The Parallel Apartments (53 page)

Cherry had apparently fallen asleep, as she no longer gave directions or responded to requests for them. So Lou drove around town. He relaxed and
listened to a country and western station on low volume.

He'd lived in Texas for almost all of his thirty-two years but had never once been to Austin City. He was a reader of newspapers so he knew what went on here, more or less. He followed state politics, Longhorns baseball, high-school football. More than once he'd been tempted to come and find Charlotte, but he knew how that would turn out.

Every few years he'd call. But Mère always answered, like she was waiting for him. He'd always imagined Mère sitting in a wicker chair in a kitchen under a dirty white telephone, waiting for him to call and then have the number traced so she could send some thugs to give him a thumping, or worse. So Lou always hung up. At least the number had been the same since 1951.

Now Mère was gone. Even though he was broke, jobless, homeless, and sober, and there were most likely men plotting his assassination, Lou felt as free and happy as ever he could recall.

Lou had been driving for more than two hours with no feeling for where he was when he found himself driving past the roadhouse again. All at once a sense of direction came over him.

LuLu's bike was no longer in the middle of the parking lot, but was instead leaning against the wall where he'd broken the RC Cola bottle.

He didn't want to stop and get the damn bike. He never wanted to see that bike again. He'd make it up to LuLu somehow. Maybe someday he'd buy her a real bike, a Husqvarna or something. A Moto Guzzi. All Dubble Bubble pink and royally betasseled, a rocket with a glittery vinyl seat.

Now and then Lou caught sight of the University of Texas tower. The top was lit up orange; somebody'd won something big. But for Lou it couldn't be a symbol of victory any longer; he could see it in his mind only as a watchtower behind a scrim of TV static, a tiny figure near the top holding a black stick.

A bright street, Lamar Boulevard. Look, a funeral home. Weed-Corley-Fish. Maybe Mère Durant was in there already, her organs gone and her lips peeling back from her teeth and embalming fluid curing in her veins. Adios, Mère.

Lou found himself in a part of town where the streets were numbered and alphabetized, and dark as a Transylvanian forest. He pulled the van over. He quietly got out and stretched. He walked carefully down the street, then
around the block. There was no traffic. The only sounds were the whinnies of eastern screech owls, dogs growling lazily behind honeysuckled fences, silly chirping tree frogs, and, once, a distant train. A large one, judging by the rumble. The Missouri Pacific, probably.

He got back to the van, climbed in, rested his head on the steering wheel, and just about fell asleep when he heard:

“Lou.”

“Wha?”

“You can lie down back here if you want to.”

“This suits me fine.”

Cherry said nothing.

He put his head back on the steering wheel.

Somebody honked.

“Jesus Christ,” said Lou, the hairs on his neck standing up, sharp as cactus spines.

“Your sleepy head slipped and honked the horn and scared both of us,” said Cherry, from in the cave. “So come lie down.”

Lou stumbled into the back. He found the vacant side of the mattress and lay down on his back.

“Here's a pillow.”

From the dark something soft and smelling of pot and baby shampoo landed on his face.

“Want some blanket?”

Lou was still sunburned and itchy from his travels, and imagining being covered by a blanket in this humid metal casket made him think of secret police and illegal interrogation techniques and live burial.

“No, you have it,” said Lou.

“I don't want it, I'm burning up. Where are we?”

“Uh, don't know. I think Avenue B.”

“Oh, we're near not too far from my house. How'd you know?”

He thought about Cherry's shirt button. He imagined it, lying in the dirt of the parking lot, a pickup about to crush it; he imagined diving for it, saving it, giving it back to Cherry. He imagined helping her sew it back on.

“Didn't,” said Lou, aware of her shifting on the mattress, which caused the van to creak faintly on its struts. “Never been to Austin.”

“What are you doing here?”

Lou did not want to mention Charlotte, or that he had a daughter. He did not even want to think about Mère.

“Had the idea of looking up an old-time used-to-be.”

“Oh.”

“Yep. Long time ago.”

“Find her?”

“I just got to town.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Haven't worked that out yet.”

Cherry sat up, then climbed into the driver's seat. She started the engine, drove a few blocks, and parked. She switched on the dome light, then turned back to look at Lou. She was awfully pretty, all that black hair.

“You can stay in here if you want.” She got out. “Or you can come inside with me.”

“Ah, Cherry?” said Lou, sitting up. “What about your husband?”

Cherry leaned back inside.

“What?”

“The bartender told me to let you be, that you were a married woman.”

“The bartender,” said Cherry, “was wrong.”

“Oh.” Lou was tired and hot and did not want to think, especially about bartenders and their ways.

“Coming? Or not?”

“I'm an old man, Cherry.”

“You couldn't be more than thirty.”

“Two years more.”

“I'm plenty old enough, already robbed from my cradle long ago.”

“Now hold on, I'm just here—”

“Why don't you tell yourself you're just coming in to use the shower? Just keep it down.”

“Roommates?”

“Mother.”

“Aw, hell, I better—”

“We keep to our own sides of the house. Now, are you coming in on your own, or do I have drag you by your hair?”

* * *

In the green-tiled bathroom next to Cherry's bedroom, Lou quietly took off his boots and jeans and socks and underwear and T-shirt. He stared at the pile of his dirty clothes and considered their recent history. They had been semi-clean when he'd been arrested and put in jail three weeks ago, but they'd acquired a jailhouse musk while waiting stuffed in a locker for their owner to be turned loose. Then he'd put them back on, spent the next few hours sweating his way around Texas City, making enemies, rolling around on barroom floors, and losing teeth, and had then bicycled and hitchhiked to another city. His clothes were no longer semi-clean. His clothes were dirty. It was good to be shut of them, even if only for a few minutes.

Lou stepped into the cold shower like it was another dimension. A nice, hygienic dimension.

When he started to shiver, he turned on the hot water, squeezed Johnson's baby shampoo onto his head, and scrubbed all over with a brick of strange black soap. He opened a safety razor he found on the rim of the tub and rinsed out the tiny thin black tusks he conjectured to be a woman's leg hairs. He wondered if they were Cherry's or her mother's. He took out the blade and rubbed it on the smooth tile to restore an edge, and shaved, mirrorless.

He stepped out. Except for his boots, which were standing neatly next to the commode, his clothes were gone. Hanging on the bathroom door was a red robe that had certainly not been there before. A fat pink towel balanced on the edge of the sink.

After drying off, he wrapped himself in the robe, tying the sash across the erection that had been keeping him company in the shower. He opened the door, glanced around the hall, and ducked into Cherry's dark bedroom.

“Cherry?”

“Get in bed with me.”

Lou followed the voice. He found the edge of the bedspread and climbed under, remaining as close to the edge of the mattress as he could without falling off.

They were both still and quiet. Presently Lou became aware of a wet rumble: a washing machine. It stopped.

Cherry got out of bed. She opened the bedroom door, flicked on a hall light, which momentarily silhouetted her body, then shut the door behind her.

He heard a muffled
tktk ttk tk
that could be nothing else but the metal zipper of jeans in a dryer. Almighty God, what was he doing here?

Cherry returned, presenting her silhouette for another quarter second. She could be Charlotte. Maybe he would pretend she was. Cherry got back into bed.

“Hold my hand,” she whispered.

He did. It was small, soft, and strong. She turned toward him and put her head on his soft terry-cloth-covered shoulder.

She fell asleep.

At dawn Lou woke to the sound of high-voltage electricity spitting out of a downed power line.

He opened his eyes. A ceiling fan with blades like cricket bats spun lazily overhead. A red cloth was twisted tightly around his body. His legs were alarmingly immobile, yet alive with a deep, intramuscular throbbing, as though run through with kebab skewers.

Facts slowly returned. Jail, Dot, Charlotte, bike, bar. Cherry.

He turned. Cherry was leaning on one elbow, watching him.

“What's that electricity noise?” he said.

“Shh,” whispered Cherry. “Those're grackles.”

Cherry kissed him hard and pulled at the collar of his robe. She swept the blankets off of both of them with one wide, hard swing of her arm. With both hands she loosened his sash, without ever taking her eyes from his.

“My legs are achy,” said Lou.

“Sh.”

She straddled him. As she leaned over to kiss him again, her long hair draped around his head, concealing both their faces from the brightening morning. She kissed him harder. Lou felt a foreign shifting in his jaw. Cherry drew away from him, opened her mouth, reached inside with two fingers, and removed a tooth. Lou's. She studied it for a moment. She smiled. Then she began to silently laugh. She buried her face in a pillow and laughed hard for a good two minutes. She resurfaced, placed the tooth on a nightstand, and resumed kissing. She tasted of whiskey and tangerines.

“I like the taste of blood,” she said.

She put her hand under his head, her fingers in his hair, and pulled him harder against her mouth. Her kiss was almost painful, and absolutely silent, as though she were holding her breath. There was silence everywhere, Lou realized—the grackles were gone, the bed did not creak beneath them, no scrape of traffic. He opened his eyes. A tiny slit in the thick private curtain of her hair opened, letting in a thread of morning light. Cherry's other hand moved lightly between their bellies until she found him and put him inside her. Lou shuddered, and Cherry answered with a shudder of her own. She put her fingers, wet with her lubrication, between both their lips. As she began to move, the tiny slit in her hair began to close. Lou felt as though he were falling into a deep crevasse, watching the wound of light overhead diminish and collapse to black. She moved, unpredictably, perfectly silent, without a word or a sound, and he came. He grew limp and fell out of her. She shifted, found his jutting hip bone, and pressed herself into it. She held herself above him, becoming a low bridge touching him only at the mouth and hip, her nipples sometimes brushing over the hairs on his chest. She began to move faster, in spasms and starts. How could she remain so silent? He felt a warm, smooth wetness; his semen falling out of her and down between his legs. She stopped, her tongue deep under his, her lips swollen and trembling. She slowly let her breasts down onto his chest, spread her legs farther apart, and began to move her hips in tiny half circles, one way then the other, like the mainspring in a watch, her clitoris a feather on his raw hip. She lifted her head, raising up her thick drape of hair. Her eyes were closed, tears snared in her lashes. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and screamed with no sound at all. Lou thought for a moment that he'd become deaf.

But then Cherry whispered:
“Lou, I like you, Lou.
”

“Me, too,” said Lou. “I mean—”

“Sh.”

Lou fell into a light sleep. When he awoke, Cherry was gone. According to an old-fashioned alarm clock on a windowsill, it was nearly 10 a.m. The room, apart from the bed and curtains and Cherry's torn and dirty black clothes and underthings, was bare.

Cherry came back into the bedroom, naked, carrying a huge armful of linens and towels, which she dropped on top of him.

”Warm,” whispered Lou.

“We're alone,” said Cherry in a normal voice. “Help me fold. Your articles are in here.”

They folded towels in silence. Lou hated all other aspects of textile maintenance, but towel-folding made him happy, and he considered himself uncommonly talented.

“What about your old flame?” said Cherry, sitting on the edge of the bed, back straight, pulling a pillowcase onto a denuded and faintly stained pillow she had tucked under her chin.