Something for Everyone

by Lisa Moore

  I’m told by the man behind me that in America, nobody walks on a moving sidewalk.

  Somebody goes to the trouble of moving the sidewalk under your feet, you stay still; you enjoy the ride, the man says. He is wearing a leather thong on his neck held together with a gold-and-turquoise clip. His hair is bleached at the tips and sticks up all over the place. Big eyes, full mouth, gold tan.

  He is probably half my age, but I teach yoga at lunchtime, Pilates on alternate evenings. Run over the square from the library to the gym four times a week. They say our library is a sick building, just because the students are eternally sprawled out in armchairs, flung over the tables, heads thrown back, snoring, the ribbed cartilage in their throats, the potato-white skin of their necks, waiting to be jerked awake. But the students aren’t sick; they’re enchanted by knowledge. Books open on their chests.

  Overhead, a giant stingray flaps languidly, bigger than my Yaris, casting a shadow on the sidewalk that moves us. The stingray’s small eyes, just gouges in the rubbery slab of a face, forlorn and eternally spooked.

  We could grab a drink, the guy behind me says. I have wandered away from Jack and the two other librarians from St. John’s. I left them back at the giant octopus. It was suctioned to the fortified glass, bulbous noggin weltering backwards, struggling to rip down the wall. Every sentient being in the aquarium moves with stealth or ennui, or they become instantly invigorated, propelled toward each other with profound velocity only to swerve at the last second.

  Which, last month, somebody hit my parked Yaris, and now the driver’s side doesn’t open. Bashed in the door handle. This morning on the median, a text from my neighbour; caught the whole thing on his security camera. Took him a while to get through all the footage. The street at night, the guy is clearly drunk, manages to scrape the side of three cars before disappearing around the corner. My side mirror hanging by a few wires.

  My neighbour zoomed in, sent a screenshot of the guy’s licence plate. I’ve had to get in on the passenger side, climbing over the gearshift, for the last month. But for some reason I want to let the guy go.

  When? I say.

  I’ll meet you out front, says guy with the leather thong and turquoise clasp. I don’t feel like introducing him to my co-workers. This little date is a secret. A fierce, uncomplicated impulse. I tell the guy I’m heading to the bathroom and we can meet at the shady bench in front. Maybe he won’t come out.

  My neighbour shoots me another pic of the licence plate. I have to pinch and spread the screen to magnify, but there it is, so clear and focussed I can see a raindrop on the raised numeral.

  Later, Jack will take us to a restaurant called the Café Tu Tu Tango. This place is special, Jack has said. (If you want to know the good restaurants, follow the librarians. Follow Jack.) Everything is so bright beyond the shade of this bench. The shadows of palm leaves on the concrete look like they have been cut out of construction paper with sharp scissors. Everything looks sharp and hot, or else it shimmers. I can see the Eye of Orlando, a giant Ferris wheel, poking up out of the trees and beyond it there’s the highway outside our hotel. This morning, the lizard going over the asphalt, making for the grass. Two speeds: 1) alert to some ominous gut grumble deep in the earth and 2) more alert.

  The cappuccino before my run and on the flat screens all over the lobby, Trump on a golf course in Scotland and the news: Britain has left the EU.

  The girl handing me my coffee, her eyes tilted toward the screen over my shoulder. My god, she says.

  Their currency is tanking, I say. It’s tanking right now. The girl fits the lid on my coffee, the Caretaker outside dips and sways the long pole. There are dimples in the surface.

  The Caretaker is using the net to get a piece of cellophane out of the pool. The wrapper from a pack of cigarettes is transparent, a rectangular box, still holding its shape, it winks in and out of view as it sinks, sometimes it’s just a glint of light in the feathered surface of the water, feathered by a breeze so slight he has barely felt it, but then the net overtakes the package, it is not just a gleam of light, it’s in the net and he retrieves it, the pole tips and sways, up and down, a splash of water over the pool deck, and the Caretaker thinks that maybe Lucia, his littlest, is his brother-in-law’s favourite, if Angelo has a favourite, and maybe his own, too. One-year-old Lucia in the kitchen with a desiccated Cheerio stuck to the inner crease of her plump elbow, where her taffy-coloured skin is sticky, and another Cheerio, which Angelo flicks off with his thumbnail, below the gold stud in her pierced little ear, little Lucia, already with the black curls and big brown eyes, actually as close to two years old as to one, and his brother-in-law, Angelo, pulls out the back of her diaper with several Mickey Mouses running around the crenelated waistband and sniffs.

  Who pooped? Angelo is saying. Somebody pooped, he announces. Lucia, a crust of toast in one fist, her spoon in the other, opens her mouth as wide as it will go and draws in a long breath before wailing, tears slipping down her cheeks, one, two, because she doesn’t like getting her diaper changed.

  They are already at the table, the older two, on booster seats with bibs, and Lucia smacking the tray of the high chair with the back of her plastic spoon. The Caretaker kisses them, the older boy and girl, squeezing past to get near Lucia.

  Pass her to me, Angelo, the Caretaker says. Lucia, come to Daddy. Pass her, pass her, pass her here. Come on. Lucia, come.

  Angelo undoes the straps of the high chair and wriggles her out and passes her over the heads of the other two and the Caretaker has her: I got her, I got her. Come on, you other two, you have daycare, come on, eat up.

  The warmed-up, cloudy stink of baby shit, somehow both comforting and sharply unpleasant in the little kitchen where the Caretaker has to rub against his wife’s ass to get by the back of one of the kitchen chairs, with Lucia held up high over everybody’s head, the other kids ducking so Lucia’s feet don’t kick them around the ears or get their clothes dirty, the Caretaker’s wife with the butter knife, she’s slicing banana into the children’s bowls, but she goes still and drops her head so the Caretaker will kiss the back of her neck where there is a soft swirl of very fine black hair, while he swishes back and forth against her ass, jokey, swish-swish, the baby held up in the air over all their heads while he swishes, full of early-morning horniness, just back from the night shift. Angelo checking his phone. Then, schuck, the toast pops.

  Get that, his wife says.

  I got Lucia, he says.

  Get the toast, get the toast, she says.

  I got the toast, Angelo says.

  Angel, the Caretaker’s wife says. Will you bring your friend by tonight?

  Banana slices plop, plop, plopping into Natalia’s bowl, juice-infused and vitamin-fortified Cheerios into Javier’s bowl, the washer rumbling to its finale, the suds slopping against the glass door, the Caretaker’s red T-shirt, part of his uniform, he has two of them with the logo, he wears one, the other is in the wash, rising like a land mass in primordial times with a bubble of trapped air, an island in the frothy sea. The tub of the washer rattles on the drain cycle and a narrow peninsula of water edges across the linoleum from under the bottom of the washer.

  Angelo talks about the washer as he spoons up his Cheerios, eyes on his phone, because there’s always some drama, he has to get going, he has a class, but the washer is leaking.

  Speaking with the milk dripping, his mouth full, and whatever it is, having Angelo in their two-room apartment, sleeping on the couch, is a comfort to the Caretaker and his wife, because Angelo loves their three kids, maybe even more than the Caretaker and his wife love them, for all the Caretaker knows. Angelo pays half the rent, not a third like you might expect, or less, maybe a quarter for putting up with three kids, not a quarter but half, half the rent on this two-room apartment, just to sleep on the couch, because of the scholarship, but he’s falling in love, Angelo, and what if he moves out
, talking about the leaking washer, Angelo’s voice sing-song sweet and cajoling. Angelo with his girlish inflection, his half-sexy, half-gossipy tone, talking about the washing machine like it’s a tempestuous chorus girl: They say it’s not worth it you fix these washers. They’re making them that way now. They break; you buy a new one. They say you have to check your pockets for coins, even a paperclip gets in there and it can puncture. Plastic tubs, instead of the old metal ones. The snap on a pair of jeans, a guy in my class told me, put a hole, water all over the floor, came through his ceiling. The redundancy is built in.

  A guy in your class? the Caretaker’s wife says. Is that your new friend, the guy with the broken washer? Why don’t you bring him over?

  The Caretaker kisses his wife on the neck where she has piled up all her hair. She’s wearing the skirt with the daisies. A skirt she’s had since he’s known her. She works for one of the big parks, HR, as a secretary, so-called, but she does a lot more than that, the park is expanding, a new park in China, which, she’s very excited, and it just bought a comic book franchise, which they are doing something, new rides in less than six months.

  He has removed the cigarette package and now he slips the net back into the pool, dragging it behind him as he strolls the pool deck, back and forth, but what he sees is the flowered pattern of her skirt at the hip. She with the knife, a flare of sunlight on the blade, so it’s like she’s holding a cold star, which sends a dancing spike of reflected light over the cupboards, over the ceiling, onto Angelo’s cheek.

  Here he comes, the kid with the turquoise-and-gold ornament on a thong and the saunter, and he steps over the long straight shadow of the palm tree beside me so his face is sliced diagonally with white light.

  My place is around the corner, he says. I text Jack and say that I’ll meet him at the restaurant, three hours from now.

  You live in the neighbourhood? I ask.

  A couple of blocks, he says. I have a place. Are you here for the sorority conference? he asks.

  I’m a librarian, I say.

  Kinky, he says.

  We walk several blocks and finally reach the building and take the stairs because there’s a sign the elevator is not in service. Twelve flights. I pause on the eleventh landing and he lifts up my hair and blows on my neck. A single exhalation and then he tells to me to come on, he tells me it’s just one more flight.

  The apartment is a single-bedroom, and the living room, dining room, and kitchenette are full of music equipment. Keyboards, drums, speakers, microphone stands, sheets of music flung all over, even on the floor, with shoe prints over them. I have to twist my hips and suck in my tummy to get past the cymbals, the button on my shirt hits the slice of brass and a ting rings around the apartment, piercing. He’s behind me, his hands lightly on my hips, guiding me to the kitchenette, and he pinches the cymbal between a finger and thumb and cuts the sound so the silence becomes eerie. There’s no air conditioning.

  A text comes and I check. My neighbour. The police have contacted the owner of the white pickup that hit all the cars.

  The Caretaker kisses the back of his wife’s neck, and he’s got Lucia, and his brother-in-law has abandoned his phone, leaves it face down on the table, and he’s left his chair and gone around the other side of the table. Angelo takes the baby from him, Come to Uncle Angelo, come to me, Lucia, come, come.

  The overt brushing of the Caretaker’s hips against the back of that skirt, daisies with yellow centres on a black background of shiny stretch cotton, pressing his cock, wagging, and still, the shape of her, that ass, and the Viper’s Revenge tattoo because she’d been at the park five years when she got that, to mark the anniversary of the ride, she’d worked sometimes fourteen hours a day near the opening, the yellow eyes of the snake and the fangs up over the black shiny waistband because she’s there in her bra, still. She makes the kids’ breakfast half-dressed, doesn’t mind her brother, Angelo, so she won’t get the blouse wrinkled or sweaty before work and Lucia, a laddering wail, up, up, shrill, and down to a gravelly indignation.

  Lucia, Lucia, come on, says Angelo. We’re going to clean you up. The Caretaker with a daisy under each hand and he kisses the back of his wife’s neck, and she stops slicing the banana, puts both her hands flat on the table, the knife to the side, stiff, ridged, while he kisses her, just tilting her head to the side so he can take in his teeth, very gently, the plump lobe of her ear.

  The Caretaker and his brother-in-law were both invited to the baby shower before Lucia was born—they’d invited the men, which, the Caretaker had never been to the first two showers, strictly ladies-only. There were games where they blindfold you and you had to taste that puréed baby food and identify. The banana, the corn, after which he got recipes online, started making his own baby food in the blender for his little Lucia.

  His wife tosses the banana peel and takes her mascara from a hip pocket, turning around in the kitchenette with the other two children occupied now wolfing down their Cheerios, pull-pushing her mascara wand up and down in the little cylinder and leaning into the door of the microwave to see her reflection but also, between one eye and the other, taking a bite of her toast and yelling, Change her, Angelo, change her.

  I’m changing her, says Angelo.

  Get her changed.

  Who wants that, Lulu? Angelo says. Who wants a dirty diaper?

  In the bag, the Caretaker’s wife says.

  Where are the diapers? Angelo says.

  In the bag, she says. In the bag, the bag, the bag by the bed. She leans in again to the microwave door, leans very close, her eye magnified in a strip of chrome on the side, so big the Caretaker can see the red veins and a third eye, floating in the bend of the chrome where it meets the smoked glass. She touches the brush to her eyelashes, curling them up. She whispers: In the bag, in the diaper bag.

  Though he has the diaper already, and he has the wipes, Lucia already on his bare, built shoulder, and the tears. A tear is inching wetly down his bicep.

  The Caretaker loves his kids, all his kids, he loves them equally, but Lucia. He loves this kid the best. This miracle kid, he loves this kid. He’d got snipped, which goes against, he is Catholic. There was an infection from the operation and one of his balls blew up the size of a tangerine, no, bigger. Bigger than a tangerine. He’d gone back to the doctor who said ice.

  But it’s like what do you call.

  It’s fine.

  Elephantitus or whatever they say, of the ball. I got a ball here all fucked up.

  Not the usual, but you put ice; it goes down, the doctor said.

  You have to do something here, man. One ball like what you play tennis with.

  You put ice and take Tylenol.

  You want me to say Tylenol to my wife? She’s afraid.

  A bag of frozen peas, the doctor said.

  Are you kidding?

  They were very afraid, the Caretaker and his wife. But it shrank back to normal and who has that happen? It is very uncommon.

  Back during the pre-op consultation the doctor had slouched in his chair, not even unslouching while he sketched on a pad and then sent the pad spinning over the desk to the Caretaker. The doctor’s head cranked to the side on his shoulder, his jaw jacked up by a blue-veined fist, his elbow resting on the plastic arm of the office chair, his legs yanking the swivel chair side to side with a two-toned squeak, until the square jaw nudged off the knuckles and the doctor was lifted from the haze of his lassitude, blinking as if to assert his presence back in the room, the Caretaker lost in the ballpoint illustration, the testicles and the tubes going to the testicles and where the cut happens, a slash dug into the paper with such force it punctured the surface of the pad with a tiny hole, which, the doctor swore it was a foolproof procedure.

  You feel nothing, he’d said. He did say: Not guaranteed. The doctor said: I will be honest. He said, One in fifteen thousand.

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nbsp; Which is Lucia.

  Who’s my little stink bomb? Angelo’s singing.

  We’re hiring construction, the Caretaker’s wife is saying, and Mr. Dixon, I get there late? Mr. Dixon is not going to be happy. He’s such a bastard, Dixon. I’m talking about Dixon, Cherry’s boss, not even my boss, but I’m late, he takes exception. I’m with the coffee and he puts his hand up. Not his hand, his finger, crooking his finger at me, like: Get over here with that. Not even stopping, he’s talking torques and widgets, elevations and gravity with the PowerPoint, and me with the pot not even finished, dripping down. Hey, he says. You, over there, bring some of that coffee.

  Nobody says hey to me, the Caretaker’s wife hisses, into the microwave. She is vigorous with the mascara wand in the little tube, she bends again to put mascara on the other eye, looking into the chrome and the snake, it’s a viper, the forked tongue, on her bare back, the viper’s head shoots to the side when she shifts her weight, scoping out the kitchen with its evil blue eyes.

  But Angelo, who later will go to the nightclub with his lover, whom they haven’t had the privilege, because Angelo says, Meet-the-family is the last step. This guy, he’s new, okay? Not serious. Now is not the time he gets to meet the family.

  We want to meet him, says the Caretaker’s wife. This is someone who matters to you, bring him around. You say, This is my sister and her husband, you say, These are my little nieces and my nephew.

  I’ll bring him, Angelo says. When I’m ready.

  Have some beers together, says the Caretaker. But if Angelo falls in love, who will pay half the rent, because work drops off now, they are coming to the hottest part of the season, and the conferences drop right off, the taxi driving he does every other night, that drops off too. He won’t lie, Uber has hurt them.

  When I’m ready. I’m not ready, says Angelo.