He had to dredge for words, even when the stakes were light, and the dredging made him sweat. And yet he was a crack salesman for Funtron, Inc., a manufacturer of recreational software for personal computers. His colleagues on the sales team decided that this simple incongruity was responsible for Albert’s success. People in the trade, they reasoned, were probably fed up with the slick, hotshot, silver-tongued types that dominated the early years of the business. They no doubt found a quiet man’s struggle for words downright refreshing, even touching. The theory was hard to believe, but no one could advance a second explanation.
Tommy swung his pajamaed legs out of the bed and walked around the fat man’s bed to the room’s single window. A work crew was demolishing an old building across from the hospital. There was a message scrawled in spray paint on the remaining upright wall of the old building: HANG UP THE PIN, WILMA. The building was an old flophouse, the city’s last blemish. The old flophouse had been a refuge for winos and homeless psychotics. A city councilman had announced, “We intend to enter the twenty-first century with a clean slate. These reminders of defeat and degradation must be erased from the public memory.”
Tommy thought: I’ll get on the pin, like pissy old Wilma, heavy into scag. I’ll get totaled on smack, crack, and what-you-got-Jack. I will free-base among the kamikaze zombies and go down in flames.
When Tommy came back to his bed, Albert said, “Mother-board.” The new stopper had waddled into his mind unnoticed and tricked him into verbalizing it. And now it sat, wide and sleek as a hippo or beached whale, jamming up the little speech Albert had prepared to defuse the situation. Sweat rolled down from his hairline into his eyebrows and down his cheeks. He drank more water, praying wordlessly for release.
“I don’t think we’re on the same page, Pop,” Tommy said.
“Pitfall,” the fat man said, triumphant.
Albert drove home. His wife, Sylvia, was under sedation. A nurse was in the house, sent over, he guessed, by Dr. Rossetti. Albert hadn’t asked for a nurse, but was relieved to find a trained professional there. It was a good idea, although he wasn’t sure his HMO would pay for it. No matter, he’d had an excellent year. Funtron, Inc., had come up with six innovative games, interactive fictions, and all of them were hot sellers. Gaslight, a Victorian romance, had stunned the industry with its success. Twelve retail outlets in his territory had the software on back order. No one thought Gaslight would become a mainstay of the Funtron line, but the public, so far at least, couldn’t get enough of it. Letters from ecstatic customers came in daily. They loved how the program allowed Jack the Ripper a wide range of character traits, from remorseless, deadpan sadism to the engaging wit of a Lothario. They loved how they could program Prince Edward, Lloyd George, and young Winston Churchill to become players in labyrinthine love affairs that were consummated in the most glamorous cities in Europe.
The nurse was sitting on the sofa watching a soap opera. Albert stepped in front of the TV set. “How is she?” he asked.
The nurse, after trying to look past Albert’s legs, said irritably, “You know. Breathing in, then breathing out. Would you scoot over, please? I think Inez is getting ready to give in to that bastard Ronnie Powers.”
“Is she... can I see her?” he asked.
“Up to you. She’s sort of asleep, though.”
Albert went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He wasn’t hungry, but knew he hadn’t eaten since Tommy tried to kill himself. He took out some sliced cheese, pastrami, the pickles, mayonnaise, and a can of Diet Sprite. He made a sandwich and carried it into the living room. He sat in his recliner and watched the soap opera. A woman—Inez, he imagined—was trying to light a cigarette while lying across a bed. She was wearing black bikini panties and bra. “Damn you,” she said to her lighter as the scene dissolved to a man crouched in a stairwell.
Albert glanced at the nurse. She was young and exotic-looking. Possibly Asian. Possibly Martian. She had smooth amber akin and streaked, triple-toned hair. Her name tag said LEEANN. Her hair was auburn, yellow, and black. It furled tightly out from her head like a frozen banner. She looked competent. She had a beautiful figure under a crisp, light-blue uniform.
“Go for a sandwich?” Albert said, holding up the remains of his.
The nurse held up her hand to quiet him. “Wait,” she said. “Here it comes. This really gives me the blues. I wish she’d kick that jerkoff Ronnie Powers out.”
Inez had given up trying to light her cigarette. She was facedown on the bed now, sobbing. Ronnie Powers, a dark, wavy-haired man, sneered at Inez from a doorway. He threw some money on the floor. “You’re trash,” he said. “You’ll always be trash.”
The nurse lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the TV set. “I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes dramatically, “this Ronnie Powers guy is such a dick.”
Albert went upstairs. Sylvia was curled up under the electric blanket. Her face had the transparent look of white wax. The room smelled of wet eucalyptus leaves. Albert sat down on the bed. Sylvia didn’t open her eyes or change position but reached out for him very slowly and sought his hand. He took her hand and kissed it, then squeezed it tightly. “Old Tomaso,” he said, his voice hoarse. “He’s going to be okay.”
Sylvia’s eyes fluttered, then opened. They looked dreamy and carefree. Except for her color and the stringy condition of her hair, Albert could almost believe she was well.
“It’s true, darling. You should see him. Oh, he’s mad as hell... at himself... for doing such a thing. But that’s understandable. He’s quite a Tomaso, that kid.”
Sylvia gradually brought her husband into focus. Then she frowned. “Why?” she said.
Rows of modems tractored through his mind. He took a deep breath. Modem, modem, like heartbeats, scattered his thoughts. He shrugged. “Girl,” he finally managed. “Fickle girl...” He felt dizzy; a roaring in his ears made him steady himself on the bed.
His wife looked away. The lids of her eyes were thick as crepe. “Girl,” she murmured, her drug-swollen tongue unable to flex properly around the syllable.
Albert patted her hand.
“What’s wrong with you?” his wife said, her voice suddenly alert.
Albert’s heart knocked against his ribs. “What? Me? Nothing.” He hesitated. “I feel sort of... unplugged from my database,” he said, chuckling nervously.
“You sound—” she began, but the drug asserted itself again and the thought dwindled away until it became the sound of her own breath as it labored through her nostrils.
Dr. Rossetti had culled the story from Tommy. Then, in the privacy of his office, he told it to Albert, not sparing the details. The girl, Barbara Sunderlin, had decided that she needed a more educational range of experience. She and Tommy had been going steady, but she felt that their relationship was becoming too confining and that it would ultimately be a sounder relationship if it were more “open.” Besides, she was a freshman at State College and he was a senior in high school. She was not especially pretty, but she had no trouble getting other dates. She told Tommy about them. When things went badly for her, she’d cry on Tommy’s shoulder and tell him what had happened in vivid detail. She told Tommy that she needed him, that he was the strong, silent, clean-cut type.
Some of those fraternity boys were degenerate beasts, she said. They were soulless harbingers of a mechanistic future. Tommy was a refreshing throw-back, without the pregenital neuroses that characterized the perverts she was seeing regularly now. It is beyond your imagination, Tommy, she told him, what those fraternity boys make me do. Dr. Rossetti had tried to put this part of the story into clinical terms, but, even so, Albert was still embarrassed at the anatomy of the sexual imagination.
Tommy had raged. He was a strong boy, a weight lifter and member of the high school wrestling team. He wanted to twist the heads off those fraternity creeps, he said. But Barbara wouldn’t give him the name of the fraternity. It was for his sake, she said, that the name must be kept secret. She w
ould blame herself if something happened. She told him she loved him and would always love him. He believed her. He told her he would always love her, too. They exchanged rings. These rings symbolize the eternal, spiritual nature of our relationship, she said. Our love is sane and simple and shall always remain so, she said. You are my sunny knight in bright armor, Tommy, you are my clean ray of optimism and decency in a toxic-waste-dump world. Tommy wanted to go steady again, even get engaged, but Barbara said she intended to become a serious poet and needed the kind of wide-spectrum experience she was now beginning to acquire. I must descend into the mire, she said. I am an erotic explorer entering the dark jungles of desire. I intend to encounter the beasts who live in that jungle and thus, step by step, gain an understanding of the human animal himself. It’s the only way. Academic psychologists, even clinical therapists, do not have access to the beast on an eye-to-eye basis. They remain antiseptically aloof.
But Tommy couldn’t accept her behavior. Her exploration of the dark jungles of desire distressed him. The types of things she was doing with the fraternity boys were absolutely beyond belief. He insisted she stop. It isn’t possible for me to stop, she said. Don’t be a child, Tommy, she said. Try to grasp the elemental nature of my quest. On one occasion, Tommy, in a tearful rage, slapped her face.
Their relationship began to change. Barbara became abusive. She began to ridicule his naivete. She sent him a poem that pointed out his self-delusions. Finally, she sent him a collection of Polaroids of herself and several others. That night, after drinking a pint of vodka, Tommy hacked at his wrists and arms. The cuts were serious but the main arteries were not involved.
Albert had called Barbara’s father. His rage and embarrassment flooded his mind with thought-blocking nonsense words. Mr. Sunderlin was mystified by the call. He had no idea what his daughter and Albert’s son had been up to. He was a pleasant, soft-spoken man, a civil engineer with the county. Albert was able, eventually, to give the man a few clues, and the man filled the awkward silence with some platitudes about the generation gap. He recommended a book called How to Deal Effectively with Your Problem Teen. Albert choked out the word microstuffer, and another long silence ensued. Then, when the stopper drifted out of his mind, he said, quickly, “My son tried to take his own life.”
“Oh, good Lord,” said Mr. Sunderlin. “I had no idea.”
The nurse, LeeAnn, went to the guest room after Dynasty. She came out a few minutes later in a bathrobe. There was a flowery shower cap on her head and a transparent gel on her face. “You can call me if she wants something,” she told Albert.
She seemed friendlier now. Her robe was partially open, and her fine, tawny skin gleamed between her breasts. Albert started to say something, but she smiled and put her finger to her lips.
“I sleep real light,” she said, “don’t worry.”
Albert watched TV for a while, but the jokes on the Letterman show were exceptionally snide and the response from the audience seemed eagerly cruel. Albert switched off the set and went out into the garage. He had a fully equipped workshop there. Against one wall were several woodworking machines, but he had never really used any of them. Sylvia and Tommy had surprised him a few Christmases ago with a complete Home Craftsman set. Albert often complained about not having a hobby, something to do with his hands. His work at Funtron was mainly mental. He ran on nervous, caffeine-enhanced energy and was exhausted most of the time. A workshop with good tools seemed just the thing. But he never got around to learning how to use them. He’d gotten as far as buying some quality pine and alder, but had only cut some boards up to see how the saws worked. He liked the sound of the saws. He liked the deep thrum of the strong electrical motors, and the whine of the spinning blades made him feel relaxed. His mind, filled with the whine and thrum of the machinery, would be cleared of its useless clutter.
He turned on the table saw and sat on his stool. The table saw had the most satisfying sound of all the tools. Its motor was the largest, and the big, savage-looking blade made a breathy whir. He went back into the kitchen and fixed himself a large Scotch and soda, then returned to the garage and the moving saw. He stayed there an hour, nothing in his mind but a ten-inch circle of steel with razor-sharp teeth spinning at thousands of RPMs.
He carried another drink to Tommy’s room. He sat on the bed and looked at the elaborately decorated walls. Pennants, comical signs (CLOSE TOILET BEFORE FLUSHING, NO PEDDLERS, BEWARE OF VICIOUS TURTLE, SPEED BUMPS). There were posters of rock stars—all with the same annoying expression on their pocked, ghost-white faces.
He turned on Tommy’s Macintosh and was surprised to see that he had Gaslight already loaded in. Albert clicked on an icon and a question appeared on the screen: “Who is Jack the Ripper?” Albert, feeling a little drunk, typed “I am,” but the program wouldn’t accept that response. It scolded him and asked that he answer the question within “game parameters.” Albert switched the machine off.
He looked at Tommy’s barbell shoved up against the closet door. He went over to it and set his drink down on the floor. He gripped the weight with both hands and tried to lift it. The barbell didn’t move. He picked up his drink and sipped at it. Then he saw the poems. They were on Tommy’s desk, next to the Mac, under a half-eaten doughnut. He knew they were poems because the words were scattered on the pages. Each poem was signed by Barbara Sunderlin. The signature was large and childishly elaborate.
This is not prying, he told himself. The poems were out in the open. Removing a doughnut doesn’t count. He slid a poem out from the stack and read it:
my bittersweet rose
bums
with a fire
of tongues
He took another poem from deeper in the stack:
night thoughts of bulls
thunder
in my field
O how I moo
at the boney moon
The next poem was no poem at all:
in it
in it
in it
in it
in it
There was a poem called “Quixote in Blue Denim.” It was dedicated to Tommy Court:
Grab your section
Sunny Jim, while
I tell you a tale
Of animal connection
Albert was unable to read the rest.
He sat in his car for several minutes in front of the Sunderlin home, thinking. He had to have better reasons for coming here than curiosity and anger. But nothing else occurred to him. He went to the door, poems in hand. A woman answered. She was a tall, striking blonde, elegantly dressed. The Sunderlins were evidently going out for the evening. This immediately threw his planned speech into a disarray of broken phrases. He felt foolish. The woman was smoking a long cigarette.
“Albert Court,” he said, at last.
The woman raised a penciled eyebrow and blew a thread of smoke out one side of her mouth. “Oh, of course,” she said. “You’re the boy’s father.”
Mr. Sunderlin, wearing a chocolate-brown tux, stepped up behind his wife. “Come in, Mr. Court,” he said, sliding back his sleeve to glance at his watch. “We have a few minutes.”
Barbara Sunderlin was sitting in a high-back chair reading a thin volume of poetry.
“Babsie, honey,” Mr. Sunderlin said. “Mr. Court is here.”
The girl looked up from her book. She was wearing glasses. The lenses were narrow rectangles, smoke-tinted. She looked over them at Albert with a flat, analytical gaze. She was not attractive. She had a high, round forehead and she wore her hair swept back into an old-fashioned bun. Her nose was long and thin, the nostrils pinched asthmatically. Her lips were dark and full and frozen in a pout. Albert could not believe she was a nineteen-year-old girl. She looked thirty-five.
She closed her book and stood up. She was tall and slender, but her breasts were sharply conical in her dark red cardigan.
“Oh, Mr. Court!” she said, suddenly distraught. She went to him and threw her arms around his
neck. She put her head on his shoulder and moaned. Albert was stunned. Her loud, wet sobs were muffled in the cloth of his jacket. He felt her thin body shuddering against him.
Albert didn’t know what to do. He’d walked into this house, prepared to tell them what had happened to Tommy, whose fault it was, and to demand some sort of reparation, but now he was helpless as the sobbing girl clung to him as if he were her sole emotional support in this crisis.
He was still holding the poems. He looked over Barbara’s quaking shoulder at Mr. and Mrs. Sunderlin, hoping for rescue. The Sunderlins were attractive, sophisticated people, and Albert began to lose his nerve before their stylish self-confidence. They were the kind of people he had always envied, even though they were not economically better off than he was. He raised his hands stiffly and patted Barbara on the back in a clumsy attempt to console her. The poems rattled, calling attention to themselves. Mrs. Sunderlin looked faintly amused, but her amusement faded quickly to boredom. Her perfect eyebrows were arched and she was squinting through a screen of blue smoke.
“I’m intruding,” Albert said, trying to pull away from the sobbing girl. He wanted to leave now, but could not make himself utter the words that would allow him to do this without appearing a complete fool. The splendid calm of the Sunderlins had somehow canceled his right to speak to them on equal terms. The complaint he had intended to make them listen to was gone; he couldn’t even recall who it had been intended for, the girl or her parents. A storm of self-hatred scattered his thoughts. He felt guilty and shy. Barbara, as if sensing his extreme discomfort, tightened her embrace. Her small sobs warmed his neck. Albert kept patting her on the back, and the rattling sheaf of poems grew perversely loud.
“So, you’re into software,” Mr. Sunderlin said.
“Just sales,” Albert said.
“Don’t knock sales. The world turns on sales. Eleanor—my wife, Eleanor— she’s into real estate.”
The woman’s faint smile seemed to summon up a stopper. Parser slipped into Albert’s mind, a vivid python, and began to uncoil. “Parser,” he said, blushing instantly.
Borrowed Hearts Page 10
