by Evan Dara
He is standing, facing her, very close. She is sitting, motionlessly, but up-eyed expectant, on the beige-painted radiator cover, her perch for warm. Rick moves closer; Carol stands. Rick takes and palms her shoulders, presses her to sit back down, upon the heater-cover, its brittle, chafing top-paint crackling, fissuring—
—O-right. Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max for twenty-one ninety—
—Sexyback – mmm Justin Timb! Now Irreplaceable, I love Beyoncé – now We Run This, Missy Elliott is just—
—And – and I am feeling so—
—So—
—As if—
—Or—
—And, like—
—And at Skidoos? The dry-cleaners? They’ve started charging for storage. You leave a shirt with them one day past two weeks and they hit you with a bill. A supplemental bill, beyond what they charge for the cleaning—
—Yeah, I just saw it. My solar plexus just sank. I was driving by and saw that Boomers has closed. The jazz club on St. Paul Street. Makes you sad. They’ve been there for at least fifteen years. And they had great people: Jimmy Heath, Don Byron, Bucky Pizzarelli, Mike Mainieri. List goes on and on. And the place was so nice: the wood paneling, those tall cushioned stools, the low cushioned chairs along the sides of the music area. The bottles like spark forests behind the bar, shattering the beams from the ceiling bulbs. The top-lit aura around the stage. Yeah, this is really sad, really just a shame and sad, a loss to the community. Always meant to check it out.
—Come on. Don’t believe it. Really. People’re just – as usual – overreacting. Everything’s fine. We’ll be OK! Really, nothing major, nothing out of the ordinary’s happening. It’s just what’s flying in the window this week. Really, don’t worry about it. Don’t—
—And where are we in all this? What is the weight of we? We are a city that, over years and decades and centuries, manufactured dyestuffs and good stern wool; that contributed to the nation’s richness of cotton and paper and shoes; that fought with its sons and its words for abolition; that shipped lumber through the Chamoon Canal to build forts and houses and administrative structures nationwide; that fought with its example for prison reform and earned great envy for its metalware. Here, we made things, and futures, and fairness, and prosperity. Here, we worked and sent down roots.
Here, we made lives.
No: here made lives.
—And look at this: The Anderburg Calendar, dropped on my porch’s welcome mat. Size of a piece of paper, all of twelve pages thick, flimsy foolscap stock, crawling with words and pictures. And, I mean: we have a new magazine …?
It’s listings and ads – but it isn’t listings and ads. Look, all the quote-unquote listings are more like appeals: there’s one here to put together a Tuesday-evening bowling night, another to start a coffee klatch, another on page eight to set up a quote-unquote Victorian-style At Home Day. They’re listings for events that don’t exist, or at best are in the planning stage. And the ads – actually, its the ad spaces: there’s only one ad, and that’s for some catering company I’ve never heard of. All the rest of the content is just spume from the city: tourist numbers (declined in 2006), the history of the Willard Street Inn, the warmest A-Burg May on record.
Exactly: essential reading.
And check this out: Vol. I, No. 2.
Jeez, must have missed the gala inaugural edition …
Now consider: Someone planned this? Someone dreamed this up? Someone designed it and presented it to investors who evaluated and thought and actually approved—?
Now Rick and Carol are standing in a dark corner, in a dark corner of Carol’s apartment’s only non-kitchen room. There are Carol and Rick backlit by a hanging, acorn-shape streetlamp, sourcing glow through the night window. They are clenched together, clenched into a huddle of hitting each other, swinging and roundhousing lightly squeezed fists and bottoms of hands, their affronts landing on collarbones, on side-ribs, on shoulders, on arms.
No, Carol says. I don’t want this any more. Don’t – this has got to end …
Rick ups and grabs the window’s muslin curtain, quickly draws it closed. Carol rises to him and starts hitting again, his upper arms, his chest, using the sides of her fists now, pushes closer and grabs his hair, his head, in her two hands, kisses him longly on the lips. They axis and twist within the kiss, he ensnares her in his arms, he, predator-like, rears and rages to kiss her uptensing white neck …
—And now at Old West End Clinic they’re selling off animals! They have something in their pens or cages or whatever for two weeks and they just sell the poor thing, hustle it out to some housepet job-lotter or someone. A dog, a cat – your best-loved longhair – you bring it in for care or spaying or just kenneling or whatever and something happens or your kid gets sick or you got to go out of town and get distracted when you come back and – and they’ve already put this on their receipts, written out there on the back! Sick or healed or whatever in good shape, the animal gets a pricetag – you hope that’s what they do—
They move towards Carol’s couch, unmaking buttons. Carol wriggles out of her dingy jeans, reverses off socks, goes back to shirt buttons, hunches her shoulders free, and Rick’s hand is on her pubis, probing the upcomers of her thighs and sampling her seams. Carol breaks apart Rick’s belt and moves his pants down his legs, all while kissing. She puts one hand at the base of his backbone, the other on his penis, already erect, poking. She holds and strokes his penis, her finger-trailing fist swimming up and down, then she moves closer and presses Rick’s penis vertical between them, a fluorescent lamp lighting their bellies. Hearts grow hectic, and audible; two necks are kissed at once. Still kissing, they descend to Carol’s couch.
They are entangled now, sending hands down body-sides and up into jangly hair, lapping each other like grooming cats. Carol, on bottom, beneath Rick’s kisses, pets her own breast, rubbing the underside of her nipple, pinching it but not hard. Letting herself go, she slides down the ceiling of Rick’s body, handmove by handmove, to grab his penis and pivot it into her mouth. And she stays there, handling and sucking, fluting the bottom of his penis while keeping the tip within her mouth, before rising back to his kiss and anchoring her slim hips squarely down and welcoming, with her hand, his penis within her. They rock, gently, lyrically, then forcefully. They are together. Touches glissade. Rhythms quicken. They are every kind of closeness.
—And so OK, you know, that’s how it is these days, that’s how things are going and what its becoming and seemingly fucking staying, there is stinking shit going down all over the place and so we got together, you know, a bunch of us – yes we’re worried about our jobs, we – most of us have families, we got houses and dental bills and people relying on us, kids who keep coming back to that table – so seven of us got together from shipping, we specifically kept it to the shipping department and on Tuesday morning we finished our coffee and made a huddle and kept ourselves the only ones in the elevator and went up to the fourth floor, we didn’t tell anybody and pushed the door and marched right into management department ready with a rap that we needed to know where we fucking stood. And the bosses, we looked, the desks. We looked! The bosses were gone. Frank, Abelardo, James Moore – all, every of them not in the building. Fired, vamoosed, no way anyone was going to tell us. Sara – their head secretary – she just sat there when we first walked by her, at first she said Hi then she just looked at us but she didn’t know. She didn’t know shit. And when we went back to her, like we were going to call her out on it, like we might actually expect something real from somebody, she looked like she was going to cry.
—And when she told me the total it was like …wow. Wow, you know, how can she even bring herself to say that amount. Thirty-two dollars for just a small batch of back-up groceries – carrots, potatoes, coffee, goat cheese, canola oil, milk, nothing special. Not even half a cart! And the prices at Teddie’s Garage are like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t get an electrician for the fixture over the bathroo
m mirror but what can you do? What can you do. I mean, that’s just how it is now.
—And now Discover Jazz is cancelled? All of a sudden they aren’t going to hold it this year? I – this – it’s one of the highlights of the summer, our summer, for locals, everyone all waiting for the music and all the dancing in the ballroom at the Marriott, and the catering there, from the hotel and from Panadero, they bring in the big two-foot-tall cakes and those sticky cinnamon pastries and all. Must have three hundred people, every year, every year!, Doug Hauser and his Big Band, they are so good and so winging with Doug up front there with his trumpet, he’s missing the tip of his first finger but he still plays so well, we all look forward to it, I am so—
—Commute to Lebanon? Every day? That would be what, an hour and twenty minutes in the car each way, an extra three hours – three hours plus – added to my day every day …? That – and there’s no guarantee how long it will last, there are lots of lathe operators in the region, I’m good damn straight I am but with all the others – in Lebanon I heard they don’t have to pay all the damn fees and surcharges and shit that City Hall keeps knocking everyone on the head with here …
And business taxes in New Hampshire are less, I think, maybe one or two percent. I think.
It’s a pretty nice drive though, of course. Parts of I-89 are OK.
A nicer drive than it is to God-damn Bangalore …
—And what I don’t quite get, what I am not … Listen, sure, there’s a mention every now and then in a chat room; I suspect I’ve seen about three. And I managed to find one online forum that had started up. But then these things don’t go anywhere. The forum, after maybe three or four posts, just petered out. No one asked more questions, and there were no further replies to earlier posts. And two of the posts that had been received were about the possibility of parking in the old University lots; trivia, insignificant things. Now don’t get me wrong: I go outside, I don’t spend my every waking second online. I like to barbecue. But even someone who just logs on occasionally, you’d think he’d find more. That it’d be referred to more. Much more.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma – so now, you know, I’m thinking maybe I should post something myself. You know, try to revive one of the existing threads, maybe even create a new one – kick up some dust, see who’s listening, I can’t be the only one who—
—Canned peas, canned soups, tinned tomatoes; Wheat Chex, sardines, salmon in a can, melba toast, bottled water; oatmeal, corned beef hash, everything – just get them, bring them in, forget the cost, there’s room in the basement, it’s cool enough down there, they’ll last. But calm, don’t be obvious, don’t be seen loading up, make multiple trips, to different supermarkets, even on the same day, today, no one will know, no chance no way anyone will notice—
—And there is news in this? There is something to talk about here? When, somehow, through some impossible chance, my glance happens to tap upon the glance of someone else, someone else turns away. Always, always, every time – on the ring bus, while walking past the planters on Lake Street, on line at Bessery’s butchers, sitting comfortably in a living room with my own sister’s reading group – no matter who, no matter where, I look and I am dodged: their eyes shoot away, a dollar on a sidewalk, there and shoom, gone. The very second I offer my light, I receive eclipse. So I console myself, I tell myself perfect stories: that there is no news in this, that this is necessary for the world to function, the mechanism is working perfectly: nightlights shut off when they see sunshine. But the consolation works as it always does: it doesn’t work at all. My stories must be for someone else, perhaps the person who wrote them. So I withdraw, I disperse myself, I look everywhere except where I most want to look, and I miss these people even without meeting them—
Here you go, Carol says, and hands a mug up to Rick. Rooibos. Really good. Really like woody and sweet. I made the pot maybe six minutes before you got here.
Thanks, Rick says. Rrm. Yeah, this is a good one.
Holding lookalike ceramic cups, brown with maple-leaf insets and immobile bubbles in the wavy glaze, they move from the kitchen into Carol’s only room. There: the couch, the bed, the corner desk piled with folders, the floor vase spouting peacock feathers, the scarves draped around the mirrors, the silvery darbuka drum. The night tones rebutted by lone-bulb fixtures turned to face walls. It is an unexceptional Wednesday 10 p.m.
So, Carol says. I spoke with Sherry. And she was nice. She said she’d keep her eyes open.
Good, Rick says. And I got in touch with Manny Lewisson – the guy at Lake Chamoon ferries? And … And same thing.
Great. I also put in a call to the chick I know at the University Inn? And she really was decent, she said they might be looking for a receptionist—
And on Monday, I looked up that rich couple who wanted a part-time—
Great.
They turn back to their tea, they warm the soft bottoms of their cup-fingers, they slurp-avoid burning their lips. This is going to be OK, Carol says. No need to call Tony Robbins yet.
They plan the next week’s visit to downtown, ticking off the names of shops both in and just around center city. Carol calls it scavenging a future. They rehearse lines, plan gambits. Carol suggests what Rick might wear – his black jeans, his detergent-blue shirt, an easily removable and restorable tie. They snuggle and hug; Carol likes to place the side of her face full-flush with her partner’s, temple-cheek-jaw, and hold it there. Carol reads the next chapter, aloud, of Nadine Gordimer. Rick sits on the opposite end of the dark blue couch and listens, and drifts.
Then it’s Tuesday:
–Thanks for coming by.
–Sure, absolutely. We’ll keep it on file.
–No problem. I know how to reach you.
–Yeah, please, please try again next month.
–Good to see you, man.
–You got it. I’ll be sure to let you know if anything changes.
They drink white tea in Carol’s cave-lit night-room. They murmur and hug. They rub their knuckles in protest against the desiccating radiator heat. Known, never-seen cars sizzle past the window’s single glaze.
—And like on the website, the government site – you know Anderburg’s on the web, right?, the city has its own …? Nothing. Absolutely not one word. It’s just all normal here-and-there stuff about a change in parking on Battery Street and next Tuesday’s budget-review meeting and – o my God – how they’re accepting suggestions for alternatives to rock salt for next winter … I mean, can you believe this? Can you believe what they—?
—But mom, I … I want – we have to upstake too! Billy, his mom’s doing it, he’s upstaking next week, and Lees family’s renting a whole U-Haul and – I – we have … Ma, we, I want to—
—Why should I pay for that? OK – why should I? I can get it – today, right now, right this instant – I can get that online for nothin’, or next to it. At like two dozen sites. You should be glad I’m in here – that’s what you should be thinking, OK? So people see me. Why should I pay for anyth—?
—And the numbers of them … The numbers of them there, sitting on the benches, lying all over the grass, and women, all the women with cigarettes, and teeth they don’t take care of, and dogs, they all have dogs, some of them are on ropes but some are just running around free, and all of them wearing wristbands or some kind of bracelets and holding cans … I don’t want to make any claims about what kind of cans, but these transients always seem to have something to sip on, they certainly have enough money for that … Their pants and coats all run down to frays, but they still have lots of money for cans … I mean, just look at them in Battery Park, and they’re all along the Boardwalk, and in the Fishing Pier lot, clusters, gangs … Where do—
—Out the door, lug the bags down the back steps and just leave them there, leave them anywhere, someone will find them. It’s all going to go off by the time we open tomorrow, and we get here at 8 a.m., and, I’m sorry, there is no sense in wasting food that can s
till be eaten. Sure, the bananas are a little brown, the chard’s a little wilty, even now no one will buy them, as if there’s anyone coming in to look—
— My god. Look at that. It towers. It looms. It’s jolly. Right on Shelburne Road, right where the traffic from 189 leads into town. Covered, it is, big swirling letters, red and blue over a white and little bit of green background. The size of an IMAX screen! Unbelievable.
Anderburg …
The “Capital of New England”
Welcomes YOU!
Great for Visiting and Shopping
Stop on by and look around!
Home of The Church Street Marketplace
Oh, yes. Lordy me. Thank you, City Hall. Makes all the difference. Just what the city—
—And aw look here shit. Run all the way over and I knew I should have called, I knew I should have called. Man, Renzo’s been here forever, sweet old guy bought my first rubbers here and all the cough medicine during that time, guy didn’t make the slightest face when I bought the rubbers. Old gray-moustache guy just getting older, older and smaller, shuffling back and forth behind the counter in these heavy pants, register to stuff, register to other stuff, always new displays near the cash register with new diet gimmicks but you could see he wasn’t into it, couldn’t talk about any of the diet shit without raising his eyes to merciful heaven and shrugging his shoulders, Hey what can I tell you?, I just sell the shit. Man, shit, I should have called, Seattle’s open at this hour—?
—The Puritans? Fuck, why she got to make me write a report about the fucking Puritans. We’re studying – social studies class this year is Vermont, mm hm, total waste of time except the State wants it to graduate, no one but no one gives a – and the Puritans, they from Massa Rhode Island, or even, even like from England. Fuck this’ll take like two fucking hours, Miss Janis said three pages, I gotta help my father, go round to the construction sites with him, Miss Janis he’s between situations at the moment and sometimes they let outsiders haul off wood and non-copper metal I do not have the time for—