Underworld

'Been years since I looked at a real map. It's a sort of Robert Louis Stevenson thing to do. We have maps of highways and motels. Our maps have rest stops and wheelchair symbols.'

'Just tell me what his name is.'

'For what, the faucet?'

'Day before yesterday or yesterday. Today's been so long I don't know anymore. No, the showerhead.'

'The hell's wrong with the showerhead? Our maps have pancake houses.'

'What's-his-name with the orange pickup.'

'Which shower are we talking about?'

'Terry, right?'

She turned a page. She used a book pillow to read when she was in bed. I ordered it for her out of a catalog, jewel-tone jacquard, a wedge-shaped cushion that nestles in the lap and holds your book or magazine at the proper angle, with tasseled bookmarks built in and a slot in back for your reading glasses.

'I'm going Tuesday. I tell you that?'

'This is, what, Moscow? Or Boston. Too soon for Moscow. Which is the heavyset one? I get them completely.'

'I need to get these shoes resoled before I go. Remind me to do that tomorrow.'

'I have this thing on my leg.'

'It's not Boston,' I said.

'It's not Boston.'

'It's Portland.'

'It's Portland.'

'What thing?' I said.

'On the inside of my thigh.'

'Call Williamson.'

'It could be an irritation.'

'Call Williamson. When did you get it?'

'I don't know. I think it comes and goes.'

She turned a page.

'Lainie had the wallpaper today.'

'About time.'

'That was her that called.'

'I hope you didn't tell her.'

'Of course I didn't tell her. What was I going to tell her? Sweetheart, we drove right past but didn't stop.'

'Stopping would have been.'

'We saw them when was it. Recent recent recent. Not that recent actually.'

'Recent enough. We don't want to overdo it.'

'Paperhangers. One was a woman, she said.'

'I'm still not completely over this motherfucking cold. Why is that?' I said.

She turned a page.

'Why is that?' I said.

'Take some of those antihistamines you take. They're hard to buy.'

'The tablets.'

'The caplets.'

'You're all revved up. I can feel the energy.'

'I'm not revved up. I'm tired. My mind is in that sort of place. You can forget about sleep, it's telling me.'

I selected the jewel-tone jacquard over the ivory because the weave went well with our carpets.

'I saw him in that orange truck he drives. The heavyset one. Last time I installed it myself but this time nothing fit.'

'Because the universe is expanding. It expands in warm weather. Remind me we need some sixty-watt bulbs.'

'I pulled alongside and he said he could be here in an hour and he showed up exactly on time and he installed the thing in exactly ten minutes and that was the end of that.'

She turned a page and then another. She had a way of sounding grim when she was actually showing satisfaction, showing completion-the finishing of a task or the telling of a story with a moral.

'Did you tell her to spackle?'

'They did the baby's room first.'

'Because this is not something Dex is going to figure out for himself. I only hope they spackled.'

'Take the twelve-hour antihistamines. The four-hour make you drowsy.'

'What's wrong with drowsy? Remind me we need bulbs for the pantry.'

'Just tell me his name. The heavyset kid is the one whose father, right?'

'And had to be subdued by four or five cops.'

'Heavyset.'

'Can't you call him fat? Call him fat. He is tremendously fat,' I said.

'He has rolls of fat. It's true.'

'Maybe the bulb's loose. Remind me to tighten the bulb. Too soon for Moscow.'

She turned a page.

'Is it a lump?' I said.

'What? No, I wouldn't use that word. No, it's an irritation.'

'Maybe it's the estrogen.'

'No no no no no.'

'Call Williamson,' I said.

I turned on my side and heard a plane in a landing pattern, a late flight from somewhere.

'Eight hours of solid sleep. That's what I need.'

'It's true actually. You've got one good pair of shoes and they need fixing.'

'I almost bought some shoes in Italy. I almost bought some shoes in Italy.'

She turned a page.

'What's the name of that stuff I wanted to tell your mother to be?'

'Wait a second. I know.'

'It's on the tip of my tongue,' she said.

'Wait a second. I know.'

'You know the stuff I mean.'

'The sleep stuff or the indigestion?'

'It's on the tip of my tongue.'

'Wait a second. Wait a second. I know.'

About three hours later I sat in the armchair in a corner of the bedroom feeling damp and cold, a chill sweat across my back and neck and under my arms. I'd come out of a dream deep-breathing and clammy, breathing fast and loud-so odd and loud and fast it woke me up, or something did.

I had the baseball in my hand. Usually I kept the baseball on the bookshelves, wedged in a corner between straight-up books and slanted books, tented under books, unceremoniously. But now I had it in my hand. You have to know the feel of a baseball in your hand, going back a while, connecting many things, before you can understand why a man would sit in a chair at four in the morning holding such an object, clutching it-how it fits the palm so reassuringly, the corked center making it buoyant in the hand, and the rough spots on an old ball, the marked skin, how an idle thumb likes to worry the scuffed horsehide. You squeeze a baseball. You kind of juice it or milk it. The resistance of the packed material makes you want to press harder. There's an equilibrium, an agreeable animal tension between the hard leather object and the sort of clawed hand, veins stretching with the effort. And the feel of raised seams across the fingertips, cloth contours like road bumps under the knuckle joints- how the whorled cotton can be seen as a magnified thumbprint, a blowup of the convoluted ridges on the pad of your thumb. The ball was a deep sepia, veneered with dirt and turf and generational sweat-it was old, bunged up, it was bashed and tobacco-juiced and stained by natural processes and by the lives behind it, weather-spattered