Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

W illie and Liberty broke into a house on Crab Key and lived there for a week. The house had a tile near the door that said CASA VIRGINIA. It was the home of Virginia and Chip Maxwell. It was two stories overlooking the Gulf, and had been built with the trickle-down from Phillips-head screw money. Willie achieved entry by ladder and a thin, flexible strip of aluminum. Crab Key was tiny and exclusive, belonging to an association that had an armed security patrol. The houses on Crab Key were owned by people so wealthy that they were hardly ever there.

Liberty and Willie saw the guard each morning. He was an old, lonely man, rather glossy and puffed up, his jaw puckered in and his chest puffed out like a child concentrating on making a muscle. He told Willie he had a cancer, but that grapefruit was curing it. He told Willie that they had wanted to cut again, but he had chosen grapefruit instead. He talked quite openly to Willie, as though they had been correspondents for years, just now meeting. Willie and Liberty must have reminded him of people he thought he knew, people who must have looked appropriate living in a million dollar soaring cypress house on the beach. He thought they were guests of the owners.

Willie did have a look to him. People would babble on to Willie as though, in his implacability, they would find their grace. Willie walked through life a welcome guest. He had a closed, sleek face that did not transmit impressions. He was tight as a jar of jam. People were crazy about Willie.

The guard said, “The doctor says to me, ‘Say you want to see the Taj Mahal. You travel all the way to the Taj Mahal, but then you don’t go inside. You don’t pay the little extra to make the trip worthwhile.’ ”

“What was he talking about?” Willie asked.

“Me! The Taj Mahal was the inside of me! They go inside there to see what’s up, and while they’re inside they shine their light in all your corners. They take out whatever they want to besides. Haven’t you ever talked to a doctor? That’s the way they talk.” The guard sighed and looked around him. “If I were young, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “The big show is definitely not out here.”

“The big show is in our heads,” Willie said.

Willie and the guard got along famously.

In the house, Clem was lying in the air-conditioning, before the sliding glass doors, his breath making small parachuting souls on the glass. Clem was Liberty’s dog, a big white Alsatian with pale eyes. His eyes were open, watching his vacation.

The guard said, “You know, I’ll tell you, my name is Turnupseed.”

“Pleased to know you,” Willie said.

“That name mean nothing to you?”

“I don’t believe it does,” Willie said.

The guard shook his head back and forth, back and forth. “How quickly they forget,” he said to an imaginary person on his right.

Liberty said nothing. She supposed they were about to be arrested. She and Willie were young, but they had been breaking into other people’s houses for quite some time now. The town was a sprawling one on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and there were a number of Keys offshore. Everywhere there were houses. There was certainly no dearth of houses. They had their own that they were renting, but it didn’t seem to suit them. Anyplace they saw that appealed to them, and even some places that didn’t, they just went inside. They seemed to have a certain freedom in this regard, but Liberty thought they were bound to get caught someday.

“My nephew, Donald Gene Turnupseed, killed Jimmy Dean. You know, Jimmy Dean’s car ran into his car.”

“Well,” Willie said, “1955.”

“It seems like a long time ago, but I don’t see what difference that makes,” Turnupseed said. “We are talking about something immortal here. Young girls have made a cult of Dean even though he was a faggot.”

“Life is not a masterpiece,” Willie agreed.

“Life is a damn mess,” the guard said. He seemed genuinely outraged. He looked at Willie. “I’m somewhat of an expert on that incident. Ask me a question about it.”

“There was something definitely sinister about the Porsche,” Willie said.

“There sure was!” Turnupseed said. “A mechanic had both legs broken when the wreckage fell off the truck — a Beverly Hills doctor who acquired the engine was killed using it — another racing doctor using the drivetrain was seriously injured when his car turned over — the wreckage, with admonitory notices declaring THIS ACCIDENT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED, was toured by the Greater Los Angeles Safety Council, and it was at such a show in Sacramento that the car fell off its steel plinth and broke the hip of a teenage spectator …” Turnupseed was out of breath, wheezing heavily. “Coincidences are a hobby of mine,” he panted. “Another hobby I got is reading cookbooks.”

Turnupseed enjoyed reading cookbooks. In inclement weather, he could be seen sitting in his patrol car, poring over colored plates of food. He and Willie would speak with fervor about chili and cassoulet and pineapple-glazed yams and pastry sucrée.

“I guess I’ve read just about every cookbook there is to read,” Turnupseed said. “I get a big kick out of it, not being able to eat much myself. I only got one quarter of a stomach. It really don’t bother me much. It’s nice just looking at the pictures. Now Mrs. Maxwell has had a cystostomy, but she’s chipper as the dickens about it, I don’t have to tell you that.”

“She’s always been a very chipper lady,” Willie agreed.

There were indications in the expensive house that an unpleasant operation had recently been endured. The Maxwells were subscribers to the Ostomy Quarterly .

“She’s a scrapper, Mrs. Maxwell,” Turnupseed said. “You know, after she come home from the hospital, she called up the paper and wanted them to send out a reporter to do an interview with her, but the paper wouldn’t do it.”

“The media prefer not to handle the subject of excreta,” Willie said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Turnupseed said. He removed his hat and his thin hair fluttered, startled. “She got herself a Windsurfer. I’ve never seen her use it, but it’s the attitude that counts is my belief.” He looked at Liberty, his chin trembling gently. “Your wife looks sad,” Turnupseed said to Willie. “Has she had a loss recently?”

“She’s just one of those wives,” Willie said.

“What do women want, let me ask you that,” Turnupseed said. “My last two wives always maintained they were miserable even though they had every distraction and convenience known to modern times. Number Two had a four-wheel drive vehicle with a personalized license plate. Every week she’d have her hair done. She died of a stroke, at the beauty shop, under the dryer.”

“Liberty isn’t distracted easily,” Willie said.

“What would our lives be without our distractions,” Turnupseed said, “that’s the question.”