Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  He loved women, but—this was something he could never tell anyone, not even Jimmy—he wanted an attractive girlfriend mainly as a ticket into the world of men. Men respected men who were able to get attractive women in the sack. Not that he didn’t appreciate sex. He did. He liked it, even though it made him nervous, all the what-do-I-do-now stuff, and the questions he couldn’t ask. Are you getting anything out of this? Does this finger do something for you? Up and down or sideways? Most disgraceful of all, he could not come unless the woman came first, or if she was at the very least having a good time. This meant that prostitutes were a waste of good money. The pity fuck, which had seemed like a decent target for a while, was also a no-go. Pilar figured this out about him early on in their year together, and to her credit, she quit putting a pillow over her head. She learned to pretend, and he learned to accept her fake moaning as the real thing. He thought—he was still sure—she had grown to like the whole rigmarole. He’d even imagined that maybe she wouldn’t want to break up after she passed her exam. That hadn’t happened, but she had given him an extra, off the calendar, adios plunge, which had to mean something.

  Billy wanted these men at the table of this overwhelmingly mediocre bar to like him. Oh sure, he had matured a lot in recent years, but the approval of these three strangers touched on that remnant feeling from his boyhood, and hadn’t it, after all, been the principal source of all the vitality in his life? Anything that he ever accomplished—he wasn’t going to ruin the thought by trying to make a list—he owed to that desire to be accepted by other men.

  He speculated on the thoughts going through the Haos’ heads. They were likely thinking about noble things, like art and beauty and naked women. Or maybe they were just as disposed to make a good impression. Billy had no way of knowing. The sole exception to all this was Jimmy Candler. The one person who saw him for who he was and said good enough for me. Billy sipped his beer and imagined Jimmy with the barefoot woman. They’d be at the house by now. They might be sitting side by side on the couch. They might be in the kitchen, leaning against the counter while they drank water. They might be in Jimmy’s bedroom. Or maybe he was giving her a tour of the place, his hand on the small of her back. She would see Billy’s room then. She would look at the bed where he would sleep tonight. He should have made the bed, but still, it was nice to imagine her there.

  Item One:

  You can’t live in a goddamn garret over some lawyer’s office if you want to be the director of a giant operation. Get out of Onyx Springs but not all the way to San Diego. Maybe a place in the foothills or out in the county? A place with class? Someplace where you could entertain if you had to?

  Item Two:

  Forget about this matchbook PhD program. They aren’t going to hire a student to direct a multimillion-dollar organization. Once you’re top pooch, you’ll make more money than the psychologists, anyway, who are a bunch of whack-jobs who spend all their time thinking about other people’s boners. You’ll come to despise and distrust them, take my word.

  Item Three:

  Ditch the truck. You can’t drive around people with deep pockets in a beat-up Tacoma with a hundred thousand miles on the ticker. Get something with flair, a little style, some class. Notice how that word class keeps coming up? Don’t be afraid of standing out. The bossman ought to stand out.

  Item Four:

  Does your office always have to smell of Lysol?

  Item Five:

  Your hair gets shaggy. Do not let that happen. Keep in mind that most of the board members still think if they can’t see the top of your ears, you’re a hippie. Look the part, and you’ll become the right actor for the part.

  Item Six:

  Quit dipping your stick in every warm piece that shakes her butt at you. Settle down. Or at least appear to settle down until you’re officially anointed. I’m dead serious about this. Nothing will screw the pooch faster. You’ve got to remember this basic fact: no one on the board has had sex with a woman in five or six decades. They see you having fun, they’re gonna take it personally.

  Item Seven:

  Be yourself. Otherwise.

  The pickup truck pulled into the parking lot of Congregation of Holy Waters Museum, which was downtown, across from the Onyx Springs Old Farts Facility, and Maura got out. She had visited the museum on a field trip—a dull local show-n-tell with nothing to look at but old clothes. Alonso’s place was nearby, and she had a general idea how to get there.

  Ernie, the less gruesome one, volunteered to drive her farther to look for the street, but she’d had enough of them. Bert asked if he could have her underwear, and though she liked the idea of telling Mick that it cost her the very panties off her bottom to make the trip, she didn’t let Bert have them. That act was in the one-thing-leads-to-another category, and she had already made such a mistake by letting his finger have the run of her vagina.

  “You okay here?” Ernie asked.

  She told him she was fine. As they drove off, the stereo in the pickup was suddenly turned up loud, some predictable thumper rock, but the truck accelerated slowly. Ernie, driving, wanted to draw no attention, while Bert, wailing up the tunes, was celebrating. She had made Bert’s night, she understood, while frightening the hell out of Ernie. She was their adventure: Maura Wood, the human personification of adventure. She watched the truck disappear with the combined feelings of relief and pride—and something else, a slippery something she couldn’t name that swam her body and rested in the marrow, making her bones feel alternately bloated and hollow.

  Alonso lived on Lapin Avenue, and she knew from the map in her room that Lapin crossed Main Street not far from here. She was confident she’d find it. The street name reminded her of something Mick had told her. His mother was the niece or grand niece or second cousin or something of an actress from the black-and-white days: Ida Lupino. It sounded like a made-up name, like Anita Peter, or I. P. Freely, but one time at Barnstone’s house she looked her up online, and Ida Lupino was beautiful just the way Mick was. She liked going to Barnstone’s. Besides the workshop and the occasional field trip, her visits to Barnstone’s were her only legit trips off campus. A freaky ex-patient lived with her, some scary-looking guy who hardly ever talked. Maura’s mother liked what she called a tight ship; Barnstone’s ship would sink like a cement block. But the house was comfortable. Maura didn’t have to worry about ruining a veneer. She needed to find some way to make Barnstone her ally in the recruitment—seduction? Was she the kind of person who could seduce another person? She needed Barnstone’s advice about Mick.

  Lapin Street was just far enough from downtown to be residential, a typical Southern California neighborhood with a combination of green yards and cactus fiascos covered with orange rocks. There were trees here and there, and lots of bougainvillea. She spotted Rhine’s scooter parked by the curb and checked the address of the house. Alonso’s place had grass in its yard. She knew he lived in the garage apartment. She didn’t see Mick’s car, but the street might have been full of cars earlier, and his ridiculous humper was probably parked around the corner. She checked her watch. Not even eleven o’clock. He’d be here, and he’d be happy to see her.

  If she was still in school and a teacher offered a class in “Maura Wood Climbs the Stairs,” and the teacher was actually good at his job and it was Maura’s only class, she might ultimately be able to account for the weird flux of emotions that made her big and then small, wide and then narrow, as she stepped up the dozen stairs to the lighted windows over the two-car garage. It seemed to take a long time, that climb, as if she were on a rickety ladder that leaned over a dark precipice. The image embarrassed her, and she might have slowed even more to come up with something less melodramatic. Shadows appeared on the curtains, elongated and not quite human in shape. Her climb of that flight of stairs was like a condemned man climbing to the gallows, where maybe the governor waited with a pardon but . . . Crap, there was no way that was less melodramatic.r />
  At the same time, despite the excitement and trepidation that carried her up the steps, she also understood that she was a teenager with a crush on a boy who liked but didn’t love her, and despite how large Mick Coury loomed at this moment in her mind, he was just a boy with nice eyes and a brain that had to be tuned daily with medications to keep it operating. Which meant what? That even as she felt this was one of the most important nights of her life, she also understood she was embracing the role so tightly that it was slightly phony, like a girl playing house but with details from a specific movie, so she was playing Scarlett Johansson playing house, and she herself was suddenly the least important element in her own play.

  She knocked on the door.

  Alonso swung the door open. “Maura!” he barked out. “Rhine, it’s Maura!”

  Rhine appeared next to him in a freaky suit like a bad carnival ride. “You just missed Karly,” he said sadly. “She was supposed to ride home on my cycle.”

  Maura understood what that meant. Mick’s car was gone and Karly was with him.

  “Maura’s crying,” Rhine said. “Maura, are you crying?”

  She thought to say, Somebody raped me, but she didn’t want anyone to know, and it wasn’t even true, was it? It was just a finger, and she didn’t even mind, did she? She had told him to go ahead, and if Mick were here, she wouldn’t even be upset, would she?

  Alonso rocked from one foot to the other, staring at Maura. Crying made her into someone he didn’t know. Rhine understood, though. He might cry if he went to a party and just missed Karly. He had almost cried when she left with Mick.

  “I didn’t cry tonight, Maura, but I’m a man,” he offered, as words of condolence. “I can give you a ride on my cycle, Maura. It’s parked on this side of the street. You can see it from the porch. Look, Maura. See my cycle?”

  Candler and the barefoot woman walked the few blocks to his house, the giant frame-and-stucco ranch-style job with a fatuous front room—the great room, the real estate agent called it. The high ceiling had a dopey chandelier that looked like an oversized bird’s nest made of glass. He didn’t turn on the light for fear she would comment on the thing. He had not done much with the place: hung framed prints by the Impressionists, kept the sheets clean, dishes washed. Every other week a Guatemalan woman vacuumed and scrubbed. Before too long, a plague of mortgage failures would cause the value of the house to drop ninety thousand dollars below the amount Candler owed, and he would walk away from it. By that time, the circumstances of his life would be radically altered.

  “Home,” he said.

  “I’ve got to pee,” the woman replied.

  He took her through his bedroom to what the real estate agent had called the master bathroom and he had thought masturbation room, and even now he wouldn’t let himself say master bathroom for fear of saying masturbation room. God, he was drunker than he’d thought. He nabbed the framed photo of Lolly and him in Trafalgar Square, tucking it in his underwear drawer. He was ridiculously pleased with himself to have this woman here and have the bed made and condoms in the nightstand. If there were going to be doubts and self-recrimination, they would have to wait for sobriety and daylight. It was, quite obviously, the kind of night that might cause him trouble. Or maybe it was a freebie, a night he’d never have to fret about. He might treasure it as a secret rebellion against the promise of fidelity for the remainder of his life. The message light on his answering machine was blinking. Probably Mrs. Coury, or possibly Mick himself. But, no, it was his cell phone he used with clients. It was likely Lolly then, and he certainly did not want to hear her voice at this particular moment. What was it she called a condom? A French letter. He laughed aloud. In the bathroom, the medicine cabinet door creaked. Candler pushed open the bathroom door.

  “Looking for something?” he asked.

  “Evidence of a wife,” the young woman said. He still did not know her name. She had a nice, slightly crooked smile. She turned away from him to flush the toilet.

  “Ain’t got no wife,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “sure it does.”

  She put her arms around him, leaning against him so that he backpedaled to the bed, falling onto it with her on top of him. Their heads bumped.

  “I have a riddle for you,” she said, settling on him, her hands in his hair, his hands lifting her skirt. “How does the Venus de Milo scratch her butt?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “How?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a fucking mystery.”

  They kissed and the clothing came off.

  Long after the Haos left and the band quit playing, Billy Atlas and Enrique drank together. When their strength was fortified to the point of falling down, they picked themselves up and approached two women sitting alone at a nearby table.

  “Men,” one of the women said, as they advanced, “who’d’ve thought we’d meet men?”

  The other woman laughed.

  “So charm us,” the first woman demanded.

  She was likely forty, Billy guessed, almost a decade more experienced than he, and the top she wore, which was made of a shiny turquoise material, was too tight, squeezing her breasts up and out as if they had just bubbled to the surface of a mountain lake. Enrique immediately chose the other one, leaving Billy with the talker.

  “I’m Billy,” he told her.

  “Like the goat,” she replied, adjusting her glossy top. “You’ve got big teeth, don’t you?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “You could use some sun, too. We’re both drinking piña coladas.”

  “I’ll get this round,” Enrique said. He knew Billy was out of dough. “Yours is cuter,” Billy’s gal said to the other woman.

  “Yours is better dressed,” she responded, which made Billy look appraisingly at his clothing: the suit he had borrowed from Candler’s closet.

  “I’m pretty drunk,” he said. “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “I assume you know how things work.” The woman’s mouth had a natural frown. Her whole face seemed defined by lingering disappointment. “You have to pursue me, buy me drinks, give me compliments, put out for a few meals, maybe some flowers if you’re a real catch, and, I don’t know, let’s say a bracelet, and then I let you in my bed.”

  “That sounds about right,” Billy said. “Or we could skip that long first part.”

  She snorted. “Fat chance.” After a moment she added, “Don’t bother being funny unless you absolutely have to. I’m not all that impressed with funny.”

  “I’ll try not to be,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”

  “After we go to bed a few times,” she said, picking up the thread, “you’ll act like a shit, and I’ll start feeling bad about myself. We’ll get into an argument at some revolting restaurant where you’ve taken me to save a few stinking pennies. We’ll make up, break up, see a counselor, and so on until we can’t stand the sight of each other.”

  The way she looked at him, it was clear he had to contribute something. Her eyes were hopeful while the remainder of her face was steeped in a combo plate of cynicism and low expectations. It occurred to him that she hadn’t offered her name.

  “I’m Billy,” he said again.

  “Like the fucking goat,” she said.

  Her name was Alice, and she worked at Neiman Marcus in leather goods and travel commodities. Enrique made it back with the drinks, but Billy could only stare at the frosted glass of beer, a pretty color but he had passed his limit. He was starting a new job in the morning. Alice had siblings, parents, a condo, a cat, a 401(k) with a hefty number of zeros, a used Rabbit, and plans to take a cruise to Alaska. She thought it likely that she could spend the rest of her life working for Neiman Marcus because she liked leather and had no larger ambitions. That statement came off as a challenge, but Billy let it slide. He offered but she did not w
ant to hear anything about his peyote vision.

  “Hearing about somebody’s psychedelic trip is like listening to another person’s dream,” she said, “boring as hill.” She wanted to know what he did for a living.

  By this time, Billy understood the futility of the truth, and yet he was reluctant to commit an out-and-out lie. “I’m not a psychologist, exactly,” he said. “You want to hear about a patient?”

  “As long as it’s not a long story. I don’t like long stories.”

  “There was this boy in the army, and he wanted out,” Billy said. “So I wrote a report that got him out.”

  “That was short.”

  “Actually, it’s my friend who’s not a psychologist, not me.”

  “You’re not not a psychologist?”