The Constant Heart

by Craig Nova

  Of course, I saw a horror, too, not only the one that Sara was concerned about, but another, the way in which someone, a human being who loved, who laughed at stupid jokes, who loved the feel of sand between the toes, could be reduced to an inventory of organs, sort of like a portable medical supply house, the surgical version of a Good Humor ice cream truck that went around filled with things to buy.

  Sara sat at the Chinese restaurant the next night. The waitress used the net to scoop out two fish, both dead. The waitress put the fish in a plastic sack and carried them back to the kitchen, but Sara didn’t think it could be that bad. They wouldn’t cook them, would they? The waitress brought her a cold vodka and an egg roll.

  MD pushed through the door and sat down, his rear end making a long squeak across the red leather of the seat.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said MD.

  “About what?” said Sara.

  “You know, cars. That’s going to lead to trouble. Vehicle identification numbers. Taxes. Registration. See?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He ran his hand through his blond hair. Then she got up and took her bag and walked away from the table, and he said, “Not so fast, sweetie. Not so fast. I’m going to get the money. And no one, no one, you hear me, no one is going to stiff Miguel Jose Cardoza.”

  He picked up her egg roll and tore it apart, the wrapping first, sort of like peeling skin back, and then said, “I’ll be around.”

  “Would forty thousand square it?” she said.

  “Sara,” he said. “I really don’t know anymore.”

  MY FATHER SAT on the bank. The pink water turned a little gray and then green, and the fish stopped taking those emergers, but the river still made that sound and the current was broken up into those long cones, those long bubbly flows, endlessly repeated as though they would be that way forever. And so, without saying a word, I got out of the water and took off my waders, rolled them up and tied them with the safety belt, and then we started along the river, my father still breathing hard, his hand to his back, although every now and then, he flinched a little as though he had just gotten an electric shock from a toaster or a blender.

  “Does that come on slowly, or is it just a stab?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” said my father.

  “Come on,” I said. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Does it ache when it doesn’t stab?”

  “I’m just getting old,” said my father.

  “Maybe I should have become a doctor,” I said.

  “I’d tell you the same thing,” he said.

  I put the tip of my rod into the water to make that white V of foam.

  “You aren’t going to sulk, are you? Jesus, Jake, you know better than that. We’re on a fishing trip.”

  “You promise me you’ll get that looked at?” I said.

  “Sure, Jake, sure,” he said. “Just getting old. Screw it. You think anyone avoids getting old?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Those were nice fish, you know, rising in that pink water, their sides so red and keen. And you got to see the stars at night, didn’t you? Mostly you don’t get to do that because of the light pollution.”

  “It was nice,” I said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “So you’ve made a promise,” I said. “About getting that looked at.”

  He faced me now. The resemblance to an unhappy Gary Cooper was never more distinct.

  “Yes, Jake,” he said. “I’ve made you a promise.”

  So we went along the trail back to the parking lot.

  I had stopped thinking about the manager getting shot and the smell of cordite and that magazine with the men with the beautiful breasts in it, but not Sara’s problems, although they took a backseat when I pulled up to my house and saw a rental car, with Hertz license plate holders on the back. Then, when I got out of the car, Gloria pulled back the curtain of my house and stood there with that look: I’d forgotten she was going to arrive. But at least the Samsung was in the middle of the front room, new in a box, and maybe that would help.

  ON THE WALL in my living room, framed in mountain ash, matted with a gray board that highlighted the white in the man’s hair, hung a picture of Albert Einstein. His expression had often been one of keen contrariness, that is, when I sat opposite this picture on my leather couch, which I had bought to give the place a sort of man’s club atmosphere, and thought about the value of the Constant and to what extent it determined the amount and effect of dark matter in the universe. I wasn’t above a few tricks of my own in the math department, but when I used one it always left me with the feeling I had when I saw a woman who was wearing a pair of underwear that had pads to make her rear end look better. Yes, I understood the impulse to want to look better, but no, this wasn’t the way to do it.

  Now, though, Einstein’s expression was a little more tense, or troubled than usual, and it occurred to me that while Gloria tapped one foot as she stood next the Samsung, Einstein might have had that expression when he argued with his wife, which, as far as I could tell, wasn’t so rare. It was a sort of wince, as though some new, previously unfelt pain had just made itself obvious.

  I had another leather chair, an Oriental rug, a framed signature of Einstein’s, and the usual clutter of fishing magazines, catalogues, a desk in the corner where I actually did some work. The kitchen was basic modern: microwave above a stove, a dishwasher, a green bottle of soap for it, an icebox with an icemaker. The house had a field behind it, just like my father’s, which was about five miles away. On the living room side of the island in the kitchen stood a wooden table with leaves, stained with oil from tractor parts that a farmer had worked on, that is, before the tractor’s gearbox was gone, and before the farmer went belly-up and sold everything, this table included, at auction. Two wooden chairs, like ladders at the back, bought at the same auction were next to the table.

  Gloria’s arms were crossed under her breasts, her eyes on mine. We’d come close to the abyss before. Just like that: Poof, years of being together had almost disappeared many times, and usually that almost-final moment had happened over some small thing. Not like this. Not like forgetting her altogether. She knew, too, exactly how to make me angry. Her eyes showed that particular, shiny glitter, which I knew from previous experience was a sure sign she was about to go nuclear.

  A big futon on the floor in the bedroom, an unpainted pine chest for underwear and shirts, a lamp next to the bed to read there, and a candleholder on the floor that Gloria liked to get undressed by. One picture of the Horsehead Nebula. The birthplace of stars.

  Did Einstein give me that hard look, the one that said, Just push through this? Don’t let anyone shove you around? Or was he guiltier than that? At least my fishing things were still in the car.

  Gloria’s bag was on the floor in the living room, next to the TV, which was still in its box and had that odor of cardboard, which was promise itself, or at least I thought it was promise itself. Still, Gloria had only unzipped the bag and taken out a nightgown and a toothbrush, since, I guess, when she finished talking to me (if it was talking, maybe screaming was going to be more like it) she would be able to throw the toothbrush, the nightgown, and the toothpaste in the bag, zip it up like finality itself, and beat it out to the Hertz rental car, which, of course, only reminded me of the kidney and MD and how he was waiting.

  Gloria had, though—and this gave me some hope—moved the Samsung box and the Blu-ray box, if only to judge their weight. Her grandmother, I was sure, would like a heavy TV. None of those cheap ones that were as light as a cell phone.

  Gloria put her hands on her hips.

  “So, were you out with some hussy? Some slut? What’s the fishy smell?” she said.

  “Let’s talk about it later,” I said.

  Einstein seemed to relax a little. Yes, that was the way to handle this.

  Gloria wore her jeans and a pink tank top, which made her sun-kissed, blond hair look nice, and the freck
les on her nose, too. She stood as still as possible. Who, she seemed to be saying, was going to throw the first stone? Although she had the attitude of someone who had a pile of them right there, next to the Samsung. She shifted her weight.

  Well, no use hiding it. It didn’t take long for me to bring my waders, vest, and rod from the car and stick them in the corner. The smell of cardboard was very strong.

  “It’s forty-two inches,” I said. My hand ran over the box with a sort of almost sensual caress. Did she remember that touch? “The ideal size, the guy at the store told me. Bigger, it’s too much. Smaller, you don’t feel you’re in a movie theater when you’re watching a movie. You feel sort of gross.”

  Einstein looked down. Yes, he seemed to say, anything bigger than forty-two inches is a waste and sort of gaudy.

  Gloria nodded. Hands shaking.

  “Did you get a good deal on it?” she said.

  “On sale,” I said. The rebate form was on the box and she took it, neatly folded it, and stuck it in her pocket.

  “Do I need the sales slip?” she said.

  “Right here,” I said. It was on the counter of the kitchen and I passed it over. “Want me to staple it to the rebate?”

  She stuck the sales slip into the pocket of her blue jeans and when she did it, she had to straighten her arm and sort of pull down her pants a little and show the whiteness of the skin at her waist. She wasn’t going to trust me to fill out the rebate form, even though it was my money that was spent on this thing, and, of course, who was going to pay for the TV was one of those things to be decided later, like a player to be named, since the first item was that I had forgotten she was coming to visit, and that, Mr. Ph.D. Astronomer, was going to be the first order of business.

  She trembled and ran a hand through her hair and across her lips. She put both hands in her pockets and pushed her pants down a little more, and the small blue veins showed in the skin that was under her bikini when she went to the beach. Her eyes closed for a moment and she swallowed, too, and then she began to breathe as though she were about to have an attack of some kind. The water ran cold in the sink, but she took me by the sleeve of my shirt and led me into the bedroom and ripped off my fishing shirt, a nice blue one I had paid fifty bucks for, and then my pants. She lifted her tank top and wiggled out of her California jeans that didn’t seem painted on so much as grafted onto her figure, right to the point where you had the feeling you could see the shape of her between her legs, but all of that disappeared in a flash and she slipped me into her and broke out into a sweat as she came in an instant, in a sexual gesture I had never seen before. She hadn’t, either, and her eyes opened as though something entirely new had come into the world. “It was like the lights of a sparkler that ran from here,” she said, putting her hand between her legs. “To my heels. And into my nipples, too. Bright, yellow like stars. Down my legs. Into the middle of my head.” Her hands shook. She pushed me away and said, “You know why I came like that? Because I am so angry I am high. Every one of those sparkling bits is fury. You stand me up like that. Like that. Not a word. No note. Nothing?”

  “Maybe those sparkles are something else,” I said.

  “No. No,” she said. “It’s a new pitch of anger.”

  She closed her eyes and then stood up, nude against the white wall.

  “You smell like fish,” she said.

  “I went fishing,” I said.

  “Great,” she said. “I’m glad. That lets me know where I exist in the food chain. About twenty-four hours beneath a fucking fish.”

  “Someone almost shot me,” I said.

  “No kidding,” she said. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “When something like that happens, when I have some trouble . . . ,” I said.

  “I know, I know. You go fishing with your father.”

  “That’s all,” I said. “The clerk at the Radio Shack bled out. Right there. Shot in the leg. And he made a funny sound at the end.”

  “Big artery in the leg,” she said. “That sound was a death rattle. I heard one the other night.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “About what? The death rattle? Forgetting about me? The guy who got shot?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  Einstein seemed severe. Yes, he was sorry, too. And he knew that while no god would reward or punish, a pissed-off woman was another matter.

  Gloria glanced down.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “That’s the truth,” I said. “A guy almost shot me. It left me feeling a little sick. I ran into an old friend who was in the store, too. She’s having trouble. So, I went fishing with my father . . . ”

  “I said I know. I know,” she said. She stepped closer, so I smelled her breath as she said, “That’s your excuse. The same old white man bullshit.”

  She stuck the rebate and the sales slip deeper into her pocket. No reason not to get the one hundred and fifty dollar rebate and a free upgrade. The edge of the bed was cool.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said.

  “I don’t like that tone,” she said. “Not when you left me here all night alone in this monastery.”

  We stood nose to nose, hers a little sweaty from that orgasm that came so fast because she was so angry. Her nipples touched my chest as she went on shaking. Still surprised and, I guessed, weak in the joints. Sort of like being in a street fight.

  Einstein’s picture on the wall in the living room was mildly inscrutable, but even now, that smile, which was a sort of scientific Mona Lisa, looked pissed, too, that I had been downgraded from human being to white man. After all, hadn’t he been downgraded, too, in the thirties?

  “Oh?” I said. I pointed at the picture. “So, if I’m a white man, what is he? Do you dare call him something aside from human being? When gypsies, Jews, Slavs were led up to a death camp, do you think the guards said, ‘Hey, look at all the human beings?’”

  I put my nose closer to hers.

  Her toothbrush and toothpaste were in the bathroom, and her nightgown was on the bed, and they went right into her duffel bag, and then she zipped it up and shoved it toward the door.

  “I asked you a question,” I said.

  “Do you know how to set this thing up?” she said.

  She put her hand on the Samsung box.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, all right,” she said. “We are going to put this thing in my car and then you are going to follow me to my grandmother’s condo and you are going to set this up and then I am getting on the plane and getting out of here. You owe that to me.”

  “You think so?” I said. “You think I owe you anything?”

  “You were always a gentleman,” she said.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I said. “You didn’t hear a word, did you?”

  We got on opposite ends of the TV box. New cardboard smell.

  “I guess I’m a little hurt,” she said. “You go off and didn’t even leave me a note . . . You know, you go along and everything seems fine and something like this happens, and nothing seems quite right. Why didn’t you want to stay with me? Why did you have to go fishing?”

  “You don’t come close to getting killed every day. So that happens to me and you call me names?”

  Einstein looked down, but then he was always waiting for the answer to a question. And for an instant, the Constant and being reduced from a human to some fucked-up name seemed to have some connection: How could such things be?

  “I wanted to hurt you,” she said.

  “Well, you sure got that right,” I said.

  “So I’m sorry. OK?” she said.

  The screen door screeched, like finality itself, sort of tinny and forever broken. We shoved the Samsung through it. And then pushed it along the drive to the back of the Hertz where the plate holder seemed like a medical device now, something that had to do with nephrology.

  “Sometimes you’ve just got your head in the clouds,” Gloria said. “Alwa
ys thinking about stars or interstellar medium or what is it you call it . . . a standard candle? What is it that’s a standard candle?”

  “A supernova Ia,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “What about things right here on Earth. Like when someone comes a long way to see you.”

  “I’m sorry. You know that,” I said.

  “I just want things to work right,” she said.

  The box fit in the backseat of the Hertz rental, nice and snug so it wouldn’t move around. We went out the strip, where her grandmother’s new condo was in a little cul-de-sac just beyond the AutoZone, the rental Chevrolet in front of my car, in which I smelled Furnace Creek and that instant, fury-inspired orgasm. The strip was like the midway of a carnival during the day, sort of washed out, the hot dog stands closed up, the throwaway advertisers blowing in the street, and a street sweeper with a rainbow in the spray he used to wash the gutter.

  Sara’s dealership was open, and there, beyond the glass that needed cleaning, Sara stood in her showroom next to a silver four-wheel-drive rig that glowed in the fluorescence of the overhead lighting.

  Why hadn’t I contacted her when I first came back to this town and took a job at the university nearby five years ago? I had told her that I thought she was gone, and in a way, that was right, that is, she might have been here physically, but yet, even though she haunted me, I assumed that what haunted me was sealed in the past, and that since you are not the same person when you are thirty that you were when you were eighteen, that what had gone on between us had vanished, too, just the way we had. I knew now that while we both had more experience, what had run between us years ago was still there. Another mistake of mine. I was becoming a professional at it.