straight out of
“Yes? Can I help you…?” he asked.
Betty stared at him without answering.
“My wife has an appointment,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
Just then Betty took the letter out of her pocket. She pushed it under the guy’s nose.
“You the one who wrote this?” she asked.
I didn’t recognize her voice. I thought of a volcano opening its eye. The man took the pipe out of his mouth and held it tight against his heart.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked.
I told myself not to worry-any second now I’d wake up. What was surprising was how real everything seemed-the wide, silent hallway, the carpet under my feet, the guy biting his lip, and the letter trembling at the end of Betty’s arm like an invulnerable will-o’-the-wisp. I stood there stupefied.
“I asked you a question.” Betty started again, in a shrill voice. “Are you the one who wrote this, yes or no?”
The guy made like he was looking closer at the letter, then he scratched his neck and glanced at us quickly.
“Well now… you see, I write letters all day long. It wouldn’t surprise me if…”
I saw he was trying to come up with something while he was talking to us-a child of three on a merry-go- round could see that. He backed up tentatively into the apartment, getting ready to make a run for the door. I wondered if he would make it-he didn’t seem particularly agile.
He made a sorry face before playing his last card, and honestly, it couldn’t have been worse, him trying desperately to get his engine to turn over. It gave Betty time to bump the door open calmly with her shoulder. Our hero stumbled backward into the entryway, holding one arm.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re crazy!”
There was a large blue vase sitting on a pedestal. Betty whipped her purse around and the thing came off in one fell swoop. I heard the sound of line china exploding. It woke me up. Under the impact, Betty’s purse had opened up, and everything you’d ever find in a girl’s purse had scattered on the floor among the pieces of broken vase.
“Wait, I’ll help you pick it up,” I said.
She was livid. She looked at me ferociously.
“SHIT, DON’T PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THAT!! TELL HIM WHAT YOU THINK OF HIS LETTER!!”
The guy was looking at us with wild eyes. I bent over to pick up the lipstick that was gleaming at my feet.
“I have nothing to say to him,” I said.
I continued picking things up with a thousand-pound weight on my shoulders.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked.
“No. What he thinks doesn’t interest me. I’ve got better things to worry about.”
The guy couldn’t see what a break he was getting. He was obviously not with it. I don’t know what possessed him-he must have realized that I wasn’t going to jump on him and so he let himself get carried away by the sudden absence of danger. Instead of staying where he was, shutting up, and letting us just get our things together, he started coming toward us.
I’m certain that at that precise moment Betty had forgotten all about him. All her anger had been turned on me. We were raking the rug, trying to put together the puzzle that had spilled out of her purse. I don’t know how she did it, because she never took her eyes off me. She was breathing quickly, and her look was a furious and sad variation on a theme of pain. The guy came up behind her and in a demented gesture touched her shoulder with his fingertip.
“Listen here, I’m not accustomed to this sort of animal behavior. I know how to use only one weapon-my mind…”
Betty closed her eyes without turning around.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
But the guy was drunk with his own audacity. These crazy bangs were hanging over his forehead, and his eyes were shining. “Your manners are unacceptable,” he said. “It is obvious that there can’t be any dialogue between us, since Speech, like Writing, requires a minimum of elegance, which seems to be a particular deficit in your case…”
She let slide a brief period of silence after this remark-the kind of trembling, empty space that separates the thunder from the lightning. She picked her comb up off the floor. She had it in her hand. It was a cheap one, made of clear plastic-sort of red, with fat teeth. She jumped up and turned around. Her arm traced a circle in the air. She slashed his cheek with it.
At first the guy just looked at her in surprise, then walking backward, he put his hand to his wound-it was pissing blood. It was all rather theatrical, but he seemed to have forgotten his lines-all he did was move his lips. Then it started to get annoying: Betty was breathing like a forge-she went toward him, but my arm came down in front of her and grabbed her by the wrist. I pulled as if I was trying to uproot a tree. I saw her feet leave the floor.
“Hold it. Stop the meter,” I said.
She tried to pull away but I held her with all my strength. She let out a little cry. I must say I was not pretending-had her arm been a tube of toothpaste, the stuff would have squirted for miles around. I dragged her toward the door with my teeth clenched. On our way out the door, I turned and took a last look at the guy. Ile was sinking into an armchair, looking numb. I imagined him reading my novel.
We went down the stairs four at a time, stumbling. I slowed down on the second-floor landing so she could get her balance back. She started yelling.
“GOD, YOU FUCKING BASTARD. WHY DO YOU ALWAYS LET THEM WALK ALL OVER YOU?”
I stopped abruptly. I trapped her against the banister and looked into her face.
“That dude didn’t do anything to me,” I said. “Nothing-you understand?”
Tears of rage started coming out of her eyes. I felt my strength leaving me, as if someone had blowgunned me with a curare dart.
“WELL GOD DAMN IT ALL! YOU’D THINK THAT NOTHING IN THIS WORLD EVER GETS TO YOU!!”
“You’re wrong,” I said.
“WELL, THEN, WHAT DOES? TELL ME WHAT GETS TO YOU!”
I looked away.
“Are we going to spend the night here?” I asked.
12
Two days later the cops took her away. I wasn’t there when they came. I was with Eddie. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were crisscrossing the town looking for olives-almost all the stores were closed. We had noticed only the night before that we were out-it seemed that Mario had committed a slight act of omission when he sent in his order for the kitchen. He’s got his gig down, Eddie explained, but you can’t ask him for the moon. It was windy that day-not more than thirty-four or thirty-five degrees. The temperature had gone down all at once.
We were taking our time. Eddie drove slowly. It was a nice little joyride under an icy sun. I felt very relaxed for no reason in particular. Maybe going back and forth all over town in pursuit of a handful of olives made for a great time-if only for the peace that came over my soul, like a light blanket of snow over a field of dead men.
We finally found what we were looking for in Chinatown-no joke-and to make it even better they gave us each
