Everyone's Pretty

by Lydia Millet

  10:46

  Decetes stepped onto the patio of the businessman with the slut daughter. The glass sliding door was open. He went in. A bar, saints be praised. An open liquor cabinet in the businessman’s basement.

  He poured himself a whiskey and sat down in a leather recliner, swinging his feet up onto the padded footrest. Providence shone on his head like the sun. She opened her arms and clasped him to her breasts, she spread her legs and let him rest his head in the sweet salty cradle of jungle and sea. The moors were his, the waters, the steeples, the dunes. His home was every home. He swished a gulp in his mouth, savored it and swallowed. This was better whiskey than he usually drank. He would do well to cultivate the man’s acquaintance.

  —The earth mother visits me, he told the Chivas Regal solemnly. —She offers me an empire of light.

  Footsteps. Decetes decided to brazen it out.

  —Taking you up on that drink you offered me, he said, when the businessman entered the room.

  —So you totaled some guy’s car, said the businessman.

  —The brakes went out, said Decetes.

  —Uh huh, said the businessman. —Ready for another?

  —Delighted.

  The businessman took the bottle by the neck and filled Decetes’s crystal tumbler.

  —Notice you favor blended whiskeys, said Decetes, making genial small talk. —Single-malt man, myself. But to each his own. Bottoms up.

  Heaving a sigh, the businessman sat down on the couch to down half his drink and then slap one knee with a square hand. Decetes noticed he was wearing a bulbous gold Rolex.

  —Nice watch you got there.

  —Thanks. Used to be my old man’s.

  —My old man had a crappy Seiko, said Decetes.

  —Ha ha, said the businessman, and sipped.

  —I saw your wife outside this morning, said Decetes.

  —Jesus I hate it when she goes out in that fucking robe, said the businessman, and reached for the bottle again. —Got her a new one but she refuses to wear it.

  —Apricot is not the best color for her, said Decetes, sipping. —She’s a winter.

  —My wife thinks you’re a Peeping Tom. Are you a Peeping Tom?

  —My God, said Decetes, and shook his head sadly. —How the mighty have fallen. I used to be an account manager over at Shearson Lehman, before it was Smith Barney. Lost a shit-load in the crash of ’87 and they fired me. The ball just won’t roll for me anymore, and here the neighbors think I’m a Peeping Tom. Kicking a man when he’s down.

  —I never thought you were, said the businessman, sitting forward. —I swear. My wife’s neurotic, that’s all.

  —It’s just, said Decetes, —you have this momentum. And then someone pulls the rug out, and you never get your balance again. I used to have clients like Leona goddamn Helmsley.

  —Are you kidding?

  —I swear. She parceled out her assets to dozens of places. I had a slice of the pie.

  —Why didn’t you go to another brokerage house?

  —They blackballed me, said Decetes sadly.

  —Jesus. I’m in merchandising, myself.

  —I took risks in futures and ’87 was the first time they didn’t pan out, said Decetes. —Been out in the cold ever since.

  —Jesus.

  —You got that right, said Decetes, shaking his head again.

  A liberal supply of Chivas was assured.

  —You ever play golf? asked the businessman.

  11:15

  —Alice! You came! Like my dress?

  —It’s lovely. This is my new friend Riva. We just met in a bar. She’s having some problems at home.

  —Hello Riva. What a creative dress. I’m Lola. This is Jerome.

  —Jerome, I’ve heard so much about you, said Alice.

  —Oh dear, said Jerome. He kissed her on both cheeks and then kissed Riva’s hand. Alice could tell she was blushing. Riva was a chicken in the land of vultures. Disoriented, aimless. In need of strength, but there was only company to offer.

  —We have to get backstage, said Ernest as Lola. —The show’s about to start. See you ladies later.

  —Can I have a drink with umbrellas in it?

  —Barkeep? Give her a Shirley Temple.

  —I love the little umbrellas. Maybe I’ll collect them.

  —Everyone should have a hobby, said Alice.

  —Jerry says I’m codependent.

  11:21

  —You want me to what? asked Ginny.

  She was looking down at him with her knees on both sides of his hips. It was dark so she could hardly see his face. Creepy. Just the sheet and the white rope.

  —Pull it tighter, breathed Alan H. —More. Don’t be shy. Pull it tighter. As tight as you can.

  —As tight as I can? asked Ginny. —What if it hurts?

  —I want it to.

  The knot was against his Adam’s apple. They weren’t even moving, he was just there like part of her.

  —I don’t know, she said. —I’ve never done weird stuff before.

  —Please, whispered Alan H. —I couldn’t ask for more.

  —Is that tight enough? she said.

  —Tighter, said Alan H. —Tighter.

  —But are you sure it won’t hurt, she said.

  —I want it to hurt, whispered Alan H. —If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.

  —What?

  —I am the eye.

  —I don’t get it!

  She was scared. He must be crazy. She let the cord loosen.

  —Don’t! I only want this.

  —You can’t breathe! Can you?

  —Don’t be afraid, he rasped. —You’re only a baby. In the woods.

  —Please can I stop, she said. She was starting to cry like a wimp. He had his hands on her hips and held her there, but pretty softly. —I want to stop okay.

  —Please don’t. I’ve been waiting for this all my life.

  He was moving a little now like a boat on the water, rocking.

  —Please, she said.

  —Forgive me, I’m sorry, he said. —But I need a baby. It has to be a baby.

  He could hardly talk, he was rasping and out of breath. Square root 75, 8.66. Square root 114, 10.677.

  —Please! That’s enough right? Okay?

  —I just want to be gone, he whispered, —just a little bit gone, and he took his hands off her hips and put them over her own on the ends of the rope, trembling. He pulled hard. Suddenly.

  11:31

  Standing on the curb, Bucella watched them hitch up the Hyundai and crank it onto the truck. The Kreuzes seated themselves stiffly in the cab, shoulder to shoulder. Babs snaked one arm out the passenger window and waved gaily as the tow truck pulled away. Bucella retreated to her kitchen and washed dishes. The gnome garden statuette was lying on its side on the linoleum under the breakfast table. A swearword heralded her brother’s presence.

  —Dean, she told him, when he appeared tottering in the doorframe beneath her ceramic Love Is . . . plate, —you are no longer welcome here.

  —Bucella you know not whereof you speak, said Dean. —It is I who will bring greatness to our family name. You should cozen up to me while you still can.

  —I mean it, you’re evicted, said Bucella. —Tomorrow.

  —Let us sleep on it, Bucella, said Dean, and fell on his face where he stood.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  The Innocent becomes confused; a Comedy of Errors ensues; and the Prince among men is rudely dethroned

  THURSDAY MORNING

  7:42

  Ginny poured cereal into a bowl and added milk. The fridge had an icemaker in the door. She pressed a button and watched ice cubes skitter across the floor, then picked up her bowl and stepped around them carefully. Her hands were shaking weirdly. There was a big-screen TV in the living room. Jonah T.’s dad had a big-screen TV till Jonah T. broke it with a barbell.

  She sat down on the couch and spooned up cereal, looking at the gray square. She didn’t turn
it on. Her reflection was in the gray square but it was like she was a whole other person. A grownup but also a ghost. No colors only gray. Her face was lines with a hollow middle. She watched the hollow lines eat the cereal. Then it was gone. She drank the milk and looked at the empty bowl. Then she had to go back to the bedroom.

  Mr. Alan was still on the bed, on his back, with his arms out. His eyes were closed and his face was puffy, and kind of blue around the lips like in Law and Order. But that was all fake too. She sat down on the floor to wait for him to wake up. She was tired from waiting all night and no sleeping but it was like she took NoDoz except she hadn’t taken NoDoz. She held the bowl in her lap and watched her hands shake. She couldn’t help it. Some unseen force was moving them like on Sightings.

  8:14

  —I would like to return some merchandise, said Phillip, with more common courtesy than the fleshmongers deserved.

  The manufacturers’ toll-free telephone number was printed upon the shipping label; he was striking while the iron was hot. Though it was 8:14 a.m., Barbara was lounging in debauched slumber. Her excesses were wanton. She lay on her back with her legs thrown out, two white pods resembling sausages at the meat counter, and snored noisily. That was where he had first caught sight of her: in the section marked FROZEN FOODS. She had round eyes and small feet pointed in at each other, and was holding a grocery list printed in capital letters. Like the shepherd with a lost lamb he had gathered her in.

  During the night, after they returned and he bathed himself at some length using no fewer than three bars of antibacterial soap, he had taken stock of the situation. She was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. At first he had taken her naivete for a pleasant attribute, a warm void awaiting the infusion of spirit. But it was abundantly clear now that she would never be a testimonial. She was the brutish force of animal mass, and nothing more.

  Thank the Lord that thus far, in the eighteen months of their conjugal alliance, he had prudently withheld consummation. While the flesh was merely a rotten vessel, there were vessels and then there were vessels.

  —Bronco Bill is the name of the item. It must be picked up here today, and taken away.

  —What are you doing? she screeched, blundering out of the bedroom with her arms outstretched.

  —I will place a key under the doormat. Please be prompt.

  8:53

  Alice left the housewife asleep on her couch, where she’d collapsed in the small hours, flopping and mumbling in a haze of tropical mixed drinks, clutching paper parasols. On her way past the trash she dumped the soiled velour robe. It had the slack, heavy feel of wet fur, the shucked skin of a doe fallen dead in the rain.

  The drive-thru menuboard read HASH BROWNS, CHEESE DANISH, speckled with birdshit.

  —May I take your order, rasped an underpaid voice from the speakerbox.

  —Black coffee that’s all thanks and I know the total, said Alice, and released the handbrake to coast downhill to the window.

  —Cream with that?

  —No thanks just black, said Alice, and forked over the coin of the realm. It happened every single day. She always enunciated clearly. Black coffee, she said. But ears were growing obsolete from disuse. They would atrophy soon and fall off. The man of the future would be featureless save for his mouth.

  9:11

  The surface of a liquid was perfectly level unless something moved it. Matter into energy wasn’t always life, but life was always matter into energy. Or something. Anyway life was movement. At least in Math PSAT Preparation.

  She got up and set the bowl on his bare stomach, and then walked back to the kitchen. She took the milk carton out of the fridge and carried it to the bed. Then she poured milk into the bowl, until it overflowed and ran down the sides of his stomach, wetting the sheets. Then she stopped and waited, staring at the milk in the bowl. Not a ripple.

  9:43

  —Goddammit where is everybody? asked Alice of the empty office, and dumped the cold contents of her drive-thru cup into a ficus pot.

  She walked into Ernie’s room to get a coffee filter, saw a memo to Phil on the desk with a manila envelope beside it, and picked them up. Ernie had worn his spangled pumps into the ground. His exuberant tango had won him a standing ovation and a broken heel. He would come in late. She dropped the papers on Phil’s chair as she passed it.

  10:02

  —This is an egregious error, said Decetes. —Do you know who I am?

  —Yeah, do you? said the security guard, and peeled Saran Wrap off a greasy egg-filled croissant. —Alan H. let you go. You’re fired, bro. No admittance.

  In the lobby downstairs Decetes stood staring at the gold and black flecks in the tile. It was high-rent flypaper dotted with corpses. Pay some candyass decorator enough cash to feed a thousand bloat-bellied brats in Namibia, he gave you flies in the floor for your trouble and lounged beside his heated pool comparing fabric swatches till the cows came home.

  When Decetes finally lifted his gaze, in a trance, there was a dwarf staring at him. A flabby lower lip and a sprouting growth upside the nose, wrinkled and lobed like a brain. The dwarf wore his stringy brown hair in a pigtail.

  —Decetes! Decetes it’s me! Remember me? Ken!

  A toy soldier was better than none.

  —Ken! Let me shake your hand. You are free.

  —Free Decetes and ready to meet the naked ladies like you promised me.

  —First Ken, we have errands to run. Then the naked ladies. You must fill the tank of my car. It has run out of gas. The Pinto beside the NO PARKING sign Ken, the wild horse on the plain.

  —Get gas?

  —On the corner there is a Texaco. I can see the red and white star Ken, the red star of morning. She beckons to you. Bring back a jug of gas Ken, and please make it snappy. We have work before us.

  —But—

  —Ken a great book is opening its pages to you. Ken that book is named history. Now run along.

  10:51

  The telephone rang on the bedside table. Ginny was dressing from the walk-in closet. She felt dreamy. Listless, from Vocabulary P-SAT. She put on one of his shirts and let the answering machine pick up as she buttoned. —Alan, you taking a sick day or something? I gotta know. Alan I’m too busy for this shit.

  She stood rooted to the spot, the big shirt hanging almost to her knees. Everything was blank. Her hands were shaking and there was milk going sour on the skin of his stomach with its curling hairs. If she closed her eyes she would fall down from dizziness, but keeping them open was terrible, the brightness and hardness of the lines. Fermat’s principle. Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. Light takes the shortest path to its object. If angle x = 0, sine x = 0 and cosine x = 1. If x = π/6, sine x = .5 and cosine x = 1.73205/2 = .866025. If x = π/4, sine x = 1.414213/2 = .707106 and cosine x is the same.

  11:04

  —Keep ’em guessing, remarked Decetes to himself as he screwed a purloined license plate onto the bracket. The Pinto had emerged unscathed from last night’s encounter: it had beat the Hyundai in a fair fight. Detroit had triumphed over Tokyo. For once.

  And now Ken had arrived. Decetes would lay tasks upon him like bales of hay on a forklift. Already he was visible in the distance, bearing his burden of unleaded fuel. Ken must keep a low profile; he was not charismatic per se. Not his fault, of course, and he was a stouthearted fellow. And of course, as the saying went, behind every great man there is a gutless convict.

  Decetes let him fill the tank and then occupy the backseat. Ken’s attention was claimed by the treasure trove of old magazines, which he pored over as Decetes drove. —At play in the fields of the whores, said Decetes.

  Ken jerked his head up from the glossy pages, nodding with a glassy-eyed stare.

  —As you can see I have quite a library, continued Decetes. —To which you, Ken, will have unlimited access.

  —They passed it around, guys only got to see it for a—

  —Forget the days of scarcity my friend. This is the lode. />
  —Not even time—

  —Yes yes. But all is not wine and roses yet my boy.

  —A one-way street?—

  —The laws of common men are not our laws Ken. You should know that right off the bat. We’re going to my sister’s. I have personal effects there, and considerable financial resources.

  —Wide load!—

  —Faith my boy, faith. I’m the captain of this ship. You see we squeezed by him there, not a scratch on our chassis.

  —But the side of the—

  —Now. The power and the glory, Ken. Before we cement this alliance I need a promise from you. Loyalty. Ken, you must promise to be loyal. There can only be one sheriff in every town, and here that sheriff’s name is Dean Decetes.

  —But uh . . . promise what, Decetes?

  —Oh Ken. Ken Ken Ken.

  — . . . mean is it like a club?

  —A club, a secret society Ken, yes. You could call it that. The next empire Ken, the thousand-year Reich, the new kingdom so to speak. Are you with me?

  —Nazis?

  —Ken Ken Ken. There are no Nazis here Ken. Do you see a Nazi Ken?

  —Watch the lady!

  —Reich, it’s a manner of speaking. Just means government Ken. I am no fan of monsters, tyrants, or morons Ken. No sir, they’re not for me. You hungry m’boy? Find us an eatery. Ribs, chicken, steakhouse, like that. Take us to lunch Ken.

  —Take?—

  —Pay you back later Ken, when we get to my sister’s.

  —Sure okay. I guess.

  They pulled into a Sizzler. Other patrons looked askance at Ken. No matter: again, he was stouthearted, if stunted in growth. Decetes ordered a steak.

  —A little history Ken. What were you in for again?

  —Armed robbery, assault with a deadly—

  —You know strength then don’t you Ken.

  —It was wrong but see the judge said I was competent to stand trial. See cause if I hadna been competent—

  —No Ken, make no excuses.

  —Because see my public defender said I wasn’t competent. He was a stupid defender. Hate that defender!

  —Here we go, you had a steak platter and the burger was for you sir?

  —Give me that, m’boy. The burger is for him.