The Nirvana Blues (24 page)

Joe raised a protective forearm to ward off the pebbles and dust from Cobey's spinning tires.

“Oh me oh my,” he whimpered stupidly. “The thot plickens!”

*   *   *

H
EIDI WAS GONE
when he reached home. No doubt she had kidnapped Heather and Michael and made a run for the border.

Puzzled, irritated, and exhausted, Joe regarded their living room. The house seemed portentously empty. Dramatic and doom-laden thunderclaps crouched in all the corners and closets awaiting their cue. The vacancy of the air aroused little chills. Halfheartedly, Joe rummaged about looking for a suicide note, bloodstains, a tender (bitter, maniacal) farewell, an explanatory document. Already, their plane had probably landed at La Guardia. Well, so what? His forehead throbbed, his eyes burned, his mouth tasted like rotten cotton, his shoulders ached; he flexed his fingers to rid them of cramps caused by gripping bicycle handlebars. It was time for a bath. A guy could only go so long crusted with buzzard guts.

In the bathroom, disappointed at the lack of final words scrawled in lipstick across the medicine-cabinet mirror, Joe dropped his trousers and started lowering onto the can when he noticed drops of urine splattered across the toilet seat. Michael, no doubt—and one of the kid's cardinal sins. Joe reached for the toilet paper. Three yards of the monolayered stuff had been unraveled onto the floor—another of the children's deadly misdemeanors. Michael couldn't wipe himself without using eighteen feet of bumwad. And Heather needed ten feet of the tissue simply to blow her nose. Someday Michael would piss on the seat once too often, and Joe would yank it off its hinges, tie it around the boy's neck, and force him to spend a year toting that albatross until he had learned to be a civilized human being!

Moments later, settling into the hot tub, Joe said, “Ahhh…” For two-thirds of humanity, such a self-indulgent treat would be a colossal luxury, an experience of stunning mystery and erotic magic. Yet he, Joe Miniver, scion of the garbage racket, archcriminal, flagrant delictodor, took it for granted.

Sloshing way down, he floated weightlessly. His body sighed, emitting tiny, satisfied burbles of gratitude. Tendrils of plants suspended from the shower-curtain rod tickled him forlornly, imploring him to be less of a bastard husband. Kiddie accoutrements—Heather's confetti-filled floating fish, Michael's mud-encrusted sneakers under the sink—broke his heart. All the everyday objects of an ordinary and loving life.…

Joe snapped awake split seconds before going under. Like tetrapods of yore, he crawled from the tub, snagged a towel, and limped into their bedroom. Accepted by the bed with open arms, he collapsed down through layers of comfort like a man drowning in silken roses. Yawning, Joe discovered he couldn't move—not even a pinkie. Gratefully, he waited for sleep to plant a morphine bullet between his eyes.

The telephone rang. Her lawyer? Scott Harrison? Joe gnashed his teeth. That son of a bitch! He was the kind of lawyer who would invite you to a party and charge ten bucks for the call! Heidi, out there in abogado waters, would be like a goldfish trying to navigate through a convention of sharks. Naturally, Joe would hire his good friend Tribby Gordon—the Mortician of Marriages. But would Tribby stand a chance against Harrison, a smooth-talking, Universal Life pendejo who drove a Pontiac Electra and wore those absurd velour jumpsuits and occasionally smoked a good cigar? Joe groaned. Scott Harrison versus Tribby Gordon, a long-haired chain-smoking, disorganized jock-hippie, who steered a battered '56 Volvo (missing one front fender) around town, and who was apt to appear in a courtroom tieless, wearing J. C. Penney's workshirts, beige corduroys split at the kneecaps, and muddy fruitboots or old Weejun loafers torn at the seams. Plus moth-eaten socks, the colors of which did not match.

To make matters worse, Harrison worked out of a nit-pickingly clean office. File cabinets gleamed in all the corners, R. C. Gorman and Fritz Scholder prints adorned the walls, an efficient secretary and law clerk, Laura Hobbes, greeted visitors and typed up all the correspondence and briefs without a single flaw. Tribby, on the other hand, seemed to work out of his car. A battered old briefcase, and reams of legal motions, quiet-title suits, abstracts, letters, envelopes, transcripts, and state statute books littered the front and back seats and floors, stamped not by official seals and notaries' insignias, but with patterns of mud in neat herringbone rows from the soles of Tribby's tennis shoes.

Horror-struck, Joe recalled accepting a ride from Tribby. When you opened the door, the wind snatched several important-looking papers that you either grabbed in midair or retrieved from nearby puddles. “Just put 'em in back,” Tribby rasped, “I'll sort 'em out later.” As for the piles of hopes, dreams, and agonies on the passenger seat? “Just shove that garbage on the floor,” quoth Theodore Reginald “Butch” Gordon. Onto the floor, that is, among more brutalized briefs, manila envelopes, important letters, tennis rackets, baseball gloves, and crumpled beer cans.

And this manifestation of a good-natured, irresponsible (brilliant, yes, but oh so distracted!) lawbooks was going to battle for his rightful share of the vehicles, the land, the inheritance, and the kids?

Joe roasted in the sweat suddenly caused by this dilemma. If push came to shove, he'd have to select his friend, otherwise Tribby would be hurt. Yet his friend was a slob. Scott Harrison—on appearance alone—would run a real redeeming red-hot radiantly rotating legal ramrod right up the shyster-athlete's rosy red rectum!

The telephone ceased ringing. Could it have been Nancy Ryan with a message for his left brain? Or Heidi from the bus station, saying good-bye?

*   *   *

U
NEASILY
, J
OE DROWSED
. All he wanted was sleep. But his exhausted frame, so full of electricity, continued humming. Sleep cuddled at his ears, whispered tantalizingly, and made his right arm and rib cage flush with soporific orgasm. Then it retreated, ruffled lax fingers in his hair, and hovered like a reticent sleaze, until, aggravated by its cockteasing presence, Joe suffered adrenal spurts just strong enough to keep him from going under.

Nancy Ryan … the plaid suitcase full of cocaine … the crippled airplane … Sasha gnashing his rotten yellow teeth …

At last it muffled his brain like a San Francisco fog: sleep. Or anyway, that no-man's-land just under the vapor where vivid dreams are a dime a dozen, and you surface occasionally, like a beaver or a whale, for a breath of groggy consciousness. Joe saw his kids being born, watched Heidi ride a horse, and lost them all in a vast field as they melted slowly into a snowstorm.

He awoke with a stifled cry of pain and loss just as Heidi—the real lady—sat down beside him.

Joe said, “I thought you were gone forever.”

“Not yet.”

“But soon?”

“Who knows. I suppose I should just laugh it off—isn't that what everybody else does? But I feel so tarnished.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? I mean, I thought we were running our marriage on a set of principles that had real meaning. Then suddenly you fall into bed with this slut who's fucked practically every horny letch in—”

“Hey! First of all, she happens to be an interesting and normal human being. Second of all, every middle-class inhabitant of this town in a similar age and economic bracket to ours
except
you and me has screwed practically every horny letch in this town, including all the people in your woman's group, and Suki Terrell, and—”

“How,” she interrupted vehemently, “can you even in jest equate Suki with that—”

“It's a meat market, this absurd valley! And just because up until now we've been vegetarians, doesn't give you license to call people sluts because they happen to like a nice roll in the hay every now and then!”

Icily, she said, “Excuse me. Obviously, I had the wrong impression about last night. Didn't realize you two were so tight. How long have you guys been duking each other behind my back?”

“Aw, come on, Heidi. Why bait me with obscenities?”

“I'm sorry.” She tossed her head angrily. “Let me rephrase the question. How long have you two been ‘dating'?”

“You're a laugh and a half. Really.”

“Well I happen to be
hurt
.…”

Wishing that he didn't have to deal with any of this, Joe accepted her into his arms. “Join the club,” he admitted. “I don't feel very funny myself.”

“The way you lied, I think, is what really brings me down.”

“It was a one-night shot, honest. When Peter didn't get off that bus, I panicked.”

“Actually, things have been pretty lousy sometimes between us. Sooner or later it would have happened.”

“Things haven't been all that bad. We've had some pretty good times also.”

“Oh sure. But in the end it's all boiling down to this.”

“What's
this?
Not the end of the world. We don't have to give up, commit suicide, or move to Cleveland.”

She burrowed her head deeper against his neck and hugged him for comfort.

“I know all that, Joey. I just feel so unhappy.”

He held his wife. Her quiet tears burned against his throat. For a moment he was big, gentle, and worldly, protecting her. She snuggled the way Heather did in the early morning when she cuddled between her sleeping parents like a defenseless kitten. If only they could make love now, this nightmare might end. Their sex together had always been good. Comfortable, funny, loving—they had grown easy together, rarely careless. They could laugh, play, tease, dawdle—or be riotous, bumptious, faintly kinky, at home with each other's bodies, and rarely bored. Sometimes Heidi ordered him to be passive and worked him over slowly with deft, teasing little nibbles that he loved. Familiarity had bred no contempt. They still liked to collide suddenly in bizarre places and fuck each other to smithereens. Only a few weeks ago, at a party, Heidi had lured Joe into a strange bathroom under the pretext of helping to scout out a lash in her eye: but once behind the locked door, she had gone to her knees and hungrily sucked him. She had wound up straddling his lap on the toilet seat whispering prurient nothings into his fevered ears while a drunk banged on the door, wailing about his bladder. Regularly, on Sunday mornings, they lingered for hours in sunny sexuality. Somehow, they had retained an inventiveness resulting in quirky variations on timeless erotic themes. Only a week ago Joe had been inspired to lay his penis against her mons, and poke both his testicles, like grapes, into her vagina, where she squeezed them until his rubbing cock brought her off. Always, they had managed to soften bad times with intimate shenanigans, seeking forgiveness or solace in the clarity of their physical compatibility, happily orchestrating simultaneous orgasms that usually left them lighthearted and invigorated. Years of learning, trusting, and adventuring had nurtured this physical rapport. So how could I have placed it in jeopardy? Joe berated himself, squeezing Heidi softly as erotic juices began to stir. Then he realized their current dilemma could be solved by a considerate, funky lay—and with a grateful sigh, begging forgiveness, Joe tugged Heidi's hair gently, softly wrenching back her head, and touched his lips to hers, thinking they would make up now, and it would be all over.

Instead, Heidi pulled back and opened one eye: “I really don't want to make love with you, Joe.”

Surprised, all he could think to say was, “You're upset.”

“No shit, Shakespeare.”

Triggered by her sarcastic, hostile tone of voice, Joe flared: “All right. Wonderful. What the hell.”

“You know something, Joey? For things to collapse this abruptly, they must have been disintegrating for a while.”

“We both admit it hasn't been nonstop peaches and cream.”

Heidi stood up and nervously began to pace the room. “You know something crazy? I don't even
like
you right now. In fact, it's worse than that. I don't have
any
feelings for you.”

“Heidi, let's talk later, okay? I'm so tired I'm hallucinating. You won't believe what just happened in Tribby's airplane. A buzzard crashed through the windshield. We could have been killed.”

“Michael says the suitcase is still at the bus station.”

“He ain't lying.”

“So now what?”

Joe shrugged. “Unless Peter comes up with a claim check, we'll have to steal it.”

“You mean on top of adultery and dope dealing, you could have an additional charge of breaking and entering, maybe even armed robbery, tacked onto your record?”

“Maybe we should discuss this later. Honestly, I'm all played out.”

But she needed to talk. “After you and Michael left, I went with Suki Terrell to see Nikita Smatterling.”

“You
what?
”

“I told him what happened last night.”

“I'm gonna vomit! How could you—?”

“I'm sorry, I'm not an iceman, Joey. When the world caves in it helps to talk with somebody who understands.”

“He's a charlatan! He's a creep! He paints monkeys! He screws teenyboppers!”

“He said he felt sorry for you.”

“I feel sorry for
him!
”

“He said only if you were haunted by insecurity and pangs of sexual inadequacy would you haul off and pull a lousy trick like that.”

“She wasn't a lousy trick, she was one of the best tricks I ever had.”

Without missing a beat, Heidi said, “Nikita thinks we should go to a counselor. He said you would only do something like that out of a deepseated hostility toward me that's probably been fomenting for a long time. He said it probably wasn't even a sexual act, per se, it was more like pure belligerence. And that if cantaloupes had recognized sexual properties, you would have accomplished the same thing by duking a melon.”