A few days later I took the morning off to tar-paper the roof. I worked easily and quietly, then went off in the car, a local station spitting songs out on the radio.
When I came home I found Betty busily moving the furniture around.
“You heard the latest?” she said. “Archie’s in the hospital!”
I threw my jacket on a chair.
“Shit, what happened?”
I helped her move the couch.
“The damn kid spilled a pot of boiling milk on his lap.”
We moved the table across to the other side of the room.
“Bob called right after you left. He was calling from the hospital. He wanted us to open the store for him this afternoon.”
We unrolled the rug in a different corner.
“Shit, he doesn’t miss a trick, does he…”
“It’s not that. He’s afraid the old ladies’ll block traffic on the sidewalk in front and cause a riot.”
She stepped back to take in the new arrangement.
“What do you think? You like it like that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s a change, isn’t it?”
We fucked in the afternoon, after which I grew suddenly languid, lying on the bed with cigarettes and a book. Betty cleaned the windows. What’s nice about selling pianos is that there’s never a rush. You have time to read Ulysses between sales without even having to dog-ear the pages. Yet it made us a nice living-we paid our bills on time and could fill the gas tank whenever we felt like it. Eddie didn’t ask us for money. All he asked was that we keep the store afloat and replenish the stock whenever we unloaded a piano. We did. I also handled the deliveries. The cash went directly into my pocket-why complicate the bookkeeping?
Best of all was that we even had some money put aside, enough to last us a month or so. This was reassuring-I had already had the experience of being out of a job, with barely enough in my pockets to buy two meals. Finding myself with money ahead was like finding myself in a fallout shelter. I could hardly ask for more. I hadn’t yet started planning my retirement.
So I took it easy. I watched Betty cleaning her nails by the window, laying on a coat of blinding red nail polish while her shadow climbed the wall behind her. It was wonderful. I stretched out on the bed.
“That going to take long to dry?” I asked.
“No, but if I were you I’d keep an eye on the time…”
I had enough time to hop into my pants and plant a kiss on her neck.
“You sure you can handle it alone?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
There were already four or five ladies on the sidewalk. They were trying to see inside, through the windows, talking loudly. I got the key from the backyard and hurried up to the apartment. I spotted the small pool of milk on the kitchen floor. A stuffed animal was floating in it. I picked it up and put it on the table. The milk was cold by now.
Downstairs, things seemed to be heating up. I went down and turned the lights on. The ladies were shaking their heads. The ugliest one turned her arm toward me so I could see her watch. I opened the door.
“Easy does it,” I said.
I plastered myself into a corner while they stampeded through. When the last one was in, I took my position behind the cash register. I thought of Archie and the teddy bear, draining on the kitchen table, losing all its blood.
“Could you give me a slice of headcheese?”
“But of course,” I said.
“Where’s the owner? Not here anymore…?”
“He’ll be back.”
“HEY, DON’T TOUCH MY HEADCHEESE WITH YOUR HANDS, YOU MIND!?”
“Jesus,” I said. “Sorry…”
“All right, just give me two slices of ham instead. The round kind. I don’t want the square kind.”
I spent the rest of the day slicing this and cutting that, running from one end of the store to the other, with six arms and ten legs churning, biting my lip. Somehow I began to understand Bob. I realized that if I had to do that job every day, I wouldn’t be able to get it on with a woman either-all I’d want to do at night is watch television. I’m exaggerating a bit, but what’s true is that sometimes life puts on such an abominable show that no matter where you look, all you see is fury and folly. Charming: this is what we have to put up with while waiting for old age, illness, and death-walking right toward the storm, each step bringing us a bit further into the night.
I closed the store on a last pound of tomatoes. Spirits were at their lowest. This sort of thing can really bring you down-turn your heart to stone. You have to know how to say whoa. I did a quick about-face, grabbing three bananas and eating them one after the other. After that I went upstairs for a beer. I felt neither here nor there. Having a little time on my hands, I wiped the milk off the floor and washed the teddy bear, hanging it by the ears to dry over the bathtub. It had a kind of surrealistic grin on its face, perfectly in keeping with the mood of the day. I sat with it for a while, the time to finish my beer. I split before my ears started hurting.
When I got home, I found Betty lying on the couch, with a yard-high elephant at her feet. It was red with white ears, wrapped in clear plastic. She lifted herself up on her elbows.
“I thought it might cheer him up if we went to visit him-look what I bought him…”
After what I’d just been through, I found the house quite calm. I would have loved to just slide right into it, but there was no way, with a red elephant standing in the middle of the living room, its eyes following me everywhere.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
I got a wink as consolation prize.
“You want to eat something before we go… a quick bite?”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
I let Betty drive. I held the animal in my lap. I had a bad taste in my mouth. I told myself that when one lifts the goblet of hopelessness to his lips, one oughtn’t be surprised if one winds up with a hangover. The streetlights were unspeakably cruel. We parked in the hospital lot and walked to the main entrance.
It happened just as we went through the door. I don’t know why. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a hospital. I knew about the odor, the people ambling around in pajamas. I even knew about the strange presence of death. I knew it well, and it had never gotten to me before-never, No one was more surprised than I was when my ears started ringing. I felt my legs get stiff and wobbly, all at once. I started to perspire. The elephant tumbled to the floor.
I saw Betty gesticulating in front of me, leaning toward me with her mouth moving, but I could hear nothing except the ringing of blood in my veins. I leaned against a wall. I felt horrible. An icy shot went through my skull. I couldn’t keep my balance. My heels slid out from under me.
A few seconds later, the sound started to return a little. Eventually everything came back. Betty was wiping my face with a handkerchief. I was breathing deeply. People kept coming and going, without paying any attention to us.
“Jesus, I can’t believe this-what happened to you? You scared me to-”
“It must have been something I ate… must have been the bananas…”
While Betty cheeked at the information desk, I went and got myself a Coke out of a machine. I had no idea what was going on-I didn’t know if it was the bananas or a sign from the Beyond.
We went up to the room. There wasn’t much light. Archie was sleeping, Bob and Annie sitting on each side of his bed. The baby was asleep too. I put the elephant down in the corner. Bob stood up to tell me that Archie had just dozed off-the poor kid had really been through the mill.
“It could have been worse, though,” he added.
We stood there quietly for a moment, watching Archie move around softly in his sleep, his hair stuck to his temples. I felt sorry for him. I also felt something that had nothing to do with him. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t rid myself of the sensation that I had been sent a message I could not decipher. It made me nervous. It’s always
