River Under the Road

by Scott Spencer

  He sank onto the sofa and sipped his drink, numbing one moment, invigorating the next. He listened for her footsteps and there they were, as if conjured up by his horrible, pointless desire. He blamed Grace; had she been more welcoming, he would not have so much untapped desire.

  Jeelu’s efficient small steps were followed everywhere by the frantic scamper of her Yorkshire terrier, a butterscotch sneeze of a dog with long ebony claws. Her dog’s name was Jeelu, also. He was amazed at the goofiness of it, naming a dog after yourself, but the oddness of it added an element of incongruity that served to draw Thaddeus all the deeper into the maze. Knowing that he would not in a hundred years so much as kiss her did not make matters better. In fact, it made everything worse. His desire’s only relationship was with itself, there was nothing to keep it in check, it was as unsocialized as a child raised in isolation.

  The Jeelus were going down the stairs. He allowed himself to wonder for a moment if she might knock on his door and ask if he’d like to take a walk. Why would she do such a thing? Who knew? Maybe she was as lonely as him. Maybe she was as crazy as him. What a lovely thought that was. It was a bit late to be taking her dog out and perhaps she was leery of the dark streets, and had finally figured out that Jeelu 2 could not protect her from anything, not even an assault from a kitten. In the flurry of maybes he almost missed hearing the Jeelus and their six feet passing from the third floor to the second and continuing their way down. He felt spurned. The madness of these fantasy affairs, it was enough to make you loathe make-believe, enough to convince you fantasy was by its very nature toxic. Yet even now he was not quite finished with the matter. He went to the window, parted the narrow slats of the wooden shade and peered down at the street, just in time to see the two Jeelus walking briskly toward Hudson Street.

  Thaddeus was up and out of his apartment without any real awareness of his movement. He was a book that slips from your hand when you close your eyes, an apple that rolls off the edge of the table. He was nothing, just atoms moving around. As soon as he closed the door and locked it, the heat of the evening was on him as if it had been poured from a kettle.

  For half an hour, he walked the streets of his neighborhood, forcing himself to maintain a brisk pace, for fear of appearing aimless and strange. He was at once looking for Jeelu and dreading crossing her path.

  The moon appeared and disappeared, a face looking briefly in on the dark city. Solitary strollers emerged from the muzzy darkness one by one. Approaching was an Asian woman in flip-flops. New York! Was there any place in the world with more beautiful women? She was delicate and private, wearing neon yellow terry-cloth shorts, a white shirt knotted at the navel; she chewed gum furiously and rubbed her hands together, squeezing them, as if trying to wash with only a tiny sliver of soap. Perhaps she had left her apartment to get away from an argument. His eyes widened; he could hear his own breathing. I’m one of those men, he thought. Yet look at her! Her? There was no her, he did not know the first thing about her. Moments later she disappeared into the haze of steam rising out of a manhole, and a woman in her forties appeared, big boned and swaggering, wild blond hair, beer can protruding from the paper bag, her belly swaying beneath her T-shirt. Oh what a ride she would be, no question about it. She carried the scent of many bridges burned behind her. She detected Thaddeus’s interest, and furrowed her brow. But she saw his harmlessness, his helplessness, and it made her smile. Thaddeus nodded, touched his eyebrow with one finger, half lost in an instant of imagining what it would be like to lie down with this woman, to experience her raucous personality, her pent-up energies, her tipsy abandon, her desire, not unlike his own, to somehow kick the plug out of the wall of Self and be plunged into darkness.

  He walked south on Washington Street, wanting the closeness of the river and the possibility of cooling breezes, but not daring to go to West Street or the docks, where by now the skin trade was running at full throttle. Who would be there? Boys down from Harlem, and ridiculously muscled men in ripped leather vests, storm trooper boots. Also, the transvestite hookers who seemed to arrive via spacecraft to ply their trade in the backs of meat-delivery trucks. Venues reeking of torment and ecstasy. He remembered for a moment when imagination was like wings, something to lift him above his life; now it was a jackhammer, pounding him into the pavement.

  WASHINGTON STREET WAS SLANTED AND secretive, with the long shadows of street lamps crisscrossing the gleaming black cobblestones. The utility company had opened a portion of the street and thrown up a barricade around it. Steam the color of tarnished silver poured out of the opening, intermittently yellowed by the flashing light on one of the sawhorses. There was rubbish in the gutters, and the moronic sound of air conditioners hummed from the windows of the row houses, walk-ups, and converted factories. On the other side of the street there was a curly-haired man with an unusually large head walking a pair of Airedales, but otherwise Thaddeus was alone. He wondered if he would catch a glimpse of Hannah, but his wondering prevented her from appearing. She could only take him by surprise.

  He passed a pay phone padlocked to a cyclone fence, next to a newspaper box selling the Village Voice. The moment Thaddeus was parallel with the phone, it began to trill like a mad bird of night. Startled, Thaddeus stopped, looked up and down the street. There was no one around to answer it and no one to see if he succumbed to curiosity’s temptations and answered it himself. He picked it up and said hello.

  “I see you,” a man’s voice said, in a harsh tone. “I’m looking right now at you.”

  Across the street was a modest six-story brick building. A light in the window on the fourth floor flicked off and on.

  “That’s me,” the voice said. Again, his window blinked.

  “What do you want?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Are you hairy or smooth?” the man asked.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Answer me!” The voice was curdled with a fury that sounded just a bit theatrical. Thaddeus looked up at the window, but nothing interrupted that square of bright yellow light, not even a silhouette. Two men in jeans and T-shirts were approaching, walking downtown. They were blasted out on something or other, and sang a Bach fugue, body-bah-bum-bum instead of words, their voices deep and pure—they may have been Juilliard students, or professional singers. Their eyes were bright and wide, like an owl’s.

  “Are you there?” the voice said.

  “I’m here,” Thaddeus said. “These two guys just walked by singing so beautifully.”

  “I’ll suck your cock.”

  “Hey, man. I’m not into it.”

  “Fuck you’re not.”

  Thaddeus hung up the phone. He hated to leave a fellow human being in the lurch. And his dick registered its own opinion: Are you sure? He turned to check the window again. The light was flicking off and on at a furious rate. Thaddeus made a small salute, a jaunty farewell, no hard feelings.

  The phone began to ring. This time zero mystery. He did not want to pick up the receiver, yet he could not walk away. On the seventh ring he thought oh well and answered.

  “I knew you’d answer,” the voice said.

  “Look, man,” Thaddeus said. “You should not be doing this. It’s creepy. I’m lonely and fucked, too, but there’s a limit. You know? There are things you just have to bear.”

  “Is Daddy going to teach me a lesson?”

  “All right. That’s creepy, too.” Thaddeus laughed, and to his surprise the man laughed, too.

  “You got a name?” the man asked.

  “Thaddeus.”

  “Real name?”

  “Yeah, it’s my real name. What about you?”

  “Leslie, as in Caron, as in Howard.”

  “All right, Leslie. I have to—”

  “Come up. We can talk.”

  “No way. I’m not that crazy.”

  “Please.” He paused. Thaddeus heard rustling. “For a beer.” Another pause. “Or a cup of tea. Iced tea. I’ve got iced tea.” Leslie had abandoned the fict
ion of his dungeon master’s voice and spoke imploringly.

  “Sorry. I’m going to hang up now . . .”

  “Five minutes. You can’t come up for five minutes?”

  “All right, Leslie. I’ll tell you what I can do. If you want to come down, we can talk for five minutes down here. On the street.”

  “It’s a hassle. I’m on a tank.”

  “What?”

  “Oxygen tank. My lungs are fucked.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do that scary voice, probably isn’t very good for you.”

  Leslie laughed until it turned to a cough. “What do you do, Thaddeus?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Nice. What kind of articles do you write?”

  “Screenplays.” He listened carefully to his voice as he said the word, making sure there was nothing apologetic in it. He was sick and tired of apologizing.

  “Really? I bet you hear this all the time, but my life would make a great movie.”

  “I do, I hear it a lot.”

  Undeterred, the man on the fourth floor went into his story, every once in a while taking time to let his breathing catch up. His lungs no longer fit him. Breathing was walking around in someone else’s shoes, three sizes too small. “My sister’s boyfriend gets me a job building a squash court in Westchester, and there are a million stories about the client and his wife, both disgustingly prejudiced, she weighs like fifty pounds and he’s a tub of lard, but the point is, I end up with a lung full of fine-particle dust, and now I’m part of a lawsuit and maybe I’m walking away with a million bucks. My lawyer tells me that more masons get on-the-job casualties and fatalities than any other occupation, cops, firemen, anything else.”

  “Oh, man, that’s horrible,” Thaddeus said. “What is it? Do you have cancer?”

  “I’ve got chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The big COPD. Which is a lot better than cancer, in one way, because it actually pays more, since no one’s arguing about where it comes from and how you get it. Open and shut that it came from the job.”

  “It’s got to be better than cancer.” Thaddeus glanced up at the window and a darkness in the shape of a human being had carved out a place in the light. He waited for a reply. A hand pressed itself against the glass. “So what happens in your movie?” Thaddeus asked. “It needs a third act.”

  “I get the money. I give some to my other sister, and her schizoid kid who needs a lot of extra stuff. My lawyer leaves his wife and lives with me in Santa Fe. I suck his cock and every now and then I look up and there they are, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.”

  “Pure Hollywood. We might have to change it a little, for the studio. Maybe Sally Field can be the lawyer.”

  “You don’t think it’s too schmaltzy?”

  “It’s what I like about movies,” Thaddeus said. “They tell us to never give up.”

  “Hey, I really think you need to come up here. Do you see me?”

  “I see you.”

  “Have you ever been with a man?”

  “I’m married. I’ve got a kid.”

  “And?”

  “Talk about never giving up.”

  “Please. I’m asking. I’ll be your slave.”

  “I don’t want a slave.”

  “Then I’ll be your master.”

  “I don’t want either. This is America,” Thaddeus added, with a nervous laugh. “Land of the free.”

  “And home of the brave, too, don’t forget that.” Leslie waited for an answer. “You’re really not coming up, are you,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. And you’re not coming down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then there it is, Leslie. Life.”

  “Okay. I want to ask you a question. All right? Can I ask you a question?”

  There was only the faint sound of breathing on the line. In the interim, Thaddeus’s mind began to race, wondering, somewhat fearfully, what Leslie was going to ask him. Why was a married man prowling the streets alone at night?

  “So what’s your question?” he finally asked.

  “It’s . . .”

  “Just ask it, Leslie. Then I have to go.”

  “I want to ask you to come up here so I can suck your cock. I’ll pay you sixty dollars.”

  Thaddeus gently hung up the phone, and waved toward the lighted window, but without looking up at it. He turned to walk away and was suddenly face-to-face with Jeelu Ramachandran with Jeelu 2.

  “Hello, Jeelu.”

  “Hello, neighbor,” she said. The dog moved restlessly, as if the sidewalk burned its paws.

  “I hope there wasn’t too much noise,” Thaddeus said. Seeing the lack of comprehension on her face, he added, “From the party.”

  “I worked late.”

  “It was a fund-raiser for the Mondale campaign.”

  “Rots of ruck with that,” Jeelu said.

  “So you’re for Reagan?”

  “I hate politics.” She quickly looked down at her dog. “Yes, yes, I know. Time to go home.”

  “Would you mind if I walked with you?”

  “I’m just going back.”

  “I am, too.”

  They didn’t bother to make conversation. The silence was agreeable to Thaddeus. It was like something plain and well made, like Shaker furniture. At one point, Jeelu followed her dog into the street where it squatted on the cobblestones, and when she stumbled for a moment, Thaddeus touched her elbow to steady her, but only for a moment.

  Still, Jeelu seemed to take it as not completely well-meaning. “Is your wife here, too?” she asked.

  “No, she’s upstate. I’m Thaddeus, by the way.”

  “I know your name.”

  “We’re hardly ever here.”

  “Your son is David and your wife is Grace.”

  “That’s right.”

  He could see their house on Horatio Street now. The yellow porch light burned with a special intensity, as if the house had seen them and had taken a deep breath.

  “Do you know the name of my dog?” Jeelu asked. She jutted out her chin, as if she were hoping he would fail this test.

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Thaddeus said, in an insinuating voice. Don’t fucking flirt.

  “Really? Are you sure? What is it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you the name of your own dog,” Thaddeus said, merrily. Flirting. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

  “What you are doing is an even older trick. And the person who plays that trick is the person who doesn’t know the name of the dog.”

  “Can I stay with you tonight, Jeelu? I won’t even touch you. I would just go to sleep next to you.” There. Not flirting whatsoever. He had always thought of himself as a tactful person, tactical even. Could Tourette’s syndrome come on as suddenly as an embolism?

  Jeelu 1 picked up Jeelu 2 and held her protectively against her chest. “I have a very small bed. It’s for when my parents come. They’re very old-fashioned, and if they saw a double bed or, God forbid, larger, they would say, ‘For whom do you need such a large bed? What is going on here?’”

  “It sounds cozy,” Thaddeus said.

  “No, Thaddeus. Tonight, I stay in apartment eight, and you are in apartment four.”

  She’s looked at my door. She knows the number . . .

  “Are you sure?” he asked, but he felt something shifting. A fever had broken, the beginnings of relief.

  “You paid good money for that bed of yours,” Jeelu said, “and you’re hardly ever in it.” She smiled. She knew her smile was dazzling; you don’t smile like that and not know all about it. “I was home when it was delivered. The men were carrying it out of the truck and I came downstairs to let them in.”

  “Well then, I guess I owe you a thank-you,” Thaddeus said. “Saved by a banker.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Her hand was on the door. “And why do you say bad things about bankers? If it wasn’t for bankers we’d all be dead meat.”

  “You think so
?”

  “Good night, neighbor.”

  “Wait,” Thaddeus said. This was something he wanted to get out of the way before she went in. “Since you asked. I know you named your dog after yourself, and I wanted to spend the night with you anyway. I think I deserve some credit for that.” It felt as if his skin was cooling down. Thank God he was not going to put further strain on his marriage by sleeping with another woman, even chastely. Nevertheless, he felt the pique of being refused.

  How could he have so much and still be this alone? If his life was a book, it was as if a sudden wind had unexpectedly rattled the pages forward and, despite his best efforts to look away, he had glimpsed how the story ended.

  BACK IN HIS APARTMENT, HE drank and watched a porn tape purchased upon arrival that day, in case he found himself at the ragged end of the night feeling exactly how he was feeling now. The candy store where he picked up the newspaper and Dentyne also sold these videos, which never ceased to astonish him. He made his purchases furtively, never failing to case the place to make certain there were no women or children present. He tried to limit his purchases in frequency and subject matter, avoiding movies that catered to specific tastes—nothing with teen, ass, bitch, or bondage in the title. He was content with middle-of-the-road raunch, something to take his mind off his worries and transport him to a world of generic in-and-out. Right now, he was glad for his foresight as the first notes of the porn soundtrack played. Of course porn music was the worst music ever made, but his body responded to it, just as it had when, as a child, he heard the distant chimes of the Good Humor truck. It was as if he had a body inside his body that needed to be appeased. All he wanted to do was draw the curtain. I shall be released. He watched the actors cavorting beneath the pitiless lights, and as he got closer to completion he closed his eyes and instead of watching strangers—the men pneumatic, the women old beyond their years—he allowed himself to remember fucking Grace in a way that was similar to how Randy was fucking Brandi. Once he entered into the whoosh of memory’s current the trick was to go with the flow and block out the sights and sounds of the tape. As he worked himself with one hand, he groped blindly for the remote control, but he could not find it and the humble reality of his lonely climax was subverted by the theatrical screeches on the film.