BED AND BREAKFAST
1
Walt Riff examined the books which, behind glass as if grand, filled the top half of the secretary. Beneath its slanting lid, the desk was empty except for one of the narrow drawers Riff had pulled out, with an accountant’s curiosity, to disclose a small glass ashtray, hidden as all smoking equipment was then, discreetly out of sight. Turning the key in the door and entering the room, he had tossed his valise on the bed and gone at once to the corner where the case stood uneasily the way large things do in secondhand shops. Its fake dark mahogany finish was as embarrassed as its posture, thin and crazed like a plate. It had no companionable chair, and the lines of lead in its panels of glass appeared painted there by a hand that shook.
Traveling as frequently as he did, with an expense account so limited it would scarcely butter his breakfast toast, Riff normally stopped at budget motels. There he could enjoy a clean sheet and watch a one-watt bulb gloomily befog walls already saddened by a coating of thickly textured paint. Except for a rubber-banded stash of twenties hidden in a plastic sack beneath the spare—he didn’t trust banks—Riff carried little of value in his car—what were a few cartons of yellowed ledgers to anyone?—otherwise he could have kept tabs on the car’s contents through windows masked by misaligned venetian blinds and floralized drapes, curtains which had never known a breeze.
Riff would sock the middle of the bed with his fist. The blow always left the same spongy dent. There’d be a pair of skimpy pillows trapped beneath its plaid spread. Across the room—only a few steps—he saw a TV, lacking its remote, trying to remain steady on a tippy stand. Not quite centered behind the bed’s shiny headboard might hang the stylized portrait of a leafless tree or, occasionally, the phiz of a happy unshaven sot said to be The Laughing Philosopher. Perhaps in answer to an overwhelming longing, in the middle of Iowa, or in prairie Illinois, a seascape would show up: foamy waves rolling toward a welcoming beach.
Well, what is it this time? a red-winged blackbird perilously perched on a cattail. He’d seen them—cat and bird—while driving toward town, in drainage ditches awash with weeds. Such tedious and tasteless furnishings were what he expected, and if they hadn’t been there he would miss ignoring them: a desk the width of a window ledge, closet crossed by a sagging rod where three wire hangers dangled in a darkness left behind by the last guest, a lamp whose gleam was smothered by a ruffled satin shade and whose switch was nowhere to be found, neither on the cord nor by its base nor at its neck. Riff frequently stared into featureless ceiling corners until he fell asleep. A gray tarp-type rug covered the floor like a faint uncertain shadow. Suddenly he remembered how, rising early one morning, he had slid a bare foot to the floor and into someone’s forgotten slipper.
What’s this doing here, Riff said, as if Eleanor were sitting on the bed, rolling down her hose. He was trying to pry the glass doors open with his fingers since the knob was missing, the key was lost. Perhaps locked, perhaps stuck, the doors wouldn’t budge, making the books look jailed, dim and desirable.
Riff kept a Swiss Army knife in a side pocket of his case, and because Eleanor wasn’t rolling off her socks he could curse when the zipper refused to move. His bag was made of a plastic cloth pretending to be canvas, so why should the zipper’s course be smooth? Using two of his long thin fingers, he fished for the knife through a bit of parted track, slid the instrument out with a modest cry of triumph. It fell on the bed without a skid. Riff unclasped one blade—wrong shape—he wanted the thin pointy one, the one you might use to bore an additional hole in your belt. He’d owned this marvel of Swiss efficiency for some time, but he had never become familiar with its workings, since he rarely used anything but the corkscrew, which was in plain view, giving the knife the barbed appearance of a fishing lure; although sometimes, after another meal of stringy beef, he’d call on the toothpick which slid out like a sliver, and once he pulled out the scissors, but only in order to pretend to cut. There the little devil is, Riff said, hiding in the backside of the knife.
He thrust a narrow mean-looking blade into the keyhole of the secretary and the doors sprang slightly apart. Open sesame, he said, returning the nasty thing to its clasp with a sound which Riff believed the glass doors would make should he shut them: a sharp snick. And that’s the noise they did make when he tested his hypothesis, which meant drawing the blade from the knife case once more to pry the doors open again. This time the doors didn’t budge. Oh number two all over you, Riff said. Eleanor didn’t know what number two was, so she didn’t object. Riff gave the frame a whack with the flat of his hand and wiggled the pick in the lock. Nope. After some fumbling he found a blade the size of a penknife’s and slipped it in at the latch. Which popped. Open sesame, he said. He may have made a mar but chose not to take a closer look. Then he dropped the knife back into its place in the suitcase. Sat on the edge of the bed beside it as if winded or overcome by disinterest. Just sat. Sat.
Riff put off pleasures, even nearly invisible ones, and when interested in anything, he became extremely methodical. He liked a lot of small tasks like completing picture puzzles. They filled otherwise empty time with a satisfactory sense of healing and repair. Large chores overwhelmed him. They had no parts. They simply loomed, while Riff tended to stand and stare. Finally he tugged at the zipper and the zipper retreated over the small opening it had made. Bother, I’ve a ladder, Eleanor said. Let me climb it to the stars, Walt exclaimed. Eleanor’s laugh was light but it had no length. Men, was all she said. Walt remembered going then and kissing her leg through one of the ladders, a square formed by threads. After that he kissed the other leg, which was bare; he kissed her hungrily, high on her thigh. Men. She pinched his left earlobe between nails she had coated with red enamel.
Riff drew out a substantial volume. It had no jacket and its spine was badly rubbed. Barrett Wendell and His Letters, the cover said. Barrett Wendell and his letters? Who’s Barrett Wendell? Has heft. By M. A. De Wolfe Howe. My my. Hoity. Titled like his letters were his dog. Having made the comparison, Riff wondered what sort of dog. His mind had a habit of wandering off like that.
He blew along Barrett Wendell’s top edge. This Wendell was a professor of law at Harvard. Well. Here’s a book about his letters by a guy at Harvard Law, Riff said. Sometimes he said things out loud. Sometimes he said things under his breath. Sometimes he said things in the dark back of his head. Often he wasn’t aware which. But chitchat had its comforts. The places he went he never heard birds. From 1924. Imagine. The Distant Past. He pushed the book into its slot. Out of Boston of course. Anywhere else old Wendell was doubtless not even a shade. Hoof. I thought these cabinets were supposed to protect books from dust. They don’t do a damn thing concerning that, Riff said, blowing again. Here’s a jazzy paper jacket. SuperCity … SuperCity. Harry Hershfield. Um. Publish a book, you must think you’re famous. Girls rub up against you like cats. Money pours in. When? 1930. Gone now. Forgotten. Never heard of, hide nor hair. There was an advertisement on its back flap for a volume by Boris de Tanko. Boris de Tanko? If there was ever a made-up moniker … The World’s Orphan. Um. “Read it!” the ad commanded. “It will make a better man or woman of you!”
Better man, baloney, Riff said. They were doubtless dirty before they were racked in the cabinet. Likely they were just lifted off some stack as had been sitting on the attic floor and stuffed in the case to look solemn and pretty. But why put a big old broad like this secretary in such a dinky overnite room? Riff did fidgets with his fingers. Jeez. Grainier than graphite. Need a wash. Riff always closed the door to the bathroom, even when alone, even when his room was safely chained and double-bolted, because he was rarely really alone. He had his little tasks. He had his chat. Riff unwrapped the reconstituted chip of soap and rinsed the secretary off his hands. Then pissed and cursed because he knew he ought to wash his hands again. He had a love of order but order didn’t always return the favor. Riffaterre, you can’t do anything right, Walt said. You kiss good, sometimes, Elean
or said, giving the bed back to his bag.
Back on the bed, Riff sat. Picked out a ceiling corner. Caught a glimpse of himself in the distant mirror. Then, beside the bed where Riff sat, on the little table where a dead digital waited, he noticed a rose leaning out of a clear glass vase, its prominent thorns enlarged by the water in the bowl whose base made a series of semi-circular shadows on the table’s varnished top. A surprise. It was accompanied by three sprays of coarse green saw-edged leaves—ah—through which aphids—likely—had eaten needle-sized holes—maybe while they were growing in the nursery’s fields. So sort of secondhand. No surprise there. The dark clock hadn’t a thing to say either. The punctures, through which a bit of the wall showed, had to precede the bud toward its unreachable bloom, the bud’s red edges already dark, for it was dead, though it didn’t appear to know it yet, as if bred to be a bud, to open like a door that’s left ajar, to remain say a day in half light, half past, half night, before it’s tossed into the trash by the maid, who may speak Spanish to it while her sweeper hums, who may herself be Rose by name, and who will perhaps lean a little from a little nail she stepped on when she was a kid, and then neglected till it festered a fourth of her foot off, skin a gray-green then, flesh odorous. Riff realized he’d rather put Eleanor back on her back in bed. Yet he couldn’t help reflecting. Examining the motel’s homey touch. The forlorn flower.
Well. Weren’t they cut when kids like Christmas trees? to begin death, their big moment, alive in some water their stems’ll discolor? Yes, Riff thought. Dying, they’ll grow drowsy. Their features will loosen. An eyelid or a lip will be released without a signal, and by one a.m. a bare stem will stand in a shudder of petals. This didn’t cheer him. Spare me your touches. Budget should be budget. Riff laughed when he realized what he’d said. And felt better.
Thought he might as well take a gander at another. Got up. Thin arty thing, title in silver on a limp chartreuse cover, but writ in a swirly hand you couldn’t decipher. Inside, Riff read Whisps of Mist. Its gray-green letters were quite legible. Surrounded by holly leaves or some such. Hotsy-totsy. The book was a dusty green, a yellow green. A green gone or going. By … by Gwen Frostic. Come on. Jeez. If there was ever a fakeroo of a nom de plume … Lavishly illustrated by the author. Drawings of seeds, ladybugs, birds, trees, landscape, sky. On rich rough-cut paper. Everything grayed and aged, soft as wood ash. Gwen must be good. You’d love this, mom, listen. Privately printed too. Gwen must be real good to get a private printing. Likely worth a lot, this book. Listen. “On and on it goes …” ah … “each season in its glory …” um … “blinding …” no … “blending with the next.” Hey, whadya think? Poems.
Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas Page 6