He seemed to be speaking to an entire room, not B. in particular, but she did not mind. She lay on her back with her eyes closed, her own voice in her head disappearing. She felt he might have sensed this.
“I see the fear in my students' eyes,” he went on. “Those guys outside the window just now. They oughtta be scared. There's no way to know they have it right anymore. They may be totally wrong, useless. I have nothing to tell them.” He laid his cheek on her breasts. “They see the others living in the parks, getting high and sticking it to the Man, so what are they supposed to think about themselves? What can I tell them? Subconsciously it grinds them. Subconsciously
. . .
”
B. was soft and serene in her drunkenness now; no spinning anywhere. She stroked his hair. He inched up next to her until their faces touched. It seemed she had left the city and traveled to the valley precisely to find this man.
He took her hand and pushed it down his pants, guiding it back and forth over his penis. “I wish I had some grass for us,” he said.
She craned her mouth toward his, rubbing the penis dutifully, losing her rhythm occasionally. “Say more,” she murmured.
“About the grass?”
“No, no
. . .
the other
. . .
”
“Yeah, baby? You like the talking? Alright then
. . .
Listen, it's all a wash. The rules they've been setting up this whole time. The rules will never paper over the abyss, never get it out of our heads, and now the holes are showing up. The fraying. But the holes are deep, unfathomable. The expectations are tumbling down. People don't know which way to go. The crybabies yell about ending the war, and they don't see that it doesn't even matter, the whole charade will end in war and famine and misery. Keats said itânature and youth and suck at the beauty before it rots. The kids get high, wait for the parents to die. Ha!” He laughed at his own rhyme.
It struck B. even in her drunkenness that his disquisition about non-believing might be just another form of believing, another attempt at “papering over.” But the scotch swallowed the validity of this thought. Anyhow, she preferred the sureness of his authoritative voice. She wanted it to keep talking.
“What does your wife think of the war?” she asked.
“This wife obsession is a serious bummer, as our friends would say.” He reached for his empty glass on the coffee table and licked the inside rim. “Never enough,” he sighed. “To answer your question, my wife does not think about the war. She may give you an opinion but she does not spend any qualitative part of her days pondering it.”
“How do you know?”
“Do you think of the war?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“But I might if I wanted to
. . .
I could.” Anger rose up weakly through the alcohol. She wondered momentarily if he'd slipped her something stronger; but this thought departed. She struggled to her elbows and he pushed her back down.
“Look, she's not here, baby, don't worry. She has what she wants. She has her Ivy Leaguer, her little slice of bohemia. She reads Kant and sketches her nudes and irons my shirts and cooks
up spaghetti. She likes it all just fine. She doesn't concern herself with every part of the arrangement.” He placed B.'s hand, which in her distraction had stopped massaging, back on his shaft and led it up and down more forcefully. “Now where was I? Hmmmm, yes, our children of the flowers and peace and dropping out. Maybe they're trying to live Keats, I'll give them thatâ”
She sat upright suddenly, pulling her hand out of his crotch. “âit really shouldn't be such a difficult thing, you know, to walk around the city. To daydream. I realize that.” Blurred thoughts had been gathering as he spoke. “I want to be like the others. I don't want to be different. I don't know why the carsickness comes. I hate it. It's horrible. And I realize the things I've wanted to do lately are strange, could be seen as strange
. . .
but they don't seem strange to me. I don't know what else to do.
“And that's the problem, you see. Nothing feels safe. The banks do, but nothing else. I don't know why.” He was jerking himself off now as she spoke, grabbing at her breasts. But she was not aware of him. “I need to get to a new place. I thought maybe it was the valley, or a kind of house. If I could only get to this new place, it would all make sense.”
She was so lost in thought she didn't notice him coming until he spurted his semen onto her lap. She sat a bit stunned, hazy. He hung his head, shuddering for several moments. Then he got up wordlessly and came back with a kitchen towel and tossed it to her.
“In the end it'll all be shot,” he said, picking up where he had left off, as if he'd spilled some milk on her. “All the old rules won't matter. Transcendence and pleasure and unboundedness, that'll be the new society.”
“But that can't be it.”
“
. . .
making love and rapping
. . .
” He hiked up her dress and pulled down her underpants.
“No, that's not right either. I don't want that.” She felt an urgent desire to get back to something. They had been on the verge of answering all the questions. Of uncovering a transformative truth. But after wiping off the semen, the room overtook her again, the alien objects and the assault of words and nudity. As his fingers worked between her legs, she had no energy to fight, against the questions, the incongruities. “Yes, maybe you're right, maybe
. . .
”
“You're lovely,” he whispered.
“No, not that. Everyone says that. Talk about the fear again
. . .
the grinding.”
Later she could not remember when they had switched to wine or moved to the bedroom. She could not recall any more of what they said, except that she'd kept wanting to get back to the earlier thing, the real conversation. She seemed to remember having his penis in her mouth. She seemed to remember his waking up in the middle of the night and whispering in her ear, “Take me with you,” as he held her. But she was not sure this wasn't a dream.
Her first awareness the next morning was the searing hangover, then the throbbing foot. The wound now pulpy and sore. It took a moment of staring at the door and the white-and-black-checkered rug to piece together where she was. The university man slept with his mouth open. She listened to his breath sputter like a boy's. After several minutes of lying there, she brought her hand to his cheek. His eyes opened. He blinked at B., clearly attempting to place her, then launched into a hacking cough. Eventually he settled red-faced into the pillow.
“Well, hello,” he said. His voice was tired, neutral.
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Well. We got a little sidetracked from your medical care. We need to put that gauze on your foot. We'll fix you up and get you back on the road.”
“I'm not in any hurry. I can stay awhile.” She thought she might tell him about the checks. Maybe he could help her be done with them.
“Well, no, you can't stay.” He spoke to the ceiling, his voice still neutral. “I'm married.”
“I realize that,” she replied. A distant sinking sensation went through her. “I thought maybe we could talk more. I like talking with you.”
He did not move his eyes from the ceiling. “I have some things I need to get to. My wife is coming back soon and there are some things around the house I promised I'd work on
. . .
”
He went on about the house, its gutters or hot water heater or some other domestic concern. She lay rigid, understanding she would need to move quickly, to locate her dress, slip it on without zipping. But for the moment she did not want to move. A Johnny Mercer song came into her head. She waited inside “I'm Old Fashioned” for some clarity or consolation; there was only her aching body in the bed.
“Good luck on your trip,” the professor said abruptly, apparently at the end of his monologue. Then she knew she must go.
The house in the morning no longer looked quaint and comforting but disordered and stained, unwashed plates and cups on bookshelves, crumpled boxer shorts on the floor, discolorations in the rug. The charcoal nudes unmistakably thrusting, hostile. She found her heels near the couch. The African mask mocking her with its foreign, turned-up mouth and slitted eyes.
She ran through the campus, her foot a violent sting. The Mustang was not where she thought it was. She limped down the first street and then the next, identical in its dumpiness, and began to panicâhad the car been stolen, towed? Why did it all look the same?âuntil she found the car dirty and untouched on the first street and wondered how she had missed it. She sat hunched at the wheel. The carsickness was a single crushing shot through the hangover and wounded foot.
She waited in the Mustang for the bank to open. A white banner draped across the top of the doors offering free toasters to new students. There was a foul smell in the car from the uneaten tacos but she did not want to handle them before going in, so she sat in the heat with the odor. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, catching the glint of the diamond brooch in the narrow rectangle, the mussed hair and dried makeup.
There was only one teller at the counter. A man. Disappointment passed through her. She walked through the velvet ropes to wait her turn although there were no other customers. The male teller had his head down, arranging some papers. He made her wait several more minutes.
“Next, please.”
“Hello. I'd like to make this check out to cash.”
He peered at the check. “Are you visiting, ma'am?”
“Yes. My cousin.”
He did not smile at her. He was young, but his brown hair was thinning at the top. His face was narrow and white, his lips pale, like two aged scars in his face.
“It's so hot over here,” she said, trying to make small talk. “I didn't realize. The city is so cold in the summer.”
He nodded and did not move to open his cash drawer or ask what bill denominations she preferred. She did not like the purple pattern of his tie. He studied the check again. “If you'll excuse me for a moment.”
As he walked away, toward a row of desks at the back, and as he stopped to speak with another man, older and gray-haired, B. felt suddenly as if she had handed over her small child to a stranger. The male teller and the older man talked in low tones, the older man studying the check now; both looked over at B. She had an urge to run around the counter and snatch back her small child.
“Good morning, miss,” the older man was saying as he approached her, “there seems to be a question on the accountâ”
“I just realized, I'm late. I'll have to come back.” She slid the ostrich-skin purse onto her wrist and backed slowly and casually away. She walked with the same casualness out the door. Eleven steps. Outside the sun struck her, harsh and bright. She opened the Mustang door, sat down in the seat, keyed the ignition and sped out of the parking lot in one fluid motion.
20.
She did not go into
her motel room, just sat by the pool in the scalding sun. She cried, watching the oiled rainbow swirls in the water. A housekeeper asked if she needed the manager; she shook her head. Her shoulders and scalp burned and her feet puckered to numbness.
The tears were not for the university man, she knew. They came from an alien, frightening place. When she finished, she dragged herself to her room, exhausted and cotton-mouthed as if coming through a desert. She lay on the bed and tried to think what she could do without the banks. What could she do without the banks? She clutched the bed, hearing the Johnny Mercer song until she fell asleep.
21.
She did not call him
from the motel. She waited, stalling, until she was back on the road. She forced herself off at a truck-weighing station. The sun was burning on the glass of the phone booth, the glare reminding her how much time there was to kill before lunch.
“Hello,” she said.
“Well,” Daughtry said. “Didn't expect a call from you.”
The concrete sidewalk radiated more heat into the glass. Sweat gathered at the base of B.'s back, between her legs.
She tried again to remember his first name. It would not come to her.
“How are you?”
“You sound like shit,” Daughtry said.
She nodded, forgetting he couldn't see her.
“How's your granny?” he asked.
“Better. Thank you.”
“Bullshit.”
She looked down and noted the faintest film of semen still on her dress. She began scratching it off.
“It doesn't matter,” Daughtry said. “I didn't mean it. Truth is I've missed you.”
“Me too,” she lied. “Look, I need your help. I need more checks.” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice.
She heard him light a cigarette, the paper crumpling as he sucked. “And here I thought you just missed me.”
The cigarette paper crinkling and exhales went on for several seconds before he spoke again.
“What happened to the other checks?”
“I lost them.”
He laughed. “Now I know you're full of shit. What is it, drugs? You got an uncle in gambling trouble?”
She didn't answer.
“Because it can't be for the kicks. That would be too stupid: you don't need the money but you wanna get dirty. You wanna be bad. Right?”
“It's not for kicks,” she said.
“You're a good girl. Period. Can't change that. You should be glad to be good.” He exhaled. “I'd give anything to be good with you.”
“I'll cut you in,” she blurted out. She ignored in her mind his pained face. She visualized only the checks.
“What happened to them?” he finally said. “You kill the account?”
“I think so.”
“See, now this is where I wonder what the fuck I'm doing. Giving them to you in the first place. Why I'm even thinking of continuing in this line with you, like a goddamn whipped twelve-year-old. Ditch the checks if you haven't already,” he said. “Get rid of the ID.”
In his tone of warning she heard only, regretfully, that she would have to abandon the false surname. She'd liked her picture beside the meaningless name.
“I've missed you,” she tried.
His voice came out low and quiet. “The first time I saw you, I thought, it don't matter what you say to her because she'll never go out with you. I could have recited the goddamn Latin mass. You were like a painting behind glass, not the ones now but the old ones with queens and ladies in dresses, soft
. . .
It's ruined now, but I keep wanting to touch the glass.”
“Daughtry.”
“When are you coming back to the city?”
“I might not. I don't know.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You wanna stay in the sticks?”
She was silent.
“You got no right to fuck with me,” he said in the low voice again. “I believed you, about us not being so different. So I'm asking you, please, don't fuck with me.”
“I get this feeling,” she said finally. “I can't breathe, I'm going to be sick. Just walking around the city makes me sick.”
“You should go to a doctor.”
“No,” she said, raising her palm to the hot glass. “You see, I'm not really sick. It's just a feeling. There's nowhere it's better. Only the banks make it better.”
“You shoulda got married by now,” Daughtry said. “Had some kids. That would make it better. You shouldn't be hanging out with guys like me.”
She knew he was fishing for reassurance but she was too caught up in her own thoughts. “I don't know the reason,” she said faintly. Her palm hurt on the hot glass, but she did not remove it. “I'm not trying to trick you. You're helping me. The checks help me.”
“You're conning me. I'm gonna get conned in this deal, is all I see. Put out with the trash. Call me when you have a straight story,” he said and hung up the phone.