Unkiss Me (6 page)

In his hazy recollection, she’d been the one to stop and catch her breath, while he’d tried not to look at her voluptuous breasts and round ass and tapered ankles and waist-length calico hair, but he’d taken them all in like a shot of Makers.

Slowly, they’d developed the habit of meeting for the noontime runs, which bled into tea, which culminated in happy hour and, after a full moon cycle of flirtation, timid sex in his modest Southeast Portland bungalow. Soon enough tame copulation morphed into Technicolor. Black and white to Land of Oz. God, how Ralph loved fucking her. The spreadsheets that typically flooded his frontal lobe, the familial worries: his kids, his siblings, his ex, his mother—they weren’t invited to the party. Until recently.

The nightly calls to his mother—the speed-punched number two—diminished, much to his mother’s confusion. She would call and call and call, his mother would, with the bird-chirping ringtone that was her designate. “Ralphy,” she’d screech into the voice mail, “are you getting your exercise? Do you need any socks or anything? Where are you? Please call me back.”

His mother’s decline was not a linear parade. Sometimes she seemed as lucid as the day he was born—asking him about his love life, even. Other days, not so much. He had a standing date with her at The Parlor on Tuesday evenings. Supper began at 4:30, and she wanted to be among the first half-dozen residents lined up at the dining room door. With barrettes carefully positioned on either side of her gray bob, she had a stooped-over schoolgirl look. In the right light, once in a while, when she softened up and forgot that the world was a series of pratfalls and disappointments, she resembled his mother of yore. But this rarely happened at supper. Out came the hand-held magnifier as soon as she sat down at the table. With him there to help, she offered merely a cursory downward scan, and then shoved the night’s offerings toward him, “Honey,” she screeched. “What are they serving tonight?”

He’d raised two children, so he was pretty good at calmly deflecting manipulative behavior. “I don’t know, Mom,” he said, when he wasn’t exhausted. “Why don’t you read off the selections.” More and more, though, he felt his cheeks heat up when she tried to get him to be her crutch. His heartbeat would quicken and he’d want to slap. Not her, but something.

At The Parlor suppers, he wished they served beers. They did not. He found himself drifting away from his mother’s unending report of boredom and despair and into the love-making fog of the past week. Of the young, ethnically interesting waitress who’d just taken their order, he thought, I wonder what she looks like under that uniform? He worried: was this inappropriate? And then. What was his girlfriend doing right now? Perhaps she too was being ogled by someone. Perhaps some pervert was undressing her and surmising the angles of flesh that he alone was now privy to. He wondered: was he turning into a creepy obsessive boyfriend? And wasn’t he too old to refer to himself as a boyfriend? Good lord, his mother was ninety-fucking-one.

“Ralphy, I want you to be happy,” said his mother. His mother, you had recently been red flagged by the staff to prevent the unwanted advances of a few randy gomers who’d lately been ambling down the hallways looking for action.

“Nonconsensual sex is becoming a problem here at the Parlor,” the social worker had told Ralph at the last family day happy hour. “Viagra plus Alzheimer’s equals, well, you can’t really call it date rape, exactly.”

Ralph had been sipping the tepid Riesling while balancing a small plate of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen and grapes. His mother, who’d agreed to use her walker, was on the other side of the room trying to maneuver around the piano. He looked around for evidence of a horny octogenarian milling about betwixt and between the swarm of ladies.

“Don’t worry,” the social worker said. “Your mother is in no danger. Her room is alarmed. We know who comes and goes.”

“So to speak,” Ralph added, trying to be funny.

At dinner with his safe and celibate mother, Ralph pushed the fruit cup in the parfait glass closer to her hairy chin. “Can you take another bite or two before we call it an evening?” he said.

Her name was Candi. A cheerleader name, not a psych nurse name. Unless you envisioned the Playboy Party Jokes version of a psych nurse, which she sort of was. A modern Playboy Party joke psych nurse with a ruby studded through her nose.

They didn’t spend every night together. On many evenings she was otherwise engaged. And when he wasn’t with his girlfriend or visiting his mother, sometimes he played squash with some of the other wonks. Like a good accountant, he lined up his schedule a week in advance. He always told Candi where he was, what he had going on, a habit she did not reciprocate. She had no children or aging parents or administrative demands, so her time off was just that. He envied her. He was a bit resentful of her, if he had to tell the truth. She seemed to see a lot of movies. Odd that she would take in so many flicks by herself, he thought.

One Friday evening when they were gliding toward her South Waterfront condo from the Health and Sciences Hospital in the bullet-shaped suspension tram, he became overwhelmed. He took in her youthful beauty, her Renaissance countenance and charms and he nearly doubled over in doubt. What did this girl see in him? He felt an instantaneous urge to consume her and rid her from his life. Amid the eleven or twelve other passengers on the vessel, he knelt upon one knee. He sandwiched her delicate hand between his meaty ones.  The tram floor was cold and it instantly numbed his kneecap. He hadn’t formed an actual proposal, just the visual. Nobody was more surprised than he when he blurted, “I can’t take it anymore. Marry me or I might just do myself in.”

“Why did you do that thing on the tram?” she asked over dinner, flicking a strand of ropy hair from in front of her to behind her. He was starting to dislike that her hair was so long. It seemed, increasingly, unnecessary.

“Sometimes,” he began. And then he closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. But he immediately opened them again because the spreadsheets and his mother’s diaper and degradation in general were invading the abyss where he’d hoped clarity would emerge. “Sometimes, I behave like I have a form of Turrets. My body just blurts things, and then my mouth does,” he said, briskly.

He could tell that she wanted to say more, but was holding something in. He wasn’t sure whether he wished she would share whatever it was or not. Secrecy and pride were his legacy, after all.

When his mother started to lose her eyesight, and then her hearing, she’d tried to keep it a secret, partly due to embarrassment and partly because intervention required funds, and, as a single mother, she’d grown used to scrimping and saving. Ralph and his children would visit her at the retirement center, and she’d nod her head whenever she didn’t hear what was said. One time he asked her if she cared for a piece of cake. He was cutting into the dark chocolate frosting of his son’s birthday cake. Her cloudy eyes blinked in confusion. “It’s definitely black,” she replied, those milky eyes searing into his chin.

His kids had laughed. In fact, they turned the comment into the family code for, “I didn’t hear a word you said, but I’m going to pretend I did.” Oh, how many good inside-joke times had he had with It’s definitely black. It was one of the nicest things about being in a family, the existence of shared opportunities for levity. The mutual language of fun.

He thought about when he might introduce his girlfriend to his mother. He was afraid, of course, that the chasm would be too great. This beautiful young hippie girl with the crazy-ass hair and pierced nose would seem a perplexing trial to his mother. The lacquered coiffure lady friends of his past at least had shared in certain frames of reference. Tony Bennett, let’s say, or needlepoint. But this girlfriend, this psych nurse Candi with an “i” with whom he enjoyed unbridled carnal relations and with whom he had actually uttered words like cunt, cock (even snatch, once), he worried that this girlfriend would be inappropriate with his mother. She might slip her hand inside his waistband during a protracted trip to Walgreens—something that his blind mother would miraculously witness all too clearly. Or worse, his mother would call Candi by one of her predecessor’s names or ask her if she were one of his daughter’s friends.

Ah, Candi. With whom he was now sitting, a faux slate coffee table between them. The strange table was mounted on a pedestal, embellished with golden curlicues on one side. Like her hair, there was too much fanciness with this table. It was like something built for a church altar. In fact, there were several church-like structures in the condo. A plywood platform extended the living space of the studio, giving purchase to the mattress upon which Ralph and Candi screwed. The platform reminded Ralph of a reliquary, what with its ornate lacquered embellishments, spires that practically grazed the ceiling, framing the rectangle of sacred space.

They lingered over supper, licked fried oyster breadcrumbs off of each other’s fingers. And in this intimate space, she ventured, “It’s not that I wouldn’t want to be your date for the Prom of Life,” she said, “but don’t ever threaten to kill yourself again, capiche?”

Is Prom of Life going to be our code for shacking up, he thought. For getting married? For introducing her to my mother? His heart began to pound with the utter ridiculousness of himself. Is it okay, in this day and age, he wanted to ask, for a man to simply have a lover? A mistress? Of course, he said no such thing. “Cross my heart,” he said.

She poured some more pinot. They looked out into the cloudy blackness dotted with bridge lights. Shapes in the night outside floor-to-ceiling windows. She sipped, and ran her tongue along the rim of the stemmed glass. She said, “I’d like you to fuck me now. Harder than you’ve ever fucked anyone. I want you to make me bleed.”

He woke up an arm’s length from the ceiling, dusty black pipes crisscrossing above him. Candi’s Rapunzel tresses were splayed across her pillow and his pillow and tickled his cheek. Her kitten eyes were closed, but when he woke up she’d instinctively nestled into him, her shapely thigh hooking his groin. There were odd blotches on her skin, a pale version of what happens to coffee when you leave it on a desk for a week. He’d never seen these before. His mind went immediately dark. She’s a junkie, perhaps. He moved the crook of her arm to check for track marks.

She opened her eyes, his princess, and he ceased his inquisition for IV drug use. He said,“Are you ok? Did I hurt you last night?”

She said, “I have plans in about a half hour and you need to go.”

“Oh,” he said. And then he knee-scuttled to the edge of the platform where black lacquered plywood steps led to the cold concrete floor. His boxers, Dockers and Oxford were clumped in wrinkled piles. His socks and shoes were harder to find, so he had to retrace his steps, which required, in the cold light that poured through the corner window, the revisioning of him jamming her from behind as she stood folded over her odd-shaped coffee table. His feet had been covered then, he recalled. It’s always more satisfying to review a night of passion from the perspective of the third person, he thought. Then the accountant’s extraordinary cock split his conquest in two. But seeing the memory of himself fucking her in his loafers was a downer. He rubbed his thumb against his forehead. His shoes and socks had been discarded in the bathroom then, after the sex. Before the brushing and the flossing. Now, he sat on the toilet seat and yanked them on—Gold Toe, new ones he’d allowed his mother to buy him their last trip to Walgreens, and his loafers. He had twenty minutes before Candi would be on to her next adventure. He was a particularly complex mixture of curious and hurt.

He checked for his spectacles, his cell phone, his wallet and his watch. “I’ll call you later,” he said over his shoulder as he thwacked open the metal fire door and strode out into the long fluorescent hallway to the elevator.

“Sorry,” he heard her reply in a soft, sort of weepy voice as the door sucked closed behind him.

He could dine with his mother, he supposed. A Saturday morning surprise for her. She would love that. Her youngest boy escorting her to pancakes and pitted prunes. He pressed the number two on his cell phone, but then he pressed the red phone icon to cancel the call. He had to find out. His ex-wife always said he had a penchant for self-destruction. He had to know.

He stood in the lobby for a while, trying to look nonchalant. The day security officer behind the kidney-shaped desk didn’t know him as well as the night one.

“Can I help you,” said the security officer, predictably.

He didn’t remember premeditating his response, but, curiously, what came out of his mouth was a complete fabrication. “A stalker,” he blurted. “My wife?” he said, “she’s being followed by some pervert.”

The rent-a-cop was a young gal with a thick braid and a tattooed forearm. Maybe that’s why he’d lied. Maybe he was trying to appeal to the feminist concerns he assumed she would have.

“What if I give you my card,” he said. “You can call or e-mail should some unknown guy show up pretending to be acquainted with my wife?”

The guard enthusiastically snapped the card up from the counter where he’d placed it. He was playing the odds, he knew, that she’d take this on without checking to see that he was legit. He offered a parting shot: “I’m really glad to see that the building is hiring women in this role. I bring it up at every board meeting.”

The security officer smiled.

“Outstanding job you’re doing,” Ralph added as he left through the atrium door.

The Willamette’s stench wasn’t quite as obtrusive as he made his way back to the tram station. The vast squares of land seemed naked. As compared with other parts of the city, South Waterfront had a dearth of trees. In their place were concrete pillars, trusses, metal lattice and other man-made forms of verticality. Once a year or so the Cirque du Soleil tent sprang up from the earth like a tumor. The neighborhood had gone up so quickly—like sexual re-assignment surgery, or Lasik or one of the other presto-chango operations an eager party could procure on Pill Hill. The city’s erstwhile economic-boom, its sudden celebrity status as the place where creative, cool people now flocked—the whole “green” movement bandwagon—all contributed to a curious aesthetic. A crazy quilt of modern, murky and monumental. Candi, mercurial and mysterious, somehow fit in perfectly here.