The Parallel Apartments (52 page)

But this was what got his attention:

          
DURANT Mrs. Louisabelle “Mère” née Desqueyroux, 55, of Austin. She is
survived by a daughter, Charlotte Durant, and a granddaughter, Livia Durant Moppett, both of Austin. Services for Durant will be held at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, September 12.

Lou stared at the paper. Livia. A daughter. He closed his eyes and examined the afterimage of the black-and-white print inside his eyelids. He opened his eyes. He read the obit again. He put the paper down, went outside, looked at the sun for a minute, tapped his baby pool with the tip of his boot, making little ripples that caused the floating bottle caps to bob, went back inside, went through his divan and chair, where he found ninety cents and a gold earring he didn't recognize, crawled around the apartment looking for change on the floor, paused at the pork chop to marvel at the biology at work in his home, stood up, read the article one more time, jammed his tooth more firmly down into its socket, and went outside again, where he sat on the curb and watched Belinda fire bolts from a bright green water gun at a fifteen-year-old-or-so girl riding a pink ten-speed down the street.

“Kids!” hollered somebody. “Dinner!”

LuLu and Belinda dropped the bike and the gun and ran toward the voice.

Lou stood up. He walked over to the where the girls had dropped the bike and gun. The front wheel on the bike spun freely. There was evidence that the decorative, streamlining plastic tassels had been cut off of the ends of the handlebars. He picked up the bike. He got on. He wobbled a few feet, experimenting with speeds and brakes and keeping his jeans' cuffs out of the gears. He picked up a little speed down the slight incline of Adelaide Street. At the corner, he turned west, and disappeared.

XIX

September 1969

Lou Borger sat on the shoulder of Morris Avenue just west of Alvin, legs spread, thumb in the air. LuLu's bike lay in the gravel nearby. He figured he'd ridden more than twenty miles, the last four being a comprehensive review of all possible pains a pair of legs could suffer, until they seemed to jelly, and Lou went down.

A locomotive-like semi, pulling an unoccupied flatbed, roared past him, kicking up a zero-visibility storm of gravel and colachi. When it blew away, Lou notice that the truck had stopped on the shoulder a hundred or so yards away. It began to back up. Presently it stopped next to Lou. Stripes of ash-colored bird shit covered the windshield, except for the double arc of the wipers' purview. The girth and lumpiness of the streaks suggested vultures were the source.

A window rolled down.

“What happened to you?” said a voice in the cab.

“I grew tired of pedaling,” said Lou, not moving.

“Where you ride from?”

“Texas City.”

The trucker was silent for a moment. Lou could not make out his face; only a big grizzly jaw, chewing something.

“Where you headed?”

“Austin.”

“Looks like your handlebars need retasseling,” said the trucker.

Lou had been sitting on the shoulder for an hour, and this was the third traveler who had pulled over and mocked his bicycle. The other two had driven off after Lou strafed their cars with fistfuls of gravel. Lou was hot, sunburned, thirsty, and had decided that he would not rebut the next person who stopped to smart off.

“Yessir,” said Lou.

The trucker chewed.

“Austin,” he said, matter-of-factly, “is uphill from Texas City.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chew, chaw, chew.

“Well, okay, then,” said the trucker, opening the passenger door. “Climb on up.”

“I can't make my legs move.”

Chew.

“Can't you pull yourself along, then hoist yourself up and swing on in?”

“No, sir, I can't get a purchase, what with the gravel and everything.”

Chew, chew.

Lou heard the driver's-side door open and shut. Under the cab, the largest feet in the largest cowboy boots Lou'd ever seen landed in the gravel. They then carried the largest man in Texas around the truck and placed him in front of Lou.

“You're gonna have to ride on the bed,” said the trucker, who then crouched down and picked Lou up like a sleepy four-year-old and lifted him up onto the flatbed trailer. “Just grab onto that rope yonder.”

“Can't I ride in the cab?” said Lou.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Your legs're paralyzed, maybe your bowel controls're paralyzed, too. Can't risk that.”

“I'll need my bicycle,” said Lou.

The trucker picked the ten-speed up with one hand like it was a squash racket and put it on the trailer next to Lou.

“Hold on tight,” he said. “We'll be to Austin in about four hours.”

When they got to town, around dusk, they pulled into the big dirt parking lot of a roadhouse.

Lou sat up, undid his ad-hoc rope harness, and poked at his thighs.

“Well, we're here,” said the trucker, who was just climbing out of the cab. “You got people here you want me to telephone?”

“No, not really,” said Lou, carefully bending one knee, then the other.

“Want me to telephone the handlebar-tassel limousine?”

“I'll find my way,” said Lou, who scooted over to the edge of the flatbed and slowly let himself over the side. With his feet a few inches or so off the ground, he let himself drop. His feet hit the dirt, then skidded away from each other, causing the splits. He screamed.

“Ow,” said the trucker.

Lou started to cry.

“Quit that, now,” said the trucker. “No-o-o crying now, you're just fine, yessiree.”

“Baaah,” said Lou.

“Settle down now, fellah. Look, you thirsty? How about a nice beer?”

Lou calmed down a little, and looked up at the trucker.

“That sound good?” said the trucker. “Nice cold beer?”

Lou whimpered. “Okay.”

The trucker picked Lou up again, grabbed the bicycle, and carried them inside the bar. He set the bicycle down and engaged its kickstand. He balanced Lou carefully on a barstool. He put a dollar on the bar.

“This man needs to sit here in this beer joint until his legs deparalyze,” said the trucker, wagging a souvenir-baseball-bat-sized finger at the bar at large. “Those are
doctor's orders.
Now, I gave him some starter money, but his subsequent beers shall be sponsored by the publican and the patronage. Y'all heard me?”

A murmured
yessir.

“Okay, fellah, you on your own.”

The trucker left.

The bartender, who had been leaning over talking to a young woman at the end of the bar, stood up and brought Lou a bottle of Pearl.

Lou reached for the beer, then realized that he had so far honored his oath, however inadvertently.

“Bartender, I think I'll have an RC instead.”

“No refunds,” said the bartender.

“That's fine,” said Lou. “Just donate this beer to someone and sell me a goddam Royal Crown Cola.”

The bartender slid the beer down the length of the bar, like in the oaters. The young woman at the end caught it without looking up.

Lou drank down his cola, then whacked himself on the thigh with the empty bottle. Slowly, sensation was returning. He rotated his ankles. He swung his legs. He kneaded his calves. He curled up his toes, massaged his kneecaps, pinched his hamstrings. Holding on to the bar, he carefully slid off the stool onto his feet.

It was all right. It would be all right. He let go of the bar, waved his arms for balance, and took a small step. Then another. Soon he was heading for the men's room all by himself.

He administered to himself a faucet bath and combed his hair with his fingers. He examined his tooth in the mirror. The cigarette-pack strand was holding the molar in place. It had stopped bleeding.

When he returned, there was a fresh RC Cola at his barstool, and the young woman from the end of the bar was sitting on his bicycle, squeezing the hand brakes.

“I had one like this,” said the woman, who Lou realized couldn't have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six. She rang the little thumb-operated bell. “I'm going to ride it.”

She climbed down, kicked up the kickstand, then wheeled it out the door.

“Okay,” said Lou, to no one in particular.

He grabbed his RC off the bar and prepared to follow the woman outside.

“Don't you pitch no woo her way, pardner,” said the bartender, pointing at Lou, and then at the door. “That is a
married woman.
”

“I just want my bike back.”

Outside, Lou found the woman riding around the dirt parking lot under the floodlights. Her shoes, black high heels of some kind with little buckled straps, lay in a tiny patch of low weeds up against the wall of the bar. She
was working hard, standing on the pedals in her bare feet, and had picked up enough speed so the wind lifted up her long black hair.

Lou watched her circle. She wore loose black slacks that must have been made of polyester—they glittered faintly under the bright lights. Her blouse was black, fitted, with three large buttons. One shirttail was out. She went faster and faster, never looking at Lou as she passed. Pinheads of sweat were visible on the bridge of her nose as she went by; then, on the next pass, a vein in her forehead; then, a button missing; then, threads of makeup-tinted sweat on her cheeks, eyes staring at nothing, toes bloody, fists bloodless. One more circle and she looked as fierce as a crusader.

The cuff of her slacks caught in the chain and she went down, sliding headfirst, wrists grooving the dirt, the bike twisting once, twice, then coming to rest on top of her.

“Hey,” said Lou. “Jesus Christ. You okay?”

The fall stopped her silent raging. She pushed the bike off, sat up, and began yanking at the cuff of her pants, which had twisted into a tourniquet around her calf.

Lou broke his RC Cola bottle on the wall of the bar, picked a sticky shard of glass out of the dirt, then as fast as he was able staggered over to her, got down on his knees, and sliced open the rock-hard knot of material. She examined her wrists, which were both skinned and peppered with dirt.

“I fell down in the dirt today and hurt myself, too,” said Lou.

He helped her stand up. One of her shirttails was still out. Lou wanted to either tuck it in or pull the other one out. Instead, he studied the arc of her nose while she appraised her wounded wrists. She reminded him of Charlotte. And of Dot, who also reminded him of Charlotte. Lou's chest started to hurt.
Now
he needed a goddam beer.

“I need my shoes.”

Lou creakily walked back to the weedy spot. He picked up the shoes, which were spattered with syrupy RC Cola. In the toe of one was a scalpel-like shard. Lou extracted it without cutting himself, threw it at the bar, then turned around.

She wasn't there.

“Hey.”

He looked around. No one at all; just parked cars ringing the parking lot like spectators, watching him and the distaff bike.

“Hey.”

Lou hobbled to the ring of cars, and began to search between and around each of them.

“Miss.”

Lou stopped and listened. A sound, nearby: murmured song.

He cupped his hands against the passenger window of a ruined Catalina and peered inside. No one there, just what looked like a whole family's worth of laundry.

Hushed singing.

He peered into the teardrop-shaped window of a Chevy van.

“Miss? You in there?”

He put his ear against the dusty vehicle. Her singing came through, warm and rich, as though he had entered a symphony hall. He walked around and knocked on the driver's door. The singing stopped.

“I really ought to run you to a doctor,” Lou said through the closed door. He thought how nice it would be to drive instead of walk or pedal.

He opened the door. The keys were in the ignition. He leaned inside and looked into the black cave of the van.

“I'll drive you,” he said, climbing into the driver's seat. “Ready?”

“'Kay.” Her voice was shaky, small.

Lou started the engine.

“Which way to a hospital?”

“Take me home.”

“Want the radio?”

“'Kay.”

“What's your name? Kay?”

“Cherry.”

Lou looked into the cave. A vacuous light came through the teardrop. Cherry was lying on a mattress.

“Like ‘cherry Coke'?”

“Except capitalized.”

“I'm Lou.”

“I've never met a Lou,” said Cherry.