Adverbs (16 page)

H
elena still never got any mail. There was still never any mail just for her, and this wasn’t, either. Her name wasn’t on it, for one thing, just the address of the apartment she lived in, and the envelope felt thick, like someone was sending her a few million dollars. She could think of no reason, but just the other day she had found a fifty-dollar bill in a movie theater, and there’d been no reason then, either. “Guess what I found!” she’d said to her husband, who was an American named David. She was a British person, originally from Britain, named Helena. Sometimes this seemed like a big deal, a channel between them, sometimes it didn’t. She’d waited until they were walking in the park to ask him. “When I went to the movies.”

“A mythical creature of some kind,” David had said. “I guess a unicorn. That’s my guess. Can we now discuss how I will get to the airport with all the stuff I need to take to the airport with me?” Now he was in Canada for his work, which was some kind of job, and now Helena had an envelope with her name not on it. She sat down in her second favorite chair and made a chart.

The envelope contained a letter, not money. It never does. Helena didn’t have any money, what with being broke. She had a job but was fired when the money was gone, and now the money was gone and her husband too, although only to Canada. She thought you needed a passport to go to Canada. In fact she was certain of it. She smoked, a certain smoker, and opened the drawer again to look at the two passports inside. They were different citizens, she and her husband, so it could be laws about citizens, or she was wrong, maybe. Or the love was gone with the money. On the table was a newspaper interviewing a man who had blown up something big. Nobody knows why men do things.

The envelope had been thick because it was folded badly around a photograph of a naked man, taken by a naked man. The naked man was standing in front of a mirror with a camera in front of his crotch, although his penis was big enough to hang below. It was also thick. The man’s expression was a little squinty, like he was thinking of giving up on the whole thing if someone didn’t sleep with him soon, and Helena couldn’t think of what song he meant, so she got in the tub and taped the letter and the photograph to the other end where she could look at them. The wall was all puckered from other times she had done this, although she hadn’t taped something to the other end of the tub in quite some time. Nights of wild love. Totally hot like lava. It was a common enough name, Andrea. Like David, or she supposed there were other names. She got out of the tub because she had to pee, which was more and more the problem lately. The phone was also ringing.

“It’s David,” said David. “I’m in Canada.”

Helena opened the drawer. “Tell me, spouse,” she said, “is Canada a foreign country?”

“Of course it is,” David said. “It’s like England.”

“And is it like England?” Helena asked, looking at her husband in his passport photo and then at the naked man.

“Well,” David said kindly, “there’s weather. Listen, I’ll give
you the number of the hotel, but there was some problem with the reservation so it might not be in my name. It’ll be under the name of the company.”

Helena could not for the life of her remember the name of the company, only that it was stupid. “How is it?” she asked. “The work?”

“Well, it’s what they’re paying me to do,” David said.

“I’m having trouble figuring that out,” Helena said. “I don’t know what people are paying me to do because I’m not making any money. We’re out of juice, David, and I don’t know if I can buy any more because there is only a handful left in my purse.” They say the poor have dignity but Helena’s voice was not dignified into the phone.

“Are you freaking out again?” David said. “Take a bath.”

“Tell me something,” Helena said. “No, tell me something else. Who used to live in this apartment?”

“You know it was Andrea before us,” David said, and gave Helena one of his long, kind sighs, which with long-distance rates cost maybe one American dollar. “Before Andrea I don’t know. Early settlers of California, for the San Francisco gold rush. Did I tell you she was driving a cab?”

“Andrea?”

“Last I heard,” David said.

“You’re jealous,” Helena said, and she was crying which was another problem. “I mean
me
. I can’t even drive a cab. You love Andrea.”

“You could drive a cab if someone paid you.”

“
New in town
,” Helena said. “
New in town, wrong side of the road
.”

“Honey, I have to go,” David said. “It’s work. I love you. Buy yourself some juice.”

“It costs seven hundred thousand dollars,” Helena said, and she cried very hard.

“Buy a cheaper kind of juice,” David was heard to say. “Andrea, I think this is good for me to be in Canada. We’ve been fighting and this is like a vacation.”

“It’s not like a vacation!” Helena yelled, or something. “I’m still here, and you called me Andrea, who you’re with!”

“This is what I mean,” David said. “Goodbye.”

Off the phone Helena felt a lot better, which couldn’t be a good sign, but she looked at Tony again. Helena didn’t have a lot of men in her life. Her husband, of course, and his friend Ed who married Dawn who was so boring she had an insulting nickname for the two of them and would only meet at restaurants so loud they couldn’t talk. Also, there was her neighbor. He walked his dog and Helena would run out in a false coincidence. “Hello again,” she would say to the dog. “Hello baby,” and cup its face with her hands. The neighbor would smile. “Hello baby,” she wanted to say to him, and cup his face with her hands. She could explain that it was a British custom and that she was from Britain, originally. The only other man she had met through an ad. When she was fired—or, more to the point, when Andrea fired her—she found a place on the computer to place an ad. It was free to place an ad so she kept placing them with increasing desperation as the theme.

By the time Helena received a reply she had no idea which ad he was answering, but she met Joe at a sticky diner and had sticky buns. “I think I misunderstood your ad,” he said, almost right away.

“Don’t be so sure,” she said, and why had she said that, and why was she wearing the boots?

“I thought you were looking for a friend or maybe something more,” Joe said. “You know what? This is a bad idea. It’s just that the love left my life so I answered this ad. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t have a lot of money but I’m employed and even you could say I do noble work. There was even a day once, or something, when everybody loved me, but not really since my wife has my love really arrived, if you know what I mean.”

“Well,” Helena said, wondering if the place served drinks or just wine. “I have the opposite problem, or maybe even worse.”

“Listen to you,
maybe even worse
,” Joe said. “You have a sexy accent.”

“I know,” Helena said, and this is another good example of why behave this way? Things just poured out of her mouth lately, like vomit, and sometimes it actually was.

“You’re money,” came out of Joe’s mouth in a new strategy.

“I’m the opposite of money,” Helena said.

“No, no, it means you’re a good person. I guess it means you’re hot, you’re money. It’s from a movie. Get it?”

“Well, you’re a vampire,” Helena said. “That’s from a movie, too.”

“Couldn’t we hang out and see where it goes or something?” Joe squinted and scratched his ear like it had an itch and he was scratching it. “I’m not some gross guy. Maybe I’m the male for you. I’m not going to say ‘I have a ten-inch cock’ or something.”

Helena stood up. “You just said it. You just said that exact thing.”

Joe smiled and threw down some money for his half of the bill. “Well, I’ll never say it again,” he said, but Helena never knew if he said it again because the two of them took their searches elsewhere and did not meet for years. Now, though, Helena considered Tony and his story with the wild nights, baby. She has his picture and ten inches is actually a good guess. Her mother would tell her to throw this whole thing away, but Helena decided something herself. This part of the story doesn’t have any mothers. They’re all gone, the mothers of us all, like the money you spent. Imagine the vanish of the weight if the advice of your mother never existed. They tell us things, unless we have no mothers, and either way things turn out such that nothing you’ve ever heard is any help. Yes it’s love, but how
would we love differently, without our mothers? I wrote a book about this and some people thought there was too much sex.

The Black Elephant Masked Ball turned out to be a Masked Ball held at the Black Elephant, a bar over on Grand. Helena found the listing right away. It cost money to go, but there were quite a few of these events lately. San Francisco had experienced its own catastrophe. It hadn’t killed nearly as many people as you might think, so the citizens were left nervous and giddy and also thirsty, and it might also explain why Helena bought more cigarettes and fought with people and cried, too. The night of the ball was the same as the night David said he would get home. She could spend the last money handful cooking a meal and waiting for the plane to land, or she could go to the Ball and keep an eye on Tony. She decided to go at the last minute, when she was watching TV. “What happens when the hunter,” the narrator asked, but Helena was tired of it becoming the hunted. Why does the hunter have to become the hunted every night? Couldn’t the hunter go to the Black Elephant?

Helena couldn’t afford a mask but she had a dress as sexy as her accent, and she found a thick black marker and drew a mask over her real face.
Is this a good idea
, she asked herself, in the mirror,
and, also, if you can hear this voice, you’re crazy
. She put Tony’s letter and naked picture in her purse, which is where Helena kept all her important mail. It was a badly, badly ripped purse and inside was a sheaf of undelivered letters to—drat, she’s here after all—her mother. “Ever been to the Black Elephant?” asked the cabdriver, who was not Andrea by the way.

“I’m British,” Helena said. “I’m British and I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Well, have a good night,” the driver said. Outside, the Black Elephant was a view. The walls were very plain but there was an elegant sign with the name of the place and a terse sketch of an elephant in nice black ink. It was a good sign. Helena paid to get in and Tony Tony Tony was right there.

Inside the light was like that of a lava lamp although there were no lava lamps around. Instead there was a big tank of women employed as mermaids over the bar, and a large screen shining beautiful old movies. Helena watched for a moment as a woman with ice crystals around her eyes decimated a man in a hat with a spiral of snow pouring out of her cape, and then she sat and looked at the list of drinks she could buy. They had everything, and a few things she hadn’t heard of. She almost ordered a Motherless Child just for the name but it had egg whites in it, which is very wrong, like wearing shorts in the winter or going on a cruise ship or a decorative animal made of butter or the worry and worry of money while we’re trying to be happy and enjoy ourselves. So she ordered a Morning Sickness, which was a mixture of champagne and Italian red wine and this was about as good an idea as drawing a mask on your face.

“Hey, Tony,” she said, which was another one.

“Hey,” Tony said, over the music. “Do I know you?”

“Nah,” Helena said. “I just think you’re money, Tony. I think you’re hot like lava,” and why say these things?

Tony also had a mask on, but he was still Tony, and grinned at her. “I used to say that all the time,” he said, “but now it’s like you can’t tell the volcano jokes or people think you want to blow up buildings.”

“I don’t want to blow up buildings,” Helena said. “I think it’s stupid to blow up buildings.”

Tony slid on down and sat next to her. “Tony,” he said.

“Money, I mean Helena,” Helena said.

Tony laughed. “Money,” he said. “You drink too much? I like that in a woman. My last girl was a girl I lived with who drank too much. It was a whole year.”

“What happened to her?” Helena said.

Tony answered but over the music Helena could not tell “fire” from “fired.” “But she was for the birds. Tell me your story.”

“I am also for the birds,” Helena said. “My mother doesn’t exist, and I published a novel last year.”

“Like a book?” Tony said, catching the bartender’s eye and pointing to himself. “What’d you call it?”

Helena sighed. Why talk about this, with a love story yet to be written? “
Glee Club
,” she said.

“
L Club
?” Tony said. “Like the band who does yes yes yes, oh baby yes?”

“Glee
Club
,” Helena said. “
Glee
!”