Waveland (17 page)

“She's not doing too well,” he said. “She's not feeling so well in the world. She's suffered some discontinuities, if you know what I mean. Things aren't quite going her way.”

“That includes you?” Tony said.

Vaughn shook his head. “I don't know,” he said, his voice going slower and deeper, quieter. The kind of voice you use when you're really getting tired of the game, playing up the menace. Even he thought it was funny.

“What're you laughing at?” Tony said.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just thought of something.”

“What?” he said.

“It's nothing,” Vaughn said. “You leaving or what? I'm going up to bed.”

“You're going to let me stay here in the kitchen?” he said.

“No, you're not staying in the kitchen, Tony. I want you to get in your truck and go home and do what you do. Do it out of sight.”

“Oh, that's pretty,” he said.

“What can I say? You trashed her and now you're seeing her on the sly or whatever. She's upset. She's having some kind of breakdown. I'm trying to cover the goddamn thing, and here you are at three in the fucking morning in the front yard. I mean, for Christ's sake, can you get a clue here and back out?”

“Whoa,” Tony said.

“Yeah, that's right,” Vaughn said. “Whoa.”

“Tough guy,” he said.

“It's not about tough guy. It's about being tired and having
had enough. You know what I mean? Whatever you want to do is fine with me. Whatever she wants to do is fine with me. Whatever the two of you want to do together is fine with me. But if she turns up hurt, it's not fine with me. That's why I'm here and why I'm going to stay here. That's why you're not staying here. And that's about what I've got.”

Tony scratched his forehead as if he was thinking. “Well,” he finally said, “that makes some sense. You know what I mean?” He looked at Vaughn earnestly. “That makes a lot of sense. You make a lot of sense.” He looked at him again. “Tell me, are you a lot older than she is?”

“Some,” he said.

“You look older,” Tony said.

“Thanks,” Vaughn said.

Tony tipped the bottle up and drained it, put it on the middle of the kitchen table, stood up, pushed the chair back in gently. “The power of persuasion,” he said.

“Ain't it something.”

He smiled at Vaughn and held out a hand, and Vaughn took it and shook it, and then led Tony to the kitchen door, and Tony strode out like a gentleman.

Gail was sitting on the upstairs landing playing with a tiny electric train set she had bought Vaughn for his birthday one year. It was N-gauge tiny; the tracks were about a quarter inch apart; the cars were about two inches long. She had a little circle built, and she was running the train around in the circle. She had the red and silver engine, a boxcar, a flat car, a tanker car, and a little half-size caboose. She was watching
the train go around this twenty-four-inch circle. She was driving it real slow.

“So what'd he want?” she said.

“I guess you already know that.”

“What, are you mad at me or something?”

“Mad doesn't get it,” he said.

“You need to save me from myself.”

“I'm beginning to understand that,” Vaughn said.

“It's shitty of you to have brought that woman in here,” she said.

“I thought you were okay with that woman,” he said.

“Yeah, I'm sure you did,” she said. She sped the train up and it went around one more time and then flew off the track. A problem he recognized. “You just brought her here to protect you.”

“Gail, it's like the middle of the night and I've just had your boyfriend for cookies in the kitchen, and I was thinking we ought to just let this go and maybe talk about it tomorrow.”

“You're mad at me because I've been seeing Tony,” she said.

“I'm not mad at you. If you want to see Tony, that's your business,” he said. “He's about half your age.”

“Like that matters,” she said.

“He's about half your IQ,” he said.

“Like
that
matters,” she said.

“So, nothing matters, then,” he said. “I'm going to turn in.”

“I need you to stay here and talk to me,” she said. “Sit down, will you?”

She was putting the train back on the tracks. It was difficult. She had to get the front wheels on the track, all four of
them, then she had to get the back wheels on the track, and then she had to scoot the car back and forth to be sure it was on the track, and then she had to put the next car on and had to bump it into the first car in order to hook them up, and she didn't have a lot of patience. Pretty soon she had the engine dragging the cars around half on and half off the track. He motioned at the train. “Turn it off, will you.” He got down on his hands and knees and put on his reading glasses and tried to get the cars right.

Gail said, “I don't know what it is, I just like him.”

“He's a real man,” he said.

“Boy,” she said.

“Whatever,” he said. “Whatever he is, he's real.”

“He's simple. That's what he is,” she said. “That's what makes him attractive. I think I'll probably get rid of him soon.”

“I think you probably won't,” he said. “But it's all right as long as he doesn't beat you up again. You can see whoever you want.”

“I guess I can,” she said, and she sped the train up and ran it off the tracks again. “Why'd you leave me?” she said.

He shook his head and picked up the engine, flipped a finger at the wheels. “I don't know. You asked me to. That's the way I remember it.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but you know—”

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“I figured it was just time. Something wasn't right,” she said.

“You were mad at me, but I couldn't figure out why,” he said.

“I wasn't mad so much as tired of you,” she said.

He handed her the little engine. “That could be too much candor,” he said.

“There's a time for candor,” she said.

“This isn't it,” he said.

“Apparently,” she said.

Just about then a door opened down the hall and Greta walked out in a pair of shorts and one of his shirts. She was coming out of his bedroom. She was buttoning the shirt. She looked down the hall and saw them sitting there in front of Gail's room, and she said, “Well, howdy-do. And good night.” Then she turned around and started to go into her room.

“Come on out,” Gail said. “Come out and play.”

“We're playing trains,” Vaughn said. Greta kept one hand on the doorjamb, stood for a moment in the hall and said, “You guys go on. I just wanted to see what happened with the guy in the truck.”

“Vaughn took care of him,” Gail said. “Sent him packing.”

“Oh,” Greta said. “Well, you guys carry on. I'm going in here to read or bathe or sleep. Probably all those things. It's going to take me an hour or two. Could take me all night.”

Gail looked at Greta, then at him. “What does that mean?” she said.

Greta waved. “It doesn't mean anything. I'm going.” She did another odd wave and shut the door behind her.

“That went well,” he said.

“This whole thing's gone well,” she said. “From the very first. The two of you coming over, taking up residence. It's very yesterday, isn't it?”

“I don't know what you expected me to do,” he said. “I'm living with this woman and what—you want me to come over here and leave her?”

“It's a thought,” Gail said.

“Not happening. We split up. You wanted me out of here as fast as you could get me out of here.”

“That's not true,” she said.

“Is,” he said.

“Well, it may have been true for a while, but it wasn't
completely
true.”

“It was pretty true,” he said.

“It wasn't permanent, though,” she said.

“Sometimes things don't start out to be permanent but end up that way.”

“What's that, a Hallmark card?” she said.

“This is tough stuff,” he said. “All of it.”

“You've got that right,” she said. “We were married. We were married a long time. We had a life. Maybe we should have stayed together. Maybe that's what we were supposed to do.”

“Tried that,” he said.

“Why are you such a fucking smartass all the time?” she said.
“Tried that
. How's that make me feel when you say something like that?”

“I'm only telling you the truth,” he said.

“I'm fucking naked as a fucking baby out here, and you're saying
Tried that,”
she said.

“What can I say?” he said. “I'm not happy either. I wasn't happy about it when I left. I wasn't happy about it when I was living out there by myself. It was all about you. Then it sort of changed.”

“What changed?” she said.

“The whole deal. You got to be more trouble than, you know. It was too much trouble.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “So what am I now?”

“I don't know,” he said. “You are what you are. Ex. Wife, partner, lover. Friend, pal, buddy. What's anybody? Know what I mean?”

“No, I do not know what you mean,” she said. “What
do
you mean?”

“After a while, what's anybody you hang out with, go to dinner with, drive around with, do errands with, go to movies with? Anybody you make things for—drinks, coffee, you know? A member of your operation.”

“Are you sliding around the question?”

“I'm trying to,” he said. He moved over so he was leaning against the wall, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall next to her. Their shoulders were touching. He could smell her and she smelled the way she had always smelled, kind of lovely and vaguely perfumed. A scent of some soap that wasn't too fancy but that smelled good anyway. The old scent. They watched some lights stretch across the windows in front of the house. She started disassembling the train set. He stopped her.

“Leave it together,” he said.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Put it on a table somewhere. We'll run it later.”

“I don't know how this is going to end up,” she said. “Is it going to get worse?”

“Might turn out fine,” he said.

“I wish you liked me more,” she said.

“Not fair,” he said.

“I apologize,” she said. “And I do sort of like her. Greta, I mean. I do and I don't.”

“Figured that,” he said.

“Are you in love with her?” she said.

“I don't think that's happening anymore,” he said. “That love thing. Or maybe it just changed clothes and I don't recognize it.”

“I shouldn't have asked,” she said.

“It doesn't hurt anything,” he said. He was looking at some lights out the window. “Sometimes it's better just to go ahead and say stuff.”

Porch light was throwing shadows through the glass upstairs across from the landing. A Palladian window, the house description said. As if after Palladio who, had he seen it, would have rolled over in his grave. The light coming through this arched window made a shadow like some kind of bat—big eyes, big ears. A strange shadow. He pointed it out to Gail and said, “You see this over here?”

“What?” she said.

“Here,” he said. He touched her shoulder to guide her.

“Oh, yeah. I've seen that thing before,” she said. “He lives here.”

He put his arm around Gail and pulled her toward him, kissed her temple, smelled her hair. They stayed there a few minutes, just breathing. It wasn't too bad. After a while she got up, patted Vaughn on the shoulder, and went into her room, leaving the train set in the hall. Vaughn stayed put for a minute, listened to her light switch snap, then got up and went down the hall and stood by Greta's door. Not a sound.

Vaughn woke up at about eleven in the morning with Gail sitting on the bed alongside him and poking his neck gently with the tip of a pink, resin-coated Japanese carving knife he had bought her a couple of years before. “Morning, darling,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “I see. How are you?”

“I think you're going to love me,” Gail said, making motions as if to gently slice his throat. “I can be dangerous, too.”

“Too playful,” he said. “Besides, I already loved you.”

She put the knife under his ear, slid it down as if cutting his throat, a sawing motion from left ear to right. “Yeah, but you stopped,” she said.

“I didn't stop,” he said. “I just got old or something. I went on sabbatical. You want to get off me here? I gave you this knife, you know.”

“You remember,” she said.

“Jump up, will you?”

“I guess,” she said, rolling away from him. She held the knife out at arm's length and tried to get some light on it. “It's pretty, don't you think?”

“It's prettier there than on my neck,” he said. “It's prettiest in the catalog.”

“I would never hurt you, Vaughn,” she said. “What would be the percentage in that?”

“I don't know—Gail works in mysterious ways?”

“She certainly does,” Gail said. “I talked to your brother this morning. I asked him to come down and see us. I said he was needed here.”

“Tell me this is another joke.”

“He said if I needed him he will come,” she said.

“That's all we need,” he said. “Little Newton.”

“Not so little,” Gail said.

By now she was on her back lying in the bed next to him. He sat up, smacking some shape into his pillow.

“About Tony,” she said. “I like him, he likes me. He's fun. He's dumb enough for both of us. I like a dumb guy.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at Vaughn. “A dumb guy is a significant asset these days. He thinks the world of me.”

“As he should,” he said. “He's nineteen and you are a legendary sex goddess.”

“I hear that,” she said. “But when they're young and dumb, they're young and …”

“Dumb,” he said. “What are the virtues of dumb again?”

“He's not really dumb. He's more like … ill-informed.”

“I don't like him,” Vaughn said.

“Noted,” she said.

“Does he have a job?” he said.

“I don't think so,” she said. “He does tree work sometimes. He's a hanger guy.”

“What's a hanger guy?” he said.

“The guy who goes up in a tree and cuts out the little pieces that have broken off but are still hanging up there.”

“No kidding? They've got a name for that?” Vaughn said.

She nodded and sat up on her side of the bed, crossed her legs and faced him. “Newton is coming. I told him to come.”