God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  "Right here," he said, breathing hard. "The living room goes right here." He looked at her, and she tried to think of something to say.

  "It's a good view," she said.

  He spread the blanket over the ground and put the basket in the middle of it and himself next to the basket. She sat down on the other side. He was wearing a tie and pants that hung off his legs like old skin.

  "Sometimes it's like that for me too," he said. "I think about this place, and I'm not sure if it's real." He opened the basket and I pulled out a bottle of French wine. The kind with a cork. Then he looked back into the basket, moving bottles, until he found the corkscrew. She saw three or four more bottles and a bag of potato chips. Paper cups. The tag on the basket said $9.95, and over that, Crown Liquors.

  He sat pretzel-legged on the blanket with the bottle in one of the holes where his legs crossed, and pressed into it with the corkscrew. His hands shook, and she looked out over the water . again and pictured herself in a sailboat and a white hat. When she looked back at him, he'd taken the top of the cork out and pushed the rest down into the wine, where it floated in pieces on top. He took the stack of paper cups out then and filled two of them with the wine, handed one of them to her. She sipped at it, straining the bits of cork with her teeth, and by the time she took the cup away from her lips he was refilling his glass. "How would you like to wake up in the morning here'?” he said.

  “I wouldn't know where I was," she said. He laughed and touched her hand, and then he drank everything in his cup and filled it again. Somewhere off to the side she saw something move in the trees. "There's something over there," she said.

  He rolled over on his elbow and looked. "Probably a deer," he said, and when he rolled back he put his hand on her ankle and then smoothed the skin on the back side of her calf. She saw the movement again, but when she turned to look, nothing was there.

  "You don't have bears, do you?"

  "Bears?" he said. "Jesus, wouldn't that be great?" He poured himself another cup of wine and freshened hers. This time she threw it down with him, mostly thinking about bears. "I'm fifty-three years old," he said after a while.

  She said, “You don't look that old."

  He said, "I'm fifty-three years old, and a whole city loves me." He laughed and she laughed with him. "Every day when I go to work there's letters from people who love me," he said. "People I never met. They want me to come to dinner or go out drinking or visit them in the Poconos."

  "Do you go?" she said.

  He shook his head. "Golf," he said. "They want me to play golf." He lay back on the blanket, resting the cup on his chest.

  “Sometimes I think I ought to take one of them up on it," he said. "Just bring a suitcase over and move in." As he spoke he found her leg with his hand again, moved it from her ankle up her calf. She had the feeling that he'd moved in on her, now that he mentioned it.

  "How long do you think it would take to get tired of having a celebrity around?" he said.

  "I don't know," she said. His hand had come up over the top of her knee, bringing the skirt with it. The skirt fell into her lap, Richard Shellburn was looking at the sky. She took a long drink of her wine and then brushed the hair back off his forehead. She left her hand there and said, "It's hard to believe it was only Monday Leon was alive."

  He looked then and saw her legs were bare. "Time is a bad bastard," he said. "There's nothing else that works against you like time. It goes slow when you're where you don't belong and fast when you're comfortable. Are you comfortable here?"

  "I think so," she said. .

  "And then, no matter what you're doing, there's another kind of time, keeping track. But it isn't to tell how far you've gone. It's to make sure you can't get any of it back."

  Something moved again, farther up in the trees. A glimpse of brown, and then Richard Shellburn moved again. His hand slid from her knee all the way up her leg and stopped with one finger resting against her underwear. "Let me tell you about your husband," he said. She didn't want to hear Richard Shellburn tell her about Mickey, not with his hand on her pants. She wasn't sure she wanted to be with Richard Shellburn at all, but she was lost in this, and trusting something.

  "Your husband," he said, "can put an air conditioner in the wall by himself or pick up an engine block."

  That was true, but she didn't say anything because she didn't want to get herself in any deeper. "And he sits in that bar across the street from your house, every night for two hours, talking with his pals, and when he comes home he doesn't say jack-shit." While he talked, she felt his finger slide under the elastic, and then he was touching her clitoris. Not moving, just touching it. She wasn't sure Mickey knew it was there.

  "He can take the air conditioner apart and put it back together," he said, "because he knows all the parts. That's what he understands, air conditioners and engine blocks.”

  He slid the finger down her clitoris and found her lips, and circled them once just inside the rim. She knew she was wet. He took the hand out of her pants and sat up. Then he filled their cups, touched his to hers, and drank throwing his head back, throwing something away. And she threw hers away too. He pulled her down, on her back, and she let him. She saw a cloud pass over the sun, and then his face was over hers, so close then that it could have been Mickey or Tom Hubbard, or any of the ones in between, and then his hand was back between her legs, with more purpose now, and she was trusting. She was trusting him to take her back after he was finished.

  She felt him push inside her and closed her eyes, and then couldn't open them, because he was all over her eyelids, kissing her. He had a nice touch, though. He moved in and out slower than Mickey, like he had a reason for it besides happening to be there, and he wasn't in a hurry to get somewhere else.

  A few minutes later he pulled her hand down between them. She thought he wanted her to hold his balls, but when she reached for them he stopped her. He pulled himself off her chest, far enough for her to see his face, and put her hand on her clitoris. "What?" she said.

  "You know what," he said; She could feel his cock and his eyes, and she began to move her finger. She closed her eyes again. It wasn't something she wanted to see. It moved her, though, farther away from Mickey, from Leon. She was trusting. She felt him begin to tighten just as she came. And when he yelled, she thought at first it was just the way writers made love.

  * * *

  Shellburn had gone from T. D.'s office to the fourteenth floor and called her from there. Then he went to a liquor store just across the bridge in Camden, New Jersey, and bought four bottles of sixteen-dollar wine—which was the best wine they had in Camden—along with some cups and potato chips and the basket. He saw the basket and knew it was going to be perfect.

  He came back across the bridge and picked her up. The daylight didn't spoil her looks. Some women got out in the sun and looked so healthy, in two minutes they had you thinking what you'd done to your liver. Jeanie wasn't like that, and he drove out past the airport toward Maryland, explaining about his job. That's how he told her who he was.

  He took it a step at a time, and she understood. Sometimes she didn't say anything for ten and fifteen minutes at a time, and he liked that. She was putting it together. And he liked it when she told him in the car that she wasn't sure the place in Maryland was really a place in Maryland, and not something he'd made up.

  It was something he'd made up, until he'd seen it.

  They came over the last hill and saw the cove, and she didn't say anything at first, just put it together, and when she spoke, it was simple and perfect. "It's beautiful," she said. He thought he would like to write a column that ended just that way. "It's beautiful,” she said He couldn't think what the story would be about.

  And she went with him into the field, not pushing him, not having to be pushed. She had no motives. She showed him her legs—dancer's legs—and he slid his finger up under her panties, and the hair was soft and pressed flat against her, no tangles as his finger went t
hrough it. And she never pushed him, or had to be pushed. It was like she'd expected him.

  He pulled her panties off one foot. Pale blue panties with little white edges, ruffled. Panties like that didn't come wrapped together in threes at J. C. Penney. He'd seen the bill that came to his wife one month from Nan Duskin. He thought of Jeanie living in the place she did, with the kind of husband she had, spending that kind of money on panties, and it broke his heart. Shellburn was touched by her underwear.

  He pulled his own down with his trousers, until he felt the cool air on his bottom, and then settled on top of her and pushed his way inside her, taking an inch, giving back an inch, taking an inch and a half. He moved slowly and kissed her eyes and her lips and her ears.

  She got wetter as it went on, and each time he pulled out of her the air touched his dick and cooled it, and it would feel that much warmer when he went back in. And then he pulled back out of her and put her hand on her clitoris, trying to hold her eyes with his. She'd closed her eyes, though, and her mouth had opened. A thin line of spit went from her front teeth to her lower lip, and she had begun to breathe harder, and as he watched that happen, his own breath came harder, and she rode up into him, meeting him, and then just as she began to shudder, the collie sneezed in his ass.

  It took a few seconds to realize what it was. He hadn't seen it when Jeanie said something was moving in the trees, and he hadn't heard it come up behind him, even though it was wearing a choke collar and tags for rabies inoculations. There was, when he thought back on it, one warm blow of air, and then a lick—it was as much a question as a lick—that touched him dead in the crack of the ass. He jumped—he may have screamed—and came completely out of Jeanie Scarpato, and then rolled over onto his back, holding onto his bottom like he'd been shot. The collie dropped to its elbows and made that noise they make when they want to play. He was black-and-white and square, and there was mud hanging from the clumps of matted hair hanging off` his edges, and leaves and Jesus knew what kind of other shit hanging from the mud.

  "Get out of here," Shellburn said. Jeanie was sitting up, reaching for her blue-and-white lace panties. The dog ran close to the ground, doing a tight figure eight that ended where it had started, back in front of them. He had a head like a Concorde jet, and his mouth was bubbling out on both sides. Shellburn said,

  "Go on, boy," but the dog had seen the cup on the blanket next to him, and he took a step closer to put his nose inside it.

  Shellburn let him. Jeanie had her pants back on and was edging away, making no sudden moves. "He won't hurt you," Shellburn said.

  "He must be lost," she said.

  He tried to protect the afternoon. "No, there's a farmhouse half a mile over that hill .... " He pointed over her shoulder, away from the water. He didn't want her thinking about anything lost. The collie liked what was in the cup. Shellburn watched him splash little drops of it up on his muzzle and his head while he drank. "He's probably just out having a look around."

  "I thought he bit you," she said. _

  When the dog had finished the cup, Shellburn filled it again, and found new ones for himself and Jeanie, and filled them too. She took the drink but kept an eye on the dog. Shellburn reached out and patted the collie's narrow head. Then he saw the uncomfortable way Jeanie was sitting, and he patted her too.

  "There'l1 be plenty of other times," he said.

  He leaned over to kiss her cheek, and his trousers dropped off his hips to his knees. The collie looked up from his wine. Shellburn pulled his pants back up and fastened the belt. The dog went back to his cup.

  Jeanie said, "I think I better get back," and the afternoon was out of step.

  "It's my fault," he said, not wanting her to blame the place.

  "It's a bad time," she said. "There's too much left to do at home."

  Shellburn poured the collie a last round and collected the basket and the blanket. She straightened herself and he admired the flat drop of her stomach and the way her blouse clung to her sides. He thought of how warm she'd felt, but she was all business now. On the way to the car he stopped at the top of the hill and looked out over the cove. "You're right," he said, "it is beautiful," but she'd already opened the car door and was getting in.

  The trip back was like the trip down, except when she didn't talk he worried about what she was thinking. She sat still in her seat looking out the window, and about halfway back Shellburn had the feeling it might be hard to talk her into coming back.

  * * *

  Mickey woke up when she slammed the car door. It was dark outside. He sat up in the chair, she came in the front door. He heard the car going up the street. A heavy car.

  She jumped when she saw him. "It's going to be all right," he said. She didn't know what he was talking about.

  "Leon's back at Jack Moran's," he said. "We'll have the funeral Saturday afternoon." He saw he was going too fast. "The services. We'l1 get it all over Saturday." She stumbled kicking off her shoes, he stood where he was. “It's going to be all right,” he said.

  She smiled at him and started up the stairs. He followed her, keeping the same distance. "That reporter ain't going to help nothin'," he said. "When he gets what he wants, he'll forget about you."

  She stopped on the steps and turned around. He thought for a second that she was going to tell him that Richard Shellburn cared about the common man, but she just stood there looking.

  "It's going to be all right," he said. She went the rest of the way upstairs and into the bathroom. He heard the bath water running, and then it was quiet. It was quiet a long time.

  When the phone woke him up, he was in the chair again. He didn't remember sitting down. There was a blanket over him, and a different kind of quiet upstairs. She was asleep, but she'd come down and covered him with a blanket. He got to the phone on the fourth ring, and from there he could see into the kitchen where there was a clock on the wall. It was two-thirty.

  "Yeah?"

  "Mick? It's Bird." He was whispering.

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm home," Bird said, "and Sophie's packin'. Askin' do I need what color socks. You should of seen it, Mick."

  "I heard about it," Mickey said. "How the fuck did she get them?"

  "I don't know," Bird said. "When I got out there the one asshole was already in pieces. It was the guy went with us to Jersey Monday."

  "Yeah."

  “Well, when I got there he was already down. I didn't even know she kept that fuckin' thing loaded. They was hollow-points, too. They had to be. I got there, she moves me out of the way and points it at the door and waits, and sure as shit, a minute later this other guy comes runnin' through and she blows a piece of his head off. A major piece."

  "What the fuck?" Mickey said. "They goin' to whack the whole world?"

  "I don't know," Bird said. "With these people, they could whack babies for cryin'. We're leavin' in a couple minutes, I ain't going to make it easy for them. Me and Sophie are gettin' in the Cadillac and headin' south."

  "Where?"

  "Don't tell nobody this, make them find us."

  "What do you think?" Mickey said. "I'm going to give you up?"

  "I mean nobody. Not even Jeanie. We're goin' down to Palatka, Florida, which nobody ever heard of. They got a trailer park there, a bunch of old people like Sophie. A river. Did you know the St. Johns River is one of only two rivers in the country that flows north? It's very interesting?

  "What the fuck are you talkin' about?"

  "If that don't work out," Bird said, "we can try Miami, get lost down there in the Jews and the Cubans. Whatever, we gotta get out of here. I ain't going to help 'em." Mickey thought of Bird in Florida, coming out of the trailer in the morning to watch a river flow north.

  "Did they say anything?"

  "They didn't get much of a chance," Bird said. The connection went quiet then, while they thought of waiting it out in Florida. Then Bird said, "Lissen to me, Mick. If you need a place to stay, you can always come to Palatka."
>
  "Good," he said.

  "Only don't sneak up on Sophie. She's probably up there puttin' notches in the handle right now. Jesus, Mick, you should of seen her."

  "And the people, they didn't say nothin?"

  Then Bird was talking to Aunt Sophie about what sweaters he wanted her to pack. "The last trip she took, she come to America," he said when he was talking to Mickey again. "No, Soph, I don't need no red pants .... Hey, Mick, I got to go."

  And then the connection went dead, too fast, before Mickey agreed to it, and he sat in the living room looking at the phone. And the house seemed emptier than it had before.

  He slept in Leon's room again. He got up at nine, Jeanie was still asleep, buried in a pile of pillows and blond hair. He brushed his teeth and washed his face and waited until he was downstairs to put his shoes on. The next time she saw him, he wanted it all done.

  He drove by the flower shop on the way to Little Eddie's Automotive Emporium. He could still see flowers through the window, but the whole place had been roped off by the police, and there were barricades all around the front that said CRIME SCENE——Do NOT ENTER. There were cops inside. The first thing cops did after a shoot was see how many guys they could get in the room where it happened, and they stayed until they got another room somewhere. else.

  The Cadillac was gone, Bird and Sophie with it. The cops would be going through their place across the street soon, trying to find them. Palatka. Mickey shook his head, thinking Bird must have found it in one of the geography books lying around the warehouse.

  "One of only two rivers in the country that runs north. It's very interesting."

  The cops would be back in the warehouse now, trying to put his business together. Mickey wasn't worried that Bird kept records, but he had to get rid of the meat today anyway. He'd thought of one other restaurant, over by the Italian Market, where he knew a bar manager, and planned to stop there after he made the deal for the truck. If they didn't want it there, he'd give it to somebody old.

  Little Eddie's Automotive Emporium sat in a gap between two lines of row houses near Third Street and Emily. He had thirty-five cars on the lot and one colored man that was supposed to keep them all shiny. His office was eight feet square, and there was a deer head on one wall and a deer's ass on the other. Little Eddie was close to eight feet square himself. Between deer parts was a sign that said l /3 DOWN and above that one that said BUYERS ARE LIARS. People who knew them both from the old neighborhood said Little Eddie was funnier than Joey Bishop, and could of been that famous if he'd got a break.