by Tobias Wolff
“I forget,” Glen said.
“Maybe the dog confessed,” Bonnie said. “No kidding, I’ve seen worse evidence than that hold up in court. This girl friend of mine, the one I’m going to stay with in Seattle, she got a year’s probation for soliciting and you know what for? For smiling at a guy in a grocery store. It’s a hell of a life, Glen. What’s that thing you’re squeezing, anyway?”
“A tennis ball.”
“What do you do that for?”
“Just a habit,” Glen said, thinking that it would not be productive to discuss with Bonnie his performance at golf. Being left-handed, he had a tendency to pull his swing and Martin had suggested using the tennis ball to build up his right forearm.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone squeeze a tennis ball,” Bonnie said. “It beats me how you ever picked up a habit like that.”
The dog was still cleaning himself. It sounded awful. Glen switched on the tape deck and turned it up loud.
“Some station!” Bonnie said. “That’s the first time I’ve heard 101 Strings playing ‘76 Trombones.’”
Glen told her that it was a tape, not the radio, and that the song was “Oklahoma!” All of Martin’s tapes were instrumental—he hated vocals—but it just so happened that Glen had a tape of his own in the glove compartment, a Peter Paul and Mary. He said nothing to Bonnie about it because he didn’t like her tone.
“I’m going to catch some zees,” she said after a time. “If Sunshine acts cute just smack him in the face. It’s the only thing he understands. I got him from a cop.” She rolled up her denim jacket and propped it under her head. “Wake me up,” she said, “if you see anything interesting or unusual.”
The sun came up, a milky presence at Glen’s right shoulder, whitening the fog but not breaking through it. Glen began to notice a rushing sound like water falling hard on pavement and realized that the road had filled up with cars. Their headlights were bleached and wan. All the drivers, including Glen, changed lanes constantly.
Glen put on “Exodus” by Ferrante and Teicher, Martin’s favorite. Martin had seen the movie four times. He thought it was the greatest movie ever made because it showed what you could do if you had the will. Once in a while Martin would sit in the living room by himself with a bottle of whiskey and get falling-down drunk. When he was halfway there he would yell Glen’s name until Glen came downstairs and sat with him. Then Martin would lecture him on various subjects. He often repeated himself, and one of his favorite topics was the Jewish people, which was what he called the Jews who died in the camps. He made a distinction between them and the Israelis. This was part of his theory.
According to Martin the Jewish people had done the Israelis a favor by dying out; if they had lived they would have weakened the gene pool and the Israelis would not have had the strength or the will to take all that land away from the Arabs and keep it.
One night he asked whether Glen had noticed anything that he, Martin, had in common with the Israelis. Glen admitted that he had missed the connection. The Israelis had been in exile for a long time, Martin said; he himself, while in the Navy, had visited over thirty ports of call and lived at different times in seven of the United States before coming home to Seattle. The Israelis had taken a barren land and made it fruitful; Martin had taken over a failing company and made it turn a profit again. The Israelis defeated all their enemies and Martin was annihilating his competition. The key, Martin said, was in the corporate gene pool. You had to keep cleaning out the deadwood and bringing in new blood. Martin named the deadwood who would soon be cleaned out, and Glen was surprised; he had supposed a few of the people to be, like himself, new blood.
The fog held. The ocean spray gave it a sheen, a pearly color. Big drops of water rolled up the windshield, speckling the gray light inside the car. Glen saw that Bonnie was not a girl but a woman. She had wrinkles across her brow and in the corners of her mouth and eyes, and the streaks in her hair were real streaks—not one of these fashions as he’d first thought. In the light her skin showed its age like a coat of dust. She was old, not old old, but old: older than him. Glen felt himself relax, and realized that for a moment there he had been interested in her. He squinted into the fog and drove on with the sensation of falling through a cloud. Behind Glen the dog stirred and yelped in his dreams.
Bonnie woke up outside Olympia. “I’m hungry,” she said, “let’s score some pancakes.”
Glen stopped at a Denny’s. While the waitress went for their food Bonnie told Glen about a girl friend of hers, not the one in Seattle but another one, who had known the original Denny. Denny, according to her girl friend, was muy weird. He had made a proposition. He would set Bonnie’s girl friend up with a place of her own, a car, clothes, the works; he wanted only one thing in return. “Guess what,” Bonnie said.
“I give up,” Glen said.
“All right,” Bonnie said, “you’d never guess it anyway.” The proposition, she explained, had this price tag: her girl friend had to invite different men over for dinner, one man at a time, at least three days a week. The restaurateur didn’t care what happened after the meal, had no interest in this respect either as participant or observer. All he wanted was to sit under the table while they ate, concealed by a floor-length tablecloth.
Glen said that there had to be more to it than that.
“No sir,” Bonnie said. “That was the whole proposition.”
“Did she do it?” Glen asked.
Bonnie shook her head. “She already had a boy friend, she didn’t need some old fart living under her table.”
“I still don’t get it,” Glen said, “him wanting to do that. What’s the point?”
“The point?” Bonnie looked at Glen as if he had said something comical. “Search me,” she said. “I guess he’s just into food. Some people can’t leave their work at the office. This other girl friend of mine knew a mechanic and before, you know, he used to smear himself all over with grease. Can you feature that?” Bonnie went at her food—a steak, an order of pancakes, a salad and two wedges of lemon meringue pie—and did not speak again until she had eaten everything but the steak, which she wrapped in a place mat and stuck in her purse. “I have to admit,” she said, “that was the worst meal I ever ate.”
Glen went to the men’s room and when he came out again the table was empty. Bonnie waved him over to the door. “I already paid,” she said, stepping outside.
Glen followed her across the parking lot. “I was going to have some more coffee,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll tell you straight. That wouldn’t be a good idea right now.”
“In other words you didn’t pay.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“I left a tip,” she said. “I’m all for the working girl but I can’t see paying for garbage like that. They ought to pay us for eating it. It’s got cardboard in it, for one thing, not to mention about ten million chemicals.”
“What’s got cardboard in it?”
“The batter. Uh-oh, Sunshine’s had a little accident.”
Glen looked into the back seat. There was a big stain on the cover. “Godalmighty,” Glen said. The dog looked at him and wagged his tail. Glen turned the car back on to the road; it was too late to go back to the restaurant, he’d never be able to explain. “I noticed,” he said, “you didn’t leave anything on your plate, considering it was garbage.”
“If I hadn’t eaten it, they would have thrown it out. They throw out pieces of butter because they’re not square. You know how much food they dump every day?”
“They’re running a business,” Glen said. “They take a risk and they’re entitled to the profits.”
“I’ll tell you,” Bonnie said. “Enough to feed the population of San Diego. Here, Sunshine.” The dog stood with his paws on the back of the seat while Bonnie shredded the steak and put the pieces in his mouth. When the steak was gone she hit the dog in the face
and he sat back down.
Glen was going to ask Bonnie why she wasn’t afraid of poisoning Sunshine but he was too angry to do anything but steer the car and squeeze the tennis ball. They could have been arrested back there. He could just see himself calling Martin and saying that he wouldn’t be home for dinner because he was in jail for walking a check in East Jesus. Unless he could get that seat cleaned up he was going to have to tell Martin about Bonnie, and that wasn’t going to be any picnic, either. So much for trying to do favors for people.
“This fog is getting to me,” Bonnie said. “It’s really boring.” She started to say something else, then fell silent again. There was a truck just ahead of them; as they climbed a gentle rise the fog thinned and Glen could make out the logo on the back—WE MOVE FAMILIES NOT JUST FURNITURE—then they descended into the fog again and the truck vanished. “I was in a sandstorm once,” Bonnie said, “in Arizona. It was really dangerous but at least it wasn’t boring.” She pulled a strand of hair in front of her eyes and began picking at the ends. “So,” she said, “tell me about yourself.”
Glen said there wasn’t much to tell.
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“I’m not married.”
“Oh yeah? Somebody like you, I thought for sure you’d be married.”
“I’m engaged,” Glen said. He often told strangers that. If he met them again he could always say it hadn’t worked out. He’d once known a girl who probably would have married him but like Martin said, it didn’t make sense to take on freight when you were traveling for speed.
Bonnie said that she had been married for the last two years to a man in Santa Barbara. “I don’t mean married in the legal sense,” she said. Bonnie said that when you knew someone else’s head and they knew yours, that was being married. She had ceased to know his head when he left her for someone else. “He wanted to have kids,” Bonnie said, “but he was afraid to with me, because I had dropped acid. He was afraid we would have a werewolf or something because of my chromosomes. I shouldn’t have told him.”
Glen knew that the man’s reason for leaving her had nothing to do with chromosomes. He had left her because she was too old.
“I never should have told him,” Bonnie said again. “I only dropped acid one time and it wasn’t even fun.” She made a rattling sound in her throat and put her hands up to her face. First her shoulders and then her whole body began jerking from side to side.
“All right,” Glen said, “all right.” He dropped the tennis ball and began patting her on the back as if she had hiccups.
Sunshine uncoiled from the back seat and came scrambling over Glen’s shoulder. He knocked Glen’s hand off the steering wheel as he jumped onto his lap, rooting for the ball. The car went into a broadside skid. The road was slick and the tires did not scream. Bonnie stopped jerking and stared out the window. So did Glen. They watched the fog whipping along the windshield as if they were at a movie. Then the car began to spin. When they came out of it Glen watched the yellow lines shoot away from the hood and realized that they were sliding backwards in the wrong lane of traffic. The car went on this way for a time, then it went into another spin and when it came out it was pointing in the right direction though still in the wrong lane. Not far off Glen could see weak yellow lights approaching, bobbing gently like the running lights of a ship. He took the wheel again and eased the car off the road. Moments later a convoy of logging trucks roared out of the fog, airhorns bawling; the car rocked in the turbulence of their wake.
Sunshine jumped into the back seat and lay there, whimpering. Glen and Bonnie moved into each other’s arms. They just held on, saying nothing. Holding Bonnie, and being held by her, was necessary to Glen.
“I thought we were goners,” Bonnie said.
“They wouldn’t even have found us,” Glen said. “Not even our shoes.”
“I’m going to change my ways,” Bonnie said.
“Me too,” Glen said, and though he wasn’t sure just what was wrong with his ways, he meant it.
“I feel like I’ve been given another chance,” Bonnie said. “I’m going to pay back the money I owe, and write my mother a letter, even if she is a complete bitch. I’ll be nicer to Sunshine. No more shoplifting. No more—” Just then another convoy of trucks went by and though Bonnie kept on talking Glen could not hear a word. He was thinking they should get started again.
Later, when they were back on the road, Bonnie said that she had a special feeling about Glen because of what they had just gone through. “I don’t mean boy-girl feelings,” she said. “I mean—do you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” Glen said.
“Like there’s a bond,” she said.
“I know,” Glen said. And as a kind of celebration he got out his Peter Paul and Mary and stuck it in the tape deck.
“I don’t believe it,” Bonnie said. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Peter Paul and Mary,” Glen said.
“That’s who I thought it was,” Bonnie said. “You like that stuff?”
Glen nodded. “Do you?”
“I guess they’re all right. When I’m in the mood. What else have you got?”
Glen named the rest of the tapes.
“Jesus,” Bonnie said. She decided that what she was really in the mood for was some peace and quiet.
By the time Glen found the address where Bonnie’s girl friend lived, a transients’ hotel near Pioneer Square, it had begun to rain. He waited in the car while Bonnie rang the bell. Through the window of the door behind her he saw a narrow ladder of stairs; the rain sliding down the windshield made them appear to be moving upward. A woman stuck her head out the door; she nodded constantly as she talked. When Bonnie came back her hair had separated into ropes. Her ears, large and pink, poked out between strands. She said that her girl friend was out, that she came and went at all hours.
“Where does she work?” Glen asked. “I could take you there.”
“Around,” Bonnie said. “You know, here and there.” She looked at Glen and then out the window. “I don’t want to stay with her,” she said, “not really. I don’t want to get caught up in all this again.”
Bonnie went on talking like that, personal stuff, and Glen listened to the raindrops plunking off the roof of the car. He thought he should help Bonnie, and he wanted to. Then he imagined bringing Bonnie home to Martin and introducing them; Sunshine having accidents all over the new carpets; the three of them eating dinner while Bonnie talked, interrupting Martin, saying the kinds of things she said. Martin would die. Glen savored the thought, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t.
When Bonnie finished talking, Glen explained to her that he really wanted to help out but that it wasn’t possible.
“Sure,” Bonnie said, and leaned back against the seat with her eyes closed.
It seemed to Glen that she did not believe him. That was ungrateful of her and he became angry. “It’s true,” he said.
“Hey,” Bonnie said, and touched his arm.
“My roommate is allergic to dogs.”
“Hey,” Bonnie said again. “No problem.” She got her bags out of the trunk and tied Sunshine’s leash to the guitar case, then came around the car to the driver’s window. “Well,” she said, “I guess this is it.”
“Here,” Glen said, “in case you want to stay somewhere else.” He put a twenty-dollar bill in her hand.
She shook her head and tried to give it back.
“Keep it,” he said. “Please.”
She stared at him. “Jesus,” she said. “Okay, why not? The price is right.” She looked up and down the street, then put the bill in her pocket. “I owe you one,” she said. “You know where to find me.”
“I didn’t mean—” Glen said.
“Wait,” Bonnie said. “Sunshine! Sunshine!”
Glen looked behind him. Sunshine was running up the street after another dog, pulling Bonnie’s guitar case behind him. “Nuts,” Bonnie said, and began sprinti
ng up the sidewalk in the rain, cursing loudly. People stopped to watch, and a police car slowed down. Glen hoped that the officers hadn’t noticed them together. He turned the corner and looked back. No one was following him.
A few blocks from home Glen stopped at a gas station and tried without success to clean the stain off the seat cover. On the floor of the car he found a lipstick and a clear plastic bag with two marijuana cigarettes inside, which he decided had fallen out of Bonnie’s purse during the accident.
Glen knew that the cigarettes were marijuana because the ends were crimped. The two engineers he’d roomed with before moving in with Martin had smoked it every Friday night. They would pass cigarettes back and forth and comment on the quality, then turn the stereo on full blast and listen with their eyes closed, nodding in time to the music and now and then smiling and saying “Get down!” and “Go for it!” Later on they would strip the refrigerator, giggling as if the food belonged to someone else, then watch TV with the sound off and make up stupid dialogue. Glen suspected they were putting it on; he had taken puffs a couple of times and it didn’t do anything for him. He almost threw the marijuana away but finally decided to hang on to it. He thought it might be valuable.
Glen could barely eat his dinner that night; he was nervous about the confession he had planned, and almost overcome by the smell of Martin’s after-shave. Glen had sniffed the bottle once and the lotion was fine by itself, but for some reason it smelled like rotten eggs when Martin put it on. He didn’t just use a drop or two, either; he drenched himself, slapping it all over his face and neck with the sound of applause. Finally Glen got his courage up and confessed to Martin over coffee. He had hoped that the offense of giving Bonnie a ride would be canceled out by his honesty in telling about it, but when he was finished Martin hit the roof.
For several minutes Martin spoke very abusively to Glen. It had happened before and Glen knew how to listen without hearing. When Martin ran out of abuse he began to lecture.
“Why didn’t she have her own car?” he asked. “Because she’s used to going places free. Some day she’s going to find out that nothing’s free. You could have done anything to her. Anything. And it would have been her fault, because she put herself in your power. When you put yourself in someone else’s power you’re nothing, nobody. You just have to accept what happens.”