Peter Rabe - The Box

“You,” he said. “Listen.” He put his glass on the floor very carefully, hoping not to get dizzy. “This slow is too slow.”

“Yes,” she said, “open me up.”

“Yes. Not here. Where’s the other room, the other, goddamn it-”

“I like you on this couch, Quinn. Your black hair on the red couch.”

The heat poured into the window and made the couch seem more red than it was. He leaned over to open her dress and felt her move under him. He fumbled and saw that his hands were shaking.

“Take my glass,” she said. “I’ll do it,” and gave him her glass.

He took the glass and threw it across the room while he watched her. She tore something but could not get the dress open and then he grabbed her and said, “To hell with the dress,” but that turned into a fight. She scratched the back of his neck and then he found that he was biting her arm. From somewhere the anger was back now, or a weird mixture of muscle strength and sex strength and they held each other apart, trying hard to focus. This might have been because of the liquor or because of a true confusion, and they had to let go of each other. I’m breathing like an animal, he thought, but an animal wearing clothes. He hunched on the red couch and watched her get up. She went to the door, rattling it before she got it open. Then she yelled something which he thought was like a scream. All this Arabic is like a scream in the ear, he thought, and therefore I don’t understand the language-He shook his head and wanted to get up, go after her, when he saw that she was back in the room and the servant was with her.

He was an old man, with beard stubble looking very white on his prune-dark face, and his fingers were nothing but bones.

“Hold still, Quinn,” she said. “Any minute now.”

And then Quinn saw what the old man was doing. He was opening her dress while she stood there and then he peeled it up and over her head. He now walked around her, to her back, looking like a crab. He unhooked her bra and slid it down off her arms.

What else are servants for, Quinn thought, yes, yes, what else when the lover is too drunk to move. Those bone hands are rattling on her, goddamn it. He looked at her body, and his eyes were stinging.

“Listen,” he said. “You.”

She was kicking her shoes off and the old man went after them, again like a crab.

“Listen,” said Quinn. “You going to send him out or what?”

“You look weird, Quinn.”

“I look weird!”

“I’ll send him out, if you want,” and then she laughed. If she comes close now, if she were close now, and he felt his arm jump and his fist get hard.

Then she stood by the couch and her belly looked soft. The old man was gone or the old man was not gone. Quinn remembered shaking his jacket off, and then the touch of her up against him, standing or lying, except that the red of the couch hurt his eyes, and then a blood roar inside him when they came together. The drunkenness was like veils between them but they came together.

Quinn did not leave that day. The first time he woke up he saw Bea asleep on the couch and his hangover was as bad as a disease. He closed the shutters of the window, took one violent drink straight from the bottle, then managed to go back to sleep.

The second time he woke up the shutters were open again and he could see the sun, low and red. He sat up carefully and localized the pains. One was in his head and one was in his back, but there was no more malaise like the first time when he had come to. He was alone in the room and sat looking at his clothes on the floor. They lay there in various ways, flat and wrinkled. I feel like they look, he thought. He put on his shorts and sat down again. The sun, he thought, was turning blue.

Bea came into the room holding a wrap around herself. She had a cigarette in one hand and when she closed the door she had to let go of the wrap. She did this without special haste, and without special slowness. The movements were simple and Quinn’s reaction was simple. She is beautiful, he thought. Then she came to sit on the couch.

“Bad?” she said.

“Not too bad. And you?”

She shrugged and smiled. Her face looked quiet and the eyes were a little bit swollen, but bright. She looks like a cat again, thought Quinn. She sits like a cat.

“I feel suddenly helpless not knowing the time,” said Quinn.

“Fifteen minutes and it will be dark. The light falls quickly now.”

“I came at noon?”

“Later.” She pulled on her cigarette and then did not exhale. When she did, she made a bluish feather of smoke and a sigh. “We drank, and argued, and made love, and then slept, and woke up, and Whitfield was here, and now we’ll have coffee, if you like.”

“Whitfield was here? You mean in here?”

“He comes sometimes.”

Quinn smelled the smoke from her cigarette and rubbed his nose.

“He comes sometimes,” be said. “Did you sleep with him too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was too drunk. You feeling nasty again, Quinn?”

“ He was too drunk. Ha.”

She said nothing to that and just smoked. The smoke had an odor which reminded Quinn of queer teas, sweet liqueurs, and strange candies.

“Is that a reefer?” he asked.

“A local kind. Want one?”

“No.” He looked at her and how her skin showed through the stuff of the wrap where the wrap was tight over her. “No,” he said again. “I don’t think I want any more interference.”

He touched her arm with two fingers and stroked down the length of her arm, over her wrist and the hand. She watched, moving only her eyes, and then she did a sudden thing, like the one she had done once before with his shirt. She moved her hand and was suddenly holding his fingers. And then, like that other time, she was done moving as suddenly as she had started. She sat holding his fingers with no more pressure than to make him feel the warmth in her hand.

The old man with the bone hands came into the room and brought a tray with cups and a coffee urn. Nobody talked while the old man was there. He made sounds with his robe and once he made a sound when his hand touched the low table. It did sound like bones, thought Quinn. Then the old man closed the door and that sounded like wood.

“You going to pour?” said Quinn.

“Not yet.” She sat holding his fingers and watching smoke.

“You keep working that smoke like that,” he said, “and pretty soon you’re going to go up like that smoke.”

“Oh no. Try?”

“I told you why not.”

“It’s no interference, Quinn, it just slows everything down. Sometimes it slows things so much, nothing runs away any more.” She closed her eyes and held his fingers.

The sun was now halfway into the water, far away, very big and rich-looking, but far. The room was in shadow already.

She put out the cigarette when it was very short and had turned brown and then they drank coffee. She said a long ah, and that she enjoyed coffee more than anything now. Quinn looked at her over his cup, wanting her.

“You look greedy,” she said.

“I am. I like nothing better right now than feeling greedy.”

“Good. Because you owe me one.”

“What?”

“When we made love, you left me way behind.”

“I don’t remember, you know that?”

“You were full of tricks but it wasn’t any good.”

“Tricks,” he said and drank from his cup.

She put one hand on his leg just as the old man came back into the room. She left her hand there and pressed while the old man said something in Arabic and then he left the room.

“Whitfield is back, maybe?”

“No. He said he fixed the bath.”

“You got one of those tin things, too?”