I’m-oh-so-independent spirit that at the drop of a hat – and at her age! – she still thinks she’s a free agent. Damn her responsibilities. Damn his feelings. She’ll just drop everything and zip up to Peebles for a week to save the world and fuck other women. At her age! And her parting shot out the door is to judge him as less of a man for his marital fidelity. To judge him as beneath the interest of a woman in her sexual prime like Beth. To judge him as a gutless, sanctimonious braggart who doesn’t have the balls to seize a sexual opportunity even in the extraordinary, totally unimaginable, completely hypothetical event of such an opportunity ever, ever, ever being offered to him. Who does she think she’s talking to? Sure, the starburst swim trunks were gone now, but the man was still very much intact.
So she could seize the moment and he could not, was that it? Was that the game? Well, screw that.
Hollis knocked the amputated bonsai with the back of his hand, harder than he intended in the decisiveness of the moment. The little tree in its little pot upended and disappeared over the back of the desk, clunking horribly down the wall, scattering a spray of dirt and moss. He stood abruptly, willing to claim and accept this arboreal violence as something already done, whether or not fully intended, and stormed out of the study. He took the stairs in long, gulping strides, two steps at a time, grabbed his wallet, keys and a jacket in one fluid motion and slipped into the garage without a word or so much as the click of a latch. Within minutes, jaws clenched and his blood pounding out Wagnerian cadences in his ears, he was threading the late-morning traffic up the I-70.
By the time he reached the Westin some twenty minutes later he had coaxed his relaxed, all-the-world-is-as-it-should-be smile back onto this face. As he stepped out of the car, he unzipped his jacket in spite of the rain – which had grown heavy since the drizzle of his meditation – and tucked his shirt into his trousers as snuggly as he could. He was, by God, vital.
He looked carefully around the lobby as he made for the elevator bay from which she had first emerged the previous night, dipped in tawny yellow. He half-expected to see her lounging about reading the paper or returning from the dining room. Driving back from the party, they had agreed to meet in the late afternoon. There had been talk of a tour of the OFSC offices and an impromptu visit with Simon Neal who was likely handling all internship matters while Vernon Ashe was down with the flu. Until then, she would lounge around, she said. She would read her book. Not seeing her, Hollis slipped into the elevator just as the door was opening.
Beth, I want you to know that your offer last night was beautiful … No.
Beth, I want you to sit down for a moment. I’ve got to tell you … No.
Beth, I want you to know that your offer last night was beautiful and special to me. I know I’d had a few last night, and I know you did too, and... well… I just didn’t want alcohol to be a part of it. I wanted to have a clear mind. Beth, I’m here because it’s a glorious morning and because my mind is clear and at peace, and I want to share last night’s moment this morning. Right now, Beth. I want you right now.
Or something like that.
The elevator opened up onto the seventh floor. He walked with a seemingly casual composure to the end of the hall, following the carpet pattern of leaves and tangled vines that he had traced barely eight hours earlier. He felt a fluttering in his chest that spread to a slight tremor in his pocketed hands. At her door, he drew in a breath and straightened himself again, marveling that what he had taken with such detachment last night – albeit stunned detachment – was now the source of such nervousness.
He knocked. He could hear her moving about inside. A bathroom cabinet closing. A shower curtain moving on its metal rod. A toilet flushed, and for an instant he thought of the bonsai on his desk and its severed limb on the floor by the baseboard heater.
The door opened. A young, petite Japanese woman stood in the doorframe. She was everything he had initially expected Suki Takada to look like. Hollis blinked at her and then at the number on the door. 713. Right room. Wrong person.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered.
“You looking?” she said, nodding her head sweetly.
“I’m looking for…”
“No here,” the woman smiled, shrugging at him. He saw now that she wore a uniform. Behind her, back by the bed in which he had never lain, was a white housekeeping cart. “Check out. No here. See? No here.”
CHAPTER 27 – Susan
“David?”
“Heeey, Mom. What’s happenin’ mom-o-mine?
“You sound…odd.”
“I do? No. Just me. Same ol’ Dave. Little Davie.”
“Am I interrupting?”
“No. I have a friend over but, you know, hey, that’s cool.”
“I’ll call back later.”
“No, no. What’s going on?”
“Oh…well…it’s your father.”
“…”
“You still there?”
“Yep. Still here.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing’s funny, Mom. Seriously. What’s up with Dad?”
“Really, I can call back.”
“Mom.”
“I was just calling to see how Mae was.”
“Huh? I thought you said it was about Dad.”
“Well, mostly I called to see if Mae was okay.”
“Oh, yeah. She’s cool.”
“She’s cool? David, I’m talking about the bump on her head.”
“Ooooh, that.”
“What is so funny?”
“I dunno, Mom. It’s just…man did she go DOWN.”
“David, it’s not … funny. I’m really worried about her.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Moooooommmmm…. I heard a laugh.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“It’s okay, Mom. Really…”
“David, if you can’t stop laughing, I’m calling back some other time.”
“Okay, okay. Wait. Okay. There. Serious. No more laughing. Mae’s fine. I’ll tell her you were concerned. It’s really just a bump on the noggin. God that’s a funny word. Noggin. Okay. No laughing.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No. I’m not drunk.”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“Mom, I’m not drunk. What’s up with Dad?”
“Oh, he’s just…he’s just being himself. Very distant. You know how he is. Drinks too much. Hostile. Yesterday morning I caught him behind the couch…well…”
“Caught him behind the couch?”
“He…meditates. He was … meditating. I think.”
“Man, he’s really into that shit…stuff. Sorry.”
“He is. And he makes me feel like an idiot just about every day because I think it makes him feel better about himself if he thinks I’m an idiot. You know what I mean?”
“You’re not an idiot, Mom.”
“Thank you, David. I know I’m not an idiot. He just makes me feel like one.”
“You’re not an idiot, Mom.”
“You just said that. Thank you. Why are you …”
“Sorry, sorry. No laughing. No laughing.”
“Anyway, he spends most of every day with that Bethany Koan friend of his.”
“Whoa, now she’s…”
“She’s what?”
“Nothing.”
“She’s what, David? Beautiful? Sexy?”
“She’s really into Mike O’Donnell.”
“She is?”
“
Yeah. Big time.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Went out with him once though.”
“Out with him how? Like on a date out with him?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“I find that a little hard to believe.”
“Well, she said she had a drink with him, so…just a sec, Mom…over there … above the sink, third cabinet…no…you are hopeless. Here, I’ll get them. Talk to my mom. But no laughing. Seriously. No…Cee Cee? Cee? Look at me. No laughing…”
“David, this is silly, I’ll just call you back when…”
“Mrs. Johns?”
“Hello?”
“Hi. I’m Sissy Lewis.
“Oh, hello. I really didn’t mean…
“I’m a friend of David’s.”
“Oh…Sissy, did you say?”
“Caitlyn if you like. He swears he has corn chips. I don’t believe him.”
“I think I called at a bad time.”
“No, no, no. Not a bad time at all. We were just… uh… sittin’ here. Getting… hungry. Oh… oh… sorry. No laughing.”
“Are you and David old friends?”
“Four days going on five.”
“Oh.”
“But we both went to Tulane about a million years ago. Damn if he didn’t find a bag of chips. I looked there! I did. I looked right in that very spot. Be nice, DJ, or you don’t get any more.”
“Any more what? Hello?”
“What? Oh, nothing. I was just teasing him. Your son is far too serious.”
“Not today.”
“Mom?”
“Hello, David. I’m going to hang up now.”
“Oh…okay.”
“You’re obviously busy.”
“Well, no, not really.”
“I just have one thing to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going away…”
“Going away? Are you sick? Away like Heaven or away like prison?”
“You need to let me finish.”
