by Roger Smith
“I’m late,” he said, pulling up his chinos, buckling his belt.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“Then before you go, tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me why you like me, John,” she said, dragging out the words in that breathy way she had, teasing him.
“You know why I like you,” he said, pulling his golf shirt over his head.
“Details. I want details,” Grace said, sitting, magnificent breasts asway as she reached for the cigarettes beside the bed, her ampleness so different from his small, scrawny wife.
“I like you because you’re good,” he said, tucking in his shirt.
“Good?”
“Yes, good.”
“Good in bed?”
“No, not good in bed.”
“I’m not good in bed?”
“You’re messing with me.”
She stretched like a cat and laughed as she put a Virginia Slims between her lips, clicking the lighter until it flamed, setting fire to the cigarette with little sucks and grunts.
“Okay. So, I’m good?” she said around the cigarette.
“Yes,” he said. “I know in this cynical age good has come to mean dumb, or naïve, or silly.”
“It has. Sadly.”
“But you have it in you. Real goodness.”
“I do?” Grace said, exhaling smoke through her nostrils, narrowing her eyes at Tuner’s unexpected seriousness.
“Yes. I saw it the first time you came to the office, when you spoke to Lucy by the pool.”
“So you like me because your kid likes me?”
“That’s not the only reason I like you,” he said, and he sat on the bed and touched her inner thigh.
She pushed his hand away.
“Well,” she said, “this goodness has a shelf life.”
“Grace.”
“I mean it.”
“Let’s not do this now,” Turner said, getting up from the bed and walking toward the door.
“I’ve been offered another job,” she said, “in Phoenix.”
Turner stopped walking and tried a smile that didn’t take.
“You’re not going back to Phoenix.”
She was on her feet, nodding, corralling her breasts and clipping her bra closed, something that never failed to arouse him, this reverse striptease.
“I am. I’m going to take the job.”
“I need you,” he said.
She laughed.
“You need the fucking, John, that’s all.”
“It’s not all,” he said. “You know that.”
“Do I? Come on, now you’re messing with me.” She reached for her blouse. “I mean it. I’m moving on.”
“I love you, Grace.”
The words shocked him.
They shocked her too, arresting her in the act of buttoning the blouse, and she tilted her head and stared at him with those swimming pool eyes.
“I didn’t think you knew how to string those words together, John.”
“Neither did I. But I mean it,” he said, crossing back toward the bed, the stained carpet spongy beneath his shoes. “I love you.”
He did mean it and for a moment she allowed him to draw her to him, then she freed herself from his arms and pulled on her skirt, smoothing it over her hips.
“Those are pretty words, but I need you to do something to back them up.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“Come on, Grace.”
She saw his eyes.
“What’s her hold over you?”
“Lucy. Money.”
Grace shook her head as she slid her feet into her sandals.
“No, there’s something more.”
“There’s nothing more.”
“What aren’t you telling me, John?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a liar.”
She grabbed her purse and her car keys from the bedside table and opened the door, letting in a blast of cauterizing sunlight and the rumble of the traffic on the I-10.
“Do it, John, or I’m gone.”
Grace slammed the door, leaving behind the reek of her cigarette.
Turner sat down on the bed, hearing the tired wheeze of the bedsprings, and stared out the window, blind to the sand and the scrub and the bone-white sky.
2
Turner, sweating in the night heat, stood silhouetted against the aquamarine swimming pool, water lapping at his shoes as the fervent PoolShark scavenged for muck.
Lights blazed inside the house and he could see his daughter watching TV in the living room, a barrage of canned laughter incoming on the still air.
Tanya was on the warpath, her manic energy driving her from room to room, and she appeared at the kitchen window, looking out at him, before the yelp of her cell phone had her hurrying off.
Turner crossed to where mesquite logs burned in the grill.
He opened a plastic container and used his fingers to lift out a coiled length of ground raw beef sausage squeezed into a casing of hog’s intestine, laying the unbroken spiral on the fire, hearing the spit and sizzle as the hot grid seared the meat.
This was boerewors, the signature dish of his homeland.
Driving through downtown Tucson a few months ago Turner had spotted a South African flag stuck to the window of a butcher shop. On impulse he’d pulled over and investigated, finding a big blond Afrikaner in a blood smeared smock sawing meat behind the counter.
When Turner discovered the man made wors he’d bought a couple of pounds and taken it home to cook on the barbecue. His wife and daughter had refused to eat the meat (Tanya was into something radically macrobiotic and Lucy, a little American now, had pronounced the sausage “gross”, preferring the familiarity of a Big Mac.)
But the wors had been superb, perfectly spiced and, though he was not a patriotic man, Turner had felt a flash of homesickness as he’d sat eating alone outside this house in his adopted country.
So, it had become a weekly ritual, the cooking of the sausage, but tonight he had no enthusiasm for the business of barbecuing. He’d come out here merely to escape his wife, sensing that she was intent on a confrontation, her agitation telegraphed by the slamming of doors and the muttered oaths that followed her through the house like a con trail.
Using tongs Turner shifted the coiled meat on the grill, flames licking at the fat that pierced the casing, fragrant smoking billowing.
Setting down the tongs Turner looked up at the stars. He still found the absence of the Southern Cross disconcerting.
The constellation had been a reassuring presence since his boyhood and it troubled him, vaguely, that he might never see it again. That he’d die under this foreign sky.
Wandering away from the heat of the fire he hunkered down and stirred the pool water with his fingers. It was as tepid as a cup of tea left to stand.
Turner never swam.
He hated the way the chlorine made his eyes burn and his skin itch. But most of all he hated how claustrophobic he felt when submerged, as if the water would suck him to its depths and never release him.
Turner stood and wiped his hands on his chinos, his damp fingers finding the outline of the BlackBerry in his pocket.
Despite—or, perhaps, because of—their disquieting conversation at the motel earlier, he wanted to call Grace, picturing her sitting on the couch in her apartment, legs tucked under her, smoking one of her ridiculous menthol cigarettes as she paged through Vogue.
He had only once been to her apartment.
Six months ago, driving with him in the Lexus to a business meeting, Grace had been drinking Coke from a can when Turner, distracted by the GPS, nearly collided with a semi and swerved wildly, the horn of rig blaring like an unmanned bull as it hurtled past them.
Grace had spilled the drink on her pale blouse and they’d had to take a detour to her apartment in Armory Park.
Grace’s desk was
frequently cluttered and disorganized and Turner had expected her home to be the same, but the open plan apartment was as clean, neat—and anonymous—as a recently serviced hotel room.
Grace left him in the hall and hurried into the bedroom, closing the door. Turner had a view through to the kitchen (a single glass upended in a drying rack) and the living room where characterless modern chairs and a brown couch bowed before a huge, wall-mounted TV.
He went in search of cold water. The antiseptically clean refrigerator held only a jeroboam of French champagne—Krug—and an open tub of Beluga caviar, the black roe clinging to the canted lid like rat turds.
Turner was surprised.
In the months they had been sleeping together Grace had never drunk champagne nor ordered anything as exotic as caviar. This hinted at a secret life and it left Turner, as he closed the refrigerator, wondering what other secrets she harbored.
Grace had emerged in a fresh shirt and they’d left the apartment.
She’d never invited Turner back and their assignations had continued in a succession of cheap motels.
Now, wandering in the dark outside his house like a spacewalking astronaut adrift from his mothership, Turner yearned to be with Grace at her home.
To sit on the couch with her and drink and eat and make small talk before going with her to the bedroom (the bedroom he’d seen only in his imagination) where they would fuck and sleep and he’d be woken by Grace’s hairdryer—in his fantasy a handheld thing that screamed like a jet during take off—and he’d lie in bed watching her as, unaware of his scrutiny, she sat magnificently naked at the vanity, one eye closed against a curl of smoke from the cigarette she had gripped in her teeth, drying her hair.
Turner’s flight of fancy was interrupted when Tanya appeared at his side, startling him.
“What’s going on, Johnny?” she said, the only person who called him that these days.
“I’m cooking sausage.”
“Wors, Johnny. You’re cooking fucking boerewors.”
“Okay, Tanya, I’m cooking fucking boerewors.”
“Are you becoming like our daughter? Talking like them?”
“Well, we do live in America.”
“Yes, we live in America but we’re not American.”
“No, we’re not.”
“No. But I bet you’d like to be, wouldn’t you?”
He said nothing, nudging the sausage with the tongs.
“Sorry, but you can’t become American by fucking osmosis, Johnny.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means that no matter how many times you put your cock inside that fat cow you’re still going to be you. You’re still going to be Johnny fucking Turner from the arse end of Johannesburg.”
“Where are you going with this, Tanya?”
“Where am I going with this?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you where I’m going with this. Jesus, Johnny, I’m not a fucking idiot. You’ve fallen in love with her, haven’t you, you spineless little bastard?”
“You’re crazy.”
He laughed a false laugh, hiding his guilty face from the firelight in a billow of smoke until a sneaky breeze came from nowhere and blew away his cover.
“I told you, Johnny: fuck your lungs out, but don’t get stupid.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“I won’t let it happen. You know that.”
“You won’t let what happen?”
“I won’t let you leave, Johnny. Leaving is not an option.”
“What are you hanging on to this for, Tanya? This fucking sham of a marriage? Don’t tell me this makes you happy?”
She was close in to him, a warm rain of spittle striking his face.
“Happiness has got fuck all to do with it. I have a husband. I have a child. I will not lose them.”
“You won’t lose Lucy.”
She barked a laugh.
“Oh, come on, I’ve seen how she moons over that fat blonde cunt. Next thing you three’ll be shacking up in some sitcommy American bliss while I’m left alone. Fuck that.”
“You’ll have your career.”
“My career?”
“Yes, your career.”
“Now, at a time like this, you talk to me about my fucking job? God, you’re a miserable piece of shit.”
He stared at her, mute in the face of her rage.
“Anyway, you know they refused me tenure?
“The university?”
“Yes, the fucking university.”
He shook his head.
“Well, they did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re not fucking interested in anything other than your cock.”
She crossed her arms. A familiar defensive posture.
“And they’re not going to renew my contract at the end of the semester.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’ll take care of you. Financially.”
“What’s this? A pay off?”
“No. I’m just being fair.”
“Fair? You wouldn’t know fair if it lassoed you and fucked you up the arse.”
“I want out, Tanya.”
“Out?”
“Yes. Out.”
“There is no fucking out. Not after what you did in Johannesburg. You miserable little bastard, I saved you, I did something for you that nobody else would’ve done. I liberated you. But, no, you chose to see it as entrapment. Imprisonment. You retreated and withdrew from me.”
She looked at him and something shifted in her eyes and for just a second the flames of the barbecue revealed an unfamiliar vulnerability and then she shut that down and slapped him hard through the face.
“And now you have the fucking gall to get all soppy over that fat bottle blonde bitch.”
Cheeks stinging, Turner gave her his back, tending the sausage, the sheath tearing and fat oozing out, sizzling on the fire.
Tanya hit him between the shoulder blades with the flat of her fist.
“I’ll talk. I’ll tell everything I know about what you did ten years ago. Every fucking thing.”
Turner swung on her.
“Even you wouldn’t be crazy enough to do that.”
“Wouldn’t I? Fucking try me.”
“You’d be implicated.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m a lawyer, Johnny, remember? I know how to do these things. You’ll go down and I’ll stand watching, waving goodbye.”
Flames flared on the grill, charring the sausage, but Turner’s eyes never left Tanya’s.
“Oh good, he’s finally paying fucking attention.”
She stepped in very close to him and he could smell her armpits over the wood smoke.
“This is how it’s going to go. Get rid of that cunt. Fire her. Tomorrow. I don’t want to see that fat arse of hers here again. Ever. You hearing me?”
“Yes, I’m hearing you.”
“You don’t do it and I swear I will start making phone calls.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Good. Now you step back into line, Johnny, and put the lid on this midlife crisis of yours. Pack away your dick and your cheap sentimentality and go back to zombieland. Appreciate what you have. Believe me, it’s way more than a piece of shit like you deserves.”
3
It was very late and Turner prowled the house barefoot listening to the calls of the nightjars and, pausing at their closed bedroom doors, the soft snores of his sleeping wife and daughter.
Then he padded through to the kitchen and, without switching on the light, took an Evian from the refrigerator, drinking it dry in one long draft.
He had a thirst that water could not slake.
Turner stood a while, listening to the whirr and clack of the wall clock and then he observed himself at a distance as he opened a cabinet above the refrigerator and stared at the bottles of liquor that gleamed malevolently in the dim light.
Turner reached for a liter of Jack Daniel’s, the square bottle as familiar to his touch as an old lover’s body.
“What are you doing?” he asked out loud.
He had no answer.
He opened the whiskey, hearing the creak and whisper of the cap as it unscrewed and lifted the bottle to his nose, inhaling the astringent perfume of the alcohol.
He could already taste it on his tongue and feel the slow, sweet burn as it hit his gut.
Ten years.
He was tilting the whiskey to his mouth when the scent of the alcohol was overwhelmed by the stink of blood and firearm propellant and he screwed the cap tight, stowed the bottle and slammed the cabinet door shut, gripping the kitchen counter, his eyes squeezed closed, waiting for the shakes and nausea to pass.
Over the years, whenever Turner had felt himself waver, become tempted to reach for a drink or a spliff or, God knew, something way stronger and more memory-scouring, he’d never sought out drug or alcohol support groups to help him shore up his resolve.
How could he?
How could he have shared—in the parlance of those higher-power-loving klatches—with a room full of strangers that he’d woken that December day ten years ago in Johannesburg a stoner, a drunk, a user, and emerged, after the hellish, blood-filled night that followed, not clean, no definitely not clean, but sober, straight, dry—that was the fucking word—dry, dry as the parched desert he now found himself marooned in?
No, his battles were to be fought alone, wandering the movie set of a house, listening to the nocturnal gargles of his wife and daughter, trying not to think about the events that had driven him to the self-imposed life sentence of sobriety.
For a decade, until that moment in the motel room earlier, he’d accepted his fate: he was bloodless and cold, a man who lived in exile from his country and from himself.
But the appearance of Grace Worthington had slowly changed that. She’d thawed him and he’d let it happen, always telling himself that it was under control.
That it was safe.
Just meaningless sex, R&R from the attritional, dug in battles with Tanya.
And then those three words had escaped his lips.
Words he had never in his life before uttered to a woman.
But what he felt for Grace was a passion—a need—unlike any he’d ever known and it left him shaken and sick.