In the end, he was not a serious man.
Had been once, he thought.
Had lived a serious life.
He was puffed that a Seneca wise man who lived in
A trailer up near Canandaigua had given him a Seneca name
Until a dealer at the casino translated the name roughly
as “fat guy who sits aimlessly watching the rain.”
It bothered him more than it should have
Because his memories were false or written over.
All his fact checkers were gone-
Scattered.
Skedaddled.
She froze near the bottom of the stairs
Startled by the form
In the window beside the front door.
Some other worldly wraith-white and shaved-stared,
Watching.
Nothing to break the pale but the dark nipples against her milky skin.
The tiny breasts lifted and fell with her breathing.
Below a dark mane, button eyes sewn onto a doll’s face
Searched for something that wasn’t there.
Her lean legs wavy, her flat stomach nothing but a creamy smudge,
Her face, nondescript from here.
She looked away from the reflection.
It wasn’t her at all.
“Are the doors locked?” she asked suddenly from her corner of the passenger seat.
Jolted by the question, he caught himself feeling along the top of the door for the plunger to press to lock it. That was years ago-when he was a kid. Cars don’t have those kinds of locks anymore. Just sleek buttons and mechanisms that lock automatically at a certain speed. He knew that. Why couldn’t he tell her?
Instead he said, “What are you afraid of?”
“You don’t have to be afraid to be cautious,” she said.
Cautious. The word struck him as strange just then. He’d have said, ‘careful’ as would most people. Why ‘cautious’?
The drizzle had turned into full-on rain pinging off the roof and sheeting down the windshield. The pressing sky atop the black night made it impossible to see the woods and fields that were out there. “There’s nobody out here to be…cautious of”, he said.
“All the more reason”, she answered looking out her window as if there were something to see.
She’s too young for me, he thought. The scent of roses he thought she wore was really bubble gum-or smelled like it anyway. Maybe it wasn’t her youth. Maybe she was too smart for him. Or too dumb. Or too tall-maybe too short. Too whiny, too cold, too butch, too soft, too dark, too light. Too something, he knew that. But why worry about it now? He didn’t have to win her. Didn’t have to impress her. She was here.
His wife was right. He thought too much about everything-drove himself crazy. Last week he’d had a nosebleed right at the kitchen table. She’d said it was high blood pressure from him worrying so much over every little thing. Like she was a freaking nurse.
Back home she sat at the same table listening to hockey on the radio. She liked it better that way; watching it made her too nervous. She poured a thick toss of Sambuca into her cup – the only way she could abide decaf. Her ma had called, worried the rain was going to turn to snow. “It’s forty degrees, Ma!” she had to yell into the phone. “It won’t snow.”
He sighed and reclined the seat slightly. Fumbling, he loosened his belt and unsnapped his pants. Rising on her knees, she bent over the console and gently pulled him out of his pants; a soft crippled bird. “Ok”, she said low. “Let’s see what we can do with you.”
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.
Liking the feel of muted life in the middle of the night, Lori kept the house dimly lit with strategically placed nightlights and tiny touch lamps. She wandered into-then through-the kitchen after pausing to gaze at but not see the immaculate countertops in the shadows. Then through the small dining room dragging a finger along the dark wood table, feeling the bumps and ridges of the hand-hewn oak. She was headed to the living room in the back of the house where a camelback clock that had been her grandfather’s pulsed, whirred and dinged the hours so long as she wound it ever other day. And she didn’t miss. It was her home’s pulse.
Naked but for a T-shirt that was just long enough to reach her thighs, she peered closely at the clock seeing naught but her eyes shining back in the glare of one of her hidden luminaries. She gently opened the glass face to better see the minute hand twitch with every tiny sweep of the internal workings. She paced it and tried to steady her breathing-still not recovered from the almost forgotten nightmare.
The dream was familiar-not in the details but the feel of it and what it had left behind. It had been dark in her dream-darker than it could ever be in her house. She was on her belly and sliding down something. A hill, a tilted floor; something impossibly slippery. She heard a voice and felt a hand on her. The voice was Uncle Red’s she knew. Not him later, sick and ravaged, but him fifteen or twenty years ago-soft and clear. She didn’t know who’s hand it was, or why it was on her calf. But it had to have been his. It was trying to pull her back-keeping her from sliding into a still darker place. Maybe. Maybe it was pushing her. She had jolted awake. She breathed in time with the minute hand’s twitch; each breath deeper, less a gulp.
Her belly bothered her. Not inside, she didn’t feel sick at all. It was more the look of it. She thought it too round and puffy-she could hold it in her hands. Could rub it all over. Her reflection in the sliding door showed her no longer slender, but not fat. Tall and pale with smudges of darkness reflecting the jumble of black hair sticking out of her head and the thatch below her belly which she still rubbed and rubbed; an angst-ridden Buddha. She hadn’t always had it-the belly. When she was younger it was as flat as the girls on TV. She wanted that belly back.
She sat on the end of the couch like she and her uncle had, facing the dark TV. Her reflection was there too. She studied it and the empty spot at the other end of the couch which was Red’s end. She glanced that way quickly as if to catch him sitting there, casting no reflection but watching her none the less. He wasn’t there. But he was everywhere.
She thought for a moment that she would lie on the couch. Just lie there on her belly for a moment and pull her shirt up. She’d done it before-lain there exposed until the jitters passed or the weight pressing down, lifted. She’d awoken that way some mornings, cold and bare-assed for anyone who could look through the door. She had decided to do it and, leaning over, felt a chill in her belly. Then she didn’t.
She watched the goosebumps rise on her thighs and pulled her T-shirt back to reveal her lap. Was it spreading? She poked at herself making tiny pink dimples which colored then filled. “Closure” was what everyone who wanted the house talked about to her. As if there was such a thing for the haunted-for those who carried the memories of past lives with them. Like moving was going to change anything. Like she wanted to change anything. The woman in the dark TV stared-giving her nothing. Not a fucking thing.
“You think living this long, I’d know all there was to know about myself”, I said not expecting an answer.
“What are these?” she asked, fingering the thin white caplets only half-listening.
“Tramadol”, I told her. “Five bucks a pill.”
“They any good?”
I shrugged but she didn’t see it.
“No oxy?”
“No oxy, no hydro…that’s dry. Maybe some perc’s end of the week.”
“Huh”, she said knocking the pills around with a blood red fingernail that matched her lipstick.
“So whatta you think”, I asked after a moment. “Am I frightening?” She looked up with a crinkle around her green eyes that could have presaged either a smile or a wince. “Do you think I’m frightening? Am I scary?”
She wriggled her ass deeper into the chair and crossed her legs; a bit of stage-business while she fashioned an answer. “You do tend to lean in a bit”, she said finally. “But you always did that.”
“Huh”, was all I could come up with. “But I never saw myself as scary.”
“We’re all used to you, sweetie. You get to be a particular way, we leave you be.”
Fuck, I thought, taking a turn at spinning the pills across the dark Formica tabletop.
“Poor Tommy”, she said reaching across the table and patting my cheek.
“Don’t say that”, I said more sharply than intended. “My mother always says that.”
“How is she?”
“Same. She’ll never die. Too busy killing me.”
“Christ, boyo…” she pulled back a little and reached for her purse. “You wanna get high?”
“Naw. I might get all scary and shit.”
She smiled and took it as a joke, which is probably not how I meant it. “This is bugging you bad, isn’t it? Who said you were scary?”
“I was at a party last weekend up in Mifflin and a girl said…”
She sniffed. “Mifflin? Shit. You have to stop trying to mix with new folks. They don’t know you like we know you. Play in your own sandbox.”
She pulled a crumpled pack of Pall Mall greens out of her purse and squeezed it open to peek. She’d need a new pack soon. “Five bucks a pill seems steep for something I never tried.”
“You should get out more”, I grinned. “Three for you.” She was thinking-counting how many were on the table. I’d go down to two.
“Do you…?”, she asked haltingly, then stopped.
I let the silence ride a little. She was waiting for me. It was my turn to say something. But I wasn’t. I saw how this whole fucker was going to play out. I had the high hand. I didn’t have to do anything to win. All I had to do was sit there and shut up, collect a few bucks and she’d be out of the picture until she was dry again. But I didn’t. Instead I said, “…What?”
“You interested in doing a deal like we used to do?” she asked. “It’s been awhile.” Fuck! It had always been my idea. My suggestion. My task to pull her in. Of course I wanted to, but… “Cause, I’m fine with it, if you are. I’m ready. “
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the creaking chair. For whatever reason, it was Joe Pesci’s voice in my head saying ‘Don’t do it! You better not do it!” When I opened them the first thing I saw was the smattering of faded freckles across the bridge of her nose. And the lines around her eyes were gone, the skin unetched by time. I knew I was seeing memories; not what was in front of me. But I was seeing it that way.
If she only hadn’t smiled just then, I’d a’ been fine. But of course, she did.
“Sure”, I said. “Why not?” Playing it like it had been my plan all along.
Hot Bottoms 