Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

John filled Linda in on her new neighborhood. A mugger had been going around spraying Sentinel in the eyes of women late at night, as if they were attacking him. They couldn’t remember what he looked like afterward. John had learned about this in a cafe a block beyond the public school one afternoon. Two men on a draped staging were steaming the front of a town house across the street. It had been a rooming house for decades and was being gutted. A woman in a wheelchair had entered the cafe talking not quite to herself, and she stopped at his table by the window and cheerfully called for her cup of tea. She wore dark glasses and had a streak of green through her dyed brown hair. She had been talking when she came in, and she divided herself between calling like a deaf person to the nodding Oriental behind the counter and quietly telling John what this counterman, Ralph, was thinking. A fat boy in a painter’s cap wearing white overalls with white paint stains on them looked up from his magazine and said, "Nirma was reminding Ralph of all the crazy no-goods who had lived in that block and in that brownstone they were looking at across the street; her husband was contractor for the extensive work being done on the house; it had been bought by two men who designed ladies’ shoes." Finally, John asked the man, Ralph, behind the counter if all Nirma said was true, but Nirma had apparently concluded the conversation, because, turning her wheelchair around, she rolled to the door and then was helped out by the boy in overalls, who had gotten up from the counter to leave with her.

"I know her husband," said Linda that night. "He’s the local locksmith. What were you doing here in the middle of the afternoon?" They got in bed and Linda turned off the light.

"Becoming a degenerate, of course."

Well, it was about time, she said, and got on top of him and pinned him. As a matter of fact, Nirma’s husband was a licensed electrician, did moving, and had a free-floating crew of guys working for him.

"One of them helped to float his wife out of there this afternoon," said John.

Linda laughed, and murmured, "She don’t need no help, honey." There was something in the words, something missing.

"Hard to believe that’s his wife," John said.

"You haven’t seen him," came the words in the dark, and here it was again, a quizzical harshness as clear as the touch that accompanied the words. Then her touch became as light and hard as ever. She could bear down on his head to massage the hair by its roots off his brain in the dark room; meanwhile, some soft spot around his stomach found another touch of hers so light-fingered it was hairlike and, growing here and there all over his body, felt good.

Languorously, softly, and so slowly that he heard his lips part, he asked if there had been further word from the Departed Tenant. She moved her hands and clasped him in her arms. (He could put his hands over her eyes when she was playing the piano and she would go on playing.) Yes, she said, to tell the truth, she had heard from the Departed Tenant, again calling to say that he would be glad to fix her bathroom window himself; the super, according to the Departed Tenant, was a nice guy but he didn’t do spit, and he wasn’t there a whole lot, because he had two other buildings, if not three, because he needed the cash flow, y’know. John could hear the very voice of the man. But the completeness of Linda’s love at this moment made the intentions of the Departed Tenant only a passing mystery, like her humor. For her humor had taken a turn. It sounded like a private joke that might be with John or against him.

Was she getting ready to turn away from him? Not possible. The next evening she told an odd story or two about the neighborhood, and the way she talked seemed unlike her; she sounded as if she were making up what she told him, but she wasn’t.

Nothing like getting to know your new neighborhood. Well, now, she said, an unusual body had been hidden on the canvas-draped staging that the men had been using to work on the brownstone. John asked what was unusual about it. Oh, it turned out to be only sleeping, she said. He asked if it had all its limbs. As far as they could tell, she guessed; it didn’t breathe for quite a while, but it must have been saving its breath, because it was quite a presentable body and finally it decided to breathe. And move on? he asked, in the living room, hearing her in the kitchen. It was one of those no-goods the locksmith’s wife gave tidings of, said Linda.

"Some Departed Tenant," John said.

"Not mine," she said from the kitchen.

"Yours hasn’t departed," said John.

"Any day now," came the answer, as the refrigerator opened and closed.

"He calls when I’m not here," said John, sitting down at the piano. "It’s uncanny: he only calls when I’m not around."

Linda pounded something. "I told him enough was enough, I was going to speak to you."

"In this day and age you said that?" said John. But Linda said that she had said a bit more than that, actually. She had said John had a temper.

"He misses this place," said John, and played the first notes of a song which were also the first six notes of a scale. "And for a Departed Tenant who’s sticking around, that’s heavy."

Linda came out into the living room to smile at him. She had an apron on over her bluejeans, and he knew there was a joint in her apron pocket, because he had felt it there not long ago. Lately he wasn’t sure what was going on. She gave him some respectful warmth that he didn’t quite know what to do with, because it was as close as his body and as separate as his clothes, as if he had a new authority that still wasn’t power. He just wasn’t sure what was going on.

She had a hammer in her hand. She was going to staple in the wiring for a second set of stereo speakers in the bedroom; dinner could be ready in ten minutes whenever they wanted it. John said he would staple the wiring, but Linda said he didn’t have to, and they sat down and smoked instead. He read her mind and asked her if she loved him. She said that was her line, why had he said it, what did he mean? He said very very softly and, he thought, humorously, "Oh shut up." She didn’t quite love it, he saw.

The next night they went to the Spanish restaurant for dinner. He was going away the following afternoon. They finished a bottle of wine, bickering a bit over whether they were splitting the check or not, then speculating whether the shrimp and mussels and the pale rings of squid came from the fish market next door, and then arguing about which way the neon guitar was pointing. He had reached for his wallet and paused, distracted, his fingers in the inside pocket of his jacket. She laughed in a more silly, distantly silly, way than he had heard her laugh before. She said if he would let her pay her share of the check she would let him pay half the rent. This set her off again; it was more than giggling; the tears shook themselves out, laughter tears — his grin got fixed — and when she calmed down she asked him like a little girl did he have to go to Houston? Couldn’t he put her in his pocket and take her along? Couldn’t he put off the trip?

Oh, he really couldn’t, he said, laughing with her.

What, not till sunrise, my darling? she said.

Oh, certainly till sunrise; maybe the Departed Tenant would call.

Oh, he never, never would call when John was there. The giggling began again.

Man sounded like the refrigerator light. There only if you opened the door.

She never opened any door for that creep.

Didn’t favor degenerates?

A select few only, she said (as a microphone got touched); degenerates could be fun even when they were not very observant.

The waiter came back with the change.

Did she mean degenerates who forgot which way la guitarra pointed?