T. Boyle - Talk Talk

She'd found a set of musty-looking turn-of-the-century prints in one of the local antique shops, featuring two children, a boy and a girl, in various poses-swallowed up in a maelstrom of brooding vegetation, strolling hand in hand like lost waifs, kicking their bare feet in a snarling stream, gazing up into the heavens as if for guidance-and she'd spent the last hour trying to decide where to hang them. “No,” he said, “I haven't seen it, but would you mind-the Champagne's in the ice bucket there and my hands…” He held up both palms, wet and slimed with the exudate of the squid, in evidence. “And that saucepan on the stove there-would you turn the heat down? To low. All the way to low.”

She was wearing a pair of capris to show off the perfect swell of her calves and her beautiful ankles and feet, open-toed sandals and a white blouse hiked up and knotted under her breasts-and she'd put her hair up too, no nonsense here, a whole house to whip into order. He cross-hatched the flattened slabs of squid to tenderize them and watched her glide across the floor to the stove and then pour herself a glass of the wine. And what was he feeling-love? Lust? The quiet seep of fulfillment and domestic bliss?

“Toast?” he proposed, putting down the knife to wipe his hands on a towel and then taking up his own glass.

The sun had fingered its way through the clouds, suddenly illuminating a patch of woods beyond the window-up came the light as if wired to a rheostat-and then just as quickly it faded. A snapshot. With a very long exposure. She was watching him intently. Poised on one foot, the glass at her lips. “Toast to what?” she asked, her face changing. “To, to”-and here it came, the flush along the cheekbones, the sheets of moisture to armor her eyes-“to a man who will not even make the introduction to his mother? In his own hometown? Of his fiancée? Is that the toast you want? Is that it?”

He said her name, softly, in melioration.

“Because I cannot stand this shit, and that is what it is, “shit.” You hear me?”

“Please,” he said, “not now.”

“Yes, now,” she said, spreading her legs for balance and then throwing back her head to drain the flute in a single gulp as if she were back in Jaroslavl with a glass of no-name vodka. “I don't believe you. I don't believe anything you say. This money. Where do you get this money? Is it drugs, is that it?”

He just stared. He didn't want to get into this.

“Will I-am I to go to prison, then? Like Sandman? And you-you have been in prison too, I know it.”

“It's a long story,” he said.

“Yes. But you tell it to me. You tell me everything.” She poured a second glass for herself, and he could see her hand tremble at the neck of the bottle. “Because I swear, if you don't… You are ashamed of me? Why? Because of my accent? Ashamed of me so that I can meet only Sandman and not your own mother?”

“It's not that,” he said, and still he hadn't moved, the squid lying there on the counter neatly prepped, his flute empty, the pan simmering on the stove. “Okay, you're right,” he said, and he moved to cut the heat under the pan and pour himself another glass, “I guess it is time, because you're just acting crazy now-drugs? Me? Have you ever seen me do any kind of drug, even pot-even a single toke?”

“Cocaine.”

“That's nothing. A little toot now and again, just for fun. What, once a week-once every “two” weeks?” He spread his arms wide in expostulation. “You like it too.”

She gave him a tight smile. “Yes. Sometimes.”

“I'm no bad guy-you think I'm a bad guy? What happened to me is no different than what happened to you. I just hooked up with the wrong person, is all. My wife. My ex-wife. That was the beginning of it, just like you-just like you with what's his name, Madison's father?”

She took a seat at the table they'd just bought the day before-oak, 1890s, six matching chairs, two with hairline cracks that had been glued and varnished over-and they finished the bottle and opened another one and he told her as much as he could, because he wanted to be honest with her; he loved her, and really did believe that people in a relationship needed to be straight with each other. What he didn't tell her was that his real name was Peck-Bridger was good, Bridger was fine for now, though he'd run the creep's credit into the ground because he couldn't resist putting it to him and before long he'd have to be somebody else-or that it wasn't the investment business he was planning on running out of the big paneled aboveground basement or that he couldn't bring her to see his mother not only because his mother was irrelevant to him but because she might call him Peck or even William and he just needed to take things step by step right now.

At some point, he'd got up and started chopping cilantro, green beans, garlic and chiles, and he deveined the shrimp and put on a pot for the rice. She didn't have much to say. She sat there running the tip of her index finger round the rim of the glass, wearing her brooding look. He was feeling a little light-headed from the wine. The pleasure of the hour, of being alone with his thoughts while things sizzled in the pan, was lost to him and the taste of the Champagne had gone sour in the back of his throat, but at least, he thought, he'd laid the issue to rest. He'd opened up. Been as forthcoming and honest as he could be, under the circumstances. And she seemed satisfied, or at least placated.

For a long while neither of them said anything. There were the faint sounds of life in the country-birdsong, crickets, the wet rush of a lone car's tires on the road out front. And what else? The rhythmic squeak and release of Madison's swings, a sound as regular as breathing. Everything seemed to cohere round that rhythm, slow and sure and peaceful, even as he moved back to the stove, busy there suddenly. When the wok was good and hot he dumped in the garlic, ginger, green onions and chiles and the instant release of the flavor scented the air in a sudden burst that made his salivary glands clench. Behind him, at the table, Natalia cleared her throat, poured herself another glass of wine. Then, in her smallest voice, she said, “I still do not see why I cannot meet your mother.”

Two days later, he was in a place across the river, in Newburgh, buying a high-end color copier with a credit card in somebody else's name, after which he intended to check out an authentic old-country German butcher shop Sandman had turned him on to-he thought he might make Wiener schnitzel, with pickled red cabbage, spätzle and butter beans, just for a change, though on second thought it was probably too heavy in this heat and he might just go with potato salad and bratwurst on the grill-when he decided on a whim to stop in at a bar down by the waterfront. He had a couple of hours to kill and that was nice. It was calming. As was the feel of the sun on his back as he loaded the copier into the trunk of the car, the underarms of his shirt already damp with sweat, the heat and humidity sustaining him in a way the refrigerated air of the Bay Area never could have. He felt like a tourist on his own home turf. A dilettante. A man of leisure taking the air before ensconcing himself on a barstool and having a cold beer or two in a conical glass beaded with moisture while the TV overhead nattered on about nothing and he spread a copy of the newspaper across the bar and mused over the little comings and goings of the Yankees and Mets.

Natalia was shopping. He'd dropped her off at a mall the size of Connecticut and she said she'd call him around two for lunch. They'd found a day camp for Madison, though she hadn't wanted to go, of course, and she'd clung to her mother's legs and shrieked till the snot ran down her nose and generally caused a monumental pain in the ass for everyone concerned, but at least they didn't have to worry about her till five-or was it five-thirty? He thought about Sukie then, couldn't help himself-it hurt to be so close and not see her, but he didn't dare risk it, not yet, anyway. Her face was there, rising luminous in his mind, and then just as quickly it was gone. He checked his watch-quarter past twelve-and stepped into the bar.