The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (33 page)

“It was my childhood. I’m sure it has to do with that. See, I told you I was your proverbial fat boy who wants the whole world to love him. The thing was, once Clinton Deix came into my life, the world
did
love me. At least, my world did. It was a combination of two things—since Clinton liked me, they had to like me or he’d punch them out. But then this mystique grew up around me. Kids began thinking, well, Mike Billa
must
have something going for him if
Clinton
likes him
so
much, i.e., Billa has some invisible cool we haven’t noticed yet, but we will.

“It was one of the greatest ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ jobs I’ve ever seen, Ingram. Because I had no cool whatsoever. I was a fatso who got Cs and dreamt of being in with the ‘In’ crowd. Remember that song by Dobie Gray? I thought that was the grooviest thing I ever heard. But what jerk gets to be in with the In crowd? If it hadn’t been for Clinton, all of my childhood would have stunk. As it was, he made the years from about twelve on heavenly.”

“Sounds like he was your guardian angel.”

“Without a doubt.”

“What happened to him? Do you ever see him?”

“Now and then.”

We ate Mexican food, went to the beach, argued comfortably about films. About two months after we met, I had one of those epiphanal moments when I realized I’d never love Michael, but that I already did love a number of things about him.

Sex was not part of our relationship. In my mind I was still Glenn’s lover and had no wish to break out of that bubble to look for something new. Michael made no move in this direction and I assumed he was either taking things very slow or didn’t want our friendship to go that way either.

“When did you first know you were gay?”

We were having lunch at the Gingham Garden restaurant in Larchmont. The sun lit the cloth roof over the terrace and people all around us talked too loudly about their lovers, bad film deals, or illness. Those are the most popular topics of conversation in the film capital of the world, and not always in that order.

I asked the question quietly, but Michael answered like a trumpet fanfare. “About a year after I met Clinton. He’d stolen some
Playboys
from the candy store and we were looking at them in my room. He asked if I liked the pictures. I shrugged and said they were all right. He asked if I’d like to screw one of those girls and I said, sure, wouldn’t you?

“ ‘Naah. Who’d want to get lost in all that?’

“I didn’t know what ‘all that’ was, but it sounded impressive, so I kept quiet. Clinton pulled another magazine out from beneath his shirt and dropped it in front of me as if it were proof of something. Remember in the old days when they wouldn’t show frontal nudity in a skin mag? The only place where you could see that was in a nudist magazine like
Sun and Fun
or
Sun Worship.
They cost
three
bucks, which was a fortune then, and pretended to be for ‘serious nudists’.” Michael said the term so loudly that a number of the women around us stopped drinking iced tea and gave him still, freezing stares. He paid no attention.

“Anyway, Clinton put one of those in front of me and then flipped it open to a page of naked men playing volleyball. They looked great—all tight muscle tone and health. And they
did
look better than the girls, who just seemed sort of lost and friendly with their big breasts and magazine smiles. It was the first time I’d seen a woman square-on, but the men were more intriguing and provocative. The women were mysterious and impressive; the men you wanted to reach through the magazine and touch.”

“Did anything happen between you two that day?”

“No. Not then.”

“Later?”

He didn’t answer the question because someone he knew came to our table and said hello.

One night on
Off the Wall
I had a bunch of people who said they were the incarnations of famous people. Hitler was there, Mozart, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The last fifteen minutes of the show were always given over to call-ins from listeners. Hitler had gotten most of the calls (and flak), but someone asked Mozart if he’d liked the film
Amadeus
and if Salieri really had murdered him. Poor Rousseau (a mailman from Tempe, Arizona) was ignored until the last call of the night.

I didn’t recognize the voice. “Mr Rousseau, could you tell me precisely what you meant when you said in Book Six of your
Confessions:
‘Believers in general create God in their own image. The good make him good, the evil, evil; fanatics, being full of hatred and bile, can see only hell, because they wish to damn the whole world, while gentle, loving souls hardly believe in such a place.’ ”

Rousseau thought about it a moment, then pulled up close to the microphone. “God is in the eye of the beholder. A good man sees God as a positive force, the bad man sees Him as a threat. Nothing could be simpler.”

My engineer pointed to the clock. There were only two minutes left and I still had to announce who’d be on the show the next day.

Before I had a chance to say anything, the voice on the telephone said “Mr Rousseau, don’t you think if mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it a long time ago?”

“Sorry, but Mr Rousseau can’t answer that because we are plain out of time. Tomorrow on
Off the Wall
we’ll be talking to the rock group ‘Rattlesnake Orgasm’ whose only instruments are microwave ovens. You are cordially invited to join us. Over and out!”

The next morning I drove over to “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” to buy a shirt and see Michael.

A moment after I walked in the door, he came steamrolling up to me. “You cut me off! You skunk! How could you do that?”

“Cut you off? When?”

“Last night on the show! I was the one who called Rousseau. I wanted you to know I was listening.”

“That was
you
? The quote about God. Why didn’t you call earlier? That was the only interesting question on the whole show. I didn’t know you were such a Rousseau fan.”

He gave a satisfied grunt. “I was going to catch the guy out with that quote from Hazlitt. The one about if mankind wished for what was right? I had it all planned out.”

“Trick him? He was just a postman from Arizona.”

“He was a fucking fake, Ingram. The other quacks on the show really believed what they were saying. Not this guy. He obviously just read
The Confessions
and decided to come on the show ...

“Don’t get me started on this. I hate fakes. Even when they’re on your show.”

“I get a lot of people like that on my show, Michael. It
is
called
Off the Wall
.”

His moment-ago anger was disturbing but already gone. His face regained its softness, the “V” of his eyebrows returned to their soft arcs. In an instant’s rerun of our relationship, I realized I’d never seen him genuinely angry about anything. Why this?

“Michael, are you all right? Is something wrong?”

Instead of speaking, he took my sleeve and pulled me towards his office in the back of the store. “I want you to see something.”

His office is small and efficient. The few pieces of furniture are grey sleek metal, and uncomfortable. The only picture on the wall is a blow-up of a still from the film
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,
the same picture the store uses on its stationery.

“Look at this.”

He stood behind his desk and offered me a piece of folded paper. I took it and looked. There were a few words in thick red ink written on it. Very loopy, childish handwriting. The dots over the I’s circles rather than dots—that sort of thing.

Dear Mike,

It’s been a long time, right? Well, you’ll be glad to hear your old pal Clinton is coming to visit you soon. So get everything for the party. I’m ready to go, baby.

I tried to hand the letter back, but Michael wouldn’t take it. I put it on a corner of the desk. He looked at it unhappily.

“Clinton’s coming? What’s the matter with that?”

“He’s already here.” Turning around, Michael pulled aside the curtain behind his desk and gestured for me to come around next to him. When I was there, he pointed across the street. His arm and hand didn’t hold still. They weren’t shaking, but his whole being emanated a kind of nervous, uncomfortably strong energy. As if a moment ago he’d accidentally gotten a very strong electric shock and was only slowly coming down from the kick.

The street was all cars and pedestrians, fumes rising, rushing sounds. Lots of people moving, moving.

“What do you want me to see?”

He jiggled a finger. “The traffic light over there. See the boy leaning up against the pole? The one in the football jersey? Number 23?”

“The red shirt?”

“Yes. That’s Clinton.”

I grinned. “That kid is about fifteen years old, Michael.”

“I know.” He let the curtain drop.

At the last moment, “Clinton” looked in our direction; as if he knew what was going on, knew we were talking about him.

Hands can tell you the real truth. The way they rise or fall, so often unconscious of their sadness or grace, can signal final defeat, or love that hides behind a straight face or a cynical smile.

Michael and I were sitting on opposite sides of his desk. He’d begun by trying to be funny, but his hands fluttered up only halfway—birds with no energy to rise. There was no more funny here.

“You know how many people I know, Ingram? The ‘Z’ section of my address book is three pages long! No lie.

“But you know what I realized not long ago? That I’ve always had the wrong admirers. So many of the wrong friends. Present company excepted, my greatest talent is attracting people who look great at first, but only end causing havoc.

“Clinton’s the perfect example.”

Unconsciously, I put my hand up like a student with an eager question in class. “Wait a minute! Michael, every Clinton story you’ve told me makes him sound like the dream combination of pal, protector ... You’ve said ten times he saved your childhood.”

“That’s true. He saved my childhood. But I’m not talking about that now. Listen, don’t tell me you know any man unless he’s revealed to you the secret prayer he mutters every night to his God or his devil ...”

I shook my head uncomprehendingly: what was he talking about?

“Yes, Clinton protected me. For years. Then one day he turned into the fucking ‘Monkey’s Paw’! The third wish that kills everything good; everything you love.”

Explaining something to someone is like sweeping the floor: first you do a series of broad sweeps with the broom to bring all the big stuff together. Then if you’re thorough, you get down on your knees to catch all the little stray things that hide in the corners and far under the separate pieces of furniture. Sweep it all together and presto—a clean room.

But instead of being clear, i.e. bringing all of his Clinton Deix details together into some kind of neat (understandable) pile, Michael spoke confusingly and at times made no sense at all. His sweeping only made the dust and dirt swirl more than ever in the room that was his past.

All I really understood at the end of that first day we saw the boy across the street was this: Clinton Deix had returned and was still fifteen years old. As long as Michael had known him, Deix was fifteen.

That was over twenty years.

“I didn’t tell you what happened to Anthony Fanelli.”

“Michael, please—”

“No, I’m not just going to tell you another story. This all has to do with what’s happening. But you have to know the background before you can say anything. It’s very involved.”

“You’re telling
me
?”

Some years before, I’d had a guest on
Off the Wall
who’d been one of General Galtieri’s thugs in the Argentine government. His job had been to torture people. Although a repulsive, despicable man, particularly because he was so proud of what he’d done and pleased with having gotten away with it, he said something in the course of the show that haunted me. Most people have little pockets of learning or wisdom and he did too. His was generally predictable, but how often do we get to hear about evil from evil’s own mouth? Or smell the breath of the monster, hear him discuss his trade?

What he said was this: the trick of both charm and torture is to accommodate them to your victim. You want to “get” someone? Don’t be rash, don’t be too quick—find out about them, sniff around their habits and their passions. Sooner or later you’ll find what you want: she likes flowers, but really
loves
orchids. Pulling out his fingernails is bad, but just mention doing something to his children and you’ve won; he will crawl under your foot. Charm and torture—use the same means and you can have whatever end you want. One of the other chilling things the man said was that he’d used the same methods to win his wife as he had to get information out of hundreds of doomed prisoners.

When I asked if he ever felt remorse for what he’d done, he said: “If you pay no attention to God, he’ll go away.”

Two days after I saw Clinton for the first time, the tyres on my motorcycle were slashed. That’s not fun, but it’s part of living in a large city one must accept. Luckily, my repair shop is only a few blocks away. I called the mechanic and we had the bike on the road again in an hour and a half. I’d moved into an apartment complex where there was a garage, but had used it only a few times. That night I did put the machine in there and thought no more about it.

Three days later my apartment was broken into. Nothing was taken, but whoever did it took a shit and wrote “Off the Wall” on my walls again and again. The smell—let’s face it, human feces has its own, very specific odour—plus the viciously intimate fact that whoever did it knew where I lived, got about five steps closer to my heart and fear. Yes, we’ve all read
1984
and remember the cage of rats strapped to Winston Smith’s head in room 101, but that’s in a book. You can put a book down and go to the kitchen for a bag of Cheese Doodles. It’s different when you come home and see part of your life written in shit on your own kitchen walls.