The Stud Book (34 page)

AKA said, “That’s his job.”

Arena pushed away the distraction of AKA’s hand.

He said, “Why do you go there?” Now he sounded exactly like her mom—her mom in a guy suit. The conversation was going off course. Arena needed an ally.

“He’s read a lot,” she said. “I go to talk about heaven, death. The big mysteries.”

“You can talk about heaven right here.” He pulled her closer.

“Seriously. I mean, what’s the point of life, if we’re just going to die?”

“You’re not the first person to wonder.” He inched toward her, and he kissed her. He ran a hand under her shirt.

Arena put her hand over his. She stopped him.

She didn’t know if she wanted that hand under her shirt. There was the scar, near her shoulder. That scar had been there as long as she could remember. It was hers, and it was private.

It was the scar from the car wreck. Her dad, his death, his life, drawn in stitches that had melted into her skin. Sometimes she listened to his records and touched the scar and could almost remember back when she had a dad.

She said, “Mack’s not trying to convert anyone.”

AKA sat up and started unlacing a high-top. His shoelaces made a slapping sound as he pulled each one through the eyelets. He said, “He’s afraid of death.”

“He’s not afraid to think about it.” Arena kicked her worn shoes off easily, one toe against the heel of the other.

AKA tossed one of his shoes toward his closet. He said, “He’s afraid to die alone so he made up a religion.” He unlaced his second shoe.

Arena said, “He didn’t make it up. It’s from the Egyptians, and scientists. It’s a collage of super-respected ideas.”

AKA said, “What I know is, people who’re afraid to die alone? They’re the scariest crew, fueled with apocalyptic fantasies.”

“I don’t think he’s an apocalypse guy,” Arena said.

Her phone rang again. They lay side by side and listened to the short bar of dance music. Arena said, “I can’t wait to move out.”

AKA said, “If you’ve got a free place to live, and decent meals, I wouldn’t ditch it too soon.”

Arena said, “My mom has all these ideas.…”

“Like keeping you safe?” he asked.

“Like keeping me trapped,” she whispered. The phone gave up; the ringing stopped.

He said, “You know, I actually own a house and an acre and a half of woods.” As he said it, he wrapped one broad, long-fingered hand around her thin wrist. The gesture fell somewhere between hand-holding and handcuffs.

“You’re joking.” Sometimes he said things like that. She looked into his eyes, practiced, but this time it didn’t feel like practicing. It felt natural. He was the first person whose eyes didn’t make her gaze skitter.

He said, “It’s in Boring. A farmhouse, with land. In the winter and spring, there’s a pond in back.” Oregon land was dotted with vernal ponds—shallow seasonal ponds that soaked into the ground and dried up in the summer sun.

Boring was a town outside of Portland. The name was a local joke.

She said, “Right. A country estate. And why would you live here?”

He shook his shaggy hair and peeled himself away from her.
She felt the draft against her feet where his feet had been. He stood up and shuffled through a clutch of papers. He crossed the room and looked in one warped drawer of his old spindly desk. He closed that one and opened another drawer. He flipped through his stacks until he found a photo, and he handed it to Arena. “Proof.”

It was a picture the size of the photo from the Kirlian photography machine. But this one was a picture not of orange energy, but of a pale green house with a gravel driveway and a tire swing hanging from a crooked apple tree. A dog stood in the sun. A tanned shirtless kid ran barefoot across the lawn. There was a mailbox up close, near where the photographer must’ve been standing.

“I’ll take you there.”

Arena looked at the house, a one-story box.

He put a finger to the photo, as she held it. Arena had never seen AKA smoke, but she could smell smoke on him, and his fingers were stained from nicotine. His nails were bitten low.

The kid in the picture wore torn shorts. His face was as wide and open as the face on his soft-eared dog. The two of them looked happy. The house was big-eyed and welcoming, like it didn’t know a gutter had fallen off. The boy was the same. AKA pointed a nicotine-stained finger at the kid in the picture. He said, “That, right there. That boy is me.”

H
umble walked in the side door of their house, and there was Georgie with Bella in one arm, her other hand in a bowl making meatloaf: raw hamburger mixed with raw egg clung to her wrist. Jesus, Humble thought. It was a bowl of salmonella, E. coli, parasites—could she get their baby any closer to death?

Thump-thump
.

The white noise machine was on.

Bella was still awake, her round eyes two little walnuts. The house was warm and smelled overripe with tomato sauce, a bowl of apples, and noodles boiling on the stove. Humble was drunk and trying not to be, mostly glad to see Georgie and his baby girl but also guilty—he said he’d be home earlier; did it matter that he wasn’t? He was always guilty. Home was where the guilt lived. He smiled and said, “Hey.”

The single word came out slurry, longer than it needed to be: “He-e-e-ey.”

Thump-thump
.

Georgie, her pale skin splotched, looked tired, like she had too much face and not enough features; and with that sound track the house was absolutely creepy. “Welcome home,” she said.

Was that sarcasm? He couldn’t tell. He’d turned away just then and dropped his keys on the table.

He said, “Did you get to those life insurance papers?”

She hadn’t. The papers were still on the table, now ringed with a beer stain. The heartbeat machine kept up its rhythm. “What if you died today?” the life insurance papers asked, through the stain.

Any minute now
, he thought. Any minute and she’d ask where he’d been, how many drinks he had. Who counted drinks?

She’d say, “So you’re drinking alone again?”

He drank alone, except for all the other people in the bar, and the bartenders, and everybody who’d learned the dead girl game and called him “Dead Man” because that was his nickname these days and he didn’t mind. He drank alone except for Justine, this twentysomething with big tits who showed up with her skater boyfriend and a rotating cast of girls, and this guy named Max, who said he just got fired from Taco Del Mar. Humble was like their dad, if they drank with their dad.

“Why’s the machine on if she’s awake?”

“I was just about to put her down,” Georgie said. She mixed bread crumbs into the meatloaf.

He waited for her to say something as he put his coat on the back of a dining room chair. He used the toes of one foot to coerce the heel of his shoe off the other foot, and as he did he tipped and started to stumble. He put two hands on the back of the chair and acted like that was what he meant to do: He meant to hold on to the chair, do a little dance, and work his shoes off. His socks were wet with sweat and rainwater that had seeped in on his way home. He kept his eyes on his shoes as he took them off but felt Georgie and Bella waiting.

“Every time I change her diaper, it’s clean.” Georgie said.

“What’s that?” Humble said. He’d been prepared for a different grievance. This was a relief. He said, “Then don’t change ’em. Sounds like you’re makin’ work.”

Georgie stepped into the living room and picked a dirty diaper off the coffee table. Like she’d saved it. She said, “Look at this.” She held the diaper in the air and bobbed it up and down. It was like a fat pelican. “There’s two pounds of pee.”

Her wrist was covered in raw hamburger.

“Throw that out, Jesus.” Humble ducked around the diaper. Did he want that in his face? Did she really expect him to look at it?

She said, “They’re all like that. She’s not dehydrated, but she hasn’t pooped in days.”

“Days? I doubt it.” Hum walked into the kitchen. He opened the fridge. Georgie and the baby and the diaper full of pee followed.

Georgie said, “I can’t remember her last poop.”

So Georgie counted drinks and counted shitty diapers. Humble said, “The house smells like baby shit. Somebody’s cranking it out.”

“That’s the diaper pail.” It was designed to keep odor in, and it didn’t. Usually it was up in Bella’s room. Now it sat by the front door. Georgie said, “I washed it and put baking soda in. But really, seriously, she hasn’t pooped for days.”

Thump-thump, thump-thump …

She held Bella close to her body, a heavy, wrapped bundle. Humble couldn’t see his own kid’s face. It was like they were merged, his wife and his baby.

Humble wasn’t ready to worry. He said, “Sounds like the perfect kid. Maybe she’s more evolved.” He found a bottle of Fat Tire amber ale in the crisper in the bottom of the fridge. Then he needed an opener. Why the hell couldn’t microbrews use screw tops?

He riffled through a drawer. They had, like, three openers—where did they all go? There was a latte frother, an olive spoon. He ran an impatient hand through the clutter, and a paring knife flipped out to the side. It swished between them. The knife fell blade first and stuck in their wooden floor.

“Humble!” Georgie’s voice was shrill. He couldn’t let that knife of a voice in. He let it go by like the wind. She said, “Somebody could’ve been hurt by that. You could’ve put Bella’s eye out, blinded your own daughter.”

That heartbeat in the background was driving him nuts. It made everything into a drama.

“Nobody’s blind.” He found an opener and opened his beer. It gave a satisfying crack and hiss.

Georgie picked up the knife. She said, “How much have you had to drink?”

There it was. Humble finished his swallow. He said, “You’re so predictable.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Georgie looked shaky. She said, “Oh, nice. You’re wasted, and that’s predictable. I’m sick of it.”

Hum said, “You threatening me?”

“What’re you talking about?” Georgie bounced the baby. She stepped back and forth, her bare feet on the kitchen floor.

“Put down the knife. I don’t talk to anybody holding a knife.” He took another drink of his beer.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Georgie tossed the knife in the drawer. “You’re crazy.”

“Name-calling,” Humble said, and turned to walk away.

Georgie followed. She said, “I don’t want to be the only one worrying here. You don’t get up when she wakes up. You don’t care if she has a rash. She hasn’t pooped in days. You think it’s a big joke.”

Her voice didn’t stop.

Humble turned around then. He said, “You’re tedious, you know that? You’re tedious.” He yelled it. It felt good to yell. Yes, maybe the neighbors could hear, their houses were close, but so what?

Georgie, her voice lower now, almost a whisper, said, “Don’t raise your voice around the baby.”

He yelled, “I don’t want to come home and talk baby shit!”

Georgie hissed, “This is not about what you want. I’m sick of being alone in this parenting thing.”

In the kitchen, a timer went off. The noodles were done. Still, they boiled on, and the heartbeat played in the background, and the timer sang its song. Georgie said, “You’re never even here.”

Humble watched her mouth move up and down. Her chin shook. Her chin never used to shake like that. She was talking but all he saw was that mouth moving and Bella screamed in her arms and he couldn’t hear over the screaming. It was two women, yelling. It was the story of his life: his mother, his sister, always this noise. His wife loved his jokes. This wasn’t her anymore.

“Who are you these days?” he said.

She said, “I’m not your mom. I’m not here to police you and keep you in line, and drag you in from the bars, like some big drunk baby—”

He reached a hand out and grabbed Georgie’s neck and slammed her into a wall and then she shut up and it was only Bella screaming. Georgie, her eyes wide with shock, wrapped both arms tight around
the baby, and held her close. Georgie’s neck was soft under Humble’s hand. There was a smell like a party now, like a moment from high school Humble could almost remember. It smelled good.

It was the smell of being unencumbered, out all night. It was the smell of freedom.

It was beer—his beer had spilled. The bottle was in his other hand, and the baby and Georgie were soaked. Georgie’s face was red. Her mascara bled into the creases under her eyes the way it did when she got sweaty in the heat of summer, and when they had sex, except now it was like she couldn’t see him, her eyes weren’t focused, and he let go.

She put a hand to her throat. She curled around Bella.

Humble turned away. He put his shoes on. Georgie said, “Humble?” She wasn’t crying but her voice cracked in a way that meant she was ready to. She said his name like it was a question. Then she hissed, “Get out.”

He was already going.

He had both shoes on now. He took his keys and went out the door. She followed him to the doorway. It was all he could do: leave. He could’ve killed her. He knew it. He knew it, and his heart pounded inside and his hands shook and he felt like somebody else, far away, not the man in the body that moved with him, and he walked. There was a rhythm to the lurch. His steps beat out a word: un-en-cumbered. All he’d done was push her away. By the throat, yes, but shit, he needed her to stop talking. The further he got from the house, the more he could believe he’d just overreacted, that was all. He wasn’t a complete bastard. Unencumbered. She wasn’t hurt.