Billy turned his head from side to side like it was the saddest news he'd ever heard. He reached for his cigarettes. I slid off the stool and walked away.
The mouth of the jukebox sucked in the dollar bill. I flipped the pages of CD titles. I pressed the buttons. The sharp, clear brassy sound of the orchestra at the beginning of “All You Need Is Love” suddenly blasted from the speakers. I made another selection. For an instant, I reached for the whiskey that wasn't on the jukebox, the way a smoker who gave it up twenty years ago will unconsciously bring his hand up to his shirt pocket for no apparent reason.
Billy was laughing at the top of his voice. You could see the tears. People were looking at him. “I hate you, you bastard,” he shouted from across the way. He ran his sleeve across his face. “I hate you,” he shouted again. I could feel the concussion of the music against my back. Then he finished it in a softer voice. “You bastard, you,” he said.
Epilogue
Dance Party
Joshua Severance
The first year we were married we called each other by the name of sexual parts or acts. She was Blowjob or Tuna. She called me Hosebag. Her vagina was Lucy, my penis was Ricky. And sometimes at restaurants she'd say, What's Ricky having, and I'd say, What's on the menu for Lucy.
We bought a house in an old neighborhood in a town in South Carolina where people still wanted to live at the country club. We got it for what we'd been paying in rent. Upstairs there was a large room that we figured had once been for a live-in housekeeper. The paint was gray from time and from a chimney fire. But underneath was old white pine with a rich grain that comes from slow growing. I began sanding away the paint, and later on, when I'd nearly finished and was living alone, my friends would show up on Wednesday nights and let themselves in and come upstairs without knocking. I began calling the upstairs room The Bar None.
The only other place we'd lived was an apartment on the Texas gulf. Rene taught only in the mornings. But I wouldn't get home until late afternoon. The sun would be bright, and even after wearing sunglasses I'd have to give myself a minute for my eyes to adjust to the cool dim light inside. I'd take off my shoes and socks. The cool parquet floor soothed the soles of my feet and worked up my ankles. Sometimes I would fill a glass with ice and bourbon and sit in a low chair in the dark apartment and just look through the sliding glass doors at her beside the tall brick wall that separated us from the rest of the world. She would be lying on her stomach on a lounge chair with a towel under her. She was already Texas brown, and in the small of her back I could see two oval pools and the bright trails that led down to them. She'd be reading some Milton scholarship through hair that hung straight down and nearly covered her glasses. Her nipples just barely touched the damp towel under her. She didn't know I was watching, and sometimes she wouldn't hear the doors sliding open.
“How are things in Paradise?” I said.
She smiled up at me. “How's it hanging, Hosebag?”
“Anything new from Uncle Milton?”
“You won't believe it,” she said, suddenly animated. Her intelligence only made her more beautiful. She sat up, covering her breasts with her left arm. “Guess where I found this? In the Lost and Found. Can you believe it? Is that mystical, or what?” Her eyes made tiny wrinkles when she laughed. “I don't know who's teaching this edition, but it's a shitty piece of work.”
Almost every evening I would cook outside on the grill and drink while she bathed and later broke cold heads of lettuce into wooden bowls. After dinner she would sometimes beg me to take her dancing. But I am no dancer.
Soon after Rene left me, some of us got up the Wednesday Night Supper Club. It's what we had in the place of other things. I don't know who named it the Wednesday Night Supper Club. I suppose one or two of the guys who didn't want their kids to know referred to it euphemistically when they said goodbye to their wives. One Christmas Eve George Miles and Rene’s colleague, Billy Mims, who didn't have wives anymore, showed up wearing reindeer horns. George had a stuffed and mounted deer's head under one arm. Topping the stairs, he announced the grand opening of a new lodge, a new order he called it. The Alc's Club. Until about a week after New Year's it was the Alc's Club, but by Valentines it was again the Wednesday Night Supper Club at The Bar None.
Before Rene left me I knew something was up. I knew it for a couple of months. I kept after her about it until finally she said, “I don't love you, Josh.”
“I don't understand,” I said.
“Which word gives you trouble?” she said.
I came home and George's truck was backed up to the front steps. I helped him and Billy with the sofa. Rene was at her new apartment putting up our wedding china. Later the three of us sat on the steps and had a few beers. I waved at the neighbors. Billy went to the Piggly Wiggly and bought another twelve pack of beer. George and Billy and I waved at the neighbors. By the time we'd finished most of the beer, it was dark and George said they'd better go. There were no more neighbors to salute. That sofa was a bitch, he said. I offered to follow them over and give them a hand, but Billy said there was help at the other end and handed me the last beer. I went inside and sat on the floor where the sofa had been with my back against the radiator and watched TV and ate a whole bag of potato chips. I saved the beer until I was done.
There was a PBS special on the Pharaohs, and for a time I understood about them and the rational explanations for their mummification. It all made sense to me as it was being explained. And a lot of the mumbo jumbo about the pyramids was straightened out and they didn't seem quite so mysterious. When I woke up I ran my hands down the cool ribs of the radiator. I put the potato chip bag and the beer can in the trash and went to bed. But I was still so drunk I couldn't remember which side I was supposed to sleep on.
In this state, twelve is the magic number. That's the number of points the Department of Motor Vehicles allows before you lose your driving privileges. Billy Mims and George Miles and I had been playing the subtracting game for months. My lawyer, John Truett, reigning king of The Bar None, had been reduced to two wheels before the bar's first anniversary. It didn't seem to matter that he was an attorney; the Mothers Against Drunk Driving have a lot of pull in this town. I've never seen a man who could drink so much and still stay up on two wheels. Picture a circus bear on a bicycle and you'll be close.
One warm Wednesday night we heard the sound of bent spokes and fenders on the sidewalk below. John arrived with swollen, bloody knuckles. Billy slipped downstairs and phoned John's home number to make sure there was a voice at the other end. There was, and Billy hung up. John was pretty drunk. He tried to talk George into driving them to The Paradise Lounge for a little action. George said they were both too drunk. They played pool. Somehow the upstairs had gotten a pool table and two pinball machines and a real bar.
Later, John forgot that the old toilet didn’t work and was about to empty his bladder when Billy reminded him. He weaved back to the pool table with his fly down. George glanced up from a straight-in shot on the nine ball, and without hesitation said, I'd be ashamed to let everybody know my old lady had a hole that big in her ass.
Then the two of them went round and round the table. John held his cue up high. He had tears in his eyes. You can't talk that way about my wife, he kept shouting. I tried to head off John, but he had that suicidal valentine look in his eye. Billy was no help. He just kept shouting, They'll turn into butter, they'll turn into butter! George made for the stairs. John tripped, did somersaults down the steps, and broke his leg. That's when he quit drinking permanently. It was a hard fall.
When you really fall in love with someone, you don't think about all the reasons why it might not work out. Or at least you shouldn't. You just have a feeling and you want to go on having that feeling and you think that you will. You count on that. You just belong together. That's all.
When Rene and I first met it was at The Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta. I thought she was another pharmaceutical salesman. I sell hospital supplies, make my money
in bandages and wraps. I took a seat beside her at the bar and said, You here for the convention? She said, Yeah. We went on for a few minutes; then she said hers was the MLA convention. I read the black print on the nametag above her left breast.
“Modern Language Association?”
She looked up at me and smiled so that little wrinkles formed and said, “Malaise,” then hooked her arm around mine and I ordered another round. Later she asked me to take her dancing, but we did something else. I forget what.
As it turned out, almost everything in the house belonged to Rene. When it was all moved out, the place looked twice as big. I sold the TV and bought a second-hand industrial floor buffer. Every Saturday morning I waxed the hardwood floors with good wax and buffed them until they looked like swirls of light. That way it seemed okay that there was no furniture. I sort of liked it that way.
I left messages on Rene's machine. Some were serious. I'd write out what I wanted to say and read it so that I would sound intelligent and not waste time. Once, I wrote a twenty-page letter to her. I would read until the second beep, and then call again and pick up where I left off. She didn't return my call. Then sometimes after a bourbon or two I'd be witty. I'd call, disguise my voice, and say I was a student and had a question about English. Once I said, Could you explain the difference between screeching to a grinding halt and grinding to a screeching halt? Then I laughed out loud like a fool. I couldn't help it. That didn't work either. Then once I tried being profound. After the beep I asked in a British accent, Had you rather walk to school or carry your lunch?
Sometime in early spring while I was buffing the floors, John Truett got his license back. He showed up at our house one morning with the other guys and told me he was holding a special ceremony at the bridge over Black Creek. I unplugged the buffer and wrapped the cord around the electric motor and put the buffing pad away.
It was about a mile walk, but nobody was in a hurry. There were a couple of bottles going around. John pushed the bike and formed the center of our troop. The sun was bright, and we walked in the shadow of blooming dogwoods down the long slope to the creek. The walk down was easy.
John's bike looked funny lying on its side on the bridge railing. It looked like a dead animal maybe. Certainly not like a bicycle. The wheels of time go round and round, John began. And the time to say goodbye is always the hardest. I'm glad you can all be here to share in this final goodbye. Then he lifted the bike over his head, pirouetted, and heaved it over the side of the bridge. We all applauded and then took a narrow trail down to the water's edge and sat in the shade.
The combined strength of Billy, George, and me was required to get John back up the trail. The uphill walk home was hot and over bright. Even the air seemed dull and heavy.
Back at the house I took off my shoes and socks and walked on the cool waxed floors. I walked through every empty room. Then I took off my shirt and lay on my back on the wooden floor in the living room. I looked up at the high ceiling. When I woke it was dark outside. I'd been dreaming but I didn't know what about. I didn't know what time it was.
Finding the trail back down to the water under the bridge was easy. The moon was full and the dogwood blooms were tiny night-lights. The water was really cold and faster than you'd think, but I found the bicycle easily enough. My trousers must have held forty pounds of water and mud. I took them off and tied them to the handlebars to balance my case of wraps and bandages. I just wore my boxers.
Rene's apartment was at the bottom of a hill. I could see the lights upstairs from pretty far away. I put my feet up on the handlebars and leaned back. The pedals went round and round on their own. The wind rushed past my ears. I laid the bike over easily on the wet grass and went to her door. There was music inside.
Funny, when she opened the door, the whole place smelled of Rene. Maybe it was the flowers. It was her place. She was wearing her housecoat and held a finger in her book. She leaned forward and squinted into the shadows. She flicked on the porch light and looked down at the front of my boxers. I looked down at the front of my boxers.
“Big Al and the Twins would like to know if you'd like to come out and play,” I said.
“I have to make a telephone call,” she said, and closed the door.
I stood outside and watched the newly hatched insects form spinning moons around the porch light. After a time she opened the door again. She'd pushed her glasses up on her head. She smiled. She hooked her arm around mine. I offered her my sample case of wraps and bandages.
When I was a kid, I shared a small bedroom with my two brothers. I slept on the top bunk. At night my older brother would play the radio beside his bed. I'd lie there in the dark on my back and listen to the low music. I could lift my hand and touch the coarse ceiling. Every night we listened to Dance Party. The DJ read dedications from people as far away as Memphis and Alexandria. He'd begin with—This number goes out to—and then he'd read the names of couples who were couples at the time. Sometimes it would take him several minutes to read all of them. Or it seemed that way to me. Some of the requests would be in code, like—This song goes out to J—and the girl in fifth period study hall with special eyes.
And now when I think about those dedications, I envision some of them being written in hieroglyphics, and the DJ at home rising from his sleep and gliding his numb fingers over miles and miles of carved stone until he discovers the etched pictures that save love, there to stand forever.
Someone To Crawl Back To Page 18