I ACTUALLY SAT IN FRONT OF THE BUBBLE BATH FOR ABOUT ten minutes, in a fretful mood, trying to convince myself to be sensible and stop wanting so many women and so many things.
Wanting even one woman intensely was dangerous enough: wanting several at the same time meant erecting a structure of need and desire which would eventually collapse like a South American bleacher, burying me in angry women.
But after ten minutes I hit the Capital Beltway, in a mood to ply the wistful Jean Arber with icons, or trunks, or whatever it might take.
Main drag Wheaton is so seedy it almost makes Arlington look classy.
Jean’s shop was in a little decayed shopping center that looked like it had been built in Cleveland and then rolled end over end from there to Wheaton.
Put another way, it looked like it had been set down whole by some huge crane capable of lowering whole cinderblock shopping centers into place: only in the case of this shopping center the crane operator had nodded for a moment and dropped it into place from a height of about ten feet.
All the buildings in the shopping center were slightly cracked, and the asphalt parking lot had begun to roil and bubble. In fact the parking area looked a little like the surface of the moon, in which big chunks of dusty asphalt were interspersed with sizable craters.
I worked my way through the craters and parked right in front of Jean’s shop, which was between an adult bookstore and a pet shop. The door of the adult bookstore was framed with multicolored lightbulbs, which when flashing might have been expected to attract adults, or at least teenagers.
The pet shop was even more depressing. Its window contained nothing but comatose hamsters and a cage full of hyperactive gerbils.
The cracks in the several buildings were large enough that small shrubs or spreading vines could have been planted in them, but instead of shrubs and vines most of them seemed to be full of empty red-and-white boxes, of the sort Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken comes in.
The sources of all the red-and-white boxes was not far to seek. A fried chicken outlet was right across the street, sandwiched between a Long John Silver’s and a spanking new Taco Bell. Even as I watched, a patron of Colonel Sanders casually tossed an empty fried chicken box out of his rusty station wagon.
I got out and looked in the window of Jean Arber’s antique shop. The window had a modest wooden sign on it which said “Jean’s Antiques.” Inside I could see a number of trunks and what looked like some rather nice blue crockery, but I couldn’t get in. The door was locked and a note stuck to it which read:
DEAR JIMMY:
Gone to the babysitters. Back at 3:15. Did you really tell them you’d take them to Baskin-Robbins?
XXX
JEAN
Although the note was short and not intended for me, I was intrigued by it.
Particularly, I was intrigued by the three Xs, just above the signature. Tanya Todd was always writing me notes and ending them with Xs and I could never quite puzzle out what the Xs were supposed to tell me. Were the Xs meant as a warning, or did they conceal an affection that the woman making the Xs didn’t feel like being too specific about?
Since Jean’s letter was addressed to the husband from whom she was not quite divorced, I suspected the latter. She might not be quite sure that she still loved him, so she hit him with a few Xs, to warn him to take things slow.
While I sat in the car, reflecting, one of the oldest Volvos I had ever seen drove up and parked beside me. It had once been dark blue but now it was just dark. I knew a good many Volvo collectors, mostly in California—they tend to be a finicky lot, but any one of them would have jumped at the chance to buy such an ancient specimen. It was much smaller than the Volvos of our day—in fact, it resembled those small vehicles, half pickup and half dogcart, that big city milkmen used to deliver milk in.
Instead of containing milk bottles, this Volvo contained a short energetic man in bib overalls. It didn’t even contain him long, because he immediately got out and headed for Jean’s antique shop. He was evidently so accustomed to marching right in that he didn’t notice the note until he crashed into the door.
Once that happened he was forced to take cognizance of the note. He was rather likable looking, bushy-haired, bushy-bearded, blue-eyed, and puzzled. He squinted at the note for a moment and then went over and stood in front of the window of the pet shop, looking almost as morose as the hamsters. In fact, he looked not unlike a human hamster, except that his hair was longer.
I had a feeling he was Jimmy. So far he had not noticed me at all, which in itself says something about the state he was in. A pearl Cadillac can’t be an everyday sight in such a shopping center.
I had been thinking of Jean’s husband as a potential rival, but the more I studied Jimmy the less like a rival I felt. Who could take pride at beating a human hamster in a contest for the hamster’s own wife? Jimmy looked like all he wanted to do was find some nice litter and curl up in it. He had little sprigs of straw in his hair, so perhaps he had already curled up in some.
Before I could reflect further on Jimmy or the Xs Jean’s van drove up and parked on the other side of me. I looked around and saw two wonderful little faces peering at me out of the right window of the van. Those faces certainly didn’t ignore white Cadillacs and cowboys. They were the faces of little girls, maybe about three and five years old, respectively. They looked as intelligent as raccoons, and their faces were surrounded by great puffs of fleecy curls, as if both of them were wearing Harpo Marx wigs.
I smiled at them, an unexpected development that caused them to exchange quick glances. Like their mother, they wore puffy coats, only theirs were red instead of blue.
After a moment of shy hesitation they decided they were charmed by my smile and gave me two smiles in return.
In the few moments that it took me to establish contact with the girls, a marital or perhaps post-marital storm gathered and broke on the other side of Jean’s van.
Jimmy stopped being a human hamster and became an outraged ex-husband. He immediately rushed around to Jean’s side of the van, and as he did I rolled my window down a little, out of a shameless desire to eavesdrop.
Eavesdropping was no problem, since Jimmy’s pent-up feelings burst out of him at the top of his voice. At the mere sound of his voice both little girls gritted their teeth, made faces, and put their fingers in their ears.
“Where did you go?” Jimmy yelled.
Whatever reply Jean made was totally inaudible.
“But I drove all the way in!” Jimmy yelled. “I thought we were going to get burgers!”
At the mention of burgers the little girls whipped around. They still had their fingers in their ears, or at least in their curls, but the burger part got through. They immediately deserted me and began to pat their mother’s back. It was obvious even to me, a neophyte with children, that so far as their father was concerned they were willing to let bygones be bygones if he was in the mood to provide burgers.
I felt thoroughly awkward. My visit could not have been more ill-timed. For half a day I had been building interesting fantasies around Jean Arber, but none of my fantasies had located her in the midst of such a charming family. The little girls were absolute darlings, and even Jimmy was something of a darling. A man who wore bib overalls, drove an incunabular Volvo, had straw in his hair, and wanted to buy his ex-wife a cheeseburger couldn’t be all bad, or even half bad.
It is hard to sustain adulterous fantasies when faced with such a scene.
For a moment my impulse was to slip away. I had come at the wrong time. Probably I should just go to New Mexico with Cindy. Now that I knew where Jean’s antique shop was I could always return.
But it’s hard just to slip away when you drive up in a car like mine, and before I could reach any decision the little girls turned their attention back to me. They rapped on their window to get my attention.
I smiled again.
Encouraged, they began to roll down their window. This was not easy, but they persisted. The one who was doing most of the rolling gritted her teeth, and made a face, to indicate how hard it was.
As soon as the window was down they both popped their elbows out. Giggling at their own daring, they leaned way out and looked at the ground. The window was full of red parkas and reddish-blond curls. It seemed for a moment that they might both topple out into the crater that separated the two cars, but of course they were relying on the marvelous balance of children. They didn’t topple out. When they’d seen enough of the ground they easily righted themselves, looked at me, and settled down for some frank conversation.
“I’m the oldest,” the older said.
The younger girl ignored this flagrant claim.
“What’s your name?” she asked.