A Strange Commonplace (7 page)

Pair of Deuces

J
ENNY WAS STANDING IN THE CORNER OF THE MOTEL ROOM in front of a little black-and-white television set, on which a soap opera’s distraught characters were silently moving through their problems. She had unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it free of her skirt. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she seemed to be blushing, although the light in the room was dim. Ralph stood at the other side of the double bed, a picture of a rustic bridge in forest mist at his right shoulder. He took off his T-shirt and looked at Jenny, he wanted her out of her clothes.

Inez had put the baby down for a nap when Bill came in, half-drunk from the office party. Merry Xames! he said, where’s my beloved spouse? More to the point—where’s
your
beloved spouse? He hung his trenchcoat and suit jacket in the closet. Let’s have a drink, it’s Christmas Eve, Noël, he said. Inez lit a cigarette and gave it to him. You’re a peach, he said. I mean it. He should have met
her
back in New York. What am I doing, he said, in this stupid fucking town, can you tell me? He reached out and touched her arm and she moved closer to him. You’re a terrific woman, he said, I’ve always thought so. Ralph thought the suede jacket would be a good idea, it was expensive, but really nice, Jenny, however, told him that she hated to buy clothes for Bill, whatever she bought him, even underwear and socks, was always wrong. What about the chess set, then? Ralph said, it’s a beautiful thing and it will last forever. He was standing behind Jenny and put his hands on her hips. She half-turned and gave him a look out of the corner of her eye and moved, almost imperceptibly, against him.
O.K.
, she said, but I can’t really play at all, I hardly know the moves. And Bill has nobody else to play with out here. All the better for Bill, Ralph said. What? Jenny said, looking him full in the face.
O.K.
, let’s buy it right now and get it wrapped, she said, and then we can do—what do you want to do? Let’s go and relax somewhere for a couple of hours, Ralph said, it’s early. He had an erection and he knew that she knew it. And Inez? she said. He shrugged.

So Ralph went out shopping with Jenny, dear sweet Jenny, to help her buy me a Christmas present! What a wonderful guy, and what a wonderful
wife,
a helpmeet, he said. He handed Inez a stiff scotch and water and made one for himself. That’s what they told me, Inez said. Oh, brother, Bill said, they might as well advertise. They might as well do it in Macy’s window. Jesus Christ, Inez, what a mistake I made, what a mistake, oh fuck it. He had tears in his eyes and Inez, surprised and moved, put her drink down and held him close. The room was gray and gloomy, cold fog outside its single window. He put his hands under her skirt and moved her against the kitchen table. I love you, he said. I love you, I love you. The baby is sleeping, she said, we have to be quiet. She pulled her panties off and sat on the edge of the table with her skirt around her waist and opened her legs.

They lay in bed watching what looked like a children’s show. Santa Claus and Mrs. Santa Claus and their elves and helpers grinned and rushed about, but the sound was so low that their dialogue was unintelligible. Ralph lit another cigarette. Santa Claus in horn-rimmed glasses, he said, for Christ’s sake. Jenny looked over at him. She was in her slip. There was a water stain in the corner of the ceiling. What class, Ralph said, well, it’s not the St. Francis, but this wasn’t exactly an—
amour,
was it? However you want to slice it. Was it? You are a real bastard, she said. What? he said, I’m a real bastard? Didn’t you suggest this place and drive us here? Now you think—what?—I’m supposed to be a tender lover? She put out her cigarette and got out of bed, picked her panties up from the floor and went into the bathroom. You’ve got a run in your stocking, he said, as she closed and locked the door. All the folks in Santa’s North Pole house were singing happily, then they disappeared and another Santa appeared, selling Coca-Cola. I hope to Christ that Billy blames the fucking chess set on her, he said to Santa.

The baby woke up, climbed down from bed, and walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She stood in the doorway and was frightened to see Uncle Bill jumping on Mommy on the table, they were bumping and making noises. She began to cry very loudly. Bill, stop! Inez said,
Bill!
Not now, not
now,
he said.

Jenny pulled up in the battered and dirty station wagon across the street from the little frame house. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig, Ralph said. Do we need any booze? I can run down to the corner, is it? They ought to still be open. I could use the air anyway. Ralph bought some yesterday, Jenny said, scotch and gin. He’s drunk already anyway from the office party, he’ll be teary and embarrassing and telling Inez how wonderful she is, how pretty, how wonderful, what a great mother.
Wonderful.
You think we can order Chinese tonight? Ralph said. Or pizza? Don’t kill yourself cooking? She smiled at him, then nodded toward the house. No lights in the front room, she said. Bill must be home and they’re both in the kitchen getting plastered. Ho ho ho, Ralph said.

Cold Supper

J
ACK GOT HOME ABOUT 8:30, WELL AFTER DARK. ANNA WAS sitting at the kitchen table, reading another drugstorelibrary novel by Fanny Hurst or Faith Baldwin, some ladies’ hogwash. Was that all she did all day? His place was set and his supper was on the kitchen counter, all of it cold. Is that my delicious supper? he said, and she looked up from her book as if suddenly aware of him, and then at her watch. Oh, I get it, he said. Let’s see, a cardboard pork chop sitting in fat, Ann Page carrots and peas, mmm, and what’s this? plaster? oh, mashed potatoes
à la
skins and lumps, a gravy boat full of, uh-huh, grease! And, of course, a luscious salad with a bright orange gourmet dressing. I can’t wait. The kid’s in bed, I suppose, God forbid you should keep him up a few minutes so he can see his father. Anna looked up again from her book and asked him where he’d been, he said he’d be home for supper, my God, you can’t spare an hour for your son on a
Saturday?
He sat down at the table and tapped his finger on the edge of his dinner plate, wise and patient and tolerant. He’d been watching a softball game at the playground between Fritz’s Bar and Grill and Papa Joe’s, the kid hates softball, he said. He said that then he went to the movies, the kid is scared of the
movies,
for God’s sake. Her mouth was twisted in the bitter smile that enraged him. And you saw? she said. Oh, he said, you want to know what I saw? Well, I saw
Three Men on a Horse
and
If You Could Only Cook
and
Come and Get It
and
Red Dust
and
Dawn Patrol
and how can I forget
Tarzan of the Apes?
Starring Edward Everett Horton, Edward Arnold, Edward G. Robinson, Edward Brophy, Edgar Buchanan, Edgar Kennedy, Eduardo Ciannelli, and—Akim Tamiroff! I think Jean Harlow was in one of them, too. What a movie—passion, action, betrayal, temptation, fury, danger! She put a paper napkin in her book and closed it, then stood up. She was pale, then she suddenly reddened and paled again. Charlie thought you’d have a catch with him in back or take him for a walk down to the shore through the park, it’s
Saturday.
She was shaking with anger. You’re a mean, rotten father! Oh, he said, it wasn’t that she cared about
herself,
not a bit, just about the son he ignored, not, oh no, not
herself!
She was a martyr, a selfless wife, a saint who put up with his neglect of her with a smile on her face, her nose in a book, her hair in snarls, and her body in an old stained housecoat with tattered stockings rolled down to her knees like the super’s wife from Bulgaria,
Jesus.
I can smell her on you, Anna said, her five-and-ten perfume and her sweaty, dirty dress, you don’t have, you’ve got, you haven’t one iota of self-respect or shame coming home smelling of that tramp, my mother was right about you, she was always right about you, you dirty guinea! She turned and started out of the room, her novel under her arm, and he picked up the gravy boat and threw it against the wall, cold gravy and shards of china everywhere. The other movie I saw, he shouted after her, was
fuck you and your drunken mother!
He saw blood on his shirt and realized he’d somehow cut his hand. He’d never said, never, he was sure, that he was going to have a catch, the kid couldn’t catch a ball with a basket with his cockeye. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of Philip Morris. Irene’s cigarettes, he’d taken them and left his Luckies by mistake. You better get them off the night table, honey, before the old man gets home, he muttered.

An Apartment

T
HE OLD MAN HAD BEEN SAVING PILLS FOR THREE YEARS, Percodans mostly, although there were some others. He thought of them as his medical Mickey Finn. He had a good handful of them and would use them as soon as he’d dealt himself the winning hand, or, perhaps more precisely, the hand that would finally beat life. He had determined, a couple of years before, when it became apparent to him that to die would be a more reasonable choice than to live, that each day he would shuffle a deck of cards, a poker deck from which the Jokers had been removed, and allow himself eight cuts, playing for a flush. He had also determined that eight cuts would be fair, this based on the draw poker he’d played all his life, the classic game, one he thought of as old-fashioned, that permitted players to discard and draw up to three cards after the hand was opened. He also made it a rule that he would play but three hands a day, one in the morning with his second cup of coffee; one around noon; and one in the evening after he’d made himself a bourbon and water. He had often drawn four of the same suit, and, even more often, three, but he was certain that four hearts, for instance, were no closer to a flush the next time than one; or, as he thought of it,
close but no cigar
did not mean
cigar next time.
So he did not torment himself with the anguish suffered by those who believe that luck and chance are incremental and progressive and fair, that is, that luck must, of necessity, change. But it was, indeed, interesting, nonetheless, when he had drawn, perhaps, four clubs on his first four cuts with four cuts to go. The odds would seem to be with him in such instances, but he’d never yet, of course, drawn that fifth club. He invariably thought, at such times, how pleasant it would be to believe in a God to whom he could pray, a God who would either change the cards’ positions in the deck or direct his hand. Dear God, give me a flush so that I can die. But there was nothing but the deck, life, and, just a blink away, death. He could have, surely, simply swallowed the pills, plus an insurance bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills, with a tumbler of bourbon; but he thought that his simple game was a duty that he owed to life, even though life had nothing for him anymore. One evening, after he’d begun his final routine, it came to him that this game, this civilized courtship of death, was the act that permitted him to go on living, it had become his life. There was a neat irony to this, it pleased him greatly: to look forward to living so that he could play for the right to die. Very neat. He, incidentally, was sure that he had an edge on the game, perhaps even an unfair advantage, one that had been hard for him to acknowledge, perhaps because he had never employed it. For he knew, quite simply
knew
that a deck of cards that he’d taken, some twenty years earlier, from a hotel room in the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, a deck which he’d never removed from its cellophane wrapper, was the charmed and magical deck that would, on its first use, lead him into the pleasures of nothingness. He even saw the flush, red and beautiful, in diamonds: three, seven, ten, nine, King.

Success

C
ARSON TOLD HER THAT HE’D ONCE READ AN ACCOUNT IN some magazine of a dream in which a woman, the wife of the man who was dreaming, turned into Meryl Streep. In the dream. She looked at him and ate the last piece of dill pickle on her plate. And? she said. What’s your point? I don’t really remember the article too well, he said. Lunch was almost over, which was too bad, although he knew that he had no chance with her, well, maybe he did, maybe, but he didn’t have the courage to risk his marriage, it was ridiculous, unthinkable. But when she looked the way she looked today, in a dark business suit and white blouse, well, when she looked the way she looked today. Oh, wait, he said, right, I think the point was that the guy hated Meryl Streep but in the
dream
he wanted to—he wanted to make love to her. But he
really
didn’t like her at all, the actual her. You must have been asleep in your psych lectures, she said. Get yourself a selected Freud, one with the dream stuff in it,
The Interpretation of Dreams.
What do
you
think of Meryl Streep? she said. She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her hips and thighs. Oh sweet Jesus. She’s
O.K.
? he said, why? I think she’s a pretentious ham, she said, all those irritating accents are supposed to show us that she’s a great actress? She puts on some broad accent, her nose gets red, and she cries a few times, that’s the routine in every movie. Sure, he said, that’s right. He was looking at the lace edging on the collar of her blouse. Don’t you think so? she said, that that’s about the extent of her talent? I’m on the side of the guy who had the dream—but when he’s awake! He stood up and she asked him to leave the tip, she’d get the check. You bought last time, she said.
O.K.
he said, I’ll pick it up next time, then. She paid at the register and he stood back a few feet, admiring her, her nose and ears, her hair, her little gold-ball earrings, her jacket and skirt, her shoes and stockings, her legs. They walked out onto the street and started back to the office. You were looking at me back there, weren’t you? she said. Her voice was even, neutral, placid. Yes, he said, blushing. You were looking at my legs. Yes, he said, do you want to have a drink after work some time? I’m married, she said, you
know
that, and so are you. Do you want to have a drink some time? he said. He looked at the slender gold chain around her neck. Is the married, ah, thing, problem, she said,
O.K.
with you, is it all right with you? How about tomorrow? he said, sure it is. I’ll let you know in the morning, she said. A drink, right? Yes, just a drink. They stopped at the curb for traffic and he looked at her profile. His wife was just as attractive, maybe moreso. So, she said, buy that Freud, and see what he has to say. Meryl Streep! she said. They stepped off the curb and his forearm brushed her hip. It felt like fire.