Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

  “Red had you write that?”

  “It wasn’t any big deal.”

  “Red hasn’t sponsored anyone new in years.”

  “This wasn’t sponsoring. He was just trying to show me some things.”

  “Ahh.” Furious jotting. “All right, then.” Stan reached into a side drawer, brought out a packet, handed it to Lewis. “Keep in touch,” he said. “Let us know where you are and how you’re doing.”

  Lewis hoped that the packet contained money, but found only an AA meeting directory, brochures for several halfway houses, and a list of community health clinics where psychological counseling was offered at little or no cost.

  LEWIS did feel guilty, as if he were letting Red down by not taking the job. He decided, as retribution, to give the office a good going-over. File some stuff and toss the junk. Lose those brown roses on the mantel.

  He hauled a vintage Hoover out of the storeroom and was merrily bashing into baseboards when Billie Fitzgerald walked through the door. She was dressed, as before, in mud-splattered coveralls, barn coat, rubber boots. Off went the vacuum, in a dramatic de-crescendo.

  “I knocked but you didn’t hear,” said Billie. “I’m meeting Red.” She plunked down in an overstuffed green chair. She sat like a man, knees splayed open, coat bunched around her shoulders. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot. “Hey”—she pointed a gloved finger at Lewis—“you’re guy in the truck, right? Who wouldn’t say jack?”

  Lewis shot her a surly look.

  She laughed. “Red said you’re a scholar. You know, I always think about going back to college. Just to catch up on all those books that supposedly shape our lives but nobody ever reads.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Pulling off one glove with her teeth, Billie let it drop from her mouth into her lap. “Well, there’s the Bible. You ever read it?”

  “Parts,” said Lewis.

  “Well, this whole wrecked civilization is based on a book most people have only read parts of.” Her eyebrows were glossy, superbly arched, like flexible brown feathers.

  “The Bible’s a good one,” said Lewis. “What else?”

  Billie unbuttoned her jacket. Beneath the jacket, her coveralls were open far enough to reveal a few inches of a brown plaid shirt. Layer upon layer: Lewis gleaned no sense of her breasts, waist, thighs.

  “Red says I’m a total and complete Machiavellian, but I can’t even remember what he wrote.”

  “The Prince. And you don’t need to read it to be Machiavellian.”

  “Evidently not.” She began worrying her other glove off with her teeth, finger by finger, which somehow seemed either profoundly lazy or obscene. When the glove came free, Billie leaned forward and dropped it into her lap, a mother cat depositing a kitten. “How ’bout Freud? He gave us the unconscious, right? And the Oedipal complex? And polymorphous perversion?”

  Was she flirting? Or was he crazy?

  “Can you name a single one of Freud’s books?” she asked.

  “Totem and Taboo,” he said. “The Future of an Illusion. The Ego and the Id.”

  “So you are a scholar.”

  “I didn’t say I’ve read them.”

  Billie grinned and whacked her gloves into her palm. She looked like a little girl who set fires just to watch adults panic.

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “What else haven’t we read?”

  “I never read a word of Emerson, but I heard he’d greet his friends by saying something like ‘What has come clearer to you since we last met?’ That’s been my number-one conversational ploy for years now.”

  “I like it,” said Lewis. “Makes you realize conversation was so much more an art in the nineteenth century.”

  An eyebrow flexed. “Well, then, what has come clearer to you since we last met?”

  Lewis thought of several answers, each more personal—and therefore unutterable—than the last. “Oh, my brain,” he said vaguely. “And what has come clearer to you?”

  “That you talk, for one.” She laughed, then grew pensive. “I guess it’s that my son gets more beautiful every day.”

  The son. Lewis had forgotten about the son. Some other man’s kid. Lewis had had his problems with other men’s kids. “Uh, how old is he?” He forced interest into his voice.

  “Little Bill? Almost sixteen.” Billie’s face softened. “He’s as tall as I am. Physically, he’s a man—his voice has dropped—but it hasn’t hit him yet. He still loves and trusts women. He hasn’t gone all embarrassed or ironic on me. He’s the sweetest human being I know.”

  “I was sixteen once. And my mother sure didn’t like me very much.” Lewis forced a stupid little laugh. “She still doesn’t.”

  “But she’s your mother,” said Billie. “She’s crazy for you, I’m sure.”

  Lewis thought of his mother’s scaling hands, her thin, querulous voice, the pull of her incessant melancholy. “No, not really.”

  Billie glanced behind her, as if wondering how long she’d have to wait here.

  “There must be more books we haven’t read,” said Lewis.

  “No doubt.” She sounded bored.

  There was a thumping on the porch. “I know,” Lewis said. “Faust. Have you read Faust?”

  But Billie had turned to greet Red Ray. Pink in the face, he apologized for being late and tossed the mail onto the desk. Billie caught his hand. “You’re freezing!” she said. “And what, my friend, has come clearer to you since we last met?”

  Red gently and firmly withdrew his hand and stuck it in the pocket of his brown leather jacket. “Only the futility of saving money so long as I do business with you.”

  Billie turned to Lewis. “He hates it when I tell him he has to spend money. But I’m always right.”

  “If I spent money every time you said to, I’d be on the street selling pencils.”

  Lewis, stung that his Faust question had been ignored, picked up the mail and started sorting it.

  Red said, “The PVC’s in my truck.”

  Billie said, “I’ve got couplings.”

  When Lewis glanced up, the door was closing behind them.

  “Hey!” Billie swung halfway back inside with a high-voltage smile. “To answer your question—no. I never read Faust. But I fucked a Goethe scholar once. Does that count?” The door flew shut.

  Sure, thought Lewis. Sexual relations are a very important motivator.

  When Red returned at dusk, the office was in pristine condition. No unfiled paper, not a speck of dust. A fire blazed in the hearth. Lewis was on the couch reading the Reader’s Digest condensed version of Pride and Prejudice he’d found in the storeroom.

  Red lowered himself into a chair. “Hey,” he said. “Looks terrific in here!”

  “Thanks, Redsy.” Lewis put down his book and gave his scalp a long, vigorous scratch. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll take the stupid job. But only for six months, and then it’s back to school.”

  AFTER five hours of overtime, everything in Libby’s office had begun to shiver. Papers in her out basket fluttered. The computer screen vibrated. Down the hall, an AA meeting was producing intermittent bursts of laughter and clapping. It was nine-thirty. She’d missed dinner and band practice, not that she minded missing the practice. Al Keene’s girlfriend was in town, anyway. Not that Libby was jealous; if anything, she felt strangely protective of this woman. Libby knew what it was like to learn your man has been sleeping with someone else, though she would spare the girlfriend any grim revelations. Libby had no aspirations to be Al’s official other. The girlfriend could have his Kmart western wear, cheap cologne, and trashy pillow talk. The only thing Libby liked about Al Keene was his generic willingness; he fell into bed with an impersonal enthusiasm she found undemanding, rollicking, a balm to her loneliness.

  When a column of numbers on her screen began to wriggle and defect, Libby called it a night. She left just as the AA meeting was dispersing. Thirsty, she joined a short line at the drinking fountain. A guy behind her s
aid, “If you’d rather have coffee, there’s some in the kitchenette.”

  She did not feel entitled to the group’s refreshment. “Oh, I’m not …” Well, how do you say, politely, “I’m not an alcoholic”? “I … uh … work here.”

  “Not a drunk, huh?” He hooted. “That’s okay. You can still have a cup of coffee and a cookie. Come on.” He touched her arm. His curly black hair needed a cut, his beard a trim. His name, he said, was Lewis. After a fourteen-hour work day, Libby couldn’t resist such overt friendliness. She followed him through the meeting hall, where men were stacking folding chairs, and into a small kitchen area.

  “I’ve seen you before,” Lewis said, pouring her a cup of coffee. “Frank slept in your car.”

  She remembered vaguely that there were two men that morning, now months ago—the mahout and the trespasser—but she never would have pegged Lewis as the latter.

  He tapped on her violin case. “Taking lessons?”

  “I play.”

  “In an orchestra?”

  “In a band right now.” Was she imagining it, or did his face fall? Why was it that things considered so aphrodisiacal in a man—being smart and funny, self-sufficient, playing in a rock ’n’ roll band—are such turn-offs in a woman?

  “Huh,” he said. “And you know Billie Fitzgerald, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Billie’s cool,” he said.

  Libby was glad he mentioned Billie, who’d called an hour ago with a migraine and wanted Libby to pick up a prescription. “That reminds me, I gotta go,” Libby said. “I gotta get some medicine over there before her head explodes.”

  He walked her out to the Falcon. He had an old car too, he said, as if this signified some deep psychic affinity. “Let’s have coffee again sometime.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Well, maybe not that coffee.”

  His laugh was good, if a little loud. “Drunks’ll drink anything. Listerine. Lemon extract. Aftershave. This coffee’s nothin’.”

  “To tell the truth,” she said, “I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since I moved up here.”

  “Oh, I’m lucky,” he said. “Guy I work for has his joe sent UPS from Berkeley. Best coffee in the world. I could get you the address of the place. I’ll call with it tomorrow, if you give me your number.”

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  “No, seriously. It’s nothing. I’d have to read a label, no big deal.”

  She would never order coffee from Berkeley, and she wasn’t sure she’d go out with this man, either. But somehow, she found herself writing her number on the proffered matchbook. After nine years with Stockton, she’d forgotten that this part, the phone-number exchange, was accomplished so obliquely, as if it was about coffee, for crying out loud.

  BILLIE was lying on the floor in the library with one ice pack supporting her neck, another covering her eyes. All the lights were out. Banked coals yielded just enough light to prevent Libby from crashing into furniture as she brought Billie a glass of water and two Vicodin. “Met your friend Lewis tonight,” she said.

  “Do I know any Lewises?” Billie the lifted the ice pack. Blue hollows cupped her eyes. “What does he look like?”

  “Tall. Black frizzy hair. Thin. Yogi thin.”

  “I like the sound of ‘yogi thin.’ ” Billie put the pills in her mouth, gulped down some water, then pressed the ice pack back down over her eyes. “Oh, I know,” she said. “Grubby? Kinda sullen?”

  “Grubby, yeah. Sullen, no. Good laugh, actually.”

  “Yeah. That’s who it is,” said Billie. “Red Ray’s secretary. I’ve talked to him. We’ve seen him at Happy Yolanda’s.”

  “We have? He’s not weird, is he? I gave him my phone number.”

  “Tries a little too hard. Smart, though.” Billie pointed weakly toward the fire. “You mind sticking another piece of wood on that? This ice is freezing. But, you know, that gives me an idea. I should take you out to the drunk farm. Two dozen men at any given time, you’re bound to find something.”

  “You mean to date?”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re alcoholics, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You think you’d do better at the bars? At least at Round Rock, they’ve stopped drinking. And there’s always Red Ray, who’s adorable. I know you don’t think so, but …”

  Libby most certainly didn’t think so. Ever since she and Stockton had separated, people had been offering to set her up, and it was always with someone they, the setter-uppers, wouldn’t be caught dead with: someone too eccentric or old or pathetic. Her mother’s best friend took her to meet a man obsessed with grandfather clocks. His living room and dining room were so packed with the clocks and their components, only a narrow path ran from room to room, and there wasn’t a single place to sit. Who, except her mother’s oblivious friend, would ever think this man wanted another person in his life? And then a friend in Hollywood introduced her to a gorgeous man—a homosexual, it turned out, who was contemplating going straight.

  Libby wedged a split oak log into the fire. “If Red’s so great, Billie, why don’t you go for him?”

  “What do I need a man for? I’ve got all the money I could ever want. I’ve got Little Bill and Dad and you. And besides, Red and I aren’t a good match. I don’t mind that he’s—”

  “Old and fat?”

  “Built for comfort, let’s say. But he’s too good for me, too pure. Monkish or something.”

  “And you think that suits me?”

  “You’re good, too,” said Billie.

  “Oh, right.” Libby turned to leave. She had to get home, go to sleep, and be back at work, all in eight hours. “That’s okay. I’m resigned. This may well be a long dry spell when it comes to men.”

  DURING the first four months of his sobriety, Lewis had suffered from more or less constant low-level pain. Something was always aching. He moved his head and a clear, electric flash of pain shot down his spine. Other times, the pain seemed to rise out of his blood like a fog. The roots of his hair hurt, or his teeth. Sometimes his entire skin seemed tender to the touch. He gobbled aspirin by the handful and found that lying facedown on the ground worked wonders. Floors were okay, but grass, even asphalt or dirt, was better. When he was flat out against something solid and gritty, inhaling the smell of soil and rocks, the pain seeped out like moisture.

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Red said when Lewis described his symptoms. “When I first got sober, I thought I had the flu all the time. Come to find out, I was angry.”

  According to Red, the pain was part of Lewis’s detoxification: as residual alcohol was leaving his system, the anger he’d avoided by drinking was now surfacing. What would help him through the long, slow process of shedding this anger was an inventory of everything and everybody he felt uncomfortable about—Red suggested he write separate lists of grudges, fears, money problems, sex problems, and secrets. “That’ll bring all this unresolved crud to light,” Red said. “Often the light alone makes it shrivel up, like pulling weeds and leaving them in the sun.”

  Before he went to sleep at night, Lewis composed a list in his head. Money, starting with outstanding debts. Better than a sleeping pill.

  BEING the new secretary of Round Rock was okay. To make order from someone else’s chaos was satisfying. He did everything from updating client files on the computer to fetching Frank from his rambles, and was in charge of making follow-up calls to track the progress of former Round Rock residents. Against his better judgment—it seemed like prying—he routinely asked men if they were sober, going to meetings, and weathering crises without drinking.

  He went with Red on supply runs, ostensibly to learn the route. Red had sold him the reconditioned Fairlane for two hundred dollars so he could make the runs himself; but after several months, for sociability’s sake, they were still doing them together. Lewis was using the Fairlane mainly to commute from Rito, where he had rented a room in the Mills Hotel. Red had tried to ta
lk Lewis into staying on at the farm, even offering to refurbish a bungalow in the village for him. But after ninety-six days and four roommates at the Blue House, Lewis wanted more freedom and more privacy.

  Living at the Mills, Lewis found, was not, in fact, all that different from living at Round Rock, though the architecture wasn’t nearly so grand and the Mills’s winos were still putting away the quarts of Tawny Port. The important thing was, Lewis had his own room—single bed, bureau, wobbly desk, minimal bathroom—and no curfew. And no rules about women, either.

  He drank his first cup of coffee each morning at the grocería, leaning against the counter as Victor Ibañez delivered a crash course in small-town life. “That Fairlane you’re driving? Used to belong to old Tillie Prouch,” said Victor. “She’s been legally blind for years, but kept nosing her way downtown every day for mail and groceries. Then the county put in a stop sign up on Church Street. Same day they put it in, Tillie took it out. That crease in your front bumper? The end of one woman’s driving career.”

  Victor was bold, too, with medical advice: “That rash on your arm? Looks like eczema. Old Rafael Flores got rid of mine overnight—a little vinegar and a sweeping’s all it took. Want his number?” Lewis, picturing his arm being scraped raw with a steel brush, demurred.

  Lewis ordered takeout breakfast burritos from Happy Yolanda’s, bought vintage gabardine shirts at St. Catherine’s Thrift Store, did laundry at the Casa de Wash ’n’ Dry. Where, on a Saturday morning in June, he found a phone number on a matchbook pulled from a pair of jeans. Under the number was an H or an L, followed by a squiggly line. While kids raced wire carts inches from his toes, Lewis sat in a yellow molded-plastic chair and tried to remember whose number it could be. The prefix was local. Probably a newcomer he’d met in a meeting. Dodging crazed children, Lewis left the laundromat and crossed the street to a pay phone. Once the ringing began, he remembered.

  I told Al I wouldn’t sleep with him anymore, Libby wrote in her journal. I said it was getting too weird with the girlfriend, the lying, etc. He said he was sorry about the lying, sorry it had to end, and sorriest about all the sex we wouldn’t have. I feel nothing but detached. Maybe this is what it’s like to be a man. Going in, taking what I want, getting out fast. The Billie Fitzgerald approach: use ’em and lose ’em, she always says. I asked her if she’s ever been in love. I hope not, she said. I hope none of those regrettable skirmishes with the opposite sex was love.