Waveland (4 page)

“I really always wanted one,” he said finally.

“He scores!” she said, offering up a high-five.

So they turned the set off and went about their business. He read a book. She regarded him with great curiosity, and then, after a suitable period of observation, said, “What is that strange object you're playing with?”

“Got it,” he said. And they went to bed.

The days that followed went more smoothly. Vaughn accepted the television and the television accepted Vaughn.

The night they went to dinner with Gail, however, they returned from the casino restaurant and things weren't going so well. They weren't talking to each other. Eddie was in the house, in the living room, sprawled on the couch, making
himself at home, snacking, and watching something that looked like ultimate cage fighting on the big screen.

“Vaughn is upset about his wife,” Greta said.

“Yeah?” Eddie said. He didn't take his eyes off the TV.

“She had some guy's name tattooed on her neck,” she said.

“Wasn't a tattoo,” Vaughn said. “Was an ink thing, like a drawing.”

“Even worse,” she said. “What kind of guy draws his name on some woman's neck?”

“Young guy,” Eddie said, wincing as one fighter on television kneed the other guy repeatedly in the groin. “This is old-time ultimate fighting. They don't let 'em do that anymore.”

It surprised Vaughn how pissed he was about Gail. Pissed and sickened—she was a grown woman, well past the age where you get written on. He tried to hide the anger, but Greta was all over it and she wasn't pleased. They'd ridden in silence from the casino, watching the wipers slog back and forth across the windshield.

“What're you doing in here anyway?” he said to Eddie. “Don't you have a TV out in the apartment?”

“Tiny screen,” Eddie said. “Barely see it. These guys would be the size of squirrels on it. The size of nuts. Couldn't see the action. It's part of my rental agreement.”

Vaughn turned to Greta.

“What?” she said. “I told him he could use the TV when we weren't using it.”

“Weird,” Vaughn said.

“You said if you weren't here I could use the television,” Eddie said. He was gathering his stuff around him, not picking it up, but moving it closer to himself.

“He's right. That's true. I said that,” Greta said.

“Well, we're here now,” Vaughn said. “There's a ring on the floor there where your beer is.” He sniffed the air. “It smells like smoke in here. You been smoking?”

“I haven't smoked a single thing,” Eddie said. “Loosen up, will you?”

“It's the boyfriend,” Greta said, stage-whispering. She was standing in the doorway between the den and the hall that led to her bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse.

“What are you doing?” Vaughn said. “With the shirt? Would you mind?”

She sighed. “What? It's going to upset him? He's … you know?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I'm—”

“Oh, please,” Vaughn said.

“Well, pardon me, Mr. Rockefeller,” she said. She waved at Eddie, then went down the hall, her footsteps ringing.

Vaughn sat in the chair alongside the couch and stared at the screen. The captioning was on, and the picture-in-picture was on. The sound was off. By now Eddie had changed channels a couple of times. There was an ad for some kind of mini-tractor on the screen—a guy picking up leaves, hauling them around his yard, vacuuming them into some kind of cloth bin that was pulled behind the tractor. This image was duplicated in the inset window on the screen.

“Why are you watching the same thing twice?” Vaughn said.

“I like it,” Eddie said.

“You like what?” Vaughn said.

“The two pictures,” Eddie said. “I like two pictures together.”

“It's the same picture,” Vaughn said. “The two pictures are the same.”

“I know that,” Eddie said. “I can see them better when there're two of them.”

“You like that they're the same. I get it. It's fine. It's very attractive,” Vaughn said.

“It's what I like,” Eddie said.

A fire blazed in duplicate on the giant screen. “What're we watching here?” Vaughn said.

“Fire,” Eddie said.

“I see that, but what?” Vaughn said.

“Ad. Fireplaces, maybe. Colorful fire logs. Insurance. I don't know what. I was watching a rerun of
CSI
before. That's the most popular show on television. That guy on there is really bowlegged.”

“He's the most bowlegged guy on television,” Vaughn said.

“I guess,” Eddie said. “I like that blond woman—she's kind of sexy. And then there's that other woman on there—that black-haired woman? She's kind of sexy. And I like the special effects. I like it when they get that blue light out and start looking at things,” Eddie said. “They always find sperm, you know? Every week they pull out the blue light and find some sperm. It's a hoot.”

“That's so last year,” Vaughn said. “Finding sperm.”

Eddie started flipping through the channels. He stopped on a “Healthier You” ad, some movie with a bunch of British people in it, an HBO channel with a cowboy movie. He flipped backward to get to The Weather Channel and then went through
Robot Wars
, public affairs, the shopping network, and a
Matlock
rerun.

“It doesn't look too good now,” Eddie said.

“Keep moving,” Vaughn said. “You'll find something.”

Eddie kept clicking, the channel changing simultaneously in both windows. He passed
Animal Planet
with the world's biggest and baddest bugs, some other stuff, and then he paused and said, “You worried about your wife?”

Vaughn stared at him for a minute or more. “Well,” he finally said. “Sure. I haven't seen her in a year and … I don't know. You always worry about the ex-wife, don't you? It's built in, goes with the territory.”

“I ain't worried about mine,” Eddie said.

“I didn't know you had a wife,” Vaughn said.

“What, you think I can't handle a wife? I'm not just a faggot, you know. I had a wife once. Just like you. Same thing.”

There were puppets on the TV, kids playing with hand puppets. Vaughn thought it was peculiar and wanted to say something but then thought better of it. “My wife had this guy's name on her neck. It hit me the wrong way,” he said.

“That happens,” Eddie said. He sat up on the couch and pulled up his socks and began putting on his shoes. Vaughn figured he was getting ready to leave and go back to the garage apartment. He didn't want Eddie to go.

“I didn't ask how it got there,” he said. “But I can imagine.”

“How old a woman is your wife?” Eddie said.

“Not too old,” Vaughn said. “And she looks younger. She's forty-something.” He knew exactly how old she was, when her birthday was, but for some reason he said this other thing. So then he said, “Forty-four. In the spring. Looks forty, maybe. She's well preserved. She exercises.”

Eddie moved the little square with the second picture in it to different positions on the screen—to the bottom right, to
the top right, to the top left, to the bottom left, then back to the bottom right. Then he clicked up the cable schedule and started jumping through that four or five lines at a time.
The Son of Frankenstein
went by,
Intimate Portraits
went by,
Beverly Hills Cop
went by,
Classic Boxing
.

“She doesn't look that old. She looks young, really. She looks good. I figure the guy who wrote on her neck is younger, a kid.”

“Maybe he's a lighthearted older guy,” Eddie said. “Maybe he's an easy guy to get along with. Maybe he was just having some fun. Maybe they were just joking around. Maybe it wasn't anything.”

“That's the ticket,” Vaughn said.

“Maybe it was a woman?” Eddie said. “Maybe your wife is joining a club or something and her sponsor had to write her name on your wife's neck.” Eddie turned around and gave him a look, a raised eyebrow thing that was a parody of hopeful.

“You look like Bubs,” Vaughn said. “The guy who was on
The Wire.”

“I've got some of the attributes,” Eddie said. “I'm short a hand. Got a skin problem.”

“Your hair isn't as cool as Bubs's hair,” Vaughn said.

“Nothing is,” Eddie said.

“You'd think you'd get over shit like this, wouldn't you?” Vaughn said. “We're divorced, we're finished, it's over. We go out with my girlfriend, for God's sake.”

“That's nothing you ought to be doing. That's going to make you feel bad every time,” Eddie said. “Seeing her, I mean. That's what happened to me. I used to go out with my ex. We didn't go anyplace big—gas stations, hamburger
joints, barbecue joints. She always made me feel bad. I felt sad as shit. Like stuff had changed. Both of us knew it, but there was nothing we could do. We'd sit there in the car and drink beer and listen to the radio and smoke cigarettes, watch kids zoom in and out of the convenience store.” He shook his head. “That was no fun. Reminded me I used to be the kid driving in, jumping out for a six-pack, speeding off somewhere. Now it was me and the ex in the car with nowhere to go. We were killing time. Sitting and drinking, listening to the radio, smoking cigarettes. Waiting for nothing. Waiting to give up. That was crap.”

“This was before or after the divorce?” Vaughn said.

“Both,” Eddie said. He grabbed his beer, tipped it up, emptied it. Then he looked at it, tossed it up by the neck, and caught it. “By the end I was just one more thing for her to worry about.” He groaned and stood up from the couch, pulling his shirt closed.

“I'll tell you what,” Eddie said. “After a while it just isn't worth the trouble.” He wagged the beer bottle at Vaughn. “If I were doing fortune cookies, that's what I'd put in them. Every one.
After a while it just isn't worth the trouble
. That and
You will have razor-sharp mystical vision today.”

“That'd be useful,” Vaughn said.

“You read the paper?” Eddie said. “The Bracelet Case? They did another piece today. She taking it all right?”

“Seems to be,” Vaughn said.

“It's a shame,” Eddie said. “Too much for too long.”

Vaughn said, “You've known her awhile, huh? You go way back.”

“Well, ‘known’ might be overstating it. But I've been around doing crap work for a while—construction, dirt work—so I
ran into her. Not like I was the contractor on the job or anything.” He shook his head and started for the kitchen. “I just ran into her. She always seemed nice. The crew guys talked a lot of shit. You know how that is.”

“Just thinking,” Vaughn said.

“Sure. She's a nice woman. She's all right,” Eddie said. “Gotta go.”

Vaughn heard the bottle click as Eddie set it down on the kitchen countertop next to the sink. He listened as the door opened and closed, then listened to Monkey's nails ticking across the kitchen floor as the dog came into the living room and curled up on the end of the couch.

Vaughn watched the dog's eyes flick up at him, then away. Monkey did that a couple of times. Vaughn stared at the screen and listened to the sudden quiet in the house. He could hear Greta in the bathroom making those little thumps that can't quite be identified—water on and off, pipes complaining, cabinet doors shutting, bottles settling on a marble vanity, bad hinges.

He watched an infomercial for some kind of barbecue device and read the captioning—“It's light; you can even pick it up.” Flames flamed up. “Here's a little gift for you: the Q-Grill cookbook with our best grilling recipes.” He picked up the remote, started punching the channel button. He got
Cleopatra
, some speech on some steps. Richard Burton arrived looking sort of like Bill Clinton. Vaughn kept clicking. He found a cowboy, a guy selling hair remover, a woman with a big mouth, a woman with a big nose, a woman with big stockings on her arms. Then police in Miami dealing with sick dogs—the stuff just kept going past, one alarming thing after another—that episode of
Matlock
with a character who
looked like Norman Mailer, the
Girls Still Gone Wild
thing, an infomercial for Jaystone gel bras. The world looked turbulent.

Vaughn couldn't really remember that much about Gail and himself, back when things were good. How they worked, how they stayed together. Or where it had gone. Fifteen years. It might as well have been his parents' life. He had a head full of photographs but not much else. They weren't sharp photographs, either. Vague, ripe for forgetting. Stuff didn't count because it was long over. People said they had sweet memories, but he had only bits and pieces. It was all he could do to remember somebody's name, a place he'd lived. He could remember a door, maybe a balcony, the stove someplace. Not much.

On the screen he caught a stunned-looking alligator with a bowie knife stuck in the back of its head, then the Gateway Arch in St. Louis lit up in pink for breast cancer awareness. It looked good, he thought.

He imagined Tony and Gail at the casino—drinking, smoking, playing the slots, having a good time. Tony was probably some kid cop or something. Some guy she ran into somewhere. One of those greasy restaurant managers he'd always heard about.

He sat in the living room at Greta's house, clicking through the television channels, catching bits of the narrative on the screen. He clicked the muting off, heard “Dizziness and diarrhea” and “Have you met life today?” He tried to remember girls from high school: Sarah Quinn, Phillipa Henry, Terry Hook. He tried to picture them, remember some incident or some moment when they were more than names, when they were objects of intense desire. He got nothing. For a
couple of them he got places—stray nights in some car of his father's, or by the lake, or in the girl's parents' garage, or in some den full of puffy furniture, on a stairway, at a piano, the front step—or summer nights, chilly winters, almost surviving memories of kisses, caresses, clothes, scents by pools and in backyards with parties in progress. Girls—with accents, odd dresses, awkward bodies, peculiar ways of using their arms. In Vaughn's memory Gail was already in their company—not as far removed, but the same category. Remember when… and who could remember, really? Who could remember more than facts. I slept with this woman. We kissed here. She wore orange. So much stuff shoehorned into this category of memory that there was little to do but be thankful that something was there, occupying that spot named
the past
.