Strangers

by Mort Castle

  Beth said, “There’s a distance, Michael, a distance between us. It’s there, I feel it, and it worries me.”

  “I…” He praised himself for the pause. He considered tossing in a bit of head-scratching and rejected it—too hayseed. Robert DeNiro an actor? Shit, he could sign up for lessons from Michael Louden!

  Michael said seriously, “I guess I do know what you mean. I’ve felt that, too, in the times I slow down enough to realize what the heck is going on.” He made his shoulders sag. “A lot of it’s probably me, you know. Ever since Vern gave me the promotion, I’ve had nothing but business on my mind. That’s yanked me out of the real world, the world we’ve made together.”

  Beth said, “I know there are pressures on you.”

  Pressures? He thought. What the hell could she know about the daily pressures of a Stranger? He said, “I guess, but I’m sorry I’ve been so out of it, so far away from you. I don’t mean to be, okay?”

  “Sure,” Beth said, with “not-so-sure” tentativeness.

  “Honest to God, Beth,” he went on, “you’re the one person in my life I always want to feel close to.”

  He tried a hopeful, mischievous smile. “I have an idea about how we can maybe bridge that distance between us. With Marcy and Kim not coming home from camp until tomorrow, we’ve got the house empty all tonight yet, just you and me. We can…get close anywhere we please. The kitchen even, or the rec room or”—he made the smile grow— “right on the living room carpet. We’ll be romantic! I’ll build a fire…”

  He had her laughing now. No problem, no Problem at all, he thought.

  “A fire? You goof! It’s so hot…”

  “So we’ll have the fire and turn the air conditioning all the way up!”

  Beth’s laughter ended abruptly. She said softly, “Oh, I do want to be with you, Michael, really with you.”

  “And that’s what tonight is all about,” he said. “Now, I’ll tell you, I’ve promised Zeller I’d come over for a beer…”

  “He does get lonely,” Beth said, implying that Zeller wasn’t the only one who did.

  “…And as soon as I get back,” Michael continued, “I’ll bicycle over to Kentucky Fried. We’ll gobble up chicken, then we can take a shower—you and me.” He leered. “How ‘bout it, kiddo? You soap mine and I’ll soap yours, huh? Then we’ve got the whole night ahead, and…”

  “All right,” Beth said. She smiled. “Yes, that sounds fine.”

  “Then that’s what we do.”

  Okay, he thought, as he wheeled the lawnmower to the garage, she was mollified for the time being. He knew, though, it wouldn’t last. He understood the humdrum rhythms and monotonous cadences, the mundane dialogues and typical scenes of his all-too-usual marriage. Tonight, he would give her a royal screwing—maybe a couple—and she’d interpret sex as a re-establishing of temporarily lost intimacy. And that would make her want to talk—a “serious discussion” about “where we are and where we’re going” as individuals, as a man and wife, as a family. And she’d probably belabor him with her typically indecisive jibber-jabber about whether she ought to go back to college. Maybe he’d be able to hold her off, though, if he really gave her a pounding tonight, wore her down and out so that sleeping was all she had on her excuse for a mind.

  Beth called to him as he stepped into the garage. She wanted the hedge clipper so she could get the shrubs lining the driveway.

  The two and a half car garage sheltered his Ford LTD and Beth’s Chevette Scooter, his tools and workbench, her gardening supplies, the family’s bicycles, all the “should haves” of the suburbs. Michael was certain his garage was no different than any of the other garages in Park Estates. It was the garage of a model citizen in a model community.

  Leaving the garage, he handed Beth the wooden handled clippers. He teasingly pinched the outlined nipple of a small firm breast. “Back real soon,” he promised, and went next door.

  Sitting in the lawn chair, Michael didn’t even have time to cross his legs before Zeller was in and back out of the sliding glass door to the kitchen with two cans of Old Milwaukee. At the comer of the patio, Dusty lay in the shade of the gas grill. The black and white, fuzzy, terrier—and—God—knows—what opened his eyes and peered at Michael. The dog apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort to struggle up on his arthritic legs to welcome him with the customary sniff.

  “Hell of a hot one,” Brad said, raising his beer can in a toast to whatever. He sat on a chair on the other side of a TV snack tray on which was a muttering portable radio, the volume low, tuned to WBBM, Chicago’s all-news station.

  Zeller was, Michael saw, already two sheets to the wind. Brad spent his afternoons drinking beer; the evenings, harder stuff. “Yeah,” Michael said, “it’s a hot one for certain.”

  Zeller said, “Course it’s not so much the heat, it’s the humidity.”

  “That’s right,” Michael said. He raised an eyebrow as though struck by an important thought. “I bet some people never think about that, but you hit the nail right on the head. You can handle the heat okay, but the humidity… When it’s muggy-like, it seems hotter than it is, you know what I mean, and when you’ve got that, it’s not really so much the heat as it is the humidity.”

  Brad Zeller gave him a slow, alcoholic blink. “I guess,” he said, his voice questioning.

  Careful, Michael cautioned himself. Boozy Brad was no moron. Oh, he was no smarter than the rest of them, the “normals” who had lengthy discussions about gas mileage, prostate operations, and overpaid sports stars, but drunkard or no, if you dumped enough shit at old Zeller’s feet, eventually he’d notice the stink.

  “So how’s it going, pal?” Michael asked.

  “What’s there to say?” Zeller replied, and then he began saying it, the familiar litany of complaint, laments, and regrets. Dusty’s adenoidal snore provided the sound track for Brad Zeller’s life story. Michael inserted “uh-huh” and “That’s right” and “I know what you mean” when appropriate.

  Brad had retired from office products sales four years ago at age sixty-two—and no, he didn’t want to get out but the bastards made it clear they wanted him out. Eight months later, his wife of forty years was dead of cancer, at which point Brad Zeller retired from life. Joanie, the Zellers’ only child, was a goddamned mess, a member of a wacko cult in California, living on natural foods and cosmic bliss. She didn’t even come home for her mother’s funeral—“the snot nose”—and for sure she didn’t give a rat’s fuzzy ass about her old man; she was a forty-two year old, self-centered, spoiled brat.

  “You’re a lucky guy, Michael,” Zeller said. “Your kids are little sweethearts. Marcy and Kim might be the only kids in the country who know how to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you.’

  Michael’s smile was fittingly modest and proud. “They are pretty good girls,” he admitted, “but they’re no angels. They do goof sometimes but, all in all, I’m not griping.”

  Michael raised his beer and sipped. “Ready for a fresh?” Zeller said. Zeller was; he was rising to get another. Michael said he didn’t need another beer yet.

  No, too much alcohol and you could lose control. The act always had to be perfect—always—never giving them the least scent of suspicion. And that’s why it was so damnably difficult, the unending pretense that was a minute by infinite minute denial of yourself as you were!

  Zeller returned from his beer run, plopped down, snapping the top of the Old Milwaukee—Dusty slowly got up. Stiff-legged, he lurched over to Brad, sitting by his chair, pink tongue lolling.

  Brad scratched the dog’s head. Dusty shut his eyes with pleasure and burped.

  Suddenly, Brad turned his head to squint at the portable radio. He quickly thumbed up the volume. “You hear about this?” he asked. Glenvale Road. Police are investigating… We’ll be back with coverage of the…”

  Zeller dialed the radio down to a ticking chatter. He shook his head. “Glenvale Road, that’s only eight, ten miles from here.”<
br />
  “I know,” Michael said, “but what happened? I didn’t catch it.”

  “Guy got killed last night. Just awful. Murdered him, cut his throat. Didn’t even steal anything is what the cops say.”

  “Jeez,” Michael said. “You don’t figure stuff like that can happen out here in the south suburbs.’ Maybe it was a mob thing. Drugs, maybe.”

  “Cops don’t think so, is what I hear,” Zeller said. “It was just a guy. Here or anywhere else, it’s getting so no one’s safe. World’s not what it used to be, everything is nuts…”

  Brad Zeller began his editorial on the problems of modern society. Straining, Dusty hoisted his hindquarters, waddled over to Michael, a nose on the shin demanding attention. Michael petted him.

  Zeller’s monologue came to a sheepishly grinned conclusion. “Damn it, I’m boring you. You get old, that’s your hobby. You bore people.”

  “No way, Brad,” Michael insisted. “I always enjoy talking with you. You know that.”

  “Ah,” Zeller waved a hand, “I get a little batty, no one to talk to, so I unload on you, Michael. Tell you, I’ve thought about selling, moving to a retirement condo, but this house, I’ve got memories here. I don’t want to wait to die surrounded by a bunch of strangers.”

  Michael covered his smile with his hand. “Sure,” he said.

  Zeller pointed to Dusty. “I talk to that little guy a lot.”

  “Dusty is a good dog,” Michael said. “I like dogs, always have. They have sense. A dog likes a guy, that’s someone you know you can trust.”

  “Dogs have that kind of instinct,” Zeller said.

  Michael tickled behind Dusty’s ear. He did like dogs. A friendly dog’s eyes held a look of stupidly blissful trust until the very instant you killed it.

  “You know, maybe sometime soon I’ll go to the humane society and pick up a surprise pooch for the kids,” Michael said. He chuckled. “Be a better pet for ’em than those ugly guinea pigs they have.”

  “Kids ought to have a dog,” Zeller said.

  “Thing is,” Michael said, “if we get one, I don’t want to give him a typical name. I’d like something unusual—imaginative, you know. Maybe King or Rex.”

  Zeller hesitated, then said, “Those are okay names.”

  “What about Sport? Maybe Prince? What do you think of Duke?”

  Zeller was staring—then he grinned. “Ali, You’re kidding me, Michael.”

  Turn it off, Michael ordered himself. “Yes,” he said, “that’s me. Always kidding around.” He drained the final mouthful of beer; it was as warm as it was flat. He clicked the can down on the snack tray and rose.

  “How about you drop over for dinner some night this week, Brad? Afterward, you and I can do some serious drinking and come up with solutions of all the world’s problems.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that,” Brad said, his voice rough with appreciation.

  “See you soon, then,” Michael said. “You, too, Dusty, old fella,” he added.

  The dog wagged his tail at the sound of his name.

  Beth had reached the end of the driveway shrubbery. From the nape of her neck an aching tiredness radiated down through her shoulders and arms. Her fingers were stiff and sore from squeezing the hedge clipper to snap off any twig that failed to conform to her vision of what the bushes should look like.

  Standing on the sidewalk for a better view, she was pleased with her efforts. Nice job with the out-of-doors—and, come to think of it, she wasn’t any too bad with the indoors—either. She had an eye for color and composition; she liked the way she’d decorated their home and felt comfortable in it. And if finances were okay next month, then those antique crystal lamps would be perfect in the living room…

  Is that all there is? The remembered lyric from an old Peggy Lee song floated through her head, souring the pleasure she’d felt. Was that all there was for her? Yardwork and housework, prettifying this and that, raising kids and clipping coupons, traditional woman’s work in a time when women were throwing away tradition. Good God! She knew and was friendly with every woman on the block, and was a real friend to none of them; comparing cures for childhood diseases or chatting about soap operas was hardly a basis for a true friendship.

  She just had to find something that would stimulate her mind, get her intellectually excited as once she’d been—assuming her mind wasn’t ten years past its shelf life with disuse!

  With a wave, Michael bicycled past her. She turned her head to watch him ride down Walnut, the sun ahead of him. For a moment, it was as though he had merged with the sunlight, the outline of the leap-hipped man melting in golden-silver, his shoulders and head seeming transfigured as though by an internal radiance.

  The thought surprised her, though it was a thought she’d had before. She watched the receding silhouette of the man on the bicycle and in her mind she said, I do not know who he is. She had a feeling not unlike the one of leaving the house and then, an hour later, not being sure—only somewhat sure—that she’d unplugged the coffeepot.

  Oh, it was ridiculous, she thought. They’d been married twelve years. She knew the jokes Michael would tell at parties, knew he liked his eggs over easy and could not tolerate them scrambled, knew exactly what type of sweetly sentimental card he’d give her on her birthday, Mother’s Day, anniversary, even Sweetest Day, he never forgot—knew the mole on his behind, the way his little toes curled under, the faded white scar on his knee.

  But with all her knowing, the myriad of bits of information that are supposed to make up the totality of a human being, she still sometimes had the fleeting idea that there was a secret inner self in Michael Louden, a self she had never had more than the merest glimpse of, as though there were someone else residing in Michael’s familiar body.

  A stranger.

  She was being stupid. With nothing of real importance to fill her brain, she was constructing fluff-brained fantasies spun off from the 3 PM movies on television: Beth Louden in The Invasion of The Body Snatchers!

  She returned the clippers to the garage and went into the refreshing chill of the air-conditioned house. With keen anticipation, she awaited Michael’s return. They would have a special time, a time with each other, for each other. She would regain the feeling of closeness with the man she knew so well, her husband, Michael Louden.

  He was a “people” dog. He liked people, the way they smelled and how they scratched his head or patted his flanks and fed him food from their plates.

  The dog liked this man. When the man squatted, called the dog’s name in a whisper and softly snapped his fingers, the dog lifted himself up, first his rear end and then his front, and came to the man.

  The man said, “Good dog, what a nice old crippled-up fart.”

  The dog knew the words “good dog,” and so he wagged his tail. He didn’t know the other words, but he knew the sound of the voice that spoke them and that meant everything was good.

  The man petted him. The dog’s hindquarters swung in tail-wagging happiness. The man said, “You are a miserable old piece of shit, aren’t you? Sure you are, you useless old fucker.”

  Still stroking the dog’s back, the man turned the animal around, talking softly and reassuringly. Then the man clamped his hand around the dog’s muzzle.

  The dog didn’t like that. He tried to open his mouth and could not, tried to squirm free and could not. Then the man was twisting the dog’s head, hurting, pressing down on his neck, hurting.

  In the dog’s throat was a growl and a yipe of pain that couldn’t get out.

  When the dog’s neck broke, the sound was muffled by fur and flesh.

  — | — | —

  TWO

  STEAM ROSE from the tub and their bodies. The enclosure’s fiberglass doors were clouded. In these few square feet of wet and heat, Beth felt sealed away from the starkness of a sometimes too-real world; this was better, a wispy, ethereal softness enveloping her like a good dream.

  Smiling, Michael said, “I’ll get your
back for you.” She turned, dipping her head into the full force of the shower spray, rinsing out the lathered shampoo.

  Washcloth covering his fingers, Michael massaged her neck, kneading away the muscular stiffness. He rubbed her shoulders, then moved down the center of her back, tracing the ridges of her spine.

  “That’s nice,” Beth sighed, feeling as though she understood why cats purr. Then she nearly hiccupped, but managed to catch herself, changing it to a giggle.

  She was drunk—not drunk drunk but happily buoyant and wonderfully relaxed. Along with the chicken, Michael had brought home a bottle of Blue Nun. Lounging on throw pillows on the carpet in the basement rec room, they’d had an air-conditioned picnic with paper plates and plastic glasses. And all right, I ordinarily don’t drink that much but it was so good! They’d had the stereo on, violin-heavy “beautiful music,” the type she generally ignored in elevators or doctors’ waiting rooms, but that tonight had seemed sweet and lushly romantic. And when the meal was concluded, the wine bottle nearer empty than full, Michael said, “I do love you, Beth, really love you.” The way he’d said it, his hazel eyes, touched her as a spontaneous overflow of his truest feelings and her own eyes misted.

  Michael’s washcloth-gloved hand was now on her left buttock. Playfully, she smacked his wrist. “I’m not a baby. I can wash my own bottom.”

  “And deny me the pleasure?” Michael laughed.

  “Well, if you insist,” Beth felt a warm shiveriness at his touch as though there were goose bumps just beneath the surface of her skin.

  “Definitely a lovely ass, my dear,” Michael said. Beth shifted her feet apart and rose up on tip-toe, bracing herself with her palms on the tile wall. She pushed her hips back, buttocks tightening, arched toward him.

  Michael smoothed the washcloth over the outer swell of her hip. “Rub-a-dub-dub,” he said, and then he was stroking her inner thighs, his fingers a so definite touch beneath the heat-holding wetness of the cloth, moving up, touching her, higher between her legs, rubbing.