Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  In a few minutes the cops would be here. Her pajamas were all right, but she probably ought to put on a bathrobe too. Suppose there was a photographer with them. Oh hell, she’d better call Maxie. His wife would flip, three A.M., but still—Glory began to rush up and down the hall again, this way and that, without reaching any objective. Maybe no bathrobe. It didn’t look frightened enough. And turn off the damned Christmas tree. That was better.

  As she stood dialing Maxie’s number, she suddenly caught sight of herself in a gold-framed mirror on the opposite wall: her face a patchwork of dried cosmetic mud, her hair wrapped in a turban of toilet paper. Christ! No wonder he had stared at her like that! She began to giggle out loud with hysterical relief. Why, she looked like something out of a Dracula film.

  And the cops would be here any minute. Frantically, as the phone started ringing in Maxie’s house, she began to pull at her headdress and rub her face with her free hand. Shreds of paper fell all round her, but more clung fast, and the paint wouldn’t come off.

  Outside, a police siren sounded down the hill. Glory slammed the phone back and raced for the bathroom, shedding lengths of toilet paper. She made it in time. When the officers knocked on the door she was standing before the mirror, smearing green eye shadow on with her fingers.

  9

  “OH, HELL,” CAME A voice from the kitchen.

  It was late in the morning. Paul was just getting out of bed, for the second time; and the second bed. He had got into the habit of going to Nutting, working at his desk for an hour or so, and then leaving for Ceci’s. She would usually be asleep when he arrived; but he had a key now and could let himself in. She slept deeply. Sometimes he managed to take off his clothes and slide into the warm bed before she woke up. He would get back to Nutting about two hours later.

  He did this practically every day. He quieted his conscience by pointing out to it that nobody was doing any work in Howard Leon’s department anyhow; they were always having coffee and telling stories; he got there earlier than anyone else and worked harder while he was there, etc. Anyhow, he was in no danger of getting fired. No one kept track of his comings and goings—if he wasn’t in his office he might be on another floor, or doing research up at U.C.L.A. The history of the company still wasn’t moving along very fast, but he had done a couple of popular-science-type articles that had gone over big. Leon had practically said that he could stay on another year if he wanted to. There would be a lot of advantages to that: for one thing, it would give him more time to finish the thesis. There would probably be a raise, too.

  “Oh, hell!”

  “What’s the matter?” Paul called. “Is the water gone again?”

  “No, I am. I forgot to get coffee. I know what let’s do—let’s go over to the Tylers. Josie will give us some breakfast.”

  “Okay.” Paul was pleased that finally Ceci was going to show him some of her friends. “Who’re the Tylers?”

  “He’s a writer. Really way out. They have five kids and a big pad over on Beach Street.”

  “Five children? How can he support five children, if he’s a writer?”

  “Oh, he drives a cab for bread. Hey. What did I do with my clothes?” Dressed only in the old shirt that she used as a bathrobe, Ceci knelt down and began rummaging in her closet. “Here they are. Jesus, look at that hole. I’ve got to go over to the Goodwill again.”

  Paul laughed. “Is that where you get your clothes?”

  “Mostly.” Ceci pulled the jersey over her head; there was a long rip under the arm, through which the curve of a breast showed. “Sometimes I go to the Salvation—Wow. Do that again.”

  “I’ve made the hole bigger,” Paul said a moment later. “You can’t go out on the street like that.”

  “I can too. I’ll hold my arm down, this way. Everybody will think, the poor chick, she has a gimpy arm. Besides, it’s all I’ve got that’s clean.”

  “You’re crazy,” Paul said fondly. He began to put on his shirt. “How do you know these people, the Tylers?”

  Ceci answered, but not immediately. “They’re friends of Walter’s.”

  Within his shirt, Paul made a face. Instinct told him to drop it, but reason, or what he chose to call reason, urged him on. “You never mention him, do you?” he asked. “It’s funny, he’s your husband, and I don’t know the first thing about him.”

  “What would you like to know?” Dressed, Ceci was brushing out her hair.

  “I don’t know,” Paul lied. “Well, for instance; what does he do?”

  Ceci glanced up at him. “I can tell you,” she said. “But it won’t mean anything.” He went on looking at her, not letting her out of it. “Okay. When I first met him he was washing dishes in the same place where I worked and taking courses at City College. Then he went into the Merchant Marine for a while. ... Last year he was mostly reading for exams up at U.C.L.A., and he had a gig with a pool man.” She explained: “Like he went round in a truck with this guy and cleaned out people’s swimming pools. Right now he’s pushing Fuller brushes.”

  Paul clutched at the item that fitted into his frame of reference. “Exams? Exams in what?”

  “Philosophy. Master’s exams in philosophy.”

  They were both dressed by now; Paul moved over to Ceci and put his arm around her as if to take the chill off their conversation. “Did he pass them?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then he has an M.A. in philosophy. And he’s a Fuller brush man? I don’t get it. Couldn’t he find a job teaching anywhere?” Paul remembered what he had heard from Fred Skinner about local discrimination against Orientals.

  “He thinks teaching’s a drag,” Ceci said. “He only took the exams because he digs taking exams. It’s like a kind of game for him.” She leaned gently against Paul, then stood aside. “Let’s go, huh?”

  “Okay.” But Paul frowned. He wanted to understand Walter Wong in order to understand Ceci O’Connor—Ceci Wong she must be legally. Only the more he heard the less he understood either of them. He tried again. “Does he like selling Fuller brushes?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light.

  “Dunno.” Ceci smiled, taken in. “He said it might not be so bad, only they screwed him on his territory. They sent him over to Hollywood, where nobody thinks about cleaning their place up, and they’re not home all day anyhow. But he was telling me, Sunday, he’s started going round at night now, and he’s running into a lot of weird scenes.” She laughed, and was about to go on, but Paul interrupted her; again he had heard only one thing.

  “You saw him this Sunday?”

  Ceci stopped laughing, and stared at him coolly. “Yeah,” she said. “He was here to supper.” With difficulty, Paul made no comment. “He makes it over here for supper every week, mostly, if you want to know.”

  “I guess I want to know,” Paul said. He controlled his voice. “I don’t mean to get all excited about it,” he said. “I know you’re not involved with him any more or anything.” Did he really know this? “Hell, I mean I have supper with my wife all the time. We don’t communicate; we don’t even talk much, but anyway, we sit at the same table and eat.” Now he was beginning to lie; he did talk to Katherine at supper. He grew ashamed. Ceci continued to look at him, waiting. “Oh, hell!” he said, flinging out his arms in desperation. “What’s the matter with me? I don’t want to act like this all the time.”

  Ceci smiled; her eyes grew warm. “You don’t act like that all the time,” she said, moving over and rubbing against him a little, like a cat. “Just sometimes.” She laughed; he turned and kissed her closely, wrapping his arms so far round that each hand held the curve of a breast. He still felt a little ashamed, so he kissed her harder, biting the inner curve of her lip. God, how warm she was, how great it was here; he would be crazy to ruin it.

  “Y’ know what I want?” Ceci whispered.

  “No. What?”

  “Breakfast.”

  It was cool but bright outside. A white sun glared down out of a whit
e sky on the slums of Venice. All the scars and stains of the one- and two-story frame buildings were exposed in miserable detail: the broken steps, the split shingles, the scabs of rust and paint on the bent iron railings. The narrow, deserted streets were pockmarked with holes and congealed lumps of tar and asphalt.

  Paul and Ceci walked along cracked sidewalks with rough pebbly bites taken out of the curbs; they passed abandoned storefronts, with windows painted over black, or soaped white. Some of these stores were deserted, but in others people seemed to be living. It was garbage collection day, and trash cans loaded with empty bottles, sticky smudged papers, rags, and half-eaten hot dog rolls stood at intervals along the sidewalk, lit as if on a great stage.

  In this decay, only one thing was whole: the automobiles. Not all of them—there were many rusted old machines. But among them, and even more gorgeous by contrast, were cars of equal or greater age that gleamed with polished chrome and glass and chalk-white tires—hot rods. Most were models of the early 1930s that had been more or less radically altered: their running-boards cut down, their metalwork rolled under at the bottom; one or two sported superchargers. They were freshly painted in all the colors of the TV screen: red, electric blue, neon green. Many were decorated with symbolic designs—lightning or red flames spurted out of the radiator and across the hood, or the whole front end of the car became a grinning monster with headlamps for eyes. They were impressive even asleep in the full light of day; roaring down the thruways at night they must be magnificent. Paul was glad he had left his car parked over by Ceci’s place. It was no fun driving around in that old heap, but if he had one of those hot rods—

  Well, and why shouldn’t he have one? They couldn’t cost too much. He wouldn’t want to drive around in a car like that back in Cambridge, but nobody would care out here. He turned to Ceci and asked her.

  “You want to buy one of these crazy shorts?” She began to laugh, pleased. Sure, she said, he could probably pick one up. There was always somebody around trying to unload a car. Steve Tyler might know of something.

  They had come out of the maze of back streets now, into the main square of Venice. The ruins of its earlier glory—for at the turn of the century it had been a fashionable seaside resort—still stood: the long arcades, the graceful balconies, arches, and pilasters of colored stucco. But it was all in the last stages of desecration. The cobbled streets were crusted with dried mud and trash, and dirty paper blinds sagged in the dirty windows. The open shops under the arcades sold gimcrack souvenirs, overripe fruit, and girlie magazines.

  There were more people about here, but all of them, like the buildings, seemed damaged and soiled. Bums leaned and spat in the arcade in front of a dark, smelly bar; shapeless women in shabby clothes were out marketing, every wrinkle and scar on their faces revealed by the glaring sun. A beggar with no legs sat on the sidewalk; the newsdealer had dark glasses and only one arm. Bums and cripples and criminals, the dregs of the city (even of the continent) washed up on Venice Beach as if by a landlocked tide. This was a dangerous place, too; Ceci ought not to be living here in these back streets, alone at night in that rickety old building. Why, anything could happen to her. As they crossed the square, Paul tightened his arm round Ceci; she looked at him, and smiled.

  “Like it? Crazy, huh?”

  Paul was not sure what she meant; he compromised. “I like you. Where’s this place we’re going?”

  “Right over there.” She pointed up an alley to a one-story building of dirty cream-colored brick. It must once have been a grocery store: faded red letters across the top spelled out GOODMAN’S PRODUCE MARKET. The shop windows had been painted over in irregular rectangles of red, blue, green, and white up to about a foot from the top. Ceci knocked at the door, which had a hole in it where the handle should have been, and called, “Josie?”

  There was no answer. Instead of knocking again, she went over to a garbage can that stood against the building, lifted the lid, rummaged about inside, and took out an old doorknob. She fitted it into the hole in the door, and turned it.

  They went up two steps into a long, dim cave of a room. Here, as at Ceci’s, practically everything was on the floor: plants, shelves of books, lamps, dusty pillows, and several mattresses with faded spreads. No wonder they called these places “pads.” The only chairs were a couple of wicker and iron contraptions like the ones Katherine had bought to replace her own furniture, which she was gradually moving into the garage.

  The upper three-quarters of the room were completely empty, with bare whitewashed walls against which drawings, newspaper clippings, poems, and photographs had been nailed or pasted. Painted directly on the wall, right up by the ceiling, surrounded by strange leaves and flowers like those in Ceci’s bedroom, was the slogan DONALD DUCK IS A COMMUNIST.

  In the center of the room was a playpen, mostly occupied by a large inflated rubber beach toy in the shape of a green sea monster with red spots. It also contained a plump blonde baby about a year and a half old.

  “Hello, Psyche,” Ceci said. “Where’d you get your friend?” Psyche did not reply. “Josie? Steve?” She pulled aside a curtain. “Hi!”

  “Hi,” replied a man’s voice from beyond the curtain. “Come on in.”

  Paul approached and looked over Ceci’s shoulder into a bedroom. Clothes hung from pegs on the walls, and there was a mattress raised about a foot off the floor on blocks. The blankets had been pushed into a heap on one side, and a man about Paul’s age was lying under the sheet, with his head propped on one hand. He had a round, pleasantly ordinary face, and long, thinning fair hair.

  “Hey, this is Paul. Steve. I mean, like, Paul Cattleman, meet Steve Tyler.”

  “How do you do,” Paul said, helping to continue the joke, if it was a joke.

  “Hi,” Steve said lazily. He looked Paul over, lowering his eyelids and smiling just slightly. His blunt features took on a look of peasant irony and cunning, like Clever Hans in the folk tales. Paul felt that Ceci’s friend might be waiting for him to do something which he could later ridicule or disparage.

  “Hey, Josie.” Steve addressed the heap of blankets. There was no response. “We had a big night last night,” he said. “Didn’t break up till about three, four o’clock. You should have been here. Where were you, anyhow? Wow, am I beat.” He blinked his eyes.

  “You want us to cut out?”

  “No, stick around. I’ve got to get up anyhow. Hey, Josie. Company.”

  A sound came from the heap of bedclothes. “Tell ’em t’go away.”

  “It’s Ceci.”

  “Ceci.” The blankets moved. A thin, pretty blonde girl with nothing on sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. On seeing Paul, she pulled the end of the sheet up over herself, but without haste or any exclamation of surprise. “Hi.”

  “Hey, Josie, this is Paul.”

  “Oh, hi!” Josie did not inspect Paul as her husband had done. Her face opened; she smiled warmly. Paul felt that he would like her.

  “I’m sorry we disturbed you,” he said.

  “Aw, no. That’s all right. Got to get up sometime and feed the kids. You want some coffee, or lunch or something?”

  “Anything you’ve got,” Ceci said, smiling. “We haven’t had breakfast.” Paul wondered if she was telling Josie that they had just been in bed together. But Josie didn’t seem to react. Maybe it was just her way; but more likely the Tylers already knew that Ceci was having an affair with him and all about him, whereas he hadn’t even heard of the Tylers’ existence before this morning.

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Steve offered. He swung his legs over the far side of the mattress and sat up. Paul realized that he too was naked. Turning his long, brown back to them, Steve pulled on a pair of blue jeans. Josie continued to sit in bed holding the edge of the sheet loosely against her breasts. Paul felt that if she knew him just a little better she would have got out of bed to dress. It was all innocent and natural. But he wasn’t used to so much nature yet. He turned back into the other roo
m; Ceci and Steve followed him.

  “Where’s all the kids?” Ceci asked.

  “Oh, they’re around somewhere.” Steve began to clean out a huge coffee-pot. “I guess maybe Starry took them down to the beach.”

  “How old are your kids?” Paul asked.

  Steve smiled, as if this question pleased him. “Let me see. Well, Psyche, that’s her there, she’s about nineteen months. Nathaniel’s four, and Ezra’s six. So Freya must be seven, no, eight now; and Astarte’s ten and a half.” He held the coffee-pot under the water tap of the sink. As at Ceci’s pad, a mere trickle of brown liquid came out. “Hey, siddown, why don’t you?”

  Ceci sat, and so did Paul, on one of the long wooden benches at the kitchen table. He began to feel easier; he decided he liked this place.

  Ten and a half. Either Steve and Josie were a lot older than they looked, or they must have been married pretty young. “Unusual names,” he said.

  “Nathaniel’s for Hawthorne. Ezra’s Pound, of course. The girls are all called after goddesses. That was her idea,” he added, grinning at Josie, who had just come into the room. She was wearing old blue jeans like her husband’s, with the addition of a white T-shirt which clung to her small, pointed breasts.

  “Hey, I hear you had a party last night,” Ceci said to her.

  “Yeah.” Josie began to take food out of a dilapidated refrigerator with COOL, MAN painted in large letters across its door. “It was kind of a great scene. You should have been here. Angus came over with some new sides, and Becky; and John was here with his guitar; and we had some beer, and everybody was singing like crazy. And then later, must have been about two, Walter fell in. How’s about pancakes?”

  “Walter,” Ceci said. It was not a question.

  “Mm. Matter of fact, he might still be here. He passed out last night, and he wasn’t up yet when I blew the kids’ breakfast. Let’s see.” Josie walked towards the front part of the room. “Yeah! Here he is.”