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

This wasn’t a hot sexy moment. Anything but. Samantha — my Samantha — was crouched over the toilet on her knees, the soles of her feet like single quotes around the swell of her buttocks, her hair spilling over the bright rim of the porcelain bowl. I couldn’t see her face, but I watched the back of her head jerk forward as each spasm racked her, and I couldn’t help playing the sound track in my mind, feeling sorrowful and guilty at the same time. Her feet — I felt sorry for her feet — and the long sudden shiver of her spine and even the dangling wet ends of her hair. I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t. My finger was on the mouse — I took one more look, watched one last shudder ascend her spine and fan out across her shoulder blades, watched her head snap forward and her hair slide loose, and then I clicked off and left her to suffer in private.

—

A week rolled by, and I hardly noticed. I wasn’t sleeping well, wasn’t exercising, wasn’t sitting on the porch with a book in my hand and the world opening up around me like a bigger book. I was living the life of the screen, my bones gone hollow, my brain dead. I ate at my desk, microwave pizza and chili-cheese burritos, nachos, whiskey in a glass like a slow, sweet promise that was never fulfilled. My scalp itched. My eyes ached. But I don’t think I spent a waking moment outside work when I wasn’t stalking the rooms of Peep Hall, clicking from camera to camera in search of a new angle, a better one, the view that would reveal all. I watched Gina floss her teeth and Candi pluck fine translucent hairs from the mole at the corner of her mouth, sat there in the upstairs bath with Traci as she bleached her roots and shaved her legs, hung electrified over the deck as Cyndi perched naked on the railing with a bottle of vodka and a cigarette lighter, breathing fire into the gloom of the gathering night. Mainly, though, I watched Samantha. When she was home, I followed her from room to room, and when she picked up her purse and went out the door, I felt as if Peep Hall had lost its focus. It hurt me, and it was almost like a physical hurt, as if I’d been dealt an invisible blow.

I was pulling into the drive one afternoon — it must have been a Monday or Wednesday, because I’d just worked lunch — when a rangy, tall woman in a pair of wraparound sunglasses came out of nowhere to block my way. She was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt that advertised some fund-raising event at the local elementary school, and she seemed to be out of breath or out of patience, as if she’d been chasing after me for miles. I was trying to place her as the gate slowly cranked open on its long balky chain to reveal the green depths of the yard beyond — she was someone I knew, or was expected to know. But before I could resolve the issue, she’d looped around the hood of the car and thrust her face in the open window, so close to me now I could see the fine hairs catching the light along the parabola of her jawbone and her shadowy eyes leaping at the lenses of her sunglasses. “I need you to sign this,” she said, shoving a clipboard at me.

The gate hit the end of the chain with a clank that made the posts shudder. I just stared at her. “It’s me,” she said, removing the sunglasses to reveal two angry red welts on the bridge of her nose and a pair of impatient eyes, “Sarah. Sarah Schuster — your next-door neighbor?”

I could smell the fumes of the car as it rumbled beneath me, quietly misfiring. “Oh, yeah,” I said, “sure,” and I attempted a smile.

“You need to sign this,” she repeated.

“What is it?”

“A petition. To get rid of them. Because this is a residential neighborhood — this is a family neighborhood — and frankly Steve and I are outraged, just outraged, I mean, as if there isn’t enough of this sort of thing going on in town already—”

“Get rid of who?” I said, but I already knew.

I watched her face as she filled me in, the rolling eyes, the clamp and release of the long mortal jaws, moral outrage underscored by a heavy dose of irony, because she was an educated woman, after all, a liberal and a Democrat, but this was just — well, it was just too much.

I didn’t need this. I didn’t want it. I wanted to be in my own house minding my own business. “All right, yeah,” I said, pushing the clipboard back at her, “but I’m real busy right now — can you come back later?”

And then I was rolling up the driveway, the gate already rumbling shut behind me. I was agitated and annoyed— Sarah Schuster, who did she think she was? — and the first thing I did when I got in the house was pull the shades and turn on the computer. I checked Peep Hall to be sure Samantha was there — and she was, sunk into the couch in T-shirt and jeans, watching TV with Gina — and then I smoothed back my hair in the mirror and went out the front door. I looked both ways before swinging open the gate, wary of Sarah Schuster and her ilk, but aside from two kids on bikes at the far end of the block, the street was deserted.

Still, I started off in the opposite direction from the big white house on the corner, then crossed the street and kept going — all the way up the next block over — so as to avoid any prying eyes. The sun was warm on my face, my arms were swinging, my feet knew just what to do — I was walking, actually walking through the neighborhood, and it felt good. I noticed things the view from the car window wouldn’t have revealed, little details, a tree in fruit here, a new flowerbed there, begonias blooming at the base of three pale silvery eucalypti at the side of a neighbor’s house, and all that would have been fine but for the fact that my heart seemed to be exploding in my chest. I saw myself ringing the doorbell, mounting the steps of the big white house and ringing the bell, but beyond that I couldn’t quite picture the scene. Would Samantha — or Traci or Candi or whoever — see me as just another one of the creeps she had to chat with online for two hours each week as part of her job description? Would she shut the door in my face? Invite me in for a beer?

As it turned out, Cyndi answered the door. She was shorter than I’d imagined, and she was dressed in a red halter top and matching shorts, her feet bare and toenails painted blue — or aquamarine, I suppose you’d call it. I couldn’t help thinking of the way she looked without her clothes on, throwing back her head and spewing flames from her lips. “Hi,” I said, “I was looking for Samantha? You know, Jennifer, ” I added, by way of assuring her I was on intimate terms here and not just some psychotic who’d managed to track them all down.

She didn’t smile. Just gave me a look devoid of anything — love, hate, fear, interest, or even civility — turned her head away and shouted, “Sam! Sammy! It’s for you!”

“Tell her it’s Hart,” I said, “she’ll know who—” but I broke off because I was talking to myself: the doorway was empty. I could hear the jabber and squawk of the TV and the thump of bass-heavy music from one of the upstairs bedrooms, then a whisper of voices in the hall.

In the next moment a shadow fell across the plane of the open door, and Samantha slid into view, her face pale and tentative. “Oh,” she said, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “Oh, hi.”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” I said, coming right out with it, “—bad news, I think. This woman just stopped me when I was pulling into the driveway — my next-door neighbor — and they’re circulating a petition.” I watched her eyebrows, her eyes, saw the glint of the rings on her right hand as she swept it through her hair. “But I didn’t sign. I blew her off.”

She looked distracted, staring out over my shoulder as if she hadn’t heard me. “Louis warned us there might be trouble,” she said finally, “but it really isn’t fair. I mean, do I look like some kind of slut to you? Do I?”