by Ann Beattie
A raccoon is sitting in the silver buttonwood tree. It has obviously been there the whole time, quietly waiting until that time when it will again have the yard to itself. Giles—perhaps in deference to the raccoon’s size—continues to sniff, but does not approach the tree. Morons on motorcycles streak by, opening them full throttle. It is almost enough noise to shake the raccoon from the buttonwood. Everyone cringes.
Lisa comes out of Modello’s house. She is wearing white pants and a hooded jade-colored sweatshirt, with the hood thrown back. She is carrying her big keyring. In the world of the ten thousand things, Lisa has keys to open a significant number of them: car keys; security alarm keys; her own house keys; keys to the shed; duplicate keys in case her girlfriend loses her keys.
“I’m off,” she says. “Everybody seems sure I’ll recognize him by his . . .” She searches for the right word: “grandeur.”
She takes the Mercedes, driving it out after opening the gate, which is flanked by cascading pink bougainvillea, through which large gargoyle heads partially protrude.
“Good-bye, pretty girl being paid time-and-a-half for going to get the Famous Poet. Good-bye,” Randy says, getting out of the tub. He waves the white towel he’d left on the hot tub railing like a big handkerchief, then wraps it around his waist. His knees feel suddenly so weak that he plops down on the field-stone, right where he is. He’s stayed in the hot water too long; that can be counterproductive, as he knows, but he was frustrated by the kink in his back, determined to soak the pain away.
“You all right?” Hopper says, wheeling his chair to face Randy. Giles noses around Randy, sniffing the wet towel. His real concern, however, is with the raccoon. He keeps glancing behind him, like someone talking to a bore who’s become smitten with another person far across the room at a cocktail party.
“Just a bit of fatigue,” Randy says. He looks at his feet. He does look like a prune. A white prune. The skin will unshrivel—at least, why not pretend to have faith in your body and assume that it will—but inside, whatever narrowed and warped will stay that way forever. He puts a hand on the dog’s rump, to steady himself. The dog stands still, obligingly, his now white muzzle further whitened by a small puddle of light aimed from a spotlight onto a royal palm.
“You’ve been depressed all night, yourself, haven’t you?” Hopper says.
“Well, it’s my own fault. I was more than capable of helping to prepare the dinner, but it just drives me crazy when Felix exudes goodwill in the direction of—well, basically in the direction of seafood. He can be all by himself, and he’ll still be talking to the shrimp and marveling at their beauty, raising his hands above some steaming pot as if it’s a magical infusion he’s absorbing through his skin.”
“I’ve seen him,” Hopper says. “How do you think he got that disposition, when his family lost everything when they fled from Cuba? And his sister dying so young, and all?”
“Current research seems to indicate that people are issued their dispositions the way they’re issued blue eyes,” Randy says, though he isn’t really concentrating on what Hopper is saying. The pain in his back has resumed, with more intensity; the soaking did nothing, except perhaps to exacerbate it. For a few seconds in the tub, bubbling, he had felt pain-free and wonderfully buoyant. It was probably thumping down on the fieldstone that made the pain flare.
“What do you think they’re doing, staying in the house all this time?” Hopper asks. When Randy doesn’t answer, Hopper answers his own question: “They’re continuing their bonding experience. Imagine having known each other almost forty years, living next door to each other, never even giving a formal dinner without inviting the other, but never—”
“Oh, we don’t know that they weren’t lovers,” Randy says. “But really: what would it matter?”
“You think they might have been? I always take everything at face value, I guess. When Carwell told me he and Modello never got it on, I couldn’t understand why, since they’re so inseparable, but I believed him.” He thinks about it. “I certainly believed him,” he says. He reaches out to pat Giles as he walks past, but his hand seizes up and all he can do is plunk his fist on the dog’s back. Giles looks back, briefly puzzled. Then he continues toward his water dish, beside the traveler’s palm. “It would be naive to think that every homosexual would sleep with every other homosexual, I guess,” Hopper finishes.
The pain in Randy’s back is burning like a pilot light. He has an image of a tiny constant light inside him, and he wonders, for a second, whether he might temper its annoyance by thinking of it not as a pilot light, but as his spirit. His continually glowing spirit. Then he decides that no, there might have been a time in the sixties when that would have worked, but it would never work now. The wet towel is making him cold. But the truth is, he isn’t sure he can stand up. He imagines himself a flea, hopping onto Giles’s back, riding into the house, tiny and invisible, transported. When Giles finishes drinking water, he walks over to the back step and goes into the house, his dog tags jingling.
“I was just seeing if I could shake your confidence before,” Randy says. “One time—I don’t remember how—but one time it came up in conversation that they’d discussed the possibility of having some sort of a romance, but both of them agreed that the other just wasn’t his type. And they’re so much alike! Isn’t that a riot . . . that that would be the reason they wouldn’t do it?”
“Gets less funny when you’re in my position, and you realize you’ll never have a ‘type’ again. That you can have any type you want, I mean, but it’s irrelevant.”
Randy looks at him. He realizes—as he rarely does—that Hopper is years younger than he. He thinks about saying: “Could you wheel over here and let me see if I could use your chair to pull myself up?” Instead, he says: “How come you never got married? Just think the chase was the best part of it?”
“Yeah,” Hopper says. “Seemed like it was a game that could go on for a pretty long time.”
They sit in silence. More motorcycles whiz by. The raccoon looks down from the tree.
“Yeah,” Hopper says again. “Lucky lady, the one who got spared marrying me, having to search her soul and then decide it was the best thing for both of us, after all, if she left.”
Randy looks at Hopper. A blanket is stretched across Hopper’s lap and the heavy sweater, like a shawl, that was thrown around his shoulders when he first wheeled out now seems appropriate, rather than excessive. Randy hears himself say, “I’m cold.”
“You cold, man? I guess so, huddled with nothing but that little soaking loincloth to warm you.”
“The thing is, I don’t think I can get up,” Randy says. “Can’t get up?” Hopper says immediately. His voice is higher than usual. He turns the chair in Randy’s direction and rolls over to him with a few quick strokes of the wheel. He looks at his hand, which is unclenched but also, he can tell, useless. Instead of extending it, he uses the ball of his hand, clumsily but quickly, to lock the chair. Then the scenario that moments before had seemed so desirable to Randy materializes: he shifts—uncoiling the pain from the pilot light into a burning corkscrew—and reaches for the top of the wheel. “That looks good. Grab on,” Hopper says.
Randy looks at him. “See? It’s not just Felix. You’ve got a good disposition, yourself. You think I’m going to be upright, after a little maneuvering, in just a few seconds.”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really assume that,” Hopper says. “I just feel bad that there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
“Don’t pay any attention to me. I was just jazzing you because I needed to stall for time,” Randy says. He shrugs. “Fifty-three fucking years old,” he says. He brings himself to one knee and, ignoring the pain, moves his hand from the top of the wheel to the armrest. He can feel—thank God; he can feel—strength returning to his upper body. He tells himself: Take your time; take your time.
“Go slow. You’re doing great,” Hopper says, his voice again at its normal level
.
“It’s so pathetic. What can you do but laugh?” Randy says. He adds: “Also, I’m highly motivated. I’ve got to piss in the worst way.”
As Hopper snorts a laugh, Randy brings himself up, unsteadily. He brushes his sides, as if he were cleaning something dusty. Then he adjusts, for a few seconds, to being upright. “Be right back,” he says, heading for the kitchen at as good a clip as he dares, and the adjacent downstairs bathroom.
In the time he is gone, Hopper and the raccoon look at each other for a long time. Eventually, the raccoon moves down a branch. You could even say the raccoon did this while staring. Hopper decides to let it win the stare-down—actually, he had been trying to calm down and to put the image of Randy on one knee out of his mind, so he hadn’t so much been staring at the raccoon as simply spacing out, but try to communicate that to a raccoon—so he looks in the direction of the bougainvillea, through which he can see one of the gargoyle’s protruding wings. The pair had been his birthday gift to Carwell the year they moved to Key West, before you saw the things in every gift shop. Obscured by the lushly flowering bush, he can now see only the stub of one’s nose, and the wing of another. Which makes them seem a little nightmarish, because they’re so effectively hidden.
Lisa is not yet back from the airport, a drive that at this time of night should have been no more than ten minutes each way, so there is a good possibility the Famous Poet’s plane was delayed in Miami, or wherever he changed to a commuter flight. Only little planes are allowed onto Key West, setting themselves down like toys, little people ducking their heads and climbing out, their eyes ablaze with appreciation and wonder. The heat! The sun! The palms!
He imagines himself one of those people: a person who leaves his airplane seat, who walks jauntily down the steps to the tarmac. But the image dissolves; he doesn’t even have a scenario for what he’d do first: jump in the air and click his heels, or simply stride purposefully into the terminal. What a simple wonder that would be: to walk across the floor to baggage claim, reach out and pick up his bag . . . he’d sling it over his shoulder; none of those rolling-wheel suitcases. He’d . . . oh, he’d stop for a Coke at the machine and drop the coins in himself, plugging in quarters with his thumb, the way he used to. . . .
Lost in thought, he closes his eyes, but even then, what he visualizes starts to vaporize. He opens his eyes, not surprised to see the yard, rather than the interior of the Key West airport, though he had not at all expected to see the raccoon, completely descended from the tree. It is sitting on its haunches, which makes it seem at once toylike and casual—if “casual” is a valid way to describe a raccoon. It’s a big one: barrel round and bright-eyed. On the ground, it looks larger but, paradoxically, less imposing. It seems to have no clear idea about what to do next.
“Just don’t turn out to be rabid and leap at my fuckin’ throat,” Hopper says.
As if shaken out of a reverie—is it sick? Could the thing really be rabid?—the raccoon draws itself up as if to say that it is in perfect health, perfect shape. It sniffs the ground. It takes a few steps forward. It really is big. Where does a thing that size keep itself? Under someone’s porch? Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it runs off, darting quickly through the open gate.
It is only a matter of seconds until Hopper hears the sickening squeal of brakes. Why couldn’t it at least have darted out in front of one of the Testosterone Pigs on their motorcycles— someone who might have been toppled? Why the banality of a car that will simply strike the big unlucky raccoon and keep rolling? But oh, hell. Goddamn and oh, hell: the poor bastard should have sniffed the ground just a few seconds longer. Then it might still be alive. He hopes it isn’t suffering. That it has been killed instantly. The car has moved on, as if there was never a problem—but what else is to be expected in Key West? Friday night—and Friday the thirteenth, no less—it was probably struck by some drunk whose reflexes were shot to shit. It wasn’t likely Mother Teresa would get out of the car and minister to the dying.
Was it the air, as evening moved toward night, that made him suddenly so cold, or just the MS, screwing up his circulation? More of the prelude to the nightly sweats and shivering? Well . . . the poor bastard was probably well out of it. How long was it going to last on a tiny island that was getting developed inch by inch, day by day? But if that was so, why was he crying. Because of the shock of it. The simple, unexpected reality of something suddenly getting snuffed. It was awful. He remembered back when he drove, the things along the highway. The little Key deer, hovered over by buzzards. The mashed turtles.
“Brr,” Randy says, coming down the steps. “It got cold suddenly, didn’t it?”
Randy has put on long pants and a beige turtleneck. He is the picture of the casual male—the way the raccoon had been, for a few moments, a casual raccoon. It is on the tip of Hopper’s tongue to blurt out what happened, but Randy has had enough trauma for one night. He seems much better. Pulled together. He picks up the pool cleaner and runs the net just below the surface of the water, clearing it of kapok leaves.
“Come down, come down, wherever you are,” Randy calls into the tree, raising the blue netted pool scoop, seeming not to care that the raccoon is no longer visible.
“Getting late. I wonder where Lisa and our charming house-guest are?” Hopper says.
“You know, as much as I like Lisa, I always breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves at night. That still leaves Felix, of course: Mr. I-Work-for-Less-Senor-I-Live-in-Your-Downstairs-Bed-room. Doris does her eight hours and there’s no keeping her after that, so she’s out of your hair.” Randy glances around the yard. The lights that are on timers have come on. From the side of Modello’s house, they can see the end of the long lap pool, lit from below, its green-painted bottom glowing. “The people they hired—well: we told them who to hire—they’re very good, but it’s a job to them, you know? Although Felix makes me nervous, sometimes. Telling Modello, who is the atheist of all atheists, forgive me, about how he implores God in his prayers every night to bless what he calls ‘the family.’” Randy shakes his head. “Still, the bottom line is that they’re being useful, and we’re hanging out like any other Key West bums, except that we’re not whiling away the evening with beer, since neither of us is supposed to drink.”
Hopper picks up Randy’s false elegiac tone: “Yes, here the two of us are, turned out into the Peaceable Kingdom with old Giles, on his last legs, watched over by our friends the gargoyles, and the koi over there in its little burbling pool, all draped with protective netting. . . .”
“And high up in the tree,” Randy says, “Mr. Coon, looking down on all of it like that guy up on the billboard in The Great Gatsby—Dr. Ecklestein, or whoever he was—the eye doctor.”
Hopper draws in his breath sharply, remembering his earlier visit to another eye doctor: the eye doctor who didn’t know his secret, the nice man who gave him a prescription that might be useful on days when there was a lot of glare.
Randy hurries on, gesturing over his shoulder. “Up there with his big bright eyes, just hangin’ out, taking it all in. Nothing to say about it, of course, but that doesn’t mean he’s not learning from our sad travails.”
So why doesn’t he look? Hopper wonders, suddenly irritated at Randy. Why does Randy take so many things for granted? What if they hadn’t worked for people who were compassionate? What if they were in a ward, somewhere? Okay— the ward might have been more imminent for him than for Randy; but what if they were drugged, living with a bunch of crazies, nobody even to visit them? What made them deserve the good—the better than good, excellent—treatment they’ve gotten? One step outside the yard he, himself, had just been derisively thinking of as the Peaceable Kingdom was the driver who’d mowed down the raccoon and continued on his merry way. What luck was it—what incredible good fortune—that the two of them had been born men, instead of koi fish, their little ponds draped with insubstantial netting so the cranes wouldn’t swoop down and slurp them into their beaks? What am
azing DNA miracle had made them able to stand upright—well: in principle they could stand upright—without barrel bodies and striped tails, and a brain barely able to comprehend so-called civilization, let alone its dangers?
“Looking a little mashed down in that chair. Can I help reposition you?” Randy asks.
Yeah, Hopper thinks bitterly; you can put your hands under my armpits and pull me up. We can pretend you’re the big puppeteer in the sky. You can reincarnate me, if you’ve got any hidden magic powers, and sit me in that silver buttonwood. I’ll come back as the raccoon. Instead of saying those things, though, he says: “Do you think you could help me down those steps into the tub?”
“The hot tub?” Randy says. “I thought the doctor said you shouldn’t go in.”
“What you’re really thinking is that we’re both so pathetic, you couldn’t help me in if you wanted to, and if you did, I’d drown,” Hopper says. Part of him hates Randy. But another part of him comes close to loving him. All sarcasm about puppeteers aside, he wouldn’t mind being lifted by Randy, and being placed in the relaxing water would obviously be the perfect finale. He eyes the water. It is the water that he most wants. If only Randy can be embarrassed into trying, the moment in the hot tub might be his. He prods just a little more: “You think five minutes is going to do me in?”
“Felix can stand on the sidelines and pray for you,” Randy says wryly.
He has convinced him. There remains only the discarding of his clothes. Stripping down to his tee-shirt and boxers.
“Let me get that shirt unbuttoned,” Randy says. “You’re sure you’re not going to freeze? I think I’d better go get some beach towels before—”
“No, man, don’t do that. It might call attention to what we’re doing.”
Slowly, with less strength than he’d like to have, Randy helps Hopper out of the wheelchair. He reaches into the side bag and takes out Hopper’s folding cane, snaps it open with two quick motions, and hands it to him. Hopper managed to unzip his pants while still sitting—he never fastens the button at the waist anymore—and he raises his legs as best he can for Randy to pull them off. Without his clothes, the breeze really cuts into him, but he can see the steam rising from the tub, just a few steps in front of him. He uses the cane, but lets himself lean on Randy. Why was he so angry at Randy just a few moments before? Randy is his friend—Randy wants him in the tub just as much as he wants to be in it. It would be a victory for both of them.