Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  “Four-door sedan, which makes her less valuable,” he said. “But she’s in great shape. Engine’s completely rebuilt, so. Want a peek under the hood?”

  Mona shrugged. “No, thanks.”

  “Well, what the hell,” he said, rubbing his chin. “She’s yours.”

  She blinked at him, and so did Wahkan, who had delicate, kind of adorable eyelids, she noticed for the first time.

  “You can have her.” He fished his keys out of his pocket and removed two. “I only have one set, so don’t lose them. One’s for the trunk. Put the vacuum in there now so you don’t forget it.”

  “What?”

  “I also have some tomahawks you might like, and. They weigh a ton but they look really cool—” He stopped talking and studied her face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Who are you?”

  Did a car qualify as “important”? Should she call Clare? Why was he smiling at her? Why was he holding out his hand like that? He wanted her to shake on it, apparently. When she finally did, he pulled her in and gave her a noogie.

  * * *

  THE VACUUM SHE CHRISTENED ESME; the car, Maxine. Esme made her giddy but that was no surprise. Maxine was something else. She’d never given a crap about cars, but her bond to Maxine was instant, deep-seated, unshakable. Her body was charcoal gray with an electric-blue pinstripe. Back in the eighties, Frank had reupholstered her seats in matching blue velvet. It was a mystery to her, but when she looked at Maxine’s grille, her decorative trim, her pie-plate taillights, she felt . . . well, happy.

  “Let’s take her for a spin,” Frank said, after putting the bird away. “She has a couple quirks you need to know about.”

  He told her to pump the gas exactly twice before starting her up. “Okay, now rev the engine a little, but not too much,” he said. “Hear that? Hear how throaty she sounds?”

  “Yeah,” Mona said.

  “Dual exhaust,” Frank explained. “Gives her more horsepower, so. Plus, it sounds cooler, obviously. Now just tap the gas when you pull out of here. Otherwise, you’ll flood the engine.”

  “It’s like driving a boat,” she said.

  “There’s more play in the steering than you’re probably used to, but. Take a left up here. We’ll cruise along the ocean a few blocks.”

  At traffic lights Mona found herself looking at the car next to her, making eye contact with the driver and smiling. She wished someone would photograph her.

  “How do you feel?” Frank asked.

  “Like a winner,” she said seriously.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, she’s a big hunk of metal, so.” More throat-clearing. “We’ll have to get you some fuzzy dice for the rearview.”

  “That’s where the burden basket’s going,” she said.

  She pulled into the driveway but didn’t turn off the engine. She didn’t want to leave Maxine. Frank opened the glove compartment, pulled out an old Thomas Guide and a pen, and signed the title over to her.

  “Don’t forget to get her registered.”

  “I guess I’ll be driving back to the desert,” she said. “After the ceremony.”

  He looked toward his apartment with a wistful expression. “It’s so beautiful there, especially Taos. You’re lucky to be out of the rat race, so.”

  “You and Mom should move there and open a gift shop,” she said. “You already have the inventory.”

  He smiled. “It’ll take you two days to get home. You should stop in Flagstaff and spend the night, but. Be careful—I have a friend whose sister was picked up hitchhiking in New Mexico and when they found her body, she’d been raped, so.”

  “So . . . don’t rape any hitchhikers?” Mona said.

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’s cute when you try and act tough.”

  “It’s not an act,” Mona said. “I’m actually made of Teflon.”

  Except, as soon as she said “Teflon,” she felt the corners of her mouth pulling down. Her eyes filled up quickly and then the tears started rolling, two big fat ones. She turned away and covered her face in her hand.

  “Hey,” he said, and touched her shoulder. “You’re my only kid, okay? I know we’re not blood, and you’ve always been weird, and we’re nothing alike. But. So. What the hell. I accept that now.” He pulled a bandana out of his pocket. “Here.”

  Strange, she thought, how affected you are by malice when you’re a kid, how a mean word or look can unravel you, how devastating cruelty feels when you’re too young to protect yourself. But eventually, after all those defense mechanisms are firmly in place, it’s the so-called positive shit—mercy, not malice—that brings you to tears.

  * * *

  SHE WENT TO BED EARLY that night. At three in the morning, she woke with a start and transcribed the Indian man’s recording. Then she practiced delivering the speech to the drapes at the bedroom window. Her voice shook but she got through it. The drapes responded by vibrating. She felt the mattress shift slightly, as if a large dog had jumped onto the bed. But there was no dog. Now the bed was vibrating, too. A deep grumbling noise rose from the floor. She got the sense she was being visited by an evil spirit—the boss, Satan. The bed shook and slid away from the wall, which was cracking. Now the whole room was rocking—up and down and side to side. She stumbled to the doorway and braced herself against the jamb. She could hear someone screaming.

  A man appeared and took her by the arm. He dragged her outside, down the stairs to the courtyard. As they ran through the courtyard, the bottom of the swimming pool heaved, leaving the water suspended midair for a second before splashing the building, drenching them from the waist down.

  It was over by the time they reached the street, where the rest of the tenants were huddled together. They all stood in silence, gazing at the building’s façade. There was no damage to the exterior that she could see, and yet the building looked different. Its pink stucco suddenly struck her as pathetic, its arched windows weak and inferior. Some of the ivy on the walls had fallen, exposing a deeper pink underneath. Mona looked toward Maxine, parked under a nearby tree. Unscathed.

  That’s my car, she wanted to tell her rescuer.

  He’d been holding her hand absentmindedly and let it drop. Everyone was pretty much naked. She was the only woman, and the only one wearing a shirt. The rest of the tenants were in boxer shorts, except for her guy, who wore leopard-print briefs. His hands hovered over his crotch. He was refreshingly free of tattoos and piercings.

  “Nice undies,” she said.

  “Same,” he said.

  Her eyes dropped. Nylon, flesh-colored, enormous. Period underwear. Except she wasn’t bleeding. She folded her hands and casually rested them over her plainly visible pubic hair.

  “We haven’t met,” he said. “I’m Kurt.”

  “Mona,” she said.

  They didn’t shake hands.

  We met during an earthquake, she imagined telling someone.

  “Which unit do you live in?” she asked.

  “Right above you,” he said.

  I had read his diary and knew he’d had his balls in a French woman’s mouth in Cambodia. It’s something we joke about now.

  “How’d you know I was home?” she asked.

  “I could hear you screaming,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Wasn’t me.”

  He laughed. “Who was it then?” he said, looking around.

  She felt her face redden. “That guy, probably,” she whispered, pointing at one of the other tenants, a mixed-martial-arts type with a terrible tribal tattoo.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed for screaming,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” he added.

  Neither should you, she thought.

  She hung back as the men started shuffling into the building. She didn’t want them looking at her ass. Unfortunately, Kurt hung back, too, as if waiting for her to lead the way. He was carrying himself stiffly, as though he ha
d whiplash. He walked beside her through the lobby and their shoulders touched as they climbed the stairs. He paused outside her open door, poking his head in to inspect the living room. A bookcase lurched to one side and the carpet was covered in glitter, which had apparently fallen from the textured ceiling. She crossed the living room tentatively, as though it were a crime scene, and then looked back at Kurt, who stood awkwardly in the doorway.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’ll make toast.”

  It was 5:03 A.M.

  “Okay,” he said. “But let me run upstairs quick and put some clothes on. Be right back.”

  She pulled on a pair of pants, brushed her teeth, applied eyeliner. Meanwhile, Clare called, wanting to know if she was alive. Mona said she was trapped under some rubble and couldn’t feel her legs. Clare didn’t think that was funny. Mona described how the pool had puked on her while she was being rescued by the guy upstairs. She left out the part about inviting him in for toast. Clare said that Frank and the birds were fine, but the freeways were a mess, reportedly, and so they planned to call off the ceremony. She heard Kurt knocking and got off the phone.

  He’d gotten rid of the Tarzan look and was more sensibly dressed in a plain white T-shirt and jeans. He seemed shorter with his clothes on. She realized he was conventionally handsome, which was why she’d never have looked twice at him on the street. Perhaps he was a struggling actor. There was blood on his chin.

  “Did you just shave?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, and sat on the couch.

  “I lied about the toast,” she said. “I don’t have bread. Or a toaster.”

  He smiled. “That’s okay.”

  “Are you an actor?” she asked.

  “Me? Hah, no. I’m in between gigs right now but I worked for Doctors Without Borders for twelve years.”

  “So, you’re a doctor,” she said. “Wow.”

  “I’m a logistics guy,” he said. “But I burned out on all the traveling.”

  She sat across from him in the armchair. He had two different eyes, she noticed now, both brown, but there was a small white cloud in the iris of the right one. She remembered what the French woman had said in his diary and felt a quick impulse to quote her. Your eye reminds me of a Magritte painting. Then her stomach felt suddenly and acutely empty, a feeling she often mistook for hunger. It was shame.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  “I’m just visiting,” she said. “It’s my mother’s place.”

  She watched him look around. He picked up a photograph on the floor and squinted at it.

  “That’s Spoon and Fork,” she said. “The dogs I grew up with.”

  “Strange,” he said. “The cats I grew up with were called Napkin and Placemat.”

  Between the two of them, almost an entire place setting. She took this as a sign to sit next to him. He tossed the photograph on the coffee table and turned toward her, leaning back slightly against the arm of the couch. She stared at the cloud in his eye. The cloud spoke to her. I like you, it said.

  “Where are you visiting from?” he asked.

  “Taos,” she said. “New Mexico.”

  The cloud brightened. “I used to live there,” he said, “with a bunch of weirdos out on the mesa. We lived off the grid in these crazy tire houses.”

  Earthships, they were called. The weirdos called themselves the Greater World. He talked about it for a few minutes, raising his arms at one point to describe the architecture. She caught a whiff of his deodorant. Old Spice. She placed him in his forties.

  “I miss that landscape,” he was saying. “I often wonder what the fuck I’m doing in L.A. It’s like, why?”

  “The beautiful people,” she said.

  He frowned.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “I have a love/hate thing with the desert. You know those park benches with the weird armrests in the middle that prevent you from lying down? They’re everywhere now. The desert reminds me of those benches. It’s a giant bench with a beautiful view and it’s saying, ‘Look at me, allow me to enchant you, but don’t get too comfortable—’ ”

  “I like your eyes,” he said suddenly.

  She blinked at him. “Yours, too,” she said. “Especially the right one.”

  The cloud said, I’m extremely attracted to you.

  “I’m blind in this eye,” he said after a pause. “That’s why I had to swivel my head around when you sat next to me.”

  And here she’d thought the cloud had been hitting on her. If it had spoken to her at all, it had probably only said, I can’t see you.

  “There’s a phony on every corner here,” he said. “The rest are headcases and flakes. But you seem like a real person.”

  “I’m a cleaning lady,” she said, and coughed. “About as real as it gets.”

  Now what?

  “I can’t swim in a straight line,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t bother you.”

  She smiled. “What else can’t you do?”

  “When I’m on a bicycle, sometimes I have to circle left to make a right turn,” he said. “Makes me seem dumb. Or just really drunk.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I stabbed myself in the eye with a hunting knife,” he said. “By accident. When I was seven. I was trying to cut a piece of rope. The knife wasn’t lodged into my brain or anything—it was more of a poke. But there was a lot of blood—like, a heavy curtain around my face. My mother was hanging laundry and fainted when I stumbled into the yard. I had to have a bunch of surgeries, and for many years I was cross-eyed.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. It took him by surprise, but he kissed her back, and then stopped.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “What kind of vacuum do you have?”

  He paused. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Acid test,” she said.

  “Electrolux,” he said.

  “Upright or canister?”

  “Canister,” he said. “It’s twenty years old.”

  She couldn’t have hoped for a better answer.

  “What’s your last name?” she asked.

  “Felt,” he said.

  Kurt Felt—interesting. Mona Felt—she liked that, too.

  They messed around on the couch. She was ready to give it up, but he said he’d rather get to know her first, which of course startled her.

  “Herpes?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “Ah,” she said. “Something more serious.”

  “Nope,” he said again.

  His penis is tiny, she thought. Are you okay with that?

  “There’s nothing wrong with my dick,” he said, reading her mind. “I’d really just rather get to know you better.” He shrugged.

  Fair enough, she supposed. He asked her some questions about her childhood and she told him a couple sob stories and then fell asleep. He left a note on the table, which she decided to save, even though it was nothing special:

  Dear Mona,

  I’m out foraging for food.

  Hope you eat meat.

  —Curt

  His handwriting was masculine enough, but she was a little thrown off by the C. When he returned from the outside world, she asked him if he wouldn’t mind if she spelled his name with a K.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because a K has a spine,” she said. “Plus, I rarely call people by their actual names.”

  He smiled and passed her a roast beef sandwich. “Is it okay if I call you Lum Lums?”

  * * *

  THEIR FIRST DATE LASTED THREE days. Day one: good weed, roasted lemon chicken, an old De La Soul record, Five Easy Pieces, kissing but no fucking. He held her hand during the aftershocks. Day two: burritos, spiked horchata, a blanket on an empty beach, more hand-holding. He told her she looked good in Clare’s ridiculous snakeskin bikini from the eighties. She told him she hadn’t set foot in the ocean for a dozen years.


  “What?” he said. “Why?”

  “Too big,” she said. “Too wet.”

  He asked her to stand up and close her eyes.

  “Focus on your nose,” he said from behind her. “Focus on your elbows. Focus on your knees. Focus on your toes.”

  “Are you trying to guru me?” she asked.

  “Shut up,” he said. “Focus on your nose.”

  “He’s trying to rom-com you,” Terry murmured. “L.A. style.”

  “Yeah, well, guess what? I think I might be ready for this shit,” Mona told Terry.

  Terry clapped her hands. Mona focused on her nose.

  “Focus on your throat,” Kurt said. “Focus on your wrists. Focus on your ankles.”

  While she was busy focusing, he picked her up and carried her into the water. He didn’t drop her in, but continued carrying her through the surf.

  “Still too wet?” he asked.

  “Wetter than I remember,” she said.

  That night she slept clinging to him like he was a rope, like he was her first girlfriend-slash-blanket, Brenda. In the morning, she offered to kiss his cock, but he wouldn’t let her anywhere near it. They got dressed. They smoked a joint and rolled down some hills at a nearby park. They swapped stories. She told him about the time she found poop in a house she was cleaning, and he suggested she write a detective novel.

  “You can write it in the motel I’ve just inherited,” Kurt said. “Like Raymond Chandler.”

  “Raymond Chandler wrote in a motel?”

  “Probably,” Kurt said.

  “Where is this motel?”

  “Bakersfield,” he said.

  Mona tried to summon an image of Bakersfield. All she saw was brown.

  “It’s really brown there, right?” she asked.

  “And green,” Kurt said. “Think The Grapes of Wrath.”

  “Which reminds me,” she said. “We’re out of wine. Will you carry me to the liquor store?”

  He nodded. “Also, I’d like to sleep next to you again tonight,” he said. “If that’s okay.”

  “Naked,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’ll be wearing two pairs of pants,” he said. “One of them will be backward.”

  She laughed.

  He waited until the following morning to make a move. The sex was sweaty and mediocre, but she felt an immediate, easy intimacy, as if, in addition to saliva and come, they’d exchanged several pints of blood.