Because the Rain

by Daniel Buckman

  “Cincinnati had the best meat by far,” he said.

  “Howard Street,” Goetzler said. “By the river.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Weber flew me down,” he said. “I ran focus groups of electrical contractors. I’m studying the catalog’s effectiveness on contractors in the Ohio River valley.”

  Uncle Kerm lit another Camel filter while he broke for the red light. The back tires locked and Goetzler felt them fishtail. He sat up in his seat.

  “This schoolteacher,” Kerm said. “She’d go hootchie for a T-bone and a motel room. Just dirty like some guys talk about.”

  Goetzler put his watch wrist on the armrest. He pushed back his jacket cuff.

  “Is she a friend?”

  “I know her.” Kerm then looked at Goetzler, the stoplight sheening his cheek. “You know,” he said.

  “You meet her at the Drake?”

  Kerm nodded and stared at the red light.

  “You must have gotten her oysters?” Goetzler said. He lifted his wrist and the Rolex caught the dash light.

  “It was this car,” he said. “That’s what got her to Florida.”

  “She wouldn’t joy ride all the way to Daytona. Maybe to Oak Park.”

  “It was about the car when I was twenty-five,” he said.

  “Seventeen hours one way?” Goetzler feigned cool. “She liked you.”

  Kerm smiled and tapped his cigarette ash through the cracked window, then wiped dry the stray raindrops on his thigh. He hadn’t yet looked at the Rolex. Goetzler bought the watch thinking his father’s bungalow would sell by next month, and he figured Kerm knew it. You can only buy a Rolex with the cash you score, he’d tell him at the restaurant. The light remained red.

  “The woman’s waist was tight,” Kerm said. “She’d do her Jane Fonda workout in the motel rooms.”

  “Tights and leg warmers?” Goetzler asked.

  “The whole nine.”

  “She’s looking for a father. She’d love you forever.”

  Kerm squinted his eyes and gauged Goetzler’s seriousness.

  “You don’t got a prayer, Donny,” he said. “You know that.”

  “You could be happy.”

  “I keep forgetting you came from your old man.”

  When the stoplight changed, Kerm’s foot fell heavy on the accelerator, and the engine dragged the Cadillac down Lincoln. His uncle passed stuffed buses on the yellow line, the oncoming traffic honking and pulling close to the parked cars. The tires broke the light-bleary puddles and the speed forced Goetzler’s scalp into the headrest. Kerm kept a straight face, his blue eyes hidden away, and blew smoke rings at the wet windshield while he jumped the red light at Halsted and Fullerton. Goetzler looked at the Rolex, realizing it had stopped during his father’s visitation.

  * * *

  Goetzler drove around Annie’s block for the seventh time, wishing he’d put the .38 in his coat pocket instead of between his pant waist and hip. The gunmetal pinched his skin when he turned a corner. A welt was forming, and it would turn raw after three more circles. But Goetzler decided he shouldn’t move the pistol into his pocket with the silencer he’d made with a socket set from an Internet diagram. Changing his mind to avoid pain had become too much of a habit.

  Goetzler would fire two bullets into Annie’s ceiling, then put the pistol to her forehead, reminding the hooker that she was bluffing. Goetzler figured Annie was too selfish to split this money, and after three days of her pimp stonewalling him, he believed that he was about to cut her loose. But Annie could keep the money he’d given her. He owed her a chance at the straight life. He also knew the cop would understand all of this. The wagon driver could never know, but he’d silently nod if he ever heard about it.

  He’d scare her silent. Maybe turn her into a wall-eyed cat.

  The last pass, he’d noticed light in her two-flat window, a vague yellowing of the glass. He knew her radiator hissed steam even if the January cold never returned when the rains quit. By law, the boilers were on timers from November to April. The apartment would be humid and breathless, and she might have opened her back window so the lake air could cool the hardwood rooms. He’d go inside face first with his pistol extended, and keep his money. Now, she was the VC.

  Stay squared away, Goetzler, and you’ll own the glory road.

  26

  The mirror where Annie watched herself hold the yoga plank fogged and dripped. The open windows did nothing against the steamy registers, and the heat made vague clouds outside the screens.

  The cop was Vietnam-gone to her. She imagined her hands would always go through him when they touched. She wanted a quiet mind and tonight she’d breathe until she met the stillness. The cop was her wish, not a real man.

  Her stomach throbbed from the yoga positions, but she was happy to know the sequence, the dying warrior, the downward dog, the fawn, and didn’t need a brick keeping the book opened flat. When the sweat started, wetting her black bra straps, she knew her gray tom would come from under the bed and lick the salty water from her obliques, slapping her face with his tail.

  The plank numbed her waist while she waited for the cat. He was still hidden away, scared by the street noise. She breathed like slow rain, and decided she’d take Goetzler’s money until she had one hundred thousand dollars. She’d split the sum between four banks, then cage her cats and fly away with them, an afternoon 767 to Charles de Gaulle, and watch the night pass in five hours, knowing she had eighteen months to escape the fat men in hotel rooms, or find another Nick. But the next morning she’d stand where the Trocadero Steps halved, looking east into the late-morning cold and trying to name the special gray of the Seine bridges. She’d decide on a top-floor apartment, three rooms with a balcony and nineteenth-century skylights, some Restoration colonnade between Sacré Coeur and the cemetery where the brick streets ran uphill. If there were tall windows, she’d never stand in them.

  From the darkness, beneath the bed, the gray tomcat was two lit eyes. Annie called to him over the Brubeck while the wind jumped and guttered the candle flames. His eyes turned orange while she thought about the cop, then told herself she might become a hooker again after trying the world, something that would make him kill.

  When Annie whistled for the cat with dry lips, she heard limp air, and the cat remained yellow eyes.

  * * *

  Her new uncle carried her to the boat while the waves took her face underwater. She left her eyes open and looked for her cats. She’d once dreamed them riding the backs of spearfish, their ears reared from the motion. Now, in her new uncle’s arms, she imagined something before it happened, and each time the sea washed her face, she waited to see the cats riding fish like the cigarette cowboys did horses in her father’s Playboy magazines from the war.

  The boat was long and short, a fishing jig. She looked at the two sampans tied to the sides, then the people, a hundred shadows standing back-against-stomach, and knew her father was among them. He got stuck in the middle and couldn’t see her to call. Annie’s new uncle, a man who was only hands in the water, understood her father was trapped in the middle, but remained quiet, never telling her for certain because he might scare her cats. They were waiting behind the boat, the fish they rode like standing horses, and her uncle was afraid to speak.

  When the waves calmed, the wind chilled Annie’s eyeballs, and she nestled into her uncle, searching for his heat, but the water swirled between them and took away his hard touch, making him like the sea. The boat teetered after the wind, and the people gasped until it righted, then coughed and spoke in low tones until the gusts came again. The cats must stay underwater because it was warmer.

  Her uncle came upon the boat while the water calmed. It made sounds when the people reached for her, water lapping wood. She watched the silent faces, then lay back and smiled. If they’d stop reaching, the boat would steady, and she’d hear her cats laughing from the backs of the spearfish. She’d have her father tell them. When her uncle
lifted her into the wind, she went numb and hoped a coughing person wouldn’t get her.

  The woman got Annie by reaching the farthest for her. She took her beneath the armpits, and lifted her from her uncle, and his hands gave way very fast. The woman’s eyes were dark like her black ao dai. When Annie came into the boat from the sea, dripping in the night, the people were still reaching overboard for her, and she couldn’t hear her giggling cats. The woman sounded breathless, her face a shadow, and Annie looked past into the crowd, hoping to see her father. He’d make them stop tipping the boat.

  Annie stood on the wet wood and kept looking. She wished it was morning, time for mangoes and bananas with coconut milk. Then, she could see her father because he always cut the fruit.

  The woman had a little boy with a piece of jade around his neck. He wore silk pajamas, blue like rainy nights, and he faced her without smiling, touching her hips before kissing her. He ran his fingers up her thighs. The woman was laughing.

  “A little wife for you,” she said.

  He pressed his tongue against Annie’s teeth. She couldn’t see past his eyeballs.

  “You know how to love her very well,” the woman said.

  The people had stopped reaching and the boat calmed. The boy pulled their stomachs together while Annie closed her eyes and listened for the cats.

  * * *

  Annie held the plank, three minutes now, her shoulder blades splaying open. The gray cat’s tail swept her face while he licked the puddled sweat off the floor. It covered her mirrored nose, looking like a candy cane. When she blew the tail, a slow exhale, the cat reared his ears and looked behind himself, before running into her bedroom.

  In the mirror, Goetzler’s head poked through the kitchen window, She rolled against the wall and assumed a yoga squat. She’d escape from her bedroom window and slide down the gray stones to the muddy grass. Her cat would be safe, hiding under the bed until she got the broomstick. She eyed Goetzler in the mirror before she moved.

  His legs teetered and he couldn’t touch the floor. His belt buckle had stuck against the sill. He grabbed the radiator, burning himself, but remained quiet, fanning his palm in the dark room. The pistol fell away and spun across the linoleum, lodging beneath the refrigerator. Annie jumped and went for the gun. Goetzler reached for her like he was swimming.

  She put her finger over her lips.

  He looked at her with the .38, blinking his eyes twice, then burned his palm on the radiator again.

  “Just teeter,” she said.

  He didn’t know where to put his hands.

  “You will keep meeting me,” she said. “Do you think I am alone?”

  “No,” he said.

  “But you came here to kill me?”

  “I can’t talk like this,” he said.

  “You can always talk, Goetzler.”

  He was silent.

  “If you killed me,” she lied, “you wouldn’t have gotten home.”

  “I wanted my life,” he said.

  “You’ll live,” she said. “I’ll live.”

  His glasses slid down his nose. Annie knew he couldn’t breathe well enough to talk.

  “There’s a picture of this wounded marine near the DMZ,” she said. “Larry Burrows took it. He’s reaching out to another wounded man who’s sitting in the mud. The other marines won’t let him.”

  Goetzler tried resting his toes on the fire escape.

  “Stop,” she said.

  He resumed teetering. The radiator steam made his face red and fogged his glasses. She watched him burn his same hand three times.

  “The marine has a bloody bandage tied beneath his chin,” she said. “The hills had been swallowing them for weeks, but the men stop him from reaching out. Do you remember the picture? The day looked steamy from the sun after the rain.”

  Goetzler tried balancing himself by outstretching his arms and legs. The sweat ran from his scalp into his eyes.

  “I want you to go outside,” she said. “Then stand in the mud between the sidewalk and the street. Make like the marine who tried reaching out. Remember, there are men watching you on the street. If you don’t do it, you won’t make it home.”

  When he slid backward, Annie cocked the hammer, and the sound of the cylinder locking turned him still.

  “If you were Vietnamese,” she said, “what you did with the pictures could have worked.”

  He rocked on his lower stomach, his lips open, his teeth wet. His palms kept hitting the radiator.

  “Remember that you are wanting to help,” she said. “But the other men say no. The hills are swallowing you all.”

  He let his toes touch the fire escape, then kicked back into the air. His glasses went to the end of his nose.

  “How long?” Goetzler had sucked air through his nose to talk.

  “Until you figure out why they never let the wounded marines touch.”

  Sweat stuck the white hair to his forehead. Annie now held the pistol with both hands.

  “Thursday at Marche,” she said. “One o’clock. Meet my cab. Sixty thousand.”

  When Goetzler backed through the window, he came down hard on his knees. The frame cut his scalp. He looked at her before pushing the glasses up, his eyes like a scared dog’s, then his toes touched the fire escape. He stood and went down the stairs, hitting every second step. Annie uncocked the hammer and exhaled hard enough to bow her legs. When she walked the hallway, she let the pistol arm swing.

  Her bedroom door had been pushed open by the running cat. In passing, she looked for his eyes beneath the bed, muted yellow, but he’d gone to the middle, and wouldn’t come out until she used the broom handle. He was scared under by car alarms and aerosol cans, like the cop, but the image of Goetzler stuck in the window might keep him hidden until morning. Even after the stick, the gray tom would pace the apartment while she finished the dying warrior, her last yoga position. The cat wouldn’t lick the sweat from her obliques. The activity made him skittish for the night.

  Annie lit candles on her way to the mirror, flaming the end table, the mantel. She fired six incense sticks, setting them in a jar before the mirror, then lay the silenced .38 beside the rice mat and thought of new leaves on Parisian plain trees.

  27

  The airport limo was coming for Mike Spence in a half hour. He’d ride to O’Hare in a four-door Lincoln town car, bound for Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and ignore the complimentary Sun-Times and Tribune on the seat behind the Serb driver. He couldn’t live in a city without a decent newspaper. Instead, he’d read The New York Times, some obituary about a chess champion who was unknown to Mike, and sip Fiji water while the cell-talking driver moved through the late Kennedy traffic by using the shoulder. James Taylor might even be singing on 93.9 Lite FM: Oh, Mexico, it sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low. From the street, Mike knew cops often listened to the Lite to ward off panic attacks.

  Maybe he’d feel like a writer on the ride to the airport and life again would have the theme music of a movie. If he missed nothing else about the two years he wrote, it was being able to elevate his movement through life by imagining theme music. There was AC/DC for the army, Radiohead for Susan and his last year together, and Bill Evans for all the lost ideas of himself. Things always felt more poignant and resolvable. But now, the car was twenty minutes away, and Mike was standing among his life packed into boxes, unsure of the right song. He stared at the wool blanket hiding the woman’s window from his eyes. After taking a beating, Mike still didn’t trust himself to look away.

  He sat on his suitcase and looked at the blanket. It was Mike’s barracks bedspread, green and wool, and he noticed two small holes. The streetlight was leaking through them in narrow slants. He realized the army had been long ago, and he saw Dilger beaten only because he was there. He could have witnessed a rape in a fraternity house, and hated himself into manhood for thinking assholes were ever his brothers.

  Let it go, he thought. Breathe the way you are supposed to.

  Bu
t turning from the window, he looked at the blinds shadowed on the oak floor, and saw a cat print on the oak floor. He started talking out loud instead of breathing.

  You would not know the place, Susan.

  I knocked down the whole wall two months after you were gone. You wanted French doors so the cats could print them with their paws. I just kept going with the sledge until it was all done. You are too extreme, you’d say. I knew I’d come to care nothing about what you thought. You would walk off and close the porch door and pet cats and cry among the windows and the city dark.

  I picked up plaster and cracked wall studs for two days. I lay with the rubble the first night, wound in the Indian blanket on one mattress. The cold wind fogged the windows and I could not see out. I then kept my eyes closed.

  You have come to my dreams since you died and you smile in the warm rain between dripping trees and I know that somehow you are fine. But that is only in the dream. When I wake and stand in our window, the morning dark windy and furious between the trees, I know that I could never find you again. Sometimes my knees go and I hold the wall.

  Mike went quiet long enough for a small rain to start. When the drops became cyclic against the window, the limo honked for him the way the dispatcher had said. Don’t worry if you miss the horn, the accented guy told Mike, the driver will call you on his cell phone. Please know that we take care of everything between the door and the terminal. Mike stood up with his two suitcases, wondering how much they charged hourly to care for him beyond the airport gate.

  He didn’t think about Susan when he walked down the stairs. His suitcases were large in the tight space and he focused upon not scratching the walls. His wife would always be alive, and he needed to figure ways to forgive himself for never knowing how to love her that last year. In Mexico, he could change the way he remembered her. He’d take them back to when they tried reinventing love with water sex and warm wind, then forget the two years afterward by filling steno pads with the memories. He’d write without hope or despair, sitting in a lounge beside a plate of orange peelings, and then kayak in the Pacific so he’d come closer to something he felt more than he understood. Oh, Mexico, it sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.