Gryphon

by Charles Baxter

  Her hands shaking, she reached into her purse for some money for the beer, and she heard Gleinya Roberts say, “Oh, I’ll pay for it,” while Jodie found a ten-dollar bill and flung it on the table. She saw that Gleinya Roberts’s face was paralyzed in that attitude of soundless laughter—maybe it was just strain—and Jodie was stricken to see that the woman’s teeth were perfect and white and symmetrical, and her tongue—her tongue!—was dark red and sensual as it licked her upper lip. Jodie leaned forward to tip over her beer in Gleinya Roberts’s direction, careful to give the action the clear appearance of accident.

  What was left of the beer made its dull way over to the other side of the table and dribbled halfheartedly downward.

  “He’s beautiful,” Jodie said quietly, as the other woman gathered up the cloth napkins to sop up the beer, “and he makes sense to me, and I don’t have to listen to you now.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “You go live with Glaze. You do that. But just remember: That man is like the kea. Ever heard of it? I didn’t think so. It’s a beautiful bright green New Zealand bird. It’s known for its playfulness. But it’s a sheep killer. It picks out their eyes. Just remember the kea. And take this.” From somewhere underneath the table she grasped for and then handed Jodie an audiocassette. “It’s a predator tape. Used for attracting hawks and coyotes. It used to be his favorite listening. Just fascinated the hell out of him. It’ll surprise you. Women don’t know about men. Men don’t let them.”

  Jodie had taken the tape, but she was now halfway out of the restaurant. Still, she heard behind her that voice coming after her. “Men don’t want us to know. Jodie, they don’t!”

  In a purely distanced and distracted state, she took a bus over to Minnehaha Creek and walked down the path alongside the flowing waters to the bank of the Mississippi River. The air smelled rotten and dreary. Underneath a bush she found two bottle caps and a tuna fish can. She left them there.

  Sitting on the bus toward home, she tried to lean into the love she felt for Walton, and the love he said he felt for her, but instead of solid ground and rock just underneath the soil, and rock cliffs that composed a wall where a human being could prop herself and stand, there was nothing: stone gave way to sand, and sand gave way to water, and the water drained away into darkness and emptiness. Into this emptiness, violence, like an ever-flowing stream, was poured—the violence of the kea, Walton’s violence, Gleinya Roberts’s violence, and finally her own. She traced every inch of her consciousness for a place on which she might set her foot against doubt, and she could not find it. Inside her was the impulse, as clear as blue sky on a fine summer morning, to acquire a pistol and shoot Gleinya Roberts through the heart. Her mind raced through the maze, back and forth, trying to find an exit.

  Gleinya Roberts had lied to her. She was sure of that.

  But it didn’t matter. She was in fear of being struck. Although she had never been beaten by anyone, ever, in her life, the prospect frightened her so deeply that she felt parts of her psyche and her soul turning to stone. Other women might not be frightened. Other women would fight back, or were beaten and survived. But she was not them. She was herself, a woman mortally afraid of being violated.

  Three blocks away from her apartment, she bought, in a drugstore, a radio with a cassette player in it, and she took it with her upstairs; and in the living room she placed it on the coffee table, next to Walton’s latest found treasures: a pleasantly shaped rock with streaks of red, probably jasper; a squirt gun; and a little ring through which was placed a ballpoint pen.

  She dropped the predator tape Gleinya Roberts had given her into the machine, and she pushed the PLAY button.

  From the speaker came the scream of a rabbit. Whoever had made this tape had probably snapped the serrated metal jaws of a trap on the rabbit’s leg and then turned on the recorder. It wasn’t a tape loop: the rabbit’s screams were varied, no two alike. Although the screams had a certain sameness, the clarifying monotony of terror, there existed, as in a row of corn, a range of distinctive external variety. Terror gave way to pain, pain made room for terror. The soul of the animal was audibly ripped apart, and out of its mouth came this shrieking. Jodie felt herself getting sick and dizzy. The screams continued. They went on and on. In the forests of the night these screams rose with predictable regularity once darkness fell. Though wordless, they had supreme eloquence and a huge claim upon truth. Jodie was weeping now, the heels of her hands dug into her cheekbones. The screams did not cease. They rose in frequency and intensity. The tape almost academically laid out at disarming length the necessity of terror. All things innocent and forsaken had their moment of expression, as the strong, following their nature, crushed themselves into their prey. Still it went on, this bloody fluting. Apparently it was not to be stopped.

  Jodie reached out and pressed the PAUSE button. She was shaking now, shivering. She felt herself falling into shock, and when she looked up, she saw Walton standing near the door—he had a key by now—with Einstein wagging her tail next to him, and he was carrying his daily gift, this time a birdhouse, and he said, “She found you, didn’t she? That miserable, crazy woman.”

  He puts down the birdhouse and squats near her. From this position, he drops to his knees. Kneeling thus before her, he tries to smile, and his eyes have that pleasant fool quality they have always had. This man may never make a fortune. He may never amount to much. That would be fine. His dog pants behind him, like a backup singer emphasizing the vocal line and giving it a harmony. Walton’s hands start at her hair and then slowly descend to her shoulders and arms. Before she can stop him, he has taken her into his embrace.

  He is murmuring. Yes, he knew Gleinya Roberts, and, yes, they did own a predator tape she had found somewhere, but, no, he did not listen to it more than once. Yes, he had lived with her for a while, but she was insane (his father had been dead for a year; she had lied about that, too), and she was insanely jealous, hysterical, actually, and given to lies and lying, habitual lies, crazy bedeviling lies, and casual lies: lies about whether the milk was spoiled, lies about how many stamps were still in the drawer, lies about trivial matters and large ones, a cornucopia of lies, a feast of untruth. Gleinya Roberts was not married, for starters. He could prove that.

  I’m just what I seem, he says. A modest man who loves you, who will love you forever. Did Gleinya tell you that I beat her up? Do you really think I am what that woman says I am? I used to get into barroom fights, but that’s different. I never denied that. She’s deluded. If what she said was true, would this dog be here with me?

  Jodie looks at Walton and at his dog. Then she says, Raise your hand, fast, above Einstein’s head. Look at her and raise your hand.

  When he does what he is asked to do, Einstein neither cringes nor cowers. She watches Walton with her usual impassive interest, her tail still wagging. She has what seems to be a dog smile on her face. She approaches him, panting. She wants to play. She sits down next to where he kneels. She is the fool’s dog. She looks at Walton—there is no mistaking this look—with straightforward dog love.

  Jodie believes this dog. She believes this dog more than the woman.

  Let me explain something, Walton is saying. You’re beautiful. I started with that the first time I saw you. He does a little inventory: you lick your fingers after opening tin cans, you wear hats at a jaunty angle, you have a quick laugh like a bark, you move like a dancer, you’re funny, you’re great in bed, you love my dog, you’re thoughtful, you have opinions. It’s the whole package. How can I not love you?

  And if I ever do to you what that woman says I did, you can just walk.

  One day he will present her with an engagement ring, pretending that he found it in an ashtray at Clara’s Country Kitchen Café. The ring will fit her finger, and it will be a seemingly perfect ring, with two tiny sapphires and one tiny diamond, probably all flawed, but flawless to the naked eye. They will be walking under a bridge on the south end of Lake of the Isles, and when they
are halfway under the bridge, he will show her the ring and ask her to marry him.

  Then she will sit for a few more days on the sleeping porch, considering this man. She won’t be able to help it that when he moves suddenly, she will flinch. She will be distracted, but with the new radio on, she will from time to time do her best to read some of the books she never got around to reading before. Literature, however, will not help her in this instance. She will take out her tarot cards and place them in their proper order on the table.

  This covers him.

  This crosses him.

  This crowns him.

  This is beneath him.

  This is behind him.

  But the future will not unveil itself. The newspapers of the future are all blank. She will in exasperation throw all the tarot cards into the Dumpster. She will buy a copy of the Rolling Stones’ album Let It Bleed. She will listen to “Gimme Shelter,” the song Walton had quoted, but now she hears two lines slurred hysterically and almost inaudibly in the background—lines she had never heard before.

  Rape, murder, are just a kiss away,

  Kiss away, kiss away, kiss away.

  She will throw away the album, also, into the Dumpster.

  Once upon a time, happily ever after. She will look occasionally for the hideous fat man at the breakfast counter on Hennepin Avenue, but of course he will have vanished. When you are awarded a wish, you must specify the conditions under which it is granted. Everyone knows that. The fat man could have told her this simple truth, but he did not. Women are supposed to know such things. They are supposed to arm themselves against the infidelities of the future.

  She will feel herself getting ready to leap, to say yes.

  And just before she does, just before she agrees to marry him, she will buy a recording of Granados’s piano suite Goyescas. Again and again she will listen to the fourth of the pieces, “Quejas ó la Maja y el ruiseñor,” the story in music of a maiden singing to her nightingale. Every question the maiden sings, the bird sings back.

  One Sunday night around one o’clock she will hear the distant sound of gunshots, or perhaps a car backfiring. She will then hear voices raised in anger and agitation. Sirens, glass breaking, the clatter of a garbage can rolled on pavement: city sounds. But she will fall back to sleep easily, her hands tucked under her pillow, drowsy and calm.

  The Next Building

  I Plan to Bomb

  IN THE PARKING LOT next to the bank, Harry Edmonds saw a piece of gray scrap paper the size of a greeting card. It had blown up next to his leg and attached itself to him there. Across the top margin was some scrabby writing in purple ink. He picked it up and examined it. On the upper left-hand corner someone had scrawled the phrase THE NEXT BUILDING I PLAN TO BOMB. Harry unfolded the paper and saw an inked drawing of what appeared to be a sizable train station or some other public structure, perhaps an airport terminal. In the drawing were arched windows and front pillars but very little other supporting detail. The building looked solid, monumental, and difficult to destroy.

  He glanced around the parking lot. There he was in Five Oaks, Michigan, where there were no such buildings. In the light wind other pieces of paper floated by in an agitated manner. One yellow flyer was stuck to a fire hydrant. On the street was the daily crowd of bankers, lawyers, shoppers, and students. As usual, no one was watching him or paying much attention to him. He put the piece of paper into his coat pocket.

  All afternoon, while he sat at his desk, his hand traveled down to his pocket to touch the drawing. Late in the day, half as a joke, he showed the paper to the office receptionist.

  “You’ve got to take it to the police,” she told him. “This is dangerous. This is the work of a maniac. That’s LaGuardia there, the airport? In the picture? I was there last month. I’m sure it’s LaGuardia, Mr. Edmonds. No kidding. Definitely LaGuardia.”

  So at the end of the day, before going home, he drove to the main police station on the first floor of City Hall. Driving into the sun, he felt his eyes squinting against the burrowing glare. He had stepped inside the front door when the waxy bureaucratic smell of the building hit him and gave him an immediate headache. A cop in uniform, wearing an impatient expression, sat behind a desk, shuffling through some papers, and at that moment it occurred to Harry Edmonds that if he showed what was in his pocket to the police he himself would become a prime suspect and an object of intense scrutiny, all privacy gone. He turned on his heel and went home.

  At dinner, he said to his girlfriend, “Look what I found in a parking lot today.” He handed her the drawing.

  Lucia examined the soiled paper, her thumb and finger at its corner, and said, “ ‘The next building I plan to bomb.’ ” Her tone was light and urbane. She sold computer software and was sensitive to gestures. Then she said, “That’s Union Station, in Chicago.” She smiled. “Well, Harry, what are you going to do with this? Some nutcase did this, right?”

  “Actually, I got as far as the foyer in the police station this afternoon,” he said. “Then I turned around. I couldn’t show it to them. I thought they’d suspect me or something.”

  “Oh, that’s so melodramatic,” she said. “You’ve never committed a crime in your life. You’re a banker, for Chrissake. You’re in the trust department. You’re harmless.”

  Harry sat back in his chair and looked at her. “I’m not that harmless.”

  “Yes, you are.” She laughed. “You’re quite harmless.”

  “Lucia,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”

  “ ‘Harmless’? It’s a compliment.”

  “Not in this country, it isn’t,” he said.

  On the table were the blue plates and matching napkins and the yellow candles that Lucia brought out whenever she was proud of what she or Harry had cooked. Today it was Burmese chicken curry. “Well, if you’re worried, take it to the cops,” Lucia told him. “That’s what the cops are there for. Honey,” she said, “no one will suspect you of anything. You’re handsome and stable and you’re my sweetie, and I love you, and what else happened today? Put that awful creepy paper back into your pocket. How do you like the curry?”

  “It’s delicious,” he said.

  After Harry had gotten up his nerve sufficiently to enter the police station again, he walked in a determined manner toward the front desk. After looking carefully at the drawing and the inked phrase, and writing down Harry Edmonds’s name and address, the officer, whose badge identified him as Sergeant Bursk, asked, “Mr. Edmonds, you got any kids?”

  “Kids? No, I don’t have kids. Why?”

  “Kids did this,” Sergeant Bursk told him, waving the paper in front of him as if he were drying it off. “My kids could’ve done this. Kids do this. Boys do this. They draw torture chambers and they make threats and what-have-you. That’s what they do. It’s the youth. But they’re kids. They don’t mean it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have three of them,” Sergeant Bursk said. “I’m not saying that you should have kids, I’m just saying that I have them. I’ll keep this drawing, though, if you don’t mind.”

  “Actually,” Harry said, “I’d like it back.”

  “Okay,” Sergeant Bursk said, handing it to him, “but if we hear of any major bombings, and, you know, large-scale serious death, maybe we’ll give you a call.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. He had been expecting this. “By the way,” he asked, “does this look like any place in particular to you?”

  The cop examined the picture. “Sure,” he said. “That’s Grand Central. In New York, on Forty-second Street, I think. I was there once. You can tell by the clock. See this clock here?” He pointed at a vague circle. “That’s Grand Central, and this is the big clock that they’ve got there on the front.”

  “The fuck it is,” the kid said. The kid was in bed with Harry Edmonds in the Motel 6. They had found each other in a bar downtown and then gone to this motel, and after they were finished, Harry drew the drawing out o
f his pants pocket on the floor and showed it to him. The kid’s long brown hair fell over his eyes and, loosened from its ponytail, spread out on the pillow. “I know this fucking place,” the kid said. “I’ve, like, traveled, you know, all over Europe. This is in Europe, this place, this is fucking Deutschland we’re talking about here.” The kid got up on his elbows to see better. “Oh, yeah, I remember this place. I was there, two summers ago? Hamburg? This is the Dammtor Bahnhof.”

  “Never heard of it,” Harry Edmonds said.

  “You never heard of it ’cause you’ve never been there, man. You have to fucking be there to know about it.” The kid squinched his eyebrows together like a professor making a difficult point. “A bahnhof, see, is a train station, and the Dammtor Bahnhof is, like, one of the stations there, and this is the one that the Nazis rounded up the Jews to. And, like, sent them off from. This place, man. Absolutely. It’s still standing. This one, it fucking deserves to be bombed. Just blow it totally the fuck away, off the face of the earth. That’s just my opinion. It’s evil, man.”

  The kid moved his body around in bed, getting himself comfortable again after stating his opinions. He was slinky and warm, like a cat. The kid even made back-of-the-throat noises, a sort of satisfied purr.

  “I thought we were finished with that,” Harry’s therapist said. “I thought we were finished with the casual sex. I thought, Harry, that we had worked through those fugitive impulses. I must tell you that it troubles me that we haven’t. I won’t say that we’re back to square one, but it is a backward step. And what I’m wondering now is, why did it happen?”

  “Lucia said I was harmless, that’s why.”

  “And did that anger you?”

  “You bet it angered me.” Harry sat back in his chair and looked directly at his therapist. He wished she would get a new pair of eyeglasses. These eyeglasses made her look like one of those movie victims killed within the first ten minutes, right after the opening credits. One of those innocent bystanders. “Bankers are not harmless, I can assure you.”