Sea Lovers

by Valerie Martin

  “I felt so bad after you left today,” she said. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was angry at you because you didn’t want to help me.” Her voice was shaky, edgy. If she started crying I would never get rid of her.

  “Okay,” I said. “Apology accepted.”

  “I didn’t think you would come, and I wasn’t ready for how it made me feel to see you again, so I said stupid things. And you were so cold, Maxwell. You never used to be so cold.”

  “I’ve changed,” I said.

  “And now you tell me you think I’m an impostor, that somehow I’ve killed myself.”

  “I didn’t mean it. I’m drunk. And I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

  “I need to sit down,” she said. She advanced to the couch and collapsed among the cushions. It was an uncomfortable product of the folded-futon school with a decidedly backward pitch, which she accommodated by leaning forward and planting her feet wide apart. Her big skirt billowed over her ankles so that only the pink toenails peeked out. She patted her hair down absently. “Could I have a glass of water, Maxwell?”

  I sipped my whiskey, contemplating my options. Should I drink more in the hopes of becoming comatose, or try to sober up and devise a plan to get her out of my living room? I was drunk enough to be stupid, I was sure of that. Rita was looking around the room, appraising the furnishings. “It’s nice in here,” she said. “It’s cool, too.” Her eyes came back to me, settling upon me with a proprietary complacency that sent a warning chill through my circuitry. “You’ve really done well for yourself, Maxwell. I knew you would.”

  I poured water from the seltzer bottle into a glass and handed it to her. “No ice,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Rita took the glass and drank half of it. “Seltzer,” she said. “I haven’t had that in a long time. Do you have any vodka to put in it?”

  “No vodka,” I said. “Only whiskey.”

  Rita held out the glass. “That would be fine,” she said. “Whiskey and soda is a good drink.”

  I poured a thimbleful into her glass, keeping my eye on my own hand, which seemed detached from me, a long way out there. “Just a little more, if you don’t mind,” Rita said. I poured in enough to turn the water golden. Rita took the glass and sipped at it, making a sucking sound that was loud in the stillness of the room.

  “The thing is,” she said, “what I told you wasn’t true. I felt bad about that. I wanted you to know the truth.”

  “Why does it matter?” I said.

  “I think it matters,” she said. “I think of myself as an honest person. The truth is, Katixa wasn’t the love of my life. I thought she might be for a while. I was pretty worn out after Danny, and Katy was strong and quiet, and she was excited about the novel. Danny never read any of it; she wasn’t much into reading.”

  “Danny was into barroom brawls, as I recall,” I said.

  “That’s true.” Rita laughed. “Danny liked to fight. Katy was the opposite; she was always calm. But after a while I realized she didn’t really know anything about books. She was excited about my novel because she’d never really read one before. To her I was a genius. I couldn’t talk to her about it, about where I was going with it, what I was doing. Writing is such lonely work—well, you know.”

  “I do,” I said, pouring myself more whiskey. The comatose option was looking attractive.

  “At that point I thought maybe my problem was that I couldn’t be happy with a woman. So I got disenchanted with Katy and pretty soon I was bored with the ranch and every animal and every person on it except Bolo, the Mexican, a real Indio. One day he had had enough of it too, because Katy was suspicious of us and making his life hell, so he said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and I went with him.”

  “So that was it,” I observed.

  “Was what?”

  “Your problem. You couldn’t be happy with a woman.” I was standing behind her, and she turned to look at me, clutching her glass, her eyes flashing in the old way, with the pleasure she took in telling a tale. She gulped her drink and plunged on.

  “I still don’t know. Maybe it was. Bolo and I stayed together for a while, drifting around, until we just drifted apart and I wound up on the reservation. While I was there I thought about my life a lot and I realized there had only ever been one person who loved me in the way I wanted to be loved, and that was because he was smart enough to value the best thing about me, which is my writing, because he knew, among other writers, among my peers, I was good—I was doing good work.”

  “And that person would be me,” I said.

  “Sure, Maxwell. That’s what I realized. You were the love of my life, but I didn’t know it then. I was too young. I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t know enough to know it.”

  “You knew enough to steal my rent money.”

  “Are you still mad about that?” she said testily. “Is that why you’re so cold to me?”

  “I’m not mad about it. But I’m curious to know, since you’re such an honest person, how you justify stealing from the person you now recognize as the love of your life.”

  “There’s nothing intrinsically dishonest about stealing money, Maxwell. Money doesn’t have anything to do with integrity; that much is clear. Just read a newspaper. You knew I took it, and you knew why.”

  I appeared to myself as I was that day, impossibly naïve, rushing into the frigid apartment, calling her name, but only once, because it was instantly clear that everything was altered; her typewriter, her shelf of paperback books, her furry slippers were gone. It was an hour or two later when, in an agony of suspicion, I opened the empty envelope in my sock drawer. Of course, I thought, of course. “You took it because you didn’t give a damn about me,” I said. “And you’re right, I did know that.”

  She sipped her drink, arranging her skirt in an absent, coquettish way that infuriated me. “I was desperate,” she said.

  A chill arising from that night when I’d understood how thoroughly and willfully she had betrayed me thickened the air between us, and it had a fierce, sobering effect. “Aren’t you always desperate, Rita?” I said. “Aren’t you desperate right now? Isn’t that why you’re here? To see if you can use me somehow, because you’re so desperate?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, gasping for air. She leaned forward over her knees so far I thought she might fall on her face. “I’m not well,” she said breathlessly.

  I watched her, pitiless as a god. She was a pathetic woman who meant nothing to me. “I’m calling a taxi for you,” I said, taking up the phone. As I spoke to the dispatcher, Rita sat up again and commenced mopping her brow with a handkerchief she extracted from her sleeve. When I hung up, I lit into her again. “What you don’t understand,” I said, “is that there’s nothing noble or brave about the way you’ve lived. You didn’t finish your novel because you didn’t know how to finish it. No one kept you from finishing it, because no one cared whether you finished it or not. You made everyone who might care suffer because you knew you would never finish it.” I’d wounded her. The sweat pouring from her brow mingled with tears. A series of racking sobs convulsed her. “It doesn’t take twenty years to write a novel,” I continued. “It might take five or seven, but not twenty.”

  “It’s almost finished,” she pleaded.

  “I’m almost finished,” I said. “But not quite. You’re a liar and not a very careful one, Rita, you always have been. You lie about things that don’t matter. Do you think anyone believes you’ve got a million dollars’ worth of art objects in that shack you live in, that you have the confidence of some Indian tribe, that you’re here selflessly laboring on their behalf?”

  Rita was hardly listening to me; she was too absorbed in her own suffering. Her handkerchief was a sodden ball she dabbed at her flushed face; her mouth was ajar. The sight of her, perspiring on my couch, enraged me. “Get up, Rita,” I said. “Get up and get out of here.” I wrestled my wallet from my pocket and peeled off a fifty-dollar bill. Rita struggled to her feet, g
ripping the sofa arm with both hands, and made a tottering progress toward the door. I was ahead of her, throwing it open.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, through her tears. Her hand came up fast when she saw the money I held out to her, my arm stretched fully to escape actual contact with her flesh. She took the bill and looked out at the street, which was humid, hot, and dark, then back at me. “I’ve read all your books, Maxwell,” she said. “I’m a much better writer than you’ll ever be.”

  Something happened then; it was the worst thing that happened. She was looking past me at the couch and I had the sensation she might push her way back to it. As I stepped forward to block her, she must have turned toward me, because I bumped into her and knocked her off balance. I saw a flash of mixed confusion and consternation cross her features, and then she was falling forward, over the steps. Not many steps, but she fell for what seemed a long time, without a sound save the dull thud of her body against the concrete. She lay still, facedown on the sidewalk, the mass of her flowered skirt rising over her like a tent.

  There was a moment, before I could move, when I considered closing the door and going to bed. But of course I did no such thing. I leaped down to the pavement and bent over her, whispering her name. A hand came out from somewhere and grasped my ankle. Another unworthy impulse, to kick free of her, passed, as she turned onto her side and looked up at me dazedly. “Are you hurt?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  I offered my hand, which she gripped with surprising strength, pulling herself to a sitting position. I was as close as I had been to her, close enough to recoil from the rank smell of unwashed flesh and fetid breath coming off her. “You slipped,” I said.

  Groaning from somewhere deep within, she pitched forward to her hands and knees and billowed up beside me. To my relief the taxi turned the corner, pulled up at the curb. Rita stood panting beside me, still clutching the bill I’d given her. “You pushed me,” she said. The cabdriver got out and opened the door for her.

  “This lady has had a fall,” I told him, ushering Rita inside. She didn’t resist. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I said, but Rita wasn’t looking at me. She was folding up the bill I’d given her and sticking it into her sleeve. It occurred to me that the driver might not be able to change a fifty and some further unpleasant scene might occur, so I handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change. This caught Rita’s attention. “That’s too much,” she said.

  “For God’s sake, Rita,” I said. “It’s my money.”

  “It’s too much,” she repeated.

  The driver frowned at her. “I’ll give her the change,” he said. “I’m not trying to rob nobody.”

  “She’s very upset because of the fall,” I said, slipping him another bill, both of us careful to keep our hands beneath the window. “She lives on St. Ann, close to the old cannery.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take over now.” I looked in at Rita. The cab was air-conditioned, the light was on. She was arranging her skirt, brightening up. There was a skinned patch on her temple, bruising rapidly, and the palms of her hands were scratched; that was all I could make out. A taxi ride was something of a novelty to her, and she was now concentrated on controlling every aspect of it. “Goodnight, Rita,” I said. She looked up, fixing me with cold eyes. “You pushed me,” she said. I backed away and the cabbie slid into his seat. Giving me a jaunty salute, he pulled the door closed and carried Rita away, into the night.

  The next morning I battled my way through the precincts of an impressive hangover to the computer screen, where I spent an hour tracking down a ticket to Vermont. I called Malcolm, who expressed no surprise at my decision. “Too hot for you,” he said. “You’ll be back in January.” Next I called Pamela, who detected some urgency in my tone, something amiss. “You sound upset,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m just drinking too much. I’m not getting any work done. It’s too hot and I miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” she said. “It’s lovely here. My tomatoes are ripening. There was a moose in the road this morning, heading for the hardware store.”

  My spirits lifted. “Tomatoes. A moose,” I said. “Sounds like paradise.” Pamela agreed to meet me at the airport. I packed my suitcase, called the landlord and then the taxi. The driver was not the one who had rescued me from Rita; I made sure of that by calling a different company.

  Two weeks later the boxes arrived. The postal slip had the New Orleans zip code, so I thought I’d left something behind and the landlord had sent it on. But when the postman pushed the sizable package across the counter, I saw that the return address was Malcolm’s. “It’s heavy,” the postman warned me. He was right.

  Malcolm had put the flimsy stationery boxes in a sturdier carton, previously used to transport a case of wine. He’d shoved a little newspaper around the sides and laid a folded sheet of paper with my name printed on it across the top. I knew what was in the boxes the moment I lifted the flaps, but a firm impulse of denial allowed me to read Malcolm’s note with more curiosity than apprehension. I admired the unexpected legibility of his cursive hand. He’d had a Jesuit education.

  Dear Max, he wrote. I’m sorry to tell you that Rita Richard has passed away. The circumstances were grisly. She called me just after you left, asking for your address in Vermont. When they found her, my phone number was in her purse, which is how I got involved. We had to get rid of everything in her house. These boxes, addressed to you, were among her things.

  When you get this, give me a call and I’ll tell you all about it. Hope you are well. Your friend, Malcolm.

  Rita had scrawled my name and address on the lid of the top box, obviously intending to package them at some later date. Her handwriting was scratchy; the pen she’d used was running out of ink. I could see her, bearing down on the name of my town, on the zip code, determined that I should not get off easily, that I owed her something yet.

  I lifted the boxes and put them on the floor next to my desk. A sensation of dread, such as Epimetheus must have felt when his bride told him who had manufactured her luggage, stole upon me, and I recalled that in some versions of that story it is he, and not the lovely, curious, deceitful Pandora, who opens the box, thereby unleashing all the evils of this world.

  I felt, as I had not in her living presence, perilously vulnerable to Rita. Purposefully I strode away from the boxes to the kitchen, where I paced back and forth. After a thorough examination of the contents of the refrigerator, I picked up the phone and called Malcolm.

  No one knew exactly when or how Rita had died; her neighbors had nosed her out. By the time Malcolm arrived, the police were zipping her into a body bag; they were wearing gauze masks and had brought in blowers to air out the rooms. They had found her, face up, on the floor in the second room, between the pottery shards and her novel. Malcolm explained that he was little more than an acquaintance, which provoked the detective. Why would she have your phone number in her purse? he wanted to know, and when Malcolm said she had called looking for a friend’s address, he repeated the question. The landlord arrived, visibly flustered. Rita had failed to pay the rent for two months and he had sent her an eviction notice. The police came through, dragging Rita in the bag like an unwieldy carpet. The landlord turned white, rushed out to the porch, and vomited into the azalea bush. This made the detective suspicious. How well did the landlord know Rita? he wanted to know. In fact he’d never even seen her, he insisted. He’d inherited the house at his mother’s death a year previous; Rita was already in it. Usually she paid her rent on time. The landlord was shaky, so they all went into the kitchen for a glass of water. There they discovered the garbage, alive with maggots. The landlord had to go outside and sit on the back steps, his head between his knees. “I don’t see why you’re so upset if you didn’t know this lady,” the detective observed.

  “It’s my house,” the landlord protested. “There’s a corpse rotting here, who knows how long,
the place is crawling with maggots. Of course I’m upset!”

  “You’re mighty sensitive for a landlord,” the detective said.

  After some conversation it was discovered that Malcolm and the landlord had both gone to Jesuit, two years apart. Malcolm had played football with the landlord’s brother. “Dickie Vega,” Malcolm said. “You remember him. This guy is his older brother, Jack Vega.”

  The detective took their names and addresses and told them he would be in touch. The police were sealing off the house until the results of the autopsy came in. Malcolm and Jack Vega agreed to walk over to Matuzza’s and have a beer.

  The autopsy report said that Rita had died of natural causes; therefore, the detective told Malcolm, he was closing the case. He had determined that Rita had no living relatives, so the city would undertake the disposal of her remains. He had also learned that Rita had a criminal record: She’d stolen a truck in Nevada.

  “What kind of truck?” I asked Malcolm.

  “Big. A semi. They found it in Texas.”

  Jack Vega had a Dumpster dropped off at the house, and he and Malcolm went through Rita’s possessions. “Just junk,” Malcolm said. “There was a checkbook with about twenty dollars in it and a fifty-dollar bill on the table by the bed; that was it. No insurance policy, no personal mail, just bills, clothes, a bunch of broken pottery, some books, and those boxes I sent you. I had to do the garbage—Jack couldn’t go in there.”

  “So you threw all the pots out,” I said.

  “It was junk. It was all broken.”

  “She thought it was valuable,” I said.

  “Right,” Malcolm said.

  When I got off the phone, I sat at the kitchen table drumming my fingers. So that was it, the end of Rita. A bloated corpse rotting on the floor of a dilapidated shack. Total worth: seventy dollars and some broken pots. How long did she lie there, in the sweltering heat with the slatted light creeping in across her body, later withdrawing, leaving her in the dark, with the skittery night creatures, the roaches, the mice, her unfinished novel? I called Malcolm again. “Did they estimate when she died?” I asked.