Elbowing the Seducer
Page 31
His eyes grew small. He gave her his beautiful smile and muttered, “Your pictures are flawless. Brilliant.”
—
He stamped his boots to shake off the snow and hurried into the house before too much good warm air escaped. The hood of his down parka slipped over red curls and released a snow flurry through the living room. He put the bag of groceries on the kitchen table, careful not to get her notebook wet, and, bending to kiss her, placed two cold fingers at the back of her neck. She yelped and slammed shut a copy of Bandaged Moments.
“Lost my gloves,” he said. He uncovered a pot of something tomato colored simmering on the stove. “What is it?”
“A couple of cans. With enough parmesan cheese it’ll taste almost adequate.” His secondhand varsity sweater surrounded her. She wouldn’t wear any of Bonnie’s clothes, which would have been big too.
“I see you’re reading junk fiction.”
“I started it this morning. Can’t stop.”
His ears grew warm. “Shouldn’t you be writing?”
“Yesterday I wanted to kill everybody in my book. But I couldn’t figure out how to get them all in the same Pinto. I’m on vacation till tomorrow.”
He took the mail and a folded newspaper page from his pocket, unsnapped the parka, and settled its nylon bulk over a chair. “Lots of news. An invitation from Dan to the opening of his new bookstore, the Velocity, on Duane Street, in January. The emphasis for now is on cookbooks and books on antiques and guides to survival in the city.”
Her delight made him proud, as if he’d caused the news instead of repeated it. He went on. “An eviction notice from Bonnie. The incoming administration has figured out she’s not a closet conservative. She’s coming back. We have to be out by the second week in January. Cheer up, it gets better. Word from Maris, addressed—notably—to both of us, as if we were a unit of some kind. She’s saving on postage. Dan did the same thing. She says, among other things, she says, she says—”
“What?”
“There’s this guy who called her to ask about the movie rights for Bandaged Moments. He wants to fly me out to meet him.”
“You’re going to Hollywood?”
“No, Munich. He’s German.”
“He wants to make a German movie about a boy growing up in New England?”
“He’s offering a first-class ticket and a hotel room with its own bathroom.” He held up the newspaper page. Three classified ads had blue ink circles around them. He pointed to them, one by one. “This is a house in Maine. For rent. This is a house—you know the road behind the mall? This is a couple of miles after that. I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it because it’s near here and maybe you wouldn’t like being near where Bonnie is. And this one, this one is about an hour away, closer to Boston and a little more expensive, but it’s month to month.”
She shivered in his big sweater. She shook her head. He looked away and rubbed his nose.
“Vincent.” Three grooves of sympathy, a Chinese character, appeared above her eyes.
He folded the newspaper page before he threw it in the garbage.
“We’ll celebrate your movie.” She turned off the low flame under the pot.
“It may not get to be a movie.”
“I know what I’d like to do,” she said.
—
In the living room he spread the afghan over the braided rug in front of the wood stove. “Minimizes frostbite,” he said. She put down the blue plastic diaphragm case from the health clinic and a squashed tube of cream.
He thought he might be holding her for the last time. He released her from the folds of his varsity sweater, from his patched thermal undershirt, from his Celtics tee shirt. She took off her jeans and pink ROCK LIVES bikinis. She took off her overbleached socks. He kissed her mouth, chin, the back of her neck. He bent to her breast.
“Unfair.” She tugged at his belt. She hurried him out of his clothes, kissing him, fighting his kisses, relenting, fighting again.
“What’s unfair?” he asked, and kissed her before she answered.
—
Part of the stream behind the house had frozen: shallow patches of ice between rocks, ice on mud. Snow flew into her mouth. “It’s a blizzard,” she said.
“It’s a regular day,” he said.
She had on two of his sweaters and his down vest. She had on green knit gloves from Kids’ Korner at the mall. She slapped her hands together.
“If you’d take my parka,” he said.
Toby, a neighbor’s dog, lumbered up, expecting a good time. One of his parents had been an Irish setter. Bask threw a stick high and far. A second dog, semi–German shepherd, raced Toby for it.
“Why are they out in this weather?” she asked.
“Same reason we are.”
“A forced march?”
They followed the stream briefly until trees intervened and the meadow climbed away from the stream. Channels of frozen water cut the ground. Across the meadow whitening trees shielded the highway. She heard a car with chains rattling past. Her sneakers snared themselves in outreaching roots. She stumbled over one. “You could help,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be as much fun,” he said.
Toby’s blunt tawny head pushed at her thigh. She patted him and declared, “Good boy.” Nearby, the other dog deposited an enormous foul-smelling turd in the snow. They walked on to sweeter pastures, past sentinel trees. The meadow widened under a low gray sky. Far behind them, the house was edged with white.
Snow soaked through her sneakers. “I bet the nails are blue,” she said. She tossed two sticks for the dogs. They didn’t have much of a run.
“Pretty feeble,” he said. Snow settled on his red curls, wet his red-gold eyelashes. He sealed her gloved hand in his bare one.
“What does it mean if we get a house together?” she asked.
“It means we don’t have to live outside.” The sticks he threw sent the dogs chasing to the middle of the meadow.
“You pay your half and I pay mine?”
“Sure. It’ll be the same as it’s been up till now.”
“No it won’t. It’ll be different. It’ll be on purpose.” Snow stung her face. She said sadly, “It’ll be serious.”
He grabbed her and lifted her up, higher and higher. The dogs barked. He was going to throw her instead of a stick. She breathed in snow. “Help!” She laughed above his wet curls. As he lowered her, she kept expecting the ground to arrive, but it didn’t. It was a long way down. The waves had done that when she was little, before she stopped playing in the ocean. A wave would carry her up, her legs dangling in water above the ocean floor. She would ride, closer to the sun, with yellow-berried seaweed and browned palm fronds in a blue-green roar of water. The dying wave would drop her slowly. Her flat feet were ready for the ribbed sand bottom before it arrived. After the sweet terror of the uplift came what she’d thought of then as safety, shells tumbling at her heels, the sand running under her feet. Her wet sneakers touched ground.
She aimed for the middle of the meadow, but the stick fell a short distance from her, far from the target. The dogs dashed for it with indiscriminate happiness.
“I vote for the place closer to Boston,” she said.
Snow fell on his boot tops. Her sneakers sank into snow. Wind shook snow from branches. The dogs danced for attention. Before he moved toward her, he seemed to be digging himself deeper in the snow.
“I’m scared,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “That sounds right.”
FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER
AND FOR R.D., M.D., c̅ GRAVITY
About the Author
T. Gertler’s first published story, “In Case of Survival,” was selected for the Best American Short Stories and O. Henry anthologies in 1980. Gertler, who lives in New York City, is at work on a new novel.
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