Centuries of June (33 page)

T
he baseball that had been stuck in the door dislodged, falling to the tiles with a wet splat and rolling across the room to the little boy, who picked it up at once, considered biting the sphere as though it were a red-seamed white fruit, thought better of the idea, and then threw it with great exuberance against the porcelain side of the bathtub, the ricochet sending the ball spinning back through the opening into the hallway, smacking a newel post on the banister, and bounding down the staircase two or more steps at a time, caroming off the wall, till it reached the front door where it stopped with a bang. Surprised by his own strength and the physics set in motion, the tot blinked and clapped for himself, uncertain as to what had just happened. I recognized the shocked perplexity on the boy’s face and felt a sense of kinship, for I had been in that same semiconfused state from the moment I struck my head, or, should I say, my head was struck for me.

We all stared at Adele. Just above her heart, tattooed on the bare skin of her left breast, were two crossed baseball bats.

“Bad odds about your fella,” the old man said. “A tough break, but at least you didn’t wait your whole life like our friend Dolly.”

With the heel of her hand, Adele rubbed the tip of her nose to fight back the impulse to cry. “No, I didn’t wait. But I never forgot him, brash as he was, and the way he made me feel, and I never forgave him for it either. And what makes you think I wanted Charlie Wells, always on the wrong end of the bargain? Why did you go and have to lose your temper and challenge those men with the bats?”

Had I been tempted to explain, that query would have been the window to jump through. Instead, I pretended to look in the mirror, check the condition of my gums, and worry over the steady retreat of my hairline. No question I was getting older, and perhaps Sita was right to insist that I come to some conclusions and make some decisions about my life. On the other hand, I had all the time I hadn’t used yet. What’s the hurry?

“Makes me mad,” Adele said. “To think what might have been, and how in the end, we never even had one night together. What’s the use of virtue if all it buys you is regret? You men had it so much easier …” She stopped suddenly and pursed her lips, scrunched her brow, seething with frustration, and her face turned flame red. Something fell from the sky and struck the roof, startling me, but like the first drops pancaking on a sidewalk, the percussion quickened and intensified to a constant rippling roar. I looked through the tiny window. Outside it was hailing baseballs. Bouncing at crazy angles of destruction, the balls smacked against the roof and within minutes a single layer covered the ground.

Over the din, the old man waved and gestured for Adele’s attention. “You did not miss much.”

She looked right through me, as though I was gauze, as though I was nothing, and thus appeased, she stopped the storm. The last of the baseballs fell from the sky and melted into the stack. “It’s like a giant ice
cream sundae,” Marie said, and all of the women gathered around her at the window to see the mounds of white drizzled with strawberry sauce. The old man took the opportunity of their distraction to spring to my side and offer his advice.

“Some act of contrition might be nice. An outward display of penance. Sackcloth and ashes.” He could readily see the depths of my misapprehension. “If I performed a trepanning and had a peek at your gray matter, do you think I might detect the far-off glimmer of cognition flickering in your hippocampus?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Right, so.” He shook his head slowly. “I suppose you would not. Relate to me, then, your memory of the she-fish and how they escaped by swimming through the keyhole.”

“Hah, that’s a laugh. Boy, you’ve got a vivid imagination.”

He appeared bemused by my remark.

“They walked out,” I said, “just like they walked in.”

“On their fishy tails?”

“Have you lost your mind? Of course not on their tails, but on their legs. I was peeping through the keyhole when someone inside turned on the shower, hot, hot water till the whole room steamed up and I couldn’t make out anything through the fog.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just bust in anyhow. Can’t think of a more prurient fantasy than the girls’ locker room after the showers.”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” I lied. It was a little bit like that, not entirely, but somewhat prurient; that is to say, I was interested enough to strain my sight at the keyhole, but when the room became too steamy, there was no longer the same potential. “I waited for them in the hallway like a perfect gentleman.”

The kid said something that sounded like “my arse,” but it could just as easily have been nonsense sounds. Or “Meyers,” whoever that might be.

“How long did you wait?” the old man wondered.

“A long time. Interminable.”

“Did you happen to check your watch and note the time?”

“My watch was broken when I fell,” I said. He scratched his head as if pondering some conundrum. I decided to press on. “At last, the doorknob rotated and out they came in billowing vapors, as if in a dream or some cheesy horror movie with dry-ice mist on the moors. They had changed clothes, or rather lost their tails altogether, and now donned Coco Chanel dresses and cloche hats. They were Jazz Age flappers, voh-doh-dee-oh-doh and bobbed hair and long strands of pearls or floor-length scarves. Ready to do the Charleston.”

“Did they provide you with a change of costume? Long tails and a Charlie Chaplin bowler hat?”

“No, just my robe. No bowler.”

“That’s too bad,” the old man said. “I’ve long thought that the bowler hat is due for a comeback. We should be wearing them at least, like a pair of tramps eternally waiting in the comedy of time.”

“Sorry, no bowler,” I said. “I suppose this means you are not Beckett after all?”

“If I were Beckett,” he said, “there would be bowlers.”

“Laurel and Hardy wore them.”

“They are called derbies in America. Al Smith wore one during the 1928 presidential election, and it may have cost him the job. And Mercier and Camier, and those two tramps in
Godot.
”

“What were their names?”

“I can never remember,” the old man said. And then after an interlude, he spoke again. “They were great comedic teams.”

“Do you think we would be better off with bowlers?” I asked.

He looked at me with what can only be described as love. “I think we are a great team even without the bowlers.”

Having popped out the window screen, the women were scooping
ice cream from the roof and piling it in cones fashioned from old manila cardboard dividers taken from the archives boxes. Even the little boy was enjoying a taste, for his mouth was rimmed with cream and strawberry sauce.

A puppet’s grin split the old man’s face. “They’re having fun, aren’t they? Of course, they deserve it after all they’ve been through.”

“You mean the stories they’ve been telling of their past lives?”

“That goes without saying. Not just the stories, but the lives themselves, those count for something. And having to entertain you—”

“They were like a floor show, those flappers. One of them, the one we haven’t seen yet, played the ukulele and sang the ‘Hong Kong Blues’ and ‘Paper Moon,’ and they formed a conga line and sashayed from the bathroom to the bedroom.”

The old man peered out into the hallway. “That’s hardly long enough to fit seven people.”

“Eight. I was at the end of the conga and there was a lot of hip swinging but very slow forward progress. Just as I got to the door, the ukulele player slammed it shut in my face, and there I was again in the hall, waiting all by myself. Behind the closed bedroom door, there was a tremendous commotion, laughter and giggling, and heavy objects tossed about the room, like they were having a pillow fight—”

Clucking his tongue like a mother hen, the old man stopped me in midsentence. I was getting good at reading his moods, and he seemed displeased with where my story was heading. “Typical schoolboy dreams. Fantasy of the most infantile sort, the nubile maids in their nighties thrashing each other with overstuffed pillows, feathers floating in the air. Skin and taffeta and more skin.” As the images infiltrated his brain, his eyes widened. “By God, this is good stuff.”

“After a while, the commotion stopped, and dead silence from behind the door. I looked through the keyhole, which again I don’t recall
being there before, but pitch darkness greeted my sight no matter how I positioned my eyeball. With one finger, I gingerly pushed the door, and it swung open slowly. The light from the hallway did not penetrate the blackness of the bedroom, but in fact, the usual order reversed and the darkness spilled into the light to the point where I could not see my feet below me and my hands disappeared when I stuck out my arms. Someone tittered in the heart of darkness and gave me the courage to go on. Not being able to see a thing, I tottered forward, following that fetching giggle.”

“A case,” the old man said, “of the blonde leading the blind.”

Once again he was pelted with small objects for his troubles. Pill bottles and stolen hotel shampoo bottles and an exfoliating sponge. Even the boy caught the spirit and overturned his ice cream cone on the old man’s bare toes. When he felt how cold it was, the old fellow let out a whoop and danced on one foot, to the child’s delight.

“The farther I went, the darker it became. As a general rule, I prefer a dark bedroom, especially for sleeping, with the blinds drawn to block out the light, which always seeks out any chinks or the slightest crackling so that even a dark room has gradations, shades of black if you will, and after the eyes have adjusted, one can make out bulky shapes and masses at the very least. But this was the darkest place I’ve ever been. Darker than a closet in a dark room. Darker than a trunk in the closet in the dark room. Darker than a sealed box in the trunk in the closet—”

“Yes, very dark, I get it,” the old man said. He was wiping his foot with a washcloth.

“All I could do in such a room was to follow the sound of their breathing. Stretch out my hands in front to sweep the air for obstacles, and rely upon spatial memory, that the bed was so many steps from the doorway, the night table to its left as I faced the bed, but that memory
proved false, for I kept on walking and walked for a long time until a hand grasped my forearm and pulled me hard to the bed, where I collapsed into a sea of blankets. A spotlight came on near the foot of the bed, and there atop a piano sat one of the chanteuses, spilling from a leather bustier, legs in fishnet stockings, lips blood red, and a bowler cocked over her brow. She winked, and the light snapped off, only to spring on several paces to her left. There in the second spotlight stood another woman in a costume made of bubbles, transparent balloons strategically arranged, and when the first one popped, the light shifted to the third woman, partially hidden behind a fan of feathers. One leg, bare to the hip, snaked out in front of her fan. The fourth was a Godiva, blonde hair down to her bottom, atop a white mare, though I instantly wondered about the logistics of maneuvering that horse on the stairs. The fifth was a French maid teasing with her duster and her ooh-la-la. The sixth was a starlet in a strapless sequined gown that left nothing to the imagination. The seventh was clad entirely in form-fitting leather, even her face hidden in a leather mask, brandishing a bullwhip. She flicked it and the tip nearly took off my tip. When the last light went out, we were once more plunged into black ink, and the bed itself moaned in anticipation.”

I stopped to look about the bathroom to see if anyone else was listening to our conversation, not that I feared they would contradict my account, but because I was suddenly conscious of their feelings and struck with the notion that providing further detail might be unchivalrous, particularly since the participants were within earshot. Fortunately, nobody paid any mind to me. Adele was sitting on the edge of the tub having her hair done in French braids by Marie. Flo and Alice and Dolly appeared to be engaged in a contest to see who could most quickly slurp the ice cream from the bitten-off bottoms of their cones. Jane had the babe in arms at the sink playing with some miniature plastic—at least I hope they were plastic—sea serpents in the water. Even the old man seemed
glazed over, but when I caught his eye, he smirked and nodded. “So, what is it like to go to bed with seven women at one time?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “There were eight.”

“You inconsiderate bastard. Eight?”

“Yes, the seven and another waiting for me in the bed.”

“Where did you even know to begin with eight?”

“Here’s the strange thing, though. It seemed like one woman with eight mouths, countless arms, hands, breasts, legs. I could not keep up with her, them, and every moment was chaos and soaked through with pleasure. I could not see a thing but only felt the curve of flesh over bone, roundness, the swell of tissue, the fissures and holes, the softness of skin, and wet hidden places. The smell of them different each to each, and yet the same musky heat and taste of mint and enamel and last night’s dinner and tangle of hair and perfume. Too many hands on me. Like having sex with a goddess in a bowler hat. Eight limbs, pinned down, devoured, spent. Ecstasy, yes, but too much and too brief. All washing me out to sea before I could tell what in the world was going on. I remember falling into a stupor, a kind of sleep, wanting to stay and experience it all again, but more slowly drowning, for something was wrong with me. I had hit my head and I was out.”

“Too bad you weren’t wearing a bowler,” the old man said. “They are usually very hard and stiff, and you may not have been hurt when you hit your head. Oh, don’t look so shocked. I once knew a man named Idaho Slim who liked to have sex wearing chaps and spurs and a ten-gallon hat, and, of course, there is Mr. Meyers who could only diddle with a sash around his middle. And Mrs. Wilma Houghton-Thorne who only screws while wearing alligator shoes. Takes all kinds. What’s a bowler hat in bed? A trifle, a jaunty jape, a sign that one is not too serious when it comes to the old slap and tickle.”