City Boy (16 page)

Her mouth worked him slowly at first, more tongue than anything else. He groaned and reached down to grip her head on both sides, making her move faster. For a time he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to come and then she found a steady, harder rhythm and everything changed and he was afraid he would come right away. The girl stopped for long enough to take a deep, ragged breath. His feeling ebbed and when she started in again he was able to hold off another minute more and then another and then it built again and there was no stopping it, oh crazy sad bad he was going to be sorry forever her hands and greedy wet mouth. He pushed hard into her and cried out and she swallowed him down.

He kept his eyes closed. His breath and blood and heart were still harsh and racing and a black fist of dread was squeezing the last bit of pleasure out of him. He was sore from her mouth, and sticky, and he fumbled to pull his clothes back together again.

When he did finally unseal his eyes, the girl was watching him from the other side of the table. The lamp on its cord was swinging, they must have bumped into it. The circle of green light wobbled. He felt seasick. He said, “Why did you do that?”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“I didn’t … God, what’s the matter with you?”

“It was like, thank you.”

He couldn’t read her face in the shifting light. “Thank you …”

“For the ride and all.”

“Jesus.”

“So now we’re even. It was okay, wasn’t it? I tried to do it right. I bet you don’t get it like that at home, do you?”

“That’s not … Don’t … ,” he began, but a wave of sickness rose up in him, he was desperate to breathe some cleaner air, he refused to hear any more. He turned and found the door with his hands, fumbled the lock and stepped outside.

Then he was in his car, driving through streets that were as dark and blind and secret and sad as anyone’s life, and in spite of everything he knew good and well that a part of him had wanted to throw a rock through glass.

I
t was very early, not yet six. They had slept for only a few hours, and had already said some of what needed to be said. Chloe watched from the couch as Jack loaded bottles into a cardboard box. The three bottles still left of the good Shiraz. Half a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. The last of the Galway Pipe port. Odds and ends of hard liquor, kept mostly for company. Remnant of a twelve-pack of Coors Light. Chloe stirred.

“I never drink beer.”

“Doesn’t matter. Clean break.”

“Whatever you feel you need to do. I completely understand.”

Chloe was wrapped in a quilt and only her head and bare feet were visible. Her skin was white and drawn. There were fine lines around her mouth and eyes, like cracks in porcelain. Overnight she looked ten years older. She was going to call in sick to work, but Jack was planning to teach his class. He didn’t want to be here with her.

He carried the box outside, through the back gate and into the alley, where he left it for some lucky waste hauler or homeless person. Eight hours ago he had been standing in this very spot with the girl, but that was one more thought he was unable to hold in his bruised mind.

He walked back inside and past Chloe without speaking. He only wanted a shower and a chance to get to Starbucks before his long bus ride. The bathroom mirror was not his friend. His eyes were so dry and grainy that it hurt to close them.

Chloe stood outside the bathroom door. He sensed her there. “What?”

“I’m really sorry.”

“I know.”

“Please open the door.”

“I have to get ready.”

“Please.”

Jack opened the door. Chloe was still wrapped in the quilt. “I didn’t mean any of it. I don’t even remember most of it.”

“Then how do you know you didn’t mean it?”

“Tell me you forgive me.”

“I want to. I will. But give me a little time.”

“Please, Jack. I can’t stand this.”

“Just let me take my shower, okay? And go to school and clear my head and get some sleep.”

He closed the door. But when he’d stripped off his clothes and was standing beneath the running water, letting it pour over him, turning him into a creature that was all skin and no thought, he heard the door open again. Chloe pulled back the shower curtain and stepped in behind him. He felt her arms around his waist, her head against his back. He stood without moving. Her hands dropped and began searching for him. He turned, dislodging her.

“No, Chloe.”

“God I’ve ruined everything.”

“No you haven’t. I just can’t right now.”

“You mean you don’t want to.”

He kissed the top of her head. Her eyelashes were wet from crying, and in her nakedness she was small and abject, like a disaster victim. He couldn’t bear to think about making love to her. He felt as if his body might never be entirely his own again. “It’ll be all right. We can talk later.”

“I’ll go to AA. A counselor. Tell me what to do. Tell me how I can fix things or I’ll just start screaming.”

“Why don’t you go back to bed. Everything seems worse when you’re this tired.”

“You won’t give me a break, will you? You’re going to keep dragging this out.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“Because you’re the kind of person who makes judgments. You’ve already judged me.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Just say it. You hope I won’t be here when you get back. Well maybe I won’t be.”

And then she was gone, stepping out of the shower and closing the bathroom door behind her. When Jack finished and went in to dress, she was lying in bed with her face turned toward the wall.

“Chloe?”

No answer. He knew she wasn’t asleep, but it seemed easiest to pretend that she was.

The plywood over the front door blocked most of the light from the street. It made the lobby seem smaller and meaner, the stage for some crabbed and diminished drama. The air that met him outside was gray with haze, the humidity already thickening. His head felt as if it was stuffed with flannel. He looked around furtively, he half-expected to see the girl lying in wait for Brezak, or even for himself, anything seemed possible, any wrong or crazy thing.

But she wasn’t there, thank God. He stood in line for his coffee and then stood in line for the bus and rode through the funky streets with the bus chugging its obscene exhaust and the bursts of radio noise that swam past them in traffic and the fat lady next to him shifting her weight from thigh to thigh and saying, Jesus, Jesus, but in a way that was conversational rather than vexed or prayerful. They traveled south on Ashland, crossing three expressways, under cement-damp viaducts or across overpasses that gave him dizzying views of roads tying themselves in concrete knots, and steady streams of cars. It was another hot day, or rather, the heat had never dissipated. Heat islands. That was what they called it when every brick and paved surface trapped and stored the air and the temperature kept building and old people too thrifty or timid to turn on air-conditioning or even open their windows were carried away in refrigerated coroners’ vans. He reminded himself to check on Mrs. Lacagnina.

After a time Jack was the only white person on the bus. He was used to this by now, he even recognized one or two of the passengers. His
head drooped and his eyes closed. He slept a little as the bus rocked and wheezed and carried him down the north-south spine of the city. He dreamed all the lives around him,
Jesus, Jesus,
as strangers jostled and coughed and conversed, he dreamed that his own life was simply one among many, like the cells of a single body. The dream consoled him. He felt for the first time that his troubles were nothing extraordi-nary: they were only his allotted portion of the world’s troubles. When he opened his eyes and came to himself again, he was able to step into his day, his classroom, pick up his normal routine. He was still unhappy but his mind was more settled, and even as he called the roll and administered quizzes he was busy trying to work things through.

This morning had gone badly in all the ways he had expected it to go badly, with Chloe crying and threatening and wanting him to feel sorry for her. Whenever she was desperate, trapped in some misbehavior, she fought back in this way, tried to deflect the blame onto him. Jack had a foreboding that this too had something to do with alcohol, that much of her history and manner and very self might be intertwined with it and there was more dishonesty to her than he wanted to admit. He was deeply angry with her. The anger was deserved. Then in spite of himself he remembered Ivory, his body remembered her with a flood of sensations. He would have to forgive Chloe. He would have to forgive himself.

Chloe was going to have to stop drinking entirely. She had agreed as much. He would stop also, to show that this was something they were in together. At the moment that didn’t seem like a sacrifice, but a relief and a penance. Perhaps things would never be restored to what they had been. You couldn’t unsay what you’d said, unhear what you’d heard. You couldn’t make broken glass whole again. But you could move forward. Love each other in spite of knowing the worst, or maybe because of it. That was what a marriage was, or should be.

During Jack’s lunch period he tried to call her but there was no answer. Maybe she’d gone in to work after all, or she might have turned the phone off so she could sleep. He thought about trying her again before he started for home, but decided against it, and began his long trip back north in the slow late-afternoon traffic. When he reached his stop,
he walked another two blocks to their favorite deli, where he bought chicken salad and onion rolls and ginger ale. At a sidewalk stand he picked up a plastic sleeve of yellow daisies. Peace offerings.

The front door had already been repaired with new glass. He took that as a good and hopeful sign. But Chloe wasn’t in the apartment. She hadn’t left him a note. Jack hardly expected that. He knew she intended to make him worry about her, and this was meant to be his punishment. It was somehow necessary to Chloe, to her sense of grievance, that he be punished. He tried calling her at work and got her voice mail. He listened to her brisk, sweet voice, that other Chloe who was neither angry nor estranged from him, and then he lay down in their bed and slept.

Jack opened his eyes to darkness. The key worked in the front-door lock and he heard the sounds of something lifting, scraping. Ivory? He almost spoke it aloud, but that shocked him fully awake. He rose up on one elbow and turned on the light.

Chloe walked the length of the hallway without looking in on him. He heard her in the kitchen. Light switch, refrigerator, running water. She would know he was here, would have seen his keys and briefcase as she came in. So they were still at war and nothing was over yet.

She was drinking a glass of water at the sink. Jack came up behind her and put his arms around her.

Chloe said, “I haven’t been drinking. In case you’re trying to smell it on me.”

Jack stepped away from her. “Good. Fine. Way to go. Nice to see you too.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not going to do that to you.” He hoped that this was the truth. It was too easy to imagine things going the other way, the endless ugly round of accusations and denials.

This seemed to take some of the fight out of her. She put the glass down and rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I feel like absolute shit.”

“Did you go into work?”

“Not until late. Then I stayed so I could catch up. I told them I had a
dentist’s appointment this morning. Beats saying sloppy drunk and hungover.”

Jack supposed it was good for her to be making jokes about it, even bitter ones. They would have to find some way to talk about everything. The clock above the sink said almost nine. He realized he hadn’t eaten since lunch. “You hungry?”

“A little. Yeah. Food. I remember food.”

From the refrigerator Jack brought out the chicken salad and ginger ale, a jar of pickles and a wedge of yellow cheese. He sliced the onion rolls in half and set out plates and silverware on the kitchen table.

“Did you get all this? And the flowers? That was so sweet.”

They sat down together and ate their supper, and it was almost as if their troubles had never happened, as if all it took to forget them was feeding a simple hunger. Chloe asked how school had been and he told her. And wasn’t it hot, though it was supposed to be cooler tomorrow, and once more Jack had forgotten about Mrs. Lacagnina, which was understandable but made him feel that he’d compromised himself with good intentions, and then Chloe said, “I need to specifically apologize—”

“No you don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Yes I do.”

Chloe said, “Look at me. Please. The only reason I said all that about your writing—”

“You were drunk. I understand that.”

“No, I mean sure I was drunk, but did you ever think maybe it’s because I’m jealous?”

He hadn’t thought that. He did look at her then.

“It was something I used to do, remember? Maybe you didn’t really know me back then, maybe I wasn’t even that good at it, but hey, I
wanted
to be good. And I gave up on it and you didn’t and I’m just saying that sometimes it’s hard for me to deal with.”

“I didn’t know it was that important to you.”

“Well now you do. I mean okay, it’s stupid to think I would have gotten very far with it—”

“It’s not stupid at all. You’re a terrifically verbal person. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

Chloe regarded the half-finished sandwich on her plate as if it had tricked her into eating it. “You don’t have to keep shining everything up like that.”

“I’m not. I’m being factual. Writing just wasn’t something you chose to pursue. You had other interests.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I started up again. Writing.”

She watched him swallow the surprise of this down. He said, “You don’t need my permission.”

“I know that. I just don’t want it to seem like I’m going into competition with you.”

It did seem like something of the sort, but of course he was not allowed to say this. “What is it you want to write?”