Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (24 page)

Lionel grimaced. “My dad wanted me to enlist in the army when I got out of high school, which I let him know I thought was the stupidest idea since quadraphonic stereo. I’m sure we disappointed each other there, but I don’t think either one of us is in
pain
about it.”

“Oh, you have pain you don’t even know about. Don’t
analyze
it, Lionel, don’t think about it in rational, linear terms … that’s a trap! Reason is
confining.
Just let it loose — let it
all
loose. Come
on
, Lionel!” He started slapping the top of the desk with the palms of his hands. “Join in! It’s the most
basic
form of communication between men. It predates speech! You’ll be surprised!” Slap, slap, slap-slap-slap. Slap, slap, slap-slap-slap.

There was no stopping him.
I’ll just humor him for a minute,
thought Lionel;
then he’ll be satisfied and go.

He gave the desktop a couple of haphazard whacks.

“Get into a
rhythm
,” Bob squealed. “You need to
feel
the beats … inside you, in your breast!” Slap, slap, slap-slap-slap. Slap, slap, slap-slap-slap. “Me, I like to follow the opening bars of ‘The Lady Is a Tramp.’”

How very primal,
thought Lionel. But he gave up and started beating in time to match Bob.

His heart raced. He was alarmed by the noise they were making, by the blissed-out look on Bob’s face, and by the fact that after thirty seconds they hadn’t only not stopped, but appeared to be just warming up.

And what alarmed him most was that he was finding it all kind of hot.

It was mortifying; he was mortified for himself. He hoped desperately that this would at least make a good story at a cocktail party somewhere down the line. But before he could convince himself of that, the door to his office swung open.

Hackett Perlman stood in the doorway, popeyed with amazement. “Lionel, what the
hell
.”

“We were just drumming,” he said, trying brazen it out. “It’s a kind of male therapy.” He nodded across the desk. “This is my fr— this is Bob Smartt. Bob, Hackett Perlman, our creative director.”

“Hi!” chirped Bob. “Wanna join in?”

When Perlman drew himself up in indignation, Lionel hastily explained, “It’s kind of a Nathan Beatty thing. You know Nathan Beatty?”

Perlman looked at him a moment, then emitted a deflating sigh. “You’re weird lately, Lionel,” he said. “Keep it down. Sounded like the fucking roof was coming down.”

He left, pointedly not shutting the door behind him. As soon as he’d gone, Bob clasped a hand over his mouth and turned to Lionel in clandestine glee.
“Whoops,”
he said through his fingers. “Hope you’re not in the dog house now!”

“I’m not ‘in the dog house,’ Bob,” Lionel said a little too hastily. “But listen, I do have to get back to work. I don’t want to kick you out or anything …” He got to his feet.

“Say no more!” Bob sprang out of his chair and brushed the wrinkles out of his pants. “I didn’t mean to keep you this long, honest.” He rounded the desk and extended his hand. “Thanks for taking the time to hear me out.”

“No problem,” he said, grasping Bob’s hand. “Least I can do
ooof
!” He found himself pulled into Bob’s embrace, and was now cheek to cheek with him, being hugged and patted on the back like an infant with gas.

When he was finally released, he reeled a little. Bob smiled and said, “Men shouldn’t be ashamed to show physical affection. We’re
brothers
, Lionel. We’ve
drummed
.”

“To ‘The Lady Is a Tramp,’” he said dazedly.

Bob laughed uproariously “And notice how the crazy’s gone!” were his parting words as he headed for the door.

He certainly is,
Lionel thought when he was out of sight.

That night, Lionel was on a stepladder in the kitchen, a hammer in his hand and his lips wrapped around a clutch of nails, when someone knocked.

“Cuh ih,”
he called out.

The door opened and Yolanda crept through it. “Lionel?” she called into the half-darkened apartment, her hand still on the knob.

“Ih heah,”
he replied. The he banged the hammer against the nail he’d positioned against the top of the doorframe. From the corner of his eye, he saw Yolanda jump at the noise.

She swept a strand of hair from her face and shyly entered the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

He put down the hammer, took the nails from his mouth, and said, “I got home from work and found the trim on this lintel hanging off. I’m trying to get it back in place again.” He waved a hand at it in disgust. “Goddamn building’s falling to pieces. The heat, the water … even the ventilation’s gone sour now. I can still smell Emil’s cheap cologne out on the stairs, and he hasn’t been here in
weeks
.”

She approached the ladder. “Could you come down here for a moment? I need to talk to you.”

“Sure!” he said happily. He tucked the nails into his pocket and descended, then brushed himself off and stood before her, smiling. “Whassup?”

She furrowed her brow, grimaced, and cuffed him on the jaw.

“Hey!”
he said, flinching. “Hell’s
that
for?”

She struck him again, and then again. From his cage, Spencer cheered her on with a couple of ear-splitting shrieks.

Lionel stumbled backward, holding his arms before his face. “Yolanda, for Christ’s sake, what’s got
into
y—”

“I thought we were friends,” she blurted, her voice raspy with anger.

“Jesus,”
he said, still keeping his distance. “I made the same mistake.”

Spencer, eager to see the violence continue, spread his wings and swayed from side to side, growling as if to say,
Come on, come on!

“You say that, and yet you went and told Bob all the things I’d told you in confidence! About how I dislike his new friends — and am apparently
jealous
of them, which is not even
true
.”

Oh, brother. He should’ve been expecting this. “Look,” he said, lowering his arms a little, “he came to my office and took me by surprise. He was all upset because he thought you were seeing someone else. I told him you weren’t, because if you were I’d know.”

“Oh, yes, I am such an open book, you can just instantly know all about me.”

“I’d know because you’d
tell
me,” he said, upset. “The way you tell me everything. Anyway, he wasn’t convinced, kept saying you’d changed, you weren’t the same woman anymore. All I did was point out that
he
was the one who’d changed. And the other stuff must have slipped out. It happens. Mea fucking culpa.”

She was still breathing fire, but had unclenched her fists. “You should not have interfered.”

He dropped his arms to his side. “Well,
he
shouldn’t have come to see me. Not unannounced, like that. He caught me off-guard. I’m sorry, Yolanda, I didn’t have time to call and ask you how to handle it. I used my own judgment. If I was wrong, I apologize.”

She rolled her eyes, then sat down at the kitchen table and crossed her legs. The casual nature of that gesture sapped some of the tension from the air. Lionel breathed a little easier.

Spencer, however, screamed in disappointment at the end of the fisticuffs. He retired to the interior of his cage and sulked in a corner.

“He just called a few minutes ago,” Yolanda said. She took a piece of junk mail from the tabletop and started ripping it into confetti, letting the pieces drift where they pleased. “He said he could no longer trust me because I was telling my feelings to
you
and not
him
. Then he accused me of seeing another man behind his back. He called me a ‘floozy.’ I do not even know what that means, but I can guess.” She sighed and flicked a long strip of envelope to the floor. The bisected head of Ed McMahon looked up at her mournfully.

Lionel took the chair opposite hers. As he lowered himself into it, the nails in his pocket bit into his thigh. He winced, removed them, and spilled them onto the table. “How did you respond?” he asked.

“I told him that if I
were
seeing another man, it would not be any of his business. We are not married or even engaged, and he should not presume that he owns me.” She finished ravaging the envelope and wiped the last bits of paper from her fingertips; they scattered like dandruff. “That made him even angrier. He said we had an
understanding
, and that if he ever learned I was cheating on him, he would not be responsible for his actions.”

Lionel lowered his head. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble.”

She gave him a wan smile. “You did not cause it. It has been a long time coming … ever since he returned from his retreat, carrying that ridiculous spear. Bob is easily influenced. Anyone whose greatest desire is to discover the next big fad, is someone who can be led anywhere by the nose. But this ‘inner chieftain’ thing is somehow worse. It has affected his
behavior
. He has been so aggressive since his return! He never listened to me much before, but now it is almost as though he cannot be bothered to hear my opinions before dismissing them. And he became so
indignant
at the idea that I might have a life of my own beyond him. The way he spoke to me tonight!” She shook her head. “He said nothing outright, Lionel, but I felt myself threatened. I only wish I knew how to avoid him for the next few days.”

“You think he’ll calm down by then?”

“I hope so.” She looked him in the eye. “Then I will be able to break up with him without fearing how he will react.”

He let loose a long, low whistle. “Wow, Yolanda. I wish I could be here to help you through all this.”

“Do not be silly. God to Wisconsin and have fun. This is not your problem.”

“Listen, if it’d help, you can stay here, at my place. I mean, you’re taking care of Spencer for me anyway, so why not just move in? And if you take a few days off work, like you’re always saying you need to, it can be a little holiday — you can hole up here where Bob would never think to look for you.”

“No, he would think of it. He knows I care for Spencer, and he would soon discover that you were gone away.”

Lionel rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe we’re sitting her trembling in fear of a man who has every Josephine Baker movie on VHS.” Suddenly he remembered how terrified she’d been of keeping Bob waiting while she searched for her missing earring several weeks before. This was not, apparently, a new thing; rather something his men’s seminar had made exponentially worse.

He clasped her hands and said, “Listen, I really think I should stay. You need me. You need
somebody
, anyway. I don’t even want to go to Wisconsin. It’s bound to be a disaster. Hell, I leave the day after tomorrow, and I still don’t have a date, despite being told not to show up without one. So all right then, I
won’t
show up.”

Yolanda clicked her tongue at him. “Really, Lionel! I cannot believe women have not been jumping at the chance to go with you to a log cabin in the Wisconsin woods! It sounds so
romantic
.”

“That’s just the problem. I have to find a woman who
won’t
find it romantic. I need someone who’ll just
pretend
.
Bit of a tall order. And it’s not like I know loads and loads of women to begin with.” He rocked on the back legs of his chair. “I mean, except for the office gals, you’re it. So screw the whole thing. I’ll just stay here instead and help you keep Bob off your scent.”

She shook her head. “Absolutely not. Whether it is a disaster for you I cannot know, but all the same I think I will not allow you to miss your holiday because of me.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound being the creaking of Lionel’s chair as he rocked back and forth, back and forth. The air hung heavy over them, like a shroud soaked in warm cream.

After a few minutes, Yolanda suddenly looked at him, her eyes bright and dancing, and said, “Lionel, we are such imbeciles.”

“We are?” He stopped rocking.

“The solution to both our problems is right in front of us.” She smiled brilliantly. “And it is so amazingly
obvious
.”

It was Yolanda’s turn to drive, so after Lionel had pumped and paid for a new tank of gas he handed her the keys and slid into the passenger seat. As she pulled back onto the interstate and picked up speed, he rolled down the window and let the flow of warm autumn air splash him in the face. This was going to be a
perfect
week. He was enjoying it so much already … just getting away, shirking the burden of the everyday and slipping into a strange new setting. It made him feel almost weightless.

Yolanda had one hand on the wheel and one on the radio dial. She was trying to find a decent station, but here in the middle of nowhere it was next to impossible. She ran through the FM spectrum, getting nothing but varying degrees of static (or an occasional burst of the same gassy Michael Bolton song, which couldn’t exactly be counted as an improvement).

She cursed in Spanish. Lionel laughed; she sounded like Ricky Ricardo.

He twisted his torso, dug into the bag he’d thrown on the back seat, and retrieved the box of animal crackers he’d bought at a convenience store two stops back. Something about being on the road always made him crave foods he hadn’t had since childhood.

Yolanda gave up, switched off the radio, and vented her anger on the pokey Ford Taurus in front of her. She careered into the opposite lane, sped ahead of it, and then swerved back, cutting into its path with frightening precision and causing its driver to honk and flip her the bird.

Lionel bit the head off a zebra. “You
daredevil,
you,” he said, chewing.

“How am I supposed to drive without music?” she asked in irritation. He recognized the question as rhetorical and didn’t reply.

The road ahead was free and clear. The sun was low, red, and very much in-your-face, but Yolanda had borrowed Lionel’s Vuarnets and looked, with her billowing hair and mirrored lenses, like the hell-bent heroine of some violent road movie.

He sighed in pleasure and nibbled at the rump of an elephant.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, taking in the countryside — flat, seemingly infinite, splotched here and there with a thicket of browning trees, swelling at intervals into a range of unambitious hills. Not a prepossessing sight; it was a landscape that couldn’t make up its mind. He hoped for better at the end of the road, in the highly touted acreage of Wild Rose, Wisconsin.

“I hope Spencer will be all right,” Yolanda said, trying to break the monotony of the view with the monotony of small talk. She stuck her hand out the window, letting the air burble through her fingers.

“I told you, he’ll be fine,” Lionel assured her.

“This Toné, he is a reliable person?”

“Not terribly, no.”

She snapped her head towards him. “Then why did you ask him? What if he does not feed Spencer, or leaves a door open and lets him fly away?”

In the mirrored lenses he watched himself flick a giraffe’s leg between his teeth. “Gee, that’d be too bad.”

She shook her head. “You are teasing me.” She turned back to the road. “I know you love that bird. I
know
it.”

“I’d love him better braised in butter and cumin and served over a bed of wild rice.”

“Stop it, Lionel! You don’t fool me.”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“No.” She grimaced. “If you did not love him, why would you have bought him?”

He curled one leg underneath him and stared at her. “As it happens, he was a gift,” he said. “From Kevin. My ex.”

“Your ex-what?” she asked.

He gave her a what-do-you-think look.

She almost served off the road. “Lionel! You never told me.”

He readjusted his knee and sat back. “It was a long time ago. Didn’t last more than … five months? Six at most.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I moved in with him and a month later we were at each other’s throats.”

“Why? How could that happen?” She was so concerned, she was barely watching the road.

He shrugged. “The pressure of being secretive, I guess. Everyone in the building clued in to what was going on between us, and we couldn’t han—” He stopped and corrected himself. “
I
couldn’t handle it. I kept inventing excuses for not going out and being seen together. He was pretty closeted himself, but next to me he was a goddamned exhibitionist.” He shrugged. “So in the end he dumped me. Which wasn’t such a big deal, ‘cause I’d never really unpacked my bags in the first place.”

“Is that when you moved in above me?”

He nodded. “And took Spencer with me. Kevin
loved
that bird, but since the horrible thing was technically my birthday gift, I exercised my right of ownership and, in the process, got Kevin back for kicking me out.” He shook his head. “Got the big karma payback for
that
one, huh. Bird’s taken Kevin’s revenge on me every day since.”

She shook her head. “Lionel, Lionel, Lionel. You are a very mixed-up man.”

“Not right now I’m not,” he said with a grin. “Open road, windows down, bitch at the wheel — life feels pretty goddamn fine.” He tossed the box of crackers back into the bag, then settled into the seat and folded his hands over his stomach. In a matter of moments, his eyes fell shut. With the garbled hiss of the radio now stilled, he felt a sense of peace settle over him like a fresh cotton sheet. The steady bass hum of the motor, the giddy effect of the barreling momentum they’d attained, the constant caresses of the air on his face, and now Yolanda’s quiet whistling, all conspired to put him in as close to a state of grace as he’d ever encountered. Noise did not exist; strife did not exist; inertia did not exist. In his contentment, he fell into a thin sleep — still aware of his surroundings, but watching a dream scenario play out in his head the way he might watch a movie on TV.

Yolanda’s whistling threaded into and out of his dreams like the leitmotif from a 1940s tearjerker. He was dimly aware that he recognized the tune, but couldn’t focus long enough to place it. Sometimes she would stop for a moment, the better to concentrate on changing lanes or making a turn. But then she’d start up again, and the tune would once more insinuate itself into Lionel’s half-consciousness.

Then she ceased whistling altogether and actually sang a verse, in a voice just above a murmur:
“Hey, big spender… spennnnd a little dime with me.”

Dime
, not
time.
Funny, he’d heard it sung that way not too long ago. Where had that been? He shifted in his seat, and gave a little yawn. It had been Emil’s Uncle John, hadn’t it? ... Channeling Edie Adams in that old 1960s TV ad. Imaging Yolanda remembering a commercial from thirty years ago!

At this, something pricked at his brain like a burr under a saddle. Yolanda, he realized, was only twenty-nine. He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.

And it all rushed in at him. Yolanda having the Emma Goldman book on her nightstand. The scent of Emil’s aftershave hanging perpetually over the staircase. Bob’s near certainty that she was seeing another man. And now, Yolanda crooning a lyric she could
only
have heard from the Shoelace King of Chicago.

He sat straight up and said, “You
slut
. You’re sleeping with Emil Apostal!”

She almost lost control of the car. “What? ... Lionel, what crazy thing have you been dreaming?”

“Don’t even try to deny it. How long has it been going on?”

“How dare you call me a slut? Apologize at once!”

“Don’t change the subject. That night I stopped by and you said you were getting ready to meet your girlfriends … you were really meeting Emil, weren’t you?”

She looked straight ahead and tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. “I have not yet had my apology.”

“And two days ago,” he said, growing excited at suddenly being able to fit all the pieces together, “when you came up with the brainstorm of being my date at the cabin … it didn’t hurt that Emil was going to be too busy studying to pay any attention to you all week. Am I right?”

“Still waaaaiting,” she said.

“I’m not going to apologize. Far from it!
Slut, slut, slut
,” he yapped at her. “What else do you call a woman who sneaks a man in and out of her apartment so that no one can see him?”

“Not ‘no one’ — only you.”

“Oh, thanks for that! I feel so much better having that clarified.”

Tears were collecting at the corners of her eyes. “You are being horrible.”

“I have a ways to go to catch up with
you
.”

She gave the wheel a good hard yank to the right, and the car careened off to the side of the road, spitting gravel everywhere. They just missed hitting a Day-Glo orange sign promoting sweet corn for sale at a dollar a bushel. When the car skidded to a halt, she knocked the gearshift into park and turned to confront him.

“Lionel, you were in
love
with him. How could I let you find out that he was with me instead of you?”

“It’s not any kinder to
hide
it from me,” he said. Despite his tone, he was surprised to discover that he wasn’t nearly as hurt as he pretended to be. It made him feel a little ashamed to be putting her through this.

She swept her hair behind her shoulders. “I thought it might not last. And then there would be no reason you need
ever
know. I thought it might just be physical attraction, and soon fade.”

“But it hasn’t.”

She shook her head. “No. And I do not think it will.”

He took a deep breath, sat back in his seat, and looked at the roof of the car. He felt inferior before feelings such as these; like a child. He had to rise above his inadequacy. What was left but the heroic effort to meet a love such as Yolanda’s with what little love he could muster himself? He jutted out his jaw and gave it a whirl.

“Okay,” he said, the word sticking in his throat. “Congratulations.”

He’d taken her by surprise. She cocked her head and said, “What did you say?”

“I’m happy for you. For both of you.” He saw the way she was looking at him — as though he’d suddenly grown an extra head — and added, “I
mean
it.”

“Lionel …”

“I do! I wish you hadn’t kept it from me, that’s all. Yolanda, I love Emil, and I love you. I’m thrilled about this.” And saying so was almost enough to make it true.

Her shoulders slumped and she fell back into her seat. “Well, then
you
had better drive, because I am too astonished to continue.”