A Stranger Like You

by Elizabeth Brundage

  He thought: Get out and open the trunk.

  A car beeped behind him. Hugh glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a woman gesturing for him to move, cursing him. The horn had alerted the gate attendant, who was coming toward him. Hugh signaled his apology and pulled away. When he went through the gate, the attendant noted his ticket and said, “Change of plans?”

  Hugh nodded. “Would you believe I forgot my luggage?”

  The attendant needed a shave and wore a strained expression like he was in a little bit of pain, but could do nothing about it. He looked at Hugh doubtfully. “No charge.” The gate opened and Hugh drove through it.

  The restaurant was a seedy place on a side street near the pier. It took him a while to find a parking space and then he had to search for quarters. You could smell the ocean and the late, damp sunlight. The beach was nearly empty. He saw an old couple shuffling through the sand, lugging their beach chairs, their shoulders hunched, their faces preoccupied and complex.

  Ida was waiting at the bar in a sleeveless dress and sandals. Her shoulders were pretty. Her face was like one of those women in the laundry detergent commercials, he thought, a wife who could keep house like nobody’s business. When they kissed hello she smelled lemon-fresh. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” she said. She stood there looking at him. “I took the liberty of ordering. You like oysters, don’t you?”

  He told her he did and took the leather stool next to hers and ordered a beer. Ida was drinking something pretty.

  “If you’re good I’ll give you the cherry,” she told him.

  “Oh, I’ll be good.”

  “She’s got you well trained.”

  He grunted a laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

  “On second thought, you don’t get the cherry.”

  “We’re separated,” he told her, and it occurred to him how easy it was to say it. “We’re in transition.”

  “Well, good for you. Transition is an interesting place to be.”

  “Speaking from experience?”

  “Oh, yeah. Experience is something I happen to have a lot of. Or, as my mother would say, source material. My mother has a way of looking at things. She tweaks everything. Like my ex-husband. Instead of admitting he was a cheap fucking bastard, she’d say it’s the thought that counts. Well, you know what? It’s not the thought that counts. Cheap is cheap, period.” She swallowed the last of her drink and shook the ice around in her glass like a rattle. “I’ve been divorced twice.”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  She made a face like it hurt. She twisted her torso to catch the bar tender’s attention and seesawed her glass. “I guess I’m not the marrying kind, whatever that means.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know, actually.”

  She laughed, showing her little white teeth.

  “Maybe it’s not important,” he said.

  She looked at him as if the idea had never occurred to her, and then said, “But of course it’s important. It’s the most important thing in the world. And I happen to suck at it.”

  “Maybe you just haven’t met the right guy.”

  She tilted her head. “Maybe.”

  The bartender brought her drink.

  “Took you long enough.”

  The bartender winked. “Now you really want it.”

  “Wanting it’s the least of my problems.”

  The bartender looked at Hugh. “You want another?”

  “Sure.”

  “Here,” she said, fishing her cherry out of the glass, holding it by the stem. “I want you to have it after all.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “Something tells me you’ve been deprived.” She dangled the cherry over his mouth. Feeling foolish, he caught the slippery thing in his teeth. When he bit into it the sweet pulp prickled his cheeks.

  “They’ve been exploited, of course, like everything else.”

  “Cherries?”

  “But they’re symbolic.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “When you’re a kid you always get the cherry. It’s like a kid-bonus. And then you grow up and you’re not supposed to want it anymore.”

  “You’re starting to sound like my shrink.”

  She smiled. “Cheap philosophy from a second-rate writer.”

  “I doubt that.” He looked at her. She was both charming and pathetic. “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Because it’s true.”

  “What sort of stuff do you write?”

  “Crap,” she said. “I’m the first to admit it. I’ve actually made my peace with it.” Her modesty seemed genuine; a little too genuine.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She looked down at her hands, shrugged.

  “Let me read something. I’ll tell you if it’s crap.”

  She gave him a coy smile. She had a look about her that he couldn’t quite figure.

  “We can act out the scenes,” he suggested. “I’ll play the hero.”

  “Who says there’s a hero?”

  “This is America. There’s gotta be a hero. You want to sell tickets, don’t you?”

  “All right, if you insist. But you’re not exactly who I pictured for the part.”

  “I clean up good.”

  “Who said anything about clean?”

  “Now I’m getting curious.”

  “Dirty interests me.”

  “Really?”

  “Still interested?”

  “I’m a very convincing actor.”

  “I’ll bet you arc.”

  They ate oysters, noisily sucking the shells. They drank all afternoon, then stepped out into the dwindling light, blinking. They ran to the beach, kicking off their shoes. The water was cold and very blue. The sky was violet. He could not remember seeing a more beautiful night. Ida looked like a kid, running in the surf. She had short, pale legs, full thighs. He knew he could kiss her if he wanted to. He could feel her thinking about it, wondering if he would. Maybe he would, later. Still, he sensed there was something fragile about her. Maybe she was broken. She had a history. He wasn’t sure he could deal with it.

  “I’ll tell you my life story,” she had whispered in his ear at the bar, “if you’ll tell me yours.” Under the circumstances, the way she’d said it with her warm oyster breath had turned him on. She’d been born and raised in Iowa. He tried to imagine her as a girl there with her knock-knees and flat feet and precocious breasts and slightly swayed back. He pictured a tire swing on a big oak tree, somebody’s pickup in the driveway. A clapboard house with a porch. A big red tractor out in the field. She could twirl a baton, she’d said, and he imagined her festooned with pom-poms in the Fourth of July parade. The images seemed familiar to him, selected from his mental archives—visual scraps from old Budweiser commercials—and he realized they were not his own.

  Ida was looking out at the ocean, squinting with such earnestness that he thought she must be drunk.

  “Hey,” he said, and touched her back. “You look sad.”

  “I’m not. Not really, I’m not.”

  “What are you looking at? What’s out there?”

  “Everything,” she said. “And a whole lot of nothing.”

  Holding hands, they walked over to the pier. It was strange holding hands with her and he found himself wondering how to break apart without insulting her. He imagined what Marion might think of it. They walked on the pier, toward the lights of a carnival. Ida wanted to ride the Ferris wheel. The air smelled of popcorn, a buttery rancid smell—maybe it was puke. He had never liked rides and now, whirling up backward after drinking so much, made his stomach turn. “Scaredy cat,” she accused him, as he gripped the handlebar and closed his eyes. She took his hand in her sweaty palm and held it very tight and whispered into his ear, “Don’t be afraid.”

  Later, they lay on the beach in the cool sand, looking up at the stars. For a while they didn’t speak. You could hear the ocean, the breaking waves
, people screaming on the rides. As he lay there beside her, he thought about the variations of terror that existed in the dark.

  He turned onto his side and looked at her. She had put her hair into two braids and looked wholesome as the next Midwestern girl, and yet he was pretty certain that she was not. On the one hand, she was sturdy and resilient and resourceful. She seemed dependable too, like if she said she would do something you could count on her to do it. On the other, she had a kind of wounded beauty that came from being let down. She was like a pressed flower in somebody’s scrapbook, he thought, signifying some important event, the memory of which left something to be desired.

  “About my script,” she said. “I’m realizing how awful it is.”

  “It’s not awful. I know it’s not.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know you. At least I’m getting to know you.”

  “You don’t know me,” she said disdainfully.

  “I want to. I want to know you.”

  “Maybe you just want to fuck me.”

  The comment startled him and he said nothing because there was a possibility that it was true.

  “You’re still married.”

  “I know. I have to figure that out.”

  “I’ve been through a lot,” she said. “I’ve been hurt.”

  “I promise not to hurt you,” he said, touching her arm gently, and he meant it.

  “Men suck.”

  “Not all men.”

  She nodded. “All men. Men can be brutal.”

  “Not all men.”

  “Most.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “That’s because you’re one of them. I could provoke you, if I wanted to.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  She looked away. In a strange way, the conversation was turning him on. “Go ahead, provoke me.”

  “You asked for it.” She rolled on top of him and started tickling him all over and he laughed even though he hated being tickled and then she pummeled him wickedly all over his chest. He got a little angry and rolled her onto her back and climbed on top of her and held down her wrists and she strained against him and her face changed slightly and for a moment he imagined being inside her. He could feel her squirming, the bones of her hips, her belly, her thighs. He seemed to come out of a haze and released her and rolled back onto the sand. Side by side, they were breathing hard.

  “You provoked me,” he said.

  “I know. It’s okay. Maybe I liked it.” Her eyes were shining, her face flushed.

  He didn’t know what to say to her, so he said nothing.

  He lay back down and looked up at the stars. At length he asked, “What are your plans?”

  “My plans?”

  “What do you want?”

  She repeated his question without answering.

  “In life,” he clarified.

  “I have no idea what I want. I don’t know.” Then, like it was a joke, she said, “I want a husband and a little house in the country with a picket fence and a whole gaggle of kids.” He watched her, trying to figure out if she was serious. “I want a high-paying job where I get to be nasty to people.” Then she added, “I want a flat in Paris.”

  None of those things seemed to fit her destiny.

  “I suppose I want what most women want.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Tranquillity.”

  “Sounds like a perfume.”

  “I want to feel at peace. In here,” she tapped her heart. “I want to stop feeling like I’m second rate.”

  “You always say that. It’s not true.”

  “I don’t know why I say it; I feel it.”

  “Maybe you should get out of L.A.”

  She shrugged. “I like it here. I like the sunshine.”

  “Maybe you’ve gotten used to being second rate.”

  “Maybe it’s another one of my bad habits.” She turned onto her side and looked at him. “What about you? What do you want?”

  He had never really thought about it—not really—at least not nearly enough. The truth was he didn’t have a clue. Instead of prolonging the conversation he leaned over and kissed her. He pushed his tongue deep into her mouth as if the words he needed to answer the question might be inside of it somewhere, waiting for him to fish them out.

  3

  Back in his motel room, he lay on the bed watching TV with the sound turned off, drinking warm whiskey. The bedspread was gold and shiny, with a design that reminded him of something you’d find under a microscope. It frightened him to think that bugs might crawl on him while he slept. He watched the television, the onslaught of images, one after another. On the way home from Santa Monica he’d stopped at a package store and when he’d come out he’d caught someone pissing on his car. For the next half hour, he’d driven around looking for a car wash, the smell of urine filling his nostrils, but none of the car washes were open. He’d showered, but he could still smell it. The incident had upset him. The world outside his window seemed too loud. The barking dog across the street. The crowds down on the sidewalk. Strange laughter coming from one of the rooms. He dozed off and woke to the sound of something banging against the wall in the room next door. It came to him, in his drowsy state, that his neighbors were having sex. It was a sound that you knew when you heard it, he thought. When he could no longer stand it, he left the room and went down to the street. He considered calling Ida, but thought better of it. She hadn’t invited him over after their date. Instead, he had kissed her leisurely and helped her into her car. He walked down to Hollywood Boulevard and watched the people on the sidewalks. Kids walking in groups. Sunburned girls with long straight hair, smelling of shampoo. Boys in baggy jeans, dripping chains, their underwear sticking out. Tourists; people from faraway lands, speaking languages he could not understand.

  The freeway out to the airport was thick with traffic. It was only eleven o’clock, people were still going out. The night was young. He realized he was in a desperate frame of mind. He had to concentrate very hard on the road. His mouth was very dry and had the sour aftertaste of the whiskey. Drinking had been a mistake, he thought. His evening with Ida, too, had been an error of judgment, for he was in no position to be in any sort of a relationship with any woman other than his wife.

  His cell phone rang. Hugh glanced at his watch. It was half past eleven, three hours later in Montclair.

  “I need to know what’s going on,” his wife said.

  “Marion, what are you doing up so late?”

  “I can’t sleep. I want you to come home.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Hugh?”

  “Look,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how to say this—I mean—I wanted to tell you in person.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Look, it’s not working out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Us. Our marriage.”

  “What are you saying, Hughie? What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “It’s because of me, isn’t it? It’s because I can’t—”

  “It’s not because of that,” he cut her off. “It has nothing to do with that.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “Do what you always do.” He pictured her twirling stem-tape on roses, watering all the plants in the greenhouse where she worked. Sometimes she came home with her fingertips pricked. When things were better between them, he would take her hands and kiss the tiny wounds.

  “They called from work,” she said. “I told them you were sick.”

  I am sick, he thought. I’m very ill.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the promotion? They think it’s why you’re not there. They think you’re upset.”

  “She was more qualified for the job,” he said. “I’ve come to terms with it.”

&nbs
p; “But you’ve been there longer, Hughie. It wasn’t fair.”

  Marion didn’t know the whole truth about why he hadn’t gotten the promotion. He’d made the mistake of making a pass at his competitor, a neatly wrapped blonde in a JCPenney suit. It had been a foolish thing to do, he understood that fully now, and yet at the time, after drinking half a dozen martinis at the annual Christmas party, he’d felt pretty certain that their interest in each other was mutual. In retrospect, putting his hand on her ass under the festering gazes of his superiors probably wasn’t a great idea. He’d forced himself on her later in the coatroom, among the guileless hunkering overcoats of his coworkers. He’d had her pressed against the wall, fragrant and ripe—and then she’d come to her senses. She’d slapped him across the face and walked out, threatening to sue him for sexual harassment. Obviously, she’d used the mishap to her advantage.

  “She has her MBA. Look, it’s out of my hands.” The traffic came to a sudden halt; he had to slam on his brakes. He watched the people in the car behind him take the jolt. The lights of an ambulance flared in his rearview mirror. The promotion would have meant a lot more money, a better office on a better floor. More vacation time. His own assistant. “I didn’t want it anyway,” he lied.

  His wife didn’t say anything and for a moment he wondered if he’d lost her.

  “Marion? Are you there?”

  “I feel like I’m disappearing. You don’t see me anymore.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “We used to be fine. We were fine before you left.”

  We were not fine. “Look, Marion, I have to go.”

  “Hughie, please.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He closed his phone, disconnecting the call. It wasn’t nice, he knew, to hang up on his wife. As a result, she would be up all night, and yet he didn’t care. He was glad he wasn’t with her—glad he would never return to their stilted little house with its singing Disney birds and garbage cans or to his cubicle on the thirtieth floor of the tower of immutable suffering otherwise known as the Equitable Life Insurance Company. The truth of it was he didn’t give a good goddamn about the promotion.

  An ambulance reeled past. The cars inched along. Finally, he passed the accident. A car had smashed into the divider. Luckily, his was the next exit. Once off the freeway, the road was clear. He pulled into the airport and wound up to long-term parking, just as he had done earlier that afternoon. The alcohol had given him a headache, and he felt slightly disoriented as he passed through the gate. He drove over to section H. Some of the streetlights were blinking and when he put his window down he could hear the buzzing of electricity and it made him consider how small he was in the scope of things. There were people out there who controlled things—things like lights and traffic. He was just a small part of the great epic drama called humanity, he thought.