The Followed Man (17 page)

The Joneses had one child, a
daughter who was eighteen and had her mother's physical presence. She
had her own life; though she lived at home she was seen only in
passing.

As Luke let more of the gin,
with its cold clarity but slight film of oil, slide over his tongue
and into his system, he felt the need to speak, and these people, who
had been so solicitous and kind after the accident, would do. He
couldn't remember why, long ago, he would have been careful. He
didn't know what he might have had to be careful about.

There was the Avenger, of
course; he had told no one about the Avenger, and he still didn't
want to tell anyone about that.

"You're drinking awful
slow," Ham said. "You thinking about that article you're
writing?"

"No. I may never do it, in
fact."

"Hell, you don't have to,"
Ham said.

"It's sort of a habit to do
what I've said I'd do, I guess."

Jane said she always knew he was
a Puritan. "You've got a bad case of the Work Ethic, that's what
you've got. So uptight!"

"Am I?"

"Yes,
always!
You
never let go for a minute! Always thinking about what you're going to
say or do. It's your New England up­bringing, I suppose."
Jane said this and lay back with her arms over her head and her knees
apart, as if to prove how un-uptight she was. He found himself
looking at the smooth swell where her bikini crossed her thigh, and
looked away.

"Oh, yes," she said.
"Up
tight."

"Well, I am getting tight,"
he said.

"But not up!" Ham
said, and laughed.

Jane ignored his laughter and
told him it was time to light the charcoal. The spareribs were in the
oven but they would finish them over the charcoal with the barbecue
sauce, in about forty-five minutes. "Are you hungry, Luke? Will
you be hungry by then?" she said, touching his leg. Her
fingernails were long and polished, silvery and slightly curved, like
woodcarving chisels. They raked slowly through the light hairs above
his knee as she retrieved her hand.

Ham had gone to light the
briquettes in the outdoor grill, and they watched him for a moment as
he showered the charcoal with a can of lighter fluid. His crewcut
black hair stood up in clumps. Though he was tall and not fat, rolls
of flesh at his kidneys came out over the waistband of his red
shorts, giving his torso a soft white, indeterminate look at its
base. Black hair grew symmetrical­ly on the two rolls as though
genetically planned for them.

"If you sell your house,
where are you going to live?" Jane asked.

"I don't know. I suppose in
motels or hotels for a while."

"We could put you up for as
long as you want, you know. We've got rooms to spare."

The alcohol made this offer seem
less dangerous, though its complications were still apparent to him.
If sober he would have thanked her for the offer quickly, thinking of
regrets, but now he let the silence continue for a little too long.
She moved her sun­glasses up on her forehead and looked at him,
meaning that he should see her eyes looking at him.

"I don't think that would
be exactly wise," he said nervously.

She patted his thigh and smiled;
that was evidently the compli­ment she wanted. But he hadn't
meant it as flattery or any sort of game. He had never played such
games, and the words for what would have been unwise were near the
surface of his mind, direct and powerful; they were magic and
shouldn't be used, or implied, or joked about if the possibility of
the action they described was real. He drank the rest of the gin in
his glass, crunched and swal­lowed the Spanish olive and poured
himself another drink. If he kept drinking he might say the words and
that would cause trou­ble—or maybe not. Maybe the Joneses
were swingers who hadn't quite been literal about it because of his
and Helen's "puritanism." Maybe that was what had kept him
and Helen a little edgy about the Joneses. Jesus Christ, he thought,
who knew? He went about his life considering certain things powerful
and dangerous (Helen had been powerful and dangerous, loving him and
watching him, treating their union with extreme attention, knowing
all implica­tions).

There didn't seem to be much
danger though, here in this sun­ny yard, by this artificial
water. Otherwise they wouldn't be drink­ing their senses dull.
They were all friends here. He and Jane had made up their little
political argument long ago, except that it hadn't been quite
political, no. But who cared. He at least had nothing to lose, so he
drank.

Later, after more warm water
splashing and swimming, Ham was cooking the spareribs, turning them
with giant tweezers and painting them with red sauce. Jane and Luke
sat at the rim of the pool.

Jane said, "Do you ever
touch women? I mean do you ever sort of spontaneously reach out your
hand and touch them?"

"I'm afraid I'm getting on
toward the dirty old man category," he said. "When I was
young and pretty I did."

"Old! Huh!"

"Maybe I'm afraid if I
touch them I won't be able to let go and I'll have to take them down
and tear off their clothes and fuck 'em and eat 'em and in general
act pretty unsocial."

"You're only partly
kidding," she said, giving him a long, deep, how-interesting
look. Evidently she thought him tame enough, and in the
circumstances, at least, she was probably right. His thinking was
vague, a little circular, or perhaps spiral, because he couldn't
quite come back to where he began.

"No," he said,
listening to himself with an interest that was at best fragmentary,
"no, I guess I'm not totally kidding." Now, that sounded,
in retrospect, pretty logical and intelligent. But what had he been
going to say next? "Jane, Jane," he said, "I'm pretty
well drunk and confused. I had something I was going to say that
would have made you feel just right, but I'm absolutely fucked if I
can remember what it was."

He immediately forgot what he'd
just said, and was surprised at her anger.

"Why do you think you're so
superior?"
she said in a low voice. "You were going
to tell me something that would make me feel good? Well,
fuck
you!"
She slid into the pool and swam the twenty yards or so
to the other side, where she turned without looking at him and
floated on her back.

He lay back and tried to
remember what exactly had happened, but couldn't. Ham came over,
climbed the steps to the deck and announced that the spareribs were
done. If Jane would get the rolls and salad, they could eat. Then he
recognized the antago­nism and said, "Oh oh, another goddam
argument? Nixon's long gone, so what's it about this time?"

Jane swam back and without a
word climbed out, irritated that one of her buttocks had slid clear
of the bikini, which she violently corrected and went toward the
kitchen. There had been a red pimple on that white buttock, Luke
observed cruelly to himself, a fairly angry sort with a good deal
of—what was the word?
Mass
to it. It must have been kind
of painful to sit on.

Ham shook his head tolerantly
and went to set the outside tres­tle table, where they ate, Jane
still imperiously silent. Luke was a little unstable physically,
though he had an appetite and ate a lot. They had white wine in large
stemmed glasses which he drank, he thought, not quite at the swilling
level.

At one point he kept hearing
little popcorn-popping sounds, lit­tle angry ticks and cracks he
first thought were in his own head, but they came from an electric
insect executioner on a pedestal, palely bluish on the inside, that
fried moths and bugs at an alarm­ing rate. "Damn," he
said. "Look at that mother eat its way through the cosmos!"
Darkness was coming on, though it was still humid and hot. "Jane,"
he said, moving his head to the side to catch her averted eyes, "I
love your spareribs! Did we have an ar­gument? I can't for the
life of me remember any argument. Lis­ten! According to the
Bible, Eve was a sparerib, though I don't ex­actly know what I'm
saying. . . ."

In the morning sometime he woke
up in a strange room. It was not his room at the Biltmore. It was not
the bedroom at home. When it became clear that it was a room in the
Joneses' house an absolute avalanche of doubtful, possibly shameful
memories fell upon him and crushed him down into the springs and
stuffing. "Oh, God!" he said out loud. It seemed there were
more and more things he'd said and done that wouldn't be good at all
in re­trospect. Was it true that he'd shit into the aspidistra?
No, and it was no use being flippant at this hour, whatever hour it
was. It was true that Ham, good old good-natured Ham Jones, had
gotten very angry when Jane had insisted on skinny-dipping in the
pool at midnight. That was her word for it, and drunk as Luke was he
could tell that she was trying to punish both of them, but why did he
have to enter into a domestic squabble? Who did he think he was,
anyway, some kind of superior idiot who could arbitrate twenty years of grievances?

Yet he was fascinated and not
quite embarrassed enough when Jane stripped off her yellow bikini,
revealing a white one beneath that was untanned skin, except, of
course, for her light brown tri­angle of pubic hair. She had
undressed in the living room, and it struck him that a bikini, small
as it was, actually did cover an awful lot, because without it she
assumed power. Her sarcasm, none of which he could remember, was
directed mostly against him, and that also angered Ham because one
shouldn't treat a guest that way. Her breasts had blue veins in them,
and seemed vulnerable, milk white but authoritative in their
heaviness and their eye-like wide brown nipples that moved as she
yelled.

He supposed it was not entirely
his fault, actually, that he found himself wrestling with both
husband and wife, ostensibly trying to keep them from hurting each
other. He was lucky he wasn't killed.

Oh,
God,
that rolling
around on the shag carpet, wall to wall. He moved and the sheets
stung the raw scratches on his ribs. There were bruises, too, one
from the corner of the marble-topped coffee table. Once he grabbed
Ham by one of his hairy kidney rolls, a texture like fresh bread. But
Ham had finally snuck a quick slap across his shoulder that caught
Jane on the side of her face and then there were no more cries of
"bitch!" "cocksucker!" "bastard!" and
the like, but tears and moans and sobs from both Jane and Ham. It was
then Luke Carr, priest, psychiatrist, medi­cine man, counselor,
tearful himself, evidently conducted some kind of therapy session
complete with weeping confession, abject apology, birth trauma,
self-flagellation, kissing, feeling and hug­ging. . . . The
portentous sentiments contained in Reverend Doctor Carr's sermons and
admonitions burned shamefully at the edges of the alcohol shadow that
lay ominously across his memory.

It was also his idea that they
should, after all, do what Jane wanted and go skinny-dipping in the
tepid pool in the light of a hazy moon. Chlorine therapy, or
something. And it was there that Gail, their daughter, returning from
somewhere, found them all palely floating.

"What in hell happened to
the living room?" she asked.

"We had a little argument,
dear," Jane said, submerging all but her head.

"Jesus! Well, good night!"
Gail said.

Other moments would emerge
later, he supposed. He held his head in both hands, as if it were a
vase. Physical and mental pain too often occurred together. Wounds
(non-fatal ones) were all right in sports, work, or war but he
couldn't stand the ones he had now.

It was eight o'clock. He tried
to think that his pain and embar­rassment might indicate that he
was getting used to the deaths. He did care about his life now,
whether he knew it or not, and he must get away from all these
people. Maybe he could leave a note and sneak out before the Joneses
woke up to their own pain. He would go and hide, change his name,
disappear.

His toes nearly disappeared in
the thick carpet. This was a guest room, with the ever-new and
moribund look of guest rooms. All naps were unworn, all the little
pictures were straight, there were no cobwebs, no worn trails, no
dents, no scratches. The connect­ing bathroom gleamed with onyx
tile and chrome; the toilet seat was covered in thick mauve pile, the
purple towels were two fuzzy inches thick on their silver rods and
rings, the shower curtain was frosted glass. Though he liked warmth
and hot water as much as anyone, bathrooms had always offended him a
little because they seemed to imply a worshipful horror of piss and
shit that he couldn't quite manage to understand, even in himself.
The power of shit— God knew he'd had his hands in it often
enough. People, people. He always made a hurtful fool of himself.

He took a shower, his scratches
raw, and put on his clothes. Shem's knife was a hard, utilitarian
lump in the pocket of the light pants. He hoped the Joneses were not
up, but to leave without seeing them would cause its own
complications, and unless he went out a window he would have to pass
the kitchen. They, too, must be mortified by all that had happened
last night.

As he came to the kitchen Ham
called, "He's up! He's up!" and came out and grabbed him
above the elbows. Ham was dapper in white tennis shorts, sneakers and
tennis sweater. "We heard the shower going so we knew you were a
survivor! Didn't we tie one on for sure? Come and have some coffee,
Sport!" And pulled him into the kitchen. Jane was still in a
robe, one cheek darker than the other, but aside from that she looked
pretty fresh.

"What a blast!" she
said, her fingers at her temples. "Gail sure thought us old
crocks were out of our gourds!"

"Us old crocks
were
out
of our gourds," Ham said. "But that's our goddam privilege,
right?"