The Fourth Hand (31 page)

Oh, Angie, Angie—my dahlin’, my dahlin’! Ya gotta stop whatcha doin’, Angie. Ya breakin’ my heart!”

“Mom, for Christ’s sake . . .” Angie started to say, but she was gasping. Her moan had become a growl again—her growl, a roar.

She’s probably a screamer, Wal ingford considered—his neighbors would think he was murdering the girl. I
should
be packing for Wisconsin, Patrick thought, as Angie violently heaved herself onto her back. Somehow, although they were nonetheless deeply joined, one of her legs was flung over one of his shoulders; he tried to kiss her but her knee was in the way.

Angie’s mother was weeping so rhythmical y that the answering machine emitted a pre-orgasmic sound of its own. Wal ingford never heard her hang up; the last of her sobs was drowned out by Angie’s screams. Not even childbirth could be this loud, Patrick wrongly supposed—

not even Joan of Arc, blazing at the stake. But Angie’s screams abruptly ceased. For a second she lay as if paralyzed; then she began to thrash. Her hair whipped Wal ingford’s face, her body bucked against him, her nails raked his back.

Uh-oh, a screamer and a scratcher, Wal ingford thought—

the younger, unmarried Crystal Pitney not forgotten. He hid his face against Angie’s throat so that she couldn’t gouge his eyes. He was frankly afraid of the next phase of her orgasm; the girl seemed to possess superhuman strength.

Without a sound, not even a groan, she was strong enough to arch her back and rol him off her—first on his side, then on his back. Miraculously, they’d not once become disconnected; it was as if they never could be. They felt permanently fastened together, a new species. He could feel her heart pounding; her whole chest was vibrating but not a sound came from her, not a breath.

Then he realized she wasn’t breathing. Was she a screamer and a scratcher and a
fainter
? It took al his strength to straighten his arms. He pushed her chest off him

—his one hand on one breast, his stump on the other. That was when he saw she was choking on her gum— her face was blue, her dark-brown eyes showing only the whites.

Wal ingford gripped her lol ing jaw in his hand; he drove the stump of his forearm under her ribcage, a punch without a fist. The pain was reminiscent of the days fol owing his attachment surgery, a sickening pain that shot up his forearm to his shoulder before it traveled to his neck. But Angie exhaled sharply, expel ing the gum.

The phone rang while the frightened girl lay shaking on his chest, wracked with sobs, sucking huge gulps of air. “I was
dyin’,
” she managed to gasp. Patrick, who’d thought she was coming, said nothing while the machine answered the cal .

“I was dyin’ and comin’ at the same time,” the girl added. “It was weird.”

From the answering machine, a voice spoke from the city’s grim underground; there were metal ic shrieks and the lurching rumble of a subway train, over which Angie’s father, a transit policeman, made his message clear.

“Angie, are ya tryin’

to kil your muthuh or what? She’s not eatin’, she’s not sleepin’, she’s not goin’ to Mass . . .” Another train screeched over the cop’s lament.

“Daddy,” was al Angie said to Wal ingford. Her hips were moving again. As a couple, they seemed eternal y joined—

a minor god and goddess representing death by pleasure.

Angie was screaming again when the phone rang a fourth time. What time is it? Patrick wondered, but when he looked at his digital alarm clock, something pink was covering the time. It had a ghastly anatomical appearance, like part of a lung, but it was only Angie’s gum—definitely some sort of berry flavor. The way the light of the alarm clock shone through the substance made the gum resemble living tissue.

“God . . .” he said, coming, just as the makeup girl also came. Her teeth, doubtless missing the gum, sank into Wal ingford’s left shoulder. Patrick could tolerate the pain—

he’d known worse. But Angie was even more enthusiastic than he’d expected her to be. She was a screamer, a choker, and a biter. She was in midbite when she fainted dead away.

“Hey, cripple,” said a strange man’s voice on Patrick’s answering machine. “Hey, Mista One Hand, do ya know what? You’re gonna lose more than your hand, that’s what.

You’re gonna end up with nothin’ between your legs but a fuckin’
draft.
”

Wal ingford tried to wake up Angie by kissing her, but the fainted girl just smiled.

“There’s a cal for you,” Patrick whispered in her ear. “You might want to take this one.”

“Hey, fuck-face,” the man in the answering machine said,

“did ya know that even television personalities can just
disappear
?” He must have been cal ing from a moving car.

The radio was playing Johnny Mathis—softly, but not softly enough. Wal ingford thought of the signet ring Angie wore on the chain around her neck; it would slip over a knuckle the size of his big toe. But she had already taken off the ring, and she’d dismissed its owner as “a nobody”—some guy who was

“overseas.” So who was the guy on the phone?

“Angie, I think you ought to hear this,” Patrick whispered.

He gently pul ed the sleeping girl into a sitting position; her hair fel forward, hiding her face, covering her pretty breasts. She smel ed like a delectable concoction of fruits and flowers; her body was coated with a thin and glowing film of sweat.

“Listen to me, Mista One Hand,” the answering machine said. “I’m gonna grind up your prick in a
blenda.
Then I’m gonna make ya
drink
it!” That was the end of the charmless cal .

Wal ingford was packing for Wisconsin when Angie woke up.

“Boy, have I gotta pee!” the girl said.

“There was another cal —not your mother. Some guy said he was going to grind up my penis in a blender.”

“That would be my brother Vittorio—Vito, for short,” Angie said. She left the door to the bathroom open while she peed. “Did he real y say ‘penis’?” she cal ed from the toilet.

“No, he actual y said ‘prick,’ ” Patrick replied.

“Definitely Vito,” the makeup girl said. “He’s harmless. Vito don’t even have a job.” How did Vito’s unemployment make him harmless? “So what’s in Minnesota, anyway?” Angie asked.

“Wisconsin,” he corrected her.

“So who’s there?”

“A woman I’m going to ask to marry me,” Patrick answered.

“She’l probably say no.”

“Hey, ya gotta real problem, do ya know that?” Angie asked. She pul ed him back to the bed. “Come here, ya gotta have more confidence than that. Ya gotta believe she’s gonna say yes. Otherwise, why botha?”

“I don’t think she loves me.”

“Sure she does! Ya just gotta practice,” the makeup girl said. “Go on—ya can practice on me. Go on—
ask
me!”

He tried; after al , he’d been rehearsing. He told her what he wanted to say to Mrs. Clausen.

“Geez . . . that’s terrible,” Angie said. “To begin with, ya can’t start out apologizin’ al over the place—ya gotta come right out and say, ‘I can’t live widoutcha!’ That kind of thing.

Go on—
say
it!”

“I can’t live without you,” Wal ingford announced unconvincingly.

“Geez . . .”

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asked.

“Ya gotta say it betta than
that
!”

The phone rang, the fifth cal . It was Mary Shanahan again, presumably cal ing from the solitude of her apartment on East Fifty-something—Wal ingford could almost hear the whoosh of cars passing on the FDR Drive. “I thought we were friends,” Mary began. “Is this how you treat a friend?

Someone who’s having your
baby
. . .” Either her voice broke or her thought trailed away.

“She’s gotta point,” Angie said to Patrick. “Ya betta say somethin’ to her.”

Wal ingford thought of shaking his head, but he was lying with his face on Angie’s breasts; he considered it rude to shake his head there.

“You can’t
still
be fucking that girl!” Mary cried.

“If ya don’t talk to her,
I’m
gonna talk to her. Someone’s gotta,” the compassionate makeup girl said.

“You talk to her, then,” Wal ingford replied. He buried his face lower, in Angie’s bel y; he tried to muffle his hearing there, while she picked up the phone.

“This is Angie, Ms. Shanahan,” the good-hearted girl began. “Ya shouldn’t be upset. It hasn’t been al that great here, real y. A while ago, I nearly choked to death. I almost died—I’m not kiddin’.” Mary hung up. “Was that bad?”

Angie asked Wal ingford.

“No, that was good. That was just fine. I think you’re great,”

he said truthful y.

“Ya just sayin’ that,” Angie told him. “Are ya tryin’ to get laid again or what?”

So they had sex. What else were they going to do? This time, when Angie fainted again, Wal ingford thoughtful y removed her old gum from the face of his clock before setting the alarm.

Angie’s mother cal ed once more—at least that was who Patrick assumed the cal er was. Without saying a word, the woman wept on and on, almost melodiously, while Wal ingford drifted in and out of sleep. He woke up before the alarm went off. He lay looking at the sleeping girl—her untrammeled goodwil was truly a thing of beauty. Patrick shut off the alarm before it sounded; he wanted to let Angie sleep. After he showered and shaved, he made a survey of his damaged body: the bruise on his shin from the glass-topped table at Mary’s, the burn from the hot-water faucet in Mary’s shower. His back was scratched from Angie’s nails; on his left shoulder was a sizable blood blister, a purplish hematoma and some broken skin from her spontaneous bite. Patrick Wal ingford seemed in dubious condition for offering a marriage proposal in Wisconsin, or anywhere else. He made some coffee and brought the sleeping girl a glass of cold orange juice in bed.

“Look at this place . . .” she was soon saying, marching naked through his apartment. “It looks like ya been havin’

sex!” She stripped the sheets and the pil owcases; she started gathering up the towels. “Ya gotta washin’ machine, don’tcha? I know ya gotta plane to catch—I’l clean up here.

What if that woman says yes? What if she comes back here with ya?”

“That’s not likely. I mean it’s not likely she’l come back here with me, even if she does say yes.”

“Spare me ‘not likely’—she
might.
That’s al ya gotta know.

Ya catch the plane. I’l fix the place. I’l rewind the answering machine before I leave. I promise.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Patrick told her.

“I wanna help!” Angie said. “I know what it’s like to have a messy life. Go
on

—ya betta get outta here! Ya don’t wanna miss your plane.”

“Thank you, Angie.” He kissed her good-bye. She tasted so good, he almost didn’t go. What was wrong with sexual anarchy, anyway?

The phone rang as he was leaving. He heard Vito’s voice on the answering machine. “Hey, listen up, Mista One Hand

. . . Mista No Prick,” Vittorio was saying. There was a mechanical whirring, a terrifying sound.

“It’s just a stupid blenda. Go
on
—don’t miss your plane!”

Angie told him. Wal ingford was closing the door as she was picking up the phone.

“Hey, Vito,” he heard Angie say. “Listen up, limp dick.”

Patrick paused on the landing by the stairs; there was a brief but pointed silence. “That’s the sound
your
prick would make in the blenda, Vito—
no
sound, ’cause ya got
nothin’

there!”

Wal ingford’s nearest neighbor was on the landing—a sleepless-looking man from the adjacent apartment, getting ready to walk his dog. Even the dog looked sleepless as it waited, shivering slightly, at the top of the stairs.

“I’m going to Wisconsin,” Patrick said hopeful y.

The man, who had a silver-gray goatee, looked dazed with general indifference and self-loathing.

“Why don’tcha get a fuckin’
magnifyin’
glass so ya can beat off?” Angie was screaming. The dog pricked up its ears.

“Ya know whatcha do with a prick as smal as yours, Vito?”

Wal ingford and his neighbor just stared at the dog. “Ya go to a pet shop. Ya buy a mouse. Ya beg it for a blow job.”

The dog, with grave solemnity, seemed to be considering al this. It was some kind of miniature schnauzer with a silver-gray beard, like its master’s.

“Have a safe trip,” Wal ingford’s neighbor told him.

“Thank you,” Patrick said.

They started down the stairs together—the schnauzer sneezing twice, the neighbor saying that he thought the dog had caught an “air-conditioning cold.”

They’d reached the half-landing between floors when Angie shouted something merciful y indistinct. The girl’s heroic loyalty was enough to make Wal ingford want to go back to her; she was a safer bet than Mrs. Clausen. But it was early on a summer Saturday morning; the day was brimming with hope. (Maybe not in Boston, where a woman whose name wasn’t Sarah Wil iams either was or was not waiting for an abortion.)

There was no traffic on the way to the airport. Patrick got to the gate before boarding began. Since he’d packed in the dark while Angie slept, he thought it wise to check the contents of his carry-on: a T-shirt, a polo shirt, a sweatshirt, two bathing suits, two pair of underwear—he wore boxers

—two pairs of white athletic socks, and a shaving kit, which included his toothbrush and toothpaste and some ever-hopeful condoms. He’d also packed a paperback edition of
Stuart Little,
recommended for ages eight through twelve.