The Dwelling: A Novel (6 page)

Becca fixed her hair before going downstairs. She would have a shower before Dan’s guests came, but for now she pulled out the elastic gently and brushed the tangles from her long hair. All gently. She took very good care of her hair, and in return it was thick and glossy, poker straight. With her fair complexion she liked to think it gave her an exotic look. Her features were thin and even, broken only by a high, round forehead. Her shirt—actually an old shirt of Dan’s that she used to clean in—was dusty at the front and she brushed at it carefully with the palms of her hands, holding her fingertips outward so as not to catch a nail on a button or pocket. That was how accidents happened. If you were aware and alert, accidents were avoided and so was the disappointment. It was focus. She was a very focused person.

“I’m coming!” she yelled. She would have sex with him now, and get it done with, then she could shower and be clean for the rest of the night. It wasn’t good for the skin to shower too often, and she felt dirty and dusty, as though a film was encasing her.

The cup in the bathroom had a white-gray film in a circle on the bottom from toothpaste. She took it with her.

She walked erectly down the stairs. Chinese would be a forty-dollar order, but she was in the mood for it and then wouldn’t have to cook or clean up before Max and Kate arrived. It was logical.

And (for god’s sake) it was her money, wasn’t it?

The front door was closed against the sun, making the hallway dark after the brightness of the upstairs and Becca paused, slowing down on the stairs, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the light. Through the wide doorway into the living room, she could see that light flooded the room. The front window spanned almost the whole wall, and was at least six feet tall; she’d added a rider to their house insurance to cover it against breakage. That had been another twenty-five dollars. Of course, Dan had still had his job then.

She took the cup into the kitchen to put it in the sink, only half registering the open door to Dan’s studio. As she passed it she called back, “Will I need gloves for this?” noting that the leather gloves were in the toolbox, which was open on the kitchen floor.

Dan answered something back, but Becca hadn’t heard him. Deciding she did (wood splinters, hard edges), she picked up the pair and walked back through the kitchen, to the studio. She could see Dan, bent over in front of the shelves with the tape measure.

She heard the snake of the measuring tape running back into the metal casing (a sound like nails on a blackboard) as she approached the small door to the studio. It was wide open.

A cold breeze hit her from the front, swirling around her, cooling the sweat on her back and freezing her. Gooseflesh broke out on her arms. She crossed them over her breasts, feeling her nipples harden. She opened her mouth—
it’s so cold in
—taking a single step into the room.

BANG!
The door slammed shut just as her foot crossed the threshold, smashing hard on her big toe.

“Oh!”
She took a reactive jump backward, staggering, cursing inwardly. She bent over and grabbed her foot, rubbing her toe.
(Shit.)

Dan said something on the other side, alarmed, but it was too muffled to make out.

“The goddamn
door
slammed in my face!” she called out angrily, at least as much at the door as to Dan inside.

Becca straightened up, face screwed up in a pout—
felt like the nail cracked…that’s going to hurt in heels on Monday
—and grabbed the knob, turning it and pushing, stumbling again when her weight did not open the door. She turned and pushed again.

It did not open. She rattled it gently, coaxing, turned it and pushed again, but it was stuck. “Dan,” she called, leaning over to feel around her toe again, checking for the cracked nail, “let me in. The door’s stuck.”

From inside he called, “What?” She pictured him looking up, not even having noticed or heard the slamming door,
he can just ignore everything completely oblivious to the world must be nice,
color rose in her cheeks, annoyance made her voice rise shrilly, hating the sound of it when it came out of her mouth. She hated yelling. Dan yelled from wherever he was, regularly. Like a fishwife. It was unattractive.

“The door is stuck! Let me
in.”
She said the last part through gritted teeth and then banged hard on the wood twice, not knocking, but
smacking
it, angry; she tried turning it again, but it wouldn’t budge.

Then it swung open easily, the knob tugged gently out of her hand. Dan stood behind it. “You have to be gentle with it, Bec. It’s an old knob,” he said, pushing it open, all the way to the wall.

“It was
stuck.”

“You have to go easy,” he said firmly.

“Well, it wouldn’t open. You should change the knobs.”

“I don’t want to. They’re funky. They’re
cool.”
The knobs were white porcelain and they were attractive; it was a look, as they say, that matched the interior of the room. It was a part of the house untouched by time or renovators. For whatever reason.

“It’s probably not safe,” she said, not willing to let it go, feeling the tension rise in her, the wanting to pick a fight. Lately she felt that way whenever they were in close quarters. Picking a fight seemed better than the alternative. It just seemed like he was always crawling on her. Always wanting to.

It will pass. This is a phase.
That was what Donna at work said.
We went through it; now we’re fine again. Moving’s hell.
She hadn’t told Donna, of course, that they weren’t having sex. Not much anyway. Not like they used to. She hadn’t mentioned to Donna and she wouldn’t, god knows she wouldn’t. Especially not the part about how she just didn’t want to anymore, about how the sight of his hands, his too-long fingers and wrists sticking out of the ends of his sleeves like pale, sickly little tree branches, made her shudder. She and Dan didn’t even talk about it. Not directly. Just the odd shot.
Nice to know someone’s getting it around here.

“I need you to hold up this shelf,” he said briskly. She gave the room a good look, her arms crossed over her chest again. He watched her. “Pretty good, huh?”

She shrugged, “It’ll look better when you get the books unpacked.”

“Then hold this while I fix it to the wall,” he said, pointing at the board leaning against the rest of the shelving. She slipped the gloves, large, over her slender hands. She felt her nails push against the ends of the fingers. It felt confining.

He marked a spot on the wall that she could barely see and had her hold the board from the center over the line. It was awkward. She was at an odd angle, her arms up over her head, her buttocks sticking out, her body bent in a V from the middle, her weight on the board to hold it steady.

From behind her, Dan said, “Keep it steady.” She heard the click of a bit into the drill, but nothing else happened.

“Mmmm,” he said. “Nice view from here.” In her mind’s eye she could see the leer spreading across his soft, almost girlishly pretty features. She closed her eyes. Waited. As if on cue, she felt his hand, hot, small, on her thigh. It rose and curved smoothly over her buttocks.

“Nice,” he repeated. She did nothing, least of all react. In a moment she heard him sigh. Then it passed. He got up under her and anchored the board to the wall and to the frame; she kept her eyes shut against the flying sawdust. The little space between them smelled of Dan’s sweat and burning wood. It took only a few seconds and the unit was complete.

She let go and the two of them stood back to look.

“Pretty good. That wood goes very well in here. I wasn’t sure it was going to,” he said, almost formally to his wife, the mood shift firmly in place.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said agreeably.
I want to be agreeable, I really do. This will pass.

“I was thinking we should order Chinese,” she added once he ducked to unplug the drill and started wrapping the cord around the base of it.

“Sure,” he said guardedly.

“Okay. Is there anything you want?”
With my money?

“I’m open.”
It’s your money.

She nodded definitively. The two of them turned at the same time, and found themselves face-to-face, his only inches from hers. They locked eyes. For a moment it was natural, familiar. Then Becca felt a tightening inside herself, bracing for what might (would) come next. His mouth was very close to hers. He had a broad mouth, the sort with an easy smile. His teeth were even and white. Even though he smoked, he didn’t have the same trouble keeping his teeth white as Becca did, who had never smoked.

There was, in spite of everything, something appealing about his mouth. His eyes seemed to bore into her, not pleading like sometimes but worse, somehow, as though he were trying to see inside her, to know what she was thinking.

Cold air seemed to puddle around her feet. She shivered, and pulled back slightly, enough to break whatever had held them there.

“It’s so cold in here. Why is that?” she said. Her voice sounded loud after the silence.

He reached out and put his hand on her arm. It was warm on her bare flesh, hot, really, in the cold air of the room.

For a long time, too long, he didn’t say anything and she felt trapped by him. She looked at his hand on her. An artist’s hand. The fingers tapered at the ends. His nails were always clear, they never got white spots or cracks. They were dirty, though. Always. She knew intellectually that it wasn’t dirt; it was ink. The tool of his trade. She wanted to snort at that.
Trade. You married a tradesman.
But it was.

(In college she had liked the idea,
welcomed
the idea, of his dirty hands trailing over her clean white flesh as though the ink on his fingers would stay on her skin and make her in that way a piece of what he made with his hands—lovemaking as art.)

“Bec—”
he said. She looked back up at him. His eyes were soft; sad. Like a dog’s. The air, cold, swirled around her.
Let’s get this together. Fix it.

She turned her head away from him. “Cold,” she said mock-shivering again. “What time are they coming?” and the moment broke, as loudly as if it had been glass.

His hand dropped from her arm and he turned away. “Seven,” he said flatly.

“Okay, then,” she said, and left the room. In a minute, he heard her on the phone, ordering Chinese, reading off the order with clipped efficiency, enunciating each word carefully, so she did not have to repeat herself.

They gave Max and Kate the grand tour, of course. Dan changed the moment they arrived: his mouth became a perpetual smiling organ, he laughed easily and was more physical, even, hugging Kate and slapping Max on the back a few times, as though he hadn’t seen them in years, instead of since just before they moved. He even seemed taller, walking straight down the hall when they knocked at the door, galloping the last couple of steps like a randy horse. Becca was hurt by it. He was so changed by the appearance of his friends that she couldn’t help but compare it to their (mostly) silent afternoon.

Becca didn’t like Max and Kate (
You don’t know them,
was Dan’s answer to that when she had brought it up once). It was too difficult for her to articulate to Dan, but it was almost an impersonal dislike, the way you don’t like someone because of their politics, although it wasn’t their politics that she didn’t like. It was the way Max seduced Dan out of the natural funk he was in after Clayton and Marks had let him go, into the current foolish, practically maniacal enthusiasm for their project, the comic book. They were calling it a series of
graphic novels.
But it was, as far as Becca could tell, a comic book. To call it anything else was what her mother would term (and had, when she told her) gilding the mule. Kate, she disliked by association.

Under other circumstances, such as previous to Dan’s losing his job, Becca might have enjoyed having them around. They were interesting people, people of the sort that Dan had always had in his closet of strange friends. She had met them once or twice before the project, usually in passing at someone’s Bohemian house party, the kind where the food was exotic and laid out on a long table, buffet-style, and you ate sitting cross-legged on the floor, and took your drinks standing up. Fridges full of beer. Half-empty bottles of wine—some of it very good—strewn about on tabletops, manteltops, coffee tables. The music too loud, the conversations peppered with talk of grants, funding, projects, theater, and art. Max and Kate were alternative. And Kate recently had a showing at a large gallery downtown that had been well reviewed.

(“It smells so clean up here,” Kate remarked, when they looked into the yellow room. “Yes,” Becca said.)

The four of them went down the stairs, crowding into the little room underneath, with their bottles of beer.

“My room,” Dan said.

He’d pulled it all together for the evening. The shelves were filled with the books; he’d set up his drawing board, a large, tall, slanted surface with a glass plate in the center that lit up when you turned on a switch. His tall stool was in front of it neatly, and beside the stool he’d laid out his art table, and his inks, pens, pencils and brushes. A closed sketchbook rested on the drawing table.

“That for me?” Max asked, grinning.

“Later, buddy,” Dan said. He opened his arms in a magnanimous gesture. “This is the inner sanctum. Headquarters of
The Headhunter.”

“Good thing I’m doing the writing,” Max said, joking.

“You should spread out a bit in here, Danny,” Kate said. “Use the room.”

“Aaah,” he said, waving his finger at her. “There’s more to this room than meets the eye,” he said mysteriously. He ran his hand along the wall, tapping lightly. As he got to the space where the bed was tucked away, the taps sounded hollow. Kate and Max followed him with their eyes, half smiling.

“What’s that? What’s that?” and he stuck his hand into the recess near the ceiling and pulled what looked to be the whole wall down. It came down with a cranky groan of metal on metal and hit the floor a little hard.