Snap, p.21
Snap, page 21
In the morning they talked on the front stoop of Ida’s flat-topped brick building, overlooking the red gravel roof of a Reveo store. Her building was high on a lopsided slope in an industrial neighborhood crowded with old chimneys; smoke had settled like a cloud among the filthy walls of the lower buildings just west of a set of railroad tracks. The smoke stayed there all year, Ida told him, except in winter when the snow fell in dusty gray flurries. Five boxcars sat on the track, all Chelsea with the dozing cat logo: five yellow cats asleep on pitch-black pillows, their paws in their ears.
Or were the cats black and the pillows yellow?
Years later, Ruby doesn’t remember. How disturbing to discover an uncertain detail. But they were cats, and they were sleeping, and already at that moment Ruby thought of Ida as catlike. He had always been a little bit frightened of cats. He wanted them to like him, but he never could get close enough; they always slipped away. Or attacked. Fortunately, Ida didn’t seem to be the violent type. So it was the slipping away Ruby worried about. When she stepped inside for a refill of coffee, he was certain that she wasn’t coming back. Ruby remembers twisting his neck, glancing up at twenty dirty windows in search of Ida’s clean one, hoping she’d stick her head out and ask if he wanted cream. Her window would be open, and there would be those filmy curtains that looked skimpy as negligees, and perhaps a purple leaf twirling down from the coleus right past the sill to his lap.
But exactly what floor had her apartment been on? Third? Fifth? Ida lived in one of those tall, unkempt places where clotheslines swung from the fire escape railings and people kept their bicycles indoors, chained to the radiator pipes in the dining rooms. Spicy cooking smells drifted through the hallways, and the walls between apartments were thin as could be. Looking up from the stoop that first morning, Ruby saw nothing but a family of pigeons roosting cozily in the eaves of the building. At dawn he’d heard their cooing but failed to recognize the sound; he’d thought it was her neighbors, fucking away. Now the birds were silent in their strip of purple shadow, as if waiting for Ida’s return. Where was she, and when was she coming back? She had taken his mug; he had nothing to do with his hands. He stared out at the view as if it were lovely, as if he’d paused for a moment just to admire. Uneasily he listened for the sound of her feet on the stairs, straining for an echo of rubber on tin.
However, Ida’s sneakers made no sound at all. She was there, and then she wasn’t, and then she was again.
The two of them talked about cockroaches, window boxes, Mitch and Martha and keys.
“Why do you have so many?” Ida asked. She dug her hand into his pocket, pulled out the key ring and slipped it over her palm. Then she slid the keys between her fingers, like brass knuckles, and punched him lightly in the arm.
“I had this vision that you’d drop them all at once on the sidewalk while I was watching,” said Ida, “and that you’d pick them all up, and that you wouldn’t be bored anymore, after that. Then, I’d be sitting on a bench, and I’d find a key you’d missed, and I’d chase after you and give it to you and that’s how we’d meet.”
“I’m bored?”
“Usually.”
“Now?”
“No!” Mock offense. She tugged at his sweatband, still on his wrist. He hadn’t taken it off in bed. Or in the shower. He was mortified to see it. At least he’d put his tennis racket down. He’d left it lying on the back seat of his car, come to think of it, along with a can of ugly green Day-Glo tennis balls. They’d brought the pizza inside; it was still on the top of Ida’s refrigerator, untouched in its box. No room for the box on her kitchen counters. No kitchen counters, actually. No kitchen, if you thought about it. For breakfast they had coffee from a plug-in hot pot, and oranges. They dropped the rinds on a square of paper towel that vanished during one of Ida’s refill trips. Ruby never noticed her picking it up. He never saw her get up at all; she was there, and then she wasn’t. Nearby, a stack of sheets of corrugated tin rattled when a train appeared on the tracks, and in the time it took Ruby to glance at it, Ida had disappeared up the steps.
He thought of something his friend Dale Lewis always said — “Thar she blows!” — whenever some woman got away from him.
Ruby chewed on his orange and spit two wet pits in the palm of his hand. This is what will happen, he predicted: The tennis racket will be missing, stolen from the car, and when I call her up again she won’t go out with me, she’ll pretend she doesn’t know who I am. Either that or she won’t even answer the phone. Either that or she’ll say yes, and when I come to get her she won’t be here. And no one will know where she is. Or who.
Who is she, anyway? he wondered. Any boyfriends? Any family anywhere? Any schooling? Does it matter? How old is she? What kind of soap does she use? Why doesn’t it wash off the smell of shellfish? Why does the shellfish smell so sweet? Who gave her that crab claw? How long does she plan on wearing it? What does she wear when you take her out to dinner? What movies does she like? What does she do after dinner? What does she love? What does she look like naked in daylight? What does she like? What is she like? Does it matter?
Ruby looked down across the railroad yard. All at once the track was empty; the train with its five cats had slunk to the horizon and rolled right over the edge. It was early in the morning, the sun still bright on the railroad ties. Ruby watched a mangy spaniel limping toward a mountain of coal that glinted and winked in the sunlight, like the diamonds it might have become.
When the spaniel squatted, its urine steamed in the chilly air.
“What do you believe in?” Ruby asked Ida when she reappeared.
Ida frowned, knelt down beside him and gave him a handful of yellow raisins. One knee of her jeans was patched with black corduroy, and Ruby, not thinking, reached out and pulled on a loose end of thread. The thread came undone all around, and the square of corduroy sailed off on a breeze.
“Oh, shit,” he murmured.
“Food,” Ida was saying. “And hunger. I would like to run a sort of combination catering business-soup kitchen. I mean, if someone was getting married and they couldn’t afford to pay for a cake, I’d make one for them anyway. They could pay me in kind. Like, if they were doctors they could treat me for free. If I was sick. But if they were doctors they’d be able to afford a cake. Well. If they had a pet store they could give me a dog, or something … I don’t know. What are you talking about? What do I think is true? Or what do I want to be true?”
Ruby shook his head, wondering. He still held the strand of thread in his hand, and wove it tightly among the joints of his fingers, knotting them together.
“Neither,” he answered. The tips of his fingers turned red. “I mean, everything is real to you, isn’t it? I mean, to you, anything is possible, right?”
“You sound mad about that.”
“No …”
He reached eagerly for her hand. His bound fingers were purple. Ida jumped from the steps, scooped something off of the ground and waved it for him to see. It was the scrap of black corduroy.
“I’m thinking I should patch up my jeans,” she yelled, “and then I look down and see this thing just sitting there, the perfect size and shape and everything.”
She pushed her hair from her face and grinned.
And vanished.
At least that’s how it seems, now, from Ruby’s vantage point many years later. Surprise, surprise, he thinks. Here I am in St. Louis, alone.
Of course he shouldn’t be surprised, now that his life seems out of kilter. Ida simply has that effect on things. On him. She always has. Sitting on that stoop on the very first morning he knew her, Ruby couldn’t quite picture his own apartment. Its image was vague, the features blurred like those of a once familiar face. There was the window, but where was the chair? What color was the chair? Did he even own a chair, or did he sit on the bed? Even his own face was blurred when he tried to imagine what Ida saw when she looked at him.
Ruby found the letter just this morning in his mother’s mailbox next to the purple chair. He seemed to have slept in the chair. In any case, he was slouched in it upon waking. He yawned, stood up and saw the letter in the box. How long had it been in there? The envelope was blacker than night, so he couldn’t read the date on the cancellation mark.
Gleefully he tore it open, and read the letter through, blinking. It filled the page exactly. Then he skimmed it again, fragment by isolated fragment.
It is true that I don’t want to talk on the phone.
I don’t want you to take this personally.
Dear Ruby.
Some people I can he alone with hut I can’t he alone if I’m with you.
I don’t want you to take this personally.
I don’t think I’ll see you again.
If the letter was a bomb, then he was poking at the shrapnel, prodding and pulling, making himself crazy. He even found himself speaking to his mother’s telephone, begging for a change of Ida’s heart.
“Ring,” he said aloud.
But at least he’s keeping busy. He’s inventing things to do, inventing games to keep sane. Indoor Frisbee, something to do on a rainy day. He grasps the flat, round object, bends his wrist until the cool rim grazes the underside of his arm, aims for the kitchen sink and throws. The plate skids across the porcelain before bouncing out to vibrate on the floor. The second plate follows but stops on its side in the sink, wedged beneath the faucet. At least he still has a sense of humor; it amuses him to find his mother’s plastic dinnerware displayed behind glass-paned doors in the hutch, the way other people show off their heirloom china. The hutch is antique; the plates came from the bank when she opened a savings account. They are white with false gilt scrollwork and a multitude of scratches left behind by her knife. Ruby sprays off the dust with the nozzle. The nozzle is loose and its cold spray hits him in the collar, so he takes off the shirt and folds it neatly over a chair. He doesn’t know what to do with these chairs, either. They’re good old ladder-backs with a gummy finish but fine woven cane seats.
He sits in one and props his feet on another. Behind him the faucet drips — ping, ping, ping. Reaching up, he grabs a third plate, aims and throws. The plate explodes into shards of white china. Surprise, surprise. At first he thinks the crash is the telephone, ringing at last.
Now he crosses his legs, closes his eyes and sleeps.
Hunger wakes him, along with the smell of paint. He’d covered two walls of his mother’s bedroom, but now the paint is drying in its open can. The can is stuck to the floor. The roller is stuck to the rolling pan, and the brush to the newspaper stuck to the top of the ladder. Ruby wishes he’d thought of painting the bedroom door shut too. Now the fumes just sit around. Big Sky; he should have chosen something rosy with a name like Dusky Halo, something not so blue and terrible and endless. He left his wrist watch in there but he won’t go in to get it. Not now. He has no need for seconds, minutes, hours. He’ll mark the passage of time by counting the casseroles crowding his refrigerator. Four casseroles. Five. Linell hasn’t brought one yet today, and she’d skipped a day in the middle and a few in the beginning, but why should a few days matter? He left Williamsburg five casseroles ago, and that’s when his life stopped and started again, with its weird, tired, chugging momentum. He’s like The Little Engine That Could, except he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. This morning Ida’s letter set him back in his tracks, flat on his aching caboose. Surprise, surprise. He lifts the edge of a mountain of foil and peeks underneath with hopeless curiosity. One entire roast chicken, its skin crisped and golden. Around it lies a ring of tiny Russet potatoes and clipped parsley sprigs, like virgin trees amid a forest of boulders. Untouched. For there is something about Linel’s food … Not that it tastes so bad. He pokes his hand beneath the foil and yanks, then nibbles a wing before putting it back. Juicy garlic and paprika with a dot of lemon butter. Good, really. But he’d eaten a sliver of quiche one day and felt bloated for hours, as if he’d taken a bite of Linell herself. Unrequited love. Its flavor is too persistent. He feels sorry for her. She invited him to dinner again, Italian, but he made up some excuse. He couldn’t stand the thought of burping up lasagna all day. Now it seems Linell might be giving up, finally. The day is nearly half gone and she hasn’t shown up with his juice. Maybe she knocked and left the filled pitcher frothing on the porch when he failed to answer. He steps into the hallway, looks out the window onto the porch. No juice. No breakfast. No vitamin C. Maybe she’s run out of pots and pans. It occurs to him he doesn’t want the offerings to run out all together. At least they keep his kitchen from looking like a bachelor’s. Instead, it looks as if someone has died. Ruby gets an idea. Why not fake his own death? While he’s lying in state the thieves will come, as they often do at funerals, and relieve him of this mess. They’ll take the cane chairs, the hutch, the rag rugs, the bookends, the ashtrays. Will they eat the casseroles? He’ll leave the door unlocked, although that might give him away. He’ll leave a window up, then, the one whose screen his mother mended with fingernail polish. They’ll steal Linel’s serving utensils as well. She’d brought them en masse wrapped up in a square of linen as if otherwise he’d eat her damn meals with his fingers.
Her utensils are elaborate, engraved with gothic L’s. Ruby unrolls the linen, chooses a spadelike thing in place of a la-die, then shovels the ancient shepherd’s pie into the garbage, layer by chilled layer, first potato, then beans, then meat, like someone digging back through geologic time. What treasure will he find? Carrots, daintily cubed, their bright hue still fresh in the thickened gravy. Linel’s spoon screeches when he scrapes it on the bottom of the pan. He sticks the pan in the sink on top of the plates and fills it with water and a squirt of pink soap. He does not have a sponge, so massages the pan with his fingers. He’s a practiced masseur. Ida likes his nails short for the job. First he tickles her spine, her hips, the crease of her backside. Then she wants a knuckle roll. After that they switch, and she docs a little number with a lock of hair all up and down his vertebrae before pounding with the knobs of her strong, clenched fists. Then comes her breath at the nape of his neck, beginning its slow journey down. Which is what he likes the most: anticipation. It gives him a hard-on that grows against the taut, jiggling mattress of the water bed, until he Hips on his back and pulls her against him.
Anticipation. Sure.
From the corner of his eye he can see the telephone, black with a rotary dial. Perhaps Ida doesn’t know his mother’s number. Perhaps the lines are down. Perhaps it rang and somehow he just didn’t hear.
Alert, he lets his fingers linger in the sink and hears a vibration of bells; but it’s only the soap bubbles popping in the water. He dries the quiche pan with the shirt he’d slung over the chair and at once claps the balled shirt over his mouth, not wanting to sneeze. He means to make no sound at all. He’ll be a monk, sweating like hell in a shroud of patience. When there’s a noise in the room, it will be only the soggy quiche shifting in the garbage bag.
Still the phone doesn’t ring. Because he’s not a believer. He’ll never make it as a monk. Well, maybe in his garden, waiting for the tulips to grow. But that’s all too far away; it isn’t here, it isn’t real, it isn’t happening now. What was that he’d said to Ida, years ago on the breakfast stoop?
“Everything is real to you, isn’t it? I mean, to you, anything is possible, right?”
“You sound mad about that.”
“No …”
Except he is mad, now, because nothing is real. Nothing’s possible unless you hold it in your hand. Nothing happens if you let it get away.
The garbage breaks before he gets it through the door, a little later on. He could have sworn the food was cold when he’d scraped it from the pans; now it breathes a dull heat like a hibernating thing. The chicken is in pieces under its skin; he has to coax it from the floor, all thumbs. When he drops it, a drumstick kicks a potato, which skids between his feet and disappears. In its place a stewed tomato spills a trail of gooey seeds around the ruins of the quiche, whose fluted crust, in pieces, clogs up the folds of the rag. He fills a bucket with water and pine-scented cleanser and gets down on his knees to scrub. Soon the floor itself disintegrates; corroded fragments of linoleum cling to the dampened palms of his hands. With that it is time for another nap — well, not a nap, exactly, but a blackout on the porch, in the low-slung purple chair, the newspaper spread open on his knees. But is this today’s paper, or yesterday’s? For a crazed second he thinks it might even be tomorrow’s. There’s a story about a missionary kidnapped in El Salvador by a band of soldiers; how the young man concealed his wife before being dragged off into the jungle. Ruby is jealous. At least the missionary knows where his wife is: in the cupboard.
Waking up he sees the empty Xerox cartons, a treat from the librarian, stacked in the rear of his rented car, waiting to be filled. Ruby carries one into the kitchen, stacks the plastic plates inside among layers of cheap, slick, rubbery placemats and bundles of tarnished flatware pulled at random from the pantry drawers. He doesn’t know if anything is valuable or not. He finds a pack of plastic cocktail swords and another of stubby white citronella candles. He saves the toothpicks. He saves a box of laundry soap but packs away a booklet of five-cent postage stamps depicting Eleanor Roosevelt. The things he saves he crowds on the countertop next to the sink. The carton he will bring to Goodwill on Delmar. He finds a jar of grape leaves packed in brine, another of pignoli nuts and a can containing embryonic corn. He saves the corn and eats the nuts. Yesterday he would have thrown the corn away, today he thinks of it as rations to be swallowed ear by ear when he needs the sustenance. He guzzles chocolate milk from a carton, and eats Cheese Nips while standing in the doorway, the box at rest on his hip. Still no vitamin C. He brings the scrubbed pans back to Linel’s. He doesn’t knock on the door, however. He just leaves them on the porch, stacked beside her welcome mat.
