by Abby Frucht
“Your earrings are missing. I don’t know,” he says guiltily.
I wipe a tear from my eye. We both know I don’t wear earrings when I’m working.
“I’ll give you a hint,” I tell him. “It’s broken.”
Daniel shakes his head, squints, makes a face, and disappears from the porch for a minute, into the kitchen. He returns with his magnifying glass, examines every button on my blouse, and says, “If you don’t tell me, then I’ll have to call the post office and ask them.”
“My can,” I hint.
Daniel spins me around, squats once more for a look at my backside. I’m crying, again, suddenly.
“Not that,” I wail. “My can. My Mace.”
“Oh,” says Daniel. “Your Mace. Shit.”
“It was a Doberman.”
“Poor baby.”
“It didn’t bite me, I swear.” I’m crying again.
Daniel enfolds me, lifts me, lays me down on the porch swing on a scant nest of pillows.
Ashamed, I add, “No stitches. No broken skin, even. No anything.”
Daniel kisses my leg, then fetches a flask of fresh iced tea, stirs it with a pipet, pours it into a beaker and puts the tall, cold drink in my hand. The beaker is graduated; the iced tea hits exactly the two hundred and ninety milliliter mark. I sip it through the pipet. Two hundred and forty-eight milliliters. I sip again. Two hundred and forty-three.
“It was the funniest thing,” I say to him.
“Sure.”
“Where’s Stevie?” I ask.
“At Simon’s.”
“Oh.”
“What was?”
“What was what?” I ask, sipping my tea, still rationing. We have finished all our ordinary leaf tea. This is a potent licorice tea from the shelves of the Epicurean, where I’d also purchased a baggie of jasmine tea and one of chocolate flavored. The jasmine makes us woozy, and the chocolate makes us high, but the licorice is fine. Sharp and mysterious. I play the usual game with the pipet – sipping, letting it fill up with liquid, then aiming it at Daniel and threatening to squirt him in the eye.
“What was the funniest thing?” he asks again.
“Oh.” How patient he is. “How is your foot?” I ask after a while.
Daniel wiggles his toes.
“That was the most awful part of it,” I say finally. “It was in that part of town at this house that didn’t have a door, there were only shower curtains hanging in the entrance way, and in the front yard was a coffee table with a bottle of Alka-Seltzer sitting on it. The mailbox was outside the gate, but I opened the gate anyway because…”
“Because why.”
“Because I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to read the letter.”
“What?”
“Through the envelope. I didn’t open it. It was from Gail.”
“Gail wrote you a letter. That’s nice. What does she say?”
“She didn’t write it to me, Daniel. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I thought it was for the Tree Man, because I don’t know his name, you know, I only think of him as the Tree Man, and he’s the one in love with Gail, so I wanted to see if she said anything worth congratulating him about the next time I ran into him. Like, if she told him she loved him or anything, or if she invited him to come live with her, or if she was having a baby or something. So I was just trying to get an idea, and then I figured I’d just go right up to the door and hand it to him and wait while he read it through, in case he started crying or anything, in case she said something careless. You know Gail. Something mean. I wanted to comfort him. I was a little confused – sad – really, because I didn’t think that that kind of house was the kind of house the Tree Man should be living in, with carpet remnants overlapping all over the front yard and a bottle of Alka-Seltzer on a coffee table in the middle of it, and anyway it wasn’t his house, it wasn’t him, it was the sweaty guy who drives the taxicab. You know, the guy with the bushy white hair.”
Daniel nods.
“But before he got to me, his dog did, and the Mace can was out of date or something. It didn’t spray.”
“And then what?”
“Then the letter blows away, and the dog starts… it was a Doberman.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“You already said that.” He puts the tip of his finger on the hole on top of the pipet, raises it out of the glass, inserts its end between my lips before releasing his finger so the fluid slips down to zero and I swallow. He lays a hand on my brow, strokes my temple, lets his finger slide down to my neck while giving me butterfly kisses, then pulling back to stare at my pupils. He’s sneaky for sure, but I know what he’s up to; checking my vital signs-heart and respiratory rate, muscle tone, skin tone, and whatever other reflexes he chooses to arouse.
I blink at the kiss and stick out my tongue.
Momentarily satisfied, he gazes at me and says carefully, “I’m still not exactly sure why you were trying to read this letter.”
“I told you. Because I wanted to see what it said.”
“Maybe I should rephrase this.” Daniel hesitates. Then, “I think you would agree that it’s not all right for a mailman to read other people’s mail.”
“I’m not a mailman. I’m a TLC.”
“All right. Would you agree that a Temporary Letter Carrier should not read other people’s mail?”
“It was Gail’s mail, Daniel. Gail doesn’t believe in privacy. And I only wanted to be there for him if he needed me, in case she said something terrible to him. You don’t know the Tree Man, Daniel, but he’s surprisingly fragile. He doesn’t know himself how fragile he is. He needs support. He needs reassurance. That morning I was in bed with him–”
“That morning you what?”
“I didn’t know he was in there. He thought I was Gail.”
Daniel eyes me warily, just as I begin to laugh. It comes on rather gradually. Deceptively, really, so in the beginning I think I can stop it whenever I want. I can’t, but I don’t want to, either. Tears roll down my face and in less than a minute I’m doubled over, my hands pressed into my belly. But inside I’m calm, the way I get when I’m watching the approach of a thunderstorm. Sometimes we sit on the porch swing, Stevie and I, gently rocking as the darkness and rain roll in and the big drops pick up weight and speed. Still, when the thunder and lightning break directly on top of us, we know we’ll stay cozy, sheltered, untouched.
“Liz, what doctor did you say you think you saw in the emergency room?” Daniel asks diplomatically. Diplomacy has a way of making him awkward.
I keep on laughing.
“Liz….”
“I say I think I saw nobody. I say I think I didn’t go to the emergency room, Daniel. I say I think the dog didn’t break any skin.” Mouth twitching, I double over again and laugh. It doesn’t feel anything like hysteria. It feels wonderful. I try explaining this to Daniel but can only sob.
“Just a minute,” says Daniel.
He takes the glassware away and walks into the kitchen, picks up the telephone, dials. I hear him asking for the doctor, introducing himself, then all of a sudden his voice gets low. Poor Daniel, I think, he is always so determined, so at pains to do the right thing. I climb off the swing, poke my head in the room, accustom myself to his whispering, hear the word frightened, hear him asking the doctor if he should put me to bed. But I won’t go to bed, I don’t want to sleep, I am far too excited. Besides, I was frightened only for a few minutes, at the beginning. The dog dragged me to and fro by the mailbag, flailing and growling while I pulled the can of Mace from its loop on my belt, aimed and tried to spray. No Mace, no weapon, and in the end, no blood, just the same dog chasing Gail’s letter as it floated across the yard, catching it, then holding the envelope between its paws and ripping it open.
“There’s your letter,” I sobbed to the cab driver, who was trying to comfort me and paid no attention to what I said. He was grasping my elbow and helping me up solicitously.
“It’s from Gail,” I added, and the driver let go of my arm at once, dropping me onto the carpet remnant. Red shag. I had already noticed that Gail’s letter wasn’t only a letter, there was something else included, a pair of cream-colored satin briefs with a special flap sewn in the crotch. The cab driver lunged for the dog but was far too late, Gail’s letter was ruined, half-chewed, ink-smeared, and the briefs were in ribbony, pearl-studded shreds.
“You bitch,” the driver screamed, at me and the dog at once, before stomping off through the entranceway of his house, pausing only to grab the bottle of Alka-Seltzer from the coffee table in the yard. I had to pull myself up, but as I did so the dog lunged again, straddled me, and stared into my face, its wet nose tensed, not twitching at all. It put its nose on my nose and, that way, pushed me straight back to the ground. After that it raised its head and for a moment only stood there listening, to what I didn’t know. I didn’t make a sound myself, for a moment, and then I heard myself say, “Don’t touch me,” That’s all. Two or three times I said it, I think.
Should I knee it? I wondered.
The dog was a male, it smelled of cooking grease, the very tip of its tongue protruded out of its mouth. I detected no whiskers at all, and no collar, and on the taut curve of the throat a few desiccated burrs, the shells split apart, the seeds already dispersed. I studied the fur on its muscular chest; how close-cropped it was, the pink skin just visible underneath.
Should I try to poke my fingers in its eyes? I wondered, at which it lowered its head again, bared its teeth, sniffed me again, took hold of my wrist with its jaw, but gently, ever so gently, and began to lick my arm. It licked meditatively in sopping-wet whorls from wrist to elbow. Then it pressed the tip of its tongue in the crease of my elbow and let the tongue vibrate. It was then I was smitten with – what?.
Resignation, I suppose.
How simple it was, how uncomplicated, all I had to do was lie there and wait for it to happen. Wait for what, I didn’t know. The dog lifted its big forepaw, hung it limply by the wrist so its toenails teased my shirt collar and stayed poised in the hollow of my sternum, barely tickling the skin.
I closed my eyes.
Was this terror? I wondered.
Although I didn’t feel afraid. Not at that moment. It was like an afterglow, one lover pulling close to another and whispering, I wouldn’t mind dying right now. The Doberman pinscher was licking my face, kissing me, French kissing, even. Its gaze was steady, melancholy. It traveled the length of my body, then paused as if ashamed by the rip it had made in my pants. It kissed my knee and started chewing thoughtfully, like a student chewing a pencil. I couldn’t move a muscle. I was still whispering, “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me,” but it was only reflexive, like cough of a motor after it’s been shut off. Then the cab driver poked his head out between the halves of the shower curtain and asked timidly if I was feeling okay.
The shower curtain was vinyl, orange and yellow plaid.
“I’m so happy I could die,” I told him, weakly. He invited me in for some coffee, and when I didn’t budge, came out into the yard carrying a glass of water in which were dissolving two Alka-Seltzer tablets. He pulled me up to a sitting position and held the glass under my nose. The carbonation hit my face. I drank, swallowed, thanked him, said goodbye, and kept sitting there. My pants were torn, one knee exposed and a little raw-looking, wet from the dog’s saliva.
“You sure?” said the driver. “I could give you a ride.”
He gestured toward his cab. It was a four door, but the doors on one side were fastened with a knotted extension cord, and there was a lawn mower doubled over on the back seat. Gail must have been the most beautiful, the most exciting thing that ever happened to him. After all, a cab driver in a town like this… maybe he mows lawns on the side. I looked again at his own lawn. There was a blue pile remnant I longed to lie down on, but instead I went home, limping, ignoring the rest of my mail.
Now, from the porch, I hear Daniel’s near-whisper repeating after the doctor, put her to bed, let her rest for a while, then wake her and ask her her name.
Quietly I sneak past the swing and down the steps, then hurry next door to the redwood fence and shimmy through a gap into Nikki’s backyard. Her yard smells sharply of citrus peel, the principle ingredient of her compost heap. Also, fresh cloves, which she sprinkles on top along with each new layer of vegetable peels, to mask the decay.
I pluck some cherry tomatoes off of the vine and eat them standing amid the neat, hoed rows, straight and furrowed as the cornrows in Nikki’s hair. It’s a postage-stamp yard, hardly bigger than the shed she tore down to make room for the garden, but very productive. A sprinkler is spinning. Against the back of the house are some tiered shelves for seedlings, while on her side of the fence are hung boxes of wax bean vines among flats of marigolds.
Next I go inside and start looking for Nikki’s telephone. I’ve never seen it before but I know where it must be, buried under something sumptuous enough to muffle the sound when it rings. I go first to the couch, flip up the cushions, then upstairs to look under Nikki’s pillow. No phone. In a minute I remember; off Nikki’s clean kitchen is a laundry alcove, and on the floor in the alcove is always a basket of clothing-caftans, kimonos, flour sack trousers, saris, sarongs, and her big square head scarves – waiting to be ironed. I reach under the silks and soft cottons, pull the telephone out by the cord, sit cross-legged on the floor and dial my own number.
Daniel, just off the phone with the doctor, answers breathlessly.
“Don’t worry about me,” I tell him, my mouth still slushing cherry tomatoes. “I’m going out with Danka.”
“But-” says Daniel before I hang up.
After that, I call Ben to ask after Stevie.
And next, I call Danka.
“Meet me at the old depot,” I instruct her. “There’s someone I want to spy on.”
FOR A WHILE we lie on the grass, Danka and I, although it took us a while to get here. When she arrived at the depot, overdressed for a walk in the woods in her little black dress and stiletto heels, we had to hop in her car and drive back to her house for something more suitable. There, I saw the Soho Tree truck parked in her and William’s driveway. One of their pines had grown top-heavy. They’d lose their homeowner’s insurance if it wasn’t cut down.
“Insurance companies make me want to pook,” said Danka.
“Puke,” I corrected, “I know. My neighbor chopped a spruce for the very same reason. The whole thing’s absurd.”
The workmen were having a break when we got there and were nowhere to be seen.
“Was the Tree Man with them?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“The tree man?”
“The slender one. The one that looks like a bird. The one with the feathered hair. I haven’t had a glimpse of him in days.”
“Is he the one you want to spy on?”
“No. But I’m worried about him. He’s delicate.”
“Oh. I believe I saw him here. Yes.”
She opened her door, slipped off her shoes, fished around in a pile of sandals, clogs, and boots in the hallway before settling on some dainty black sneakers. The hall smelled sour, from all of Danka’s shoes, I thought.
“Where are William’s shoes?” I asked.
“He’s wearing them. He keeps his slippers near the couch, where he does his reading. He’s shopping now. He loves it. It’s a hobby. He drives all the way into the city for a bottle of wine… Last week he drove to the Amish country for cheeses. He orders suckling pigs by mail. Before we married, I knew about this shopping, I thought it was charming, like you. Only you don’t look so charming today,” she remarked. She’d put her hands on her hips and was staring me up and down. “You look-how shall I say? – excitable. Ordinarily you look so healthy. So contented. So-how shall I say?-quaint.”
“I’m all right,” I told her, cringing at the word. “I had a little run-in with a Doberman pinscher.”
“Run-in?”
“It fell in love with me.”
Danka chewed on a fingernail. “I think maybe we should not go out. A little something to drink…”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t know.”
“Danka, if you don’t want to go, fine, but I’ll go by myself. That’s all,” I said. I held open the door while she tied the laces of her sneakers.
Now we lie side by side on our backs, the little fingers of our inside hands almost touching as if in careful mimicry of our bodies. Danka is worried about her husband, she tells me, for in his careful reading he has come closer to uncovering the identity of the City of Repose. For some time he seemed to have forgotten all about it, but just recently he came across another reference to its existence in ancient Palestine.
“What he still hasn’t figured out is that its proper title is not the City of Repose but the City of Forests and sometimes the City of Refuge,” says Danka. “I am thinking of sneaking some scissors into the library, if you know what I mean, so that he’ll never come across it. I wander what the penalty would be. What do you think?”
“You might have to pay a fine,” I say, shrugging. “What’s so terrible about the City of Repose? That sounds beautiful. The City of Forests.” I shut my eyes. “The City of Refuge. Refuge. What a beautiful word.”
After a while, Danka says, “I was thinking you are the kind of person who will come into the library with me and stand guard at the end of the stack and keep watch while I snip. On the other hand, you can snip while I keep watch, if you prefer.”
“Anything. Sure,” I say dreamily.
“What kind of clouds are those?”
“Cirrocumulus. It’s going to get windy.”
“It’s calm, now.”
“I know,” I say. So calm is the air that it blanketed us; upon seeing a flattened bed of tall grass we flopped down on it like Dorothy in the field of poppies. Around us, not even the petals of the daisies tremble.
“How hot is it now?” asks Danka.