A. Homes - Music for Torching

"Do you?"

"I asked you first."

"Why are you asking me that?"

"I have to," Elaine says.

"No. Not really," he says.

"Which is it-no or not really?" "No," he says.

"Do you want to go off with her?" Elaine continues.

"Who?" he asks nervously.

"Whoever she is."

"No," he says. "Is there somewhere else you want to be?" he quizzes her.

"No," she says. "There's nowhere. There's nothing."

They drink, they eat.

Paul unzips his pants; pills roll out of the pocket.

"What're those?"

He recognizes the bright colors. "Mental candy, mood enhancers," Paul says, wondering how the magic trick worked, how the palm kisser got the pills out of the gold vial and into Paul's pocket.

"Where'd you get them?"

"A guy on the train gave them to me," he says, picking pills up off the floor, counting, eight, nine, ten.

"Mr. Wash Your Bowl?"

"Exactly." Paul shows Elaine a palmful. "Different colors for different effects. If you're crabby, you take an orange; if you want bliss, eat a blue. Red is for energy. You can take a few at a time."

"What happens if you take too many?"

"You get overwhelmed and maybe a headache, but then you take a couple of aspirin."

Elaine picks out an orange and a red. She swallows them with the last of her drink.

Paul sits on Elaine's side of the bed, naked except for a shirt and tie. He takes a bottle of nail polish out of the night table and proceeds to paint his toes-fire-engine red.

"Should we go and talk to somebody?" Elaine asks.

"What could someone tell us?" Paul asks, working on his little toe. "Everything we're doing is wrong-we're lousy parents, criminals. If anyone knew us, they wouldn't like us."

He's got one leg crossed over the other. Elaine's view is up under his shirt-his balls, his bandage.

"What is it with you anyway-the shaving, the nail polish, the nightgowns?"

"Exploring parts of myself that I'd otherwise ignore."

"It scares me," Elaine says. "I find it weird and scary."

"Haven't you ever been tempted to do something that others might find unusual?"

Elaine doesn't answer. "It's important to try and be normal, as normal as you can possibly be."

The phone rings again. They freeze. They listen. Elaine wonders if it's Sammy, homesick Sammy.

"Just calling to say good night. Are you in there?"

"Pat," Paul says, identifying the voice.

"Did you two already go to bed? Nighty-night," she says. "Sleep tight."

"Let's get the children back," Paul suddenly says. "Their rooms are ready, everything is ready, waiting. Let's go and get them." Paul imagines getting into the car and driving over to Mr. and Mrs. Meaders, banging on the door and insisting that they surrender the little pervert. He sees himself pulling up in front of Mrs. Apple's house-tooting the horn and plucking Sammy from his sleep; in effect kidnapping their own children and bringing them home.

"It's one-thirty in the morning, and you're drunk," Elaine says. "We'll get them tomorrow, when it's light, when we can see what we're doing."

There is a silence. They doze.

"It's so good to be alone," Elaine says.

"We can be ourselves."

"We can be nothing."

"Are you feeling anything yet?" he asks.

"No. What colors did you take?"

"Green and orange." "Green-what's that do?"

"Not much, apparently," Paul says.

"Maybe you have to take them for a while before they work," Elaine says.

"Like how long?"

"Antidepressants take three to five weeks."

"We only have a dozen," Paul says.

"Well, maybe that's what it takes," Elaine says, noticing that Paul's big toe, with the hairy knuckle, looks interesting painted red.

Paul is dreaming. He is dreaming that he's ice-fishing, he's holding a long line that goes down into a hole. There is a tug. He pulls on the string-his own head pops through the ice. His lips are blue. "What took you so long?" he says to himself. His eyes open.

The bed is wet.

Paul panics. His thoughts race-the tattoo guy hit a nerve and has rendered him incontinent. He is forty-six years old, neither young enough nor old enough to wear diapers. He starts to cry; a pathetic rush of fear bellows out. "Oh, God, I think I wet the bed," he says. "Oh, God!"

Elaine wakes up. "What?"

"I wet the bed."

She feels around; the bed is damp.

"There's something horrible wrong with me," Paul sobs.

"You drank too much," Elaine says. "You fell into a deep sleep. You had an accident. Everything does not require a diagnosis."

She gets up, pulls the sheets back, and looks at Paul. He is still in his shirt and tie. He is not wet. She smells the bed. "It's not you," she says.

He cries.

Elaine looks up. "The roof is leaking," she says. "It's raining."

Paul can't stop crying.

"It's the hole," she says.

He looks up. A drop falls.

"Move the bed," she says.

He gets up, and they push the bed off to the right. Paul takes the damp bedding off and stuffs it into the hamper.

"I'm sorry," he says, still sobbing, great gulps. "I'm sorry."

"It's late, Paul. It's very late," Elaine says, remaking the bed.

Elaine can't sleep. She goes downstairs, gets her tools, and fixes Daniel's doorframe. Reconstructive surgery. Putty and glue. Waiting for it to dry, she reads the book Pat gave her, How to Fix Almost Anything -there's a handwritten card from Pat tucked into page forty-three, the laundry section: "Elaine-My ideas don't come from nowhere. My ideas aren't always my own." The page is about how to remove a coffee stain. Elaine remembers splashing the coffee, taking off her shirt, Pat slipping the pot holder under her head. Fine. Everything is fine.

When the glue is dry, Elaine repaints the frame around Daniel's door. She washes her paintbrush. She cleans up after herself.

In the middle of the night, Elaine is sitting on the sofa in the living room. She is thinking about what she wants. She is reading an alphabetical list of occupational titles: candy puller, elephant trainer, fatback trimmer, feather washer, felt finisher, female impersonator, field attendant, fig sorter, film inspector.

The cop car whisks by, siren silenced; red light flashes over the walls, flickering like fire.

Elaine is not alone.

THE WRECKING BALL WAKE-UP. A hard knock shakes the house. They don't so much hear it as feel it-slapping them out of their sleep, pushing the air out of their lungs.

Elaine rolls over. "Wrecking ball," she says as it slams into the house a second time.