“It’s just irritated,” Pet dismisses. “I’ll be fine. Maybe some cream.”
“Look how red you are.”
“It’s fine.”
Anita still can’t believe what she sees. “My God, Pet, what were you thinking?” she says. She rubs herself, in sympathetic pain. “Next you’ll go off and have your clit pierced.”
Well, I wasn’t thinking, Pet wants to say. Not at all, and that’s probably the point. I’m just moving, acting, doing. There’s no other way to be, now. All we can do is get sucked along, just be. Do. That’s all that’s left. Who the hell has time to think anymore?
“Come on, Nita,” she says instead, just being, reaching again for the Edge. “I’ll do you. Take your mind off things.” She shakes the can until the rattle fills the small room like silly thunder.
Great, Anita thinks, this is just what Nils needs to see later. This is just what we need to be doing—dulling his already-dull blade with our pubes, giving ourselves a kinky makeover. Then she thinks, you know, what’s the big deal? It’s just hair. She’s up for being sucked along, like her friend. Do. It’s as good an idea as any. Of course, an exclamation point wouldn’t suit her mood. She’s never been an exclamation point kind of person. A question mark, that’d be Anita’s call. If that doesn’t just fit: a giant WHAT? to let the world know she’s got no fucking clue.
He’s not quite himself, Wood.
Hell, he’s not quite anyone. In less than forty-eight hours, his life has been recast and undone. True, it’s been Wood’s own recasting, his own undoing, but everything seems to be running away from him just the same. It’s like he’s got no say anymore, like he doesn’t matter. He guesses that was the idea, but his life has taken a life of its own, and he’s not even left playing the same role. He is here, in the upstairs apartment of an overweight waitress, momentarily alone in her bedroom area, listening to a heavysteady stream of what sounds like horse piss coming from the pocket door to the bathroom at the foot of her bed.
True as well, this last is not an unpleasant realization to the overindulged (as ever) Wood. Recast, undone . . . it doesn’t matter. The essentials are the same. Absolutely, the thought of his enormous new friend squatting mightily over her dwarfed toilet has an undeniable appeal. It runs alongside competing thoughts of his son Norman, his wrecked car, his first wife Elaine, the turmoil he imagines in the preproduction offices of his next picture, the calm he feels at being left alone, at last. Also, Anita and Pet—as much a part of him as they are now of each other.
Probably the biggest thought is for the general uncertainty he has unleashed around him, all of which looms as this wild cacophony, while Wood—somewhere in silence, somewhere in the middle—struggles to understand the foofaraw. He listens to Grace, pissing, and, in the sound of her water meeting the town’s, he finds genuine release. There’s a peace and quiet inside the moment that he hasn’t known for way too long. Just last month, he paid $139.95, plus postage and handling, for a white noisemaker—the deluxe model Heart and Sound Machine from the new Sharper Image catalog—with settings to simulate the soothing sounds of rain on the roof, waves on the shore, critters in the night forest, to which he might lose himself and the world around him enough to facilitate sleep. Yet, there was no setting to match the sound of Grace pissing. Too bad. To listen to her now is to lose the wild cacophony, to drift off into the rhythms of silence, into nothing. If she can keep it up (and for a while it seems she can), he might just sleep for the next hundred years. As it is, he lightly nods off, flitting at the edges of a sound sleep for just a few beats, but long enough to become disoriented until Grace finally runs out of need. In the cruel sound of her flushing, Wood is returned to his shifting reality.
He wills himself alert, reclaims his bearings: ah, yes, here. This is where I am. This is what’s happened. This is me now. He looks about, takes it all in, plans to think ahead. The one-room apartment is decorated with framed posters advertising out-of-town art shows and a lobby poster for Scorcese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which Wood figures must be the Easy Rider of waitress movies. There’s not much in the way of furnishings: tattered loveseat, a single straight-backed chair, full-size bed (a mattress, box spring, and frame, just), Formica coffee table, two mismatched floor lamps, the windows dressed only in shades. There’s a counter and two stools pulled close enough they might be kissing; the counter tops are showroom clean, save for some loose packets of Equal sugar substitute, the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, an open box of Kellogg’s Corn Pops, some personal mail. The room is dominated by Grace’s one apparent extravagance: a kick-ass Mitsubishi entertainment system, complete with wide-screen television, side-by-side four-headed VCRs (for dubbing), high-definition DVD player, and fully integrated stereo.
The tiny apartment is in only slight disarray, most of which seems Wood’s doing: kicked pillows, rumpled linens, a happy forest of pink stuffed animals floored by an errant elbow from a shelf alongside the bed. His clothes are bunched in a ball in the far corner of the room, and, in their bunched position, they appear somewhat ratty, uninspired, out of fashion. Now that he’s noticed them, he can’t find any accompanying plans to put them back on. Oh, he’ll be out of the apartment soon enough, and back about his strange new business, but he is in no hurry. He stays under Grace’s sheets, waiting for her to return from her ablutions, trying to keep warm (it’s like the whole town’s in need of insulation), angling for a way to parlay his good fortune at being here into a shower, possibly a change of clothes. He’s worrying what kinds of stories he’ll need to pin on Harlan Trask in order to win Grace’s accommodation.
Grace, meanwhile, loiters at the other side of her pocket door, wanting to allow this Harlan person time to get dressed—maybe even to leave, if that’s what he wants. No reason to expect anything more. She’s seen enough Sally Jesses to know this is the way things usually go. It’s the way of the world, and she should just get used to it. Besides, it wasn’t like it was even his idea or anything, this getting together in the middle of the afternoon. Well, it was, but it was also hers. It was a mutual thing, a consenting adults thing. Matter of fact, if she wants to get particular, it was mostly Grace’s doing. She’s a big girl, she’s got her own impulses, and if she’s big enough to act on them she’ll have to find room for the notion that there’s someplace else the guy needs to be. There’s actually someplace else she needs to be, too: downstairs, fixing for the dinner crowd, touching back down on the rest of her life.
“You’re still here,” she announces, sliding open the pocket door, noticing Wood between her sheets. She is pretending at surprise and truly surprised, both.
“Something I need to ask you,” he says, patting the bed at his side, smoothing a place for Grace to sit. He wants to get through this.
“Something big?” Grace wants to know, not moving from the doorway.
Wood hedges. “To me, you know, I guess it’s pretty big, huge, but that’s me. That’s where I’m coming from. You, I don’t know. You, I’m hoping maybe you’ll see it like a little thing.”
Grace is interested as hell, but determined to play it cool. She read a book once, Interacting to Advantage, in which the author told how she should present herself without giving anything away. Her mood, her emotions, anything. Doesn’t matter that she’s shared an intimacy with this man, that they’ve exchanged bucketfuls of bodily fluids. It should, but she won’t let it. Sport fucking, her regulars call it, no more meaningful than bumping carts with your neighbor at the Stop ’n’ Shop: oh, excuse me, nice to see you, yes, love that little thing you’re able to do with your hips, let’s get together again soon. She wants to come across as guarded, indifferent, like it tells in the book. She knows enough to know that you never know—right?—and that this is the only way she’s got to keep from being too exposed. “Now?” she says, trying on indifference. “You need to tell me this right now?”
“Or later, doesn’t matter.” Wood allows himself an actor’s pause (if anyone’s entitled,
it should be him) before lapsing into melodrama: “But soon, though.”
She buys into it, full price. “What?” she says softly. “What is it?” She has to know.
“Basically a favor. That’s all. Don’t mean to make it sound like such a big thing, but I’m at a place in my life where I could really use a good turn.” Of course, he does mean to make it sound like such a big thing. That’s his plan exactly. He bites back his lip as if to hold off tears, congratulates himself for the “place in my life” phrasing. The way she watches Jerry Springer and all, this Grace is probably a sucker for pop psychobabble. He’s thinking maybe he can muster some crying if he sees that it’s needed. Matter of fact, he gets close to it here: “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to lean on someone else.”
Grace, suckered, reaches for his hands, sandwiches them between her own, waits for the rest.
Here it comes, closer still: “Grace, it’s like this. I need a place to crash for a while. Crash, settle down, whatever. I need to get back on my feet.” He dabs at his eyes with the top sheet.
“What can I do?” She knows, but she wants to hear.
“I’m wondering if I can’t maybe stay here a while, get myself a job. Like I said, get back on my feet.” He doesn’t wait for a response, figures it’s best to keep talking. “I’m not looking for a hand-out or anything, just a place to stay, maybe a couple weeks, until I can put together some money, get a place of my own. I’ll pay my own way, soon as I get some money coming in, it’s just that all the rooms to let in town, they want the money up front. Like a week’s worth. You know these people.” She nods to confirm that she does, but he keeps talking. “They need to make their nut for the winter, I can see that, but that kind of money I don’t have. Not anymore.” He touches her hair. She seemed to like that. He’s to where he’ll try anything. “I know you don’t know me or anything. I mean, who the hell am I, right? But I think you can sense I’m a good person. Two people don’t share what we just shared without trusting each other, at least a little. All I’m asking is that you keep trusting me, maybe trust me a little bit more. I just need a shot.”
She has questions. She doesn’t want to scare him off, but there are things she’s dying to know. Like, why here, in Maine? Why her? To look at him, you’d never guess he had no place to go, no money in his pockets. He’s well-groomed, articulate. Clothes could use a wash, now that she thinks of it, but they were nice looking once. And recently. Him, too. Still, the package doesn’t fit with her idea of desperation. Something must have happened. Something worth knowing. “You want to tell me about it?” she says, softly still.
“Long story short?”
“For now.”
He comes up with something. He works from the script, sticks to Harlan Trask’s story, but there are whole chunks missing from memory. Anyway, what Wood does recall doesn’t entirely fit. In the picture Front to Back, Trask uproots his young bride to Canada to avoid Vietnam, leaving his conservative father with an office products business he can no longer manage and the indignity of having a draft-dodger for a son and partner. Wood no longer remembers where in Middle America the story was set—Idaho, Iowa, one of those—except that it was the sort of place where youngsters did what they were told, where patriotism was absolute. Here, for Grace, he’s got to embroider things to get what he wants. He borrows the backstory, but that’s about it. He throws in a bit about losing his wife to cancer, no children, and, from there, it’s just a short leap to the White House pardon, to a less forgiving reception back home, to vagabonding the country, running from what happened, looking to put down some new roots. It’s not hard to see how just a few wrong turns might have led to this sorry place.
“Harlan,” she says, pulling close. “I had no idea.” She’s thinking, if this is what he wants to tell me, then this is fine.
“I’m okay,” he says. “I’m really fine. I just need a break, is all. A change of clothes.”
“A fresh start. Like you said, someone to believe in you. Everything’ll just fall from there. You’ll see.”
“You think?” He starts to dab at his eyes with the sheets again, maybe ask for tissues, but he catches himself. Doesn’t pay to overdo it.
“Yes, I think.” Grace has all the answers. She tells him what. She’ll get dressed, get the dinner menu started, leave him alone up here just to relax. There’s meat loaf tonight on special, and that’s always a job and a half. Harlan can just use the time to rest and think. Lord knows he must be tired. Just look at him. Probably a shower’d do a world of good. She’s got some sweats in her closet, he can help himself, they should fit. He needs to get past the color, is all. They’re lilac purple, she’s sorry to say. Not exactly gender neutral, but who’s gonna know? She’ll send one of the Lennys up later with a plate of food. Something hearty, she promises, with built-in seconds. She’d come up herself, but she hates to leave the place during the rush. She’s not exactly the poster girl for delegating responsibility, she hopes he understands. Anyway, she should be done around ten, maybe eleven, it’s not a late crowd around here, and after she closes up they can talk things through some more, see how tomorrow’s gonna look, and the day after that. “One day at a time, Harlan,” she says. “Remember that show?”
He does, but only because Papa John’s kid played one of the leads back when they used to run together. The man was always meaning to drag his friends down to one of the tapings in a charade of pride and doting, but it never happened, leaving Wood with no knowledge of the show other than the casting. Nobody watched television, then, at least nobody in the business, but they all read the trades, and news of Papa John’s kid landing a CBS sitcom spread like a bad chain letter.
“That it, then?” Grace says, sensing he doesn’t want to talk television. “Anything else you might need?”
Wood stands, pulls close. “No,” he says. “I’m good.” And he is. He lets the sheet drop to the floor, leans into Grace and places gentle butterfly kisses on her brow, her nose, her lips, the fleshy gobble of her chins. He means to overcome her with these tiny, soft kisses, with his famous naked self, but to Grace he’s merely naked. To her, this is more than enough, but Wood was hoping for more of an impact. Either he’s losing his touch, or she’s had enough, or he’s had whatever effect on her he’s going to have. Maybe there’s some place else she needs to be. Probably she’s thinking about dinner, opening up downstairs.
“Car,” she suddenly announces. “What you need is a car. Get out. See the sunset. Take in the town.”
A car? He hadn’t even thought to ask. “You think?” he says.
“I definitely think,” she insists. “It’ll be the best thing. You won’t feel so trapped up here waiting for me to close up downstairs.” She grabs a set of keys from a hook by the front door and hands them to Wood. “It’s the Brat out back,” she says.
“What color?”
She has to think about this. “You know, I’m not sure,” she allows. “That’s so weird. Gray, basically, I’m pretty sure. Maybe blue-gray. It’s always dark when I drive. That tells you how often I get out of the restaurant, right? Anyway, it’s the only one in town. You won’t miss it.”
“A Brat?” He likes that she calls her place a restaurant.
“A Brat. You know, like a pickup. It’s got those two seats in the bed, facing back. Totally useless. Very big in the seventies.”
Wood nods. So was he. Big in the seventies. True, there’s not much he remembers from that time other than his bigness, but there’s not much he remembers from the night before last. He couldn’t even swear to the color of his ditched Pathfinder.
“Still runs great,” she continues.
He puts the keys on the counter and pulls Grace back to where she was. “Not going anywhere just yet,” he says, a famous catch-phrase from The Half Shell, delivered with trademarked inflection. Right away, he wants to draw it back. What’s he thinking, mimicking his own material now? The line was the closest he ever came to a classic here’s-looking-at-you-kid momen
t on the big screen. For a while, there were T-shirts and bumper stickers all over the place echoing the sentiment—and here he is, falling back on it like he was at some party. Go ahead, make his day. Jesus. He covers his blunder with another round of gentlesweetallover kisses, hoping she won’t notice.
She doesn’t, but the kisses are at last getting to her. It astounds her, all this kissing. “There’s not like a quota?” she says, gentlysweetly pushing him away.
Wood is still worried about the catch-phrase, doesn’t get what she means.
“Kisses,” she says. “You’re not gonna run out or anything?” She grabs at his balls and kisses back, hard, wet, over and over. She works her hands around to his ass cheeks and presses herself against him; when she feels his excitement, she steps back. She hadn’t meant to get him going again; she’s really got to get back downstairs to see to her regulars. “Here,” she says, reaching for his hand, guiding it to his cock. “Hold that thought.”
She spins to leave, this Grace, and Wood’s thinking, okay, so this is what I’m into here. This is what I’ve got to work with.
All this, and a car.
“Tell me about yourself, Axel.”
Pimletz doesn’t know where to begin. It’s just been fifteen minutes, but already Warren Stemble has gotten two drinks into him. Vodka martinis. This is what publishers drink, apparently, and how quickly they drink it. Fifteen minutes, two drinks, and a load of shit. This must be the formula, and Pimletz fumbles through the mix. He’s not used to all this drinking and talking. Either one on its own would be a challenge.
“Nothing to tell, really,” he manages, “more’n you seem to already know.”
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