Shorts - Sinister Shorts (32 page)

Laura's reply came instantly. “The one in the yellow sundress.”

Fan.

“Go get her.” She stepped aside.

He ran.

The authorities in Puerto Rico arrested the woman in the yellow sundress just as she was trotting toward a plane for St. Kitts, ran her face and stats through their computers.

Fan was their bogus mom.

Baby was returned home to his, as it turned out, frantic family in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Daniel and Laura flew to Tortola and stayed for three weeks at a villa near Smuggler's Cove, Olga be damned. Laura loved the air, the humidity, the silver waves. Daniel loved Laura.

“Now,” he said that first night, the one where she wore the slinky black nightie until, four piña coladas past the yardarm, he tore it off her with his teeth. “How did you know it was her?”

“She got off the plane with a baby on her shoulder and a bottle in her hand. So where was her diaper bag?

“No insecure new mom goes anywhere without a pile of changes, activities, toys. She had one diaper, two bottles, no bag. I couldn't help wondering, where's the stuffy, the rattle, the plastic key set? Where's Shamu the stuffed whale?”

Daniel said, “I owe you, honey.”

“Then pay up,” Laura said, and he grabbed her.

To Still the Beating of Her Heart

Leaving the shop behind, Claude stepped outside onto the street and took a deep breath of car fumes. He wrinkled his nose and finding that insufficient defense, blew it on an immaculate handkerchief. He zipped his new leather jacket, walked toward the subway, then stopped, laughing a little at himself. Habit, old scripts. He had plenty of cards and cash nowadays. He scanned the street for taxis, but saw none. Hands in his pockets, he reflected on the circumstance that had led him into the perfume business. He loved the smell of women. He drank in their radiant skin the way other men guzzled fine wine. His father, trained at the Henri Jacques Parfum House in France, had left him the San Francisco shop when he died, probably worried about Claude. “A man needs an occupation,” he used to scold, “even a gentleman.” After the inheritance, crazy in love with Clea, with an excellent education in French literature but no calling, Claude discovered the latent talent hidden in his untrained but eager nose.

He waved a yellow cab down, got inside, and shut the cold wind out. Today had been unusually successful. Four Asian females, all beautiful, all petite and dark with hair that gleamed like dripping oil, had bought out the majority of his stock of his most precious French scents, the ones he had manufactured especially for his shop. He had a special connection to the factory outside of Eze. The town hovered pretty as a sprawling vacation villa above the Mediterranean, and was very near where his father's relatives all lived, and where he had spent the majority of his childhood until the divorce, when his mother had brought him to the States to live near her family. He thought perhaps something floral would suit them, heavy on the tuberose, beeswax, and rose de May, with a slight tickle of sweet honey.

Bantering, friendly, fun-loving, these Asian customers knew how to make a good day great, how to flirt with a man, how to make him feel-manly. On the way out, the prettiest of the group slipped her business card into his pocket, whispering, “I'll be back at the hotel by eight tonight. Call me.”

Unbidden images invaded his mind. Six years of happy marriage had inured him to such invitations, but recently, he felt pulled in an unfamiliar way. He felt a weakening, a lack of moral musculature where there once was brawn. Still, he did not want another woman. Another woman would not be Clea. He wanted Clea back, the way she was the day he met her.

The trip to their home in Noe Valley shouldn't take more than ten minutes from downtown San Francisco, but tonight, with rush hour in full roar… the halts and jerks of the cab irritated him, obliterating the last traces of his good mood. He began to picture Clea, at the window at home, waiting for him, her beady, unmascaraed eyes never wavering from the street.

Beautiful, she had been, with her flaming red hair, her perfect body and intense intelligence. Passionate, loving, the ideal model for his products, Clea was his vision of female perfection. She looked as she was, like a woman with a career of her own, thoughts, opinions, life, so much life. Everything a man could want, she had been.

No longer.

Now she waited for him, and he felt her waiting like a cable car slipped off the track on Powell Street, going downhill and coming at him. He would show up in the taxi, pay the man, get out, and wave at her face in the window. He would try not to look, but he would feel the onslaught of her need. He saw it coming, and he was paralyzed in its face. He would be flattened, reduced to a blot of blood in the dirt between the tracks.

As he paid too much for the taxi, he steeled himself for the charge, turned, and smiled at the pale moon-face that glowed like a headlight.

For a long time after the accident, he had believed Clea would get better. Her doctors told them there was hope that she would improve over time.

They lied.

Hurting, he watched the changes reduce her. Her skin, once a lovely pink, drained and tinged to blue. The cantering of her mind-they had taken so much pleasure in the evenings together talking by the fire, entertaining each other with tales of their days and the people that mesmerized them like the characters in her films-ceased. Conversations drifted away, sabotaged by a narcotized mind. She slogged behind him now like a snail, leaving a sticky trail of regret for what was, and what would never again be.

Where before, Clea held his heart in her hands, his worshipful attendance on her after the accident had subtly altered the balance of power and thrown the weight of their lives entirely upon him. He toiled in the world, she stayed home. He brought whatever life there was to this house which would otherwise fall rank with decay as a deserted shack. Once upon a time, she could inspire a frenzy of lust with a brush of eyelash upon cheek. Now when her eyelashes brushed her cheek, he felt only relief. Would she fall asleep early? Could he, just this once, sit in his study and read the newspaper, like a normal man in a normal house?

So over time, he who swore eternal love faltered. Grated to shreds with emotion on a day when she had cried inconsolably for two solid hours, he decided to tackle the issue coldly. Like a scientist collecting data, for the past few weeks he had observed his reactions and Clea's; he graphed them, and now he had reached a conclusion.

His feelings had altered, inexorably. His perfect wife had become his gothic madwoman in the attic. Her tiny moans worked on him like screams in a horror movie, making him jump. No matter how well he kept the elements of his life separate, smiling through his days in the city, stronger by the minute in his business, every day when he came home, she shambled from the background into the foreground and choked the screen with her colossal presence.

He hated her.

However, the more he considered, the more he wanted to preserve the idea of them as they used to be. Clea must never know what the graph showed, its remorseless descent. That would break her heart. She deserved love, and he would continue to make her believe in it as a tip of the hat to their past shared happiness.

If along the way the effort had become exhausting, if, in spite of his best efforts, cracks had appeared in his facade, well, he was human. He had seen her tilt the angle of her head at the sight of the new model, for instance. He had seen her moment of uncertainty, and his pity welled at the sight.

As he pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the front door to the claustrophobic miasma of antiseptic, bleach, and sick, he promised himself he would renew his efforts to keep her happy. Later tonight, after she fell into her usual drugged stupor, he would give her a last chance. He would examine the emotional graph one last time, inspecting his heart for dishonor. He would convince himself that killing her was by far the best solution to her problem, and she would die securely in the warm bosom of their love.

Sad, things coming to this. If only he hadn't taken on the role of white knight. He was ill-suited to the position, he knew now.

Right after the accident, Clea had wanted to die. As soon as she had regained some mobility, she tried to overdose on pills, then tried to drown herself in the low laundry sink, holding her head underwater until she passed out and he had found her. She cried nonstop. She tore at her hair. She screamed at him. She hurled herself to the floor, and one time, tried to roll herself down the stairs. After that, they kept her on the first floor. When she couldn't do it herself, she begged him to help her die. Fortunately, or so he thought at the time, she hadn't done any real damage to herself. These incidents, coming during the full flush of his savior complex, made him feel protective. He had thrown all his energy into making her feel cherished so that she would never consider such a thing again.

Stupidity. Clea had been right. She foresaw the bitter ending before he did.

They could not continue like this. He hated the man she now made of him. He hated their life together. But what other life was there for her without him? He had taken the truth away from her. The lie she lived rendered her unfit to participate in these painful deliberations. As he had several times before, he pictured telling her the truth, that he didn't love her. A vision of her face hearing the news flashed before him. This repulsive image filled him with businesslike energy. He would decide what constituted a merciful future for both of them.

He cleared his throat, the better to inject false joviality. “Clea,” he said. “Darling.” He leaned over to kiss her lips, still soft, closing his nose against the smell of her, the dirty-hair smell the nurse had not managed to eradicate, the smell of ointments, emollients, and chemicals, with no aesthetics, no pleasures for a man with an educated nose.

***

The sight of Claude outside made Clea's heart pound shallow and fast. With him, came pressure. When he leaned down to kiss her, she felt afresh the wheelchair, the indignities of the day, her pain, her fears. She breathed harder, her asthmatic lungs contracting with her emotions. He floated in on a wave of fresh air, smiled, and made her wonder at his horrific tenacity. When had his love become such a burden?

He loved her so much and he so depended on her. Even in her immediate hysteria after the accident, she recognized that she had to protect Claude. Claude was squeamish in a way a woman never would be. He found earthly things squalid. He read the newspaper for its politics and sports, skipping over headlines of mayhem and crime. Everyday domestic demands puzzled him, laundry, dishes, cleaning. They didn't fit in to the picture he had of life, a kind of impressionistic bliss, removed from drudgery. Really, it was lucky, his father leaving him the shop. Perfume sugarcoated his world, keeping it sweet the way he needed it.

Unfortunately, Claude was more figurehead than businessman. The shop operated at a loss, and she did all of its business even now, figuring the accounts, writing his letters, signing paperwork in his name, covering his debts. She never publicly acknowledged his failures. In fact, she collaborated with him on his public pose as a success. She didn't mind. She felt useful in this one regard, and it did help keep Claude happy.

Soon after her injury, after recovering her spirit, she decided to stake out his arrival home from work with unwavering loyalty. She owed him that, even though many days, waiting endless minutes, often in pain, plastering a grin on her face at the sight of him while screeching inside, her daily waits for his return from work had become as much ordeal as tradition. He seemed to love the formal reception, saying once, “I feel so cherished,” and another time, “You are everything to me.”

Clea appreciated his devotion and knew she needed to show an equal commitment, but she wasn't foolish. They would never regain the closeness they had lost. They weren't two peas in a pod anymore. She lived in one, in an arid, harsh garden. He flourished nearby, in another universe where there was shade and moisture. She depended on him for nourishment, for things as basic as water.

She depended too much on him. That eroded everything every day. That compromised her love.

Nowadays the only acting she did was to maintain this sham of a relationship.

Awful the way things changed…

Agitated, as she always seemed to be in his presence these days, her heart continuing its erratic flip-flops, Clea could barely catch her breath to speak. “Claude?”

He nodded, but continued on his way toward the bedroom.

“I need to tell you something. I've made a decision.”

“Okay,” he said. His voice muffled as he went into the bathroom. He closed the door. She heard running water.

She wheeled herself away from the window, where air slipped through cracks and made her shiver, toward the fire. She ran into a plush armchair, one she used to sit in in the evenings, studying her lines and chatting with Claude. Joking, laughing, crying over a lost role, griping about her colleagues. He would sweep her up in his arms, turn on some music, and they would dance… She tried to kick it, but her foot ignored the message of her emotions. She passed by the chair consumed with frustration, settling in as close as she could to the fire without getting burned.