Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

Pauline had been quite right about the whales. Had they not cried out in the days of their destruction with exquisite and anguished song? Yet their pursuers wanted only to extinguish them. Indeed, man had reveled in the fine red mist that rose and then fell, as though from heaven, from the great collapsing hearts to herald the harried and bewildered creatures’ deaths.

The inn where we had taken lodging was now in sight. I thought once again of the debt I owe Pauline and wondered if, in time, she would leave this life before me. It is proof of her success with me that I could entertain such a thought. One of us will be first, in any case, and until then we have each other.

“The fire department charged us three hundred and seventy-five dollars to relocate that snake,” Francine said.

“Must have missed that one,” Freddie said. “Fire department was here? Big red truck and everything?”

“There was a rattlesnake on the patio and I called the fire department and they had a long…it was some sort of hooked pole, and they got the snake in a box and released it somewhere and it shouldn’t have cost anything because that’s one of the services they provide to their subscribers, which is why everyone knows to call the fire department when a snake shows up on the patio. But we’re not one of their subscribers, Freddie. I was informed of this after the fact. We have not paid their bill and their service is not included in our property taxes, which we likewise have not paid.”

“Must’ve been taking a tub.”

“The charge is excessive, don’t you think? They were here for five minutes.”

“Why didn’t you just smack the thing with a hoe?”

“It’s very civilized of the fire department to effect live removal. Why aren’t we one of their subscribers, Freddie? If the house started to burn down, they’d respond but it would cost us twenty-five thousand dollars an hour. That’s what they told me when I called to complain.”

“The house isn’t going to burn down.”

“Freddie, why aren’t you paying our bills?”

“No money,” he said.

It was October in the desert and quite still, so still that Francine could hear their aged sheltie drinking from the bidet in the pool house. He was forbidden to do this. Francine narrowed her eyes and smiled at her husband. “What happened to our money?”

“It goes, Francine. Money goes. I haven’t worked in almost three years. Surely you’ve noticed.”

“I have, yes.”

“No money coming in, and you were sick for a year. That took its toll.”

“They never figured out what that was all about,” Francine admitted.

“No insurance. Seventeen doctors. You slept eighteen hours a day. All you ate was blueberries and wheatgrass.”

“Well, that couldn’t have cost much.”

“Like a goddamn mud hen.”

“Freddie!”

“Seventeen doctors. No insurance. Car costs alone shunting you around to doctors cost more than four thousand that year, not including regular maintenance, filters, shocks and the like. Should’ve rotated the tires but I was trying to keep costs down.”

“There was something wrong with my blood or something,” Francine protested.

“Bought you an armload of coral bracelets. Supposed to be good for melancholia. Never wore them. Never gave ’em a chance.”

“They pinched,” Francine said.

“Even stole aspirin for you. Stole aspirin every chance I got.”

“That was very resourceful.”

“Oh, be sarcastic, see where that gets you. There’s no point in discussing it further. We’re broke.”

The sheltie limped out into the sun, sated. He barked hoarsely, then stopped. He was becoming more and more uncertain as to his duties.

Francine went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She searched the refrigerator until she found a lemon, a small shriveled one from which she had some difficulty coaxing a bit of zestful juice. The refrigerator was full of meat. Freddie did the shopping and had overfamiliarized himself with the meat department.

“Broke,” Francine said. He couldn’t be serious. They had a house, two cars. They had a gardener . She returned to the living room and sat down opposite her husband. He was wearing a white formal shirt with the linkless cuffs rolled up, black shorts and large black sunglasses. His gaze was directed toward an empty hummingbird feeder.

“It’s bats that drain that thing at night,” Freddie said. “You don’t have hummingbirds at all, Francine. You’ve got lesser long-nosed bats. They arrive in groups of six. One feeds while the others circle in an orderly fashion awaiting their turn. I enjoyed watching them of an evening. Can’t even afford sugar water for the poor bastards anymore.”

“What do you propose to do about our finances, Freddie?”

“Ride it out. Let the days roll on. You had your year of sleeping eighteen hours a day.”

“But that was a long time ago!” Once she had been the type of person who didn’t take much between drinks, as they say, but the marathon sleeping — it actually had been closer to twenty hours a day, Freddie always was a poor judge of time — had knocked the commitment to the sauce right out of her.

“Seventeen doctors. No insurance. Never found out what it was.”

“I pictured myself then very much like a particular doll I had as a little girl,” Francine mused. “She was a doll with a soft cloth body and a hard plastic head. She had blue eyes and painted curls, not real curls. The best part was that she had eyelids with black lashes of probably horsehair, and when you laid the doll on its back those hard little eyelids would roll down and Dolly would be asleep. Have I ever told you that’s how I pictured myself?”

“Many, many times,” Freddie said.

Dusk arrived. A dead-bolt gold. Francine maintained an offended silence as vermilion clouds streamed westward and vanished, never again to be seen by human eyes. Freddie made drinks for them both. Then he made dinner, which they took separately. A bit less meat humming in the refrigerator now. Francine retired to the bedroom and turned on the television. The sheltie staggered in and circled his little rug for long minutes before collapsing on it with a burp. He smelled a little, the poor dear.

—

Freddie in seersucker pajamas lay down beside her in the bed. He settled himself, then placed his hand in the vicinity of her thigh. A light blanket and a sheet separated his hand from the thigh itself. He raised his hand and slipped it beneath the blanket. But there was still the sheet. He worked his hand under the fabric until he finally got to her skin, which he patted.

They were watching a film that was vicious and self-satisfied, tedious and predictable, when in a scene that did not serve particularly to further the plot a dead actor was introduced to digitally interact with a living one.

The dead actor was acting away. “Look at that!” Francine said.

The scene didn’t last long, it was just some cleverness. The dead actor seemed awkward but professional. Still, this wasn’t the scene he had contracted for. Watching, Francine knew a lot more than he did about his situation, but under the circumstances he was connecting pretty well with others.

“What are you getting so upset about?” Freddie said.

“Space and time,” she said. “Those used to be the requirements. Space and time or you couldn’t get into the nightclub. Our senses establish the conditions for the world we see. Kant said our senses were like the nightclub doorman who only let people in who were sensibly dressed, and the criterion for being properly dressed or respectably dressed, whatever, was that things had to be covered up in space and time.”