Paris Trout - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  The lawyer was asking about her. If there was a "disharmony" between them, it was better to know it now than later.

  Her husband raised his voice. "She don't matter in this," he said. "She ainlt a consideration."

  She could not hear the lawyer's reply, but then her husband's voice was back again, louder, as clear as if he were standing there in the bathroom. "She can't accomplish nothing against me," he said. "She's my wife."

  They were moving toward the front door. She heard it open and close, and then her husband's footsteps were on the stairs again and then in the hall. She sat still, looking at her fingers. Wrinkled and white from the water.

  He stopped at the door to her bedroom, and she noticed that the water she had been sitting in had chilled, and she shivered.

  He knocked on the door.

  She reached for the hot-water tap with her toe and turned it on. Her foot was as white and wrinkled as her fingers. He knocked again, then tried the door. Even with the water running, she heard the handle rattle. It went on a long time, as if he were a child who had never encountered locked doors before and did not understand what they were.

  She heard his voice suddenly, and the sound startled her. "You can't pretend I ain't here," he said.

  She slid farther down, until the water covered her ears and raised almost level with the lip of the tub. Rather than turn off the faucet, she found the plug with her toe and pulled it.

  His voice came to her through the water. It seemed to come from a long ways off "Cut off the goddamn water," he said.

  There was a book on the floor, one of Raymond Chandler's novels she had borrowed from the library, and she picked it up now, opened it to the bookmark, and started to read. The water drained slowly out of the tub. He kicked the door, but it was an inch thick, and it held. The noise was solid and in some way comforting.

  He kicked it again, harder, and she began to whisper the words in the book out loud. When Paris spoke again he was out of breath. Even with the water running, the tub had almost drained, and the inch or two left was scalding hot on her bottom. "You got obligations to me," he said. "You best keep that in mind."

  She put her toes on the faucet and turned it off. His voice filled the room. "They ain't nobody gets in trouble if they live up to their obligations, not with me. That's the cause of this whole mess now."

  She put the book back on the floor, stood up in the tub, and then stepped out. She dried herself in front of the mirror, noticing the discoloration where she had been pinned against the edge of his desk.

  "Hanna Nile," he said. "You can't pretend I ain't here."

  She wrapped herself in a robe and crossed the bedroom to the door.

  She opened it and found him leaning against the far wall, his forehead pressed into his arm. She stood in the doorway and waited. He walked past her into the room. The smell of urine came in with him.

  He sat on her bed, she stayed in the doorway. She saw that he didn't know what to say. He looked at the ceiling and then covered his eyes."Mr. Seagraves has said you made it worst than it was," he said. "He believes it was accidental."

  She squared herself but did not answer.

  "He don't want you near this," he said.

  "I've done all I'm going to," she said, and the sound of her voice was stronger than she felt. Stronger than his. "I paid my respects."

  "You flew in my face, is what. You didn't know who they was." She thought of the girl she had taken to Cornell Clinic and saw part of what he said was true.

  "Mr. Seagraves has cautioned us to present a front," he said, "for the sake of appearances. That it would be harmful if we were perceived to be different than we were."

  "How were we perceived?" she said.

  He shrugged. "Married."

  He looked at her in a way that had appealed to her once. Plain spoken and out of words. There was a time when he would find himself at the end of the things he knew and then suddenly stop, in awkward places, because he could not say the things he felt.

  It had appealed to her, but that was before she had glimpsed the things he felt. And the things he didn't. His dark side had fastened itself to her sexually in the abstract, and then she had seen it uncovered, and it was nothing like what she had imagined. It was only ugly.

  "I will not associate myself with what you have done," she said.

  "Nobody said to. You don't have to admit nothing except we're married. This is the wrong time for you to disappear."

  "The store? You want me back in the store?"

  "For appearances."

  She felt a drop of water moving down her back, the only movement in the room. "I want you out of the house," she said.

  He looked at her as if this were an old, tired argument.

  She said, "I will not stay here under the same roof."

  "It"s my roof."

  "Then I'll move," she said. "I'll sue for divorce and for the money you took. I will testify in court what you did with your bottle of I mineral water."

  She saw she had gone too far. He rose up and came for her across the room. She would not let herself run. There was a flat look to his face; decisions had been made over on the bed, and he was now the messenger.

  He slapped her in the same place he had slapped her before. She was standing this time, offering him more leverage. It was more painful, because she understood right away what it was, but the thing she noticed most was the weight. All the things she had read in Raymond Chandler's books about being hit, he'd never mentioned how heavy it felt.

  She fell backwards into the wall, and it was not over. He came at her from the same side, and she held up her hands and turned away. His hand crossed the plane of her arms and found her again, but something in the turning away took the weight off the blow. Her eyes watered and her hands dropped to her sides, and she said it again. "I want you out."

  He grabbed the front of her robe and pulled her into his face. She looked into the gaps between his teeth. She thought of the places she had meant to go in her life. Los Angeles. For some reason, it felt as if it were too late to see Los Angeles now.

  Without meaning to, she began to cry.

  He held the front of her robe a moment longer and then pushed her a few inches away and studied her face. She tried to turn her head, but the collar of her robe was tight under her chin and ears now and prevented it.

  The words came from behind the teeth, someplace in the dark. "That's better," he said.

  She did not answer; she was no longer sure she could talk.

  "There ain't nobody moving out of this house now," the words said, "least of all me. When this other is solved, then you're free to go where you want."

  He dropped his hand and her robe fell open all the way to her knees.

  "Until then," he said, "what goes on in this house stays in this house."

  Something in that nudged her. She covered herself, thinking that for as long as she had known him, Paris Trout had never cared for anyone's good opinion.

  "I will not have this," she said. Her voice was watered and uneven.

  And he suddenly turned reasonable.

  "You should of thought of that before," he said.

  * * *

  HE LEFT THE House an hour later; she watched him from her window.

  Four hours later she saw him return. He arrived in a truck with the words "Mims's Hardware" written across the door. He and the Negro who drove it over got out together and opened the back end. The driver put on gloves and then climbed in. Paris stood on the street, waiting to receive what was inside. He was wearing gloves too, although she had not seen him put them on.

  In a moment he reached into the truck and then backed up slowly, pausing between his steps. He appeared to be carrying something heavy, but then he cleared the doors of the truck, and there was nothing in his hands.

  He took another step back and then another. She saw the Negro's boots then beneath the truck doors, carefully finding the street. He cleared the truck, and she saw he was carrying the other e
nd. There was nothing between them.

  The thought came to her that Paris had gone to the state hospital and found himself a companion.

  The men turned, keeping exactly the same distance apart. She saw it was glass a moment before it caught the reflection of the late-afternoon sun. They maneuvered themselves through he gate — the Negro opened it with his foot — — and then up the walk to the porch. The Negro backed the whole way, losing his balance once but correcting himself in time to save the window. Paris stood behind, red-faced, with his cheek pressed into the glass, grunting with each step.

  The Negro arrived at the top of the stairs and stopped. "It's left open, sir?"

  Paris grunted. The driver set his end of the glass on the porch floor and turned to try the door. "It ain't open," he said.

  "The key's in my pocket," Paris said.

  She watched the Negro step off the porch and put his hands in Paris's front pocket. He came out with a key ring, it could have weighed five pounds. She thought Paris must have saved every key he ever had.

  "Where does a man start?" the Negro said.

  "Two square ones, right together," he said. "These here?"

  "No, square ones. One's old, one's shiny."

  The Negro went through the keys slowly and finally found the ones to the front door. "Which?" he said.

  "The shiny one opens the top."

  He went back up the porch stairs, out of her sight. Then she heard the door open downstairs and the sounds of them coming in. "Two locks on the door," the Negro was saying. "They ain't two locks on the bank ....You must of got somethin' in here, all right."

  At the bottom of the stairs they set the glass down again. "Heavy, ain't it?" the Negro said.

  "It goes upstairs," Paris said.

  The Negro came halfway up and stopped on the landing between floors. "Whoever come up first," he said, "they got to lean way over to here, let the other one to past this banister."

  He came the rest of the way up and opened Paris's bedroom door, which was directly across the hall from the top step of the stairs. He returned to the glass, descending the stairs more slowly than he'd come up.

  "There ain't no broke glass in that room, sir," he said.

  "It ain't for now, it's for later."

  Hanna sat in the chair near the window and listened to them negotiate the glass up the stairs. They set it down inside Paris's room, and when they came out, they were breathing hard and blowing. "The other seven goes up here too?" the driver said.

  She did not hear Paris answer.

  The driver said, "I ain't said there's nothing wrong with it, no sir. You know how much glass you need better than me."

  They went back out to the truck and got the next piece of glass. And then the next. She watched for most of an hour, and when she saw none of the glass was going to be dropped, she left the window, opened a novel called The Big Sleep, and began to read.

  Except for the grunting and their feet on the stairs, the men worked in silence. The Negro did all the backing up, Paris followed him into the house and up the stairs. When they had finished, it was almost dark.

  "That be the last one," the Negro said.

  Paris did not answer.

  "Lawdy, look at the time," the Negro said. "I been on the job two hours plus my regular duty."

  Paris did not answer.

  "Mr. Mims don't pay me over the time."

  "How much does he pay you, regular duty?" she heard Paris ask.

  "Forty dollars."

  "That's a good dollar," Paris said. '°More money than that, it just get you in trouble."

  It was quiet a moment, and then the Negro said, "No sir, that's spendin' money, that don't get peoples in trouble. What done that is money they saved. That's the kind make them evil."

  "I'll call Mr. Mims tomorrow, tell him to divest his savings," Paris said.

  "No sir, you doesn't has to do that."

  "You already told him, did you?"

  "No sir, I don't tell Mr. Mims nothing."

  "And that right there," Paris said, "is how you stayed out of trouble."

  She heard the door open and looked out her window in time to see the Negro walking to the truck. His gloves were in his back pocket. He got in without as much as a glance backwards and drove away. Of course, all he'd lost to Paris Trout was two hours.

  * * *

  THIRTY MINUTES AFTER THE Negro left, Paris began the hammering. It was more of a tapping when she got used to it, and she realized he was not driving the nails all the way in. Still, it shook the floor and rattled the bottles on the dresser where she kept her perfume and

  jewelry.

  The tapping went on late into the night, and she lay in her bed, listening, trying to imagine what he was doing. Nothing came to mind.

  She woke in the morning to the sound of the front door slamming shut and moved to her window. She saw Paris had slept in his clothes — if he'd slept at all — — and hadn't changed them before he left. He walked in a stiff way to the gate and then down the sidewalk in the direction of town.

  She stayed at the window a few minutes longer, making sure he was gone, and then went to the end of the hall and tried the door to his room. It was not locked — not even completely shut — and it cracked open at the first touch of her hand. She paused, suddenly afraid he was somehow inside, waiting for her. Then she pushed the rest of the way in and was momentarily blind.

  The floor was covered with glass. The sun came in through the east window, gathered itself in a spot about halfway across the floor, and met her at the doorway. She squinted and moved a few steps inside. The spot seemed to move with her, keeping between her and the window.

  She crossed the room carefully, testing each step, feeling the warm glass on the soles of her feet. At the window she turned back and surveyed the floor. The sheets of glass were fitted flush against the walls. Lines of tenpenny nails, spaced two to an inch, had been driven to the floor at the edges, keeping the glass in place.

  The glass covered the perimeter of the floor. He had moved his bed way from the wall, and it sat in the middle of the room now, in the only space that was not covered. The legs of the bed each sat in a rubber overshoe. The hammer and a can of nails lay in the corner near the loset, beside an open, half-eaten can of cling peaches. She looked back toward the doorway and saw her footprints on the glass.

  She left the room as carefully as she had entered it and hurried downstairs into the kitchen. She found ammonia under the sink and put that and some dish powder into a small pail and filled it with water. She picked up a sponge and a dish towel and went back.

  She left the pail outside his door and went to her own room for a pair of socks. The ones she found first were Christmas socks, a present from a time so far removed it could have been something she'd read about. Dark green socks with little red Santas tumbling up and down the sides.

  The tops came all the way to her knees.

  She returned to the room, in her nightgown and her socks, and began working on the far corner of the floor. The ammonia made her eyes water, the glare of the sun caught her from unexpected angles as she backed herself and the pail toward the door.

  When she had come about halfway, she turned around, and with the sun behind her, she saw it was not ordinary glass. It was thicker than windowpanes, and it did not wipe clean. It had seemed to, but as the glass dried, the footprints reappeared.

  She began again, scrubbing harder, checking her work from different sides as she moved back toward the hall. It took most of an hour, and when she had finished, she stood in the doorway and saw that all the signs that she had been in the room were erased.

  * * *

  PARIS RETURNED LATE IN the afternoon and went directly upstairs. She heard him open the door and stop. She did not breathe until she heard him move again, farther into the room.

  He went in. Then he came out, stopping at the doorway to look down the hall. She knew he was looking in her direction. The urine smell came back to her as fresh as if he
were standing in her bedroom. He went back down the stairs, taking them slowly, and then into the kitchen. She heard the first breaking noise two minutes later. A deep pop, perhaps a jar of mayonnaise on the floor.

  Which, in fact, it was.

  He dropped the mayonnaise, and then all the preserves, and then the eggs, and then two bottles of milk. The little explosions seemed to come at minute intervals, and finally, when she understood that he meant to break everything in the kitchen, she put a robe over her nightgown and went downstairs to stop him.

  She found her husband bent into the open refrigerator, as if he were looking for something to eat. There were pieces of broken bottles and jars all over the floor, most of them still holding part of what had been inside. His shoes were splattered with the same things.

  He stood up, holding a jar of pickles, looking carefully at the specks floating in the liquid. Then he seemed to find what he was looking for, and he dropped it from eye level and watched it all the way to the floor.

  She watched it too — it broke near his feet and the juice sprayed the wall. A pickle landed on the toe of his shoe, hung there a moment, and then rolled off. When she looked up, his eyes were fastened on her, and she held herself in the entrance. An act of will.

  "This is a sin," she said. If there had ever been an agreement between them, it was that waste was a sin.

  "Then I expect you'll be eating it yourself."

  "What has got into your mind?" she said, and as soon as she had asked the question, she knew the answer.

  He said, "An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure," and turned back into the refrigerator, coming out with the catsup. This bottle did not break when it hit the floor, and it didn't break when he stomped it with the heel of his shoe. He picked a hammer up off the cupboard and hit it three times, finally catching it square, and sprayed red all over himself and the closest wall.

  When he looked at her again, he was holding the dripping hammer.

  "I sleep with my eyes open," he said, "and I know everything that happens in my house."

  He turned back to his work, selecting the bottle of ice water. It turned the mess runnier than it had been, and little pieces of relish floated a few inches on the tide and then were set back down on the floor.