Thomas Pierce - Hall of Small Mammals - Stories

Walker waits until they are back on the main street before asking what he wants to ask. Has she ever wondered if Alan is really out there somewhere? That’s he not just a dream? What if he’s real and dreams he’s married to a woman named Claire?

“Very funny,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

“You should ask him. What do you normally talk about?”

“The usual stuff. Books, movies. What to fix for dinner.”

“So in the dream, you’re definitely still you?”

“Who else would I be?”

“Anyone. A prairie wife, a criminal, whatever. One time I dreamed I was the king of Europe.”

“There is no king of Europe.”

“Right, but the point is, some people dream about being someone else. And apparently you don’t. You’re you, and Alan is Alan.”

She shrugs. They’ve reached the house. He parks the car along the curb, lined with tall shapely pear trees, their wilted white blossoms pressed flat into the sidewalk that leads to the front door. Claire inherited the house from her great-aunt. Her parents were both engineering professors at the university. She went away for college but came back for graduate school. Inside, Walker leans over Claire’s blue bicycle and flips the light switch on the wall.

“Okay, I have to ask something else,” he says, dropping his satchel on the hardwood floor. “Do you have sex with Alan in your dreams?”

She is ahead of him, halfway up the stairs.

“He’s my husband,” she says.

Walker knows that Claire has been with other men. He thinks about this fact as little as possible, though he knows that before him there was another student in her department, and before that a Swedish guy named Jens who actually proposed, and before them a couple of college mistakes and a backseat high school fling. She never mentioned Alan in the list.

“How often?”

“Do you really want to do this?”

“Just tell me once, and then we won’t have to talk about it again.”

She’s pasting their toothbrushes.

“If you must know, probably a few times a week. But it doesn’t often happen in the dream itself. It’s kind of offstage action, you know? For instance, the other night, we were on our way to a friend’s house for dinner, and the car ride took up the entire dream. But I knew what I’d done over the course of that day. I’d run some errands, picked up the dry cleaning. Baked strawberry brownies for dinner. The dessert was on my lap in the car.”

“I can’t get over how detailed these dreams are,” he says. “I hardly remember anything from mine.”

They both brush and spit into the sink.

“Do you remember me in your dreams?” he asks. “Does it ever feel like cheating when you’re with him?”

“Don’t get weird on me. They’re just dreams. I’m not cheating on anyone. You or him.”

They turn off the lights and climb into bed. She tickles his back until he flips toward her. She’s naked. He wiggles out of his boxers quickly, shoves them to his feet.

“You don’t need to worry,” she says, and climbs on top of him. He doesn’t need to worry. He knows that. Sort of, he does. She’s moving faster now. He has his hands around her waist, the way she likes. He mutters her name, and, thankfully, she mutters his, Walker , and when it’s over she tugs at his chest hair playfully, smiling. Then she goes into the bathroom. He can hear her peeing, and then, seconds later, she’s back in his arms, skin hot, nuzzling under his chin until she’s asleep.

He lets his breath fall in line with hers and keeps his arm draped over her side, inhaling the conditioner in her hair. He can feel her heartbeat, soft and far away. Is she with Alan now? He wonders what it must be like for her, this double life, if she closes her eyes in this bed and opens them in the one she shares with Alan. Maybe her life with him mirrors this one. At that very moment, it occurs to Walker, she could be waking up and brushing her teeth all over again, discussing the upcoming day with her husband. She could be straightening his tie, pointing out the spot on his chin he missed while shaving. She could have her warm palm flat on his chest as she kisses him goodbye, the same way she sends off Walker most mornings. The idea of her repeating these private routines with another man, even one who doesn’t technically exist, is almost more unsettling than the thought of her sleeping with him.

• • •

The phone book contains two listings for Alan Gass and one for A. Gass. Walker scribbles down all three on the back of a take-out menu. He carries the take-out menu in his satchel for two days before pulling over on the side of the road one morning on his way to work. The sky is cloudless, and across the street a long green field unfolds between two wooded lots. A row of ancient transformer towers runs down the middle of the rolling field.

He dials A. Gass first, and a woman answers. Her voice is so quiet and shaky that she has to repeat herself three times before Walker understands that her husband, Albert Gass, passed away the year before last.

Walker gets out of the car. The road is not a busy one. He dials the next number, but the Alan Gass who used to live there has moved to Columbia, the city, or possibly to the other Colombia, the one with the drugs. The man on the phone can’t remember which it was.

He dials the last number. The phone rings and rings. Walker is about to give up when the voice mail message begins.

“You’ve reached Alan and Monica,” the man on the line says. “We’re not around to take your call, so leave your name and digits at the beep.” It beeps. Walker hangs up quickly. The tall grass beneath the transformers swishes back and forth. He gets back in the car and starts the engine.

The address in the phone book leads him to a part of town he rarely visits. It isn’t dangerous or run-down; it’s just out of the way. The houses on the street are adjoining, with small grass yards in front. At one corner there is a video store. Walker doesn’t recognize any of the movies in the front window. On the opposite corner, two women smoke cigarettes outside a Piggly Wiggly.

Alan Gass lives in the middle of the block in a three-story house painted light blue, so light that it’s almost white. To the right of the front door there are three buttons, a label taped above each. The third doorbell says GASS 3B.

He pushes it and stands back. After what feels like an eternity, a small speaker in the wall crackles and a man who sounds like he might have been asleep answers with a cough.

“Bobby? That you? You’re early.”

“I’m not Bobby,” Walker says.

The line crackles. “Okay, who are you, then?”

“Sorry for just showing up like this,” he says, “but there’s a chance we know each other through a friend. Do you have a moment to talk? I promise I won’t keep you long.”

The man doesn’t answer. A buzzer sounds, and the door clicks open. The stairway inside is narrow and long, with a dirty blue carpet runner, smudged with old black gum, shredded at the edges. The door at the top of the stairs is half open.

“Mr. Gass?” he calls, and steps into the apartment. “Hello?”

The room is almost as narrow as the staircase. Walker feels like he’s looking down the barrel of a shotgun. The half of the room nearest the door serves as a living area, with a small television against one wall and a futon-couch against the other. At the far end of the hall a single window provides light. The parts of a dismantled computer are scattered across a flimsy table beneath the window. Alan Gass emerges from a room to the right of the desk. As he steps into the light of the window, his tall Art Garfunkel hair is illuminated a wispy golden brown. He looks nothing like the man Claire has described.