Maryse Meijer - Heartbreaker - Stories

* * *

At work I can barely walk. In the kitchen I pour some coffee and Dad says What are you, drunk? I shake my head, one hand on my stomach, and drink my coffee. It’s agony trying to ease myself down on the creeper but once I’m off my feet the pain simmers down to a dull constant throb. I can feel my pant leg hitched up and I know the bandages are showing. Carl stops at my feet and says What the fuck, dude. Then his boots move on. When I know the coast is clear I roll out, go inside to use the bathroom. Carl can probably fill the mirror over the sink with his reflection. Not me. Just my face and the top of my shoulders show. But I’m not looking in the mirror, I’m unwinding the bandage, which is stained through. The wound is sticking to the bandage and it will hurt if I peel it off now so I don’t, I just rewind the bandage tight, trying not to inhale the sickish-sweet odor that rises from it. Ray bangs on the door, says he has to piss. I ignore him. The bathroom window looks out onto an ordinary street, residential, clean, empty — it means nothing to me. Most windows don’t, most feet don’t. It’s not like I’m some kind of fetishist. Or if I am, it’s a new thing, it happened since the apartment, since STILETTO, and it’s not my fault. The thought of holding a razor now makes me feel sick. But I know I’ll go home and I’ll see her and then the razor will seem harmless, will seem good, and I’ll be right back where I started.

I bend down, unroll the cuff on my pant leg, and open the door.

Christ, I thought you’d fallen in and we’d have to fish your ass out, Ray says, shoving my head, and I am so tired I don’t even tell him to go fuck himself, I just slide back under a car and stay there.

* * *

On payday I come home and find my envelope short $20. I count the bills over and over — we are paid in ones and fives — and then I sit staring at the envelope, chewing my cheek. I hobble to the phone and dial my father’s number. Take it or leave it, he says, and hangs up. I hit the receiver against the wall and am surprised when it breaks, plastic shooting under the fridge, clattering across the stove. There is only room for one person in the kitchen, and when I stand still in the middle I can touch the fridge, the sink, and the oven without taking a step. It’s a shithole, I realize, this kitchen, this apartment. I eat some SpaghettiOs out of the pot. My ankle flares.

Outside the window traffic is heavy and I am roadkill beneath it all night long.

* * *

On Monday, a workday, a miracle: lying prone beneath the corroded belly of a Ford I hear the click-clack I’d only ever heard through glass approaching in full stereo — STILETTO coming straight toward me! I am breathless, instantly hard, terrified. I am a panicked dog in its cage hoping for a kick.

Carl, she calls. Carl!

What’s her voice like? Like your mother threatening to take something away from you.

You’ve had it since eight yesterday morning, she says, and I realize that the clean midprice Saab convertible just a few feet away from me belongs to her— how could I not have guessed it, the gleaming black paint job a perfect echo of STILETTO’s heels.

I told you it’ll be ready at six, Carl whisper-whines, and I flinch again, because he knows her, knows , maybe not quite fucking her, but almost? Or wants to? Or used to want to? She is Dad’s age — it’s in her voice, the skin on her feet — and Carl is almost handsome, long hair bleached yellow, though all of our hair is naturally brown: their shoes are so close together, the brutal steel-toed boots, the teetering heels.

I can’t take the bus back, she says, and he sighs. I hear his hand run through his hair, I hear his hair fall back over his eye.

There’s a Starbucks two blocks down, why don’t you wait and it will be done in an hour, he says. I see the toe of one shoe lift as STILETTO stretches her Achilles, a gesture of consideration, impatience; finally she agrees, though not before saying that it isn’t worth the deal Carl’s giving her, it’s no deal if Carl can’t do something simple on time. I know Carl is less than interested in her complaint — he must have made the promise to her long ago, not expecting it to be cashed in — and I think You stupid fucking bastard Carl. I watch STILETTO walk back down the drive, tight steps hobbled by a tight skirt, and I braid my arms deep in the guts of the Ford’s undercarriage.

Dad’s boots come down the backdoor steps. What’s it need? he barks, and Carl pff s. Fucking oil, he says. Dad says You’re an idiot and Ray laughs from the lawn, where he is messing with a dead engine. I’m done with the Ford — I hardly have any work to do all day — but I stay beneath it. Carl tests the Saab and I listen; it hums. Dad’s fist raps the hood of my car. YOU GOT THAT RUNNING GOOD, ROBERT? he yells and I feel myself draining into the bandages as I shout YES SIR.

Carl finishes with the oil and bangs the hood of the car shut. Vacuum, he orders, and drops the Shop-Vac at my feet. While he eats his lunch on the porch step I vacuum STILETTO’s car with ruthless precision. The floor mat below her pedals is an especially tender area and I stroke the nozzle over every nook and cranny, the vacuum’s hungry sucking music to my ears. I polish the pedals with a damp cloth, Windex the glass on the dashboard. I could lick the steering wheel — the pedals — the pale leather seats — there are so many temptations to resist. For a moment, for many moments, I refrain. But in the end I am only human.

The rear door opens with a click. I get in, coil on the floor behind the driver’s seat. I breathe. Already my back aches. With my dark hair, my dark clothes, pressed against the dark carpet, I might be a backpack or a duffel bag, a dropped cloth. I wait.

* * *

Less than an hour later I hear STILETTO approach, her heels cawk-cawking as she steps up to the kitchen door and calls for Carl. There’s a muffled conversation about payment; I can almost hear the sound of STILETTO’s money being crushed in Carl’s greasy fist. Then she opens the car door and her body slides into place, displacing lesser molecules, and I turn my nose toward the floor so I can get a better look, my whole body tuning itself to this vision: the wink of patent leather against flesh. The slamming of the door, the car ON; I am made of flames. STILETTO’s high heel, indented minutely — by gravel, or stones — nails the mat as she depresses the gas. I’m doing it wildly, my hand between my legs, the sound of the road eating the sound of my terrible pleasure. Did she notice how I polished her steering wheel, sucked the dust from her console — the cup holder — the coin tray? Fuck Carl, I could be her mechanic for life. She turns on the radio — voices, not music — and the turn signal click click click s. Shadows are passing over me, caressing me — trees, buildings, streetlights — and I shiver beneath them, a hunchback, a fetus, curled so tight, my eyes narrowed and burning. And the air rancid with her perfume.

* * *

She parks somewhere quiet. Still. Complete stillness. The engine ticks down. Suburb? Which one? Without the sound of the road, without the radio, I have to be quiet; I hold my breath. She’s waiting for something. I inch my hand, wet, under the seat; I can sense her weight through the sag of the springs, and her nearness radiates like an X-ray right through me.

* * *

Maybe it’s a minute that she stays here, part of the air she is breathing my air, part of her body a part, in a way, of mine. Then a hand reaches down and my chest surges and she eases off her shoes, releasing a delicate, private bouquet. With a sigh the door opens, her fingers hooked to carry the shoes, lifting them out of my sight, and there is a glimpse of her bare feet — a flash of toenail (red! as expected!) — and then the door is shutting and the locks are locking—