Borrowed Hearts

by Rick DeMarinis

  “We’re freaks,” she said. She left the table and went into the bathroom, where she retched.

  I followed her and stood outside the door. “Are you making yourself vomit deliberately, Antoinette?” I asked. She did not reply. “I cannot sanction that, my darling. I can never sanction that.” Still she did not reply. Then I humbled myself. I knelt on both knees before the sullen door. “Ah, love, we must be true to one another,” I said. “We have nothing else, don’t you see?” But she would not answer.

  Now hear this: Like most large men I’m tolerant and easy to get along with. But there is a line. If you are a skinny man you may not understand what I am saying here. Suppose, then, that you are a skinny dancer and you have married a skinny woman who is also fond of dancing. Then she decides, without consulting you, that she’s tired of dancing and would rather sit down and eat. Soon she blossoms out to a healthy size eighteen or twenty and will not roll back the carpet when the Lawrence Welk rerun comes on TV. You soon begin to feel stupid foxtrotting around your rumpus room with a barstool in your arms while the little woman has her face parked in the Kelvinator. Where is the little girl I married, the girl with the twinkling feet? you ask yourself. I shall tell you where she is. She has shipped out. That size eighteen or twenty with the drumstick in her hand is someone else. You have begun to sense this yourself and have taken to calling her the USS Tennessee or some such appellation meant to discourage her. But she is not discouraged. She has, perhaps, found herself a new companion, fat as herself, and you find them together laughing wonderfully between mouthfuls of guacamole dip and tortilla chips. You’re beginning to feel left out. You are disgusted by her. You are angry. Bitterness taints every bite of food you take and you grow skinnier and thus even farther away from her than ever. She asks, so innocently, what’s wrong with you lately, and you can only stare at her as if she is the last person in the world who has the right to ask that question. But you won’t say a word because you are afraid, at this point, of what might happen if you open your mouth and let loose what’s really troubling you. You have been betrayed, skinny, but you cannot say a word because that kind of betrayal is not punishable by God’s law or by court martial.

  A betrayer needs an ally. Our condominium had a number of candidates. Skinny food-haters, dozens of them. Fifty-year-old business executives with the bodies of schoolboys. Suntanned grandmothers in string bikinis. You never see them with food in their mouths. They live on vitamin supplements and protein tablets. One of these food-haters, Bessie Carr, gave Antoinette a subversive menu guaranteed to bum away her fat in a matter of weeks.

  Antoinette refused to sit down with me and discuss it. “My darling, such diets are dangerous,” I said. She looked at me with that challenge in her eyes, but it wasn’t the same. There was no promise of fun in this new defiance. I felt sick at heart.

  “You are the one, Gabe, who is digging his grave,” she said. “And you are digging it with your mouth.”

  It was the realization of my worst fears. It had happened to me before, with the others. Am I cursed? I asked myself. A trichinosis of self-doubt undermined the shank and brisket of my soul.

  “Come, my darling,” I said one morning, hoping to retrieve something of our former happiness, “let us do a Roly-Poly.” But she looked at me with icy disgust. We hadn’t done a Roly-Poly since our honeymoon and the two or three months of high excitement that followed. Yes, it is the pinnacle of frivolity, but I was desperate. My life, once again, was listing severely and threatening to capsize.

  “Don’t be vulgar,” she said.

  We used to do it in the hot tub. It was a game. We’d get about seven hundred tins of liverwurst and Wing would open them on the electric opener. Then we would cover ourselves with the tasty paste. We would roll and slide in the drained tub, nibbling liverwurst from each other until it was gone. It was the appetizer to afternoons filled with a smorgasbord of delights. I can remember Antoinette rolling like a dolphin and murmuring, “Yummers.” Once we tried deviled ham, but it did not hold well to the skin. Those were the days. We were hot pink whales in a soupy bay.

  But now her fat was going like lard in a skillet.

  I began to eat for both of us, as if I could maintain her bulk by doubling my intake. By the time she dropped to one-fifty, I had climbed to three-eighty. I had passed my upper limit and the difference made me nervous and gassy.

  Bessie Carr used to be fat herself. She brought over an album of snapshots showing her progress from a size twenty-two to a size nine. They were at the kitchen table, poring over the pictures. I said, leaning over them, “Now hear this: There is a woman after my own heart.” I pointed to a picture of Bessie lying in a child’s wading pool. Arms and thighs, like great roasts, fell over the sides of the inadequate pool. Her breasts expanded in the buoyancy of water. They looked like fine wheels of white cheese. The pale hummock of her belly was a vast, North African kingdom. She turned the pages, however, until she found herself thin. There she was in a bikini, daylight blaring between her thighs even though she was standing in a normal way. So much daylight, quite frankly, that you could have placed an entire chicken between her upper thighs and it would have fallen to her feet without touching her! It was horrible, enough to make a leper queasy. I sighed regretfully and they both looked at me with undisguised scorn, and then pity.

  “Adipose Tissue and Its Spiritual Implications,” said the brochure I happened to find on Antoinette’s vanity. I thumbed through it. There was a good deal of nonsense about something called, “The Great Need.” It seemed that we were very hungry, but not for food.

  I went into the living room to point out the foolishness of such claims to her. She was sitting on the floor, before a black man with thickly lidded eyes. The black man was on the TV set, speaking in low tones. He was wearing a turban of some kind.

  “Antoinette,” I said. “May I have a word with you?”

  “Shh,” she said.

  “Please, my darling, we must discuss this thing.”

  She turned to me then, annoyed. “I am listening to Sri Raj,” she said sharply.

  “I would rather that you listened to me for a moment,” I said, somewhat offended.

  “No,” she said. “I’m learning about it.”

  “It?” I asked, glancing at the black man, who seemed on the verge of nodding off to sleep.

  “Life, Gabe,” she said. “I’m learning how to flower. The spiritual garden within is starving, according to Sri Raj.”

  I dropped the brochure. It fluttered to the floor beside her. “I’m going to have lunch,” I said. “I’d like you to join me, Antoinette.” I snapped off the TV set.

  This angered her. “Don’t call me Antoinette anymore!” she said. “My name is Debbie! I’ve always hated that name Antoinette!”

  “Have you now,” I said.

  “Yes, I have! It’s a pig’s name! Farmers give their eight-hundred-pound sows names like Antoinette and Veronica and... and... Emmeline!”

  “Do they,” I said.

  She turned the TV back on and the black man rolled into the screen. “Be joyful, then, as the little birds,” he said.

  I lunched alone. Wing, sensitive as ever to crisis, had made a wonderful Viennese linzertorte, one thousand calories per serving!

  “Wing, old son,” I said, affectionately. “Pack up my uniforms. I am afraid it’s time to ship out.”

  And ship out I did. I am not such a fool as one who will humiliate himself before the inevitable. I bought into another condominium up the bay toward the city. Of course, I missed her terribly. I always miss them terribly. And why shouldn’t I? It is no great pleasure to take your meals alone, is it? And what of the great restaurant hunts? The round-robin eating binges? The king-size bed with double-strength frame? Such a bed needs a great and ample queen.

  Faithful Wing drove me about the city, looking for a new companion. Wing’s careful manner at the wheel tended to hold my eagerness in check. The way he held to the speed limits, the sober way h
e lifted the gear lever, the delicate gloved hand on the wheel—all these things served as an example to my hasty mind. Haste, in such a weighty enterprise, can serve no good purpose. Had I taken more time to observe Antoinette four years ago, I might have detected the worm of discontent that eventually fouled our pleasant arrangement.

  “I think we should look for a younger one this time, Wing,” I said. “One with a simpler, more reliable outlook.”

  Wing understood immediately and turned the car toward the beach areas where the cheap fast-food restaurants thrive. We cruised the neon boulevards, scanning.

  “Starboard bow, Wing,” I said, pointing to a place called Holy Cow! It was a hamburger house shaped like Borden’s Elsie. Sitting alone on the patio, a tray of giant cheeseburgers before her, was a likely prospect, a hefty redhead of eighteen or so. Her complexion was unfortunate, perhaps, but a year of clean, expensive food properly prepared would clear it up just fine. There were other young people there, but they sat tables away, avoiding her as though she had a dreaded disease.

  We sat in the parking lot for half an hour, simply observing her. Wing had the video camera going and I was making copious notes. Even though I was wearing my elegant “King Edward” naval uniform, and would have made a smashing impression on her, we needed to exercise some empirical caution this time. But all the signs looked very good.

  The longer I watched her lift those cheeseburgers to her lonely but shameless jaws, the more convinced I was that we were meant for each other. Her name was probably Kathy, Wendy, Jean, or Pam—something that did not give credit to her true nature. I thought about it for a while, then snapped my fingers, making Wing jump.

  “Roxanne!” I said. “We shall call her Roxanne!”

  The Smile of a Turtle

  Cobb knows the cooped housewives need him. A new breed of degenerate (de-gents, Cobb calls them) has been making the headlines. A door-to-door salesman with a sharp yen for the average, haggard, wide-beam housewife. Cobb saw it in the Times yesterday morning. This de-gent peddling a glass knife guaranteed to slice overripe tomatoes. College-educated guy at that. Nice, trim, clean-cut, good suit from Bullock’s or Macy’s, and this normally cautious house-wife lets him in. He demonstrated his glass knife on her. Sliced her, diced her, iced her. Then went out to his Volvo to jerk off. Bad news. The bad old world is full of it, but Cobb’s product promises freedom from such bad dreams. He holds the three-inch chrome-plated cylinder up to the cracked (but still chained) door so that the lady can see it clearly. His blond, unlined face looks harmless and sincere and deeply concerned about Home Security. It’s his business, and Cobb has been working the hot neighborhoods of West L.A. all morning this burning day in early August.

  “You need this device, ma’am,” Cobb - says, sincere as the Eagle Scout he once a Turtle was. “Every housewife in L.A. needs it. A simple demonstration will make this abundantly clear. The de-gents, ma’am, are everywhere.” He says “ma’am” in the soft southern way to slow her trotting heart. But the gadget sells itself. And it’s a bargain at five dollars. Ten would be fair and most would pay twenty, but all he wants is the price of a movie ticket. Isn’t Home Security worth at least that much—the price, say, of Friday the 13th, Part Three or Dressed to Kill?

  She opens the door a hair wider, hooked. Cobb looks like her kid brother, or her old high school boyfriend, or maybe the nice boy who delivers the paper. All American Clean-cut. He looks harmless as a puppy. There’s even something cuddly about him, something you could pet. A dancing prickle of heat glides across the nape of her neck and into her hair line.

  Cobb is working on projecting these positive vibes. He feels that he’s able, now, to radiate serious alpha waves. His boss, Jake the Distributor, has this theory. He thinks every man and woman is an animal at heart. We respond, he says, to the animal in each other. We see it in our little unconscious moves and gestures. We see it in our eyes. The trick, says Jake the Distributor, is to identify your personal animal and let the pure alpha waves flow out of it. This is how you become a world-class salesman. Jake the Distributor has studied the subject in depth. “You,” he said to Cobb, “are obviously a turtle.” He said this at a big sales meeting and everyone laughed. Turtle, what good is a turtle, Cobb thought, humiliated, and, as if answering his thoughts, someone hollered, “Soup! Soup!” and they all laughed at him and among the laughers he identified the barking hyenas and dogs, the hooting chimps and gibbons, and the softly hissing turtles.

  Cobb bought Jake the Distributor’s theory. He made a study of turtles. The Chinese had some definite ideas about them, for instance. On the plus side, turtles are careful and shy, fond of warm mud, and ready to leave a bad scene at the first sign of trouble. On the minus side, they are shifty, shiftless, and dirty-minded. They think about getting it morning, noon, and night. They are built for getting it. Even their tails help out. The turtle tail is prehensile during the act. It holds the female close and tight and there’s no way she can detach herself once things get under way. Turtles can screw ten, fifteen times a day and not lose interest.

  But Jake the Distributor says, Emphasize the positive and you will make your fortune. Keep your fingernails clean and clipped. Wash up several times a day—you can develop a bad stink walking the neighborhoods all day long. Change your shorts. Use a strong underarm spray. Don’t touch yourself out of habit in the area of your privates while in the process of making a pitch. Keep a good shine on your shoes. Keep your nap up. Hair trimmed and combed. Teeth white, breath sweet, pits dry. Groom, groom, groom.

  It’s the brace-and-bit, though, that tends to do major harm to his first good impression. This can’t be helped—tools of the trade. Cobb tries to hold it down behind his leg. But she’s seen it and is holding her breath. So he starts his pitch, talking fast. “It’s called Cyclops, ma’am,” he says. (Southern, says Jake the Distributor, don’t forget to sound southern. They trust southern. Sound New York and you are dead meat in the street. Sound L.A. and you get no pay. Think genteel, southern Mississippi. Think graceful Georgia. But do not think Okie. Talk Okie and they will pee their drawers. Bike gangs are Okie. Bible salesmen are weirdo Okie. Think magnolia blossoms and buggy whips and mint juleps. Think Gone With the Wind. Make them think they are Scarlett O’Hara.) “The Farrago Cyclops, ma’am,” Cobb explains. “Charles V. Farrago being the name of the gentleman who invented it and who currently holds the exclusive manufacturing rights. Yes, there are many cheap imitations, ma’am, but there is only one Farrago Cyclops!”

  She stands there blinking in the crack of the chained door. She’s a mouse, Cobb begins to realize. Thirty-five to forty, afraid of sudden moves and noise, bright outdoor light always a threat, for there are hawks, there are cats. Her house is dark inside, like a nest chewed into wood by quick, small teeth. She is wearing a gray housecoat and she is nibbling something—a piece of cheese!— and Cobb almost grins in her face, pleased that he’s identified her secret animal so perfectly.

  He fights back his knowing smile, for the smile of a turtle is a philosophical thing. It tends to put things into long-term perspective. It makes the recipient think: There’s more to this situation than I presently understand. It will give the recipient a chill. A mouse will run from such a smile, though in nature mice and turtles are not enemies. But, Cobb thinks, we are not in nature. This is L.A., this is the world. He masters the smile and muscles it back to where it came from.

  “Here you go, ma’am,” he says. “Take it. Try it.” She receives it gingerly, as if it were a loaded gun with a hair trigger. Microtus pennsylvanicus, Cobb thinks, mouse, and that is what she surely was meant to be, down to the cream-cheese marrow of her small bones. He begins to think of her as “Minnie.”

  Cobb kneels down suddenly on her welcome mat. Stitched into the sisal mat are the letters of a Spanish word, bienvenido. He crouches down as low as he can get. Neighborhood children freeze with curiosity on their skateboards. The heat leans down through the perpetually grainy sky. In the north, the annua
l arsonists have set fire to the brushy hills. In the east, flash floods. Rapists, stranglers, and slashers roam the jammed tract-house valleys. Santa Ana wind, moaning in the TV antennas, spills over the mountains from the desert, electrifying the air. The ionized air lays a charge on the surface of his skin, the hair of his arms stands up stiff and surly, as if muscled, and his brain feels tacked into its casing. His back is soaked with sweat and his pits are swamps.

  “Sometimes these de-gents will ring your bell, ma’am,” he says, “and then drop down to all fours like this hoping that the lady occupant, such as yourself, will make the fatal mistake of opening the door to see what’s going on even though she didn’t see anybody in the peephole. Some of these de-gents are real weasels, take my word for it. But the Farrago Cyclops will expose them, due to the fish-eye lens system.” And he can see now that she is suddenly gripped by the idea of the sort of weasel who would ring her bell and then hide on her doorstep, waiting to spring.

  “The worst is sure to happen, ma’am” he says, gravely, “sooner or later, because of the nature of the perverted mind in today’s world. This is a proven statistical fact, known to most as Murphy’s Law.” Cobb makes a movement with his wrist, suggesting a weapon. Sledge, ax, awl, ice pick, the rapist’s long razor, the slasher’s stiletto. He shows her some crotch bulge, the possible avenger in there, coiled to strike. “You can see me, ma’am?” he asks. She gives one nod, her face crimped up as she peers into the Cyclops. “That’s it, ma’am,” says Cobb, doing Georgia, doing ’Bama. “Hold it level to the ground, as if was already in place in your door.”