Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  “I’m not alone,” he said.

  “Say something sweet, please.”

  “There’s an outside chance the feds have bugged my line.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Say something sweet!”

  For the first time ever, he hung up on her.

  TWELVE

  “YOU SHOULDN’T have done that,” Kit Fletcher said after he clamped the receiver down. “Maybe it was a matter of life and death.”

  “You have no idea what the conversation was about.”

  “I know it was from your friend. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Sometimes she’s too much.”

  “Never, Barney, not if she’s a real friend.” Kit’s hand glided over the stereo. The telephone had rung during a Simon and Garfunkel song, and she had lowered the sound. Now she turned it off. “Your mother and father are both dead, aren’t they? They were the only people on earth who would’ve forgiven you anything, who would’ve kept on loving you no matter what horrid thing you might’ve done. Who do you have now? Me? Would I be that forgiving?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Cole said.

  “You’re right, Barney, not me. I’m not put together that way. But how about her, your friend? That’s something to think about, isn’t it?”

  Cole looked at her askance. “You send mixed signals.”

  “Granted, I’m jealous, but that doesn’t fuddle my thinking.”

  “It fuddles mine. Louise is trouble, and you’ve made it clear you don’t want any.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to involve me,” she said, moving to a window and gazing out at the dark. She had on a green blouse and denim skirt that made her look more Andover than Boston, more Indian Ridge Country Club than the Ritz. “Loads of fireflies out there, Barney.”

  “Little taillights,” Cole said. “Like traffic.”

  “But no pollution.”

  “None.”

  She turned with a half smile. “What was that business about your line being bugged?”

  “I was joking.”

  “No, I can tell when you’re joking and when you’re not. Should I be concerned about calling out?”

  “I’d use discretion.”

  “How much?”

  “All you’ve got.” He smiled. “I really am joking.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  A little later they undressed for bed and read together under twin flexible reading lamps, their feet casually tangling and untangling far under the covers. Without her telling him, he knew she was leaving in the morning, and he asked when she thought she might be back. “The weekend,” she replied without looking up from the page of the Joan Didion novel she had plucked from a bargain table at Barnes & Noble. She turned the page. “In the interval, maybe you could zip in and take me to dinner.”

  “It’s a possibility,” he said, doubtful that she expected or wanted him to take her up on it. Near the house trees shifted their shadows and sent in drafts of cool air. He put aside his magazine and switched off his lamp. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “For a bit,” she said, closing her book. When he stretched past her to extinguish the light on her side, she traced her fingertips along his rib cage and produced a shiver. “Those are my fingers,” she whispered, “not your friend’s.”

  “Glad you told me.”

  “Some other things I’d like to tell you, but I don’t think you’d understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Another time,” she said and settled into his arms.

  It was nearly midnight when he eased his legs over the side of the bed, slipped on his undershorts, and stood listening to the depth of her breathing and the nighttime chorus of peepers. He made his way by touch through the dark to the kitchen, where he put on the stove light and looked up Louise Baker’s number in his private phone book. She was obviously asleep, for several rings went unanswered. When she finally came on the line she sounded drugged. “What?” she said. “Who?”

  “Barney,” he repeated.

  Her voice came awake. “Some nerve, Barney, you hang up on me and then call back at this hour. How did you know my husband and I sleep in separate rooms?”

  “Guessed.”

  “Have you forgiven me about that little thing in the parking lot? It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, you surely know that.”

  “It’s forgotten,” he said. “Have you forgiven me for hanging up?”

  “Nothing to forgive. I knew you’d call back. I know what’s in you.”

  He stood silently looking down at his bare toes and listening to June bugs bashing their brains out against the lit screen in the window over the sink.

  “Still there, Barney?”

  “Yes.”

  “I needed you tonight, it would’ve been better if you were here, but this will do.” She sighed happily. “I’m so glad we didn’t marry. We never would have stayed this close.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good thing, do you?”

  “I’ll let you answer that,” she said, “so that I can go back to sleep. Good night, baby.”

  “I haven’t said anything sweet yet.”

  “Another time.”

  Cole hung up, left the stove light on, and made his way back to the master bedroom. Leaning over the bed, he could just barely make out Kit’s face. Her eyes were open.

  “You were listening in, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He turned away, started for the door, knowing her voice would stop him. “Barney.”

  He placed a hand on the door frame and with his other hand hitched up his undershorts. “What?”

  “I’d love to meet her.”

  • • •

  Henry Witlo soaked his hot hand in a pan of water at the kitchen table. On the table was the small black-and-white Magnavox that Harold Goss had kept in the garage for company while puttering around. Henry watched the Red Sox game and after each inning changed the water, for his hand heated it. He was hungry, but little in the refrigerator appealed to him. He ate a tomato and two plain slices of granola bread. After the game he watched the late news, all of Johnny Carson, and most of David Letterman, whose humor was too slapstick for him. It hurt his head. After dumping out the water for the final time, he shuddered. The soaking had bleached his hand and withered the ends of his fingers while leaving the wound black.

  Emma Goss was asleep, her face turned to the wall. He tried to creep into bed without waking her and fell slowly into Harold’s hollow. Drained of strength, he soon dropped off, but his sleep was fitful, without sustenance. Soon Emma woke him for good.

  “I can’t sleep with you in the bed,” she said. “You toss and turn. You groan.”

  “It’s not my fault,” he said as if talking to his mother or to a superior officer.

  “You gnash your teeth.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  Her white face waxed in the dark. “And I can’t sleep!”

  He went into the front room and rolled up in a blanket on the sofa, where he dozed off and on for what little remained of the night. He heard the first birds, the clatter of a rubbish truck, and the slap of a newspaper on the Whipples’ walk. With the blanket wrapped around him, he stumbled to the bathroom, rummaged in the medicine cabinet, and came across a plastic cylinder bearing an old prescription label, Harold Goss’s name typed on it. The pills were penicillin. He took two.

  His right hand bore the wound, which made it awkward for him to shave. He nicked himself several times. Showering was no problem, but drying himself was. Then he switched to a face towel, which made it easier. He dressed with a lack of patience and skill, leaving his shirt unbuttoned and Harold’s shoes untied. With less patience he waited for Emma to get up.

  She slept until eight-thirty, not at all like her, and appeared muffled in a bulky bathrobe, which made her bare feet seem tiny. He had returned to the bathroom and peered at her from the mirror. She said, “Will you be long?”

  He went to her immediat
ely, extending his bad hand. “I don’t like the look of it, Mrs. Goss. I should’ve gone to the doctor’s like I wanted.”

  “Nobody stopped you.”

  “I got it saving you.”

  “Saving yourself, not me. Are you through in here?”

  She stayed a long time in the bathroom, the door locked, and a couple of times he put his mouth to the crack and called in to her, “What are you doing?” He was too fidgety to sit, and he went out onto the breezeway, where the sight of the shattered screens depressed him. He spat through one of them. “I shouldn’t have let the little bastard crawl away,” he whispered to himself.

  When he returned to the kitchen, Emma was in a neat housedress, her hair drying from a wash. He stared at her with disbelief and outrage. She was making herself breakfast, nothing for him. He struck the countertop with his left hand. “What am I, black?” She ignored him. He slapped a plate on the table and threw down cutlery. “I want something too!”

  “I don’t care what you want,” she said, and he verged on striking her, holding back at the last instant. Her eyes were calm. “What’s stopping you?” she asked.

  “I never hit my mother, I won’t hit you.” His face was a patina of sweat. “But if you don’t make me something, I’ll break every window in the house. I don’t care if the cops come. You think I’m kidding, watch me!”

  All she was having was toast. She dropped a slice on his plate. He held it in place with the pained fingers of his right hand and buttered it with his left. She poured herself coffee.

  “I want some too.”

  There was no cup for him on the table. She waited for him to get one, which he did with an expression of deprivation and injustice and then reseated himself with such force that the back of the chair gave way a little. He watched her pour.

  “Thank you,” he said in a voice pitched higher than normal. He ate his toast with his mouth open to annoy her. “See, I can play the same game.”

  She did not respond, not even with a grimace, her natural reaction now. She spread jam over her toast and ate quietly. A silence grew, which she seemed to relish. He sullied it with a cough and glared at her through a dazzle of sweat.

  “You wouldn’t care if I died, would you, Mrs. Goss? You’d just go right on with your business. Fuck Henry.”

  She looked away.

  “I want something more,” he said. “I’m sick, I’ve got to eat.” He leaped up. He shook cornflakes into a bowl, the last in the box, and added milk, the last in the carton. Back at the table, he had trouble manipulating the spoon with his left hand, grew impatient, and began eating with his fingers.

  Emma left the table.

  He left soon after. Unsettled in the stomach and wobbly in the knees, he groped to the bedroom and flopped down on the unmade bed, sinking into Emma’s hollow instead of Harold’s. He did not expect to sleep, he felt too sick, but he slipped off at once and dreamed he was chewing a salt pill against the jungle heat and slogging through muck. There was too much of everything. Too much sun beating a fever into him, too much uncertainty in his step. Too many black guys were laughing at him, for he had rolled his sleeves up, a fool thing to do. Leeches laddered his bare arms. He tried to pick one off, but it was blubber, like a lip, and fastened to him as in a kiss. His arms pulsing with kisses, he sank to the warm wet of the jungle floor, a heady way to go, as irresistible as freezing to death. It was a religious experience of a vulgar variety, not unlike the time a Pentecostal preacher came to Chicopee, talked in tongues, and brought people to their knees, including his mother, who did it for the giggle.

  He did not want to wake. He cherished where he was, but he felt pressure from above and a renewed throb in his hand. His eyes fluttering open, he saw the same blade that had raced so swiftly across his palm that he had failed to feel it and now could feel nothing else. Now the tip of the blade was tickling his throat, with Emma’s violet eyes pressing down into his.

  “I wish I could do it,” she said. “I wish to God I had the nerve.”

  “Do it,” he said.

  • • •

  Marge raised her penny eyes from her IBM typewriter and said, “Can I get you something, Mrs. Shea? A cup of coffee maybe?”

  Edith Shea said no. She was sitting in one of the hard waiting-room chairs, her knifelike legs crossed. “I drink too much coffee as it is. I got coffee nerves, that’s one of my problems. I won’t tell you the others. How long do you think he’ll be?”

  “Not long. He knows you’re out here.”

  “I don’t have an appointment.”

  “He knows that too.”

  Edith wiggled a foot. “Is he a good guy to work for, Marge?”

  “We get along well.”

  “I bet he couldn’t do without you.”

  “He lets me think that.”

  “Yes, Barney’s a charmer.” Edith lit a cigarette. A Thanks for Not Smoking sign stood on Marge’s desk. “You don’t mind, do you, Marge?”

  “There’s an ashtray under the magazines.”

  “Hiding it, huh?” Edith pulled apart old copies of Life to find it and then settled back in her chair. She was not in her waitress uniform but in a peaceful shade of blue, with a polka-dot scarf round her neck. “You’re not married, are you, Marge?”

  “Not yet, Mrs. Shea.”

  “Christ, call me Edith. I’m not that much older than you. Or am I? Yeah, I guess I am.” She spread her fingers out when she brought her cigarette to her mouth. She inhaled hard and blew out fast. “Any boyfriends?”

  “Not really.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “I live with my mother. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “Someday you’ll know.”

  “I don’t think about that.”

  “You’re going to have to. Ask me. I know.” Edith flicked an ash, missing the target. “What do you do about sex?”

  Marge started to blush and stopped. “I think about it.”

  “I know what you mean. Listen, Barney’s a damn good-looking guy. If you’d like, I’ll mention the matter.”

  Marge laughed abruptly and said, “Don’t you dare.”

  A few moments later Barney Cole opened his office door, and Edith rose, stubbing out her cigarette and smiling to show him that nothing was desperately wrong, Daisy was not dead, her children were all right, and the only immediate problem was within herself, which he had probably guessed. He kissed her cheek and closed the door behind her. She sank into the worn leather chair near his desk, the seat warm from the previous occupant, who had left by a different door.

  “Daisy’s giving up his office,” she said.

  Cole, who had remained standing, peered down at her. “He shouldn’t do that. He’ll have no place to go.”

  “Sure he will. Wild Bill’s Tavern, the Hibernians, or some other joint.”

  “Is it the rent?” Cole asked. “I’ll pay it. It can’t be that much.”

  “He’s in arrears.”

  “How much?”

  “Who the hell knows? He doesn’t know himself.”

  Cole’s desktop was a confusion, but he found his personal checkbook without a search. The problem was finding a pen that worked. Sitting down, he tossed two away and came up with a red one that wrote.

  Edith said, “Make it out to me.” When he gave it to her, she blinked. “This is too much,” she said, reexamining it. “I didn’t come for money, Barney.”

  “I know that.”

  Her voice went stiff and practical. “When’s the last time you gave your secretary a raise?”

  “I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Give her one,” she said, and tore the check in two. “When it comes time to bury Daisy, that’s when I’ll need your help. I know he’ll want all the trimmings.”

  “You make it sound imminent.”

  “He was pretty sick last night, but he bounced back this morning, full of jokes I couldn’t listen to.” She threw her shoulders back in the chair. “It’s not
him I’m thinking of. It’s me. I’ve never lived alone in my whole life. The thought is starting to terrify me.”

  “You still have the kids.”

  “For a while. Then what? I wouldn’t know how to be Edith Pratt again. She walked in right now, I wouldn’t know her. And she sure as hell wouldn’t know me.”

  “I’d introduce you.”

  “I wouldn’t like her. She was a silly kid, as I remember, full of mistakes. She made all the wrong choices.”

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “I’ve already been asked that.”

  “Then tell me what I can do for you,” he said.

  “Flatter me.”

  “That’s easy. That’s a lovely outfit you’re wearing.”

  “I charged it. God knows when I’ll pay for it. You really think it looks good on me?”

  “It’s you,” he said.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I can’t win,” he said with a smile.

  “Nobody can, Barney. People aren’t happy anymore. Happiness belonged to another era. Back in the Depression people were happy with what little they got. Today expectations are too high. I expected to live in Andover like you. Instead I’m still in Lawrence and working as a waitress. Where’s my fine house, Barney? Why isn’t Daisy a judge?”

  “Why am I not a United States senator?”

  “You never wanted to be one. That’s the difference. Different snores, different dreams. I never did know what you wanted, Barney, except maybe Louise. Probably a lucky thing you didn’t get her.”

  “I won’t ask your reasoning on that.”

  “I don’t act on reason. I’m pure emotion. Yesterday I read in the paper about a Worcester woman slitting her husband’s throat while he slept. I didn’t need to know the facts. I could understand it all.”

  Cole said, “Remind me never to come to you for cheering up.”

  “But that’s exactly why I come to you. I know you’ll listen. You think you owe me something, Barney, but the joke’s on you. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”