Charles Bock - Alice & Oliver

Moving parallel to Alice now, the man initiated eye contact. Gaunt, but not painfully so. Unwashed black hair splattered across his forehead, a boyish mess he was too old to pull off, but that held charm nonetheless. When Alice understood his brown eyes were trained on her, something inside her kicked up. She allowed a nod in his direction, kept on shuffling, the soles of her boots making scuffed sounds.

She’d made it down the hall, and completed a right turn, when he approached again — was it possible he’d lapped her?

His face almost alabaster in its paleness. A pronounced brow and pointed features made him look almost feral. Aquiline jaw muddled with a week of growth. “You need someone?” he asked. “To walk with you?”

She did not look at him.

“You sure?”

She wavered, but said, “Should be.”

For reasons unknown to her, Alice kept talking. “My drugs haven’t kicked in yet. And my counts are still high. The doctors felt I’d be okay—” She thought, laughed. “You know, I don’t think this is a very good hospital.”

His smirk was entertained, vaguely predatory. “I felt the same way when my doc asked if I needed to score.”

“I suppose I could use the company. After all, what can happen, I’ll catch cancer?”

He asked how she was doing. She gave him a tepid smile, and her fashion voice: “Let’s change subjects, shall we?”

The man acquiesced, taking hold of her IV pole, assuming the responsibility for pushing both of them. He volunteered that it was his fifth day here. The story of him getting here was honestly bizarre. He played keyboards, mostly session work, but since he had a station wagon, cats figured they could ask him to sit in a set, get him to haul and store their gear. “I was playing with my friend’s band at Brownies, you’ve been there, right?” He waited, checking if Alice had a reaction, continuing when there was none. “I’d had the flu, something. That shithole’s a total hotbox, so going in I knew it was going to be a long night. But it’s a gig, and, you know, playing is better than not playing. Anyway, behind the beat every song, head’s all sludgy, just slogging through.”

“You don’t say.”

“Carrying my gear outside afterward, arms were total noodles. I stopped to adjust my grip. Just looked up, like for a sec, up at the street. The old brownstones, snow hitting my face—”

Alice felt herself relating to and disappearing into the tale: the musician’s legs turned into buckling accordions; the sound of his keyboards hitting the sidewalk; it registering upon him that this clatter had to mean hundreds of dollars in repairs. She didn’t give in to the temptation to ask if he’d been under the weather beforehand. Alice was going to have to ask his name again.

He was explaining about a youngish woman who’d helped him get to an emergency room. “We were getting to know each other, seemed like we had a little connection.” So when this art school chick said she had to check her messages—“like the third time she’d said that, at two in the morning ”—the musician should have guessed someone was waiting on her, or she was waiting on someone.

“My husband’s been a saint.” Alice felt happy to volunteer the information; saying the words was a relief. “The pressure Oliver must be under— Sometimes, I feel guilty for getting this. Ridiculous, I know.”

He’d taken a few steps ahead, but stopped, and turned now, so he could watch her.

She kept on, dissembling: “I once heard that when you get past the honeymoon and the bliss, most marriages are one good fight away from being kaput. With us, the baby had already added a lot of strain. And all this dropped in Oliver’s lap.”

The keyboardist—“Mervyn? Merv? Thank you, Merv, I won’t forget this time”—asked if Alice was doing all right, volunteered to slow down, and, after a bit, admitted that he hadn’t added up all the signs with the girl, but “she must’ve taken her jacket with her, too. When you think about it, pretty big hint, right?”

“He’s been better than anyone has a right to ask for,” Alice murmured.

“Last thing she did: rubbed her hand on my cheek. Gave me this look, all soft and dewy. You don’t even know is what she said.”

Alice noticed him now, studied him, thinking. Her voice was sudden with amusement: “How could anyone have walked out on you ?”

He laughed, a little.

“ Really now?” She did her best to bat what was left of her lashes. “Who could say no to such a studiously and meticulously unkempt nature? That undernourished and malodorous body?”

Again he smirked. “That’s me. Your generic, by-the-numbers, brooding antihero.”

Alice’s hand on her pole halted their progress. “I’ll admit,” she said, a bit winded, but sounding happy. “I’d stop you on the street.”

“There we go.”

“To settle a question about my income tax.”

Hers was a mischievous yelp, score for her side. The musician felt at his jaw as if smarting from a slap. “You’re right,” he said. “I can’t really blame her, leaving that freak-ass situation. Funny thing is, I am the responsible one. Rest of the band’s out chasing tail, I’m the idiot hauling their gear.” He stared at the floor, thrummed his fingers at the exposed knee in his jeans, as if for emphasis. “I mean, I’m old enough to understand how much of a cliché it is: guy playing rock music. Do this long enough, you better get some kind of comfort level with reality.”

“So that’s your angle?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the smart sensitive one? The good man left behind?”

He considered this. “I got one for you. Singer I used to play with. His girlfriend told him, I can’t come over, I’m on my period. Swear to God, Donovan goes back : You’re not bleeding out of your mouth, are you? ”

Alice snorted. “I might have gone out with that man.”

“It’s not even that he tells the story, you know? It’s that he likes telling that story.”

“But not you,” Alice said.

Staring away, down, Merv seeming to concentrate on the wheels of the units. He tapped out the opening of an exercise for the piano, his fingers dancing in rapid, minor movements.

“Honest and revealing is your thing,” Alice said.

“Dunno.” His face stayed serious. “We’d have to discuss it over ice cream.”

A current ran through her stomach.

“Oh, you’re more into gelato?”

“Please, either way….Wait— that’s how you work?”

The deadpan gave way to mischief, a scraggly grin. “I’d ask you to get some with me.”

A gasp, only with an upturn at the end, something near delight. “It sounds safe and nice.”

“And innocent,” he said. “Don’t sleep on innocent.”

“A creamy cool treat,” Alice thought aloud.

“Only you’ve got licking.”

She caught on: “Mouths and wetness.”

“Throw in a daddy issue—”

“Well.” Alice’s voice made clear this discussion was completed. She looked at him for a time. “You may not look like much—”

“Yeah. But I’m actually less.”

It was his turn to let loose, a full Cheshire smile. She laughed, leaned into him with her shoulder, nudging him just a bit. The musician flipped some kind of interior switch, became intensely alert, his arms extending, ready, just in case. After a moment he understood the nudge had been a form of approval, saw she was steady.

Still he asked, “You okay?

“You know,” he said. “It’s good to vent to a stranger. I guess.”

Moving into another right turn, a bit slower and more carefully this time, Merv concentrated on the rollers of each IV pole, guiding them in a wide arc, making sure all their wheels stayed on the linoleum. Once this had been negotiated, and it was clear Alice was not going to be giving in to his particular strangerness, that no venting would be forthcoming, he started again. “That ice cream line usually gets me in the door. Not that I’m Mr. Great Pickup Artist Bullshit Guy — back when I drank, I used to really be something. Only, it got to the point where I’d get a girl home, and I’d be thinking: You fucking pig. I can’t BELIEVE you fell for my shit. How can you be so stupid you’d let ME fuck YOU? ”