The Easy Way Out

by Stephen McCauley

  “Right, but I just closed up shop. Maybe you heard me say that?”

  He started to head back into the shop, and curiosity got the best of me. “I’ve been wondering about this sign for a while now,” I said.

  He folded his arms across his chest and leaned into the doorway, his weight on one foot. “Which sign?”

  “The one that says ‘Fifteen Days Left.’ Fifteen days until what?”

  He shrugged. “Whatever you want. I put it up for a sale I had six months ago and forgot about it. Then I figured it’s always fifteen days from something, right? Somebody’s birthday, anniversary, funeral.”

  “I thought you were predicting the end of the world.”

  “That’d be convenient, given my financial situation.” He had very round eyes, too blue not to be contact lenses but attractive even so. “Nice bike,” he said, nodding toward my rusting three-speed.

  I could tell from the condescending tone in his voice that he wanted to think I was younger than I am. He himself was probably in his mid-forties. He had the lined face of a man who’s spent too much time sitting in the sun at Key West and Provincetown, and he was going gray around the temples. There was something in his Marlboro Man look that was a little overdone—considering the weather and his job, he didn’t really need the flannel shirt and the cowboy boots—but I liked the way he had his arms folded and his head tilted back. He obviously thought I was so desperate for attention I’d be flattered by the insult to my bicycle, and I was disappointed to realize I was.

  “It’s not pretty,” I said, slapping the handlebars, “but it works.”

  “I’ll bet. What’s your name?”

  Kyle, I told him.

  “Harvard student?” he asked.

  I nodded. For reasons I’ve never understood, the words Harvard University are the most powerful aphrodisiac in Cambridge. “Sophomore,” I said, and then, realizing the best fantasies have at least a shred of credibility, amended it to “Graduate student.”

  He told me he thought he had some irises in the back of the shop. “Lock your bike up,” he said, “and come in.”

  “Crumbs,” I heard my brother saying as I followed the florist into his back room. He sprawled out on a beaten-down sofa and kicked off his boots. “Table scraps and crumbs, Patrick.”

  * * *

  I left the store half an hour later, without the irises, and by the time I’d biked to Sharon’s house, I couldn’t quite remember what the florist’s face had looked like.

  * * *

  Sharon had a policy against locking her doors. Locks were a complete waste of time and effort, she theorized. She didn’t want to burden herself with carrying around a ring of keys and worrying about whether or not she’d secured the doors. Half the time, she claimed, she’d probably lock herself out. Her house was designed for breaking and entering, with a huge number of windows surrounded by trees, hatches into the basement, and trellises to climb to the roof. The idea that bolting a couple of doors would prevent anyone from getting in was laughable to her. “Do you think they’d try to get in the front door?” she’d ask. When we were housemates, I’d found the open-door policy a bit unnerving, but liberating. She’d stuck by her rule for ten years and, perhaps through luck or perhaps through the sheer weight of her determination, never had a problem.

  Her yard was spectacularly overgrown now. All the trees were in full leaf, and from the street, a good portion of the house was hidden by the foliage. I locked my bike to her fence and made my way down the leafy path to the side door. The forsythia bushes had finished flowering already and were a mad tangle of green branches, spilling out over the walk. The flowers on the lilac bushes beside the door were nearly dead, although they still exuded a faint, sweet perfume as I brushed past.

  I went in the back door to a tiny entry hall, a monument to Sharon’s good intentions; there were stacks of bundled newspapers, dozens of bags of returnable bottles, cartons filled with plastic yogurt and cottage cheese containers. It was all prepared for the recycling center, but the effort would ultimately fail. There was too much piled up; soon Sharon would be overwhelmed and, in a fit of impatience, drag it to the sidewalk for the garbage collector. I called out to see if Roberta was at home, but there was no answer. The sunlight that filtered through the shade of the trees was fading quickly. I love the melancholy of deserted houses and empty, unfurnished rooms. I climbed the staircase to the second floor, checking out the repair job Ryan had done on the balusters and the plaster. It was an improvement but still unfinished, and the way things stood now, it probably never would be finished.

  I pushed open the door to Sharon’s room, a disaster area: sweaters and papers and money and jewelry scattered about, the bureau drawers all oozing clothes, an ironing board set up in one corner, an ancient TV in the other. The only bit of decorative furnishing that hadn’t been buried under the mess was a tiny lamp on the table beside her bed. The base was cut glass, and the shade was a dainty skirt of stiff lace. Clearly it was from an earlier stage of her life, and it looked so incongruous, it was almost comical.

  I climbed the narrow staircase to the top floor and entered the room in the turret where I’d lived when Sharon and I were housemates. Now that the trees were in bloom, the windows were all shaded, and the house could have been hidden in some deep woods. No one had lived in the room since I’d moved out, and Sharon had converted it to storage space. There was a stack of mattresses leaning against the wall, a discarded window fan, old Monopoly and Scrabble games, their boxes held together with elastic bands, and a pile of electric blankets and old quilts. I opened a window. A cool breeze blew into the room, stirring the stale air. I took down one of the mattresses and stretched out on it, staring through the window at the tops of the trees.

  If I was going to make a drastic break with routine and be honest with myself, I’d have to admit that even though I didn’t know the florist’s name and he certainly didn’t know mine, even though I hadn’t really looked at him closely enough to positively identify him unless he was standing behind his counter dressed in his flannel shirt, I wasn’t looking for irises when I followed him into the back room of his shop. I wasn’t looking for the cigarettes he offered, either. I wasn’t even looking for the twenty minutes’ worth of fumbling around we did on the dilapidated sofa behind the refrigerator case. I was looking for someone to drag up to the top floor of a hotel in New York and make passionate love to on a low leather sofa in front of a window with a view of the whole decaying city. I was looking for someone to shake up my plans, disrupt my life, and help me burn all my bridges. I suppose I’d have to admit I was looking for love.

  I didn’t even end up with irises.

  I put my hands behind my head and drifted off.

  * * *

  I woke to the sound of a man singing “Cry Me a River,” wildly off key, put the mattress back against the wall, closed the window, and stumbled downstairs.

  Ryan was standing at the kitchen counter, unloading boxes of Chinese food from a shopping bag. He looked over at me, and his grin spread out across his face. “I thought that was your bike out front,” he said. “Where were you?”

  “Upstairs. Meditating.”

  “Great, great. Not with Roberta, I hope.” He laughed uproariously, pleased with his own joke. He had on a pair of khaki pants and a navy-blue cotton sweater, subdued, flattering, and spotless.

  “I can’t get over your wardrobe,” I said. “You look like a new man.”

  “Yeah, sure. And I’m twenty-one, too.”

  I slumped down into a chair at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had some news I wanted to tell Sharon. I almost called, but then I thought I’d just drop by and bring some dinner. Great having a friend who doesn’t lock her doors, isn’t it? I would have bought more food if I knew you’d be here.”

  There were six large, steaming cartons along the counter, enough food to feed at least five. He folded up the shopping bag and tossed it into the entryway w
ith Sharon’s good intentions. “She’s never going to have that stuff recycled,” he told me. “She’d need a forklift to get it all out of here. She kills me.”

  “You say that as if she were a stand-up comic. Is that the way you think of her?”

  “I meant it as a compliment. Let me get you a beer.”

  He took a can of his Australian ale out of the refrigerator and sat down at the table across from me. “She’s only got one can left,” he said, “so we’ll have to share it. I should have brought some along. Here, this’ll calm you down.”

  It was after eight, and the sun had set. A chill was settling over the house. Ryan switched on the light over the table, but the dim bulb seemed to make the room darker. “I’m going to come through this house one of these days,” he said, “and change every goddamned light bulb. It’s like a crypt in here.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you going to come in here and change all the light bulbs?”

  “One of these days, Pat. Like I just said.”

  He was looking at me suspiciously, his eyes narrowed. I wanted to lash out at him, slap some sense into his gentle face, but it seemed out of the question. The whole point of introducing him to Sharon had been to snap him out of his depression. If Sharon wasn’t blaming him for running back to Elaine, it wasn’t my place to do it. We sat in the dark kitchen, passing the beer back and forth, and I held my tongue until the desire to say something wounding had faded.

  “So what’s the big news?” I asked. “You seem pretty jolly.”

  “I had dinner with Elaine last night. We resolved a few things, Pat. And if you want to find out what, you’ll have to wait until Sharon gets here. But I’m feeling pretty good about it, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Will she feel pretty good about it?”

  “Sharon? I don’t see why she wouldn’t,” he said. “Come in the living room with me. I want to make sure she has the video machine set to tape Jeopardy. She pretends she’s on top of everything, but half the time she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. All those Jeopardy tapes she claims to have are about seventy-five percent static. Did you see the stuff I fixed on the staircase?”

  “I saw it,” I said. “But what’s she supposed to do now?”

  “Now? Well, now it’s fixed, Pat, so she doesn’t have to do anything. That’s the whole point.”

  * * *

  When Sharon arrived home, she burst into the kitchen shouting about a client she’d just spent two hours with, a “weak sister” she’d agreed to help by thinking up a scheme to get her to Tokyo for under four hundred dollars. As soon as Ryan came in from the living room, she brought her rant to an abrupt halt, dropped her enormous straw bag onto the kitchen table and herself into a chair.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She reached into her bag and pulled out her cigarettes.

  “I came to say hello.” He put his hands on her shoulders and started kneading. “From the sounds of it, kiddo, I’d say you didn’t stick with your business resolve for long.”

  “Yeah, well. She was desperate. What can I tell you? Did you bring the food, Patrick?”

  “I brought the food,” Ryan said. “The uninvited guest always brings the food.”

  It sounded like a piece of advice from Sharon’s rules of order. She pulled a flake of tobacco from her tongue. “I don’t suppose you remembered extra hoisin sauce.”

  “Would I dare show up here without it? See what I’ve learned from your friend, Pat?”

  Invited guest though I was, I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable and was trying to think of some way to tell them I had to leave without making it obvious I meant: so you two can have it out. Sharon had her feet up on a chair, and I was trapped behind the table.

  “All right, Ryan,” she said, “let’s hear the rest of what you learned from Patrick’s friend. What happened at this famous dinner last night?”

  It wasn’t a question so much as a challenge, and Ryan’s innocent grin quivered and then expired. He went to the shelf over the counter and took down three ceramic bowls and a handful of chopsticks.

  “Maybe we should eat first.”

  “I’m not the least bit hungry,” Sharon said. “I am, however, dying to hear what happened at this dinner with Eileen.”

  “Elaine.” Ryan’s voice was as shaky as his smile had been. “If you’re so interested, why are you asking like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Ryan.” Sharon had on a wooden bracelet, which she shook to her elbow. She stomped out her cigarette in one of the ceramic bowls. “Maybe I’m just a little bit pissed off, that’s all.”

  “Well, maybe you should tell me why.”

  “Well, maybe I should just get going,” I said. “I have some heavy packing to do tonight, and it’s been a long day.”

  Sharon kept her feet up on the chair and gave me a look that was at once so pleading and so cold, I didn’t dare move. Her head was encircled by a cloud of smoke, and in the dim light from the overhead lamp, her exhausted eyes belied the fierceness in her voice. “Maybe, Ryan,” she said, “I’m a little bit pissed off because I’m sick and tired of being everyone’s goddamned best fucking friend. Best friend and confidante and earth mother and mother superior. I suppose you’re going to make me godmother of your next kid, too—is that what you came all the way in here to tell me?”

  Ryan was standing at the counter, thoroughly confused. “What kid?”

  “Or maybe you were planning to wait a little bit for the next one? Give me a beer, will you?”

  “Patrick and I drank the last one. And you don’t drink.”

  “I thought I might take it up. I figured I needed to boost my caloric intake.”

  “Eileen and I aren’t planning to have another baby,” Ryan said, “and Elaine and I aren’t, either.”

  “Too bad. I love kids.”

  “We’re getting divorced,” he said. “She wants to remarry as soon as it goes through. We worked it all out over dinner last night, very civilized. Good food, too.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. I tried to sound enthusiastic, but the news was hopelessly anticlimactic now.

  “Congratulations,” Sharon said. “Congratulations to the bride and the groom and the ex-husband.” She slapped her palm down on the table. “I’d really like to stay up all night and tell you how sorry I am your wife found another man, but I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed. Call me in a couple of weeks, and maybe I’ll be able to offer a little more sympathy. Sorry the evening didn’t work out as planned, Patrick.”

  She pushed her chair back, gathered up her cigarettes, her straw bag, a bottle of spring water, and a roll of paper towels, and headed upstairs.

  I expected Ryan to be cowering in a corner, but he was stomping around the kitchen. He washed the bowl Sharon had used as an ashtray, put away the chopsticks, and loaded all the cartons of food back into a shopping bag. “Here, take this,” he said, handing me the bag. Then he took out one container and put it into the refrigerator, mumbling something about breakfast.

  “If she’s tired, she’s tired,” he said, “but she doesn’t have to be so rude about it. Let me give you a ride home, Pat. I don’t like the idea of you biking around the city at this hour. As your big brother, I’m supposed to help you use common sense every once in a while. We can load the bike into the trunk.”

  Before we walked out the front door, Ryan went to the foot of the staircase and called up, “I taped Jeopardy for you. It’s in the machine and all rewound. Did you hear me?”

  There was no answer from above. “Fine,” he said. “Good for her,” and we left.

  Thirty-six

  “I don’t get it,” he said. He was driving through the traffic in Harvard Square, blowing his horn at the inconsiderate pedestrians. “Is there something I’m missing here? I mean, I come in in a good mood, dinner in hand, tape her favorite show . . .”

  “I think there’s something you’re missing here,�
�� I said. “Sharon is very fond of you, Ryan.”

  “If that’s any example of her fondness, thank Christ I’m not on her bad side. Which way do we turn now?”

  “Just keep taking lefts, and we’ll get there.” I’d talked him into driving past the yellow house so I could get my nightly glimpse of the place. I wanted to burn an image of the exterior into my brain; that way I’d have a realistic picture of what it looked like once I was trapped inside. “Anyway, the point is, she’s very fond of you.”

  “You just said that.”

  “Hasn’t it crossed your mind that maybe she has a crush on you? You’ve spent an awful lot of time together these past couple of months.”

  He pulled up to a red light and braked hard and looked over at me with a pleased, incredulous grin. “A crush? I didn’t know we were back in junior high.”

  “Well, maybe you’re not far off. But the point is, you mean something to her, and you can’t expect her to be thrilled when she spends two months making you feel good about yourself so you can go running back to Elaine.”

  “Patrick, for someone who’s known Sharon as long as you have, you really don’t know her at all. I’ve heard about some of the guys she’s been with. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s her type.”

  “Of course you’re not her type. Maybe you noticed that nothing’s worked out with her type. That’s why she’s so stuck on you. You’re a decent person, Ryan. And I happen to know Sharon thinks of you as a sexual volcano.”

  “Volcano! If I’m a volcano, I give new meaning to the term ‘inactive.’ ”

  We’d turned off the main street and were winding our way past the cemetery buildings to the sheltered neighborhood with the yellow house. As we went over the railroad tracks, the beams from the car’s headlights bounced into the trees. Ryan was nervously concentrating on the road, but he was smiling.

  He pulled over to the side of the street and killed the engine. Every light was on in the house, and I could see the owners scurrying from room to room, obviously packing up for the big move. Arthur had met with them a couple of times, but I knew nothing about them. I had no idea why they were selling the house or where they were moving—they could have been bankrupt, for all I knew—but watching them racing around, taking down pictures and books, I envied them and what I imagined was their upcoming freedom.