Robert Coover - John's Wife

As for John’s erstwhile troubleshooter, who had so known but who had always, successful businesswoman that she was, given more than she had received, the gumpopping hitchhiker’s disparaging judgment upon the local country club applied equally to this whole pig’s ear of a town, Nevada having come round to Bruce’s bitter take on his friend’s backwater fiefdom: a living nightmare. It was, the pits, a house of horrors. Where the hideous crawly things were the deadbeats who lived here. Nobody in their right mind, like the lady said. Nevada rolled along through the creepy half-lit streets, empty but for a stray dog or two, a car crossing several blocks up, a distant siren. She felt like she was touring the land of the dead or a wax museum after hours. Remote shimmerings of heat lightning stirred memories of her white-whiskered granddad’s apocalyptic fantasies. It was time for her to blow this sick scene once and for all before it fucked her mind completely, which was what she was going to tell Rex when she saw him. She’d like him to come along, meal ticket on her, but if not, not. She’d gone out to his motel, nobody in, though his car was there. Out jogging maybe. She’d made herself at home, put on some music to beat back the silence, worked out a bit with his weights, but in the end the emptiness had spooked her, so she’d hit the road again, looking for lights. Downtown was dead, she cruised the strips, feeling oddly panicky whenever the darkness welled up around her. Her hotel out on the interstate was full of John’s friends, down for the holiday, even her own suite was being used, couldn’t go there without getting sucked into bad shit. She drifted past the malls, where the young were buzzing around restlessly like flies on dung, having no one to take their anger out on except each other. There were a few cars dragracing in the mostly empty parking lots, tires squealing. She heard a bottle break hollowly: the sound of her own empty fantasies gone bust, she thought. But what could she have done? She’d got caught between two old pals, playing rough. She’d grabbed what she could while she could and now it was time to turn the page. She had met John out at the airport after sending him the note, supposing she’d be invited along, but after he’d got out of her what he wanted, he’d told her in effect to go fuck herself, looking down his broken nose at her like a lord at his dirty kitchenmaid. Something he had to do himself, he’d said. He’d seemed suspicious: did he know about the signed agreements Bruce was leaving behind for her? Well, what if he did, fuck-all he could do about it, they’d be partners now in effect, and if he didn’t like it he could shove it up his royal wazoo. That was how Nevada had put it to herself, glaring at his back as he’d crawled up into the cabin, but she’d been crying when he took off without her. Like that old bluesy song Rex so loved: Goodbye, good times… The tears had dried now but she was still feeling wasted and strung out, so she decided to make a pit stop at an all-night drugstore where she had a friendly connection. Just as she was pulling in, though, that steely black Porsche she knew so well went rocketing past, horn blaring and brights ablaze, announcing: look out, buttheads! this is an emergency! John? He’d found them? Her heart was in her throat as she leapt back in her car. What now—?!

No, Clarissa: going nowhere, anywhere, ready for come what may, as she’d been ready all day, or so she’d thought, for come what didn’t. Betrayed! Not just by two-faced Jennifer, but by Bruce and Nevada, too! Those shits! She could never forgive either of them. Her only real friends! Or so they’d seemed: she’d been suckered yet again by her infantile trust of others. When was she going to grow up? She spun up onto the interstate and, burning rubber as she accelerated, went barreling down the open highway in her daddy’s blazing saddle, as he called it, daring anyone or anything to get in her way. She watched the speedometer rise past 140, but she felt like she was sitting still, not moving at all. Signs, cars and trucks, light poles whipped past as though under their own power: it was the sensation she used to get on merry-go-rounds and rollercoasters, the world going into a wild spin while she sat anchored at the center of stillness. She slowed and a sense of her own motion came back to her. A bird caromed off the windshield, startling her, and she cut her speed even more, took the next exit ramp, looped around, and headed back toward town, see who’s hanging at the mall, a rock station at full blast, fanfaring her coming. She wanted to hit somebody or rape them or tear their eyes out or something, she didn’t know what she wanted. She found the usual crowd. More of them outside than in, that kind of night. The Porsche impressed them. They passed around some grass cut with angel dust or smack or both, a vague blend of pass-me-downs, that did nothing to soften the implacable fury that gripped her mortified heart. A couple of the girls had stripped off their tops, and Clarissa did, too. A guy with his shirt off said, “Let’s walk through the mall like this and see if they throw us out,” and she told him to fuck off. Kid stuff. Mall-rat Mickey Mouse. She’d always loved this mall, ever since her dad brought her here on her seventh birthday, just after he’d built it. A day in her memory when the sun shone as though for her alone. It was magic and it was hers. Now the magic had suddenly left it, like when somebody dies and leaves nothing but a cold clammy body. These scuzzy candy-butts were spoiling it. When a girl asked where Jen was, Clarissa snapped: “She’s dead, man. Gone. Forget her.” “Really—?!” They wanted to know more, but Clarissa had nothing to add. These assholes were getting on her nerves. She felt surrounded by flesh-eating aliens and it was making her want to throw up. Even the light was weird. As often in moments like this, when she felt completely alone in a scumbag world, Clarissa asked herself, what would Marie-Claire do next? Her destiny: whatever it was, let it come. The guys started pressing her to give them a ride, suggesting in their dork-brained way that they wanted more than one kind, so she said: “Okay, show me what you got, I only go with the biggest.” “Got?” “In your pants, stupid. Haul it out. Let’s measure up.” The girls were giggling with their heads down like they’d just seen someone poop themselves. “Lay them out on the hood there, if you can find them. The longest gets a ride he won’t forget.” A couple of the bigger boys unzipped, but the others started backing off, the wimps. One of them asked if she even had her license yet, and she heard someone say she was so ripped a ride with her was like a one-way ticket to nowhere. The class nerd mooned her, his mashed-potato ass being the only joke he knew, but not close enough for her to stub her roach out on it. So she flicked it in its general direction, gave them all the finger, and gunned it out of there, tires screaming in her behalf.

The class nerd was not alone in assisting the heavens on this moonless night, others including Clarissa’s father’s Assistant Vice President in Charge of Sales and his clairaudient but troubled helpmeet, as well as the motelkeeper, her father’s old battery mate, who’d caught it (his destiny) but good, and at this moment lay mooning the indifferent world in the very room serially occupied so recently by the other two, though now it was his alone. He had just knocked the telephone over and was groping for it with his left hand, finding it oddly elusive even though he knew just where it was. As he knew where everything was, it was all quite clear to him, Dutch felt perfectly sound, composed and carefree, a bit bored if anything, and he seriously considered simply locking up for the night and sorting things out in the morning. At the same time he knew he was dying. He could see himself lying there in the shattered glass, fatally wounded, fumbling for a fallen phone which, when dragged to his ear, turned out to be dead. Poor bastard, he mused. Pity he had to check out in such undignified circumstances. Of course, Dutch thought (always thinking), he could still use the two-way radio the police chief had given him. If — big if — he could reach his back pocket, now somewhere down around his ankles. Which were miles away in some other room. He could hear someone frantically rattling the door. Probably Waldo’s old lady wanting back in to get her pants back. Could he go over and open it up for her? He couldn’t, right though he was about it being under-clad Lorraine. She’d fled the room in abject terror (her impression was of someone exploding bloodily right through the mirror), then had thought better of it, but the door had snapped shut behind her and locked her out. She shook it and shouldered it and kicked it, but no dice. And no help from within. She raced for her car, tugging her shirt down as she ran, feeling dreadfully exposed, but the old wagon wasn’t there! Someone must have stolen it! Oh my God! She ducked into the scraggly bushes at the edge of the lot; her thighs were wet and it felt like someone with icy breath was breathing on them. No one around, though, or she’d know it. She did pick up something like a fuzzy overview as if from a low-flying plane (she glanced up into the empty sky), but it didn’t seem quite human, whatever it was, her own imagination maybe, all atingle as it was, as was her bare ass also. She was crouched there, drying her thighs and tears with her shirttails and meditating on the awesome vicissitudes of death, wisdom, and paradox (her destined lot), when it occurred to her that there might be a spare room key at the reception desk. So she crept around to the front, braced herself, leapt into full view from the highway, and threw herself at the double glass doors. But they were locked, too. The scurrilous sonuvabitch must have shut up shop before waddling off to his peepshow. She tried to force them, but felt her backside light up from the passing traffic like a billboard, heard sirens not far away, had to beat a quick retreat. Thus, on opposite edges of the town, both Lorraine and her maiden-chasing spouse found themselves this night in paired plight, let loose in the wild without prospects and in nothing but their shirts, her corkhead hubby, all forlorn, now slashing around in the rough somewhere on the back nine at the country club. He’d been taken in. Not for the first time. He had a gift for it. She whom his wife called one thing, he another, having lured him out here and in here, had, sassily, abandoned him, her pale will-o’-the-wisp buns dancing elusively through the underbrush ahead of him the last sweet glimpse he’d had of light itself. All dark since. Couldn’t see his hand in front of his nose before. Where was he? No idea. Hopelessly lost and getting eaten alive by mosquitos, Waldo was consoled only by his pocket flask, which, though drained dry, he sucked on like a pacifier, in the same way that his wife, when distressed, as now, found solace in nibbling the polish off her nails, or their friend the motelkeeper, who had so recently hosted them both, in scratching his balls. When he, like Adam, had ‘em.