by Cutter Wood
“Now you want my help?” He points at Armando. “Get him to help.” And he storms off down the street, still carrying his pumpkin.
“Leave him,” Karin says to Sabine.
“What will he do?”
“Not your problem.”
“What do you think, Britta?”
“He doesn’t seem very stable,” Britta says.
“He’s dangerous,” says Karin.
“What if you talked to him?” Britta says. “What if you told him you weren’t happy?”
Karin purses her lips and looks out across the road. Tom passes by with a werewolf head.
“Leave,” Karin says. “It’s as simple as that.”
The window is large and full of plants. The light comes in green and sour. There’s a chime on the door. The room smells of sweat, nylon, and patchouli. Armando, the trainer, shares the space with a yoga studio. He’ll have his own place soon, without the gong in the corner, without the chakras on the wall.
He rubs Sabine down at the end of the hour, as he rubs all his girls. His hands enliven the flesh. It is why they come back, to be rubbed and to talk about what they are capable of.
“You can do that!” he says.
“Don’t you think I’m too—”
“Don’t you say too old. Never too old.”
“But—”
“Girl, you do whatever you want. You tell him who’s the boss. You got the looks. You got the money. What’s he got? If I was you, I just go. Not tell him. Go down to Puerto Rico. Take your girlfriends and have a nice time.”
Of course his clients tell him everything: affairs, addictions, bad dreams and bad mortgages. And he remembers almost none of it. He doesn’t gossip but has only a passing interest in their stories.
“Oh my god,” he says. “It’s two. I got to go. I got a date.”
The afternoon is strangely cool and temperate, a slack wind blowing in to shore. The sun dives behind each passing cloud, and the beach is mostly empty. Guests come into the office looking for museum brochures. December feels nearer than anyone had hoped.
Each hour of the afternoon seems to drag on forever, promising that one is appointed to a thousand future obligations of equal dullness. Tom spins side to side in his chair and dreams about boats, shuffling things around on the desk as if busy. He imagines a Boston Whaler with varnished oak along the keel, a blue gunwale, and stripes of red and gold running the length of the hull. Or maybe a trim little sailboat, all white, tacking up the coast with him at the rudder, in white, as well. There is the hint of a beautiful woman belowdecks. Every few minutes, he checks his watch and looks out the door mournfully.
He carries these daydreams home with him, but even a beer and a rest in the hammock can’t dispel the tedium. He sweeps the patio, spends some time staring down into the canal and rubbing the back of his neck. The task of preparing dinner seems insurmountable, and an image looms up of an open box of pizza and the glare of the TV reflected in the patio doors. How long he has been standing in the kitchen, he can’t say. He is pulled from the reverie by the sound of Sabine’s tires rolling into the drive. He looks up at the same time as the cat.
Sabine flops onto the couch, and as the cat runs to her, Tom wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what. She sits up.
“Can you make some room in the garage?” she says. “I may move a few things back.”
The apartment on Magnolia Avenue sits nearly empty. A few dishes are in the sink. An old banana sends up its stink from a bowl on the counter, and two fruit flies zigzag drowsily above it. Otherwise, there is hardly anything there. The past few days, without mentioning it to Bill, Sabine has been removing her things from the drawers. Her toothbrush lies on its side by the bathroom sink, but almost everything else is gone. Everything Bill owns is in the apartment, but that doesn’t amount to much: a pair of boots, a stack of new white undershirts, the watch. He has no photos of family, no family rings, no pens, no diary. No books on the nightstand. In his wallet, there are no lists—not of things to do, not of numbers to call in case of emergency. Neither are there credit cards, insurance cards, business cards. There are two dollars and a crumpled wad of receipts. He has no shampoo of his own. He has no dress shoes, no Swiss Army knife, no son to give it to. Where now are his arrowhead collection, his grandpa’s purple rabbit-foot? Where is the jean jacket he wore as a little boy? If, as Borges says, things are what marry us to the world, what can one make of this dearth? On top of Bill’s dresser, there is nothing but a mirror and a pack of cigarettes.
14: A Disagreement
The liquor store is as cold as a vault, and the old man, the owner, sits on a high stool behind the counter, looking down on everyone who enters. From a speaker in the back, a few watery lines of Ella Fitzgerald drift into the room. When a woman in a sun hat asks a question, he jumps down and hobbles over to her. There is something wrong with his legs, a deformity that has marked him since youth, now as much a part of his temperament as of his body. His disdainful gaze barely comes level with the woman’s breasts, and pulling a pair of eyeglasses down from his head, he peers at the bottle of wine she’s holding.
“Beaujolais, Beaujolais, Beaujolais,” he says. “Beaujolais is all the same.”
He makes his way back to the counter and climbs again onto his stool and sits there, staring out the window. The woman buys the bottle anyway. His is the only store on the island. She thanks him and leaves, and his eyes follow her across the parking lot until a white convertible drives up.
Sabine walks across the asphalt. She wears sneakers, jeans, a flowered shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her legs are long, and she’s in no hurry. He once heard her speak against property taxes at a city council meeting—her jaw clenching, a slight nervousness in her voice. He’s adored her ever since.
“Wilkommen, meine Frau.”
“Freddie.” She nods and passes by, dragging his gaze along behind her.
He trails her around the store, showing her first this bottle, then that one. She smells just barely of sweat, and he inhales this scent and thinks of crushed grapes. The big front window is covered in a brown plastic film. Through it, the sun shines like a burning penny, filling the store with a deep caramel gloom. He limps behind her through the mountains of Bavaria, the hot, dry plains of southern Spain, the fortress towns of Tuscany with their dank crypts in which a pair of middle-aged lovers might casually embrace.
She dallies. She has no interest in anything particular. She wants only something cold and white to drink while watching television, but she feels compelled to delay the decision. Anyway, she doesn’t mind listening to Freddie go on about vintages and crus, and it’s pleasant to hold the expensive bottles he keeps placing in her hands. When she turns away, he undoes one of the buttons on his shirt, and a minute later, he redoes it. He would give it all up, every bit, to picnic with her someday in Sonoma.
At last, she picks a pinot grigio off the discount shelf.
He doesn’t wince. “An excellent choice,” he says. “Good value. My wife, may she rest in peace, drank chardonnay.” He puts his hand over his chest. “I prefer verdicchio.”
That she would have picked another bottle. Here is an excellent champagne, there a near-perfect Barolo. She could have afforded them. He would gladly have given them to her. But now it’s too late. Freddie has slipped the bottle into a paper sleeve, and as he rests it in her palm, he lets his hairy hand brush her arm. She leaves. He sighs. And so, on the last night of her life, Sabine drinks pinot grigio.
It hasn’t yet begun to darken when she pulls up at the apartment. She gathers her things, and as she walks across the terrace, lizards scatter over the cement. Bill isn’t home. The apartment is quiet. She puts a bag of groceries on the counter and stands in the middle of the kitchen with the wine in her hand not looking at anything in particular. She hasn’t thought the words yet, but somewhere in her mind she’s begun to think that she’ll be better off without him. Her whole body has loosened. You can see it in the way she walks, a languor a
nd abandon. She turns on the TV and heads for the shower, where she lets the hot water run until she can hardly see herself in the steam.
The lizards have just emerged again, clustering in a rhombus of sunlight on the wall, when Bill walks into the lot and sends them darting back into the shadows. He sees her car and looks in the window without much reason. When he enters the house, the groceries still sit on the counter in their plastic bag, her sneakers are in the middle of the room, the shower is running, the bottle of wine is open on the counter. He knows that something is going to happen, though he can’t tell what.
She stays a long time in the shower. The water is so hot it flushes her skin red. Her palms wrinkle, and she imagines, as she used to when she was a girl, that she is breathing the thick air of a jungle. The closing of the door to the apartment and the opening of the fridge, these sounds come to her as from another life.
Wrapped in a towel, she stands steaming in the middle of the bathroom. Her face in the fogged mirror is the face of women glimpsed in subway stations, at the parties of strangers, through the window of cafés, arresting, undefined. She has the sensation that she could wipe away the years as easily as the fog, and she hums and slowly rubs her skin with some lotion smelling of lavender and honey, which she spent too much money on.
Though the apartment is small, they manage to avoid each other for a time. She is in the bathroom combing her wet hair, and as she comes out, he goes into the kitchen and begins looking through the bags of groceries. When he finishes, she has her head in a cupboard, and he goes directly to the bedroom and lays himself out for a few minutes on the bed.
“Are you hungry?” she says to the empty kitchen.
His murmur is too faint to be a yes.
It’s not time yet, but he winds the watch. She doesn’t go in to get her book from the nightstand until she hears him enter the bathroom. They meet at last on the couch, she at one end with a book, he at the other.
But now that she sees their relationship as a temporary state, it’s much easier to get along. They are like lovers removed by years from an affair. She has her feet tucked beneath her. He stretches out his arms and legs, and yawns. Cordial and polite, pensive with recollected desire, they listen avidly as the other speaks.
“The oldest little couple,” she says. “They looked just like, just like two raisins. Exactly identical. You couldn’t tell the difference, except he was bald, completely bald, with a shine on the top.”
He grins and sips his beer.
“They asked for the honeymoon suite,” she says. “I wish you could have seen them.”
They run out of things to say, but neither of them moves. It is as though they are waiting for directions. He looks out the window. A car pulls into the parking lot, then turns around and goes back the way it came. She flips through her book, reading pieces here and there, but the meaning escapes her. The words run out from under her eyes, and she closes the book and lets her foot rest on his thigh. He looks with fascination at her toes, then between them.
“It tickles,” she says. They end up in bed.
When they wake, the apartment is dark. They stumble out into the black rooms, first him, then her. Only the light above the stove is on, and it seems to place in relief all that is meager and paltry in their life together. The half-empty bottle of wine sits in a pool of its own condensation. The discount clothes are thrown in a heap on the chair. Now the bond is dissolved. Something has come between them while they slept, not the resentment of the past days, something more final, less cruel, more distant. Neither turns on a light. He pulls a T-shirt over his head and goes outside.
She sits on the couch in only a bra and underwear and says nothing, does not even look as the back door opens and closes. As soon as he’s outside, she gets up and paces the room. She looks at the front door of the apartment. You want to tell her to leave now. There’s nothing to gain by confronting him. There’s no reward for letting him know. You want to bang on the window, but she can’t hear you. The door might as well be locked.
Outside, the little universe of the match illuminates his cupped palms, his tilted face, the skin beneath his eyes, then flashes out. A spurt of smoke shoots up directly at the stars. The night is chilly. The palms chatter in the wind. The boys have gone home with their football to eat hamburgers and macaroni. Outside of beer, he has had nothing all day. His body is hollow, and the smoke, when he inhales it, rubs up against the underside of his skin. His head feels light, and he doesn’t realize the cigarette is finished until he’s back inside.
When he returns, the television throws a blue glow around the bedroom. He thinks he will duck into the bathroom and brush his teeth before she sees him, but she is waiting there for him. She comes up close to his chest, points her nose at him like a finger, and sniffs.
“Cigarettes?” she says.
“Listen.”
But she’s already walking away. He follows her to the couch, where she pulls on her shirt and turns her back to him.
“This isn’t working,” she says.
Why bother recording the arguments of lovers. They are only asking, Why did I love you? and that question has no answer. It is an argument about his smoking, a childish habit, and about her behavior, controlling, but it’s not about either of those things. He says the things that he’s been planning to say, and she does the same, but the wound they make is not what either had expected. He plants his feet, with his hands at his sides. She sits on the couch, putting on her shoes. In the end, it is only a disagreement about a cigarette. That it had been something grander.
“You know what the problem is,” she says, drawing her laces tight with quick jerks of the wrist.
But he has not finished. There are other things he wants to say. He can see everything so clearly right now. If only he could find a way to put it into words. He goes over to her, and so quickly do these things occur, so rapidly does he reach out, that a minute later he will be unable to say what exactly has happened.
When she opens her eyes, he is above her. The television is on, but she can’t hear it. Her mouth tastes bitter.
“You would not believe the headache I have,” she tries to say, but her tongue has trouble forming the words. He is very close to her, and he looks frightened, and she realizes—it seems like some sort of joke—his hands are around her neck. “Don’t,” she says and tries to stand. Instead, so slowly that she can hardly tell what is happening, she slips down onto the floor with him on top of her.
The tile presses against the back of her head, and already any pain has subsided. All of her body now feels cool, a chill very reminiscent of the winters of her childhood, and with great effort, she turns the hand that lies before her and sees there a bluish color gathering beneath the fingernails. There is a fantastic looseness in her limbs, a feeling of liquidity, but she cannot move them. Lying here, in utter relaxation, it is as though she has been cast in marble. For some time, she listens to a wild irregular pattering, without realizing it is her heartbeat. The clapping of the valves is clearer than she has ever heard it, as if the organ itself were a sort of ear. She tries to gasp a little air, and her nostrils quiver with the effort. How terrible she must look trying to breathe in this fashion, she thinks—like a horse.
She studies herself closely, backing away from her sight until at last she bobs above her body the way a balloon bobs above a mailbox. Looking around, she sees her surroundings still, but now the objects in the room have begun to blur and refract. Each thing trembles with the image of its future. It is charming, this shimmering in time. The table is there, four legs planted firmly on the floor, and yet it hardly seems to be a table. In fact, she can no longer recall the word for it. Bill’s face is above her, and she examines it with a great deal of interest. So distorted are his features that for a time she hardly recognizes him. Something seems to be occurring just beneath the surface of his skin, and the muscles in his face are moving as if jerked by strings. He looks very afraid, and she cannot imagine what it is that coul
d frighten him so terribly. And then it ceases to be his face at all. She can’t remember who it is. It could be Tom, or a man from very long ago, or another thing entirely, a toaster or a giraffe. She laughs, but her throat is so hot and raw the sound dries to nothing before it leaves her lips.
What was it she was thinking about? She can no longer remember. I’m having trouble focusing, she thinks. I should focus. But the thoughts lose their edges anyway, soften and come apart. It can’t have been that important, after all, if she’s forgotten it. The words drift down like bits of snow now. Phrases return to her from conversations long ago, from books she read as a girl, but they have been freed from their origins and meanings. They drift gracefully down, disturbed only barely by the faint wagging of her thought, and finally they aren’t disturbed at all.
But a body wants to go on doing forever and ever what it last meant to do. As if to a throne, something is beginning to ascend within her now. A kind of wave runs up along the inside of her spine, grasps her by the inmost fiber and shakes, and she draws in a breath that seems to burst her eyes, and tries to reach down to tie her sneakers. In an instant, she’s driven down against the floor by an impossible weight. It presses her through the floor, and she is drawn away again. It is not like giving birth or being born. At the last, it is more like being tipsy, queasy and tipsy, and a good friend with a forlorn face has her by the elbow, is pulling her away, with gentle reassurances and encouragements, from the lights and colors and songs of the party. As her head falls back, she sees on her shirtfront three bright-red drops of blood, and she thinks that now it’s ruined.
15: What Lights a Fire
For all the fuss that was made about it, he can’t believe how easy it was. It was like she was 101 years old and the good Lord just took her away on home. She murmured something he couldn’t hear, and he leaned in closer. “Don’t,” she said, and she looked up at him like she didn’t know who he was, and then she just stopped trying. When her last breath came out and the muscles in her neck went loose, it was like she’d been carrying this weight and she’d finally gotten to put it down.