Talk Talk

by T. C. Boyle

  Head down, walking crisply, with purpose, he crossed in the middle of the block and came down the street toward the station, past the outdoor café with a bunch of people chewing as if their lives depended on it and the area reserved for taxis—and when he saw the cabs idling there and the northbound train sitting at the platform the idea came into his head to slide into one of the cabs and hustle out of there, but he dismissed it. The police would arrive in a matter of minutes, once the clown got himself up off the floor and the wreckage settled and the bartender dialed emergency, and the cab would have to go right by them. He saw all that, moving forward, never breaking stride, though people were looking at him—blood on his face, his pants torn and dirty—and he mounted the platform and stepped onto the train, taking a seat on the far side. A minute later he was in the restroom, dabbing at his face with a wet paper towel, hearing sirens—or was he imagining it? A minute after that the train jerked forward, the wheels taking hold, and then the car was swaying as if under the influence of two competing and antithetical forces and the rattling started and they were under way, heading north.

  The cut—it was a scrape, really, with a thin slice down the middle of it—traced his right cheekbone all the way to one very red ear and it was bleeding more than it should have, and that was inconvenient. There was little chance that whatever cop responded to the scene at the tavern would connect him with the incident and even less that they’d bother with the train because it was just a bar fight, after all, one of a million, but still he didn’t want to draw attention to himself unnecessarily. If they had the Mercedes they’d be at the house with a warrant and there’d be somebody there for a few days at least waiting for him to turn up, but he wasn’t going to turn up, he had no intention of turning up—at the house or anywhere else. He wasn’t that stupid, though he was getting there. When he’d stanched the bleeding, he took a fresh wad of paper towels, soaked them through, and waded out into the lurching car, taking an empty seat on the near side now, so as to present his left profile to the conductor when he came round taking tickets.

  They were making the big sweep round the base of Anthony’s Nose when the conductor came up the aisle behind him. “Beacon,” Peck said, turning to him, the wadded-up towels pressed to his cheek. The conductor—a black man, older, with distant eyes and a fringe of processed hair hanging limp under his cap—didn’t ask, but Peck said, “Hell of a toothache,” and he handed him a bill and the man punched his ticket and gave him his change and that was that. For the moment, at least. But what next? And why had he said Beacon and not Buffalo? Or Chicago?

  When they stopped at the Garrison station—a little nothing of a stone building, a row of houses, the flat hand of the river and a big empty parking lot—and there was nobody waiting for him, no cops and no Natalia, he began to understand. There was unfinished business here, and the thought of it twisted at him and soured the contents of his stomach, the flat beer out of the twelve-ounce glass, stale bar mix, the Coke that ate right through him like battery acid. Natalia had left him. She was gone. It was over. For all he knew she could be on this very train, connecting to Toronto. But no, that wasn’t her style, and he tried to picture her, the little moue of a kissing mouth she would make when she was concentrating on something, doing her eyes or working a crossword puzzle, Natalia, stepping out of the bath or tipping back a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau or worked up and fuming at him, as capable of action as anybody he’d ever met. She would take a cab to Hertz or Enterprise, rent a car, pick up Madison and go back to the house. Where she would brood and fling things on the floor and swig vodka, squat and murderous and stomping around in her bare feet till she passed out and the cops came in the morning with their warrant and turned the house upside down. And then she’d suck down more vodka and take Madison out to lunch and go shopping and eventually she’d find herself back in the house, sorting out the damage. She’d look out the window and see the rental car there, something nice, something sporty—a Mustang, maybe, or a T-Bird, because why would she deny herself as long as the credit cards still worked?—and before long she’d start packing the car with everything she could carry. And then she’d be gone.

  As the train rattled through the remnants of the day, the declining sun striping the looping arc of tracks ahead and picking out individual leaves in the treetops while the rest faded to gray, his mind began to close a fist over that picture of Natalia and he found himself getting angry all over again. The house. He hated to lose the house as much as he hated losing her—and the things he’d collected. The car. The names in the notebook, pure gold, every one of them. His business. And Sukie. That was over too. And that was another thing: how quickly it had all turned on him. This morning he was on top of it, waking up in a mansion, six months paid in advance and a lease to buy, climbing into an S500 and taking his fiancée to meet his mother and his daughter he hadn’t seen in three years. That was when the image of Dana Halter rose up before him and he saw her there on the sidewalk, the look in her eyes, knowing what he was going to do before he knew it himself, and then the way she’d run, making a chump out of him, a fag, somebody’s girlfriend. He wanted to hurt her. Hurt her the way he’d hurt Bridger Martin. Even the score. One parting shot. And out.

  It was still light when he got off the train at Beacon, a real shithole of a place, crap blown up along the tracks, crap floating in the river, graffiti all over everything as if nobody cared about anything, not even their own human worth, and where were the cops when you needed them? Why weren’t they nailing the little punks with their spray cans instead of busting his ass? For that matter, why weren’t they out here cleaning up the trash and painting over the gang signs and obscenities instead of burning up the taxpayers’ gasoline to drag their bloated carcasses from one doughnut shop to another? Oh, he was in a mood. He recognized that. What he needed was a car, a change of clothes, something in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten all day, not since breakfast—too wired, too scared, too outraged even to think about it—but now, suddenly, he was starving.

  The streetlights began to make themselves visible, an amber glow bellying out into the shadows, and already the insects were there, drifting like snow. There were a couple of people milling around, white T-shirts faintly glowing against the fade of the light. He heard a girl laugh aloud and turned to see a knot of teenagers perched on the concrete abutment, passing a bottle in a brown paper bag. He didn’t see any cabs and so he started walking up the hill toward the lights of the town—always look as if you have a purpose, that was a rule—and before he’d gone three blocks he saw a yellow cab pulled up in front of a tavern and crossed the street to it and leaned in the driver’s side window. A Puerto Rican kid with a heavy scruff of acne was behind the wheel, the radio spitting up a low-volume spew of hip-hop. “You waiting on somebody?” Peck asked.

  The kid’s eyes, naked and too big for his face, skirted away from him. He mumbled something in reply.

  “What?”

  “Supposed to be.”

  Peck jerked a finger toward the tavern. “Somebody in there?”

  The kid nodded, his eyes flashing white in the dark vacancy of the interior.

  “Forget about them,” Peck said, fishing a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to him. “Here, this is for you. I need you to take me someplace where I can rent a car at this hour on a Saturday night. What about the airport? You know the airport on the other side of the river? They got to be open twenty-four/seven, right?”

  More mumbling. Something about Hertz in Wappingers.

  “But they’re closed at this hour, right? On a Saturday?”

  “I don’t know.” An elaborate shrug, the eyes ducking away. “I guess.”

  The door of the tavern swung open then, a rectangle of light with two people in the center of it, a couple holding on to each other as if they were wading into the surf at Coney Island, and Peck ended the discussion by easing round the hood of the car and sliding into the seat next to the driver. The people at the door—they were twenty
feet away, sallow-faced, drunk—made a move toward the cab, but Peck just gave the kid a look to focus him, to let him know what was going down here, and then he said, “Hit it,” and the cab pulled away from the curb with an apologetic little chirp of the rear wheels.

  The girl at the desk ran his platinum Visa card without even looking up and he showed her his California driver’s license decorated with his own smiling photograph and M. M. Mako’s name and address, and filled out the rental agreement. He chose a black GMC Yukon because the seats folded down and he was thinking he might wind up sleeping in it—there were dirt roads up in the hills in back of Beacon that might as well have been in Alaska for all the traffic they took and nobody would bother him there—and when the girl asked him if he wanted the supplemental collision insurance, a by-the-book standard rip-off, he just smiled and said, “Sure.” Then he went to a diner and had a Greek salad and two burgers, alternately thumbing through one of those freebie real estate magazines and watching himself chew in the reflection of the darkened window. His face floated there in the void, disembodied, a handsome face, a face that could have belonged to anybody, and he chewed and watched himself and let the tension drain out of his eyes. All things considered, he didn’t look too bad, the cut drawn pink and thin at the edge of his cheekbone and fading into the sideburn there—for all anyone knew it might have been a scratch he’d got while picking raspberries in the woods or playing with his cat.

  Or his girlfriend’s cat.

  The thought of her started up the whole process all over again, one thought butting up against the next till the momentary calm the food had given him burned off like vapor and he had to stand up, throw a bill on the table and stalk out the door without bothering with his change. Cash he had—he always carried a thousand in hundreds, against the unforeseen and unfortunate, against moments like this, like this godforsaken interlude in a parking lot in New Windsor, New York, under a sky that was black to the molars of the universe and no forgiveness anywhere—but it would begin to be a problem in a few days, because he couldn’t risk going into a bank for a cash advance, but that wasn’t his immediate worry. His immediate worry, he realized, as he started up the car and put it in gear, was Sandman. He had to call Sandman and warn him about what was coming down, and the thought of that made his stomach churn. It wasn’t so much that Sandman was going to be upset in a major-league way about the risk he’d put them both in and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d just extracted from their mutual pockets because he’d given in to the impulse to run down that bitch and everything was unraveling like a big ball of concertina wire, but that he’d have to admit to it in the first place. He’d have to squirm and he didn’t like squirming. He’d have to breathe into the phone and tell Sandman how weak and stupid and shortsighted and amateurish he’d been and then he’d have to say goodbye, permanently, to maybe the only friend he had left in the world.

  Yes. And he actually had the cell out, looking to punch in the number as he cruised down the dark street toward the highway and the bridge back across the river, when he stopped himself. He heard his own voice playing in his head—Hey, Geoff, it’s me. Hey, I fucked up. Don’t. Don’t say anything because I just got to warn you—but then he folded up the phone and slipped it back in his pocket. He would call him later. Once he got where he was going—but where was that?

  Without even realizing what he was doing, he’d turned south on Route 9 once he crossed the river, idly punching through the stations on the radio while the trees rose up on either side of the road in a vast black continuum broken only by the occasional gap where there was a restaurant or gas station or a business with its lights muted and parking lot empty. He’d passed North Highland some time back, a line of cars behind him, headlights coming at him in intervals, and he was in no hurry, floating there in the dash-lit cabin as if that was all that was expected of him. When he came to the places where the road opened up to an extra lane he hugged the dark shoulder and let the whole line of them pass. The musical selection wasn’t much—oldies, mainly—but he found a station playing reggae, a Black Uhuru tune followed by Burning Spear and then, who else but Marley? His spirits lifted. He felt almost human. And when he spotted a deli open alongside the road he swung into the lot and went in and bought a bag of barbecue chips and a six-pack.

  He had no intention whatever of going anywhere near the house, but when he came to the turnoff that would take him down to 9D and the run along the river from Cold Spring to Garrison, he found himself flicking the right-hand turn signal and then he was in the deeper precincts of the continuous forest, the blacker road, the less-traveled path, listening to reggae till the station faded out and tipping back his second beer. And then he was sweeping past the old church and the cemetery with its ancient stone markers, everything quiet, under wraps, the moon showing now over the trees, quarter of eleven on Saturday night and only the occasional car running toward him and shuddering on by. It was quiet out here, which was why he’d chosen the area in the first place, and he slowed to just under the speed limit and rolled down the window to feel the glutinous air on his face and come alive to the roar of the insects. When the headlights picked out the black sheen of his mailbox and the flitting sparkle of the gravel drive, he felt a sensation of loss so immediate and immitigable it was like a physical blow that reverberated from his brain on down through his torso to his legs and the foot that hit the brake and brought the car to a near standstill before he came to his senses and speeded up again even as a car swung out behind him with a tap of the horn and shot on past.

  What was he doing? He didn’t know. But he pulled in at the next road, a driveway servicing half a dozen houses that showed now only as vague scatterings of light through the black-hung trees, and he swung up on the shoulder and cut the engine. He fought the impulse to crack another beer—beer, he didn’t even like the taste of it, and it bloated you, slowed you down—and pulled out his cell. For a moment he thought he was going to call Sandman, but then he thought he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t call at all. Maybe he’d just let it go. Vanish. Fuck everybody. It wasn’t his fault that this woman—this deaf woman, this freak—was like a bloodhound. That was one in a thousand, one in a million. All right. Fine. He was sitting in the dark a quarter mile from his own house, feeling the effects of two beers and refusing himself the third, his fingers grainy with the residue of the potato chips, every flag waving and every buzzer going off in his head—Get out, get out now!—and so what he did was hit Natalia’s number for the hundredth time that night.

  The insects roared. The moon cut through the trees like a laser and sliced the hood of the car in two. And suddenly her voice was there with him, the sweet bitten breathy words: This is Natalia, I am not here now, please. Leave a message. Once the beep. The rage came up then, a violent impulsive hot cautery of rage burning through him till it was all he could do to keep from pounding the phone against the dash till there was nothing left. He was breathing hard. His eyes felt like they were about to crystallize. And then, as if it were foreordained, as if it were what he’d come to do all along, he cracked the door of the car, eased out into the night, and started through the trees for the house.

  He told himself he was only reconnoitering, only trying to gauge the extent of the damage, to see if they were there yet. Moving deliberately, one slow step at a time, he felt his way through the patch of woods that separated his property from the near neighbor’s and emerged from the trees in a hurricane of mosquitoes, angling silently along the edge of the lower lawn, the lawn he’d mowed himself, his Vans wet with the dew, his eyes fixed on the looming vacancy of the house. There were no lights, everything quiet, brooding, ordinary, and in the dark, with the moon draped over the roof, he could see the cool green glow of the LED display on the alarm panel in the kitchen. For a long while he just crouched there in the shadows, thinking how he could slip in through the window in the basement without activating the alarm and get the notebook with the names and anything else he could find that mig
ht be incriminating, credit card bills, Dana Halter, Bridger Martin, but if they were watching he wouldn’t have a chance, what with the moon and the pale outline of his suit—if he’d thought ahead he could have gone to Kmart and bought himself a black sweat-suit, with a hood, but he hadn’t thought ahead. That was the problem. That was what had got him here in the first place.

  He was just about to step out onto the lawn when the faintest noise cracked open the night, a mechanical wheeze feeling its way along the dense compacted air from the direction of the driveway out front to fan across the individual blades of the grass and find surcease in the baffle of the woods at the edge of the lawn. To his ears, fanatically attuned, it sounded like the stealthiest all-but-silent easing open of a car door, the hand at the latch, dome light switched off, nothing but the unlubricated protest of the hinges to betray it. Jesus! What was he doing? He sank back into the shadows. On hands and knees, aware of every stick and fallen branch that might betray him, he crept along the inside verge of the lawn, heart thundering in his ears, determined now to see for himself—because it could have been Natalia, in his fantasy anyway, Natalia unwilling to leave without him, and waiting there for him so they could pack up the essentials in the dark and make for the next town before the pigs showed up in the morning with their search warrant.