T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

Was there a theme here? Was he missing something? Laurie had run out the door shouting, You don’t own me! as he’d backed the car out of the drive, the window up and the motor racing. And Rob had sent him the video. And the article too. Just then, a groan went up from a booth in the corner behind him and he glanced vaguely at the TV before digging out his phone and hitting Rob’s number. The referee on the screen waved his arms, music pounded, the bottles behind the bar glittered in all their facets. He got a recording. The message box was full.

The strangest thing, the worst thing, had been those first few minutes when he had to struggle with himself to keep from bulling his way back into the kitchen to see the look on her face, to see her shame, to see tears. He’d slammed the door so hard the cheap windows vibrated in their cheap frames and one of Laurie’s pictures — the silhouette of a couple on a moonlit beach he’d always hated — crashed to the floor, glass shattering on the tiles. He didn’t stoop to clean it up. Didn’t move, not even to shift his feet. He just stood there rigid on the other side of the door, picturing her bent over the screen, her face stricken, the wine gone sour in her throat. But then the thought came to him that maybe she liked it, maybe it turned her on, maybe she was proud of it, and that froze him inside.

When she did come through the door — and she’d had enough time to watch the thing three or four times over — she didn’t look contrite or aroused or whatever else he’d expected, only angry. “Jared is such an asshole,” she hissed, glaring at him. “And so’s your brother, so’s Rob. What was he thinking?”

“What was he thinking? What were you thinking? You’re the one on the sex tape.”

“So? So what? Did you think I was a virgin when we got married?”

“You tell me — how many men did you have? Fifty? A hundred?”

“How many women did you have?”

“I’m not the one putting out sex tapes.”

She stood her ground, tall on her heels, her face flushed and her arms folded defensively across her chest. “You want to know something — you’re an asshole too.”

If ever he was going to hit her, here was the moment. He took a step toward her. She never even flinched.

“Listen, Todd, I swear I didn’t know that creep was making a video — he must have had a hidden camera going or something, I don’t know. I was in college. He was my boyfriend.”

“What about the lights?”

She shrugged. An abortive smile flickered across her lips. “He always liked to do it with the lights on. He said it was sexier that way. He was an artist, I told you that, really visual—”

Everybody had past lovers, of course they did, but they were conveniently reduced to shadows, memories, a photo or two, not this, not this hurtful flashing resurrection in the flesh, the past come home in living color. An artist. All he knew was that he hated her in that moment.

“How was I to know? Really, I’m sorry, I am. To put that online — where’s it posted, even? — I mean, it’s really disgusting and stupid. He’s a shit, a real shit.”

“You’re the shit,” he said. “ You’re disgusting.”

“I can’t believe you. I mean, really — what does it have to do with you?”

“You’re my wife.”

“It’s my body.”

“Yeah? Well you can have it. I’m out of here.”

And that was when she chased him down the drive and put on a show for the neighbors, her voice honed to a shriek like something out of the bell of an instrument, a clarinet, an oboe, abuse of the reed, the pads: You don’t own me!

—

It was getting late. The game was over, long over, and he was sitting there in a kind of delirium, waiting for his phone to ring, waiting for Rob — or maybe her, maybe she’d call and pour her soul out to him and they could go back to the way they were before — when he noticed the couple sitting at the end of the bar. They were kissing, long and slow, clinging fast to each other as if they were out in a windstorm, as if all the contravening forces of the universe were trying to tear them apart, two untouched drinks standing sentinel on the bar before them and the bartender in his cowboy shirt steering round them as he poured and wiped and polished. The girl’s arms were bare, her jacket — blue suede, with a fake-fur collar — draped over the chair behind her. He couldn’t see her face, only the back of her head, her shoulders, her arms, beautiful arms, stunning actually, every muscle and tendon gently flexed to hold her lover to her, and he looked till he had to look away.

He became aware of the music then, some syrupy love song seeping out of the speakers, and what was it? Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart at his worst, hyper-inflated love delivered in a whisper, as manufactured as a pair of shoes or a box of doughnuts, and here was this couple sucking the breath out of each other, and what was he doing here, what was he thinking? He was drunk, that was what it was. And he hadn’t had anything to eat, had he? Eating was important. Vital. He had to eat, had to put something on his stomach to absorb the alcohol — how else could he get behind the wheel? Drunk driving on top of everything else. He pictured it: the cuffs, the cell, his corner in the teachers’ lounge deserted and Ed Jacobsen, the principal, wondering where he was — not a phone call? Couldn’t he even have called?

The thought propelled him up off the stool, down the length of the bar past the stupefied sports fans and the clinging couple and the bartender with the haircut like Rob’s, You have a good night now, and out onto the street. He stood there a moment outside the door, patting down his pockets, wallet, keys, cell phone, taking stock. The air was dense and moist, fog working its way up the streets as if the streets were rivers and the fog a thing you could float on. He could smell the ocean, the rankness of it. He thought he’d go to the next place, get a burger and coffee, black coffee — wasn’t that how it was done? Wasn’t that taking the cliché full circle? That was how it had been in college after he’d gone out cruising the bars with his dormmates, lonely, aching, repressed, gaping at the girls as they took command of the dance floor and never knowing what to do about it. A burger. Black coffee.

He started down the street, everything vague before him, trying to think of where to go, of who would be open at this hour. Things glittered in the half-light, the pavement wet, trash strewn at the curbs. A single car eased down the street, headlights muted, taillights bleeding out into the night. Neon thickened and blurred. He made a left on the main street, heading toward a place he thought might be open still, a place he and Laurie sometimes went to after a late movie, focused now, or as focused as he could be considering the whiskey and the hammer beating inside him, reverberating still, when a woman’s voice cut through the night. She was cursing, her delivery harsh, guttural, as if the words were being torn from her, and then there was the wet clap of flesh on flesh and a man’s voice, cursing back at her — figures there, contending in the shadows.

He wanted to call out, wanted to defy them, bark at them, split them apart, get angry, get furious — there they were, just ahead of him, the woman lurching into the man, the man’s arms in dark rapid motion, their curses propulsive, shoes shuffling on the concrete in a metastasized dance — but he didn’t. There was a suspended moment when they felt him there and they switched it off, in league against him, and then he was past them, his footsteps echoing and the curses starting up behind him in a low seething growl of antipathy.

How he made it home he couldn’t say, but he remembered standing at the door of the car fumbling with his keys on a street so dark it might as well have been underground and feeling the cell buzz in his pocket. Or thinking he felt it. He kept it on vibrate because of teaching, because of class — the embarrassment factor — but half the time he never felt it there against his skin and wound up missing his calls. Which was why he had to check messages all the time… but it was buzzing and he had it in his hand and flipped it open, the only light on the street and a dim light at that. Rob. Rob calling.