I am here, he thought, on a pier in Damariscotta, Maine, U.S.A., in the summer of my twenty-sixth year. In the year of Our Lord 1970.
That much was clear. But there was one thing he didn’t know at all.
Why.
But it didn’t seem to matter much.
One day Barnes showed up alone.
“Where’s Nell?” Gene asked him.
“She left.”
“Boston?”
“No. Me.”
“Oh.”
They went for a walk, out along the riverbank. After a while they stopped and sat on some rocks. Barnes picked a tall piece of sea grass and put it in his mouth.
“What happened?” Gene asked him,
“Nothin. That’s the trouble. Nothin’s been happening too long. I took her for granted. Didn’t pay attention to her. Wasn’t even fucking her much the last couple months. She knew I screwed around. She never complained. About anything. Then she just left. Couple days ago after she’d spent the night I woke up late and she was gone and so was the stuff she used to keep at my place—you know, a comb, a sweat shirt, toothbrush, odds and ends. I called her up and asked what was wrong and she said she just couldn’t take it any longer. I couldn’t argue, you know, cause I knew what she meant and she was right. It’s just that I hadn’t expected it. I figured I could keep on being a slob and have her around when I wanted her and not around if I didn’t feel like it. But you can’t do that to people.”
“Did you love her?”
“How the hell do I know? I thought she was swell. I took her for granted. Now it’s too late.”
“Does it hurt bad?”
“Well, shit. I mean it wasn’t some great world-smashing love affair or anything. I’m not going to bleed to death. I just feel lonesome right now. And stupid. If I’d paid a little more attention …”
He spit out the piece of grass.
“It’s funny,” he said. “It’s like you and me did the wrong things, but the opposite wrong things. With our women.”
“How?”
“I mean I didn’t love mine enough and you loved yours too much.”
“I don’t see that, man. If you love someone, how can you love them too much?”
“It’s hard to take. For the other person.”
“Being loved?”
“Damn right.”
“I thought it was supposed to be what everybody wants.”
“It is supposed to be. But then when it happens a lot of people can’t take it. It’s hard. Especially when it’s a lot.”
“Why?”
“Listen. Have you ever had some chick fall madly in love with you? Want to be with you all the time, tell you all the time how terrific you are and how much she loves you, hang on every damn thing you say, look at you all the time with big lovesick eyes?”
Gene scratched at the back of his neck.
“Well, yeh. I guess I have. Had that happen to me.”
“And how did you feel? The truth now. How did you really feel?”
“Shit, man.”
“You felt like shit?”
“I felt like I was in jail.”
“Exactly.”
“It seems like you just can’t win. If it’s something to do with love.”
“It ain’t easy,” Barnes said.
They walked back to the bar of The Pier and Barnes bought Gene and him some very dry martinis straight up. The liquid smooth and cool.
Gene had taken to hanging out after work at The Damariscotta Pier. It was a nice bar and restaurant with windows looking out over the tidal river. The tables were filled with families and parties, couples and assortments of summer people hunting up and down the coast like dogs on the scent—of sea and the unmentioned magic powers they presumed it contained, the allegedly healing elements of ocean, sun, gullsound. Attain a tan and with it inner peace. You gotta believe.
Out the windows Gene could see the people clamber on the rocks, taking each other’s pictures. He had the feeling they were trying to prove they were alive, that they could look at them later kept neatly in a book to prove that they had lived, had once been in some particular place a particular expression on the face. So. Snap.
Usually Gene sat at the bar part and drank beers and looked, not for action but amusement. He didn’t want to get in the act, he just wanted to watch it. It was like some uncut documentary film in which you only heard some of the words; you had to guess a lot of what was happening and who the characters were. Sort of like an Andy Warhol thing. Very with-it.
One particular woman kept eyeing him.
He had seen her many times in The Pier, laughing too loud, always with a man, mostly a different man. She had a mane of wavy tangled dirty blond hair tied with a rubber band, she wore loose shift dresses of different solid colors—orange, blue, green—that came just to her knees, no stockings, and a pair of scuffed, run-down black high heel shoes that must have been ten years old. She was big, big all over, and the shift was like a tent to cover it, except for the calves, which were thinner than the rest of her, more proportioned, and were usually streaked with dust or dirt. Her blue eyes were dim, indifferent. The only part of her that sparkled was a large diamond wedding ring.
One night she stopped by where Gene was sitting at the bar, pinched the flesh of his arm, and looked at him as if she was considering cooking him.
“Come see me,” she said.
When she’d left Gene said to the bartender, “Jesus, who was that?”
“Stella the Divorcée,” the bartender said.
It was still that big a deal, being a divorcée in a small town in Maine. Like the scarlet fucking letter or something.
When Gene got off work a couple days later and was walking to his room a car honked. It was Stella the Divorcée, behind the wheel of a canary yellow Olds convertible.
Gene smiled and put his hands on the car.
“Hi,” he said.
“You didn’t come see me,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“Get in.”
He did.
Why not?
Her house was off a dirt road way back in the woods, but it was one of those split-level modern jobs with picture window. The effect of house and setting was confusing, like someone had clipped a picture out of Better Homes & Gardens and pasted it onto a page from Field and Stream.
“You know what this is?” she asked pointing around her.
They were sitting in the living room, drinking Four Roses on ice.
“No,” Gene said.
“This, my boy, is an actual, honest-to-God American Dream House. The genuine article. The one that begins with the little wifey-poo sitting home in the shabby rented job clipping out pictures and ideas from House Beautiful, and big hubby promises someday all that shall be hers and by God he delivers. He is a contractor and so he supervises the whole thing with little wifey-poo at his side, making sure all the little loving details are just so, and then while wifey-poo is safe at home scanning Family Circle for further helpful hints and finishing touches to make everything more perfect big hubby has to go to Boston on business in the conduct of which he comes across the cutest little nineteen-year-old clit you ever laid eyes on and after some months of guilt-ridden dalliance comes home crying to wifey-poo he can’t live without her—not little loyal wifey-poo, he can live without her all right, he means little Miss Nineteen-Year-Old Clit.”
She finished off her drink, went into the kitchen, and came back with the Four Roses bottle. She set it on the coffee table. Formalities, such as they were, were over.
“I’m sorry,” said Gene.
“Ha! Forget it. I got me a deal, brother. I got me my little Dream House and I got me good alimony and I intend to see it keeps coming. I got me a little shop, driftwood crap for tourists, and it doesn’t make money. It’s not supposed to. All I have to do to keep it coming is not get married and I can’t tell you how easy that is. At first I sat here in shock and soon found everyone thought cause I was divorced I
was laying every stud in the county so I figured if they think so why not? And I eat and drink what I want when I want to. No more counting calories, no more pushing away from the table, no more Royal Canadian Air Force Exercises. What the fuck, I said one day puffing and aching, let the fuckin Royal Canadian Air Force do them. Why me? Yeh, you see little wifey-poo also kept nice and slim for big hubby cause he liked it that way, he liked the nice narrow little waist and the good measurements. Well, little wifey-poo kept it that way, but it wasn’t enough. I could stay slim for him, but I couldn’t stay young for him. You can’t starve and sit-up yourself back to being nineteen, buster.”
“No,” said Gene.
She took another belt of the drink and laughed.
“The little clit won’t stay that way either. She must be up to twenty-five by now, and they’ve moved to Southern California, land of the nubile beauties. Hubby’ll never last the course. He’ll end up payin double and livin in a tent on the beach humpin teenyboppers.”
“Sounds like it,” Gene said.
She lit a cigarette and turned to stare at him.
“You’re pretty cool,” she said. “I don’t see you runnin after all that little pink twat around The Pier.”
“No,” he said.
“You don’t like it?”
He shrugged.
“Too much trouble,” he said.
She threw back her head and laughed, hard and harsh.
“Too much trouble,” she said. “I like that. I approve of that.”
She poured more of the whiskey into their glasses. Gene was drinking his faster, too, now. For a while they just sat there drinking the whiskey down, like they were ill and they had to get a whole lot of this medicine in them. She put her glass down and put a hand on his thigh and looked him straight in the eyes.
“One thing I got going for me,” she said, “is I’m no trouble at all.”
“That’s good,” he said.
He did not find her attractive but found himself becoming oddly aroused by her, as if her bitterness and desire were a kind of stimulant. Also, she really wasn’t so bad. She was fat, was all. Maybe that would be nice.
She mashed her cigarette out.
“Let’s go,” she said.
He followed her into the bedroom. She kicked off her heels and then before she pulled the shift up over her head she said:
“I want you to know what you’re getting. You’re not gettin nubile. You’re not getting peach fuzz and hard little titties.”
“I know,” he said.
“Good.”
The breasts, huge and pendulant, the stomach in folds, the thighs bruised and mammoth, she stood before him, smiling at his hard-on.
“Good,” she said. “One thing you are gettin. You’re getting laid.”
And he did.
Again and again and again till he couldn’t remember.
At some point she got another bottle and they kept it by the bed, not bothering with glasses.
Late afternoon the second day she grabbed his cock, which was hard still again and said, “You like it here?”
“Yeh.”
“Let’s keep this party goin.”
“OK.”
“Here. In my little ole Dream House.”
“Sure. Got to go to work, though. Buster’s.”
“Buster’s? Shit, that’s no work. Besides, the season’s almost done. He won’t need you. He can get along. You work for me now. Keep me nice and cozy in the ole Dream House. Got any stuff in town?”
“Yeh. A room, near Buster’s. I’ll go get it.”
She pressed her lips down over his cock and her teeth made a tiny little bite.
She looked up smiling.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “You don’t go marchin into town with all those pink little nubile twats twitchin at you. You might get other ideas, and Mama don’t want that. Mama’s gonna go in for ya and tell Buster you had to quit because of some awful emergency and then get your things and bring em right here. Mama’s gonna get some gin for us this time just for a little change and you can lie right back here and play with yourself a little and think about what it’s gonna be like when Mama comes back. But don’t you dare get so heated up you spill any out because Mama will get real mad. She is greedy and she wants it all inside her.”
She rubbed herself between the legs, grinning.
They lived like that. Days. A week. She let him go into town now on his own because she knew he’d have to come back. She let him drive the big yellow Olds in and get gas, and buy them the junk food she loved at the grocery and the booze they both needed at the liquor store. People looked at him funny now, amused or hostile, depending on whom. Mama made him tell her about it, laughed, slapped her thighs. She loved it. She loved that the fucking town all knew she was screwing herself silly with this cute little skinny young kid. One night she made him take a shower and put on his best outfit which was the summer cord suit and a tie and she put on a black satin shift and silver bracelets near up to her elbows and big silver earrings and they went and had dinner at The Pier Restaurant. She waved and called to people and laughed loud and everyone in the place was looking at em and Gene went along with it, smiling and graceful, somehow glad to help her say Fuck You to the world, or her tiny part of it. When they got back home she laughed and kissed him and took off everything but the silver bracelets and when they got into bed she whispered huskily, “Mama’s real pleased with her young gentleman friend. He behaved real good, and Mama liked that a lot. Now cause he’s been so good like that, Mama’s gonna teach him some tricks.”
And she did.
September was cold there, a chilly wind rattled the windows and seeped through cracks in doors and swept down the chimney with a shrill, chilling rush. They alternated drinking gin and Four Roses and stuffed down frozen pizzas with lukewarm centers, peanut-butter sandwiches on raisin bread, Hostess Twinkies, Sara Lee cheesecakes, cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee ravioli, pretzels, and potato chips … With their “meals” they drank Coke and after that they’d start passing a bottle between them and he would listen as her voice grew fuzzier, her laugh more scratchy and scary, her language more frequently punctuated with cocks and cunts and pricks and twats, until she would kick the empty bottle across the room and wrestle her clothes off, wanting him to give it to her on the floor, in the Dream House Picture Window Living Room, she would lie there heaving and waiting, waiting for him to smother as much as he could of her body, her thoughts, the sound of the wind and the echoes of other years, and he understood her need and covered her and filled her with all he could give, blotting out her hurt as best he could. Afterward they would lie there on the floor naked on the nap of the carpet, cold and not caring, not minding at all, being beyond that. No one mentioned the future because there didn’t seem to be one.
Sometimes in town to get supplies Gene would walk along the sidewalk looking at the ordinary people, the ones who were doing something or going somewhere and he wondered whether he shouldn’t think of such things, but when he tried to his mind would be like a blank movie screen and so he would just go on, back to the Dream House.
Once he stopped for a drink at the bar of The Pier and so took longer than usual getting home and Stella’s eyes were snappish.
“You don’t go getting ideas when you’re there in town, do you?”
“No,” he said. “None at all.”
Which was true.
It was still true the day he disappeared from her for good.
It wasn’t his idea.
He was walking down the street when he noticed a car cruising slowly, a head peering out.
A hand waved.
“Hey, Gene!”
He hadn’t been called that for so long that for a moment he didn’t connect the name with himself. He just stopped, not knowing why.
The car pulled up beside him and stopped.
It was Barnes. Driving the car. He rolled down the window and Gene peered in.
“Hey, man,” Gene said. �
��Whattya doin here?”
Gene looked in the back of the car, which had suitcases and clothes bag piled up in it.
“Hey, where ya goin?” he said.
“L.A.? Wanna come?”
Gene opened the door and got in.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where do we go to get your stuff?”
“I’ve got my stuff,” Gene said.
“Where?”
“On. It’s all I need. In fact, when we get to L.A. I won’t even need the coat.”
“Guess I caught you at the right time,” Barnes said.
“You could say that.”
Barnes gave him a curious sidelong look.
“What the hell you been up to? Basic training?”
Gene smiled.
“You could say that.”
Barnes pressed down on the gas. At the first chance, they turned west.
IV
The open road.
Roads, opening.
Closing behind you, people and places, left.
Others opening. With the road. The roads. Fast highways. Six lane. Super. You sailing. Smiling.
Roll down the window and let in the air. Tune in the radio, turn it up. Or off, talk. Tell about the time you, she, we … recall what happened when we all … remember? You know the words to the one about Laura—or is it Ora? Lee. Sing. Together, top of the lungs, or delicate, do the harmony, harmonize, sing-along, or sing alone, solo. Stretch, smelling fumes of gas getting pumped while the gallons and dollars and cents roll backward, up and out of sight, making a ping at regular intervals, take the key tied to the piece of wood marked M and take a pee, relieve yourself for the next stretch of road, guzzle a Coke that clunks down out of the body of the red robot, grab a Mounds Bar for munching through the journey’s next leg, pause, while Gus is getting your change, feel the special freedom of standing still between motion, the rumble and whirr of it crisscrossing out there in front of you, long distance traffic wind blowing your hair a bit, the taste of dust and odor of gas a curiously nice intoxicant, subtly exciting; being on the road, on the move, on the go, going, no matter where, something filling in the act, in being in it.
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