John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

“Oh God. Hasn’t anyone else in this town ever seen a foreign film?”

Her chin drops. What am I doing, trying to impress sixteen-year-olds now?

“Mrs. Boweroff, um. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about sometime. Like, a special project. When you’re not busy on the phone or anything.”

“Busy on the phone? Have my little scouts been spying on their den mother again?”

But no, that kind of smarting off, no that’s not right here either. That’s Josh talking again. I hand over the returns with a lot of extra contact, shoulder and fingers, and I tell her to call me Dolly, Dolly please. She manages an un-flustered smile. I figure that’s as decent a pickup as I’m going to get before I have to go face my — friends.

“Val, Lilah.”

“Delores. We thought we spotted you earlier.”

The women and I stand facing each other at the slower end of the counter, down by the popcorn and candy. The machine takes vegetable oil instead of butter, it reeks of grease. But of course I know what movie I’m going to suggest already. These two can come flaunt their bow-tie blouses all they want, their tinted contacts and Kappa Delta cool, it isn’t going to rattle me. And Julie peeking round the base of the widescreen won’t make any difference either.

The owner, Orr, said he hired me for this. You people from back East, he said. It’s like you remember all the movies you ever saw and you got ’em stashed away in categories. But the fact is I recommend by rote. I have exactly two choices that I suggest for people who ask, and I couldn’t tell you a line from either of them. I don’t want to spend any more time on this than I have to. I don’t want to hear another word about parties that I’m not invited to. It’s like I’m a diabetic working in the candy factory, and the worst is when I start to blame it on how happy I felt six months ago. Oh I was just thrillingly happy, six months or a year ago. I could swear that when I slipped in a nursing pad, the tickle would dart through me till at last it curled up again inside the shrinking space under my belly. But while I went humming around, playing snuggle and coo, Josh was flailing away as the new Director of Downtown Development — the king of the three-color resume, flailing away while it all went up in smoke. He was supposed to get people to come out of their holes. And I was as bad as anyone else, I wouldn’t even try walking the streets.

The upshot is that nowadays I feel as if I’m going on with my life behind some kind of papier-maché husk. I’m always at a tremendous internal distance. I can tell these women what to get while by far the larger part of me’s sitting back and giving them a onceover. Well listen, something came in last month, you two really ought to have a look at it . Must have been a rough week for them too, Lilah’s makeup looks cadaverish. Ten Oscar-winning animated shorts, really they’re slick . Valerie’s eyelids tic at the words “Oscar-winning.” But after that her gaze levels, grows calculating, and I can guess the real selling point: showing shorts will help break the ice. You won’t believe the claymation. You know all it is is play-dough . I can see also the resemblance between Julie and these two. Josh is right when he says that families like Valerie’s and Lilah’s are just off the farm.

“But with the claymation, it’s like magic.” If I hadn’t tasted Chapstick, I wouldn’t have known I was smiling. “It looks they’re hardly giving it a touch, but then the doll or whatever keeps changing shape and changing shape.”

When they agree, I send Julie off to get the cassette. Just to get that one cassette, which is bad management, no question. Likewise I don’t interfere when she takes the time to read the women’s choices out loud; on the Fellini she practically squeals. All this while the other girls are schlepping round with double orders and VCRs. Ah, but it pains me to see Julie schlep. Trying so hard to leave the ranch behind, ruining that perfect t-square of neck and shoulders. Julie, another five or six years and you’re going to be so lovely — will you have enough left of yourself to know it?

So I’m talking to the girl when Lilah and Valerie leave. Power suits, who cares? Just another summer fashion. Julie reminds me that there’s something we should talk about, there’s that project she mentioned earlier, and I avoid the other girls’ stares by studying one of the corner mirrors. Then, sure. I guess it is time for another break.

Lately I haven’t been coming straight home on weekend nights. I’m not meeting anybody, nothing so earth-shattering. And I’m certainly not all fired up from work. The way I poke around, it’s as if I’d never heard that there’d been complaints. Still I’ll open the windows on the Toyota, and I’ll drive a while.

This time of year, even in the middle of the best subdivisions, the air’s dusty with field burning. The smell’s the same no matter where it comes from, no matter what the crop was, but I want to see. I park away from any trees. There: over the alfalfa highlands, to the east. A heap of smoke the color of a lost nickel, spreading its shoulders and shadowing the low full moon.

I jam her back into gear, so rough she lurches and dies.

Josh has the stereo on. I can hear it while I’m still fishing for keys at the door. In fact these new duplexes have such a styrofoam excuse for walls that I can tell he’s playing talk, not music. Not TV talk either. You only get static like that when you record an interview off the radio. And he wouldn’t be playing back an interview just for himself, he must have brought Jesse and Willie over.

“Hardest thing to play is the blues.” Do I have to hear this the minute I get in the door?

“All the rest of it, you can just throw on some technique. But the blues is the blues is the blues.”

Then, click. “That’s Mr. Oscar Peterson,” Josh announces. His voice is a letdown. Your standard Long Island honk, after the musician’s honeyed gravel.

I’ve come in so sensitive to sound because Josh hasn’t got a light on in the place. There he is on his knees in front of the stereo, trying to read his own notes on the cassette’s label by the green glow of the tuner. Frowning, obviously drunk. Obviously everything. I come home wanting a little honest family feeling, and every time what I get is Entertainment Tonight. Jesse and Willie. The one who works for a living, most likely he’s racked out on the sofa. And that brrek-brrek across the room somewhere, that’s got to be Willie in the rocker. A condo “living area” like this, there’s nowhere else those guys could be. It holds the stink too, the beer and cigarettes like some dank indoor pollen. We hadn’t lived here a week before Josh had dubbed it Cliffdweller Estates. Now my eyes are adjusting, he forgot the curtains, and I can make out Willie’s agitation against the waxen blear of the windows. I’m reminded of a grasshopper whirring up in the middle of some smudgy farm acreage.

“Dollbaby! Hey, at last. You remember that tape I asked you for?”

“Awh.” Forgetful Me, all five fingertips to forehead.

“Forgot again , honey?”

“We just get so busy , honey. It’s a consumer paradise around here, I swear.”

Josh settles his weight back onto his hands. Deliberate, unruffled: we listen to his slacks flap as he extends and crosses his long legs. Not that it fools me. Oh yes I’m in the mood now, I want it to stay dark in here now, and none of his junior-exec smoothy is going to fool me. But before I can move in Jesse stumbles up out of nowhere. Okay Josh, Jesse says, or brays. You promised. You said if she didn’t’ bring home Wild Bunch we could watch Magnifcen’ Seven . The mood I’m in — yes keep it dark, and don’t anybody get up to kiss me or anything — I have to laugh. This is a guy with a million stories about when he was captain of his Ultimate Frisbee team. Josh however plays to the distraction, laughing differently. He puts out a hand, give me five. I yank off my shoes and start in about Denise.