“My husband stutters,” she said, dismissive, half shutting her eyes, imagining it were true. She could almost picture him, his hair rumpled, his sweet and naked mouth unable to fix on a word. “I’m used to it.”
Mr. Chub seemed charmed by this. His smile grew large and rectangular, teeth white and perfect. From the neck up he was movie-star handsome, a peaked mustache feathering his full upper lip. “If you have any questions, you may call me,” he said and showed her the intercom mounted low on the wall—his level, the Chub plane. “This button is tricky,” he warned, pushing it with his black thumb, pink in the creases. Not really black, of course, a shade of brown, with some red in it, like a dark oak stain, a tobacco color. The black man she had dated had been a waiter in a seafood restaurant. He had been getting a degree in economics. Uncircumcised. He preferred V-neck sweaters. She made a mental note to look through Mr. Chub’s clothing.
She stripped the bed, bundling the expensive pinstriped sheets, imagining this man’s life, then imagining her own—a woman with a husband who stuttered, a woman who cleaned condominiums as a way to get close to the mysterious Mr. Chub. She could write an article on him or even a book, either exposé or biography, depending. When Brian finally reappeared in her life, she would reveal that she had begun a biography, but she would refuse to divulge her subject’s name. He insists on anonymity, she would say.
She vacuumed the big closets first, noting the shirts, identical except for color, all facing the same way and evenly spaced, like men marching in a parade. They would fit her, she thought, and wished she could try one on. There were only two sweaters, crew necks, folded and stacked on a shelf, but many belts—twenty-six—wide ones with enormous buckles, thin ones with elegant latches, belts made of metal, belts ringed with turquoise, a crude leather belt with little silver figures on it—milagros. She had a cross at home covered with milagros, silver shapes that healed whatever was broken—damaged arm, chronic headaches, bad marriage, loneliness. In the center of Monica’s cross was a silver heart milagro. She would rub her finger over it daily and ask that her heart be healed. On Mr. Chub’s belt were silver legs in a pair, one leg longer than the other. Monica touched the silver image to her lips. She would put a photo of this belt on the cover of her book. Maybe an actual milagro could be pounded into the cover of the hardback.
She knelt to inspect his footwear: six pairs of identical black shoes, polished, mounted on sloping wooden blocks. The soles of the left shoes were an inch thicker than the soles of the right. Custom-made, she thought, imagining a man kneeling and measuring her bare feet, then stretching the cloth tape to calibrate her legs, her thighs, to make shoes that would balance her perfectly, even her keel, flatten the world.
She would not sleep with Mr. Chub. No matter his grave pleading, his crooked legs bent beneath him. She inhaled sharply as she pictured it. On his knees, he would only reach her thighs. He’d have to stand, his natty hair blending with her pubis, his enchanted voice humming through her torso.
Monica cleaned houses most thoroughly when they were not dirty to begin with. Mr. Chub’s spare condominium looked as if it had been cleaned the day before. She concentrated on grout in the tile lining the shower stall, grime on the chrome legs of the sink, dust at the base of the porcelain toilet.
He entered the bathroom while she knelt before the toilet, which made her gasp.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
She clutched her heart, panting convincingly. “I’ll be all right.” She offered him a smile, which he returned.
“You work very intently,” he said, that rhythmic singsong—but smooth. How would she ever find words to describe it?
The Man with the Magical Voice, a working title.
“I just thought I’d look in on you,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she assured him.
On her knees, she was only an inch or two shorter than he. She was on the Chub plane, the world around her instantly altered.
“You know how to reach me,” he said.
He might have looked down her blouse. He turned too quickly for her to be certain.
Dear Chub, the letter began. Have you forgotten the way to ElPaso? Monica found the letter in the trash, slipped it into her basket of cleansers, touched it several times to be sure it was still there. Even while he commended her work and promised he would ask for her again, she had slid a finger past the plastic bottle of Lysol to feel the crinkled texture of the paper. An unauthorized biography, and here was the first clue. Each week she would add to her store of knowledge about him.
She drove directly to her next customer—her next john, she used to say, as if she were a hooker, but no one had found the term provocative or funny. She parked in front of the Stalker’s house, a redbrick bungalow inhabited by a middle-aged man who followed her, watching her clean, a computer genius she guessed from the mess he kept, who lived alone. “My wife died of a strap infection,” he had said slyly, expecting her to be curious, a stupid joke hiding in the mispronunciation, in his watery eyes, but she had refused to ask. She thought of him as a stalker, a creep, a Heffalump; although, he had given her a set of china, unchipped and almost complete. “I’ve no need for it,” he had said, hiding his secret motives so well she still could not name them.
She sat in the front seat of her blue Corolla under the shade of the Stalker’s giant sycamore and flattened Mr. Chub’s crumpled letter against her knee.
Dear Chub,
Have you forgotten the way to El Paso? We all would like to see your ugly self some of these days soon. Does anyone there call you WaterBoy? Have to come home to hear the words that go straight to the heart. I am doing alright. Really, I am. I know you heard they cut out that lump I had that you did not know about. Which is why I am writing, because I know somedumbody told you. Which I didn’t want. My own way of telling you would have been more fun for the both of us. Anyhow, it is out, and there is a little cut like a smiley face under my nipple. You will like it.
Come see the girl who loves you no matter what. Hear me? I love WaterBoy. I love Chub. As for Mr. Chub, he is a stranger I don’t or even want to know.
Don’t step on my heart.
Your Only One,
Missy
Monica pressed the letter to her chest. The book would write itself. It would win all the prizes. She and Brian would cruise to Hawaii, Greece, Fiji. Sally would need a private tutor.
The curtains in the Stalker’s house parted. She would keep him waiting another few minutes. The suspense would be good for his heart.
There was no question whether Brian would show up, only when. Fate being what it was, she guessed it would happen soon. His wife was already so explosively large, Monica could hardly bear to watch her wade into Casa Azul and drop onto her chair. Their baby was not due for two more months. One day Brian would come to Monica, appear at her trailer door, just before the baby was born or shortly thereafter. He would resurface in her life like a man in a boating accident who has held his breath too long: gasping and clutching, weeping over the good fortune of merely being alive.
Monica didn’t volunteer at Casa Azul in order to see Brian’s wife. It was important work. She had gone there the first time to gawk at her, but then she saw what they were doing. Food for the hungry. Shelter for the abused. A woman and her baby had spent one night in Monica’s trailer. She had forgotten their names, but they had been dark-skinned, and the woman spoke with an accent. Monica had let them have the bed, while she slept on the sofa, next to Sally’s crib—which was too small for her now. Brian would buy Sally a new bed when he came back.
Monica lunched in Waffle Park, sharing a picnic table with a guy in a black suit, red tie. His chin was too strong, pulling his face out of proportion, but Brian might be jealous, anyway—he was younger than Brian, closer to her age, and his suit was pressed and creased. If she showed any interest at all, Brian would be jealous—if he had some way to know about it.
“Are you through with that section?�
� she asked the man with the chin casually, lightly touching the folded newspaper at his elbow.
“Help yourself,” he said, pushing it her way.
Business section, but she glanced over it.
“Investments?” the Chin asked her. “Checking on your money?”
“I like to be informed,” she said.
Her tone was brush-off, but not too brush-off. She didn’t want to ever see him again, but she didn’t want him to know that yet.
He returned to his lunch—a sandwich, no vegetables at all. She gave up on the business section, pulled her book from her bag. Poetry. Monica had studied poetry for a while, taken classes at the community college and through the library. She had published two poems in the college magazine. She had given up poetry to write fiction, and then given that up to paint. She sold two paintings, one to a boyfriend for twenty-five dollars, the other to a man in Santa Fe who wanted her to pose in the nude, for fifty. She had been surprised when he didn’t make a pass at her. Just painted. She had spent hours at his house naked, even after he paid her. She watched The Sopranos naked on his couch, the artist beside her but not touching her. His painting had included the slight stretch marks on her stomach, the memory her body held of being pregnant, the way her hair remembered the hot iron with its curl.
She read her book:
A nervous glance as eyes meet
stare beyond
the wide canyon
She glanced up at the Chin, who was studying the sports section now, his newspaper folded down to a little square.
“Are you nervous about something?” she asked him.
“Me?” he said, lowering the paper and beginning, then, to appear nervous.
“You look nervous,” she said.
“How can you tell?” He flicked one eye oddly, a tic in the early stages.
“I bet I know your nickname,” she said. “Do you have a nickname?”
“When I was a kid, I had one,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“That’s not important,” she said.
“I’ve seen you, though. Before. You bring your lunch here often?”
“I used to,” she said, which was true.
Before Brian, she had come to Waffle Park twice a week, directly from the Stalker’s house on Tuesdays and from the Colonel’s on Fridays. Then she met Brian, and he had wanted to take her out so much—ethnic food, expensive places, once to a hotel in the middle of the day. He had been crazy for her, and she had quit coming to Waffle Park.
It wasn’t really called Waffle Park, of course. She gave things names.
“So what do you think my nickname was?” The man with the chin shoved the paper aside. She had his complete attention.
“Water Boy,” she said, smiling, cocking her head.
“Water Boy?” He sounded shocked, or tried to, then attempted a smile, but he was disappointed, that much was clear. What she said to him mattered.
“You were hoping I’d say Romeo or Mr. Beautiful?” She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Well, no, but Water Boy?” Flicked, and flicked again, that nervous tic.
“Did I get it right?”
“Skeeter,” he said. “My father—”
“I had a nickname, too,” she said, though she had not yet thought what it might be.
He hesitated. His eyes wandered over her chest.
“I bet I know,” he said. “I bet it was Foxy.” His eyes were bright now and zeroed in on her.
“Oh, please.” She made a face to convey disgust. “My mother started it—the nickname—then my sisters used it, my girlfriends. It was a female kind of nickname.”
“So?” he said. “What was it?”
“Sting,” she said. “Mostly. I mean, my mother would say, ‘My little Sting,’ and my sister would call me ‘Stinger,’ and the girls called me ‘The Sting.’”
She made a bridge of her fingers and let her chin rest there, happy with her invention.
“How… why’d they call you Sting?”
“They called me Sting because I have a big nose. It is big, isn’t it?”
“I think you have a great nose.”
“My ex-husband used to say that. He loved me for my nose.”
“What did the boys call you?”
“Some called me Sting, the rest used my name.”
“You’re not going to tell me your name?”
“I come here twice a week,” she said. “I’ll tell you another time.”
The Chin smiled again, a knowing smile, which she didn’t like, and no tic. She could read him already. She would not come here again for at least a month. This idea pleased her, and she raised her book, as if she had forgotten about him.
“You must like the Police,” he began. When she lowered her book and frowned, he added, “The band, you know. Sting is the lead singer, or was. I don’t guess they’re a band anymore.”
“I hate them,” she said. “They’re so insipid. I quit going by that name when that band came out. That, and the last boy who called me Sting stepped on my heart.”
“I have to go,” the Chin said, gathering together his paper and lunch bag. “But you’ll have to tell me how he did that, how he broke your heart.”
“I didn’t say he broke it. He stepped on it.”
“Durable heart. I like that.” His smile was full of self-appreciation. “See ya,” he said. “I’ll be looking for ya.”
She gave him only a twist of her head to indicate good-bye. Already, she could hear herself tell Brian that he, Brian, had stepped on her heart, which he had, after all. He would know that already if his wife hadn’t intentionally gotten pregnant. Blinding him. The idea of a baby, of becoming a father again, blinded him. Monica had meant to tell the Chin that her ex-husband stuttered, that she liked men who stuttered but she didn’t like facial tics.
One time Sally’s father had said to her, “What you don’t know would sink a ship,” which had made her think love was dependent on what you didn’t know—a kind of blindness. Myopia, glaucoma, amblyopia, heterotropia, esotropia—she’d written a poem about it, eons ago, back when she had loved Sally’s father and been seeing a guy named Eddie, not sleeping with him, just seeing him. Eddie had been to Nicaragua right when it was interesting to go. He had been desperate to screw her, which was why she had not let him. She had seen himtwice a week for almost a year. Just petting, a little hand play.
Petting, what a funny word. She took her notebook out and wrote down the word petting and then made a list of the things that one might pet, starting with dogs and then describing the places on her own body that men liked to touch.
Her last house of the day was Mrs. Nighetti, whose apartment was as cluttered as Mr. Chub’s was empty. Photographs of her nine sons lined the mantel of her fireplace, black-and-white photographs of beautiful young men.
“And only Vincent makes his mother happy with a grandchild,” she told Monica, as she did every week. “Nine of them. Boys the girls go silly over. My phone never stopped ringing. Now their papa’s dead, the phone is quiet, and what do I have to show? Only Vincent makes his mother happy with a grandchild, a girl, no less, Carlotta, which you may not know, but Carlotta is my name. Names her after his mother, my Vincent.”
She did not look like a woman who had borne and raised nine sons, did not really look old, except for the bags beneath her eyes. She was confined to a wheelchair or Monica doubted she would permit someone to clean her apartment.
“Do you have any new pictures?” Monica asked her.
Mrs. Nighetti, from her wheelchair, showed Monica her palms. “You’d think that wife of his would know I want new pictures of my Carlotta every week, but she’s too busy getting famous. ‘I’m going to be a famous model,’ she tells Vincent. To hear her talk, the baby set her back years.” Mrs. Nighetti waved her hands as if to push away the very idea. “But I may have some old ones you haven’t seen.”
Of the three hours Monica put in weekly at Mrs. Nighetti’s, half would be spent in conve
rsation, often over cups of hot tea. She handed Monica a photograph.
“Here’s my girl sitting in the lap of Miss Famous.”
Miss Famous. Monica liked that. She felt sort of famous herself, a private sort of fame. A secret celebrity. It was the one real thing she knew, while the rest of the world was ignorant. She recalled, for an instant, the trip her senior class had made to Disneyland, how she had liked to pause behind people while their relatives snapped photos. All over the country, she appeared in pictures, the mystery woman in dark glasses at the border of the photos.
“Now tell me,” Mrs. Nighetti said. “This Brian, has he come to his senses yet? Has he come rushing to you with an armful of roses?”
“Not a word,” Monica said and sipped her tea.
“I’ve written my Pauly, my youngest boy. Handsome like Clark Gable, but with better skin. An electrical contractor with his own truck like they’ve got to have, and dating a woman whose name he won’t remember in a year. Trash, forgive me for saying it.”
She quickly made the sign of the cross, touching her fingertips to her lips at the beginning and again at the end. Monica had made Mrs. Nighetti teach the gesture to her during one of the visits. It took some flair to make it compelling.
“I forgive you,” Monica said, which made Mrs. Nighetti flap her big hands and laugh.
Monica let her eyes roam the photographs for the one that might be Pauly. She had never met him, but his mother had written to him about her. No doubt he pictured Monica in his mind, thought about her, imagined her body, her life. What was that if not fame? The Chin was picturing her right now, she guessed. Not to mention the Stalker and Mr. Chub. Brian. She touched her fingers to her lips and crossed herself in the quick solemn manner that Mrs. Nighetti had taught her.
Sally ran her slow gallop, arms flailing, across her father’s grassy yard to Monica’s open arms.
“She took a nap,” the new girlfriend called out, sitting on the steps, keeping her distance. “’Bout an hour and a half.”
The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards Page 6