“That’s not why I asked you, though,” James had said to her cold bare back. “I really asked you to help me pick out presents. I hadn’t considered this—I mean, this was not my aim.”
But it had been his aim, and she wished that he wouldn’t pretend it wasn’t. The worst part of the entire trip was when he left that night—it had to be one in the morning—and paid her. For her professional opinion, he said. About the gifts. As he’d promised. He paid her far too much, in fact, a neat little pile of fifties, and it was morning before she could bring herself to touch the money, which lay on the bed beside her as she fitfully slept. In the end, of course, she did take it, she did tuck it into her little knitted handbag. And now the house was quiet, and she was waiting for Happy.
Her first thought, upon coming back from New York, was that she wanted to go home. Wisconsin home, not Equinox home. She lay on her bed in her dorm room and listened as April and Sara walked by, talking; they weren’t talking about her, and they went past without knocking or even pausing. And why not? Janet had been silent at meals, and had been away all weekend without telling them where she was going, and she and April appeared to have broken up. Not that they’d discussed it. But it had been a couple of weeks since April had appeared, in her familiar way, at bedtime. Janet told herself this was what she wanted, but she had spent those weeks waiting in vain every night for the knock, and the crack of light, and April’s body slipping into the room and into the bed. And now, after what had happened, it was worse. She barely slept at all Sunday night, and again last night, and her mind was paralyzed by the sudden foreignness the world seemed to have taken on. She had disappointed her friends, lost her girl, had sex with a married man as old as her father. The bar was closed and the new one was too loud, and anyway Dave had gotten drunk and put the moves on her and so they couldn’t have a regular conversation anymore.
What she needed was her room at home—her desk—the stained blotter with the ballpoint ivy drawn around the border, and her little row of reference books, and her Charlie Tuna lamp, and the drawer full of notes passed to her, by already-abandoned friends, in high school. She wanted her dad to cook her favorite dinner—a strange concoction he called Chinese pizza—and her mom to shout and swear at the radio, and she wanted to go skating on Lake Mendota and get a nosebleed the way she used to when the air was cold and dry. Here, the air was clammy: here her nose hardly ever bled at all.
And so maybe she cried a little bit, there in Happy’s office. Maybe, silently, she allowed a tear or two to fall. Maybe she had a little fantasy about Happy coming back, surprising her here, and looking down at her tear-streaked cheeks and saying Janet, dear, what’s the matter? and taking her face in her strong plump hand and wiping the tears away with a rough thumb.
And then, as if the force of her desire had created it, a door creaked and footsteps sounded in the hall. Janet pulled a tissue out of her bag and daubed at her eyes and nose, and then put the tissue back, and threw her arm over the back of the chair in a posture of relaxation.
James stepped into the room. He was wearing a loosely-tied bathrobe as thick and fuzzy as a small bear. A V of hairy flesh extended from his neck all the way down to his navel. She turned away and tried not to start crying again.
He said, “I feel like I’ve offended you.”
“You haven’t,” she made herself say.
“I thought it was a nice day.”
“It was.” Staring at her folded hands.
There was a silence as he considered.
“Okay,” he said, seemingly confused. “It was a nice day.” He didn’t say anything for a few moments, though she could hear him shifting his large body, and could smell his skin. And then he said, “I asked you not to wear those things.”
This finally made her look up. “I’m wearing them for her.”
His expression, puzzled and hurt, looked like one he had practiced for years and used often, to good effect. Indeed, it worked on Janet, too—she felt terrible for him, she felt like she wasn’t being fair.
“Okay…” he said.
“Can I be alone now?”
He frowned. “Well, all right.” But still he stood there. She turned away again.
“Okay,” he said, leaving. “Fine.”
* * *
Happy met him in the hall between the office and the master bath, and yes, there was something out of kilter about him all of a sudden. He tried to muscle past her, but she stopped him with a firm hand.
“What?” she said.
“What what?” he came back. He cinched his robe tighter.
“What’s going on? With you? Something funny.”
He scowled. “There is nothing funny about me. I’m going to take a shower.”
She searched his face, but it was like looking at the side of a barn. Well, fuck it. She had other things on her mind. “Right,” she said, “shower. Go to it.” And she passed him and strode right into her office, right to the desk, picked up her phone and called the Klams.
* * *
“It’s me,” Happy said. “I need you to start working on a new outlet store.” A pause. “Because somebody burned it down, that’s why.” She went to the window, looked out, told the phone what had happened over the weekend.
Janet knew she ought to have cleared her throat, or made a noise, or something, but it was too late now. She sat very still, half-concealed by the open office door. Happy pressed her forehead against the glass, listening. She appeared to pick her nose.
“No, I want it in town,” she was saying. “And I don’t think we can start knocking down the college until summer.” Another pause, a laugh. “Ah, ye of little faith! The museum will still go on the library site, I promise.”
It was the stiffening of her body, the tiny squeak of surprise that escaped her lips, which betrayed her. Happy froze. Their eyes met in pale reflection in the window. Janet cringed, pulling her legs up to her chest, and her employer, her master, turned around to face her.
* * *
It was ingrained deeply into Happy not to betray fear or surprise. This was what had satisfied her cousins, when they hid in the closet at bedtime, or jumped her in the park and stripped her naked, or sicced the dogs on her. They loved it when she screamed. And so she had learned not to, absorbing their power, driving them mad with rage. It was this ability which she pressed into service now. She spoke clearly and evenly: “Sheila? Something has come up, I have to go.” Then she pocketed the phone, sat on the edge of her desk, and said, “Janet, hello.”
The girl nodded. She looked different. Her nice dress and shoes and earrings, and her wet eyes. The round fearful face peering out from between the black panels of hair. Happy’s scrutiny seemed to shame her, and she hung her head. Then, mastering herself, she raised it again. She said, “Happy belated birthday.”
“Thank you,” Happy answered. “Janet.”
“Yes?”
“I just got off the phone.”
The girl nodded. “I know.”
“Tell me what I was talking about.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
Happy glared.
“You said you were going to build a new outlet store.”
“And what else?”
Janet again hung her head. “Knock down the college?”
“What do you think of that?”
She shrugged, pressed herself back into the chair. Her feet slipped off the edge and thumped on the floor. There was ten seconds of silence. Happy went to her, knelt, and gazed, very closely, into the girl’s eyes.
And then a funny thing happened—Janet went all soft. All doe-eyed. She seemed to draw forward, as if into a mirror. The lines on her forehead and chin disappeared and her lips relaxed and stuck ever-so-slightly out. And then—Happy might have moved away if she had anticipated it—she brought her hand up and stroked the side of Happy’s face. This surprised her far more than Janet’s presence in the room had done. She considered taking the hand away, but then she would be holding Ja
net’s hand, and she considered standing up, but that would be a kind of defeat, wouldn’t it. No need to spook the little thing. So she held her ground, and ignored the hand, and said, “Janet, you’ll keep your mouth shut about this, won’t you. You’re in my company now. These are trade secrets.”
A tear squeezed out of Janet’s eye as the hand moved up and down on Happy’s cheek. “Yes,” she said, in a kind of mesmerized, watery voice.
“Janet.”
“Yes, Happy?”
“Where did you get those clothes?”
The hand dragged down Happy’s cheek and under her chin; she felt the soft narrow fingers following the curve of her ear. A chill ran down her spine and she coughed. It amazed her that a moment so strange could last so long.
Janet said, “I have no idea.”
23. Made to be ruined
The knock came on Ruth’s door at one in the morning. She was awake, of course—she had barely slept since the fire. Sunday’s sunrise had found her standing behind the police line tape in her bathrobe and slippers, staring in horror at what was left of Happy’s outlet store. She scanned the crowd for Kevin Russell, hoping to find him there, because if he was there, it might mean that he hadn’t done it.
But of course he had done it. She had all but told him to. What she had actually said was “Hit her back”—foolishly confident that they had been dealing in the realm of petty insults, minor vandalism, symbolic mischief. How stupid she’d been! “Hit her back,” she’d told him, and handed him a hundred bucks. “You’ll get the other fifty when you’re done.”
“The other hundred,” Kevin had corrected, tucking the bills into the pocket of his jeans.
“That’s not what we agreed on.”
“You’re asking me,” he drawled, “to cheat on my boss. She’s a killer, you know.”
She stared daggers at him, but he didn’t back down. What could she say? She was desperate. Her first hundred dollars was already in his pocket. She said okay.
All she’d wanted was for Happy’s grand capitalist scheme to fall on its face. All she’d wanted was a little humiliation, a little jab to the ribs to remind Happy Masters she wasn’t the only bitch in town. Instead she’d gotten arson by proxy. If Kevin blabbed, Ruth could go to prison. No more sitting by the fire, drinking wine. No more quoting Wittgenstein to teenage girls. No sex, though that might come as a welcome relief.
And now the knock. She jumped out of her chair and stood in the middle of the living room rug, its ragspun circles radiating out like shock waves. What if it was her? What if it was Happy Masters, a cop on each arm and a dimple on each smirking cheek?
But, “I know you’re in there,” Kevin taunted through the door. The knob turned—she never locked her door at night, having never had a reason to be afraid—and he entered, clad in black, like a thief, like a cinder. She tightened the belt of her robe. “Pony up,” he said, laughing.
Ruth flew to him, her fear dispelled by sudden anger. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” she hissed. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“‘Hit her back,’ you said.” His face was slick, his eyes dark. Her alarm appeared to amuse him.
“It isn’t funny. We could both go to jail. You knew what I meant!”
He laughed openly at that. “Gimme a break. You didn’t even know what you meant. For all I know you wanted her shot in the head.”
“If I’d wanted you to burn a building down,” she whispered, “I would have said so.”
“If you didn’t want me to burn it down, you would’ve said so.” When she couldn’t produce a response, he kept on. “You left me to do whatever I felt like doing, ‘cause you thought I’d do worse than you ever could. That’s why you hired me, Ruth.”
“That’s not true,” she mumbled.
He leaned in close. “You were right. I could’ve done way worse than that. I’m bad, remember? That’s how come everybody’s throwin’ money at me.” He stood straight, shaking his head. “Where would this great nation be if people did their own dirty work? Every punk would be out of a job. I think you owe me a hundred bucks.”
Ruth knew defeat when she saw it. She went to the bureau and took the crumpled bills out of the middle drawer. It didn’t matter if he knew where the money was, he could have it, for all she cared. She went to him and handed it over, and he took it with a smile. He turned to leave.
“Ruthie,” he said from the door. “Don’t worry about the cops. I used to have a death wish, y’know. I’ll take the heat. As far as I’m concerned I thought this whole thing up myself.”
“You’re fired,” she said.
“My other boss has bigger balls,” he replied, chuckling, and shut the door behind him.
* * *
Archie was already awake when his doorbell sounded sometime later. He’d had a dream, the edges of which were already blurred beyond recognition, the details runny. For years he’d had war dreams, so bad they’d burned themselves into memory more powerfully than the war itself. Eventually they grew dull, and his memory vague; maybe that’s what happened when you got old. Anyway, this dream was no nightmare, it was merely odd, erotic. The lake, his feet in slime, stones against his legs. And Happy Masters. He’d got up, went to the toilet, sat there five minutes waiting for his erection to go away. He pissed, returned to bed, lay awake. He had a sudden impulse to pack it all in and drive somewhere, Arizona maybe, someplace hot and dry all the time. Maybe he’d look into that.
Then the bell rang and he was up like a shot, hammer in his hand, heart in his throat.
He took a breath. Put down the hammer on the bedside table where it lived. Went to the door.
Ruth walked straight past him and sat down at the kitchen table, wrapped in a bathrobe and a pair of yellow rubber boots. She folded her arms and rested her head on top of them.
“Weren’t you cold? You should have put on a pair of pants.”
She didn’t reply to that, so he lit the lumpen candle on the counter and heated up a pan of milk. He made them cocoa—that’s what his mother had used to do when Archie couldn’t sleep. He remembered falling asleep there, in the kitchen, with his mother, the two of them finding themselves slumped on the table in the morning. Gone twenty years now, his parents. Soon he’d be as old as they were when they died.
Ruth sipped the cocoa and spoke her first word of the visit: “Thanks.”
Archie nodded. “So,” he said.
She turned a face toward him that was haggard and anguished, a face that didn’t want to explain. He put up a hand in acknowledgement. They drank their cocoa. Afterward they went to bed, undressed, exhausted themselves in sex, the only free pleasure in town. Archie still wasn’t used to it, sex as comfort, as an extension of friendship. Without particular passion or desperation. It was a different act entirely from what he had been accustomed to, the one he’d discovered at sixteen, the one he was surprised to find he maintained with his wife, until she grew ill. Maybe it would have turned into this, if she had lived. Maybe they would have grown apart. Not for the first time, he wished that if she’d had to die, she wouldn’t have died with their illusions intact.
He lay beside Ruth, willfully slowing his breathing. Their fingertips barely touched. Whatever had happened to her tonight that brought her here, he wasn’t going to find out. He realized that he didn’t want to find out. She said, “This world is made to be ruined.”
“Maybe so,” he had to reply, for he’d had the same thought before.
“I try not to participate. I really do, Archie.”
“Harder,” he said, “than it sounds.” He felt his hands beginning to sweat.
“Damn near impossible.”
She was crying, he could sense it. It was time to hold her, to offer some solace. But he didn’t. He shifted his body, clenched his jaw. He felt like he used to feel waiting in the heat and the wet for the enemy, waiting to jump or run or die. Moments slid by with agonizing slowness. A bead of sweat stung his eye. In time Ruth stopped crying, and she got ou
t of bed. Archie let out breath. She put on her nightgown and her robe.
“What time is it?” he asked, slurring his words with counterfeit sleep.
“Not much later.”
“Stay.”
She shook her head. “I want to go home,” she said.
Blearily, they regarded one another. Always awkward, parting, when you don’t really love someone. For this first time since she got here, Archie felt tired. She gazed at him, sadly, then slipped on her boots and left.
24. Poise like a statue of Stalin
On Thursday morning Reeve Tennyson stopped for gas on the way up to the Syracuse airport. Bud Triesman filled the tank. Reeve preferred Jennifer—she didn’t talk, she hustled you out of there as fast as she could. Bud talked. Today he was talking about fishing, ie., how he wasn’t looking forward to winter because you couldn’t fish. Well, there was ice fishing, maybe he could do that. Then again, he really only liked fishing in streams, the lake was boring. He knew this fellow who said he once caught a sturgeon in the lake, what do you think about that?
Reeve didn’t think anything about it, because he was too busy watching Jennifer through the closed window of the ice cream kiosk. She was wearing shorts and a tank top and what appeared to be boxing gloves, and she was dancing around throwing punches into the air. He said, “Bud, what’s Jennifer doing in there?”
He turned and looked. He said, “Boxing.”
“Why?”
Bud squinted. “Sheesh. I just don’t know.”
“Hmm.”
“It was thirty-seven inches long.”
Reeve turned and looked at him. “What?”
“Thirty-seven inches.”
“What was?”
“Sturgeon.”
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