Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

  Not even with Little Bill’s dad?

  Her face gets that plaster of Paris look. That’s not a topic for today.

  How can she be so intrusive and so secretive at the same time? Maybe that’s not such a—

  The phone rang.

  “Sorry I never got back to you about the coffee,” Lewis said. “I lost your number, but I’m doing my laundry and and I found it in a pocket. I don’t have the coffee information with me. Maybe you’ll talk to me anyway. Laundromats make me so forlorn. Am I taking you away from anything?”

  Were all men going to apologize to her this week? Was she insane to be charmed by this outburst?

  “Before I forget,” she said, “are you Red Ray’s secretary?”

  “Yeah! How’d you know?”

  “When I described you, that’s who Billie thought you were.”

  “And how did you describe me?”

  “Thin, black hair, good laugh.”

  He demonstrated the laugh, then said, among many other things, that he was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, son of a Hollywood producer—a TV producer, nobody famous. He’d been married once, and divorced, “back in the Neolithic.”

  “What about you?” Lewis said abruptly. “Ever played your violin in a symphony?” He was a particular fan of Beethoven and Mahler, he said, and she could’ve guessed. Wagner, too. The tonnage. The origins of gravity.

  “So you want to have dinner sometime?” he said.

  “Okay.” She felt a little worn out just from listening to him.

  “Saturday? A week from today?”

  She checked the calendar, half-hoping the Cactus Pharaohs had a gig. No dice. “That’s fine.”

  Should he come pick her up? At first she thought, no, no, better to agree on some public place. In Rito, however, that meant bars—not such a good idea, given his AA status. Then she remembered that Lewis had already been to her trailer; if he’d wanted to come and chop off her arms at the elbow, he could have done so months ago.

  “That would be good,” she said.

  Falling asleep that night, it hit her. Unless she counted caving in to Al Keene’s ever-present horniness, this was her first real date in nine years.

  With a drunk, no less.

  LEWIS bit into his sandwich, a peculiarly fluorescent-pink ham salad on white, yet another Round Rock variation of shit on a shingle. Friday was Ernie’s day off, and the replacement cook reliably presented food that made everyone grateful even for Ernie’s meager abilities. “Where do you take someone out to eat around here, anyway?”

  “The Basque Garden in Buchanan’s pretty good,” Lawrence said. “It’ll run you, oh, twenty per person.”

  “I’m looking to spend about half that.”

  “Jeez, Lew. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “A friend,” said Lewis.

  John, the house manager, lowered himself into the chair next to Lawrence, and Lewis regarded him warily. Since Lewis had joined the staff, John’s private mission, apparently, was to cut him down to size whenever possible, preferably in front of residents. John had once come up to a group and said, “Lewis, you may be one of those guys who’s just too smart to stay sober.” A few days later—similar scene, a few guys talking—John approached him again: “You know, Lewis, I was wrong. You’re not so smart, just lucky.” Then, a couple nights ago, John handed him what looked like a business card; one side said “KISS” and the other side, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Was this hostile or what? Yet the other guys seemed to like John. He sponsored eight or nine of them, including Lawrence.

  “Is this a friend-friend,” asked Lawrence, “or a girlfriend?”

  “A friend.”

  “Better not be a girlfriend,” John said.

  “Excuse me?” said Lewis.

  John unloaded his tray and pushed it to the end of the table. “You better not be getting into a relationship so soon.”

  “So soon to what?”

  “Your first year of sobriety.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Hasn’t Red told you? No relationships in the first year.”

  “Why would Red tell me that?” This was the first Lewis had heard of such a thing. He turned to Lawrence. “Is he making this up?”

  Lawrence gave Lewis a sad, anxious look. “Don’t ask me. I haven’t had a date in five years.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news”—John’s eyes twinkled with malice—“but really, it’s in your best interest. Face it. What do you have to offer anyone, anyway? What kind of woman goes for someone who’s bankrupt—emotionally, spiritually, and financially? All I have to do is think about what I dated my first year to—”

  Lewis told Lawrence, “I’m going out to dinner with a friend.”

  “Good,” John said. “See that it stays that way.”

  Lewis got up, shoved his plate into the bus tub by the kitchen door, and set out walking back to the office. In early June the heavy morning fogs turned dingy and yellow by mid-afternoon; if he didn’t know better, he’d say it was smog. He hadn’t made it very far when Red drove up, leaned an elbow out of the truck’s window. “Want a ride?”

  Lewis scuffed around the back and climbed in.

  “Want to talk about it?” Red said.

  “No.”

  Red drove leisurely, humming. A shiny black snake stretched out in the road, straight as a javelin. “King snake,” Red said, steering around it. “They eat ground squirrels and rattlesnakes, supposedly, although that’s hard to imagine.” He resumed humming.

  Lewis looked at him. “So what’s this about no women in the first year of sobriety?”

  “Says who?”

  “That paragon of tact and mental health you have managing the Blue House.”

  “John? He’s one to talk. He shacked up with a heroin addict his whole first year.”

  “So it’s not true.”

  “Nowhere is it written in stone,” Red said. “Though it’s not such a bad idea to take a break from sex until your sobriety’s stabilized. I’ve seen more guys get drunk over women than anything else. But people do what they’re going to do. I say, so long as you’re willing to observe your own behavior, do what you need to.”

  “So I can take someone out to dinner Saturday night without breaking the eleventh goddamn commandment?”

  “Is that what this is all about?” Red grinned. “I don’t see why not.” He gave Lewis a sidelong glance. “Although it never hurts to do a little housecleaning before inviting people over.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you might want to write that inventory before plunging into something.”

  “Before one crummy date?”

  “Just a suggestion,” Red said mildly. “Some light housekeeping today could prevent a big shambles down the line.”

  “I know, I know….”

  “On the other hand, it is possible that you can get a house so clean, you won’t want anybody coming in and messing stuff up.” Red’s voice grew even softer. “Then, I guess, the challenge is to open up, allow a little chaos in. And that can be a …” Lewis strained to hear, but Red appeared to be talking to himself.

  Red parked in front of the office, then headed across the street to his bungalow. Lewis started up the office steps, shook his head, went banging on Red’s door. “How come you haven’t even asked who I’m going out with?”

  “Well, God, Lewis …”

  “What if she’s a succubus or something?”

  Red burst out laughing. “A what?”

  “Who knows what kind of woman would go out with me?”

  Red walked over to the coffee maker, dumped some old grounds into the trash. “Okay, then: who are you going out with?”

  “That woman in the trailer—where Frank spent the night? Libby.”

  “Libby Daw? She’s a plum.”

  “A plum?”

  “She’s got such a warm, open face.”

  So far as Lewis could remember, Libby’s face
was okay. Round eyes. Tanned skin. A cute kink in her lip when she talked. She wasn’t ugly or anything, but not beautiful, either: more like cute, even droll. He would never have singled out her face for comment. Her slimness, maybe. Her playing the violin. Her connection to Billie Fitzgerald.

  “Yeah, well, anyway,” he said, “I wish I knew someplace good to take her. I wish I could cook, it’s so much cheaper, but I don’t even have a hot plate at the Mills.”

  “Cook here,” said Red.

  “What, so you can chaperone?”

  “I’ll hit the starch wars.” That’s what Red called eating at the Blue House. “If I stay for the meeting and the movie, I won’t be home till eleven.”

  “A woman here, after dark, at Round Rock?”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t it against regulations?”

  “Only at the Blue House. I used to look the other way there too, but guys started pulling them in off twenty-foot picking ladders.”

  “I wish I’d known that.” Lewis slid down in his chair so he could stretch out under the table and nudge Red’s shin with his toe. “Why do you think I moved to town? I couldn’t hack the celibate life. You might’ve adjusted, but I never could.”

  Red swung his leg away. “What makes you think I’m celibate?”

  “I don’t know—all the lingerie strewn about your house? All the women I see trooping in and out?” Lewis cackled and stood to leave. “I hope to God you’re whooping it up over here, big guy.”

  RED POURED himself a fresh cup of coffee and watched through the window as Lewis went back to the office. “Celibate,” he muttered. Such a priestly, ecclesiastical word, and not one he embraced. True, he’d gone long stretches without women, but not because of any vow or conscious effort. As a younger man, a drinking man, a bachelor, he’d hit the hay with the first willing victim. Get him divorced, sober him up, add another thirty pounds of padding and behold: a shy, self-conscious, stuttering man.

  He was two years sober and three years divorced before he asked a woman out. Cleo Barkin, who ran the alcohol crisis line, seemed the obvious choice. Beige-haired, whiskey-voiced, and widowed, she was older by six or seven years and unflappable. The whole recovery community, including Cleo herself, considered the match inspired and had them married off long before Red even kissed her. So he never did.

  Four or five years later, Doc Perrin told him, “I never thought I’d say this to anybody I sponsored, but you gotta get laid, Blue Eyes. Before that armor of yours gets any thicker.”

  Red took two more years to comply.

  Roberta was a state health inspector, a tall brunette with dark eyes and big bones who wore some ancient sadness like a murky perfume. They met for lunch in Ventura, then drove around, two large people curled in her Toyota Corolla, until they came to the Jet Motel outside of Santa Paula. After five or six visits to the Jet, Roberta asked Red to be her date at the state inspectors’ Christmas party. He wasn’t ready, Red told her. He didn’t know when he would be, if ever. Roberta broke it off, changed her mind long enough for another afternoon at the Jet, then broke it off again. Back and forth, Red never knowing whether she’d be furious or welcoming. Eventually he withdrew. For months, she called “to hash things out,” until he grew phobic around the telephone. He finally spoke firmly, then harshly, to her.

  “I inadvertently engender expectations I can’t meet,” he complained to Perrin, who in turn accused him of perfectionism, sexual anorexia, priestliness.

  Thank God, then, for Christina. Twenty-seven years old, seven years sober, Christina was an M.F.A. student at the institute down the road, a conceptual artist who earned her tuition by dancing at a strip joint in Valencia. They met at an AA meeting in Buchanan. She asked him out for coffee, then asked to come home with him. The first and only woman he’d had in this house, Christina came almost every night, sometimes arriving very late, after her job, sliding into bed next to him, not even waking him up. She never moved in a single thing, and made do with his toothbrush and combs. They drank coffee together before she left for school. A few times, she brought food and made dinner. He gave her a little money, a ten here, a twenty there, whenever she indicated a need. Eighty dollars, once, for art supplies. He was surprised and pleased she turned up for as long as she did, about two months. They would lie in the darkness and discuss her problems at school, her artwork, and her stripping, which she didn’t mind because her boss was so fierce with the customers. She had gotten sober young, and was self-contained and direct in a way Red admired. Her body was long-waisted and supple and strong from hours of dancing, and with it she pulled him back from a lost, deep place where he’d long ago abandoned his own desires and sense of possibilities.

  When she didn’t appear for a week or so, he knew it was over. She did show up once more to tell him she’d met an artist, someone closer to her age, and was going to New York when school was over. She spent the night with Red—one last time, her request. She said that he’d steadied her, calmed her, and thanked him. Now, every so often, there was a postcard from New York, Connecticut, London, all addressed to “My Fine Friend….”

  LIBBY had a hard time deciding what to wear. Persona problems, as her old shrink Norma might have said. Which mask to don? She settled on a black T-shirt and a black-and-white polka-dot circle skirt, which turned out to be a little too dramatic.

  Lewis showed up ten minutes early in khakis and a green sweater darned, poorly, at the elbows. He roamed around the living room while she applied lipstick and finished drying her hair. She was aware, for the first time, of the preponderance of postdivorce self-help books on her shelves. He asked to borrow a beginner’s Spanish language text.

  Dinner, he told her, was at Red Ray’s house. “I’ve been cooking all day. Well, not all day—unless you count soaking beans as cooking.”

  “Oh,” she said weakly. She’d been expecting a room full of other people, a waiter, a menu, a ritual to contain them.

  “If you’d rather have Basque food or a swordfish steak, just say the word.”

  But he’d cooked all day. “No, no. That’s fine,” she said, and hoped it would be.

  Red’s house was pretty enough, especially his roses, but all the shabby, shut-up houses surrounding it made her uneasy. Anything could go on in there; she stopped herself from imagining specifics. “Red lives here all by himself?”

  “Beats living cheek to jowl with twenty drunks,” said Lewis.

  Once inside the cottage, Libby relaxed amid the oak built-ins and glowing wood floors strewn with good Bokhara and Kurdistani rugs. Books filled the walls, and photographs, including a signed Ansel Adams and a Stieglitz. Red also had an impressive collection of Native American pottery and artifacts. “Nice,” she said.

  “Red’s such a closet aristocrat. Now, listen to this,” Lewis said, and, using Red’s antiquated stereo system, played Yma Sumac’s Voice of the Xtabay, an album he’d found at the farm’s rummage sale. “Andean birdcalls,” he explained, “by a Peruvian princess.” Libby didn’t tell him Yma Sumac was really Amy Camus, born and raised in Chicago, who later fell into the hands of an imaginative promoter. Some things you didn’t do on a first date, like smash illusions.

  Lewis had made red beans and rice. A green salad with Thousand Island. Roasted beets. “What’s the underlying principle of this meal?” he asked her twice, but she didn’t guess until he brought out dessert: a large, domed pan dulce encrusted with hot-pink sugar.

  “It’s all pink?”

  “Right! Right! Now we don’t have to eat this hunk of leavened lard.” Opening the kitchen door, he slung the pastry out into the night, and served her strong, truly delicious decaffeinated espresso. He drank the high-octane stuff himself.

  At least she didn’t have to worry about what to say. Lewis talked like a radio. No dead air. He kicked off his shoes, perched on his chair like a cat on a fence post, and held forth. He kept to his topics, where he felt safe: music, books, alcoholism, God. Even if he wasn’t a real dyed-in-the-w
ool, black-out-on-your-first-drink alcoholic, Lewis said, he was fascinated by the spiritual aspects of recovery. “Do you have any kind of spiritual practice?” he asked.

  She felt, immediately and for the first time ever, spiritually inferior. She’d never gone to church. Her mother was a defiant nonpracticing Jew, she explained; her father, a guilty nonpracticing Catholic. She grew up unaffiliated, just defiant and guilty. “I fish,” she told Lewis. “Every Sunday morning. At Lake Rito. I commune with the catfish. They bring me messages from the deep.”

  “Spirituality doesn’t mean organized religion,” Lewis said. “It’s more about intuiting or inventing something you believe in which helps you have a rich and loving life. Do you believe in God?”

  “Sort of.” Stupid answer. Still, what a relief to be with a man who (a) talked, (b) but not about architecture, and (c) used phrases like “a rich and loving life.”

  Around eleven, Red Ray drummed lightly on the door and stepped inside. Next to Lewis’s dark looks, Red was so pale that he glowed. “Look what I found in the driveway,” he said, and held up the pink pan dulce. “At first I thought it was a beautiful seashell.

  Want some?” He broke off a piece, crossed himself, and held it out in offering. “Eat this in remembrance of me.”

  They all took a bite, road dust notwithstanding.

  I like these men, thought Libby.

  Lewis drove her home at midnight. Once in the car, he was hyped up and nervous; then again, he’d had about five hits of espresso. He told her how a Russian theologian had distinguished between being and existing. “Things have being,” he said, “and the spirit has existence. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”