The Animal Hour (36 page)

“I
mean, look at this sweater,” Avis said. She shrugged shakily; it was almost a shudder. Meeting new men always made her nervous. “I mean I was just … I didn't want to wake you. I'm from the apartment upstairs, Ollie asked me to come down and see if you were all right, and I was just kind of walking around wondering if I should stay and I noticed … I mean, that ker-azy, crazy brother of yours …” She launched into an imitation of an Ohio housewife on TV. “He cain't keep this place clean for ten minutes in a row. No. Seriously. I cleaned this whole place up for him just this morning … I mean, I was just doing him a favor cause he had to … um, run out and, anyway, I come back and I just noticed his sweater drawer is all messed up and this one, I don't know what he did to it, it's got some kind of stain or something.”
Jesus
, she thought,
stop babbling! You sound like an idiot.

Zachary blinked up at her from Oliver's mattress. He nodded as she spoke, but he said nothing. He looked like a man who did not know what had hit him. Avis stole glances at his dark, sensitive eyes. His silence made her more jumpy still.

“I wish he'd take better care of his clothes.” She just had to go on. “I mean, it's not like he's rich and this sweater, I think your grandmother made it for him, it's so beautiful, she does such wonderful work, doesn't she? I'll take it up and give it a wash tonight, but I think I may have to reknit the end of the sleeve. I wonder if Nana still has the wool, maybe I can match it, I don't know.” She shrugged again, wishing she could shut up. “Well … As you can see, I'm compulsive.”

Zachary nodded at her another moment. Then he smiled; it rose over him like the sun. That broad, boyish smile she had seen in his photograph. It made him look lost and appealing, like an orphan at the side of the road.
Like Dondi
, she thought.
A good role for David Kory.
His baggy, crazy-quilt shirt and his torn jeans added to the effect.

“So …” she said, because these long pauses just made her twitch.

“You sure are nice,” Zach blurted out then. “I mean, wow. All this stuff you do. You sure are much too nice for Ollie, that's for sure.”

“Oh, much!” Avis laughed and rolled her eyes. She flushed and felt herself relax a little. Zach was nodding up and down, goofy as a puppy dog. Looking down at the sweater in her hands, as if he were afraid to look up and meet her gaze. Here was a man definitely in need of being taken care of, she thought.
And, hey, nurture is my life, right?
“And while we're on the subject of how nice I am …”

Zach laughed. “Ye-es?”

“I, uh, made you some soup. Genuine Jewish-mother chicken soup. Vit rrrice, dahlink. Oliver said you weren't feeling well so … I'll heat it up for you, okay?”

“Oh no! Oh gee!” He was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, his arms wrapped around his knees. He gave a pained grimace. “That really is really, really nice of you. But the thing is—I'm a vegetarian.”

“Agh!” said Avis.

“I know, I know. But it's okay.”

“Oh—no it's not, damn it. I think I knew that.” Avis popped herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand. “I think Ollie told me that and I forgot. Damn it. I must be losing my Jewish-mother touch.”

“No, really. Listen,” Zach said. He pushed himself off the mattress, got to his feet. “Listen. The thing is”—he held both hands before him as if he were shaping the thought in the air—“the thing is: Ollie will probably be back any minute now …”

“You know what I could do?” said Avis—the thought had just come to her. “I could make you a vegetable omelette. Ollie always has enough stuff for an omelette.”

“Listen …”

“No, no, it's all right.” She was figuring it out. Green peppers. Mushrooms. Cheese. Ollie always had cheese. And she wouldn't need onions if Zach's stomach was off. She was laying the sweater down carefully as she thought. Draping it over the Catullus atop a tall stack of books.

Zachary stepped toward her, his hand out as if to stop her. “It's really too much trouble.” He kicked over a small pile of paperback mysteries.

Avis was already moving away from him. Stepping over books to reach the kitchenette. Plotting out the omelette in her mind. “Are you kidding?” she called back at him. “I mean, you can't just
be
a Jewish mother if you're a Presbyterian from Cleveland. This is how I earn credits.” She moved to the refrigerator, talking over her shoulder. “When I have enough, I send them in and they send me a faded flower-print dress, big breasts, and steel gray hair. Usually I have to practice on Ollie or my …” Baby, she almost said. She was about to make a joke about her baby. But she stopped. She wasn't sure why.

She pulled open the refrigerator door. She bent over to look in the crisper, aware that she was showing him her backside in her sleek jeans. Well, she had worked hard to get her figure back after the baby came; someone might as well admire it. She picked out plastic bags holding green peppers and mushrooms. She straightened and turned to him, the bags in her fist.

Zachary, she saw, was now standing over the white sweater she had draped atop the books. He had lifted the sleeve in his two hands. He seemed to be examining the stain on the sleeve as she had. When she turned, he glanced up at her quickly. He flashed that big smile again. “Look, I'm really not hungry,” he said. “And the thing is …”

“Sorry. You have to eat something. Otherwise, I cease to exist. I am what you eat. It's been in
Science Times
and everything.” She turned back to the counter. She set the veggie bags before her, shaking her head. Why is it, she wondered, that a guy like Randall beat the shit out of you if you didn't squeeze his orange juice by hand while these Perkins brothers, from whom something seemed to cry out to the very soul of maternity … “Anyway, you know, you
have
been sick all day,” she heard herself say, with even a slight touch of exasperation. She found the cutting board leaning behind the drainer. “And you're probably going to need your strength if you have to deal with the police and …”
Oops
, she thought. She was setting the board on the counter with the bags.
Dumb, dumb, dumb
, she thought. She glanced at Zach over her shoulder. “Sorry. You probably don't want to talk about that. I was just … Oh, hey, don't do that.”

Zach, she found, had taken the stained sweater off the books. He had moved to Ollie's dresser. He was stuffing the sweater back into the drawer.

“No, leave it, okay?” said Avis. “It needs to be hand washed.”

But Zach didn't seem to hear her. He pushed the drawer in, leaving it a little ajar, as it was when she found it. He faced her, scratching his head dopily. “Uh … Look … Avis was it? Look, the thing is …”

“Mm-hm?” She had turned instinctively back to her work. Corralling the green pepper bag. Twisting off the wire tie.

“The thing is,” Zachary said behind her, “Oliver should be back any second now. And, uh, I really need to kind of talk to him kind of personally. Okay?”

“Oh, sure. Okay,” Avis said. “No problem. I'll take off the second he gets here.” She had her hand in the bag. She squeezed first one pepper, then the other. “I'll probably have to leave soon anyway cause my … cause, uh, I have stuff to do.” And again, she didn't mention the baby. And why not, psychology fans? Yeah, yeah, she thought; she knew why not, all right. Because if you tell a guy you have a baby right at the beginning, his eyes go sort of flat on you, don't they? You get one of those pained smiles. Like he's wondering how soon he can call for a cab. And she just had to have her little fantasy, didn't she? Her little flirtation. She pressed her lips together, squeezing her peppers. As if she were really going to be ready for another relationship anytime this millennium. And a relationship with a psychological basket case who already had a girlfriend, a drug problem, and a warrant out for his arrest? And a brother she was secretly in love with? Hey, a computer dating service couldn't have made a better choice.

Self-destructive girl seeks emotional cripple for anguish, co-dependency, and moonlight walks …

Pepper Number One seemed firmer all around. She drew it out and set it on the cutting board.
Knife
, she thought.
Knife, knife, knife.
She pulled open the silverware drawer.

She heard Zach's footstep behind her—and another stack of books falling over. And he might've started to say something too, but he stopped. Avis found herself babbling on again in the silence.

“It's really nice that you guys are so close, you know, you and Oliver. You can talk to each other and everything when there's trouble like this. I've got, like, four sisters and they all still live in Cleveland? We never talk. I go out there for Christmas or something, and it's like all we say is ‘How're you? How's the swim team? How's … this and that?' We even joke about it, we call it ‘News of the Day.' “ She had selected a little steak knife from the drawer. She had lifted it out. But now she spotted the butcher's knife. A monster of a knife, a horror movie special. In the drainer, wedged down among the dishes she'd washed this morning. “Huh!” she said aloud.

“What,” said Zachary behind her.

“Oh. Nothing. Just this knife I never saw before.” She put the steak knife back in the drawer. Shoved the drawer shut with her hip. “The thing is,” she went on, “to them I'm like this big shot New York movie person, you know, I'm like too far out of their lives at this point to even, you know, comprehend their trials and troubles. I mean, if they only knew …” She reached into the drainer. The dishes rattled as she drew out the big knife. “Look at this. Where the hell did he get this?” she murmured.

“Listen, uh, Avis?” Zach said quickly. “Ollie's gonna be back any second. Really. And the thing is … Um. Um …” He really sounded a little nervous now.

“It's okay. Really,” she said over her shoulder. “I promise I'll do this so fast I'll be out of here before you know it. It'll lose some of my customary brilliance but …” She decided to try this monster out. She steadied the green pepper in one hand. Held the butcher knife in the other. “What I was saying, though, is that if they knew this job I had. This reader's job. I mean, you write these reports.” She let the pepper go then. She had noticed some kind of goo on the edge of the knife's blade. She reached out and turned on the faucet. Water hissed loudly into the sink. She had to raise her voice to go on. “No one ever reads them. It's like sending them into a black hole.”

“What are you doing?” Zach said with a little laugh.

“You begin to wonder if you even exist,” Avis called. “There's just some weird … yuch on this knife. I gotta wash it off.” She lifted a yellow sponge from the sink counter and held it under the running water. “I mean, I sometimes think I'm a daydream in the mind of some movie executive, you know?”

Zach said something, but she didn't catch it over the hiss of the water. “What?” She examined the blade of the knife in the light. “I swear your Nana spoiled you boys,” she said.

“I said, can I see that for a second?” Zach repeated, more loudly.

She glanced back at him. “What?”

He was standing in the center of the room. Standing as if he were frozen there, surrounded by Ollie's piles of classics, the pinnacles and steeps. He had his legs akimbo, his hand out to her, one hand. He was smiling eagerly. There was a bright light winking in his black eyes. “The knife,” he said. “Could I just see that knife for one second?”

“Oh,” said Avis, “sure, let me just wash it off.”

“No, I meant before.”

“What?” She squeezed the excess water from the sponge.

“Before you wash it off.”

“Wait, I can't hear you over the water. Hold on.” Avis brought the sponge to the blade of the butcher knife.

“Could you put the sponge down?” Zach said.

“What? Hold on just a …”

“Would you put the sponge …”

“I just want to …”

“DROP THE FUCKING SPONGE, YOU STUPID BITCH!” Zach screamed.

Avis looked around quickly and saw the gun. She spun then, her back against the counter. Zach was standing straight as a steel rod. He was clasping the pistol clumsily in both hands. Sticking it out at her. Waving it back and forth so that the bore crossed and recrossed her forehead.

Avis gave a bewildered laugh. “Uh, wha …?” she said. The water hissed into the sink behind her. She stared at the gun. “Oh God, Zachary …”

Zachary's eyes were wide. He waved the pistol at her. “I said drop the sponge, drop the sponge, damn it.”

Avis nodded quickly and dropped the knife. It clattered loudly on the floor.

“The sponge, the fucking sponge!” Zach shouted. “Oh Christ, it doesn't matter now.”