The Last Bender, Chapter 33

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

          She stood a little behind the door, in silk pajamas. The light shimmered in folds of rose and egg yolk. She stepped back and said, “I got your message Mr. Bartell. Come in.” Sun burned through the cloud cover, warming the sidewalk and shutters. “Have a seat. I believe you prefer exotic soft drinks?” –her voice trailed into the kitchen. In the living room I looked at a photograph of St. Claude in a small antique frame. It was a formal room, doilies everywhere, cut glass lamps, chotchkies, a baby grand, with a brass bucket of dried oats and artichoke hearts dyed orange and green. The antiques were tastefully worn out; they had acquired their own ennui. It smelled of lemon oil and butcher’s wax.

          I went into the sitting room and looked down into the courtyard where a bunch of pigeons pecked at breadcrumbs. Evalyn St. Claude continued to speak from the kitchen, her voice like a distant radio. She came in mid-sentence and handed me a frosted glass of iced tea, with a slice of lemon and sprig of mint. “I hope you like it sweet. Mine is a Spartan County version. You’ve heard of that?” She looked at me over the top of her glass and raised her eyebrows.

          “Yes I have.” I sipped the iced tea and it instantly made my teeth ache. “It’s sweet of you to go to all the trouble.”

          “No trouble at all.”

          While she spoke I finished a train of thought I had been chasing the whole way over. Traffic flattened into two dimensions while the radio sputtered static. The pill spun and rolled through this neutral mindscape, till my face became a rictus stretched on its rational frame. If the madness caused by its decomposition drove them deeper into paranoia and delusion, might not the solution be a sort of speedball concocted of it and Tranzidene? I felt a banner unfold in the wind, lough and snap straight, pointing to the sun shafts, punching through the thunderclouds, and blazons of flower covered valleys.

          “Mrs. St. Claude–“

          “Evalyn, remember?”

          “Yes. Of course. Why didn’t you tell me about your husband’s change?”

          She coughed and sputtered on the drink. “My god, this could clean drains! It’s burning my mucosa.”

          “Don’t tell me about your mucus membranes. Answer the question,” I said.

          “Oh my, sarge.” I stared into her eyes. The corners were delicately wrinkled like leaves. The whites were clear. The chestnut centers calm. Her pale skin was smooth except for a faint line between her nose and mouth. She blinked a few times and said nothing more.

          “I want you to answer the question.”

          “I know you do. But why? Why do you want to know about my husband’s change?”

          I sat down. “He wasn’t snatched and you know it. I know everything now. I’m going to put him down and dig myself out, me and anyone else left standing.”

          She looked out the window and rubbed the back of her calf with a fluffy slipper. “Look. On a day like this I like to sun bathe. Care to join me in the yard?”

          “If it doesn’t get too hot.” I hated the idea of sweating in front of her. “Men like me tend to wilt in the sun.”

          She left the room. “It’s all the tweeds and worsted wools,” she said in a loud voice through the bathroom door. I could hear her stepping out of the jammies and slippers. She came back in coral jellies, white culottes and a black sports bra. She put up her hair with bobby pins, mumbling through them, “Just a minute,” and put on a pair of mirrored oval sunglasses in glowgreen frames. “Follow me, boss.” Her lips glistened. “Perhaps cotton harem pants, something with a drawstring or elastic band–” she said, stomping down the iron spiral stair from the kitchen to the basement. It was dark and mildewy. She pushed open a rickety glass door and beckoned me into the garden.

          It looked lived in. On the table were a couple of magazines and empty soda bottles, stacked plastic cups and ashtrays. Next to that was some redwood lawn furniture, with big comfortable cushions. It looked real old but was in good shape. By the chaise were a tube of sunscreen, a pocketbook and an ashtray. The pigeons ditched us for the trees and squirrels started to run down off the brick wall, making for the scattered crumbs.

          She lay on her back on the chaise and the anemic sun began to bake her skin. She sat up abruptly. “Can you rub this on?” she asked, handing me a tube of sunscreen. “Mother had terrible skin cancer before she died and father’s missing the tip of his nose. Put some on my back and shoulders, Jack. Just where I can’t reach.” The way she leaned forward this seemed to include everything between her neck and the crack of her ass.

          “Are you trying to fog my brain with a longing so intense I forget to ask you questions?”

          “Are you afraid of touching me?”

          “You have a strong back, Evalyn. Do you work out?” I squeezed out the cream. It sounded like a farting cunt.

          “Aren’t you going to excuse yourself?” she asked.

          “I thought it was you.”

          “It feels so nice and cold.”

          “You say that like you actually mean it,” I said, smearing it over her back and shoulders, feeling the bones move beneath my fingers, and up along her vertebrae.

          “Then I do apologize.”

          “The truth has a way of slipping through.” How can I make this last, I thought. “Sometimes you have to press hard, in the right spot. Sometimes you just tease.”

          “Am I the enemy?” she asked into her knees.

          “Do you love your husband?”  

          I handed her the tube; she lay back and started to smear it on her arms and legs, face and belly. She laughed. “God no. I don’t even respect him anymore.”

          “Why did you meet with Clara Turback? Why didn’t you tell me you were friends?”

          “We’re not. And I didn’t meet with her.”

          “Don’t lie to me. You want me to know what’s going on. You put me onto Watts and your old man. That felching business left a bad taste in my mouth but the wise crack about Chateau Yquem is just the first course. Where’s he hiding out?”

          “I don’t know.”

          “Clara Turback met you for an hour yesterday and then drove out to Grassmear with some rug jockeys to drop carpets off at your beach house.”

          “Oh that.” I could feel her roll her eyes behind the headlights. “That human ashtray put in a claim for rugs to make the home where she stands by my man a little more comfy. They can suck my bloody oysters.”

          “I thought you didn’t love him?” She turned her mirrored ovals on me. I became two-faced, bent.

          “I don’t. It’s pride. Shameful to admit, but there you have it.”

          “Do you mind my asking what you do?”  

          She faced the sun again. It looked like a dull yellow hole stirred into the sky. “All day you mean? In the summers, nothing. The rest of the year I teach. I used to write quite a bit but now I drink. It hasn’t helped my career at all but it’s done wonders for my disposition. Anyway,” she smiled, “I don’t need the money.”

          “Teach? Like school teach?”

          “Oh yes. Like school teach. I’m a Gastropodiatrist by trade. I found I was better at teaching and research than treatment so I joined the academy. That’s how I met Bromion.”

          “Who’s he friends with in the lab?”

          She lowered the back of the chaise and turned onto her stomach. Her voice became a little rough and sleepy. “Light me a cigarette, willya? They’re in my bag.”

          “I can’t.”

          “Oh, you are so tedious sometimes. Hand them to me.” I opened her bag. It smelled like eucalyptus, cigarettes and lipstick. I pushed around all the crap, tissues, keys, a change purse, a few tampons, bottles of pills, a half pint of hundred proof bourbon, her wallet and a creased news magazine before finding the pack of menthols and the lighter with the hydra. “I hope it didn’t disappoint you.”  

          I handed her a cigarette. “It was kinda quick is all.” She raised up on her elbows and lowered her head, letting it dangle from her lips.

          “At least light it for me.” I lit the lighter. Her breasts swelled over the top of the bra. She grabbed my wrist and held my fingers close, puffing at the flame. The muscles in her arms and back tensed. She exhaled and said, “Thank you,” before sinking flat, chin propped up by the head cushion.

          I asked her again who his friends were.

          “He wasn’t friendly with his staff, except in the usual way. Volley ball and badminton at the spring picnic. He used to get up in a funny T-shirt with the chef’s hat and burn hot dogs and booze with them. He hasn’t got any real friends. There’s a philosopher, Cosgrove Swain, they played squash together in the old days, upstate. I believe Bromion gave old Cosgrove’s wife a rather vicious strain of amoeba, I’m not sure. Then there’s Stani and Lafferty. But mostly he prefers rich businessmen. The kind who invest in R&D. And their daughters.”

          “What about David Watts?” Her ass rippled and she curled her toes.

          “What about him?” she asked.

          “You know him, don’t you?”

          “Only slightly,” she said, exhaling slowly through her nose. “He came in when Bromion started this damn business. Never saw what he saw in him.”

          “Smart kid?”

          “Kid? I’ll bet he’s older than you.”

          “And how old do you think I am?”

          “Today? Or the first time you came around sniffing my jam?”

          “Any time at all.”

          She cocked her head back and twisted it. “Twenty-eight,” she pronounced. “I’d say you were twenty-eight.”

          “Close. I’m thirty-one.”

          “You see?” she smiled. “David’s thirty-three.”

          “I thought you only knew him slightly.”

          “I do, but we’re the same age. Most of Bromion’s friends are old men.”

          “So David was a friend of your husband’s.”

          “I didn’t say that. What is this anyway?”

          “Is Hubble Watts one of his rich friends?”

          “Oh–Hubble Watts.” She made a face. Light shined on the white down of her upper lip. There were two tiny black hairs at the corner of her mouth. It was hard to tell exactly what kind of a liar she was, compulsive or self-serving. “I guess you could call them friends. If you call wearing plaid golf trousers and expensive puffy shirts a friendship. For a while he spent all his time out in Grassmear, courting the boors.”

          “Did you go with him?”

          “Only if he insisted. He preferred to strap on Ms. Turback. Women have stoles, men have women. But she was too crude a bauble for some situations. And I have a stake in things of course. Gastropodiatry supports a certain kind of lifestyle quite nicely, but there are other horizons.” She finished her drink. There were a few ice cubes left at the bottom. She got up on her elbows again and said, “Hand me the half pint, huh? The day is young and my candle’s barely burned.” She poured in a few shots and made another face. “Look,” she asked, pealing off a strap of her bra,  “I’m gonna take this off. I’m sure you can handle it.”

          “I’ll handle it any way you like.”

          “And what would that be, that you were handling?”

          “The tits of an intelligent, funny woman getting more and more bitter and retarded as she drinks herself into a stupor.”

          She turned. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.” She pulled the bra off and tossed it on the ground. I watched her breasts drop and swing and then looked at her face. “Well, don’t start barking all at once,” she said.

          “You want me to say how beautiful they are and start slobbering?” I asked.

          “No, that’s just what I don’t want. I want you to relax and enjoy the afternoon with me. Wait till I’m sufficiently bitter and retarded, then make a play for me. You can leave by the back door.”

          “This is the back door.”

          “Then come in by it.” She looked a little like the photograph in Barker’s office. “You’re probably thinking I got an itch for blue collar cock. That I’m a rinsed out drunk, a fly catcher.”

          “Not really. I’m trying to figure out what you’re hiding. Who you’re still trying to protect. Do you mind if I take my shoes and jacket off?” She smiled and pulled the glasses down her nose. I took off the blue serge and quilted yellow tie and kicked off the soft Giacometti lace-ups with the clunky heel and blunt toe. I peeled off the black silk hose and wiggled my feet. The skin on top was red and dented. I rubbed them on the brick, pointed my toes and put my legs out. It felt good sitting in the redwood chair with her stretched out beside me, the sun shining through the sky like worn out fabric.

          “Now If I could just get you to take a drink.”

          “How do you know you’d like it?”

          She flubbered her lips and lay her cheek on the back of her hands so she could look at me. “Are you making a temperance speech?”

          “I’ve given up a lot of things. Whatever stands in the way. Whatever makes me forget.”

          “You’ve got nice feet.”

          “Of course, I’d like nothing better than to tie one on with you right here and now and then go back to the office and put six rounds in my boss’s belly. I’d pistol whip him to the floor first, then flip him over like a beetle and start shooting.”

          “Now you’re scaring me,” she said, sounding about as scared as a librarian.

          “The sun feels nice. Nice, it’s nice.” I felt awkward. We lay there for a while. Again I asked her about Barker, wondering if she’d give about his being her father, or if I’d have to pop it like a zit.

          “Oh, he’s some man Bromion played golf with in Grassmear. That Grassmear. They never want you to leave.” She tipped the rest of the half pint into her glass and sipped it straight.

          “That’s a strange way to describe your father. That and that his nose is partly gone.”

          “You know all about me. Here’s to good times.” She drank some more, lit a cigarette and turned on her back. She picked at her navel and pushed the little blob of fat on her belly around. “Some people would try to hide this,” she said a bit sadly.

          “There’s not so much of it. It’s like everyone else.”

          “I suppose you think that’s kind?”

          “Are you and David still together? That’s who you’re protecting? It’s the six million dollar ticket off of Bromion’s cloud and onto some beach in Champa?”

          She winced and cleared her throat. “Try to picture a man whose brain is like one of those tail-pendulums on a Kitty Kat Klok. A plastic toy that tics back and forth and rolls its eyes and meows the hour. I got two of ’em Jack. Two men and between ’em I haven’t had a decent fuck in three years. Problem is, they’re the only men I’ve ever loved. And you wanna know a bigger problem? Do ya Jack? I have to love a man to let him in. And I don’t stop caring when it’s over. So whatever kind of fool that’s called, that’s me.”

          Most days I work out for two hours in the morning, at home or in the Monozone gym. It’s the closest I come to a physical relationship. Sometimes I smell myself in the hall and pretend it’s someone else, a lover. Her body and voice are missing but I can taste and smell her in the air. Sometimes I smell Corrie’s head. It had a baby-sweet smell that permanently shaped certain zones of space. Its essence is palpable. It mingles with my mother’s breast, my father’s varnished hands, my grandfather’s composted breath, Mary’s urine soaked blanket, Corrie’s nicotine neck. I knew what it was to couple with an automaton. I asked, “Does it matter to you what happens to them at all?”

          “Don’t you hear me? It matters. All of it matters. I care what happens to you. Walk away from it, Jack. Walk away from Bromion and David. You have no idea what you’re about to step into. Now I’ve told you everything. Are you going to come to me? Or are you going to go?”

          Her question caught in my throat. I knew I wanted to say yes. I knew I should say no. She looked at me directly with a humorless half-smile, and I watched my bent doubles on the silvered gloom. Then I reached and tentatively touched her hand. She curled my fingers in hers and I kneeled on the bricks beside her, bending to kiss the warm sun off her cheeks. Slowly, our mouths opened between us, and we were in the good dark. Consciousness assembled slowly, shifting like patterns of light and leaves on water. Her breath was hot on my ear. Sweat spread where our stomachs touched. I blinked. Evalyn’s mouth was slightly open. She stirred beneath me, grumbled and shifted. I kissed the corner of her mouth and whispered her name and softly shook her shoulder. She drew a deep breath and opened her eyes, blinking. “I have to go,” I said.

          She gripped her arms around my waist and pulled me in, wet knee between her legs. “O.K. That was the deal. But you owe me a goodbye.” For a while were contained by a deep, introspective calm; balanced like snow on a branch.

          I dressed, followed her into the house, and asked if I could use the phone. My voice sounded weird, like my body was in one room and my brain in another. The disassociation, the trembling, seemed to follow her around too, as if we hovered in and out of each other. It was only when our minds or bodies were in matched rooms did we fit eye to eye, lip to lip. “It’s in the living room,” she said. “I’m making coffee. Want some?”

          “Nah. I got to go.”

          At the door she asked me where.

          “Just around,” I said. “Are we, should I come back?”

          She was back in the yellow and pink jammies with the white slippers, sipping a mug of coffee that said I AM THE BOSS. “You’d better,” she said into it.

          “Right now, there’s no one else,” I said, looking down the steps and then up at her.

          “There’s always dozens. Anyway, you did all right leaving ’em at the door.”

          “Better than I’m doing now.”

          “Ah, you’re all right Jack. There’s not so much of it. Just like everyone else.”

          “Sure. I got to go. I–”    

          “No one’s stopping you.”

           She didn’t move from the doorway. I turned and left. When I looked back, the door was shut.