Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

“Get a load of this bullshit,” said Isidore. Hank turned to face him.

“Seriously,” said Isidore, who appeared to be reading a trade magazine of some sort. “Have a look.” He passed the magazine over the register. Of course he’d have a look. He was taking his own advice and filling his days. The Aquafilters, the spiced ham, the stamps, the whatever else was written on that validating piece of paper in his pocket: They could wait another minute.

What Isidore wanted him to look at was a display ad, for “SPIRIT OF ’76” cigarettes. The pack depicted Archibald Willard’s three familiar figures, silhouetted against a red, white, and blue background. Twenty Class “A” Cigarettes. Limited-time availability; participating retailers would receive special countertop displays. He passed the magazine back. This was not something for which he had a witty aperçu at the ready. For some reason this had struck Isidore as being a cut above, even shabbier than, the usual level of gross vulgarity. Or perhaps he thought Hank was class, would respond. Or maybe he was just an old man who ran a smoke shop and thought the Bicentennial, still two years away, was bullshit. Hank was leaning in that direction himself. Bicentennial this and Bicentennial that. Flags and banners all over. All it took was an anniversary to make everybody forget a decade’s worth of troubles. Would that an ailing marriage could be cured that easily.

He felt suddenly woozy and sat inelegantly on one of the stacks of newspapers.

“You OK?”

“I just need some Aquafilters.”

Isidore reached behind him and picked a package off a hook.

“Gotta watch that sun,” he said. “I like to stay inside the store. Nice and cool.”

“Can’t stay inside forever.”

“You could try.”

“Believe me,” said Hank, rising and digging in his pocket for money.

“Buy a Coke,” said Isidore.

“Oh, I don’t need a Coke,” said Hank, “but I do need a magazine.” He moved over to the rack and selected the one Helene wanted.

“Seventeen, ” said Isidore, beginning to depress the keys on the old register. “For your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” said Isidore.

Sunwashed walls. Dead time of midday, cars here and there poked askew into the diagonal spots, waves of heat rising from their hoods and ruffling the still air. Hank stood under the shelter of an awning and in the mirror-bright window he saw an old man holding a paper bag. He knew if he lifted his left arm, the old man would lift his right, like something out of the Marx Brothers. Freedonia, Symbionia, one was a comic reflection of the other. If only his daughter had been abducted by Harpo and Chico, to be brought to Groucho’s lecherous burrow. He began to laugh when, casting about for the proper counterpart for the superfluous Zeppo, he settled instinctively upon Stump.

MRS. MOCK CARRIED, WITH a little difficulty, the flat of zinnias to the patio area behind the owner’s unit. There was a sliding glass door that she could push open with her foot, but she had forgotten first to open the screen, and after standing there indecisively for a few moments, staring out into the unsparing sunlight and allowing the centrally conditioned air of the owner’s unit to escape into the desert, she set the flat down on the glass dinette table to open the screen and then returned for it, to carry it without further incident onto the patio area where her small garden plot was located. There. In the hot, dry air she felt her skin clench up immediately and classified the feeling as bracing. She could hear the sound of water slapping concrete and knew that Mr. Mock was indulging in one of his peculiarly meaningless morning rituals, the hosing down of the deck surrounding the heated swimming pool. As eggs fried, coffee brewed, and morning papers unfurled across the Las Vegas region, at least for those who lived and worked here and maintained normal schedules, as Mrs. Mock chivied her lovely, soft-spoken, unutterably stupid housekeeping staff into action, Mr. Mock could be found tightening lightbulbs in the breezeway, or testing the ballpoint pens at the front desk in the office, or hosing down the deck surrounding the heated swimming pool, whose otherwise still waters gurgled occasionally as they incorporated hose water runoff. Mrs. Mock affixed pads to her knees and donned work gloves, preparing to transplant the zinnias to her mostly luckless garden plot. The zinnias were in fact replacing an earlier, failed attempt at cultivating some rather temperamental ageratum. As she fitted the last surprisingly flexible and pain-free finger into a glove, the Trimline phone rang in the living room. The sound of the hose ceased immediately.

She heard, “Telephone!”

At least she wasn’t on her knees yet.

She’d chosen a tropical theme for the designer living room, uncomfortable with the locally dominant southwestern look. She pretended to herself that she had been motivated by boredom with the latter style’s austerity, but it was actually fear of its sterility, an eroded look that seemed an unpersuasive attempt to prepare her for her death. Anyway, she liked things that grew, not things that blew away or were bleached and scoured down to nothing in swirling storms of sand.

She thought of Beau Geste; what a fine picture that was.

So a living room in cool blues and greens, with rattan and cane furniture covered with floral patterned fabrics, and plenty of plants, and a big aquarium that had been full of tropical fish, until they died. The room sat cool and still behind the walls of glass that divided it from the desert, like the diorama of a remote ecology. It had been her idea, her decision, 100 percent. Mr. Mock didn’t care. He walked about the room, sat down in its chairs, drank bourbon highballs and watched television and read his newspaper in it. He himself looked somewhat out of place, dressed in the blown-out clothing of a backpacker on an extended journey. The heavy, dark garments that had constituted his East Coast wardrobe lined the walk-in closet, useless. If he insisted on going around like a vagrant or a hobo in cut-off chinos and a frayed old dress shirt with the tail hanging out, that was none of her concern.

She had a picture in her mind of Mr. Dick Taranutz, who lived across the highway with his adorable if somewhat strident second wife Minnie and who wore crisp khakis and a fresh polo shirt even when washing his Cadillac. He’d stop the hose to wave across the lanes of traffic when he saw her. When he dressed to take Minnie out to dinner, he looked like something that stepped from the pages of a storybook. That was what she meant by active maturity.

She passed the color console on which sat framed portraits of Guy and Ernest. She sensed that this was one of her boys calling. Which troublemaker would it be? She was a pleasant, handsome woman in her mid-sixties who sometimes caught herself trying on the word widow as a term of self-description. She enjoyed dancing and dining out. A night at the pictures was always appreciated. She kept herself as busy as she could under the circumstances, but she couldn’t help feeling sometimes as if there were a millstone tied around her neck. There were evenings when she would look across the Key lime tiles that divided the all-electric kitchen from the designer living room and see the ill-clad figure sitting in the shifting light of the television, hear the faint clink of ice cubes, and grow full with despair.

“Ma.”

“Why, Guy. What a nice surprise to hear from you.”

“I know it’s been a while.”

“Oh, don’t you worry. We’re out so much I often wonder if we don’t miss more calls than we receive.”

“All right.”

“I was even thinking that maybe we should get ourselves an answering machine.”