The Parallel Apartments (51 page)

Lou fell to the floor. His eyeballs felt like pickled eggs. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the barroom. He surveyed the undersides of the stools and the distant, blurred green rectangle of the game.

“Goddammit, Kelly,” Lou heard someone, a woman, say. “He just got out of the goddam joint.”

“He always just got out, Dot,” said the other voice.

“Gimme some milk,” said Dot.

“No.”

Somebody stepped on his Lou's triceps. Then, a voice in his ear.

“Lou, stand up.”

“Aht?”

“Yeah, it's me,” said Dot. “Let's go.”

Dot guided Lou along the sidewalk as his vision and his ability to respire slowly returned. He spit out sheets of flesh that the peppers had burned off the inside of his mouth.

“Dah,” said Lou, regretting it instantly, as a new blaze broke out in the back of his throat.

“Be quiet,” said Dot. “I'm going to run in here for some things, then I'm taking you home. Just sit yourself down here on the curb.”

Lou watched her go into Murra's. She came out with a carton of L&Ms and a half gallon of milk.

“Here,” she said handing him both. “They're out of Cheez-It.”

He looked up at her as he drank the milk. The sun was directly behind her head. He felt like he was staring into an eclipse of a thousand-foot statue of Cleopatra.

“Thank you.”

“You in a lot of trouble with Kelly,” Cleopatra's statue said. “He means to collect. Doak only owed him nine-hundred dollars for his bar tab, but Kelly got somebody to break his arm. Doak paid him half of it right away. Kelly won't let you off.”

“My truck's gone. What am I supposed to do? I lost my offshore job.”

“He already started to collect,” said Dot, glancing behind her, in the direction of Lou's apartment.

“What's that mean?”

“Let's get you home first.”

Dot helped him stand up, and walked him down to his apartment on Flangit Street.

Scattered around the tiny cement courtyard that served as Lou's front yard were three weeks' worth of
Galveston County Daily News
es. Below the picture window next to a partly vaporized geranium plant that kept coming
back to life year after year was the baby pool that Lou used for relaxation. It had been hot lately; only two or three inches of water remained. Lou noticed that there was a hot plate in the pool, and scads of bottle caps, some of which were facedown, floating like tiny rafts.

“Hey,” said Lou. “That's my hot plate.”

“Lou…”

“And those… that's my goddam bottle-cap collection.”

Lou looked up at Dot, and then at his apartment. The door was just ajar.

Inside was a darkened ruin.

“Try to keep an open mind here, Lou,” said Dot, following him inside.

His phone was gone. His TV was gone. His hi-fi and collection of country and western records were gone. His painting of bluebonnets. Both his electric fans and his percolator. On the kitchenette floor were the contents of his icebox—a pooling Velveeta, a jar of olives, a measled pork chop convulsing with larval beings. The icebox itself was gone.

All his work clothes were still on the floor where he'd left them, but the three-piece suit he kept on a hook on the bathroom door was gone. The pistol he kept in the drawer in the table that he put his alarm clock on was gone. The alarm clock was gone, too. They'd taken all the light bulbs, and his electric shaver, which had cost him nearly fifteen dollars. The jar of pennies he kept on the mantel over the fake fireplace was gone. The first edition of
Jude the Obscure
that Dot had given him was gone.

“Oh, fuck all this, Dot. Look. They took the book you gave me.”

Lou grabbed the sides of his head and moaned.

“It's okay, settle down,” said Dot. “It's just a book.”

Lou didn't mention that that was where he kept his only picture of Charlotte.

“Aagh.” Lou tugged at his ears.

“I told you. He means it.”

Lou sat down heavily on the divan.

“He got my pennies and my .38.”

And Charlotte, he got my Charlotte.

“Maybe you should commit a small crime and go back to jail,” said Dot.

“Merle Haggard's gonna write a song about me.”

Lou got up, went outside, and gathered up all of his newspapers. He came back in and dropped them all on the bare tile floor. He noticed that the circular
rug made of yarn that he'd found in the bed of his pickup one day was gone.

“My little rug's gone.”

Dot kicked off her shoes, tiny green mules, and made herself comfortable on the divan. She peeled open the carton of L&Ms, opened a pack, tamped a cigarette against a front tooth, and looked around on Lou's coffee table.

“I'm sorry, baby. Got some fire?”

Lou went into the kitchen and returned with a box of strike-anywhere matches, which he tossed in Dot's lap. She lit a cigarette and offered it to Lou. He wasn't much of a smoker, but he took a long drag anyway. “I hate Kelly.”

“Sit down, baby.”

Lou picked up Dot's feet, sat down on the end of the divan, and replaced her feet in his lap.

“Lou, you might want to think about New Orleans.”

“I don't like to think about New Orleans,” said Lou, which was very true; he'd been there four times, and only once had he returned with any memory of what he'd said or done there, and that time he'd fallen off a balcony onto a mobster, who'd pummeled him with Lou's own shoe until they were interrupted by a policeman on a horse who arrested both of them and put them in the same cell, where the mobster completed his task by pummeling Lou with his other shoe and poking him in the eyes, Three Stooges–style. Lou, temporarily blinded, had had to be chaperoned back to Texas City by a couple Eagle Scouts who found him bumping into poles in front of the jailhouse after he'd been let go.

“A judge would have to sentence me to New Orleans to get me back there.”

“You can't stay in Texas City,” said Dot, trying to light a match with her thumbnail. “You know Hoyt Delahoussaye? He only owed Bogue a hundred and some-odd. And nobody's seen him in a week.”

“You think Kelly
killed him?
”

“Did I say that?”

Dot's feet in his lap initiated an erection in Lou's pants. Not that anything would come of it. They didn't exactly mesh as lovers. Lou didn't enjoy blow jobs in general, even though it was well documented that Dot could accomplish them in a variety of epic ways. And regular sex never really worked out between them. She liked to be on top, and Lou had no trouble being on bottom—the role fit his nature—but Dot liked to bounce hard
and vigorously, with great amplitude, and Lou sometimes slipped out when she was at the peak, at which time she would slam back down quickly, once catching the tip of his penis and folding it in half. This had necessitated a trip to the emergency room, ruining the mood. It had complicated every one of Lou's penis-related activities for more than a year.

He leaned over and picked up a newspaper off the floor.

“Look here, the Padres are in last place again,” he said, mentally commanding his erection to revert to flaccidity. “Wait. That was a couple weeks back. Let's look at today's standings.”

Dot got the match lit, but the flaming head broke off and shot into the kitchen, where it landed in the pool of Velveeta and sizzled out. The room smelled briefly like a grilled cheese.

“Here it is,” said Lou, slapping the newspaper on the table. “Today's goddam paper.”

“Lou.”

“Oho,” said Lou. “Still in last place. I hope they get so far behind they wind up first place in the minors. I hate the Padres.”

“Lou! Are you listening? I think the man may really put the hurt on you.”

“Don't worry about me. I won't ever go back in there again. Look, I made an oath to quit drinking, anyway.”

Lou reached into his pocket for his envelope and gave it to Dot, who declined to read it.

“You ought to mind me,” she said instead.

“What about you? Why don't you go to New Orleans?”

“I can't go. This is where my business is, this is where I'm from, goddam Texas City. I can handle Kelly. You're between careers, and you're really from anywhere.”

A few moments passed. Lou studied the newspaper, trying to ignore his erection. Dot looked around for Lou's ashtray, a two-foot-high sand-filled brass compotier on a clawfoot stand, but it was nowhere to be seen. She stubbed out her cigarette on the coffee table.

“Well, why isn't he making
you
pay?” Lou finally said. “Those were some costly philters you had old Bogue mix you over the years.”

“Kelly's collecting on me three times a week. Hour at a time.”

“Oh, goddammit, Dot, don't tell me that.”

“He makes me call him brother. He calls me sister. Because of Bogue
always telling him that I was like a daughter to him.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Lou. The idea of Kelly touching her repulsed him. His erection began to renege. But before it did, Dot noticed it with her foot.

“Hey, are you up?” she said, feeling around his crotch with her bare feet. “You are!”

“No, no, I'm not, I mean to say I was, but it's ending now, and it was an accident in the first place, but it's—”

“You son of a bitch,” she said, yanking her feet out of his lap. “You like that? You like thinking about me and Kelly? I oughta—”

“No, Dot, you've got the wrong i—”

She kicked him in the jaw with her heel, hard, producing a bony
chrk
sound.

“Urln!”

“You… you… Did you know I've been working extra with Kelly to pay off
your
tab? You fucker. You're on your own now, man.”

“Wait, now, just hold—”

Dot stood up, slipped on her green mules, and left, leaving the door wide open. Lou didn't run after her. They often had communication misalignments, and they often ended in minor violence, Lou always on the receiving end. Most times he deserved it. This time, though, he hadn't been guilty of what she thought he had. Kelly made him sick. Lou didn't have the guts to stand up to him. Which was too bad, because giving Kelly a good throttling would be a fine way to make up with Dot. As it stood, though, it seemed unlikely that Dot would forgive this anytime soon.

Lou poked at his chin, rubbed his jaw, stuck out his tongue. The bottom half of his skull sang like a tuning fork. Something fell out of his mouth. A tooth, of course. A fine specimen, a shiny alabaster molar. Lou took care of his teeth. He tried to replace it, but it wouldn't stay. On the coffee table he noticed one of those little strips of red plastic that one pulls off a pack of cigarettes to open it. He picked it up, wrapped it around his tooth, then wedged it back in its socket.

A little girl, nine or so, appeared at the front door. His neighbor, Belinda.

“Hi, Mr. Borger.”

“Whaddaya say, Bee,” said Lou.

“Why'd Dot stomp off like that?”

“We were engaged in a brief misunderstanding.”

His tooth felt funny. Maybe it wouldn't take root again.

“Oh. You're bleeding.”

“I know that. What's on your mind, young lady?”

“Momma needs your TV
Guide
to look for
Room 222
.”

“I don't take the TV
Guide
,” said Lou, poking at his tooth with his tongue. “You can have the TV section outta here, though. I'm keeping the local news part, though.”

“Okay.”

Lou subtracted the entertainment section from the paper and handed it to Belinda, who bore a poultice of some kind on one elbow.

“What happened to you?”

“I fell off LuLu's ten-speed.”

“Who's LuLu?”

“My visiting cousin from Bossier.”

“That's just fine.”

“I hate LuLu.”

“That right? What for?”

“She stole my Sno-Caps and fed them to Marvin.”

“Who's Mar… oh, never mind, okay, then, run along, I need to cry and sort out my life.”

“Okay. We're having corny dogs anyway. Bye.”

Belinda left the door wide open. Why women often left doors wide open was a mystery he could find no patience to contemplate at the moment. And he was too tired to get up and close it.

He turned to the funnies. Then he remembered that the goddam funnies were on the other side of the goddam TV page, which he'd just given to a nine-year-old, goddammit.

“Goddammit.”

Lou wadded up the paper and threw it at the pork chop. He picked another paper off the floor and opened it at random. Obituaries. Opposite was a list of Texans recently killed in Vietnam. One fellow, an unlucky GI who'd never even made it out of boot camp, had been bitten by a wandering spider.