Make Me Work (4 page)

The bare bulb in the ceiling was on, and Tommy was in the halo of yellow light with his Fender Stratocaster. He'd plugged his amp into the socket above the bulb, and if he didn't have it turned up all the way, Lisa didn't know what all the way could possibly be. It was monstrously loud. She could feel his fingers slither over the strings as though she were the guitar herself. His long brown hair waved around his face as he played one screaming blues lick after another.

It was more than Sparky could take. Her bandit's face appeared in the window. Tommy leaned into his amp for the feedback and fuzz of Hendrix at his most crazed, and smaller raccoon faces popped up next to Sparky's, dazed and confused. One by one they went over the sill like lemmings, pushed from behind by their mother.

Jesse had been woofing at the sky to protest the guitar, but the raccoon activity caught his eye. He ran across the yard on his tether and stood on his hind legs in disbelief, which caused Sparky to see that a large dog occupied the place where she'd pushed her babies. She flew out the window. Lisa dove for Jesse and wrestled him into the mud, and together they watched as Sparky herded her brood across the yard and up the trunk of a leafless maple tree. Their hunched forms stood out against the sky—a mother and three babies in the safe, high branches.

Tommy unpropped the window and slammed it shut. Lisa hadn't realized he'd stopped playing his guitar. She hadn't realized something else: the raccoons were so easy to see because they were bathed in moonlight. The moon was out, inside a big hole in the clouds. It wasn't raining anymore.

Tommy appeared on the lighted deck, squinting into the night. “Raccoons go away!” he called to the back yard, but no one answered. “I play blues for you, Lisa!” No one answered. He came down into the mud. Lisa was sprawled across her Labrador retriever in the foot-deep soup. “Hey, what happen?” Tommy said.

“Tommy T.,” said Lisa, wiping mud from her eyes. She unfastened Jesse's tether and let him go. He hit Tommy like a bomb. “My hero.”

Jesse went back on his wire run, and Tommy T. went in the shower. Lisa gave him her largest, longest robe—a pink terry-cloth one with satin lapels. She made him a plate of cheese and crackers, and left it on the counter with another beer. He'd piled his clothes outside the bathroom door. In her flowered kimono, she took his muddy things and hers to the washer downstairs. The raccoons were gone but not the fleas; they peppered her ankles as she hopped from foot to slippered foot. When she got back upstairs, Tommy had found the food and was eating it in the living room while inspecting her record collection. The pink robe, ankle-length when Lisa wore it, barely covered his knees. “You look ridiculous.” She giggled.

Tommy looked down and laughed at himself. “Great records!” he said.

“We get them for free. Your clothes'll be ready in an hour.”

She forgot that she couldn't start her washing machine and then hop in the shower. Cold water trickled on her toes. Tommy was not likely to run away without his jeans, but with men you never knew. Paradoxically, she wanted him to leave, so she could call her girlfriend, Sally, in town, and talk about him. When the water came back, she showered and hurried out. Tommy was making no attempt to run away. He was playing an obscure Willie Dixon album and singing along. She watched him from the doorway. He seemed so relaxed and happy. She thought twice about entering the living room in only a kimono, her wet hair combed straight back, but she couldn't very well get dressed and leave a foreign guest stuck in a bathrobe by himself. “You play great guitar,” she said.

“Thank you!” he said, and finally shook her hand. Then he kissed her.

“Tommy T.!” she whispered.

“Lisa disc jockey,” Tommy whispered back, putting his arms around her.

“Lisa Harrington,” she said, putting her arms around him.

Unearthly shrieks erupted from the basement. Tommy gasped and dropped his beer bottle. It hit him on the toe. He hopped to the kitchen with his foot in one hand and the foaming bottle in the other. “What is this?” he cried.

“I don't know!” Lisa said. Jesse began to howl in the yard. The shrieking in the basement was now joined by scraping and banging, and a screeching like innumerable nails on a blackboard. “I've never heard anything like this in my life!”

She looked out the pantry window. In the moonlight, Jesse was flying around on his wire like Peter Pan. She remembered the hippies' note, pinned to the basement door. “Let's just leave and come back in the morning!”

Tommy grabbed her flashlight from a shelf, put his boots on his bare feet, and slipped away, one slow step at a time, into the bedlam below. When he was gone, the telephone rang. Lisa snatched it from the wall. It was Mitchell.

“I can't talk to you now,” she said.

“What the hell is going on over there?” he said. “What's that noise?”

“I don't know. I think this house may be haunted or something.”

“Really. Well, I just called to tell you I've met someone. I didn't want you to hear it through the grapevine.”

It was the most considerate thing Mitchell had done in ages. Had he actually changed? She felt a pang of loss and regret. “Who? Who did you meet?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I'd like to know.”

“Her name's Diane. She works in that boutique on Main Street.”

“The leotard store?”

“Yeah, I guess that's what it is.”

“Not the little blond one.”

“Yeah, I guess she's little and blond.”

Lisa slammed the wall with her fist. “Mitchell, she's, like, ten years younger than I am! And you're six years older than me! You could be her father!”

“Why do people always focus on that?”

“I'll bet she wants to have a family, right?”

“I don't know, Lisa. I just started seeing her. You left me, remember?”

“Yeah, and this is why, you ass!”

The logic of this stopped him for a second. “Are you O.K. over there, Lisa? Yes or no.”

“No. And I found something out for you today. Elvis came from Mars.” She slammed the phone down and turned to find Tommy standing there.

“Guess what!” he said. He led Lisa down the deck steps and swung the flashlight on the house. Sparky was on the narrow ledge of the basement window, clinging there with her rear feet and scraping her front paws down the glass with a teeth-shattering screech. Behind the glass, a smaller version of Sparky clawed in a similar fashion, and screamed, while Jesse howled and bucked like a bronco in the moonlit yard. “I close baby inside!” Tommy said sheepishly.

“A
baby
is making that sound?”

“Want his mama!”

“What do we do now?”

He slapped the backs of his hands. “Gloves?”

In a kitchen drawer she found two oven mitts imprinted, for some reason, with maps of Montana, and practically made for raccoon wrangling. Tommy put them on, and Lisa put on her boots, and they went down into the cellar. At the far end, the baby was perched beside the window on a pipe. It stopped shrieking when she shone the flashlight in its eyes. With a deft maneuver, Tommy seized it in the mitts. Lisa moved the light into Sparky's face through the glass and swung the window up. Jesse's barking filled the room.

“I forgot the dog!” she said. “He's blocking their tree.”

“Get him away!” said Tommy.

Out in the yard, Lisa leashed Jesse and took him off the wire run. “No pull!” she cried, but he towed her halfway to the house like a water-skier. Lisa stopped him the way you stop in real waterskiing, by falling in. “Bad dog!” she cried, and hauled him back across the yard.

Tommy pushed the screeching baby out the window. It plopped into the soupy ground. Sparky jumped down and nosed it out of the mud, and together, mother and child, they crossed the yard and climbed the tree.

“I love lady mud wrestling,” said a voice behind Lisa. “Never saw it with a dog before, though.”

She spun around. Mitchell was standing at the edge of the house in his black leather jacket and paratrooper boots. Jesse yelped and bolted away, pulling Lisa off her feet again. She rose from the mud in a rage. “No pull, Jesse!” she screamed. “Mitchell, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Ah, my grateful wife. You were in trouble, so I rushed over to help.”

“Thanks, we don't need any.”

“Who's we?”

“Me and Jesse. See you, O.K.?”

“Lisa, I don't think so. I'm worried about you. Look at yourself.”

She reached a wild pitch of exasperation. “Hear that, Jesse?” she cried. “Your daddy's worried about me! He was never worried about me before!”

The back door opened, and Tommy stepped onto the deck above them. Sergeant Pepper got out again, too; he leaped onto the railing to rub against the corner post and meow at the moon.

“The place is haunted, all right!” said Mitchell. “Here's the ghost! What big teeth you have, my dear!”

Tommy lit their faces with the flashlight. “Ghost?” he said. “Teeth?” He came halfway down the stairs. “What man is this?” he asked Lisa.

“It's my husband,” she said.

“You put my leg on, Lisa!”

“This is Tommy,” Lisa told Mitchell. “He's from Poland.”

“What's he doing here?”

“He's not my boyfriend, Mitchell. He's fixing my car.”

“They do things funny in Poland.”

“He fell in the mud helping me. I'm washing his clothes.”

“You look nice in that robe, Tommy,” Mitchell said. “I gave that to Lisa for Valentine's Day once. Why don't you come down here? I don't like talking to people on stairs, especially when they're wearing my wife's underwear.”

“He doesn't live here, Tommy,” Lisa said. “We're getting divorced.”

“Why should Tommy care, Lisa? He's just fixing your car.”

Bravely, Tommy came down the stairs and stepped into the mud. Up in the house he'd looked silly in the knee-length pink robe, but now, his long hair brushing the satin collar in the moonlight, he looked like Galahad—transported here with the dress and manners of a more heroic age. Animals obeyed him. “You are man from music store,” he said to Mitchell.

“Yeah, that's right. Why? You shop in my store? I don't remember you. I'll have to give you a special deal from now on.”

Mitchell's tone of voice upset Jesse. He hunkered in the mud and barked.

“Can't you shut up the goddamn dog?” Mitchell said to Lisa.

“No bark!” Tommy said. Jesse cast his eyes at Tommy's feet and stopped barking. “Come!” Tommy said. When Jesse skulked to him, Tommy took the leash from Lisa and made Jesse heel and sit.

“Wow,” said Mitchell. “Look at that. How long you been training my dog, dude?”

“Your
dog!” Lisa said. “You hate this dog! You never wanted this dog!”

“How long you been seeing this guy?” Mitchell asked her. “You had him in the wings before you left, didn't you? You sent him to spy on me in my store. Maybe this has been going on for years, huh?”

“I met him this afternoon, Mitchell. You know why the dog obeys him? Out of respect, that's why. Think about it.”

“You need a new headshrinker, Lisa.”

“Headshrinker?” Tommy asked her.

His innocence was exhilarating. “It means a psychiatrist,” Lisa said.

“Crazy-people doctor?”

“That's right,” Mitchell said. “She's crazy, Tommy.”

“
He
's the crazy one!” Lisa said. “He thinks Elvis Presley's still alive!”

“There happens to be a lot of evidence he is,” said Mitchell.

A bark of laughter burst from Tommy's mouth. “Elvis is dead, mister!”

Mitchell flinched as though he'd been struck. “Don't you ever say that about Elvis, punk!”

“You're sick, Mitchell,” Lisa said. “You're not a well man.”

“I'm sick? I'll show you how sick I am!” he cried, and raised his hand.

“Stay!” Tommy yelled.

“You're next!” Mitchell screamed.

“He's all talk, Tommy!” said Lisa.

But this was something Tommy had no reason to believe. “Get him, Jesse!” he commanded, and unhooked the leash, and when Jesse left the ground you could tell that Mitchell had not been the daddy he should have been.

LATE EARLY MAN

“I was talking to your girlfriend this morning,” announces Anita, speaking from the carpeted floor of our editing suite, where she's sprawled like a stranded whale, her head cushioned by a coil of video cables, her silky blue harem pants pulled up over her knees. She's buffing her face with an ice cube as though taking a gravestone rubbing. After lunch she lost the ability to sit up in a chair, and I had to take over at the controls. Our suite contains the only air conditioner in all of Paradise Productions, and it broke down last night, and this is the two-week stretch of hell we go through every summer in Boston where you can't buy an air conditioner no matter how much money you're willing to spend. The hardware commando, Marco Tempesto, was supposed to come over and fix the one we have, but apparently he's too busy building one of his laser guns, or simulating reality on a computer somewhere. “She was telling me she wants you to do this to her,” Anita says.

I twiddle a knob on the console to stop the videotape. “Wants me to do what?”

“You know. Knock her up. Make her pregnant. I'm supposed to plant that suggestion in your mind.”

Anita has been with child now for as long as anyone can remember. The baby was due a week ago and there's still no sign that it plans to throw in the towel and come out. Everybody in the office lost the birth-date lottery; we had to make new guesses and put them in the hat all over again.

“Rebecca told you that?” I say. “When?”

“This morning. She was leaving for work when I came in. You were in the shower.”