by Parke Godwin
Now he profaned parental largesse. Wedding gifts. “Don’t you talk mean about those dogs! They cost my mama every green stamp she had!”
“And the furniture I hated —”
“French pervincial!”
“And the designer kitchen you never cooked anything in.”
“You know I hate to cook.”
“Hate it, my ass. You just hated the way it looked without the dishes washed.”
“I wanted things to look nice,” Letti flared back at him. She couldn’t understand any of this. Next he’d say he didn’t believe in Jesus or Reverend Falwell, “Don’t you like things to be nice?”
But restraint in Lance was a shattered dam; the torrent burst forth. “And that fold-out refrigerator full of microwave breakfasts.” The image was too vivid to be glossed over. “Just before the undertaker got to me, I looked better than a microwave breakfast, but hell, I just ate whatever you put on the plate because I didn’t know about holistic foods, and —”
He had to stop again before the most painful truths. Putting them in words, they didn’t hurt as much as he expected. “And you never liked me.”
“I don’t like this awful talk.” Letti couldn’t understand. He was supposed to come back contrite before she forgave him. “I married you, didn’t I?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Lance started down the stairs. “Admit it, Letti. You never liked me worth a damn.”
“Where you going? Lance, it wasn’t you. It was all that damn sex nonsense, I just got all turned off sometimes.”
“Letti, you were born turned off.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs, checked by an insight. “You must really love being dead. Nothing gets dirty.”
“You know what the Bible says about sex. And shit, it weren’t all that much fun for me anyhow. Can’t life just be quiet and nice and neat and —”
They were in the living room now, Lance still cataloging with a reckless finality. “Life is not neat.”
“This ain’t life,” Letti maintained. “This is our Heavenly reward – Or s’posed to be, I don’t know.”
“Well, we got shortchanged, Letti. Goodbye.”
“Where you going now?”
“I don’t know,” Lance opened the door, feeling he needed a Rhett Butler exit. “Maybe to find God.”
“He ain’t around here, that’s for sure.”
“No, He ain’t. I guess I’ll go back to the hotel for a while.”
“Back to that li’l whore?”
“I want to mean something more than the The Hero’s Lady.”
Gone too far, The holy of holies, ruined as it was, “Don’t you say a word about mah beautiful book!”
“Hell, you didn’t even write it.”
“Ah don’t care. It was NICE. It was pretty.” Letti sniffed – effectively, she hoped. “You were a hero and I was your wife.”
Lance looked up at the ceiling. “Letti, that’s what ain’t. It ain’t even minimum wage.”
“Lance, you are mah husband —”
The. door closed. Letti raised her voice to the commanding banshee screech that had always worked before. “I don’t want to start divorce proceedings on you, you heah me?” She: hurled the door open to yell it after him – but there were neighbors out in their yards, and Letti was not going to let them know her private business. Why, everyone would be looking at her in church and talking behind her back. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Letti closed the door and listened to the silence. The first thought was involuntary: least he won’t be messing up the house for a spell.
Once more she was shamed. By him. All right, she never liked him that much after high school, but they were married. When she’d fixed herself up, she was going down to that goddam hotel and by God do more than just complain to Lance Candor.
And even her nice Reverend Strutley. You wouldn’t think...
Yes, you would. Dirty old sunvabetch.
“Messy.” Letti made a microscopic adjustment in the magazine display on her walnut veneer coffee table, rearranged the roses that looked so nice. Her pink ceramic clock on the mantel chimed the half hour, and Letti turned from the mundane to matters of the heart.
“Shit. Upstairs.”
The rooms weren’t straight, not really. Lance couldn’t walk through a room without messing something up, and there was her makeup to do over. After all, someone might come. Damn women like Bernice, they had eyes everywhere and always saw something you missed.
Lance felt liberated and defiant as he rode the elevator up to his room. His image in the mirror-paneled walls invited innovation. He added a cigarette. Pleased by the rakish result, he went all the way with a battered slouch hat and trenchcoat. He saluted the classic image and the early retirement of Letti to grass-widowhood: “So long, shweethaht.”
Sherry was still out but the red light flashed on the answering machine. The recorded voice was Sherry’s, throaty with a new hormonal brusqueness.
“Hi, buddy, this is Sher. Just dropped back to leave this message. I don’t want to fuck up your karma or anything like that.” A pause, an audible sigh. “Man, this is heavy.” The intonations were all wrong for Sherry, not her song at all. More like Lance’s old basketball coach in the locker room.
“But like there’s heavy changes in my horoscope, and I’ve met this really significant woman from another planet. Life has called me to Purji’s side. Back soon. Ciao.” Click!
“Purji?” Lance stared, mystified, at the answering machine that just delivered a karate chop to his future. “But she’s... where are you, Sherry? I just broke up with Letti and you’re not even here. What d’you mean life has called you to... what?”
“I’m sorry,” the machine responded in an authoritative masculine voice. “I record messages. I neither comment nor enlarge.”
“Ali, shut up.”
“Oh, very good. Abuse a captive device. Do you think I’m having fun?” the machine complained. “A creative artist, acclaimed in the field of science fiction, who lived a legend and died rich I ask you: is this a post life for a genius? Recording the labored locutions of an ambivalent flake like Ginsberg? Rather oblivion.” The voice went limp with self-pity. “Were it not better to be a mere memo pad? Degradation...”
Lance was intrigued in spite of himself. “You died from sci-fi?”
“The term is SF,” the machine corrected archly. “There’s a lot of it going around, but no. I died rich from starting a religion.”
“Now, that’s blasphemy.”
“No, Mr. Candor, that’s commerce. In science fiction, good bullshit goes for eight cents a word. In theology, you name your own price.”
“That’s not true.”
A verbal shrug. “So how come I died rich? This job is a bad rap, but there are compensations. A perfect disguise until I work my next angle. You know what religion needs?”
Lance sat down, thinking of the whole last month. “How about truth?”
“Oh, ye of little smarts,” the machine chided. “The secret is to find what people really want and call it self-awareness. Which means you do what you would anyway but without the lip service of guilt. Did I have angles? I was working on an orthodox diet that kept you slim and one hundred percent cancer-free. We couldn’t miss. But hark!”
“Hark what?”
“I am picking up vibrations,” the machine informed him. “Leather boots coming this way. Ms. Ginsberg, I presume. Excuse me. I will not intrude.” Beep.
Scheherazade gusted in, waving casually to Lance as she pulled her backpack out of a closet. “Hi, fella. Get my message?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand it.” Lance did a double-take at her black leather ambience. “What are you dressed like that for? You look like Marlon Brando.”
Scheherazade grabbed clothes out of the dresser. “That’s the message.”
Lance was totally at sea, still unbalanced by his own crossing of the Rubicon. He wanted to talk about it, wanted Sherry to admire and reassure
him. That would be only natural for the woman he loved, but she didn’t even look like one now.
“What was this about Purji? What’s she got to do with us?”
“Everything. She’s very relevant to where I am now.”
“Relevant?”
“Lance, I’m in love. I have to follow my star.”
“What star?” he struggled to comprehend. “She’s a girl.” Her packing didn’t miss a beat. “You better believe it.”
“You’re a girl.”
“Men know nothing of the feminine mystique. Where’s my tantric tapes?”
At least he thought she was a girl – his salvation, his education and pearl of great price. Realization dawned in a bleak light. “You mean you’re a dick?”
“A what?”
“A female queer?”
“That’s dyke, Lance.” Scheherazade frowned at him. “It is the term of a chauvinist bigot. Try alternate life-style. I am exploring all my potential as a woman.”
He stared at her, miserable. From first class on the flagship of a roseate future, he had become a stowaway set adrift. “Sherry, I’m serious. I left Letti.”
“That is a very positive karmic move. That woman, even B. O. would leave her. Hey, I like the trenchcoat.”
“I left her for you, Sherry. I’m in love with you.”
“Of course you are, baby.” She dropped the backpack and came to him. “When I’m hetero, I am a force for good in the pool of life, but you gotta be holistic about this. Life is a turning wheel.”
“And you just hung one helluva left without signals. What – what does all this mean?”
“Life has called me to her side,” she said simply. “Just as it called me to yours. You don’t have to understand fate to accept it.”
Grief mixed with adoration. Lance tried to accept the inevitable. “So it’s goodbye?”
“Who knows, fella?”
“Just let me see you the way you were... before. One last time.”
“I can’t, buddy.” Scheherazade sat down beside him. “It wouldn’t be me anymore. But wherever I go, I’ll always remember you. I want you to keep the peace signs and the Ché poster.”
“Sherry, you’re tearing my heart out!”
“I’ll be seeing you,” she promised, “in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces all day through.”
The memory was bittersweet to Lance. “I always loved you when you were lyrical. Our room. The dungeon where we first touched and I knew my heart could sing.” He wasn’t at all surprised when the violins crept in under their farewell; he had expected them.
“In a small café, the park across the way. The children’s carousel —”
“Sherry, I think I’m going to cry.”
“The chestnut tree, the wishing well.”
“Your beautiful pink hair. The way it always changed color with your moods.”
“I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day —”
“Playing Mantovani while we made love.”
“In everything that’s light and gay —”
“The way you hate underwear.”
“I’ll always think of you that way. I’ll find you in the morning sun and when the night is new —”
The strings broke off in a trembling hush.
“And you never used my razor to shave your legs.”
“Baby, love is little things like that.” Scheherazade kissed him lightly in farewell.
If life called Lance Candor to drama, he would be equal to it. He wiped his eyes and tried a tough grin; a survivor, wounded but resilient. “So long, baby, I’ll keep your razor by the tub.”
The phone buzzed softly.
“If that’s Letti,” Lance suggested, “I’m not here.”
“If that’s her, neither am I.” Scheherazade went back to her packing.
Lance expected Letti and a shrill stream of invective at the other end of the phone; he held the instrument at a safe distance. “Hello?”
Rather than the squawk of his wife, the urbane tones were an aural blessing. “Mr. Candor? This is Coyul. Purji and I are in the lobby; thought we’d drop up to see if we put you together correctly. Not the easiest job going, and we don’t get much practice.”
With a lot on his mind, Lance was late on the uptake. “Uh... Prince?”
“Just Coyul, old fellow. No hard feelings about the trial, I hope, but we should look you over.”
Lance covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Coral and Purji. They want to come up.”
“Purji?” Scheherazade scooted for the bathroom. “Bring her on!”
Immediately there was a polite knock at the door. The visitors had skipped the elevator and simply materialized outside. Scheherazade tore out of the bathroom, slapping her checks with Lance’s aftershave. “A vivre, baby! To live is to know the heart of drama. A marital confrontation!”
“I had one for breakfast.”
“So it’s my turn” Scheherazade hurled open the door, beaming at Purji, “I knew you’d come.”
20
The more things change...
“Well.” Coyul surveyed his restoration job. “How are we getting on? Everything in the right place?”
“Right on.” Scheherazade devoured Purji with her eyes, “Perfecto.”
“I’m not so sure.” Lance sounded that way.
“Give us half a minute to check you out. Purji, inspect Ms. Ginsberg.”
“Please don’t dash,” Scheherazade implored, covering her eyes. “I still got dots.”
“You won’t feel a thing,” Purji promised. “Here we go.”
For a few seconds, Lance and Scheherazade were alone. Lance squirmed with an unscratchable itch. “Sort of tickles.”
“Kinky,” Scheherazade said in a voice full of wonder. “These are weird but wonderful beings.”
The inspectors materialized again, reassured. “Not a corpuscle out of place.”
Purji patted Scheherazade’s butch-cropped head. “Coyul?”
“Clean bill of health, although Lance feels better than he looks. What’s the matter?”
“Ask her.” Lance collapsed into a chair. “I feel awful. It’s not your fault, sir,” he added hastily. “I want to apologize for blowing you up.”
The gracious Prince waved it away. “Professional hazard. As you’ve discovered, traumatic but hardly permanent. What’s the problem?”
Lance hunched over his knees, a tragic figure. “I left Letti for Scheherazade, and now she’s left me for Purji.”
“It’s planetary changes,” Scheherazade defended herself. “Can I help it?”
“That’s why the sinister ensemble.” Coyul took closer note of her costume. “You look like a satanic biker. Purji, have you been irresponsible?”
“Don’t be stodgy, dear. To have a public entails obligation. Had to allow it on Keljia now and then.”
“There, you see?” Scheherazade glowed. “We shall overcome. Were there many sisters, baby?”
“It’s their Bronze Age. They’re all too busy trying to live past thirty-five.”
“You of all people,” Coyul reproved. “Playing musical bedrooms. Promiscuous.”
“Coyul, you’re putting a nasty human complexion on the whole thing. Sherry, please try to understand —”
“I do.” The ardent Scheherazade tried to embrace her. “The first time I opened my eyes and saw you leaning over me, bells rang and I turned on.”
“What can I do?” Purji appealed to Coyul. “Help me, will you?”
“Me?” He folded his arms. “Lie in your own bed, you turn coat.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You did, you made love to me,” Scheherazade insisted. “It was to die.”
“No, child. You made love to me. You were enjoying yourself so, it didn’t seem good manners to interrupt.”
“Sherry, not only have you broken my heart,” Lance in toned darkly, “you are depraved.”
“Nonsense,” Purji sniffed. “She’s bare
ly proficient.”
“I am too,” Scheherazade hurled back, stung to the quick. “I am a primal force!”
An arguable point to Coyul, who had seen more attractive buffalo. “Well, how was it, dear? Primal?”
“Oh... popcorn without butter.”
“Snails without garlic?”
“There you have it: something missing. Sherry, did I get that gall bladder in right?”
“She’s ruined,” Lance groaned. “The love of my life and she just wants to be my brother.”
“What can I tell you?” said Scheherazade, creature of the moment. “Scorpios are unstable.”
To Coyul the definition was inadequate. She was a sexual traffic hazard.
“I know fate like I know good grass,” the hazard appealed to Purji in tones husky with hormone. “Be any kind of light you want. I’ll wear shades.”
Lance got up, resigned. “I don’t need to see this. Goodbye, Coyul. Thank you for everything.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Out there, like Speed. Out into the dark. That’s all there is for me now.”
“Marchbanks to the core.”
“I do love you, Lance,” Scheherazade vowed despite defection, “but a star is to follow.”
“Stars change,” Purji reminded her, “Consider the age difference alone. There you’ll be, the rekindled flame of Topside and myself the pitiful castoff of your wearied lust.”
“Honey, that’s then,” Scheherazade bleated. “This is now.”
“All you have is now,” Lance said. “That’s all you’ll ever have. And when your goddamn sign changes again, where’ll you be, Sherry? All alone, that’s where.”
“Only a large soul could love a goddess or give her up,” said Coyul.
“Think how much time we could have.” Lance held out his arms, inviting. “Eternity almost. I need you, Sherry. I’ve been burning bridges all morning. You’ve always talked about commitment but you haven’t even lit a match.”