Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  “Whad’ya mean?”

  “Tell me what’s going on, what you see and hear.”

  “Stuff from the news?”

  “Whatever you think is important. I’ll pay you.”

  He considers the offer. “What about the snow?”

  “I’ll pay you to shovel my walk. Afterward, though, I want information.”

  “Okay,” he says, shifting nervously. I open the door and he slips outside without looking at me.

  In twenty minutes he has cleared a path halfway from my porch to the curb. I watch him through the window. In a few days he’ll have his television set, and his interest in binoculars will evaporate, and they will collect dust in a closet with all the other gadgets he’s grown bored with until the day he packs to leave home.

  Getting through the shrink-wrapped cornucopia of industrial farming that is Riteway is not pleasant or easy. Time inside is slowed by some mysterious effect of light and sound so that people’s movements seem drowsy. It takes an effort of will not to succumb. I dart up and down the aisles dropping what I need into the basket and ticking it off my mental list. In the fresh produce section I browse among hybrids flown in from distant points around the globe. I’m always curious but rarely tempted by lettuce that actually comes in the size and shape of a baby’s bib, square tomatoes piled neatly into pyramids, apples powered by their own internal sources of electricity, oranges that can talk, carrots that will serve as entrenching tools, and bananas that will lift payloads many times their weight into low satellite orbit.

  “Hello.”

  I turn. Sylvia is directly beside me, standing behind an empty shopping basket. “Do you roll them in your palms to test for freshness?”

  I look at the tomato I’m holding. “Actually, I’m trying to see if the corners can be rounded out.”

  She picks one from the base of the pyramid and holds it out, gripping firmly. “I see your point.”

  I select another tomato and roll it vigorously between my palms. “You can’t make them round.”

  Sylvia smiles broadly. Her eyes look bloodshot under the neon lights.

  She holds the tomato flat on the palm of her hand, then lets it drop to the floor. “They don’t bounce too well, either.” She takes another tomato from the display, holds it up. “Observe,” she says, then hurls it. It lands noiselessly somewhere at the other end of the fresh produce section. “They fly pretty good. Horace, right?”

  “That’s right.” I am still looking at the spot where the tomato landed, wondering if it hit anyone. “And you’re Sylvia.”

  “That’s right.”

  She is drunk. Her eyes blink in slow motion. Her smile fades a little, and I notice that she is holding on to the empty cart for support. She is bundled into a bright red down jacket that looks like an inflated raft and highlights the red in her blue eyes, the flush of her cheeks. She is wearing an old brown fedora, and her dark hair falls to her shoulders in weather-blown tangles. “Do you like kiwis?” She pulls one from the pocket of her jacket.

  “I haven’t had one in a long time.”

  She holds it in her hand, regarding it for a moment. “I was going to steal these.” She pulls another from her pocket. “I mean, how can they make people pay for things that look so—goddamn ugly. Know what I mean? It’s like ginger or potatoes. How can they charge for things that look so pathetic?”

  I nod, wondering what else she will pull from her jacket pockets.

  “Anyway, I came here for kiwis. I had this craving.” She mimics a southern accent, pronounces it cryving. “And you know what, honey-bun?”

  “What?”

  “Ah just don’t know what the fuck to do with them. Ah mean, do you peel it first? Or are you supposed to slice it and then peel? Ah cain’t decide.”

  I lean against the tomato bin, holding my basket with both hands and bouncing it lightly against my knees, amused.

  “Fuck it. I’ll pay for them this time. Figure out what to do when I get home.” She drops both fruits into the cart. “Does that ever happen to you?”

  “What?”

  “You get a cryyyving for something you never had before? Or maybe you had it someplace but never made it yourself.”

  I shrug.

  “Or maybe you even just saw a picture of it in a magazine and you go, ‘Boy, that there sure looks delicious,’ and you just have to have it.”

  Her sentences ramble together, and she sprinkles her speech with mock southern inflections.

  “Or maybe you been eating them all your life and you just don’t remember. That ever happen to you?”

  “No.”

  “They look so good when they’re cut up, like on cheesecake.” She leans forward and half whispers, “But they got all this fur on ’em.”

  Her sotto voce deadpan makes me laugh, that and the sheer surprise of her bloodshot, bantering personality. We stand in uncertain silence for a moment. I double-check the contents of my basket. Sylvia wanders over to a large bin filled with pineapples. “Fresh Hawaiian.” She lifts one from the mound and hefts it in her hands as if she is about to hurl it. Then she drops the fruit into her basket and turns to me with a devilish grin. “Hey, Horace! Let me buy you a drink.” She starts toward me with her cart, peels the sleeve of her jacket back, checks the time on her watch. “It’s three o’clock. Three peeee emmmm.” She lets her arm drop. “There’s plenty of time. You’re lucky.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s my day off. My only goddamn day of the week off. C’mon, Horace. It’ll make me feel good.”

  Fifteen minutes later we are sitting in a booth at some place called Andy’s. It’s two parking lots up from Riteway. I insisted that we come here.

  “I hate this place,” Sylvia sulks. “I want to take you to Jack’s.”

  “I said I’d have a drink with you, not crack up your car.”

  “I can drive just fine.”

  “I believe you. But not with me in the car.”

  She waves me away. “I’m not even drunk.” She leans back into the corner of the booth and glares at me. The bartender sets our drinks down on the table, a glass of wine that I can tell will be undrinkable and a Jack Daniels and Coke for Sylvia, which I see she’ll have no problem with. 149 place is empty except for the two of us and an old man at the bar reading a paper. A more generic vinyl atmosphere would be hard to imagine. We clink glasses. “To my only goddamn day of the week off.”

  Conversation does not come easily, and in the beginning Sylvia talks about her job at the pharmacy. She says she is the pharmacist’s assistant and tells me that she plans to get licensed as a pharmacist but hasn’t gotten around to taking the courses yet.

  “How old are you?”

  She regards me over the rim of her glass. “Thirty-one.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  She shrugs. “Not really into it. I used to work at Semantech. It’s why I moved here in the first place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Pink slip.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I swear.” She holds up a hand and laughs. “Just kidding. I was an assembly coordinator.”

  “Assembly of what?”

  “Circuit boards.”

  “For what?”

  “Missiles. Conventional guided. Everybody thinks they make bombs there. But it’s only circuits and wiring harnesses. Anyway, it’s all over for me. They cut over half the work force. The old guys were given early retirement. The middle managers are being retrained or are leaving. The assembly line is down to one-third and shrinking.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Right in the way of a pink slip.”

  “How long did you work there?”

  “Seven goddamn years.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes. Sylvia stares across at the television over the bar. A soap opera. When she lifts her glass to drink she keeps her eyes fixed straight ahead. She hasn’t removed her hat, and in profile her features seem aquilin
e, hardened. She is wearing small silver earrings. Her fingernails are chewed. Since she mentioned Semantech the broad outlines of her redneck stoicism have begun to emerge. She’s a good ol’ girl. The incongruity of it allows me to ask the question that has been on my mind from the beginning. “Did seeing me in that lineup help you remember?”

  She turns to me. Her features soften in an I-was-waiting-for-you-to-ask-that look. She tears at the napkin stuck to the base of her glass. “Yes,” she says. “Well, sort of.”

  “Do you mind me asking?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I stopped by the doctor—what was her name?”

  “Dr. Henley?”

  “Right. I stopped by to find out how things were.”

  “She told me about it. I said I didn’t care.”

  “Did your memory return completely?”

  A shrug.

  “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  After a brief silence I continue asking questions anyway. “Are you still seeing Henley?”

  She shakes her head. “I quit.”

  “Why?”

  A shrug. “Didn’t want to continue.” She sips her drink and looks up at me with a weary expression. The military stoic again. “Didn’t think it mattered one way or another.”

  “Mattered?”

  “I went to group therapy for a while afterward. It was okay in the beginning, but then I just got tired of all the goddamn whining and complaining. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” She sips her drink and looks me in the eye for one completely sober and uncomfortable second. The geography of her features changes as the outline of a hidden rage comes to the surface, then sinks below again. She finishes her drink and signals the bartender for another. “You want another one?”

  I shake my head.

  “You don’t like the wine?”

  “It’s pretty awful.”

  “Get something else.”

  “That’s okay.”

  She shrugs. The bartender sets the second drink down in front of her and she stirs it, first with the plastic swizzle stick, then with her finger. “The therapists all say you have to come to terms with the anger. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You know? Come to terms? It’s a bunch of bullshit.” She stirs the swizzle stick around with her finger without looking up. “There’s only one way I can see to come to terms,” she says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Get even.” She jabs her finger back into her glass and puts it in her mouth, then looks at me, completely sober eyed.

  “You’d have to remember who it was.”

  She puts her finger in her mouth again, then lifts the glass to drink. “That’s right,” she says with a wily glint in her eye. “That’s absolutely right.”

  It takes about fifteen minutes for her to finish the second drink, and during the interval conversation stops. She sits wedged into the corner of the booth, one leg up on the bench, staring idly at the soap opera on television, poking her finger alternately into her glass and her mouth. I align myself in the same position so that we are parallel, facing into the bar. I take intermittent sips of the sour red wine, which leaves an aftertaste in my mouth that seems appropriate to the occasion.

  “I wonder where they find the assholes that act on soap operas?” She knocks back her drink.

  “Same place they find the assholes that watch them.”

  Sylvia looks at me and smiles. “I’ll remember that,” she says and signals the bartender.

  “I have to go.” I reach under the table for my backpack.

  “Just one more. I’ll be quick.”

  “You said one drink. Not three.”

  “It’s my day off.”

  “Mine too.” I let the backpack drop back under the table. “How do you plan to get home?”

  “My car.”

  “You’re too drunk to drive.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Listen to you!”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Then why don’t you wait for me and you can drive?”

  “I don’t drive.”

  “What do you mean you don’t drive? Everybody drives.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  An alcohol-fueled guffaw erupts from her. “I don’t believe you. You telling me you’ve never driven a car before?”

  “No. I don’t like cars.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Do you have a phobia or something?”

  “Something.”

  She nods her head. The bartender arrives, takes her empty glass, replaces it with a full one. He glances at my unfinished wine and then loafs off without comment, wiping his hands on a towel slung over one shoulder.

  “Have you ever been to Mexico?”

  I reach under the table for my pack and put it on the bench beside me. “Years ago.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “All over.”

  “What did you like best?”

  I lift my glass and swirl the remains, trying to think of an answer. “I liked different places for different reasons.”

  “C’mon. Just answer me. What places did you like best?”

  “Mexico City.”

  “Mexico City? That’s supposed to be one of the most polluted places in the world.”

  “That’s part of its charm.”

  “C’mon, be serious.”

  “I am being serious.”

  “Everybody says stay away from Mexico City because it’s too polluted and too huge.”

  “It’s a good place to get lost.” I let the comment drop casually but watch to see her reaction. Does she want to run away? Plan an escape? Her expression doesn’t change.

  “What about the beaches?”

  “Are you planning a vacation?”

  “Maybe.” She sips her drink, regarding me with aqueous blue eyes. It is a little discomforting the way she fixes them on me. I find myself unable to look directly back. If she senses my discomfort, it is only making her stare more overtly. I don’t know why I find it so unsettling. Maybe because underneath it all I sense that in her drunkenness she is revealing something to me that I would rather not know, inviting me to share in some secret plan she has concocted.

  “Do you come from around here?”

  She takes her eyes off me and settles back into the corner again, keeping one hand on her glass. “Not by a long shot.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “I grew up all over. My dad was in the Air Force.”

  “How did you end up here?” I am asking all the questions of her that I would refuse to respond to myself.

  “Semantech.”

  “You moved here to work there?”

  She nods, hefts her glass, mock macho. “You want to hear the story?”

  “Not really.”

  She sips. “Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I was working at a resort down in the Virgin Islands. Just finished my first year of college. A group of Semantech brass were having their annual getaway conference. I got friendly with the president, and he offered me a job.”

  “You got friendly?”

  “It’s not what you think. He was just a nice old guy. Dick Georges. He died of a heart attack during my first year on the job.”

  “And you took him up on the offer just like that?”

  “Why not? I was planning to take a year off school anyway, and I figured what the hell. The job was pretty decent, and the pay was great. I figured I’d go work for a year and then go back to school.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I got trapped.”

  “What happened?”

  “For a guy who doesn’t want to know anything, you sur
e ask a lot of questions.”

  “Change the subject.”

  “Fuck it,” she says, then continues with her story without any prompting. “They made me a team manager. One day they called me in and said I could make section head if I decided to stay. What about my degree? I asked. They said as far as they were concerned my on-the-job was more important to them than a degree. They wanted me to stay. What they didn’t say was that they figured they could save money by putting me—a woman—in a dead-end job that they would have to pay a man more for and eventually promote him out of anyway. It’s the fucking truth, and I was too young to see it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Everything was fine. I liked the job. Anyway. Last year—I get a pink slip. Cutbacks. Blah blah blah.” Her eyes glaze over.

  For several minutes there is silence. The television drones; another man appears and sits at the bar and begins telling the bartender a loud joke. Sylvia’s story is not particularly moving. Maybe it’s the way she told it. People talk about themselves as though their life story were some uncomfortable obstruction, best purged early in an acquaintance. The process is called “intimacy,” and, for reasons I don’t understand, people seem to attach an element of moral necessity to “telling all.” I prefer the quiet, blank absorption of the present. Non semper imbres nubibus hispidos: the clouds do not forever pour murky rain.

  Our eyes meet for a moment, and I look away. The man at the bar roars with laughter at his own joke. The bartender grins and shakes his head, then leans forward and says something that causes the man to slide off his barstool and do a sort of laughing pirouette. Sylvia shakes her head, smiling into the heel of her hand. It’s a good thing she can’t remember everything. I’d like to tell her so. Her doctor too. What possible good could a complete return of memory be to her? Who would wish to know?

  Sylvia drains her glass. “Do I have time for another?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because you’re my escort.”

  “I am?”

  “You think I’d stay in this shithole alone?”

  “Do you go to other bars alone?”

  “Bars suck,” she says and holds up her glass to the bartender.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”