Joy Williams: Breaking and Entering

Then she realized it was JJ in his wheelchair making the sound. It was something, she guessed, he had learned how to do when he couldn’t do something he wanted to.

Her thoughts drifted toward Willie, but they couldn’t find him, anywhere.

“Everything is going to be fantastic,” Charlie was saying, “you’ll see. Even my Shakespeare is coming back. Whole scenes have been bellying up to me. Yeah! You and Reverdy and the dog and me. We’ll each take parts, we’ll be a troupe. The kid can play all the messengers. You can play the ghost, man, how’s that,” he said to Clem.

At the table beside them, the woman said loudly, “You don’t love me.”

“Now, now,” the man said, “we haven’t had too much to drink already, have we?”

“You don’t love me. You never buy me flowers. You don’t wear a wedding ring and you don’t kiss my pussy.”

“I wear no jewelry at all, sweetness. I don’t like jewelry.”

“You don’t wear a wedding ring, you don’t kiss my pussy and you never buy me flowers,” the woman said. She raised three fingers stiffly in the air.

“Why do I take you out for a little treat,” the man screamed. “I could take my secretary out for a little treat.”

“Your secretary,” the woman moaned. “That Susan person!”

“She could accuse me of the same things,” the man said.

Large tears fell from the woman’s eyes. The man placed the bottle of rum back in the paper bag and put it in his pocket. He escorted her, sobbing, out.

“I know that lady,” Charlie said. “Her name is Beatrice. The only other Beatrice I ever knew was the largest lobster in Louisiana. Not a crayfish, mind, a lobster. Guy showed her at carnivals. Somebody poisoned her one summer and he went half mad with grief. Guy’s name was Jimmy Daisy. You never saw a sadder man after his Beatrice died.” Charlie pulled on his beer. “Poor ol’ Jimmy Daisy,” he said. “Drink up, doll.” He tapped her sweating bottle with his own.

“Have you seen Teddy and Duane? They were here.” Liberty picked at the label on the bottle with her fingers. “Teddy shouldn’t be here.”

“Why, Duane and I have been looking everywhere for you, Liberty. Duane and me and Reverdy looking everywhere, high and low. We’ve been to your house half a dozen times and been driving all around. Willie’s gone, right? Gone gone? Stay gone?”

She didn’t answer him. “Sally said that Duane was giving everything he had away?”

“There are just a few odds and ends left. He gave the kid a car and let him choose it himself, which I thought was nice. It’s the one with the fancy hubs and the screaming eagle painted on the air scoop. He gave the Shelby to the postman. Little flat-footed guy is standing there in his pith helmet rummaging through his pouch and Duane gives him a fifteen-thousand-dollar car. Everything in the house Duane dragged out and gave away. What a sight.” Charlie took a crumpled pack of Chesterfields from his pocket. He pulled a cigarette out, straightened it and lit it. When he inhaled, thin lines of smoke dribbled from holes in the paper.

“The bugs of Room 303,” Charlie said. “People think the bugs are in Charlie’s mind, but they are not in Charlie’s mind.”

“What exactly happened?”

“The particulars in cases of love lost are clouded,” Charlie said, “as we all know.”

“Janiella left.”

“She sure did, and left a mean note behind too. There are suspicions about the pool repairman. Duane’s sworn off human intercourse after tonight. Tonight, he drinks. Tomorrow he’s going to hitchhike into a desert.”

A skinny boy with a plate full of barbecue sat down at their table. He pressed his hands together, pointed them at the plate, muttered a grace and dug in.

“The desert,” Charlie said. “Picture it. Gulches, canyons, playas, oddities of erosion, mud palisades and Duane. Awesome stillness. Desolate grandeur. And that maniac.”

“I’ll take care of Teddy,” Liberty said.

The boy was folding the chicken into his mouth and banging his teeth noisily down upon the bones.

“The kid had no doubts,” Charlie said. “We discussed it at length. No desert for him. He wants to go to the North Pole first. He has already collected some facts on the North Pole. He says the polar bears there carry their babies around between their toes. You and me and Reverdy,” Charlie sang, “heading north. And you too, sport,” he said to Clem. “Never have I failed to include you in my master plan.”

“You want some more beer?” the waitress asked.

“No, no, no,” Charlie exclaimed. “My sweetie here and me, we’re about to start our life together.” He smiled his wild smile and put his hand lightly on Liberty’s back. “We begin,” he said. “The memories of our past existences will be but glints of light, twinges of regret, passing shadows of brief disturbances that will be gone before they can be grasped.”

“There’s Duane at the bar,” Liberty said. She stood up.

Charlie cupped his hands around his mouth. “Yo, Duane!” he called. The men at the bar remained hunched and unmoving. “Such embittered individuals,” Charlie said. “Armageddon and faithless women. Camouflage and survival. Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

They pressed through the crowd toward Duane. He sat on a stool gazing into a brown drink, his face blank as an acolyte’s.

“Where’s Teddy?” she asked.

“I just lit up my lip a minute ago,” Duane said. He pushed his lower lip out and pointed. “Thought I had a cigarette. Didn’t have a cigarette. Lit up my goddamn lip.” He looked at Liberty, then at Charlie. “There’s a woman here,” he said.

“Yeah, man,” Charlie said. “Correct.”

Duane tilted toward his drink, then tilted back. “You ain’t believing a thing this woman tells you, are you? You can’t trust a woman. They don’t stay around.”

“Life is subtraction,” Charlie said. He ordered beer.

“You know what I’m gonna miss most? My big block 428. What a monster.” He shook his head mournfully. “I thought that machine was gonna be with me for the duration.”

“Where’s Teddy?” Liberty said. She touched his arm, which was as hard as a piece of wood beneath his checked shirt.

“You gonna take care of my boy?” Duane asked. “My boy, my son?”

“Yes.”

Duane looked at her shyly. “I’m abandoning my boy.”

“Don’t be so lucid, man,” Charlie said. He drank the beer quickly.

“I’m not a scrutable man,” Duane said. “Even so, I can explain myself if I want to. I got my reasons, my theories, like with hunting. You ever hear my theory as to why hunting is so great? Well, I’ll tell you it. It’s not just that you can stop some big sucker that thinks it can go anywheres it wants to go. It’s in the gear and the preparation and the knowledge of your terrain and prey and stuff, but the great part is after you’ve shot the thing and you’re looking at it and it’s dead, but not real dead you know, and it’s watching you. That’s when you have this incredible feeling. You feel a little bad. You feel a little sad and regretful and that’s the best part.” Duane pounded the bar. “That’s the best part, that little bit of guilt! Too late to do dick about it. Then that guilt just fades away.”

“One thing you got to learn to do in the desert is to keep your mouth shut,” Charlie said. “Very important.”

“Who’s telling Duane to keep his mouth shut! Don’t get me hostile. See these eyes here …” Duane jabbed his finger at his own face. “These eyes are the enemies of all joy and hope tonight.”

“I’m just saying, man, that in the desert you’ve got to learn to reduce your water needs. Lack of water is what makes the desert desert.” Charlie panted with enthusiasm.