by Mary Robison
“You’re trying to act hard,” he said. “I quit that, and I feel a lot better. Getting angry is easy. Everyone ought to fight to be softer instead. That’s the test of a real person.”
“Knock it off,” Maureen said. “You just want me to act soft, so you can get me into bed, which is not—believe me—on the agenda.”
Chris said, “I want to, of course. Sure. I’m not ashamed of it and I’m not being sneaky. But that isn’t the reason I’m being nice. I’m lonely. But I’ll never—I decided in Quebec—force anyone to do anything.”
He accelerated, shot around a Pinto, passed a city bus on the wrong side, and flew below a traffic light that was going from yellow to red.
“Please. You know I can’t stand speeding. If you don’t let me out right now, I’m going to jump. I’m not kidding.” Maureen popped open her door. The car slammed into a deep, black pool of water that had been hidden in the shadows under the railroad bridge. Cold water exploded into the car and blasted the windshield. She pulled her door shut. The car slowed as if stunned, and quit running. A horn went off behind them.
“My new dress,” she whimpered. The cloth was streaked with stains and pasted to her. Water had gone into her nose and mouth and splashed her hair. “Fucking Ground Zero.”
“Shut up,” Chris said. He struggled with the ignition. They sat in fender-high, swarming water. The engine finally started. He sped to fifty and then seventy. “Got to dry the engine with air,” he said. “Brakes don’t work.”
“What? I want out, goddamn it!”
“Just hold it. I’m drying them.”
He drove for a while with one foot on the gas, the other lightly on the brake pedal.
“I remember now,” Maureen said. “I remember how it was with you.” Her bottle of ale was rocking on its side on the floor mat. Creamy bubbles foamed from the bottle and mixed with the rain pooled around her shoes. “This is just about right. About the average for a day with you. Except I don’t have a broken tooth yet, and we don’t owe anybody a whole lot of money. Nobody’s coming to evict us, so I won’t have to go to a phone booth, after I bum a dime, and call my dad and ask to borrow money.”
“Who was it who opened the idiot car door to jump out?”
“You are going to buy me a new dress,” Maureen said. “And new shoes.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I mean it. You’re buying them and you’re going to do it right now. I’m freezing, and I’ll get sick otherwise.”
“Consider it done,” Chris said.
26
The store’s phony Victorian sofa was teal blue silk, with cherry arms and legs that ended in claw feet. Chris perched there, sipped the free coffee from a delicate cup, and watched the salesgirls. They wore sweaters and heavy makeup and pants that were tight over their bottoms. One girl, in a rosy leotard, rested her weight on the cash-register counter, her back to the room. Chris was studying her spine when she twirled, throwing clean hair.
“Here we go,” someone said, and Chris peeked around as Maureen came out of the dressing booth.
“Oh, hey,” he said. She had on a linen frock with an indefinite, scalloped hem and a modest sunback.
“It’s not what I wear,” she said. She stood on her toes before a wall mirror.
“But you’re wearing it,” Chris said.
“It’s lovely,” the salesgirl said.
“You can say that again,” Chris said.
“It’s—you know—too cutesy for me,” Maureen said.
“Yeah, a little,” Chris said.
“I know what,” the salesgirl said. She went and got a high-heeled shoe and a nylon stocking. She dropped to one knee and took Maureen’s foot in her hands.
Chris got up from the sofa and paced around. He stood before an underwear display by the counter. The display had a cardboard cutout with a photo of a teenager. Her hands were on her hips and she was poking her tongue out. She wore candy-striped underpants. Over her tousled hair was written Get Sassy! Get Sassy’s Panties and Briefs. Chris shook his hands and arms like an athlete preparing to heft a barbell. He glanced down the hall to the dressing booths. In a bright side stall, a muscular girl was pushing her legs into black boots. Chris looked away. He saw the salesgirl yawning and stretching, her sweater rising up her bare midriff. He crossed the store to her.
“Pardon me,” she said, and covered her mouth, though the yawn had been completed. She blinked pleasantly. She had coppery red hair, china-blue eyes.
Chris said, “You know, this is a very sexy place.”
“Not to me,” the girl said. “Do you need help, sir?”
“Waiting for my wife,” he said, stabbing a thumb in Maureen’s direction. “Honestly, think about it. You’ve got a whispery French girl on the loudspeaker.”
The redhead gave Chris—his faded shirt and dungarees and cracked leather sandals—the once-over.
“I’m just killing time,” he said. “I’m not dangerous.”
“Of course, sir,” the salesgirl said.
“Women don’t notice,” Chris said. “That’s what’s so weird about it. You hear that music?”
“Not really. Not anymore,” the girl said.
Chris said, “Doesn’t it sound like a person being intimate?”
“Maybe. I guess so,” the redhead said. “Granted.”
“Okay. Look at all the pictures around. On that tray of underwear—the Sassy girl. Or that picture behind you.” There was a poster behind the redhead, a model in a shimmery slip. “Or all the girls in the magazines you’ve got out on tables.”
“I didn’t put them out,” she said.
“Of course not,” Chris said. “But what if you went in a men’s store, and there were blowups on the wall of guys in tiny clothes, and in magazines spread all over, and a guy on the Muzak sighing away?”
“Carol?” the redhead said. She called over her shoulder to another employee. “Tell all this to Carol.”
Chris did. But then he noticed the two girls exchanging looks. “I was just killing time,” he said.
“And what’s your conclusion, sir?” Carol said. She was an Oriental, flawless skin, thick legs.
“Well, I don’t know,” Chris said. “I don’t know what to make of it. I suspect you want all the men to feel uncomfortable and out of place. So they’ll leave the women alone to try on the clothes and buy them.”
“No,” Carol said. “We love to have a girl bring a guy with her. They always spend more bread that way. The guy likes to show off. He flirts with us in front of his old lady, and drops bread to show he’s a big shot. A chick alone will hassle you and give you a hard time. She’ll talk herself out of clothes. But if the dude says, ‘Oh, wow, that looks really groovy,’ even if he’s just being nice for our benefit, the chick’ll always believe him and buy. My best sales are to dudes, really, not chicks. And you know something? It’s not rich chicks who buy. They already know what they look good in and what they want. They can mail-order it all from New York. It’s the poor chicks who’ll buy anything flashy just because it looks new.”
Chris said, “I once worked in a parking lot in Montreal and every day, practically every day, our rates went up another nickel. I kept noticing that it was the poor people with the carloads of kids that never complained. Never a peep out of them. It was the rich guys in their Mercedes that raised holy hell. A lot of times they’d refuse to pay at all.”
The redhead smiled. She said, “Carol knows about this. At Christmas, if you get a poor enough girl from the hills and her old man in here, and you get her to try on anything at all, you’ve got a sale. The guy buys out of guilt at that time of year. They buy just because they’re grateful you let them in the store to touch the stuff. See, they’re used to discount joints where there are, essentially, no sales personnel. But here they buy crap that looks terrible and is in the wrong size and doesn’t fit. And the thing is they’ll never wear it.”
“Fat people,” Carol said. “Fat guys with fat chicks.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Nice.” He turned back to Carol. “What about fat people?”
“Ooh, look. Robin doesn’t like us talking,” said the redhead. She returned the glare of the salesgirl who was helping Maureen.
“She named Robin?” Chris said.
“Yes, that’s Robin,” Carol said. “She thinks we’re blowing her sale. You’re supposed to be over there, man, looking at Robin’s tits.”
The redhead started laughing.
“An in-joke,” Carol said. “Just an in-joke. Robin is our favorite chick. She sells to the man, see? And she goes all out.”
“Sell those shoes,” laughed the redhead. “Sell those coats. She’s half-owner. She’s our boss.”
“Okay,” Chris said. “I promise I’ll go over and look at Robin’s tits if you’ll tell me about fat people.”
“Hey, Chris! This one or the other?” Maureen called. “Or this?” She held up a dress on a hanger.
“Let’s see that one on you,” Chris said.
27
Maureen was crazy about her new shoes. She put them on her hands, and danced them on the dashboard. They were oxblood leather slings with tiny gold buckles on the straps. “And this dress!” she said. She had chosen the pink one and a striped grosgrain ribbon for a belt.
“Pricey, though,” Chris said as he steered and smoked.
“The one you ruined was plenty more,” Maureen said.
“I ruined?”
“Forget it,” Maureen said.
“I talked to these two girls,” Chris said.
“I saw,” Maureen said. “The one waiting on me said the two you were yapping with are going to get fired.”
“Yours was Robin—the one waiting on you. She half-owns the store. The two I was talking to thought you should be a model. They couldn’t figure out why you were with a jerky-looking guy like me.”
Maureen, with effort, let out a little burp. “You’re buttering me up,” she said.
“No, I’m really not, Maureen.”
“Oh, you sham. You farce. You ridiculous fraud.”
“Hey, look,” Chris said. “Can’t you take an honest compliment?”
“Not when it comes from you.”
“There’s my place,” Chris said.
Chris’s motel, the Tavern Inn, was a trapezoidal building on concrete legs. It stood off a thoroughfare at the edge of the campus. The street was a fairly long drag with all-night food stores, three movie theaters, and college hangouts. The wet sidewalks were empty and smeared with reflections of pink and green. Chris swerved into the parking lot.
In the lobby, the members of a delegation of Africans sat on their luggage or stood in circles, chuckling. Flashcubes were fired. West of the lobby was a big tavern. Chris led Maureen inside. There was a circular bar in the center and lots of vinyl-upholstered booths. A huge chandelier hung over the bar and three yellow spotlights blazed from the ceiling. Otherwise, the place was dark. On a dais in the back, a trio of musicians slushed through “I Can’t Get Started.”
“Did I ever show you my blue-racer trick?” he asked Maureen.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Chris plucked a match from the book on their table and struck fire. He touched the head of the match to his whiskey and a blue flame spurted over the shot glass. He drank the flame and the whiskey.
“Blue racer,” he said.
“Yeah, you did show me,” Maureen said. “Very mature.”
The lights in the tavern went out and came back on. The crowd of a dozen or so people moaned. Then the lights went out for good.
28
This whole wing’s out,” said the kid in a red tunic with brass buttons as he led them with a flashlight to Chris’s third-floor room. They followed the boy out of a stairwell and down a carpeted corridor. Room doors on both sides stood open. There were low voices. People stepped into the hall behind them. The boy in the tunic stopped by a door. He shined the flashlight up on his own face, holding it like a microphone. He had pitted skin and dirty hair parted low over his eyebrows and tucked behind his ears. He was so ugly in the bizarre light that Maureen couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She stared at him shamelessly, her mouth open. She twisted away when he put the beam on her and then on Chris to say good night.
“What a revolting person,” Chris whispered. He turned his key in the lock.
He went immediately to the portable refrigerator on the floor by the far wall. He shoved some packaged food around, then, standing inside the refrigerator’s little door, took time downing a canful of Schlitz. “Warm already,” he said, and belched. “Now.” He got onto his knees and rolled four candles off the refrigerator’s bottom shelf. Maureen leaned against the bureau and watched him light them.
They followed the candlelight into a second room. Across the room was a king-sized bed, which the maids had fixed into an orange-wrapped package. There was a divan where Chris stretched out. He kicked off his sandals.
“You have the contingency conveniences,” Maureen said.
“All of them,” Chris said. “That’s because I’ve been staying in hotels so long. I even have a special showerhead I put in if I’m going to stay for like a month. Love me?”
She said, “You think it would hurt me to take two Librium after all the Scotch I had?”
“I don’t know. Why do you want to?”
“No reason.” She rummaged around in her bucket bag and came up with an amber bottle. She uncapped it, then slid out a couple of turquoise and black capsules. She swallowed them dry.
In the night, after the pills took effect, she lay by Chris on the bed and babbled in a throaty voice. “If the bus’d break down,” she said, “we kids’d have to walk up that hill. Once we got snowed in. I remember Dad, for some reason, made a big kettle of lentil soup. Mom’d always fall asleep watching the TV, wake up middle of the night and yank off her socks or sweater, whatever. She never got a real night’s rest. And TVs didn’t last long. She burned them out. We had a dog she tied to the chaise by its leash. Pietro was its name. Mom drank big, clear cups of—smelled like pine needles—gin. Then take hot baths and lie on the—stare up at the ceiling. I remember she, her family, had a trophy company. It seemed like I went there once. I helped do something like put ‘winner’ on the trophies. I don’t know. Mom’d sing, ‘You’re a weird.’ No. ‘You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan.’ I can’t ever think of that song without seeing her.”
Maureen went in and reluctantly out of a wheat-colored dream, her face against a foam-rubber pillow. She said, “I hear the ice-crusher machine.”
“Possibly,” Chris said.
“Then we have electricity. Have I been talking long?”
Three
1
Chris steered his car up the Cleveland drive. Between gear changes, he touched a light scar on Maureen’s tawny knee.
“Good,” he said. “Your old man’s up.”
“Why good?” Maureen said. “The last time he saw you, he was breaking a blood vessel to get you in jail.”
“I’ll square it with him,” Chris said.
Cleveland was in the yard with Jack, the gardener. Both men were attached to pieces of lawn-grooming equipment. They faced each other, huddling over some joke. Cleveland was chuckling when he looked around Jack and spotted the car.
Chris braked within shouting distance. “Truce, Mr. C.? Mo and I have patched things up!”
“With used bandages!” Maureen said.
Cleveland spoke something to his gardener and they both laughed again, both looking down and away from the car. “You get any storm damage?” Chris called. Cleveland let his spade fall and sauntered over.
Chris said, “We saw a Waffle Palace that was blown in and lightning got a Burger Villa, it looked like. You?”
“Not too bad,” Cleveland said. “A midget golf course of mine had its features rearra
nged. That’s the only damage I’ve heard about.” He looked to Jack for confirmation. Jack rocked his thin head yes. “We got limbs down, of course,” Cleveland said.
“That’s not bad,” Chris said.
The gardener came part of the way to the car. He squatted on his ankles and brushed a tiny area of wet grass with his hand.
“Jack, you trying to dry out the lawn manually?” Cleveland called. “That’s Jack, my yard maintenance engineer,” Cleveland said to Chris.
“Stephanie’s pa,” Maureen said.
“Ah, Stephanie,” Chris said.
Cleveland said, “So how is it?”
Maureen made a vague noise.
“You’re having an anxiety seizure and can’t talk?” Cleveland said.
“I’m grooving,” Maureen said.
“Howdy’s not grooving,” Cleveland said. “His play debut—or whatever it is—is tonight. He’s nervous. Lola says we all ought to be there, and she’s spreading tickets around. She even dropped one on Jack.”
“Seeding the audience,” Chris said.
“Making an audience in the first place,” Cleveland said. “The dirty weather hurt sales or something. They’re afraid of an empty house.”
“I’ll be there,” Chris said.
“Jack’s going if he wants to hold this job. Aren’t you, Jack?” Cleveland called.
“Maybe I’ll go bull with Howdy,” Chris said. “Try to calm him down. If I can do anything to help you two out, let me know.”
“Usual Saturday stuff,” Cleveland said. “You borrow some work clothes from Howdy. I’ll give you work if you want work.”
“I didn’t mean for pay,” Chris said.
“Neither did I,” Cleveland said.
Chris reversed the car, swung it around, and followed the driveway on down the corridor that led through the poplar trees to the carriage house.
He and Maureen went up the stairway and through Howdy’s open door. Howdy was studying a fat mimeographed script.
“‘The sails pant, the sea chafes, the clouds call us away!’” Howdy said. He wore black clothes and glasses with tortoiseshell frames.
