Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  “I’m going to call your mother,” Candler said. “I want you to sit in this chair, okay?”

  Mick nodded and let himself be lifted and situated in the chair. The liquid air swept in around him. It buoyed him and held him down. Held him up and held him down. He could breathe but he was drowning.

  Lise waited for the woman to emerge from the dressing room. Waiting seemed to be the main activity of her life. She had finally quit believing that her life could return to its previous routine. She had not been fully aware just how many of her daily habits had been tied to her interest in James Candler. He had been the center post in the construction of her daily affairs—or rather, her idea of him had been the post. The actual him couldn’t hold up an umbrella.

  “Are you sure this is a ten?” the woman called from the dressing room. She was one of Lise’s regulars.

  “It’s made in Italy,” she called back. “The size is an approximation.” This was a lie that the woman would recognize as a kind of politeness. The truth was that the woman had a size ten body with a size twelve butt. Some size tens would sheath that bottom to great advantage, and others would make her look like a beanbag.

  “It’s tight around my ass,” the woman said.

  No kidding. “Let’s take a look.”

  “I have a lifelong history of dresses not fitting. I tend to prefer loose-fitting clothing.”

  “Now and then you might find a piece of apparel that emphasizes your bottom in a way that—” The door to the dressing room opened and the woman stepped out. She was tall and otherwise thin, with fussy hair that must have cost her a fortune to keep exactly that fussy.

  The dress was perfect.

  “My god,” the woman said, “it directs the attention, doesn’t it?”

  “Your boyfriend is going to love it,” Lise said.

  The woman frowned. “My hope is that he sees me and eats his fucking heart out.”

  “Trouble?”

  “He needs his fucking space. The lamest line in the history of lame lines.” She crossed her arms and continued frowning into the mirror. “I halfway thought he might be dating you.”

  Lise remembered him then, a twenties-something surfer boy in flip-flops who had accompanied the woman the last time she was in the store. He was probably five years younger than Lise and at least a few years younger than this woman. Lise would sooner date a walrus. She would sooner date an Amish minister who would neither watch television nor drive a car, a blind monk who spoke an unintelligible language.

  “Not my type,” she said.

  “So he did hit on you?”

  “If you mean the young man who was with you the last time you were—”

  “Ted Kooperman, but he goes by Tiko. It’s his beach name. He’s the kind of cruddy adult child who has a beach name.”

  “I’ve only seen him when he was here with you,” Lise said, “and I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

  The woman gave the lovely shelf of her buttocks a final look and turned from the mirror. “Why not? I mean, what’s wrong with him?”

  “Besides what you just said?”

  “I’m pissed at him, but he is cute. Why wouldn’t you—”

  “He’s too young. Too aware of his appearance, and I don’t go in for the surfer thing. Not to my taste. He looks like he’s never read a book in his life. He also struck me as arrogant—that young-man arrogance that some women are drawn to, but I don’t care for it. He dresses—”

  “Okay. Okay,” the woman said. “Not your type. That’s all you needed to say.”

  “If you don’t take that dress,” Lise said, “you’re crazy. Or blind.”

  “I’m taking it, for Christ sakes. What’s gotten into you?”

  “I may be a little tense.”

  “You could use a surfer dude or two,” the woman said, turning her back. “Even when it’s some lousy quickie, it lets you know you’re still, you know . . .”

  “Desirable?” Lise said, at the same moment the woman said, “Alive.”

  “I went three years without sex,” Lise said. “It was the most alive I’d felt in my life.”

  The woman faced her again. For several seconds, neither spoke. Then she said, “Do you have this in a light gray?”

  “It’s one of a kind.”

  “I’m sorry I said that about, you know, needing to get laid. It’s a stupid thing to say. I was just pissed. And Tiko is a turd, a completely worthless floating turd. I’m attracted to the worst sort of men. I can see myself doing it, and I still go ahead. I pretend. I imagine he will be different when I know they’re all the fucking same. When I was in college, there was this sweet boy who sat near me in Spanish, and I think he loved me, but he wouldn’t make the first move. I hated him for that. In my head, I was all Be a man or you can’t be with me. But really, I liked him the way he was, you know? If I’d given him any encouragement . . .”

  “Men and women,” Lise said sadly, as if citing a natural catastrophe. “I’ll take the dress. It’ll attract more of the type of swine I seem to need.”

  “There are nice men in the world,” Lise said, “who would also appreciate the way you look in that dress.”

  “Name a couple.” She gave her fussy hair a serious shake. “You want to get a drink sometime? Maybe go out and meet some of these decent men together?”

  Without hesitating an instant, Lise said, “Not a good idea.”

  Sometimes what draws two people together is that they’re going through the same door, and the bumping of their hips seems not merely the product of limited space but divine intervention. Which is to say: tears filled the woman’s eyes, and she turned to touch her fingers to her face. Lise could not quite believe the response.

  “I’ll just wear the dress,” the woman said. “Ring it up.”

  “No man would look my way,” Lise said, “if we were out together.”

  “Hah.”

  “I just don’t do that. Look, I’m hung up on this particular guy. Have been for years. And he’s engaged to someone else. I tell him off one day and have lunch with him the next. He means something to me that I can’t even name, and I spend every hour of the day waiting to see if he’ll choose me over her when I know there is no chance. None. But I can’t let it go.”

  “I get it.” The woman nodded and turned away. “You’re more fucked up than me.”

  “Way more,” Lise agreed.

  “But you also don’t like me.”

  “Not especially. Not outside the store. We have nothing in common.”

  “Okay, fine. I’m changing.” She charged into the changing room and slammed the door shut. “We should be allies, you know?” she called out. “This is why we go with fucked-up men, because we treat each other like garbage.”

  And later, in her subcompact car, driving to the Ocean Beach apartment that she shared with a friend, it occurred to Lise that Whispers and Lies was nothing more than another stop along the road to the person she would eventually become, no different from Bare Barracudas or Amoeba Records. And this Lise who seemed to her so genuine was perhaps no more solid or real than Beth Wray. The girl who had escaped the many-headed monsters discovered that the conjurer could not go on saving her indefinitely, and that her paradise was not an exotic outpost but more like an intergalactic bus stop, and those who did not keep moving turned to stone.

  Stopped at a traffic light, she cut off the air conditioner and lowered her window. Accordion music poured from one of the cars nearby, that Mexican polka music—lively and intense. Whoever was listening to that music, she thought, must know precisely who she is.

  After Karly went back to the sheltered workshop, Candler sat with Mick in his office and waited for Mrs. Coury to appear.

  “I’ve canceled my appointments, Mick. We can talk as much as you like.”

  “All right,” Mick said, “then none, please.” He was not crying any longer
but his face was red and blotched.

  “We don’t have to talk about Karly,” Candler said. “Your mom said it would take a while for her to get here. Where does she work? I can’t seem to recall.”

  “She works.” Mick nodded. “For money.”

  “Doesn’t she do something with the school district?”

  “She does something.” He ran his hands through his hair, one hand, the other.

  “I’m so sorry this turned out this way,” Candler said.

  “Me, too,” Mick said, and then he took his head in his hands. “I’m sad,” he said. “My feelings make me this way.”

  After a long while, Rainyday appeared in the doorway to Candler’s office. “Your mom’s here,” she said to the boy, and she offered her hand.

  Mick stared at the hand and stood. He thanked Candler and followed Rainyday into the hall. Candler thought to go out to see Mrs. Coury, but they had spoken on the phone and he didn’t know what else to tell her. “He’s having trouble with the news that Karly is living with a man,” Candler had said. “He’s taking it hard.”

  Candler stood by the window and jotted a few notes in Mick’s file. He tried to determine why things had gone so badly. Through the window, in the lot at the edge of the grounds, Mrs. Coury walked her son to their silver car. She put her arm around him and either whispered to him or kissed him, Candler could not tell. Beyond those two, past the bordering fence, wind moved over the avocado orchard in a consecutive shudder, like the trained men with rifles in military exhibitions. After the wind fled the orchard, there remained the two-eyed tractor staring back at him. “What?” Candler said aloud. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You didn’t go home,” Rainyday replied. She was standing behind him in the doorway. “And now, even though you canceled your appointments, there’s someone here to see you.”

  “Send her in.”

  “She’s a him,” Rainyday said. “Will I get a raise when you’re the boss?”

  “Send him in, please,” Candler said.

  “And my husband needs a job. And I want a new desk. My desk is too weensy.”

  “I’ll get him myself,” he said.

  “Mick’ll be okay,” she said as he swept past her. “Somebody’s always breaking down.”

  There was only one person in the waiting room, a scrawny man sitting on the floor with his back against one of the chairs. He looked like a high school kid, and Candler tried to imagine who it might be, but he could not concentrate. When the kid saw Candler approaching, he stood. It was Guillermo Mendez, the War Vet.

  “You’re surprised as shit to see me,” he said.

  “I didn’t recognize you in civilian clothing.”

  Mendez looked down at his T-shirt and jeans. “Temporary,” he said. “I’m still in the Nasty but your report did something. I’m not going back to the desert. Not yet anyway. Army agreed to have its own headwashers do a scrub to see if you’re full of shit or not.” He let his head loll—a shrug. “Fucking guy will probably say I ought to spend the rest of my life in Baghdad, but he can’t see me for another three weeks. Which gives me, well, three weeks. I’ve got light duty, and I wanted to let you know they may be calling you to talk, and I wanted to say thanks.”

  “You don’t owe me any gratitude,” Candler said.

  “Sure I do.” He offered his hand and Candler shook it.

  “All right, then,” Mendez said. “You got work.”

  “The truth is . . .” He wasn’t sure he ought to say it. He glanced about the room, but they were alone. “The truth is, I didn’t want to write the report the way you needed me to. But I told someone about you, and she . . . Telling her was a breach of confidential—”

  “I don’t give a damn about confidentiality bullshit.”

  “Maybe not, but I should. And the hell with it, I was only telling her about you to get in her pants.” He looked again to be sure no one else had heard. He lowered his voice. “I was making my job sound important and I was making myself sound compassionate. I hadn’t written the report yet, but I pretended that I’d gone to bat for you.”

  Mendez pursed his lips. “Did it work?”

  “You mean—”

  “You fuck her?”

  It was Candler’s turn to shrug.

  “Can’t begrudge that, then.”

  “I started seeing more of her, and when it came time to write your report, I don’t know, I couldn’t make up my mind what to do, so I decided to be the person I was pretending to be.”

  “In the desert, it’s the same deal,” Mendez said. “You’re always scared as shit and play acting. Then comes the rock and roll, and all you can do is go on pretending.”

  “That’s kind of cynical, isn’t it?”

  Mendez made a face. “I hadn’t planned on spending all day here. I just wanted to say thanks and give you a heads-up ’bout the phone call. Look, you remember that girl I told you about, middle name Iris?”

  Candler could not remember but he nodded anyway.

  “That’s the same way I knew I must be in love, ’cause I was a better person when I was around her.” He sighed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass why you did it. You did it, and that means I’m here and not in the desert.” He turned and ambled to the door.

  Candler stared at his hands for a moment. He should go home, he thought, or maybe for a walk, a walk in sunlight, and then he was in the stairwell going down, bursting into the lobby as Mendez, who had taken the elevator, pushed the door to the outside. Candler did not speak to him, kept his head down. He could not imagine wrestling with the car’s wretched cover in front of the War Vet, but he had not come for the car. He had gone down the stairs to take a walk, his appointments canceled, a sunny day. He veered onto one of the white sidewalks that angled across the grass. A walk, a stroll. He did not know where he was going until he reached the rock wall and stared over it. The tractor was not where he expected to find it. He walked a few steps to his right and went on tiptoes to look again. No tractor. He tried to identify landmarks. He tested several spots, but he could not find the tractor. How was that possible?

  Rainyday was standing at the entrance to the Hahn Building. She had the jacket to his suit draped over one arm. “See something out there?” she asked but did not wait for a reply. “I wasn’t sure you had your keys.”

  Candler’s watch told him that the day was spent. Time had slipped away or jumped ahead. Everyone but Rainyday had gone home. “I have my keys,” he said. “But thanks for checking.”

  “Someone around here has to have a brain.”

  He put on his jacket and walked with her to the parking lot.

  “I’ll be making something fast and dirty tonight,” she said, “but you’re welcome to join us for whatever it turns out to be. We have beer. My husband always has beer. We’re keeping several national breweries in business.”

  Candler declined, thanking her again.

  “If we get real fancy,” she said, “we’ll order pizza. Everybody likes pizza.”

  This time he merely smiled and waved before going to his car and tugging at its cover. He took his time, folding it carefully. He was grateful today for the task.

  The thought did not fully form itself until he was behind the wheel, the engine humming softly. Karly had said that the man with whom she lived had folded sheets with her. He knew how to make a pizza. No fucking way that was the trucker. Yet someone lived with her.

  The drive to Lantana Avenue would take only a handful of minutes. On the way, he passed the Fish Out of Water Saloon. A line of people stood outside the door. Happy hour, he thought. Happy hour in a blackened room.

  Maura saw no good reason for the requirement of letter writing, but she trusted Barnstone and didn’t want to lose the few privileges she possessed. She sat at a lunch table trying to explain to her big sister why she liked the looks of the Onyx Rehab cafeteria, which was gray and white in alternating ho
rizontal lines. The chairs were padded and movable, half of them the same shade of gray as the wall, and the other half, the same white. The colors made her think of the ocean, a fact that made no sense, but it was true, and letters didn’t have to make sense.

  Dinner was over, but she stayed in the cafeteria to avoid Rhine, who was pursuing her. He lived off-campus and had no access to the cafeteria and the place was probably expensive, as they advertised the fresh, organic quality of the chow. She had seated herself with some of the Danker girls to listen to their general unhappiness, their attacks on their counselors, their parents. Silence was hardly her thing, but she was in the mood to be quiet. It was a celebratory silence, and the last thing she wanted was to have it cut short by Bellamy Buttfuck Rhine.

  Mick had gone to his counseling session after lunch, as he always did, and he did not return. Instead, Karly was called out to join him. She came back after an hour or so, but Mick never made it back. Billy Atlas took a call in the office and spoke on the phone for a long time.

  “What did they say about him?” Maura asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t you worry,” Billy told her, taking Mick’s place in the assembly line, “I’ll cover his losses.” He was nowhere near as fast as Mick, but Maura liked that he was helping out. It meant that he expected Mick back.

  “What happened?” She took Billy’s arm and shook it. “What’s wrong with Mick?”

  Billy displayed his huge teeth, a wacky wide grin, and she knew he would give her the goods. He was the kind of man for whom secrets were a burden. Her father was like that, and she decided she would always like Billy Atlas. Whatever benefit of the doubt she had to grant him, she would. Even if he didn’t come through with what happened to Mick, she wouldn’t be upset with Billy. At the same time, she remained confident he would spill his guts.

  As for Billy, he had never been able to say no to a woman. “See, Mick and Karly were talking to Jimmy, and I guess Mick didn’t like what he heard, and kinda lost it.”

  Maura was not the only one listening. Rhine asked, “What did he lose, Mr. Billy Atlas?”

  “It’s just Billy,” he said and shrugged. “Mr. Atlas, that’s my dad.”