Love Nest

by Andrew Coburn

  “We remember different things, don’t we?”

  They paused to watch a trolley of rich desserts roll up to the table of elderly ladies, who began agonizing over their choices. At another table somebody’s beeper went off, and a man who looked like a doctor rose to his feet. Eve finished eating and placed her knife and fork together, like man and wife, on the plate.

  She said, “Remember Hartigan’s Drugstore, the ice cream sodas we had? The man in the starched peaked cap who made them? We giggled a lot, couldn’t stop ourselves. Remember the spigots popping out syrups? We made everything sexual. Remember the rose-veined marble of the counter? You said it looked like me inside.”

  “I couldn’t have gotten that close.”

  “We didn’t always wait for night to go parking.”

  “Whatever we thought we had didn’t last long.”

  “At that age nothing should. A sin if it does.” She smiled lightly. “But the years have no business going by so fast, do they?”

  They skipped dessert. The man whose beeper had sounded had returned to his table and, his wife looking on, was carefully examining his check. In anticipation of theirs, Eve had discreetly laid out a gold Master Card at the edge of the table. She sipped Jamaican coffee through a layer of whipped cream, the rim of the glass sugared, the sparkle adding another dimension to her class ring. For want of something better to say, Dawson asked why she had never married.

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  “Did you?”

  “No. No time.” She dabbed her mouth. “Why didn’t you? The real reason.”

  “I never wanted to be responsible for anybody except myself. Selfish, I guess. Or maybe I was afraid or insecure. Something like that.”

  “So instead you became a cop, responsible for everybody.”

  “Yes. But only while on duty.”

  “Melody went beyond your shift.”

  “A little,” he conceded.

  “A lot,” she corrected.

  He gazed off. “I’ll tell you something, Eve,” he said, looking back slowly, “I’m always on duty.”

  “And I’ll tell you something,” she said. “From what I heard, she’d have stayed a perennial ingenue.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She expected miracles. She thought men wanted to marry her, Alfred for one.” The waiter collected the card. “You for another,” she added.

  Later he said, “Thank you for the dinner.”

  They wound their way out of the dining room at the same time the elderly ladies were leaving and for a moment or so mingled among them in what seemed a gust of scent, mostly hair spray and emanations from the neck. One of the ladies resembled Eleanor Roosevelt. It was she who had smiled at them earlier and now smiled again. The wine waiter bowed, for Eve had tipped him well.

  The dark sky was shot through with stars, and the air was cool and still. “Lovely,” she murmured and dangled the keys. “You drive.”

  He had to push the seat back. Then, on Main Street, the car purring with a power he was not used to, he readjusted the rearview mirror. He drove toward Ballardvale Road. She lowered her window and asked if the breeze was too much for him. It was, but he shook his head. She sat sideways in the bucket seat, her dress carelessly riding up, her eyes on him.

  “If you’re taking yourself home,” she said, “drive slow.” He did, letting other cars pass them, their lights sweeping over them and chalking their faces. She dropped an arm over the back of his seat and brushed her fingers against his nape. “You were my first love, Sonny.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.” Her voice came at him in a low pitch, her smile slanting. “Do you remember where we used to go parking?”

  “It’s not there anymore. Houses are.”

  “A shame.”

  “Your boss built them.”

  “More shame.” Her mouth moved toward his. “Some other place then. What do you say?”

  His eyes shifted into hers, and suddenly she laughed.

  “You’re not buying it, are you? I told Alfred it was a long shot.”

  “He really must hate me.”

  “He has no choice, does he?”

  He accelerated and turned sharply onto Ballardvale Road. “What was the game plan?”

  “I bruise easily, you surely remember that. And no jury would believe I ripped my dress myself, not this one. It cost six hundred dollars.”

  “So now you get to keep the dress.”

  “Silver lining to everything.”

  He pulled up in front of his driveway, and they both got out. She ambled around to the driver’s side, where he held the door open for her, the motor idling. In the starlight her face looked cleansed to the bone, her mouth newly minted.

  “Like old times, Sonny, me dropping you off at this funny little house. Strangers must wonder if real people live in it. You’re not Andover anymore, you know. Others are. May I?” She rose on her toes, carrying up the mingled scent of her clothes and skin, and for a number of seconds her full lips looped over his. He stepped back with a shiver, and she slipped into the Mazda and grinned out the open window. “You have a lot of willpower. You must be pleased.”

  “Not entirely,” he said. “I have a hard-on you wouldn’t believe.”

  She wrenched the gearshift into drive. “Yes, I would, Sonny. I’ve seen ’em all.”

  • • •

  The Bauers had gone to bed early, Alfred with a book on John F. Kennedy that he was still reading and Harriet with a magazine that she had not opened. She seemed asleep but was not. Her eyes snapped open when the front door chimes sounded. “Are you expecting somebody?” she asked, and he looked with a shade of disappointment at his watch.

  “Not this early.”

  He made the trip down to the front door wearing only his striped pajama bottoms, his chest hair sticking out where he had been scratching. Above his solid shoulders a vein pulsed through the ruined flesh of his neck. He opened the door on Eve James.

  “How’d it go?”

  “It didn’t,” she said.

  The top of his head hurt, as if from a sudden crack racing over the skull. “Worth talking about?”

  “No.”

  “Come in anyway.”

  He took her coat, though she had meant to keep it on. While he hung it in the coat closet, she inspected herself in the mirror. She said, “How is she?”

  “The same.” He seemed to aim his voice over her head. “Had this worked, it might’ve helped.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Come up and say hello to her.”

  They ascended the stairs, his step slower than hers, one foot dragging, an unwilling weight. His belly buckled over the waistband of his pajamas.

  “Have you noticed? I’m going to pot.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I haven’t been working out.”

  “You will.”

  They entered the bedroom together. Harriet lay with her fair head against a triple layer of pillows and with both arms and a single foot outside the covers. The magazine rested in the sag of covers between her legs. Viewing Eve with only slight surprise, she said, “What a beautiful dress. Stunning, isn’t it, Alfred? Though I doubt I could get into it. I have much bigger bones.”

  Bauer said, “Eve had to drop off some papers.”

  “How wonderful of her to work overtime.” She patted the bed. “Sit down, Eve. I don’t see much of you now. Not like the old days.”

  Bauer excused himself and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Eve sat on the edge of the spacious bed, crossed her legs, and dropped her hands into her lap. She spoke gently. “How are you doing?”

  “Junk going on in my head you wouldn’t want to know about,” Harriet said with a faint shrug.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You got any juice with the spirit world? I could use some answers.” She wiped the hair from her face, including strands that had been adhering to her cheek
. She smiled vaguely. “Are you still afraid of me? You used to be.”

  “No, I was never afraid of you,” Eve said. “Because I knew I was never a threat to you.”

  “That’s true.”

  They heard the flush of the john, and moments later Bauer emerged from the bathroom and made his way to the distant side of the bed. “I’ve gained a few pounds,” he said, propping pillows and then sitting atop the velvety covers. “In the gut. The worst place.” Harriet seemed not to hear, much space between them, the Kennedy book in the middle of it. Her eyes were on Eve. Bauer extinguished the light on his side of the bed as if to diminish himself. “But I’ll work it off. No choice in the matter.”

  Eve felt a dry palm press idly against her wrist. She looked Harriet square in the face and said softly, “Do you want me to stay?”

  “It’s up to Alfred.”

  Bauer had not heard the question but knew what it was. “No, dear, it’s up to you.”

  “Then it’s up to Eve.”

  Eve said, “I’m rather tired.”

  “Yes, we all are.” Harriet closed her eyes in the instant. “Get her out of here, Alfred.”

  Bauer accompanied her down the stairs and to the door and even walked her to her car, gingerly on bare feet, for there were sharp little pebbles on the drive, some glinting up through the dark as if a jeweler had tossed them there. Trees drooped their gigantic shadows. She said, “You’ll freeze.”

  “It’s not cold,” he said. “It’s almost balmy.”

  “She’s not right, Alfred.”

  “I know that.”

  “Will she get better?”

  He shook his bald head with a weariness that seemed to come over him all at once. “That I don’t know.”

  “Poor Harriet.” She touched the hair on his chest and then slipped her hand into the front of his pajama bottoms. “I wish this was mine. All mine.”

  “You haven’t said that in a long time.”

  “The time wasn’t right,” she said, dipping down. Pebbles tore through her stockings into the hard flesh of her knees. His voice grew husky.

  “She might be watching.”

  “She never minded before. Why should she now?”

  Eleven

  She was staying at his house three and four times a week, showing up at will. She no longer slept on the couch but in a bed set up for her in the room that had been his parents’, though now it seemed a child’s, a lamp burning through the night, the door left open. When she talked in her sleep, he could hear her. He never went into the room, not even when she called out from a troubled dream, knowing that if he did he very likely would not leave. There was a magical look about her in the morning when she crawled out of bed and made her way down the stairs, her hair gloriously tousled and her bright eyes blinking through a blur. She expected a kiss on the cheek, and he got into the habit of giving her one.

  She made breakfasts that were edible. Suppers, however, were a challenge. The only time she cursed was when she overcooked something.

  The pneumatic attachment to the screen door in back no longer worked. When let go, it slammed shut with a noise loud enough to wake the dead. “Sorry, my fault,” she said, appearing in an old T-shirt and baggy shorts. “I’ll fix it,” she said, rooting out a screwdriver and pliers from a bottom drawer in the kitchen. Something was electrically wrong with the front doorbell, which rang when no one was there. Eventually she fixed that too, amazing him.

  “Who taught you?”

  “I don’t know, Sonny. I’ve often wondered.” She glanced about, slim hands on slim hips. “Any other little jobs? I want to earn my keep.”

  Just her being there gave something to him, though he did not tell her so. He suspected she knew.

  “Want me to clean? I’ll clean.”

  “I have a woman who comes in once a week,” he told her.

  “House doesn’t look it.”

  “She’s in Maine for the month.”

  “Fire her. I’ll do the job.”

  “That wouldn’t work.”

  “How do you know?”

  She mowed the lawn and brought the smell of grass into the house, along with blades of it on her sneakers. She picked and chewed wild spearmint growing on the sun side of the garage and carried in the scent on her fingers and breath. “I could live here and be happy,” she said.

  “You only think you could.”

  “I’d be great for you, Sonny. Don’t you know that?”

  “I’m old enough to be your father.”

  “Only if you had married young. And you didn’t.”

  “You’re playing house,” he said. “In a few months you’d get tired of it.”

  “I swear I wouldn’t.” She chewed more spearmint and raised her lips. “Kiss me and see how good I taste.” He passed, and she said, “I’m known for my audacity and stubbornness. Character traits, Dr. Stickney says. Do you mind them?”

  “In time,” he said, “I think I would.”

  “Dr. Stickney also says you — not you in particular, Sonny, but somebody like you — shouldn’t allow yourself sympathy for me because I won’t be easy to brush away. He says I’ll cling. Pieces of me will stick. I told him that’s what I want. Do you know what else I want?” She stretched out a hand, shapely fingers pressed together, thumb extended. “A key.”

  “Why?”

  “I never had one in any of those foster homes. If I was out and nobody was in, I had to wait. Didn’t matter what the weather was or how dark it got.”

  “You have your own place now, your own key. You don’t need one here.”

  “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case I’m out in the cold.”

  He gave her one. “It’s for now,” he said, “not forever.”

  Forever meant nothing to her, for she did not believe in it. She believed the world was going to blow, if not in this decade then the next and if not by the Russians then by Reagan or someone like him. “Deep down isn’t that what everybody thinks?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I refuse to think that deep down.”

  “Sue won’t either. She says it’s best not to.”

  “Sue?”

  “One of my roommates. I’ve told you about them. And them about you.”

  “I’m not sure I like that. What do they think of your spending so much time here?”

  “They want me to be happy.”

  “And you’re happy here?”

  “Absolutely. Sometimes it’s almost like we’re married, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he said, “not in the least.”

  Occasionally, sitting with her legs tucked under on the couch, she watched television but found little that amused her or contributed to her sense of reality. Only the better movies held her interest for an appreciable time. Her favorite actor was Jack Nicholson, the kind of man, she mused, who looked as if he did not wash under his arms.

  “I hope that’s not what turns you on.”

  “No, but it’s real,” she said.

  He was standing near the couch. He let his eyes sink into her. “How real are you, Melody?”

  “I bleed every month. That’s real.”

  He did not mean to ask the next question. It simply flew out of his mouth. “Ever have an abortion?”

  “Yes,” she said. “When I was twelve.”

  • • •

  The final week of August brought a heat wave, temperature approaching one hundred, humidity unbearable, records challenged. With the heat searing through his clothes and soaking his skin, he arrested a bare-chested youth in cut-off jeans who was selling sandwich bags of marijuana behind the bowling alley. The youth said, “If I ran, you couldn’t catch me. Would you shoot?”

  “I don’t have to,” Dawson said. “I know your father.”

  “No you don’t. You got me mixed up with my brother.”

  The youth’s girlfriend was with him, her hair butchered in the punk style. She said, “You’re supposed to
be a right guy.”

  “I have my moments,” Dawson said, “but this isn’t one of them.” He busted her too, for possession.

  Much later in the day he went to the home of a retired marine officer suspected of sideswiping two parked cars in the Shawsheen Plaza and then kissing off a VW camper that was coming the other way. The house, long and low, looked like a regimental barracks. He was confronted first by the bark of a dog and then by the massive plainness of the man’s stout wife, who was wearing garden gloves and nervously trimming a rose hedge, sweat drooling down her naked arms. “He’s on medication,” she said. “Come back tomorrow.” Dawson looked beyond her. The man, posted behind a screen door, said, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I did more damage to my car than to theirs.”

  “We’ll let the insurance companies handle that. We’ll talk about the rest down at the station.”

  “I can’t do that,” the man said.

  The woman whispered, “He thinks he’s confined to quarters. You see, he’s punishing himself.”

  Dawson squared his shoulders and said, “Come out, sir. That’s a direct order.”

  At the station the desk sergeant, who had a headache from the heat and a knot in his stomach from paperwork, said, “Can I ask you a question, Sonny? Day like this, why the hell you makin’ pinches? I mean, Christ, this kinda weather, I’d think you’d be takin’ it easy.”

  Dawson said, “I’m proving myself.”

  “You got nothin’ to prove. Everybody loves you. You want, c’mere, I’ll give you a kiss.”

  Billy Lord, who had just checked in with a couple of other officers, said, “How about giving me one instead? Might clear up this cold sore I’m getting. Hope it ain’t AIDS.”

  “It could be,” the desk sergeant said. “Where’ve you had your mouth?”

  “On your sister,” said Billy, rolling flat eyes. “I got tired of your wife.”

  Dawson repaired to the basement, to his cubicle office, where the former marine officer was sitting beside the desk in a metal chair, his dry hands resting as dead things in the lap of his thin trousers. His slicked-back black hair, which was dyed, looking like a shoe shine, and a single unending line streaked across his brow like a fine wire keeping his large ears up. He sat erect at the sight of Dawson and said, “Shouldn’t I be in a cell?”