The Delectable Mountains

by Michael Malone

  “Put it here,” she said, and cupping my hands, poured perfume in them, pressed them against her breasts, skin strangely cooler, strangely softer than other skin. The nipples stiffened and pushed into my palms.

  “Hey, breathe,” she said.

  I stroked her body with the flowered water until she lay beside me. “This feels good,” she said, fluttering her nails across my chest and down under the sheepskin. She closed her hand around my prick. Cupped it in the dark heat of her palm. Then turning around, she took it in her mouth. Her breasts floated over my stomach.

  “Don’t come,” she said.

  “No,” I promised. Then I lowered her over me until I was hidden in shadows of legs and hair and darkness. The wire tensed tight as far as my feet and my head; my hips jerked upward as I pushed into her mouth, but she moved away. Her hair swayed, brushed my skin. She knelt above my groin and sinking slowly down, she encircled me, and like a flower as sun sets, folded close around me. The wire wound fast, sprang, snapped apart, scattering my seed inside the petals.

  My sleep was troubled by Tanya’s unfamiliar presence, by the unfamiliar noise and feel of breath close to my ear, the unfamiliar sticky pleasure of a leg brushed against mine, the weight of an arm across me. A small rotating fan blew on and off me disconcertingly. It was 3:45 A.M. I remembered I had told no one I wouldn’t be home. They must be worried. Four o’clock; I thought, is Bruno Stark going to ask me to tell him everything Mittie ever said to me that might explain it? Should I say what Mittie had said about Spurgeon? I thought I shouldn’t. I rehearsed Stark’s questions, my answers. Four-thirty; I heard Verl saying, “I hate waste. Love is not a waste.” I hate waste. Love is not a waste. Over and over, until finally I fell into a sleep uneasy with dreams.

  The last one waked me. I was walking toward a bright clearing far in the distance of thick woods. A crazed old woman stood there, gaping at me with straggled teeth. She bent over cackling, slapping her hands against her scrawny thighs. Fog whirled around her as I approached.

  “Come over here. Come over here,” I heard her squeal.

  I climbed to the clearing. Tanya stood there. In silence we began to kiss. She unzipped me, put her hands inside my pants, drew out my prick, and squeezed it in her fist so that at first it hurt.

  “Are you happy?” she asked. ‘Why don’t you stay? I know what you like, don’t I? Don’t I. Don’t I. Don’t I.”

  On a hill above us, Leila was standing with Verl beside his yellow Triumph. “Who is that with Devin?” I could hear her asking him. Embarrassed at being seen by them, I tried to pull away, but Tanya wouldn’t let go. She tightened her fist.

  Verl came running down the hill at us and started tearing off Tanya’s clothes. As he ripped them from her body, she laughed hysterically. I pulled at his arms.

  “It’s Jardin, Verl. It’s Jardin!” I screamed. “Leave her alone. Are you crazy? Stop it.” He threw my arms off and went on like someone possessed until she was naked. Then he grabbed me by the back of the neck, shoved me to my knees, and stuck my face in Tanya’s stomach. The skin bubbled and spat out big running sores like a pot of boiling fat. Large bubbles of burning flesh burst, scorching my face. I gagged at the stench, but Verl held me there against my struggles as he rubbed my face back and forth in the sores.

  I woke up sick and startled. Tanya, smooth and perfumed next to me, posed like a dancer, was sleeping. I stared at her, horrified, then heat sunk me back to the mattress. The little fan churned the same worn air back and forth. I turned it off. My dream faded. It was 9:15. Somewhere now, Leila was talking to Bruno Stark about her future. I should get up, but I felt queasy with lack of sleep, and thought, anyway, I shouldn’t just leave without saying something.

  At noon, I woke with an erection. Pressing next to Tanya, I rubbed it against her thigh, then nudged under her arm to take her nipple in my mouth. Sleepily she groaned and moved beneath me.

  “Are you awake, Tanya?”

  She made a mumbled sound, pulled me over her, and led me inside. I came almost at once, then fell back asleep,

  When I woke again at 1:15, she was gone. A note had been scrawled on the back of a page of my writing. “Had a lunch date. Hope you don’t mind. Took a loan from your wallet. All you had was a twenty. Pay you on pay day. See you. Leave the door on ‘lock.’”

  I gathered my papers and collected my clothes, I dressed and left the door on lock. My wallet was in fact empty.

  At the theater no one had returned from lunch except Joely, who was splicing wires in the lighting booth. “Where the hell have you been?” he snapped. “Great time to wander off!”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I feel like shit.”

  “You look it,” he agreed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re supposed to be on box office today. You’re a half-hour late.”

  “Oh, Christ, I forgot. I’m sorry, Joely. Really. Just let me use the bathroom. Is there some coffee behind the counter?”

  “Yeah. And Mrs. Thurston made doughnuts.”

  “The Good Lord bless her.”

  “Are you hung over?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, come on, don’t be coy. Why didn’t you show up last night?”

  “You didn’t call the cops, did you?”

  “Boy, are you paranoid! No, the cops already had their hands full with our friend Spurgeon. You know, Leila got him out; how do you like that? Of course, she’s had practice. She’s talked Mittie’s way out of the can enough times to know how.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “No, I didn’t finish up here until two. By then everybody at home was asleep. Ronny told me he saw you over at the Red Lagoon, so I figured you were probably passed out under a table or off humphopping with that Dennis Reed guy.”

  “Are you kidding? Anyhow, I don’t like him.”

  “No? I thought you said he was a soulmate. Didn’t you tell me Reed was a real soulmate? A poet, a prince?”

  “Get off my back. So I made a mistake.”

  “You made a mistake? Oh, boy, boy, boy. Let me be the first to congratulate you. Go wash your face.”

  Cleansed in the dressing room sink, I took a cup of coffee and four doughnuts to the box office, where in the next two hours I sold twelve dollars’ worth of tickets to The Belle of Black Bottom Gulch, reread my newly written pages, and fought back against a headache, hunger, sweat, heat, and an itching crotch. Finally, Sabby Norah brought me a cheeseburger from the streetcar diner.

  Seated in wide plaid overalls on the stool beside me, Sabby told me what had happened with Leila and Mr. Stark, punctuating her sentences with that unrelieved series of sniffles that had led Mrs. Thurston to advise her to make blowing her nose a regular habit.

  “Oh, you should have been there this morning, Devin, when Mr. Stark came to get Leila and the babies. Mrs. Thurston made him come sit down and eat breakfast. She was all dressed up and had the table all set. And Eggs Benedict. Grapefruits with kinds of designs, you know the kind I mean? Cut right into them. I thought it was really nice of her, but I don’t think Mr. Stark wanted to stay there for breakfast. Then Mrs. Thurston told him she just couldn’t allow him to leave that way. At least, if he was going to sleep in a public hotel, he could eat one simple meal with his relatives.”

  I laughed; her imitation of Mrs. Thurston was better than Leila’s. “Well, how did it go? WATCH OUT!” Sabby had knocked over her careful stack of interleafings; they floated to the floor. She blushed and bit off a fingernail.

  “It went okay,” she said, as we crawled about collecting the pages, “but I don’t think anything’s been settled yet. Mr. Wolfstein stayed in his room. Mrs. Thurston talked the whole time. You know how she sort of gets going. About how she had been through so much herself, and could certainly understand how Mr. Stark must be feeling. And it’s true, Devin, she has been throu
gh a lot; so many deaths she’s had to deal with. But anyhow, how he was holding up wonderfully, which was what people had to do. Then she said how she had been to college, and that if Leila went to live in Oregon, maybe she could go to college too, because she had already been practically on her way when Mittie talked her into marrying him. You know, I thought Leila had been to college. She’s really smart.”

  “Sabby, you suffer from hero worship.”

  “I don’t either,” she flushed. “I just happen to admire Leila a lot. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. She’s beautiful. And talented. And nice. I wish I could be like her.”

  “You are nice, Sabby; you’re very nice.”

  She pointed at her face, glasses, body, tapped her head despondently. “Well, that leaves a lot behind. Leila got the sheriff to release Spurgeon. Last night on bail or bond or something. I forget. Isn’t that amazing about him getting arrested? Somebody you actually know. I never knew anybody who went to jail, except the husband of the lady who worked for my mother. He beat her up. Did you know anybody?”

  I thought of university sit-ins, the cacophony, the smell of sweat and adrenalin, the surge of group outrage, and the set faces of nervous policemen. Then the yells of indignation at physical hurt, and the protest of limp bodies. “Yes,” I said. “Some students.”

  “Oh, that. I mean real jail. Spurgeon went to Denver in the middle of the night in that beat-up old car of his to buy some supplies. He went off in a rage because Leila said she’d never told him she was going to put his play on—you know that one, Napalm, the one he took to California because Mittie wouldn’t do it either. You should have seen him. Well, you know how he gets. And after she’d just gotten him out of jail! He borrowed ten dollars from me for gas.”

  “Jesus, Sabby, why did you give it to him?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t have any money. Do you think I shouldn’t have?”

  Someone in a straw hat with pointed sunglasses sewn into the brim tapped on the booth and bought six tickets for the evening performance. Sabby was elated and took it as a sign that things were going to get better.

  At 4:00 the Oldsmobile braked to a stop in front of the theater. Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Edgars hurried out with one orange bicycle, one blue tricycle, one push-pedal sports car, one doll that looked like a midget in a Broadway musical, two shopping bags from the delicatessen, and Mrs. Thurston, Davy, and Maisie.

  “This day has absolutely worn me out,” Mrs. Thurston announced. “Go with your Aunt Sabby,” she pushed the children in our direction, “Sabby, honey, take them straight to the ladies’ room. They are simply covered with food, and the Lord knows what else. And try not to let them get soaking wet and catch their deaths. Mr. Edgars, it is impossible, no matter how much effort you put into it, to keep children satisfactorily clean.” Both Stark’s employees nodded yes. “Are you parents yourselves?” she asked. They bobbed no.

  The theater door was jerked open. Bruno Stark, gray with anger, followed Leila inside; he spoke with an almost choked calmness. “I can’t force you to use your head, but you listen to me, young lady. Don’t think for a minute you’re going to keep up this horse-assery at my expense!”

  “I told you, Bruno, I don’t expect you to keep paying the rent. The lease is in my name. I can manage myself.”

  “Bull. You and Mitchell were out here playing GAMES, that’s all, GAMES. And now this is the real world, and this theater is coming down just as soon as all the business is taken care of. In four weeks it’s coming down! Understand me? And this caravan of crap is going to be sold!”

  “So I have until then,” Leila said calmly. The rest of us were frozen silent.

  “And as for Mitchell’s children and the rest of the legal situation, I’ll be talking to my lawyers. I won’t have David mixed up in this craziness. You’ll do something to close it. Or I’ll do something. And, Miss, you had better believe I mean that. EDMUNDS!”

  Edmunds and Edgars scurried over. “Get in the car!” Stark ordered. “We’re going to the airport.”

  I realized it might not be the best time, but I had promised, so I went ahead. Stepping from behind the booth and clearing my throat, “Mr. Stark,” I said.

  “Yeah?” It wasn’t encouraging.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

  He stared with what I couldn’t help but regard as disgust.

  “You went to Harvard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mitchell went to Stanford. I sent him four years. He graduated.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It was a waste of time and money.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he suddenly rasped at me, jabbing the air with his cigar. “Why don’t you grow up? Why don’t you all grow up? Do something with yourselves! Nothing’s good enough for you. Nothing real’s clean enough for your lousy hands to touch. Well, let me tell you something, boy, if you don’t grab it, somebody whose hands ain’t quite so clean is sure as hell gonna pick it up. And all you spoiled brats are gonna be left sitting in the dirt, bawling.”

  I could feel my face flushing as Mrs. Thurston interrupted Stark’s outburst, “Bruno, whatever is…”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish, but spoke as he threw open the theater door, “Amanda, if I was you, I’d have a little talk with your girl about who’s holding the keys to the bread box!” He went through the door.

  Edmunds and Edgars left with him, and the door slammed shut on Mrs. Thurston’s open mouth.

  “Lord God Almighty! What is the matter with that man? What’s been the matter with everybody since we’ve been in this fool town? Leila, what in the world did you say to him to cause him to carry on like that?”

  “Can we talk about it later, Mother? I’d like to go home. Would you mind putting the kids in the bus? Where’s Joely?”

  “Backstage,” I mumbled, still shaken by Stark’s attack.

  Leila went to find him. Her mother took a seat under Mittie’s picture. “I don’t mind telling you, Devin. This entire population is closer than some people may realize to downright insanity. Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen in this mountain air,” she mused, “but it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if before the summer’s out, every single one of us wasn’t committed, lock, stock, and barrel, to a mental institution.”

  I smiled as much as I could manage, and she bustled the children out to the Red Bus. Soon Leila went through the lobby without speaking to me and left too.

  I went back to the booth, where, in a few minutes, Joely tapped on the window. “The plot thickens,” he grimaced.

  “What is it now?” I asked. “Termites ate up the stage?”

  “Close,” he grinned. “We’ve all got crabs.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, but I already knew. The itching I’d blamed on the weather. But how did we all get them?

  “Apparently we have Spurgeon to thank; that’s what we get for befriending a poor artist in a military-industrial society. Leila saw Dr. Ferrell today. He told her. Maisie and Davy have got them too. And, man, if Mrs. T’s got crabs in her privies, I’d sure hate to be in Debson’s boots!”

  “The kids? I thought you had to sleep with somebody that had them.”

  “Listen,” he laughed, “once those little buggers get going, they breed like the lower classes. Sheets, towels, combs! So if you’re itching, it ain’t lust. You know, maybe that was what was wrong with Wolfstein the night we thought he’d gone nuts over the bugs.”

  “Boy, this is it,” I slammed the box office shut. “She’s really doing a number on everybody ever since we got out here. One damn thing after another.”

  “Who?”

  “Leila. Who else is responsible? Who dragged Spur off the streets to infect everybody? Goddammit! Oh, Jesus, this is really perfect. Jardin’s g
etting married tomorrow, you realize that. Tomorrow. My brother is marrying her tomorrow!”

  “So?”

  “She’s getting married, and I’m getting shaved for V.D.!” I felt like kicking in the floor with Leila’s face on it. “And now I’ve got to go tell Tanya, and that’s really going to be embarrassing. Jesus!”

  “Well, you always said August 2nd would be about the most painful day in your whole life.”

  “Go to hell.”

  • • •

  Tanya’s cabin was locked, and no one answered. I was turning to leave when the man in the raincoat I had seen in Slough Lane the previous evening startled me by tapping my shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You didn’t,” I told him.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said nonchalantly, pulling the same notebook I’d seen before out of his coat.

  My pulse throbbed once in my neck. What now? If he was here about Spur Debson, I was ready to tell him anything he wanted to know. “Sure,” I nodded. “What is it?”

  He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head. He put the pack back in his pocket. “Do you know a Carlotta Sirenos?”

  I felt puzzled and a little disappointed. “No, sorry, no, I don’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why?” I was beginning to get alarmed again.

  He took a photograph from the notebook. “Have you ever seen this woman?” He held it in front of me. It was a studio portrait of a woman with her hair up in an elaborate way, wearing expensive looking clothes, a necklace and earrings. I held it up to the cabin door light. It was Tanya.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “This person lives right here. Her name’s Tanya.”