Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  She began a story about her days as a school teacher in New Jersey. This was after she had given up eking out a living from fingertouch but before she left for London. “It was a suffocating job,” she told him. To survive it, she colored her hair every Friday after school. “Dyed it the black of plastic cooking utensils.” She filled her piercings with rings and studs, and spent entire weekends in New York, sleeping on a friend’s floor or in some man’s bed. She interrupted the story to say, “I hope this doesn’t upset you.”

  “I like hearing about your sordid history.”

  “Wanker. I’m trying to tell you something important.”

  “I’m listening,” he said. “Hear me listening?” On one of their last dates in London, she had shown him the tiny scars from her piercings, which (except for the earlobes) had all closed. She produced a photograph. He did not recognize her: Lolly slouched on the asphalt of a city street in full regalia—eyebrow toothpicks, lip and nose studs, a hoopsnake ring dangling from her nostrils, a half dozen earrings to the right, and three more to the left. Her bare midriff revealed a tattoo: an octopus, its arms arranged in a V. Even her jeans had holes. “No piercings in the tongue, nips, or snatch,” she had said, “so don’t get too aroused.” She’d had the tattoo removed but it was still visible, though indistinct. The first time Candler noticed it, he’d thought it was a birthmark. “That’s the shadow of my former self,” she had said.

  “Those weekends felt like the real me,” she told him, “while that mousy second-grade teacher was the impostor I was forced to play. I was pretty good with the kids, but I couldn’t find a path. It was all what now, what now from one moment to the next, like I didn’t know how to be that person. I’d be all sixes and sevens until Friday arrived.” Then one winter weekend in New York, her friend with the apartment asked if she wanted to sell small quantities of cocaine in Jersey. “Just to your pals,” she assured Lolly. Her friend needed to sell enough to cover her expenses, and the implication was clear: Lolly had snorted her share of the woman’s stash.

  “That threw a spanner in the works,” Lolly said. “I decided I didn’t like my impostor life or my real life.”

  “So you moved to London.”

  “London was part of it. The key was understanding that I needed a new costume.” The piercings and hair, the tattoos and clothing had given her definition. “A role to play, and I was good at it.” All she needed to do was redefine herself in some equally definite but more desirable way, a role that would permit her to make a respectable life for herself. “That’s the story of my birth, this Lolly you claim to love. She doesn’t do drugs except maybe a puff of pot. She doesn’t take it up the ass—not even for you, lover—and she isn’t ashamed of wanting money. I’ve gotten very good at this me, and now that I’ve met you, I never need to dye my hair and don that mask again. All the gaps in my face are closing up.”

  “You don’t have to act with me.”

  “Oh yes I do.”

  “The glasses you wore at the publishing house?”

  “Just plain glass, and only required on the job, but yes, part of the costume, and the hair, the clothes, the stockings. I had quite the bedroom routine worked up until you nixed it.”

  “Your accent?”

  A long pause ensued and Candler was readying an apology before she said, “Bollocks.”

  “I’m sorry, I . . .”

  “No, you’re right. I wanted a new way of talking, and don’t ask me to let it go. The whole thing falls apart without it. You’d need the king’s horses.” After a moment, he felt her hand on his hip and she said, “When Vi first showed me your picture and talked about you—she adores you, you know—I decided to make a play for you. What I hadn’t planned on was falling arse over elbow for you. Now I’ve fessed up. You’re engaged to a mirage.”

  “Always wanted to be engaged to a mirage.”

  “I know it’s a contradiction—telling you all this, trying to be honest, but still wearing the toupee, so to speak.”

  “It’s bloody okay with me,” Candler said. “Everybody’s fucking bald. But about this taking it up the ass thing . . .”

  “On our twentieth anniversary,” she said. “You can start crossing the days off the calendar.”

  They had held each other until Candler’s arm fell asleep. Lolly was conked out by that time, and he’d had to extricate himself carefully. Now she was with his sister at the Barnstone’s bonding or something, and he was playing Sam Spade. He parked in a La Jolla garage and continued the charade, meandering through shops and leaving through back doors, stopping in a Kinko’s to study the street from behind a partition, and when he was certain that he was not being followed, strolling by the boutique where Lise worked, wondering if she was inside.

  It had made for an enjoyable if silly morning, all that make-believe skullduggery. Their rendezvous point was the Crow’s Nest, an upscale bar and grill. Egri was seated in a booth by himself, dressed in marine gear—short-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts, deck shoes. Candler sat across from him in the booth, and Egri lifted from the bench a floppy green hat to display it.

  “I used to have a sailing cap,” he said, “but now I’m reduced to this thing.”

  “You actually think the gargoyles are following you?” Candler asked.

  Egri pursed his lips and eyed the ceiling. His journey to the Crow’s Nest had been even more elaborate than Candler’s. He had rented a catamaran and sailed it to a nearby pier where he called for a cab. “It was reasonable on my part to assume as much, but I know now I was wrong. I found out precisely ten minutes ago. My wife hired a detective.” He lifted a stein of beer from the bench and drank from it, returning it to the bench beside him. “The sad thing is, I’ve never fooled around on Cheryl. Not one affair. Oh, I smooched a woman at a party, felt some bouncy cheeks in the back room, things like that, but Mr. Ralph has kept to his zippered quarters.”

  “What does she think is going on?”

  He shook his head slightly. “Not here to talk about my merry-go-round.” His eyes lifted to the approaching waitress. “Order something, then I’ll give you the inside dope on the carousel that matters.”

  Candler ordered a BLT and a beer without looking at the menu.

  “The important thing is that I still have the board’s trust.” He drank again from the stein before describing the two interviews for the directorship that had already taken place. On Tuesday, Ava Greene, the psychologist, impressed everyone during her presentation and the Q and A session, but over lunch Egri casually asked her about the attention her article on systematic empathy was garnering. She responded enthusiastically, as if it were a friendly question. Egri’s follow-up included mention of the UCLA Department of Psychology. Greene faltered before admitting that she had applied for a position there. “I was encouraged to apply,” she said. “It’s unlikely that I’ll be offered the job or even be interviewed.”

  “The funny part?” Egri laughed. “There is no job at UCLA, and if there were they wouldn’t be taking applications in the summer. I had an acquaintance of mine rig up an email account, and I sent her a phony job description, a glowing review of her article. You want people to do something stupid, flatter them.”

  Candler still did not understand.

  “The hiring committee will listen when I say we don’t want a director who’s flirting with the universities for jobs. Her goose is roasting in wine sauce.”

  Clay Hao’s interview had taken place Thursday, and he came off exactly as Egri predicted: competent, thoughtful, and dull. “He suggested we target clients who have just begun showing signs of trouble. He had statistics at the ready to show they had a higher success rate. But the therapy he’s pushing is called mindfulness, which I found easy enough to mock with the board. Had to be careful with the Hao Dog, though. Didn’t want to tip my hand.”

  “What is it about Hao that puts you off?” Candler asked. “He’s the most qualified of us.”
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  “Hao’s not suited for the job,” Egri said, “and we lose our best counselor in the deal. He has no understanding of politics, not in any real sense. You, you’ve got a feel for it. You’ve got the initiative, besides, and when you walk your balls got a swing to them. That’s gonna be important. Not mindfulness, Christ. That’s just therapy crap.”

  Candler’s interview was Tuesday. He would spend all day with the committee. His presentation would be on the successes of his existing innovations—the evaluation hub and the sheltered workshop. Egri coached him to offer no new projects, and to emphasize the importance of stability. They ran through the questions to expect. “They’re making a point of asking the identical questions of each of you,” Egri said, “so you’re set.”

  “You know,” Candler said, “I’ve been studying mindfulness, too.”

  “You think I care? Just keep your gob shut about it. Wheeling and dealing is the job. For example, technically the entire board votes on the hire, but the personnel committee makes the recommendation, and it’ll almost certainly be followed. Are you listening? I’m teaching you how to manage things after I’m gone. I’m on all the committees, and I encourage the board to divvy up the duties. Divide and conquer. I’m the only one who has all the information and I pack the committees with ringers; ergo, I’m the one who always wins.”

  They ate their sandwiches. The conversation veered to the presidential election, the wretched Padres, the economy, the brunette with her legs crossed at the bar.

  “I love women,” Egri said, “but I also need men, camaraderie, the occasional poker game, sports outing, trip to a titty bar. That’s what the detective’s going to discover. Not that I’m unfaithful to Cheryl, but that I’m a fucking man with a man’s predilections. I used to like sailing, but now I have to pretend to sail in order to meet with a friend and shoot the shit. Pathetic, no?”

  Candler drank his beer to avoid replying.

  “We’re close to the wire. You interview Tuesday, the committee meets Wednesday, and the board makes its decision Thursday or Friday. If I have my way, you’ll come in and sign your contract Friday afternoon. You hip to all this?” He didn’t give Candler time to answer but grabbed his floppy hat and twirled it on his finger. “There’ll be a few things I’ll want you to throw my way once you’re in power. I’ll be asking favors.”

  “What favors?”

  “Friendly favors, nothing close to what I’ve gone through on your behalf.”

  Candler sighed. “Have you wondered, have you even considered that maybe I’m not the right person for this job?”

  “You’re the only person for the job,” Egri said. “This lunch, of course, never happened. You make sure, during the interview, to remember all you don’t know.”

  Candler assured him that he would.

  “I can’t quite believe she hired a detective. Used her private credit card to do it. Still doesn’t know that I have all her passwords. Trust is the basis of a good marriage.” A smile flickered across his face. “Found the charge on my smartphone just before you got here. What’s with your sister, anyway? Pretty enough in a foundling way. Not my particular taste, but plenty of men at the Limb were eager to chat her up. She wouldn’t give them a nod.”

  “Her husband died,” Candler said. “It hasn’t been long.”

  “I guess you told me that.” He lifted the stein from the bench. “The ocean calls. I have to get sunburned or the whole charade will convince no one.”

  “Why do you keep your beer mug on the bench?”

  “Deniability,” Egri said, emptying the stein before grabbing his floppy hat. He left without saying good-bye.

  The advice Barnstone offered as she went to answer the door was Be yourself. For Mick, this command had a specific meaning: he had been right in cheating on his medication.

  “I like being myself,” he said, feeling a sudden infusion of joy. Then he added, “She’s always telling me about you.”

  Barnstone paused at the door to make a face he could not read, and she said something unintelligible, not words but a kind of grinding noise. Then Violet and Lolly were inside—as if time had skipped forward—and he was shaking their hands, his wide grin making his face ache, their dry hands in his hand, feminine hands in his hand, skin to skin.

  “I’m sorry we’re late,” Violet Candler was saying. “I’m so stupid with directions, I could get turned around in a coffin.”

  Mick lit up. Turned around in a coffin. He laughed. Turned around in a coffin. Then it was already later and he was sitting and Maura was complaining, “I’m on the there-are-a-million-things-that-aren’t-cheese diet.” Barnstone had set a platter of cheese and crackers on the table, time jumping onward again, skipping like an old thirty-three-and-a-third. “You put me on the diet,” Maura accused. “Got any chips?”

  “Besides the one on your shoulder,” Mick put in.

  Barnstone laughed. To Maura she said, “I see why you like this one.”

  “I told you he’s funny,” she said.

  The Candler girls smiled at him with their eyes and the skin around their eyes.

  “I just let the chips fall where they may,” he said.

  “Are you going to make puns all night?” Maura asked.

  “You can chip in too,” he said, “even if it’s just a microchip. Or a chipmunk. Chipped tooth. Chip N Dale. Chip shot. Chipper. The big chips. Time to chip out. I got chipped!”

  They were all laughing.

  “Everything is chip shape,” he said.

  “Chipped beef?” Lolly said.

  “Chipworthy,” Maura offered.

  “The Starchip Enterprise,” Mick said. “I chip you not.”

  “Stop now,” Barnstone said, and remarkably, he did. He could almost see kindness radiate from Barnstone’s person, and he would trust that, not his impressions, which, after all, often got him into trouble. His desire to believe in her was what he had to trust, not the hammering of emotional strings that comments like stop now set off. He let those go, let them slide beneath his consideration, like a life guard watching a sea of swimmers drown: against his natural impulses he stayed in his elevated seat. A wooden seat, likely. The sea air would weather it. Watch for splinters.

  They ate in the living room, plates in their hands, conversation awkward. Mick felt his immense pleasure slipping, sliding, defoliating until Violet Candler mentioned how truly awful the Calamari Cowboys were, and Lolly put in that all the songs were thirty years old, and Mick understood they were laughing at the expense of Mr. Clay Hao and his band, which Mick found enjoyable, joy-making, joyous, joy-us, joy-them, rat-a-tat-tat to the happy strings that lined his belly. And Ms. Patricia Barnstone revealed that she had played in a series of rock bands when she was young, which was so wild, and she told a story about an epileptic drummer having a seizure onstage, a funny story, which meant they were laughing about someone’s disability, and that was wicked funny.

  When the comfort returned, it returned double fold, and Mick heard himself talking to the women, the Candler girls, sister and fiancée of Mr. James Candler, who had never once spoken to Mick as Ms. Patricia Barnstone had spoken to him all day. Not that Mick had lost respect for his counselor, just that there was something big jelly about Barnstone and also the big jelly laughter . . . no no no, he didn’t want to lose it. He took a breath and held it, pulled his attention back to the moment. The sister, who’d been so nice to him when she was lost (her movement in that parking lot, the fluidity of the night around her body’s moving parts, and her smile, the grimace that made her ugly and proved her beauty—should he warn the others about that smile?), she was right here, in this room, saying how much she liked California in a way that made it clear she was bored. What was boredom? It was all he could do to keep up with his thoughts, except when he was medicated and then he could not think quickly enough to be bored. Maybe this comfort could turn to boredom, a nice kind, like listening to a fav
orite song over and over. “What do you think of it here?” the Lolly one was suddenly, fervently saying, addressing either Mick or Maura, hard to tell. “James tells me about the Center, but he only has the perspective of the counselor.”

  “It’s a zoo,” Maura said. “It’s helped me, but it’s still a zoo. I just happen to be in the best part. Mick and I have the nicest cages.”

  He expected Barnstone to admonish her, but she was sly-eyed and ready to laugh. “It’s not really a zoo,” he put in, “though Maura is an anteater.” Snooting up the ants, he thought to say, but let it play only in his head. Snozzing up the nosy . . . He pulled himself back, like yanking a string that straightens a puppet, a marionette, the proper puppy puppet, ruff, ruff, the rough edges of the assembly machine at the sheltered—listen! Listen to Maura’s mouth.

  “Hah,” she said flatly.

  “More like a factory,” Mick said, “pretty good factory, where the workers—let’s say it’s a car factory—where they’re trying to convince the cars to build themselves. Build yourselves, you cars you. Like an Audi or Nissan factory. Ford. Caddyshack. And there are all of these parts on the conveyor belt, and the counselors, here’s Mr. James saying The fender bone’s connected to the chassis bone, and we chassis types are trying to lure the fender over—here fender, fender—but it’s harder than he sounds.” He bursts into laughter and the others follow. Good good good, like a river good. But watch it now, watch it now. Slip and you’ll drown. River’s deep. River’s wide. Swim, little buddy.

  All of a sudden it was later, maybe seconds later, maybe minutes later, the conversation accelerating again, Candler girls asking questions, Maura shooting something at him and Mick slapping it back over the net. She explained the hierarchy of the dorms, that the psychologists—see-cologists? Shouldn’t it be see-cologist? Or sigh-cologist? Psycho-ologist? She was still talking, that Maura, and he joined in about the workshop, about Rhine, Vex, Alonso, skipping over Karly, each knowing, without saying a word, to pass her by, like their brains were one brain hovering in the room, a flying saucer brain, and Maura yanking on his arm and in his ear the wet lisping whisper of one friend to another, Maura lispering: “Thlow down, monkeyhead,” and remarkably, again, he did it, the whole carnival ride giving up the spin, slowing, thlowing, simmering down.