An Amateur's Guide to the Night

by Mary Robison

  “If you move that thing down some, you’ll catch me and my hound,” Devon says. “Buster.”

  Nobuko sits up, reaches behind, and twists a knob, killing the projector.

  “You have some of the nicest clothes,” Devon says, “but I never see them. I mean, you only wear those p.j.’s.”

  Nobuko puts herself on her stomach, and folds part of her pillow against her black hair.

  “Nothing to eat?” Devon says. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

  “What’s the matter?” he would say in the mornings before he left for work, and in the evenings when he returned.

  “There are things,” Nobuko says. “Many things.”

  “Lassitude?” Devon says. “Or is it depression?”

  “I may leave,” she says.

  THEY’D MET IN A BAR, A CHOWDER AND BEER PLACE, off Beacon Street, called The Ships. Nobuko was helping the bartender trim a tabletop Christmas tree, hanging her origami work among the bulbs. Devon, drinking up some holiday gift money, watched from down the counter as Nobuko deftly fanned and folded. She made clusters of tiny flowers. She made birds in flight, and angel dolls.

  “Anything,” he said, when Nobuko caught him staring. “Anything at all I can do for you.”

  “That’s nice of you,” she said.

  “I live upstairs,” Devon said, and that night Nobuko went to see his rooms, and stayed.

  But after a week, she lived less in the apartment over The Ships than in the bar below and on the street out front. She had a peddler’s license, and she set up a stand there and sold the things she made. She wore layers of heavy clothing, and went in and out of the bar all day. She knew dozens of people—she talked with everybody.

  Devon found work at the nursery and moved them, the next autumn, to the Back Bay place, which was bigger, lighter, safer. They took the apartment over on a World Series Saturday, and as Devon carried in labeled boxes and his old furniture, he wore a transistor radio on a wrist strap, for the game.

  Nobuko set up the three-piece stereo, donned her blue silk pajamas, and parked their deepest armchair by a loudspeaker. She went under headphones, shutting out Devon and closing her eyes.

  The next day, Devon laundered his shirts in the basement machines. He spray-starched and ironed them. He hung them in a bedroom closet, arranging them by hue—darkest to lightest. With a bristly brush he scrubbed the thick canvas coveralls that were his work suits.

  Nobuko used the earphones, or ran her movie projector, or folded paper.

  By evening, Devon had lettered his name and Nobuko’s on the framed card on their front door. He had hammered all the necessary brackets for curtain rods. He had put together their bed.

  But after that Sunday, the rest of their belongings stayed in boxes. Weeks went, and nothing got put away. When Devon needed a spoon, or a drinking glass, or playing cards, or kitchen shears, he had to hunt through the crates.

  “HELP ME OUT,” DEVON SAYS NOW. “JUST LOOK at me.”

  Nobuko turns slowly in the sheets and blankets. She tries a smile, but it fades quickly. “You look done in,” she tells him.

  “I’m killing myself,” he says. “I’m not used to having a job this hard, and doing it this faithfully. You know what I mean?”

  “Maybe. No,” she says.

  In the kitchen, he opens and heats two cans of chili. He warms a healthy splash of rum in a saucepan and swallows the drink for its fire. He thinks of Nobuko’s parents in San Jose. He hurries back to the bedroom. “Could your parents be of any help to you?”

  “I can get by,” Nobuko says. She shrugs. “They don’t want to know about it.”

  For the hundredth time, Devon asks Nobuko to marry him.

  “Oh, no, Devon. Un unh,” she says.

  “We’ll do better than this. We can do better than this place here. And my job, I mean. If that’s it.”

  “Nothing’s it,” Nobuko says.

  “GIVE HER MY BEST. TELL HER TO BUCK UP. TELL HER Johnny Foss wants her to get better,” Foss says.

  “That’ll help,” Devon says.

  “In two more seconds,” Foss says, “I’m going right over the top of that pea-brain in the Fiat.”

  “I can walk from here,” Devon says. He hops from the cabin of the Foss Nursery truck, which has been stalled in a Friday-night traffic tangle.

  “Hey, Devon! Give her my best,” Foss says. “It’s tough.”

  “Take it easy for the weekend,” Devon says.

  He starts jogging. There are chains of Christmas lights across the streets. A drugstore window is full of gold-foil candy boxes belted with fancy ribbons. A lot of car horns are ringing.

  Devon checks the mailbox, finds a gas bill and a newspaper page from a hardware store. He takes the steps, opens the door.

  Nobuko is sitting with someone. Her headphones are off, resting on the back of her neck. On a packing crate between her and the stranger is an assortment of plastic items—a shoehorn, key chains, a ruler, a medicine spoon. All the items are printed with the names, addresses, and slogans of local merchants.

  “Hi,” Devon says.

  “Hello Neighbor Club,” the stranger says.

  “Neighbor Club,” Nobuko says.

  The visitor is a man about forty. He’s dimpled, with a happy, careless-looking face, and a sloppy necktie. He shows Devon his dimples, and picks up his spiel. “Rush is a client I really feel good about backing. In fact, really all our clients are good people and they provide excellent service, but especially Rush.”

  Devon takes a seat on the floor by the packing crate. He examines the shoehorn. He reads, “Pulaski’s—Where The Shoe Fits.” The key chain, he notices, is from Foss’s Nursery and Gardening Center.

  “We don’t go to stores,” Nobuko says.

  “You never go, eh?” the man says, brightly. “Well, you may need to someday, when one of our little future Red Sox down on the street hits a home run through your window. That’s when you may want to think about window glass. And to get you thinking about the right people for glass, Donnelly’s would like me to give you this cap gripper. It’s a thing you’ll use ten times a day, if you’re like me. Loosens jar lids and does twist-off caps that won’t twist. I’m Burt Libby.”

  “Devon,” Devon says. “I like those gripper things.”

  “Well, this one’s yours. And another advantage of Donnelly’s is they have a frame-it-yourself department, which you can walk out of after an hour with your picture or art work perfectly framed under glass and ready to hang. Unless you’re like my wife and putter over which mat goes with which molding.”

  “We aren’t like her. We wouldn’t go there,” Nobuko says.

  “Oh, now, we might,” Devon says, laughing. “You never know. So, what’s the rest of this stuff? We get to keep it?”

  “Sure. See, it cooks down to this. The businessman wants to get you into his store one time, whether you’ll buy or not. That way, you know what he’s got and how to find him. So, plus what you see here, if you visit any of the places on the list I give you, they each have an additional goody for you when you go in.”

  “We don’t need any of it,” Nobuko says.

  “That’s fine and dandy. I’m not here to sell you a thing.”

  Devon reaches for Nobuko’s foot, which is near him—a foot that hasn’t worn shoes in weeks.

  The man says, “I think I may have interrupted your wife’s musical concert. You two knew I was coming?”

  “Yeah. I remember you called,” Devon says. “We set it up, in fact, I think.”

  “I could come back, when your wife’s feeling better.”

  “We’re all right,” Devon says.

  Nobuko is absentmindedly fingering a paper coupon the man has given her. With one hand she folds and unfolds, eventually producing a little animal with an oversized head.

  “Let me get you coffee or something,” Devon says to the man. “Out here in the kitchen.”

  On the wall next to the stove, Devon has tacked up a hoop
of pine branches got at discount from Foss’s, and some of Nobuko’s origami doodles.

  “Her work,” Devon says.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen the living room. Around there’s the bathroom.”

  “A big kitchen,” the man says.

  “You should’ve seen what we had before,” Devon says.

  “Bedroom through there?” asks the man.

  “You can look at it if you want while I get this coffee put together, or I think we have cider.”

  “No, we don’t!” Nobuko calls out.

  “How long have you been here?” the man says.

  “We just got in, really. I mean, it’s still in the planning stages.” Devon gets a flame moving under a kettle, and then he leads the man into the bedroom. “Just my shirts,” he says, swinging the closet door.

  “Movies?” the man says.

  “Yeah, the projector,” Devon says.

  “You make movies, or just watch them?”

  “Just watch them. They’re just some home movies,” Devon says.

  “So you get some popcorn and candy and get into bed. Very cozy.”

  “They are my movies!” Nobuko yells. The Hello Neighbor man raises his eyebrows and smirks. “What, exactly, is wrong with that woman?”

  Devon pushes the man, using the heels of both hands. The Foss Nursery job has made Devon strong, so the shove sends the man backward.

  “Out,” Devon says.

  The man stands cautiously and edges around Devon.

  “This is one I’ll remember,” he says.

  DEVON IS UP LATE FOR A WEEKNIGHT. BESIDE HIM on the thrift-shop couch, Nobuko is curled into a ball. She is falling asleep with her cheek on Devon’s thigh.

  “So nice,” he says.

  “You’ve been saying that a lot.”

  “You’ve been letting me say it,” he says.

  Nobuko says, “You remember Patsy DeSoto?”

  “With the violin? And the parakeet? A beggar?”

  “From Beacon Street, yeah,” Nobuko says. “I really miss seeing her. I miss her music. I miss being out there, seeing everybody. There’s so much that’s happening on the street. Everybody knows me. You know, here comes Ted Kennedy or a parade of Italian guys. Lots of people say, ‘There’s Nobuko,’ like they’re so glad to see me. Accidents happen. I got a lot of friends there. Reporters. That sidewalk artist? You bought him chalk once. Mike something?”

  “Yeah, I did,” Devon says. “But I always thought Mike was just losing time. He did some nice stuff, but it all got walked on and rained on and the dogs, of course.”

  “Being out there. Seeing everybody,” Nobuko says. “That’s the story.”

  Look at Me Go

  THERE WAS A FAINT, INDUSTRIAL HUM I THOUGHT I heard, and from up the beach the sound of swings creaking on chains, and a grinding noise from the spinning playground machine I’ve always called a whiz-around.

  There was a lighthouse, but it seemed ineffectual—like an amusement park thing. The day was pale. White glinted off the water. The sun was white. There was a breeze with autumn in it. The swimming season was almost over.

  At the next bench in the long shelter, a bare-chested man with a cord for a belt was lecturing quietly to his boy in Russian. Over that, Paul had the portable radio going, and we sat regarding the water, Paul and I.

  A collection of college kids in Yale sweat shirts were ruining their jogging shoes in the cold tide. There was a lifeguard with a whistle clamped in his teeth. He had found a length of crooked stick and was playing fetch with a wet spaniel.

  A little storm arrived. The lifeguard sent his dog walking and towed a safety boat closer to his stand. He went out onto a rock jetty to watch the sky. A jagged pin of lightning blinked, but far across the sound.

  Two boys younger than Paul—twelve, maybe—took over the guard’s tower. Down from the tower on a red towel, a woman in a fading suit shifted carelessly in her sleep and let her knees fall open. The pushing wind mixed up brown sand and shell splinters. A cat-food ad crackled from Paul’s radio.

  The Point had been a purposeless stop on a restless Saturday drive I was doing with my son. We had followed signs.

  Before that, I had had a bad fight with my husband, Jeff. Jeff was using the telephone at the time. He was on “hold.”

  “I don’t trust Paulie,” Jeff said to me, his fingers guarding the telephone’s mouthpiece. “I mean, I love him, he’s my son. I almost never believe him, though, and I’m sure he lies. I think he’s a fraud.”

  I remember reeling into the bedroom to get my set of car keys. I spent some time in there, angrily stroking my hair. I buttoned some clothes on—a cardigan. I didn’t bother with makeup, or even tying my tennis shoes.

  Jeff was still on the phone as I came back through the library. “Look, it’s not just you,” he was saying. “We’re all waiting on the shipment.” Jeff was executive salesman for a furniture store.

  I let the dog in off the balcony where she’d been barking away.

  “I’ve taken orders, too, Johnny,” Jeff said to the phone. “I could use the commissions, too. You want their home office number? I mean, you’re more than welcome to get them and try to shake them up. More than welcome.”

  I went back out onto the balcony. “Paulie!” I yelled to the yard, to the neighborhood in general. Paul was out there somewhere. He hadn’t heard what his father had said. Paul was fourteen; our only child.

  Inside again, I teased around with the dog, tussling with her over a rubber bone that had a jingle bell. I was waiting for Jeff.

  “Hold it one minute,” he said to me, and then to the phone, “Maybe you ought to pay attention more, friend.” He listened, and said, “I just don’t believe that.”

  FOR ALL THE SKYWORKS, THERE REALLY WASN’T MUCH RAIN.

  Paul had got off our bench and moved around the Russian boy. The boy had a horseshoe crab in his capture. “Badness!” Paul said. He did his girlish giggle.

  “It’s like a helmet, don’t you think?” asked the Russian boy. He tipped over the crab and revealed its jointed, struggling limbs. Paul yelped, bopped the boy on the shoulder, ran away, and came back again.

  The Russian father strolled over to my bench. His bare shoulders had been dampened by the meager rain. He had the big girth and rolling muscles of a laborer.

  A voice on Paul’s radio talked about Coleman Coolers. Our boys knelt together, drizzling sand onto the crab.

  “This one sleeps hard,” the Russian man said, smiling off at the woman on the red towel. She was in a sprawl.

  Thunder murmured. The lifeguard’s whistle chirped in a three-beat pattern. The woman drew herself up, curved her spine, stretching. She headed for the shelter.

  “Your sister?” the Russian man asked me.

  The Yale students—five of them—aimed their running game of plastic football for the shelter, although they were already soaked. The one girl in the pack collapsed onto a bench just down from mine. A young man with white ointment on his nose charged up and put himself on her lap. “Oof,” the Yale girl said.

  Her young man said something like, “Das vi danya,” to the Russian, and, “Stras vu eatya.”

  “Thank you,” the Russian said.

  My Paul tugged at his cotton-lisle shirt, fought his way out of it, and spread it on the sand. The other boy lowered the crab onto the shirt. The two began dragging the crab around, giving it a ride. They left a little wake on the rain-speckled beach.

  Paul’s chest looked dough-white, and his arms tubular next to the toned body of the Russian boy.

  The university students must have thought I was married to the Russian father. They spoke to us as a couple. They asked us about the Soviet Union.

  “What do I know?” the Russian said. “That was such a long time past.”

  “We’re in for it, weatherwise,” said the young fellow with the nose ointment. “Big storm due.”

  “They called that off,” his girl friend said. “Come on, Dan. Wi
ll you get up? My legs are getting numb.”

  Paul skipped up to me. “You should see its eyes,” he said.

  “Paulie, stop wiggling,” I said. “Get your shirt back on.”

  “Watch,” he said. He spun and did a gawky sprint for the water. He was proud of his imagined speed. He often referred to it. Look at me go. Things like that.

  “Some kids get big real fast,” said the Russian father. “Some other kids get to be kids a long time. I think they’re more lucky.”

  His boy called out to Paul, “What’s your time in the hundred?”

  Paul was by the water, out of breath, bent at the waist, his hands on his knees. “Ten-five,” he managed.

  “I’m sure,” the Yale girl said.

  “I sort of doubt it,” her friend, Dan, said.

  “No, I think that’s right,” I said. “My husband timed him with a stopwatch.”

  “Better fix his stopwatch,” Dan said.

  “It could be,” the Russian father said. He smiled as though he loved all boys and took pride in them—even mine. He smiled as though he loved me. I let it come, so much love so easy.

  © Pier Rodelon

  MARY ROBISON was born in Washington, D.C. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the 2018 Arts and Letters Award in Literature. She is the author of four novels and four story collections. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.