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

“Hello?”

“Hey, Todd, hey, bro — you okay? I mean, I been calling for like three hours now and I’m worried about you, because I mean, it’s tough, I know, but it’s not like the end of the world or anything—”

“Rob,” he said, his voice ground down so that he barely recognized it himself. “Rob, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.”

“Good. Because screw you. That’s my message: screw you.” And then he’d turned the phone off and thrust it deep in his pocket.

—

When he came in the door the house was silent. There was a lamp on in the hallway and the nightlight in the kitchen was on too, but Laurie, in her meticulous way, had turned off all the rest and gone to bed. Or so it seemed. He moved slowly, heavily, his breath coming hard and his feet working as if independent of him, far away, down there in the shadows where the baseboard ran the length of the hall and conjoined with the frame of the bedroom door. If she had a light on in there — if she was up, waiting for him, waiting for what came next — he would have seen it in the crack at the bottom of the door, the tile uneven there, treacherous even, shoddy workmanship like everything else in the place. Very slowly, he turned the handle and eased the door open, wincing at the metallic protest of the hinges that needed a shot of WD-40, definitely needed WD-40, and then he was in the room and looking down at the shadow of her where she lay in bed, on her side, her back to him. It took him a moment to see her there, his eyes adjusting to the dark and the stripes of pale trembling light the streetlamp outside the window forced through the shades, but very gradually she began to take on shape and presence. Laurie. His wife.

He saw the way she’d tucked her shoulder beneath her, saw the rise there, the declivity of her waist and the sharp definition of her upthrust hip. He’d always loved her hips. And her legs. The indentation of her knees. The way she walked as if carrying a very special prize for someone she hadn’t quite discovered yet. He was remembering the first time he’d ever seen her, a hot summer day with the sun arching overhead and her walking toward him with a guy from school he liked to hang out with on weekends, and he didn’t know a thing about her, didn’t know her name or where she came from or that they liked the same books and bands and movies or that her whole being would open up to his and his to hers as if they had the same key and the key fit just exactly right. What he saw was the sun behind her and the shape of her revealed in silhouette, all form and grace and the light like poured gold. What he saw was the sway of her hips against the fierce brightness of the sun and the shadow of her legs caught in the grip of a long diaphanous dress, her legs, sweet and firm and purposeful, coming toward him.

He remembered that. Held that vision. And then, as quietly as he could, he pulled back the covers and got into bed beside her.

(2011)

What we were arguing about that night — and it was late, very late, 3:10 a.m. by my watch — was something that had happened nearly twelve hours earlier. A small thing, really, but by this time it had grown out of all proportion and poisoned everything we said, as if we didn’t have enough problems as it was. Mallory was relentless. And I was feeling defensive and maybe more than a little paranoid. We were both drunk. Or if not drunk, at least loosened up by what we’d consumed at Chris Wright’s place in the wake of the incident and then at dinner after and the bar after that. I could smell the nighttime stink of the river. I looked up and watched the sky expand overhead and then shrink down to fit me like a safety helmet. A truck went blatting by on the interstate and then it was silent but for the mosquitoes singing their blood song while the rest of the insect world screeched either in protest or accord, I couldn’t tell which, thrumming and thrumming till the night felt as if it was going to burst open and leave us shattered in the grass.

“You asshole,” she snarled.

“You’re the asshole,” I said.

“I hate you.”

“Ditto,” I said. “Ditto and square it.”

—

The day had begun peaceably enough, a Saturday, the two of us curled up and sleeping late, the shades drawn and the air conditioner doing its job. If it weren’t for the dog we might have slept right on into the afternoon because we’d been up late the night before at a club called Gabe’s, where we’d danced, with the assistance of well rum and two little white pills Mallory’s friend Mona had given her, till our clothes were sweated through and the muscles of our calves — my calves anyway — felt as if they’d been surgically removed, hammered flat and sewed back in place. But the dog (Nome, a husky, one blue eye, one brown) kept laying the wedge of his head on my side of the bed and emitting a series of truncated violin noises because his bladder was bursting and it was high time for his morning run.

My eyes flashed open, and despite the dog’s needs and the first stirrings of a headache, I got up with a feeling that the world was a hospitable place. After using the toilet and splashing some water on my face, I found my shorts on the floor where I’d left them, unfurled the dog’s leash and took him out the door. The sun was high. The dog sniffed and evacuated. I led him down to the corner store, picked up a copy of the newspaper and two coffees to go, retraced my steps along the quiet sun-dappled street, mounted the stairs to the apartment and settled back into bed. Mallory was sitting up waiting for me, still in her nightgown but with her glasses on — boxy little black-framed things that might have been an example of the generic reading glasses you find in the drugstore but for the fact that they were ground to the optometrist’s specifications and she wore them as a kind of combative fashion statement. She stretched and smiled when I came through the door and murmured something that might have been “good morning,” though, as I say, the morning was all but gone. I handed her a coffee and the Life section of the newspaper. Time slowed. For the next hour there were no sounds but for the rustle of newsprint and the gentle soughing suck of hot liquid through a small plastic aperture. We might have dozed. It didn’t matter. It was summer. And we were on break.

The plan was to drive out to the farmhouse our friends Chris and Anneliese Wright were renting from the farmer himself and laze away the hours sipping wine and maybe playing croquet or taking a hike along the creek that cut a crimped line through the cornfields which rose in an otherwise unbroken mass as far as you could see. After that, we’d play it by ear. It was too much trouble to bother with making dinner — and too hot, up in the nineties and so humid the air was like a flak jacket — and if Chris and Anneliese didn’t have anything else in mind, I was thinking of persuading them to join us at the vegetarian place in town for the falafel plate, with shredded carrots, hummus, tabouleh and the like, and then maybe hit a movie or head back over to Gabe’s till the night melted away. Fine. Perfect. Exactly what you wanted from a midsummer’s day in the Midwest the week after the summer session had ended and you’d put away your books for the three-week respite before the fall semester started up.

We didn’t have jobs, not in any real sense — jobs were a myth, a rumor — and we held on in grad school, semester after semester, for lack of anything better to do. We got financial aid, of course, and accrued debt on our student loans. Our car, a hand-me-down from Mallory’s mother, needed tires and probably everything else into the bargain. We wrote papers, graded papers, got A’s and B’s in the courses we took and doled out A’s and B’s in the courses we taught. Sometimes we felt as if we were actually getting somewhere, but the truth was, like most people, we were just marking time.