Ruth Galm - Into the Valley

“Best time to be here,” the man said. “No students.”

“It’s very quiet.”

“Quiet. Obscured.”

She did not turn her head to him, in part because she knew she must look terrible, in part because she was afraid to see his face, she did not know why. “I’m trying to find a drugstore,” she finally said.

“Are you alright?” He turned toward her then, and she made herself look. He was maybe a decade older than she, but tanned and handsome, thick brown hair that had begun to gray at the temples. She wished she had the energy to take out her compact.

“Yes. My foot is cut a little, that’s all.”

“Everything’s closed now,” he said. Dozens of sprinklers exploded on, the jagged arcs thrusting in the dark.

“I have some bandages at my house,” the man eventually said. “It’s just down across the way there.”

“Oh. I don’t know. .”

“I’m harmless, I promise. You could infect the cut walking on it like that.”

She’d seen his wedding ring, wide and shiny. He spoke in a slow liquid manner, possibly from drinking, she thought. But a quality in his voice was reassuringly authoritative (he must be a professor, she decided); she felt too tired to argue.

“Alright. Thank you.”

She put back on her heels. They walked along one of the paths, the sprinklers catching their ankles. The house, opposite the quad, was a small Craftsman with every light on. The woodwork inside was mahogany, the ceilings low and the walls crowded with bookshelves, a comforting feel, although she wished the blazing lights would go away. B. noticed various charcoal sketches on the walls of nude women with giant engorged nipples. In one corner a tall heavy African mask. Piles of papers scattered across the tables and chairs.

He led her into the bathroom. There was a shaving kit open on a shelf, a can of woman’s hairspray and an open jar of cold cream, as if two people were still in the midst of getting ready. The man motioned her to sit on the side of the tub and ran the water until it was warm, then bent down next to her and washed her hands, then her feet. She smelled the man’s aftershave and the liquor on his breath; his tanned hands on her skin briefly made her stiffen. The white washcloth turned brown with dirt; B. blushed, embarrassed. When her foot was washed he moved her to the toilet seat and swabbed the cut with antiseptic, then reached for her dress and picked off a few spurs. B. waited for him to finish with gauze and tape for her foot but he stood up and put everything away.

“Shouldn’t it be bandaged?”

“No. It needs to develop a protective layer. Open air.”

“Stay for a drink,” he added.

He left the bathroom before she could respond and she hobbled behind him on the side of her foot. She realized then a radio had been on, beating out a twisting, low and mournful jazz that made the house drowsy. She sat down on a couch next to more papers.

“You don’t live around here,” he said, handing her a glass.

“No. Visiting.” She thought briefly she should not be drinking with a stranger, she should get back on the road and find a motel. But the tiredness and light-headedness (did she have a bit of sunstroke?) made her unable to move.

“And why on earth, dear lady, would you visit Chico? You have an Aunt Alma here or some other bad luck?”

“No, I’ve just been driving.” She did not feel like knitting together the explanation in her mind. She drank her scotch.

“We haven’t been here long,” the man said. “Still finishing the dissertation. We’re out from New York. That’s where my wife is now. That faraway galaxy called New York. .” He peered dolefully into his drink.

“I’m from the East too.”

He did not seem to hear her. “So you’re really just driving? No obligations, no appointments? Sounds lawless.”

She fidgeted. Some of the papers from the couch fell onto the floor. She bent to pick them up.

“Don’t bother about those. No point.”

“Does your wife like it out here?”

“Oh, she’s busy enough keeping me in line, you know.” He laughed but it was not cheery. He fiddled with a thread on the arm of his chair. “It’s been an adjustment for her, cooking more, keeping up a house instead of an apartment. I mean, she paints and sketches too, of course.” He pointed at the charcoals.

The drawings troubled B. She tried to find them modern, but the nipples were out of proportion, bellicose. “They’re very interesting,” she said.

“How old are you?”

Suddenly a chorus of drunk voices crowded in through the windows. “Well, helloooo, Professor! Helloooo, helloooo! Another one of your ‘conferences’?” Howls of laughter, catcalls.

The man raised his hand in embarrassed greeting. It was impossible with all the lights to make out any faces in the dark.

“Don’t give that grade ’til she earns it!” someone yelled, then more howls of laughter. The man’s face looked like it would turn red if it weren’t so mellowed. A few more mutterings and hoots and the commotion faded out.

“The frats stay here all summer,” he explained. “Amazing they survive to fall.”

“Thirty.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m thirty years old.”

He looked her up and down. “Well. What a nice change. I’m usually in the company of nubile student-girls — severely off-limits, of course — or mommies and widows.” He got up and went into the kitchen. She heard the slamming of cabinets and the suction of a freezer door, ice clinking.

When he came back, he held a refilled drink in one hand and the bottle in the other. He sat back across from her in the slouchy arm chair, tearing more thread out of the upholstery, widening the hole. “ I saw pale kings, and princes too,/Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;/They cried—‘La belle Dame sans merci/Hath thee in thrall!’ You made me think of that. Keats. My dissertation.”

“Well, thank you. . I think. . It’s lovely.”

“What I find lovely, and fascinating, is exactly what a thirty-year-old woman is doing driving around the valley for no reason.”

“It’s not for no reason.”

“No?”

The lights felt momentarily blinding. She drank more scotch. “Can you turn some of the lights off, please? I have a bit of a headache.”

“Whatever the lady wants.” He walked around the room and hallway until all the lights were off except a small lamp on an end table. She picked at a stain on her dress, hoping he would drop the subject.

“It’s funny,” he went on, “I find I can talk more easily to single women of a certain age. I tend to go out of bounds. Not always appreciated in normal, civilized speak. I’ve found that mature-yet-not-coarsened sensibilities appreciate the out-of-bounds from time to time.”

“I can’t talk to people easily,” she said. The dimmed room relaxed her; it might be the alcohol, she realized. “In college I was passable at it, but not anymore. .

“What do you and your wife talk about, usually?” she asked.

“Ha! That’s funny.” But he didn’t laugh, only drank more.

“No, really.”

“Oh, c’mon. We’re married. What do married people talk about? You’re obviously not married.”

She peered into her scotch with a vague irritation. “No.”

“In fact, now I’m putting it together,” he said, leaning forward, the mellowed face brightening. “Thirty and unmarried. That’s it: you’re on a quest. A midlife journey. Something mystical even.

“I ran away from the East too,” he went on without waiting for corroboration. “Didn’t want all that baggage and dusty claptrap. Not to mention the tenure tracks were for the picking out here — forgive the pun. The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled. . ”