Memorial Day

by Paul Scott Malone

  "Satisfied?" she said hoarsely.

  "No."

  He had a horrible, painful erection, covered by his trousers and his jacket, but she knew. She stepped up to him again and gripped it firmly in her hand and gave it a quick shake, and when she let go he saw that her face was bright red and her eyes were shining. A little bubble of spittle appeared at the corner of her lips. His own mouth had gone dry and he blinked at her.

  "Someone's coming," she said.

  They separated again, went to different hampers and started pulling out the new merchandise to price and put on the shelves. A middle-aged woman in a business suit walked up to the counter. "May I get some help please?" she said, and Dalrymple straightened, put his hand in his pocket to cover the bulge in his pants.

  "Yes ma'am," he said loudly. "What can I do for you?"

  "I need a battery for my car. And I'm in a hurry."

  Glancing back at Jane with only a half-hidden smile, Dalrymple led the woman to the display of batteries and went into his spiel. While he told her about the various batteries, trying to sell her up to the Super Sixty, he could hear Jane working her hand-held pricing machine ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk and the sound of it, the regular rhythm perhaps or the thought of her hands manipulating the machine, made him want her more than ever.

  His customer bought a battery but then changed her mind once he had written it up; she'd take the Super Sixty after all. Then he was told of some problem with one of his deliveries, and he had to deal with setting up a new time. Other interruptions followed (he sold another television and a dinette table) and it wasn't until 3:30 or so that things calmed down. Most of the hampers had been unloaded and removed to the warehouse, the stock boys were either gone for the day or out helping on the delivery trucks, the other salesmen were busy with customers or writing up delivery orders, and a kind of hush fell upon the place. The old building itself seemed to let out a long deep and settling sigh before the last push to closing time.

  9

  Dalrymple was standing alone up in Appliances, taking a smoke break, catching his breath, staring at but not watching a soap opera on the televisions when Jane scurried up, brushed passed him, said over her shoulder, "Meet you in the warehouse," and then scooted away, wagging her butt outrageously. This meant she had checked. The warehouse was empty of people. She threw him a look then and he knew what it meant. Then she waved a long gray dust rag at him as if it were an alluring hanky.

  He had almost forgotten about her in the commotion of the afternoon but now, excited by all his activity and the money he had made and feeling generally good about his day, the old eagerness resurfaced and quickly agitated his loins. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and stepped on it with the heel of his shoe. Then he meandered his way through the Furniture side of the store to the back. Before pushing through the doors he hesitated, looked for observers, but no one was paying any attention.

  The warehouse was long and narrow, a two-story rectangle. It was quiet now. Even the downstairs area, where earlier there had been so much bustling about, was sullen and mysterious and echoed with his footfalls. Dalrymple crept up the wide wooden stairs to the second floor, lighted by only a few naked bulbs. It was up there that they stowed the leftover Christmas merchandise and the new bicycles and the mattresses by the dozens in their large brown boxes. The place was a study in gloomy shadows, with many dark and hidden places, everything coated in gritty dust and dotted with mouse shit. He turned a corner and then another and found her waiting for him back in their usual corner. She playfully waved the dust rag again and tried her best to look inviting. And she did look inviting: those long legs and arms showing, that neck, all that hair. His heart was a croaking frog in his chest, and he felt the excitement sounding through his veins.

  They said nothing. There was nothing to say. They kissed once, a long dry one, but he could taste the health in her like candy on his tongue. She responded, the dust rag still in her hand, waving about his head and shoulders, and then they were smearing each other with kisses. Dalrymple's hand found her crotch again and groped. She was moist again.

  What happened then came to him as if in a dream, as if he had only imagined their mingled breaths and mingles limbs and mingled scents. Her skirt came up, her underpants went down he actually shoved them to the floor with his shoe without even looking so that she could step one foot out and somehow his fly was open and she had him in her hands. Then he was pushing inside her. It had been so long! and he had the feeling of experiencing something new in the world. Their breathing came like the snorts of a locomotive, and his shoes kept slipping on the dusty wooden floor. And then she eased herself back into the V between two slanting mattress boxes and he was almost on top of her. She kept whispering, "Oh Dal yes, yes," and when he looked once he saw that her eyes were closed in an impossible and unexpected ecstasy. He glanced around to see if anyone was coming, but she quickly drew him to her again. He tried not to think about what he was doing; it was so incredible; he just took what was being offered. "Hurry, Dal, hurry," she whispered and he felt himself falling into a strange and glorious place. He groaned once and settled against her and after a moment more it was over.

  "Oh Dal, finally," she said. "You were full and ready weren't you." They rested quietly, breathing into each other's ears but trying to listen for intruders and every second seemed an hour long. "You're a fine lover, Dal," she whispered.

  "Shhh."

  He winced at the term lover? and wondered at her ignorance and realized in an instant that perhaps this was the only kind of love she had ever known: hot and quick and dirty. Giving only and never taking or demanding her own woman's pleasure. Already he wanted to get away from her.

  Lemons! No. Lemon oil. The pungent odor struck his nose and seemed to fill his head. He could even taste it. And then he felt something against his neck and realized it was her dust rag draped across his shoulder. He realized that she had never let go of the thing. and wondered if the oil in the rag was staining his jacket or his shirt collar; in the same instant his stomach gave a lurch and he felt the revulsion pump up through his body. It was as if she had vomited in his hands; and he despised her.

  Dalrymple stood up, arranged himself, zipped and put out a hand to her. It was Dalrymple who bent down and pulled up her underpants. He saw then that they were red like her skirt.

  "You okay?" he said, suddenly feeling brutal.

  She only nodded and smiled. He saw a streak of dust on her cheek and reached up to brush it away. Their fingers met, and she took his hand in hers and held it to her face.

  "I wish it could have been more, Dal, better somehow."

  "It was fine," he said and nodded his encouragement and his thanks to her several times. They looked at each other with such uncertainty that it was apparent she couldn't believe what had just happened either. Why had she done it?

  "I've never done anything like this before," she said.

  It was a lie obvious enough but understandable.

  "Me either," he said.

  "Maybe next time "

  "Shhh."

  They blinked at each other and tried to smile, and then it came to them both that they had to hurry.

  "Listen," he said. "You better go first."

  She nodded again and then kissed him on the cheek. She smirked in embarrassment as she had done earlier at the checkout counter, an annoying tic to him now, and she moved away from him. Before turning the corner she looked back and offered a quick smile. She waved the dust rag once more in playful farewell and was gone, clumping down the stairs. He heard the big doors open and then wheeze shut and he was alone.

  Dalrymple lingered in the silent warehouse and smoked a cigarette and tried not to think about what this meant. But it was impossible. He could still smell the lemon oil and his own body odors heightened by his exertions, and he could smell her odors too. Mingled with the dry itchy odor of the dust it all seemed perverse and disgusting. Again he felt the brutality of what he had done and thought himsel
f loathsome, but he felt also that she had wanted and expected it to be just as it had been. He tried to imagine what in her simplicity she would expect of him now. Had he created another responsibility, another problem? He paced, smoking, pleased with himself but worrying all the same.

  Then he heard his name called over the loud speaker.

  "Oh shit! Gee-god! You idiot! You louse! You fuck-up!"

  It sounded at first like the voice of God condemning him for his depravity. He froze, listening, feeling caught, frightened and uncertain what to do but to linger would only heighten his apparent guilt. So he rushed down and out into the bright showroom where he was certain everyone would be looking at him, waiting for an explanation. By the time he reached the main sales counter, sort of a corral at the center of the store within which worked the office girls and the manager, he realized that none of them suspected a thing, none of them had even missed him.

  Waiting for him was a pair of customers, an elderly black couple with whom he'd been dealing for months. They liked Dalrymple. The man was a municipal employee in the Parks Department, and they had been putting away money for years to furnish their little house one last time before retirement. They were ready now to do the living room. Didn't take long. By 5:30 Dalrymple had sold them one of the two sets of the Old Colonial stuff that had arrived in the store just that morning along with tables and lamps and even a rug. An eighteen-hundred dollar sale.

  The news spread all through the store.

  "I just love it," the old woman said, her soft body jiggling with excitement in its print dress. "And brand new you say."

  "Yes ma'am, it's something all right," Dalrymple said.

  As he was writing it up he glanced over and saw Jane grinning at him from across the corral. She was even proud of him, as if he were her son or her husband. He quickly looked away and tried to ignore her, afraid someone would notice. Soon, along with most of the other employees, she filed out the front of the darkened store and disappeared into the sweltering afternoon to meet her husband in his Plymouth. He felt at last set free.

  "So when do you want it delivered?" he asked the couple.

  They agreed on Monday. They all shook hands and he showed them to the front, joking with them and reassuring them in a salesman's easy encouraging terms that they had made the right decision. McCleary had stayed behind until Dalrymple was ready. They left together. As they were parting for their separate cars McCleary said, "Damn, Dal, you had a pretty good day."

  Dalrymple couldn't disagree.

  "By the way, when you gonna get you some of that Jane gal?" McCleary asked, winking with ludicrous familiarity. "It sure looks like she's got something for you in a big way."

  "She's married," he said.

  "That's the best kind, my friend. Experience! And you can smell it all over her. She ain't getting enough at home. Do her a favor, Dal, and then tell me all about it."

  Dalrymple felt himself blush, and for a moment he considered telling McCleary his Jane-in-the-Warehouse story but such boasting would certainly get around. He liked Jane. He kept quiet.

  "You okay, Dal?" asked McCleary.

  "Yeah thanks," he said.

  "Say listen, try not to worry too much about this draft shit. Maybe something'll come up. You never know."

  They yanked off their ties and jackets and got into their cars, like heated ovens, and McCleary waved before he drove away.

  "Goddamn!" Dalrymple screamed joyfully in the car.

  He felt good and it was good to be in the Camaro again, once the A/C had cooled it down. He flew through the narrow streets of the neighborhood, racing the engine at intersections, grinning challenges at the other drivers who looked over. He was nineteen and strong, he was healthy and handsome, he'd just gotten a little and made a lot of money; it was summertime, lush and green and full of the promise of summery things he had the urge to kick off his shoes and drive barefoot and maybe life wasn't such a mean old nasty bugger after all. The army, the war, the menacing world in general seemed very far away, off there in the future, a vague shadow in his thoughts now and a lot could happen between now and the future. All the way to Angie's house he kept shouting, "You genius! you lover! you hotshot!" and he hummed snippets of old songs while he waited in traffic on the steaming freeways of the great and sprawling city.

  10

  Angie was not in the best of moods. For one thing he should have let her know he was coming; she had a date that night. And for another she needed a car; she needed his car.

  "Oh great," she said when he appeared at her door. "I just don't have time for this. What a day."

  She turned and went to the kitchen leaving him to come in or go away as he saw fit. His nose told him it was dinnertime.

  The house was small, two bedrooms, a box with windows in one of those Baby Boomer neighborhoods that had flourished in the city's southwest quadrant in the '50s and '60s. It sat at the dead end of a street of similar little houses, each one needing paint and yard work, each one obscured to some extent by old cars and pickups parked at the curbs and even an eighteen-wheeler in one case. Just the kind of neighborhood he couldn't fathom himself living in now. There was no cul-de-sac; the street just ended at a low weedy berm littered with paper debris and broken bottles, and on the other side of a twisted and listing chain-link fence ran a Southern Pacific railroad line. Twice a day the walls and floors of the house rumbled and shook as if in an earthquake when freight trains sped by. They had rented the house in the last few months of their marriage, and Dalrymple had liked the place back then, despite the noisy trains. It was homey and had a large yard in back where he had at first planned, in those days when he was trying his best to be a grown-up family man, to do all those things people with houses do to make them even homier. A hammock he had hung was still out there stretched between two rangy elms, the only trees in the yard. Everything else had that sad neglected look of a house in which a death has recently occurred. The grass was knee-high in places; the old flowerbeds were choked by weeds and the dead stalks of long-gone plants; and toys lay all around like discarded and forgotten bits of brightly colored happiness. Looking upon it all brought to his mind again the chaos of their life together, from beginning to end, for in those two years there had never been any real peace or beauty or sense or permanence. Nothing about it had been tended properly, nothing nurtured, and the weeds of discontent had at last won out.

  Dalrymple closed the door and followed Angie into the kitchen, a box within a box. It housed a chrome-legged dinette table and aged appliances in a harvest gold color. The window above the sink looked out on the ugly and dilapidated vacant house next door, about twenty feet away, which was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a suicide victim. Which meant the owner had a hell of a time renting the place, for the neighborhood children of which, Dalrymple had estimated, there must have been about a million always made a point of coming around on their bicycles to shout this fact to prospective tenants whenever the man showed the house. Whether it was the ghost or the children who made the people hesitant to rent Dalrymple had never figured out.

  "Well it's good to see you too," he said at the kitchen.

  She looked over from the stove and said, "How many times do I have to tell you? Call first."

  "I forgot. And it was a busy day."

  "Tell me about it."

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked, but she didn't answer.

  He stood in the doorway and stared at her. She was a good-looking woman, not in the way of Jane whose robust body seemed to be always about to burst out of its clothing whether she intended it to or not but in a thinner, smaller, more subdued and more demure way. From a distance she looked rather like the very young wife of an executive or a businessman or perhaps she could be a college coed. She had just then a kind of rusty-blonde dye in her hair, which she liked to pile up on her head. Her skin was smooth and milky-colored, and her small breasts rode high on her body as if always on the look-out for something. Which she was. Her sharp narrow f
ace, so often severe, could be sweet at times.

  "Where's Josh?"

  "My parents, for the weekend," she said as she stirred something in a saucepan on the stove. "Mama came and got him."

  That meant more than likely she was planning on a weekend guest of the male variety. The house inside was neat and tidy, he had noticed. She worked a short day on Friday and so, he assumed, she had spent her time doing housework, perhaps another reason for her foul humor since she hated cleaning anything but herself. She worked at a boutique, Darla's Hanger, which sold expensive clothes to rich women over in the Galleria area. With her discount at the shop she dressed well in Darla's clothes. Just then she was wearing a pair of too-tight jeans of some fancy design and an outlandish Western shirt with sequins all over it, the tail tied up at her waist. Her feet were bare. And little drops of perspiration dotted her narrow upper lip.

  "Boy, the yard's a real mess," he said.

  "Don't start on me, please."

  "I wasn't starting anything," he said and wondered then why in hell he had come here. He had no idea what he was looking for, what he expected from her. Always with her in the back of his mind, and even now, was the possibility that if he saw her something would click or fuse between them and thus spark a renewal of the old emotions. This was unlikely, especially today, but still in many regards she was his closest friend since his old high school buddies had mostly abandoned him during the time of his marriage, drifting away, leaving for college. Because he and Angie were connected in other more intimate ways he had thought she should know that something awful and life-changing had happened to him. He had planned to come and so he came and now he regretted it.