Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  Something authoritative in Rachel’s tone, probably. Immediately Silver sat on the edge of her bed. But when Rachel then folded her arms and studied him, he jumped up and crossed to the nearest wall. There he leaned his entire weight against his forehead.

  “Alex,” Rachel said. “One question. Have you been dream depriving yourself too?”

  Silver pushed off from the wall and turned. Rachel’s question might have been an ice pick stuck between his eyes. He blinked repeatedly. Then he said, “What is it? What are you going to say?”

  “Sit down.”

  Silver did this.

  “I just talked to Leon,” Rachel told him. “His impressions seeing you again weren’t exactly—favourable.”

  “Oh,” crestfallen. “Anyways, I can take it. You people are all hopeless neurotics. I can discount anything you say.”“Alex, what about my question?” “I’m fine, fine. Talk! Talk!”

  Rachel talked. Told him exactly what Leon had said. Pulled no punches. When she had finished there was a brief silence, and then Alex, head bowed, said, “I can’t believe Leon would say those things about me. What kind of an idol is that to have?”

  “But Alex. People always say harder things about other people than other people can ever imagine. As a therapist you must understand that. And the only reason you found out at all in this case is I think it might help you. Under normal circumstances—”

  “But Rachel,” turning. “It’s all true! Not in any absolute sense, but what is? From a recognizable, not-totally-off-the-wall point of view, I am a shameless opportunist! Who else would conceive and host a show like Share That Dream? Look what I’ve been doing to Puff! Leon, in his wisdom, has put his foot, I mean thumb—”

  “You are dream deprived, aren’t you Alex. Why?” “To find Leon of course.” Silver seemed amazed to need to say this. And then he was moving again. “But I’m not important right now. What is—The bond between me and Leon, like Double Bubble, it’ll stretch to a filament, but it’ll never—”

  Here Rachel lunged, caught Silver’s shirtfront in both hands, and lifted him clear off the ground. “Alex Silver,” she shouted at his face, “when you make three women and a cat crazy, somebody has to be in charge!”

  She lowered him then, and Silver stood blinking. “OK, I nominate you—”

  “Elected!” She grabbed him and threw him onto the bed so violently his glasses flew off. Whimpering, “What are you going to—” he bounced a few times then tried to scramble away.

  “Get comfortable!” Rachel screamed, throwing him back down.

  He eyed her in terror.

  “Now! And close your eyes!”

  “You won’t hurt me—?”

  “Close those fuckers!”

  Silver did so.

  “I said, Get comfortable!”

  “Like this?” Silver made buttock-shifting settling-in movements. “Now what?” he wondered, yawning.

  “Fold your hands across your stomach.”

  “You won’t stab me?”

  “I won’t stab you.”

  “Like this—?”

  “Uh-huh. How do you feel?”

  “Terrific. Widescreen eyelid feature. Wilmott High Days—”

  By the time Rachel had got the electrodes attached to Silver’s head, he was snoring gently.

  The Buhrstone was spinning as ever, the miller and his sad family looking down, the Muzak playing. Leon was sitting where Harry had, but he wasn’t him. The waitress was snapping a fresh checked tablecloth. It billowed and floated down. Leon was haggard, smoking, like a man who has been an increasingly reluctantparticipant in morale-sapping acts. Rachel noted there were now filters on his cigarettes.

  “Where have you been all week?” he demanded when she sat down. “You’re a wreck.”

  “I’m also starving.” Soon she was tucking into a four-egg sour cream omelet with capers and red peppers, three toasted bagels with bacon on the side.

  “Have you been eating like this all week?” Leon asked when she ordered cream cheese and more bagels.

  She nodded.

  You haven’t gained any weight. This could mean a tapeworm. I’m serious.”

  She told him about the Dream Centre.

  “Maybe we could sue—” Leon suggested, half-hearted.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Anyway, no use beating around the bush. We’ve both had our fun, and now I want you back.”

  “But you were the one—”

  “Listen, I’ve decided you’re right. Real estate is not it. A person like me needs to be doing something one hundred percent creative at all times. Otherwise I get too restless. I’ve decided to go back to writing. And I know what my first book is going to be. Hell, I’ve even mapped out the chapters. Are you ready? The Cosmic Game of Real Estate.”

  “Leon—”

  “Not just another handbook. Not just the usual con-man tips. Genuine inner stuff to make people feel good about sellinghouses and therefore do it much more effectively. Here are some possible chapter titles: ‘The Zen of Timing’; ‘How to Package and Sell Positive Emotion’; ‘Interiorizing the Interior’—”

  “Leon—”

  “Of course, once I got the ‘Cosmic Game’ format down, I could do it for anything. I’m thinking of money here, Rachel, you’ll be happy to know. Bestsellers. A string of bestsellers. Culminating in The Cosmic Game of Writing Bestsellers. Why not?”

  “Leon, I think—”

  “But you know what this will be a stepping stone to? A publishing house called True Books that will only publish books that are completely clear, completely objective, and completely true. No biases, no axes to grind, no soapboxing, no hidden agendas, no warring schools, no fancy writing, no artificial word limits. Just the truth. Period. No more of this relativity-uncertainty stuff. It’s a fad anyway. People are fed up with quarks. They want something they can get their teeth into. And where there’s an unsatisfied need, that’s where the ones with vision make their fortune. I’ve been thinking I’ll call it Limpid House. ‘Books for folks who only mess with the truth.’”

  “Leon, first things first—”

  “I know. I’m just as sick of the Millpond as you are. 201 Dell is driving me crazy. What I wouldn’t do for a proper rec room like a normal homeowner. Instead I’m bouncing between that freezing rat hole of a den and that living room. By the way. This morning I figured out what’s wrong with our living room. It’s only got light at one end, those French doors! We’re hemmed in! If we could just smash a hole in that useless long blank wall—”“Leon, we live in a townhouse. We’d be into the Barringers’ living room.”

  “That’s what I’m saying—I wish we had the kind of living room that nobody used. You know, a real showcase. That’s a kind of lifestyle that despite all our education, despite the fact that we’ve been out in the work force almost twenty years, despite our high critical intelligence, we’re not even close to. I’m saying I’m ready for a major push. Right over the top. Make it or destroy ourselves trying. That’s how I’m feeling right now—”

  “Leon, could you shut up for a minute, please?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to live with you any more. Anywhere.”

  Briefly Leon resembled a man who has just received an unexpected jab to the nose. He blanched. Next his mouth twisted for sarcasm, but it quivered out of shape. “It’s Sirocco, isn’t it,” he said, breathing with difficulty. “Now that Wilkes is taken. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Leon, I found Harry.”

  “Harry? Don’t tell me you’re still on Harry—Rachel, listen. This is Leon you’re finding right here, and he loves you better than he loves anybody!”

  “Then it shouldn’t take him a week shacked up with Gretchen Molstad to realize it.”

  “But what if it did take something like that? And a lot of hard thought in between?”

  “In between what?”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You’re a good talker, Leon
. You don’t need love, you need to be heard. There are lots of starving ears out there.”

  Here, on the subject of ears, an interesting thing happened. Over The Buhrstone sound system were coming strains of a familiar tune.

  “Leon!”

  “What.”

  “Listen! That’s the Melody for the Girl on My Bus! No—It’s a little different. Hear it? This goes da-da-da-da—The Melody goes—”

  “So you don’t love me.”

  “Now I know where we heard it! In our bedroom our first spring in the Millpond, when we used to leave the windows open and make love all night—Remember how we’d hear the Olde Mill music on the night breezes? It was our song!” Rachel was sobbing.

  “What’s the matter with you,” Leon said.

  Here the waitress, a woman with an expression that was equal parts jaded and sympathetic, came by.

  “Excuse me,” said Rachel, blowing her nose on a serviette. “This is really, really important. Do you know what that tune is?”

  “This tune?” The waitress listened. “Nope. More coffee here?”

  “So you’re telling me you don’t love me,” Leon said.

  The waitress looked at him. “Yup. More coffee.” She filled their cups and went away.

  Rachel and Leon sat and talked for another hour, Leon pushing for the limpid truth and behaving in a hurt and hostile way when he got it. For Rachel a Buhrstone hour under even the most benign circumstances was an eternity; she was getting dizzy. When Leon had finally worked himself into a rage and stormed out, she sat for a few minutes, then stood up, gripping the table.

  The waitress came over. “You told him you don’t love him.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “That’s a hard one,” the waitress said. “Especially when they leave you the bill. Tell you what. It’s on the house.” She held out a piece of paper with numbers on it. “You said it was important, so I asked the manager. He says call Muzak. This here is their number,” pointing. “This here’s the time it came on—”

  At a phone by the front doors of the Olde Mill, Rachel called Muzak, asked about that tune. The man went away to his program schedule and came back. “It’s a traditional, called I Climbed the Rocky Mountains (But I Can’t Get Over You).”

  “Oh really? Thanks—”

  “Thank you. We try real hard here at Muzak, and it’s nice to know somebody out there is actually listening.”

  EPILOGUE

  A little more than three years later, on one of those raw spring days that provoke nostalgia for the soft snows of February, Rachel Jardine, formerly Boseman, her babysitter sick, took a day off work and with one travelling companion, her daughter Clare Elizabeth, aged three months, made her first excursion to the newly opened Arcadia Centre, in order to visit her friends Cam and Jane Wilkes in their condominium home. Clare’s father John, a lecturer in geography, was working that day and anyway, though curious as most people about Arcadia Centre, had a horror of the suburbs.

  It was the structure itself, breaking the horizon just south of the 303, like a harvest moon ribbed silver, that told Rachel long before the overhead signs that Exit 37 was the one she wanted. And even after all she had read and heard, she was impressed. It was not the usual brick compound but a sort of grand Victorian arcade in the round. An intricately arched dome of steel and retractable plastic. A bowl inverted upon a wheel with a green hub, eight broad shopping-street spokes, and a three-storey rim of retail and condo development. Like a covered baseball stadium with a park instead of a field. Shops and condos instead of stands.

  Got to hand it to you, Stanley.

  As these things go …

  Clare Elizabeth appreciated the PeopleMover, the gondolatype monorail that carried them from their underground parking level to the Centre itself, and on, if they had wanted, all the way to the Olde Mill. Rachel liked the spacious sunniness of the place, the way her eye kept being drawn to the green of the park, the way when she happened to push Clare’s stroller up one of those spokes it ended just like that and the heavy greenery and the white and yellow and crimson blooming began.

  She knelt to loosen Clare’s clothes …

  “Rachel! Rachel!”

  Rachel raised her eyes from Clare’s face. High above her, above the highest level of shops, were condominiums where white shutterlike windows stood open on the scene below. From one of these windows two distant, tiny people were leaning out, side by side, a middle-aged couple with pale hair. Waving. Calling. In mouse voices.

  “Rachel! Rachel! Welcome to Arcadia Centre! Welcome!”Rachel and Clare had a genteel tea with the Wilkeses in their new home. Cam wore a blue blazer with buttons that rattled tinnily, grey flannels, and sheepskin slippers. Jane wore a cream rayon crepe blouse and pink slacks. She had the plastic off the furniture by the time Rachel and Clare arrived at the door. Selected bus parts remained polythene-draped in a sort of viewing area off the front hall. There was chicken wire stapled to the legs of the chesterfield. Puff VI lay orange and dozing under the dining-room table. The condo, which was large and airy, had the neat, sanitized look upon it of Jane’s small hand. In addition were occasional Wilkesian touches, such as those bus parts, his trumpet and music stand, a framed letter of thanks for his role in bringing Arcadia Centre into the life of PAGO (now a loose-knit bunch who called themselves The Mall Rats), and an extensive collection of the Dick and Jane readers—the fruits of his recent hobby: attending Board of Education used textboook sales. “See how in the fifties the clarity of the line goes, Rachel? See how vague and blurred Jane looks in 1951 compared to 1940? See how she’s been redone, exactly the same pose and story but softer? What on earth do you think it means? Do you think it might have something to do with World War II?”

  For a long while they stood at the glassless window looking out over the green glory of Arcadia Centre as Puff VI rubbed purring against Rachel’s leg and Cam spoke sadly of the tragic death of Stanley Jardine just as construction was nearing completion. Rachel had noticed a small item in the newspaper about an unspecified accident. She had sighed and gone to warmClare’s Pablum. According to Cam, who had hung around Arcadia Centre throughout construction and was acquainted with many of the workers on a first-name basis, there was said to be a body in cement somewhere under the marble of Xanadu place, a spoke in the northwest sector.

  “It’s the kind of accident a hard hat is no protection against,” Cam commented.

  “So’s a push from behind.”

  He nodded sadly. “The Mall Rats are having a tile engraved over the approximate spot. The sort of thing you see in Westminster Abbey. We owe him everything.”

  They stepped away from the window, and the rest of the visit passed mostly with the Wilkeses, proud godparents, fussing over little Clare. The TV remained on. Curious, Rachel studied the Wilkeses carefully and decided that they were exactly as happy as they appeared to be. Cam’s salacious doting, though tedious to the observer, did not seem to bother Jane at all. Rachel managed these observations shortly before she, like Clare, fell into a profound sleep while Cam was showing his new ordering of redeveloped slides from the ninety-day bus tour the Wilkeses had won on Share That Dream—”And here’s an amusing one of Jane in front of that remarkable gift shop shaped exactly like an oven mitt—” Jane: “Tea cosy.” “—just outside of, um—” Jane: “Akron.” “Rachel? Rachel?”The bi-weekly taping of Share That Dream had continued to be a high point in the life of the Wilkeses. This Friday, for example, Cam was going as a bus driver and Jane as a windshield wiper. Once they had even taken Dick, who went in shorts and high-lace sneakers and won a car-polishing kit with a real chamois. He wept, remembering Father. Both Cam and Jane agreed that the show had lost something since the departure of Alex Silver and his mother, now in L.A.

  About Dick the Wilkeses were in mild disagreement. Cam maintained that he had not changed at all, Jane that he had mellowed. They checked on him daily to make sure he had not stepped on a rake or brained himself with a window sash.

>   “Cam,” said Rachel, tearing her eyes from the TV. “Do you ever see Leon around?”

  “As a matter of fact I ran into him just the other day. He’s got a terrific new job selling computers at CompuTec, right here in the Centre. It was too bad that faster-than-light computer company he invested in after he made all that money selling my bus yard was so far ahead of its time. He’s been through a rough patch these past few years, but I think he’s beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Still, just between you and me, I don’t think that Molstad woman makes the best sort of companion. She’s far too—What’s the word, Jane?”

  “Needy.”

  After Rachel had left the Wilkeses, who wrung from her a promise to bring John next time—they thought the world of John—shedrove back to the city through the Millpond. First she headed for Smutter Circle, where she got to see Dick, pipe in teeth, knees slightly flexed to examine his shrubbery in preparation for the warmer months ahead, Spot with his dewlaps flat on the grass between his paws, tail going, the house and yard perfect in a way that suggested importation from a rarer, purer, altogether simpler planet, but then Spot bounding high, as for an invisible ball, the leash somehow pulling tight around Dick’s knees, Dick’s arms flying into the air, his mouth going Oh, oh, oh! as he fell.

  Rachel did not stop, passed on to 201 Dell Drive, where Leon and Gretchen had their less-than-perfect home. From Sally—who had moved back to the city about the same time as Rachel and become a good friend with a trying habit of passing out before going home—Rachel had heard that Gretchen and Leon were both in therapy with Silver’s successor in the Millpond, a practitioner of Implosion Therapy. Individually or as a couple? Willing or unwilling? A good sign or bad? Who knew? Who except Rachel cared, and then in such a distant, sad way?

  There—slowing down now—was the rusted-out old Subaru in the driveway, all the plants gone from the kitchen bay window, that would be Gretchen’s killer thumb, weeds in the front lawn, Leon must be off the Millpond, or perhaps more generally demoralized. But of course, really, Rachel had no idea what life was like inside that now weathered-looking rose coloured townhouse-type two-and-a-half in Contractor Modern. Probably, like life in the Wilkes condo, pretty ordinary and pretty strange. Like most life, anywhere. The unfamiliar effect of 201 Dell Drive, its otherness, caused Rachel to realize that the routes the cracks in the foundations were busy tracing had a genuine complexity; so did the paint bubbles and missed bits, dents in the aluminum, lime stains on the brick; and the subtle angles that doors and windows were tilting on, the way two baseboards no longer quite met in the corner; that chalk oatmeal the drywall was here and there dissolving to…. And she noticed that people had been building weird additions, the trees were filling out and getting so tall already, some houses were looking quite a bit more lived-in than others, some more spiffy, on some streets the landscaping and home improvement competitions had veered off in remarkable directions.