The Broken Teaglass (9 page)

“Yeah, so I get this letter. Dan apparently read it and had it sent straight to me. I don’t know what the hell goes through his mind sometimes.
Genitally fixated correspondent? I’ll put Minot right on it!
Anyway. The writer wants to know all about the word ‘poon.’ And ‘poontang,’ too. Guy wants to know if it has an Asian origin. He says he figures it does since it sounds sort of Chinese. You know, ‘tang’?”

“So what did you write?”

“Nothing. I decided to try and squeeze a little chivalry out of old Dan. I went into his office and said, ‘Do you
really
want me to answer some pervert’s letter about a word like “poontang”?’”

“You said that to
Dan?”

“Why not? It’s not exactly appropriate for me to be answering that sort of thing. Especially now that we’ve got you around. At least
you
might enjoy researching something like that.”

“Maybe too much,” I admitted.

“Anyway. Dan looks at me sort of funny and says—get this—‘I’m sorry, is it a slang term? I’m not familiar with it.’”

I shook my head. “Whoa.”

“I know. So I tell him what ‘poontang’ is—”

“Hold on. How exactly did you say it?”

“Well, I just said ‘female reproductive organ.’”

“Nice.”

“And he turns red and says, ‘Give me the letter. Sorry. I’ll handle this.’ Then he grabs the letter from me and goes back to his citations.”

“Poor Dan,” I said. “Some aspects of this job are a little too sleazy for someone like him.”

“Yeah. But what kind of guy goes his whole life without knowing what ‘poontang’ is?”

“Maybe a guy who spends his whole life with his head in a bunch of dictionaries?”

She smiled her sideways smile. “He is a gentleman, though. There’s just something old-fashioned and honorable about him.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “With the pale face, and the graying black hair, and the long, thin body … he kind of reminds me of an aging vampire who never really had any bite.”

“A vampire? I wouldn’t say so. Vampires don’t have beards, for one.”

“Well, that’s why I said an
aging
vampire. I mean, he has the look of a dapper old Dracula who never had the heart to suck anyone’s blood.”

“You’ve given this a great deal of thought, I can see,” Mona said, yawning. “Have you ever actually read
Dracula?”

“No,” I admitted. “You?”

“About two thirds of it, then I stopped,” Mona said, looking bored. “It’s no
Frankenstein.”

“Should we get back to work?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Mona said, and sighed. She slumped in her chair and let her arms hang down at her sides.

“Someone’s a little tipsy,” I teased.

“Just like someone else wanted,” she retorted in a sing-song voice that mimicked mine.

We dragged ourselves back onto the couch. Mona scrunched into a little ball and ruffled through her citations at a much slower pace than before.

“You can’t leave,” she said firmly, “till we find something.”

“But we don’t know for sure if there’s anything else.”

“I’m just sayin’.” She was slurring just a bit.

I looked through citations for
auxotroph, baby oil
, and
access time
. Nothing. When I looked up at Mona again, her eyes were closed.

“Wake up, Mona,” I called to her. “It’s still early.”

“I don’t know about you,” she said, without opening her eyes, “but this job takes a lot out of me somehow. By the end of the week, I just crash. I get so tired.”

“I try to get some sleep at my desk.”

“Mmm. I’ve noticed.”

“Mona?”

“Yes?”

“Why is this
Teaglass
stuff so important to you? I mean, for real.”

“Aw, shit, Billy,” she sighed. She nestled her head against the back of the couch.

“C’mon,” I prodded. “I really want to know.”

“I just want to be in on it, that’s all. I want to be a
real
member of this exclusive little dictionary club. Not just one of the
babies.”

“I think everyone there already really respects you.”

“Give me a break. You have no idea.”

“No idea
what?”

Mona snuggled her head deeper into the couch cushion.

“These are hard questions,” she murmured. “Maybe you should ask me on Monday.”

“Never mind,” I said.

Mona dozed off and I kept flipping through the citations. Soon she was breathing loudly in her sleep, snoring almost, and the sound of it nearly put me to sleep as well. I almost missed it when a
Broken Teaglass
cit fluttered by in my fingers:

I considered whether I should wake up Mona and show the cit to her. She’d probably be pretty excited when she saw it. It confirmed her theory that someone was messing around on purpose—that someone wanted editors to notice his or her work. Probably
her
work.
Someone in the office
. I thought again of the
maven
cit and felt my pulse quicken. The little surprising bit about the corpse in the previous cit didn’t seem so amusing anymore. Now that I was alone with
Mona in this quiet, creepy apartment, listening to her murmuring softly in her sleep, the whole affair struck me as eerie. Not just the corpse, but the way this newest cit seemed to be addressing someone so intimately. Somebody named Red? We were either terrible voyeurs or we’d fallen for some colossal joke.

Suddenly I remembered Tom, on that first day, when I met him on our front porch. What had he said?
I’ve heard some bizarre shit goes down at that place
. Since when had the voice of the downstairs freak become a part of my conscience? The last thing I needed was to have this floating, wiry-haired head of Tom directing my way in this world. The Black Labels were probably starting to affect me in deep and unhealthy ways.

I decided it was time to leave. I went to the kitchen to look for something to write on. There was a stack of papers and other junk on one corner of the table: bills, a Chinese take-out menu,
TV Guide
, a few napkins. I took a napkin to the living room and scribbled on it:
Mona, Look what I found! I guess that means I can take off now. We’ll talk Monday. Pleasant dreams. B
.

I looked around for something with which to anchor the note and the cit to the table, where she’d see them. It was then that I noticed there was no television in the room. Then why the subscription to
TV Guide?
Was Mona doing a little research-reading at home? I used
The Hindenburg
as a paperweight.

Mona smiled in her sleep, stretched her legs onto my spot on the couch, and twisted away from me. Still a little spooked by the
advantaged
cit and the creaky, abandoned feel of the apartment building, I wondered if it was unwise of me to leave her alone and unconscious, with the door unlocked and a bunch of incriminating dictionary material scattered
around her. Maybe, I thought, I should at least wake her up before I go. But that seemed a little too intimate an act—shaking her awake, whispering goodbye, speaking to her while she was still half in dreams.

On my way out, I peered into her bedroom. It was just as spare and neat as her living room. There was a narrow bed with a fluffy white comforter. A bookshelf full of paperbacks. An antique-looking dresser. No TV. Strange bird, that Mona Minot.

“Huh,” I said aloud. On my way out, as I passed the kitchen table again, I picked up the
TV Guide
and looked at the address sticker.

Mona Rasmussen
, it said, and then Mona’s address.

I put the
TV Guide
down.

Bizarre shit!
cried the floating head of Tom in my brain, this time with a cigarette hanging from his lips. But far more bizarre than Mona’s two last names—which shouldn’t have been all that surprising, considering what Mona had just told me about her family—was my own unexpected impulse to snoop, and my own jumpy mood. I slipped out the door and tried not to squeak the old floorboards too much as I crept down the stairs.

Next came the void of Saturday
. I slept late. I watched a little TV. I tried not to be too disappointed that the first social encounter of my young professional life ended with the girl falling asleep.

The contents of my refrigerator were grim—eggs, mayonnaise, and some rubbery old carrot sticks—so I at least made it to the grocery store. Once there, I was inspired by the bright plum tomatoes that were displayed on a sale table in the front of the produce section. They reminded me of this great sauce my mother used to whip up from scratch. I’d watched her make it enough times to see that it was largely improvised. Tomatoes, basil, a little wine, and then cream at the end. But the main ingredient was roasted garlic, which she’d bake as a whole bulb and then squeeze into the sizzling tomatoes. I think this sauce was an imitation of something she’d had at a restaurant once.

Mine would be an imitation of her imitation. She’d usually put in some julienned zucchini and yellow squash, so I added that to my cart. Her sauce didn’t have any meat in it, but I figured I’d add some chicken breast just to make it a little heartier. On the way home, I stopped at a package store for a cheap bottle of wine.

I started cooking early in the evening, tasting it every so often, adjusting the salt and the wine and the cream until the balance was just as I’d remembered. I covered it, put a giant pot of water on for the pasta, and then went to the living room to catch a little TV. One of my favorite movies was on—
The Usual Suspects
. There was about a half hour left of the movie, and I got caught up in the ending. I just wanted to see the detective drop his coffee cup at the end, and figured the pasta water could boil a few extra minutes before I put the penne in.

The problem, I discovered upon returning to the kitchen, was that I’d turned on the wrong burner to boil. The cream in the sauce had scorched, forming a brownish crust around the edge of the pan. I poked at the sauce with a wooden spoon. It was burnt at the bottom too. I stared into the pan. The limp curls of overdone zucchini spelled something like
even food fails you
. I gripped the handle and flung the pan sideways.

As the metal clunked against the wall, I heard a pathetic wail that must have been mine. Then I slapped the heels of my hands into my eyes. I kept them there for a moment, not yet ready to look at what I had just done. Taking a deep breath, I let my palms slide down my cheeks.

The pan and wooden spoon were on the floor, and a clump of burnt tomato-cream-garlic sauce had slid down the wall by the oven, leaving a greasy reddish trail on the off-white wall. I threw the pan back on the stovetop. As I watched the remains of the sauce settle into the baseboard, it occurred to me that it wasn’t quite as burnt as it had appeared in the pan. A small part of it probably could have been saved.

I didn’t feel like cleaning it up. I turned off the burners, the TV, and the lights. And went to bed.

• • •

I got up early on Sunday
morning and drove down the block for a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. When I returned, Jimmy was out smoking on the porch. He pointed his cigarette at the empty lawn chair beside him.

“Take a load off, Billy boy.”

I sat down and sipped my coffee, which was too sweet.

“How was your date Friday?” Jimmy wanted to know.

“Weird,” I admitted. “I guess it wasn’t really a date.”

“Are you gonna go out with her again?”

“It wasn’t exactly going out. I don’t know if we’ll hang out again.”

“Wasn’t
really
a date. Wasn’t
exactly
going out. Doesn’t sound like you know what you’re doing.”

Jimmy mashed his cigarette into the ashtray in his lap. Then he leaned over the porch railing and emptied the ashtray into the hedges.

“Where’s Tom?” I asked.

He lit another cigarette before answering. “His wife wants him back. For today.”

“What does that mean?”

Jimmy sighed. He shifted in his chair. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll be back. You know Tommy doesn’t actually live here, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure what the arrangement was.”

He gazed at me and smiled a little. “Arrangement? Yeah. Tommy stays here when his wife kicks him out. Sometimes she kicks him out for pretty long stretches of time.”

“Huh,” I said.

Jimmy turned away from me to blow smoke rings.

“You go to church?” he asked me, after a few smoke rings. He was looking across the street again.

“No. I tried a few different churches in college, actually, but—”

“But?” he prompted me.

“But none of them fit right.”

He nodded. “The best fit’s probably the church you were raised with.”

“I wasn’t raised with any church. We never went to one.”

“Sometimes I think I should start going again. Raised Catholic.”

“You and Tom are Catholic?”

“Yep.”

“Does Tom go to church?”

“No. He used to memorize whole passages of the Bible just to show off, but he doesn’t have a religious bone in his whole body. Only one he worships is himself.”

“Huh. Does Barbara ever go?”

“Naw, Billy. Barb’s Buddhist.”

I snorted, thinking he was joking. He took a long drag and didn’t look at me. He was serious. I tried to follow the line of his gaze. I decided he was probably looking at the plastic Mary statue standing in the little yard across the street.