WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR LOVE?

__________

LATER, WHEN HE was thinking about what it would be like to take a bullet in the head, Darry found that, even then, he couldn’t blame Marla. He thought: Marla was only one part death.

Three parts of her were something else. Somewhere in her was a kind of mythic terrarium, where she kept another Marla, a little mental doll that moved with the power of imagination through a clean landscape, a place where neither fear nor pain could take root.

He taught high school, American Lit. He met Marla in the El Loro High School parking lot when she came to pick up her niece.

HE STOOD ON the front steps in front of the school office, beneath the flagpole; not wanting to stay, not wanting to go home to Bette. It was almost winter in El Loro, but it was Central California and the trees had shed only an outer skirt of leaves; the sky showed blue through fissures in the smears of number-two penciled clouds. His name was Darius; he went by Darry, and didn’t like that much either. He stood in a wind that smelled faintly of leafy decay, watching Marla get out of the car.

Marla’s niece, Cecily, was a pretty girl, except for the weak chin. He thought of Cecily as a student who sometimes tried. She wore baggy overalls, one strap deliberately left hanging, and a Pearl Jam T-shirt. Her hair was teased over to one side; there was a touch of irony about the coif. When Cecily saw her Aunt Marla coming to get her, instead of her Mom, she got a look on her face he knew from a thousand displays of adolescent embarrassment: Oh Gawd, not her.

But Darry felt a bittersweet tightness the first time he saw Marla. She wore a taut leopard-print blouse, black vinyl skirt not-too-short; a black butterfly tattooed on one ankle; around the other a charm bracelet. Her lips were full, voluptuous with shiny burgundy lipstick, but her mouth seemed not quite wide enough. Her nose was small, her eyes were a goldflake green; it was only later that he saw one eye was just a little higher than the other. Her hair was an unnatural shade of blond, cut close like a Roaring Twenties flapper, and you were supposed to notice that it was an unnatural blond; and her earrings were little silhouettes of Queen Nefertiti. There was a half-faded tattoo of an ankh on her forearm. And her feet were packed into almost vertically elevated spike heels. They looked at least a size too small.

“You like to look close!” Jan said, stepping up beside him, smiling to show she was Just Kidding. Jan taught computer science to juniors.

Darry realized that Jan had caught him staring at one of his students’ female relatives. And with his mouth open, just a little.

He shut his mouth with an almost audible snap, jerking his gaze from Marla, who was standing on the school steps with Cecily. “Well she’s … striking.”

He smiled, hoping she took the remark and the smile as condescension toward the woman in the leopard-print top; the woman who wore black onyx beads, he saw now, glancing back at her; who was looking past Cecily, back at him.

Snap. Look back at Jan. She was a small, tidy woman with mousy brown hair; narrow in the shoulders and broad in the hips. She had large, pretty brown eyes; she wore contacts to give her best feature its best shot. He hoped she wouldn’t press another behavioristic computer-model questionnaire on him. She had a fetish for computer-modeling behavior with artificial-life analogs. But she was saying, “Oh most definitely, she’s a prize. I can almost read her rap sheet from here.”

“Now that could be a little uncharitable, Jan.”

“I guess. I feel like I knew her from gym class at my own high school. She reminds me of the one who put pepper in my brassiere. How’s your Bette?”

“Bette’s … she’s good.” Someday he was going to learn how to talk about his wife to people without it sounding like she was dying of something. She wasn’t dying. She was just sort of housebound. Sort of. His looming sense of their mutual decline was almost certainly exaggerated. They were only in their forties. True, the American Association of Retired People had sent her a sample newsletter, because he was two years older than him and had popped up on some AARP databank; but he hadn’t got one yet. Not yet.

“How’s sophomore English?” Jan asked.

He managed to stare at his shoes and not Cecily’s aunt. He had heard Cecily say, moments before: Oh no it’s my Aunt Marla oh Gawd she’s so …

So … what?

He managed, “How’s sophomore English? … Um, in one word: apocalyptic.”

Jan laughed. “I’d call you melodramatic except I know better. Try juniors and computer science.” She’d been married once. The guy had just disappeared one day. Story was, she’d had a single, apologetic postcard from Florida and no other word, for years. And there was a rumor she was quietly rich from designing computer software and didn’t need to work here at all. With modern kids, teaching for the love of it had always seemed incomprehensible to Darry.

He knew she had a crush on him. He could feel it like something sticky on his shoe. Sometimes he was tempted. She seemed willing; she seemed sympathetic but he wasn’t sure what she was sympathetic about. What did she know about his marriage?

“Sophomore English, sophomore science—both oxymorons.”

“But keep in mind—”

“I know: our teachers thought were a hopeless generation too. Et cetera. Sure.”

She sang softly. “‘Why can’t they be like weeee were, perfect in every way’ …”

“You have to pretend not to remember that musical, so it doesn’t date you!”

She laughed. He watched Cecily argue with her Aunt Marla.

What are you so embarrassed about, girl? Just get in the car…

Jan was murmuring, “Well … I guess …” She was trying to think of something else to say, to keep him here. She’d prod him about the computer modeling questionnaire, and would he fill out another. But school was out and there were no meetings for once and he could go home; see his dog, avoid his wife. Marla was taking the reluctant Cecily to her mom’s car. The aunt looked only ten years older than the niece. There was some story or other behind that, he thought.

He said: “Well—papers to correct—”

“Me too.”

But as he started to turn away she thought of something. “You still writing that book?”

“Oh—perennially.”

“If you sold it, would you quit teaching?”

He’d asked himself that a dozen times but he said, “Not a chance. I don’t jump without a parachute. I’d quit if I got a half million dollar advance but—” He paused to chuckle. “I don’t think it’s that kind of novel. I think it’s maybe a three-thousand-dollar-advance novel. Or maybe a ‘paid in contributor’s copies’ university press novel.”

“Your mistake is getting literary. Not enough shootings.” She looked at him, then looked away. “Or enough sex.”

“You’re … probably right. I’m afraid this is more like a Lucky Jim for secondary school.”

“Uh oh—anybody I know on the faculty get brutally caricatured?”

“Wha-a-at? Me? Write about anybody I know?” Darry winked. “Give me some credit.”

She gave a brittle little laugh. He thought he needed another excuse to leave; he could tell her he had to feed his cats. But that would seem like no priority at all to her: he’d heard her say she didn’t like animals. He didn’t trust people who didn’t have pets.

Inexorably, she said, “I do have one more questionnaire for you—”

“You know, those questions are getting a little personal.”

“Sorry. Computer modeling knows no boundaries. I mean it is, you know, behavioristic. But it’s all very anonymous and ‘hypothetical person number thirty-nine’ and … ”

“Am I number thirty-nine? I’ll do one more for you, tomorrow. Well …” He glanced at his watch. “Whuh-oh.”

“Me too!” she said chirpily, just a flutter of regret, and backed away, smiling goodbye, then hurried off, briefcase swinging.

Darry saw Marla looking at him as she maneuvered to get out of the stunningly-illegal red-zone parking spot she’d picked, between two smallish handicapped-student shuttles. She backed her car … right into his Mitsubishi. Both cars rocked. She made a big show of grimacing.

He smiled sympathetically and his heart leapt as he walked over to the car and looked at the bumpers. She got out and looked too.

“Eek! Is that your car?”

“Uhhh—”

“I know it is, actually.” She talked fast, which didn’t sound right with the mild Texas accent, at first. “Cecily told me right before I backed into it. ‘That’s my English teacher’s car and he’s watching so don’t—’ And, you know, wham! And not even a bam and thank-you-ma’am!”

“Gawd, Marla!” Cecily said, with exquisite misery, getting out.

“It’s your fault, girl,” Marla said, shaking her head slowly at Cecily as she spoke. “You got me all tense saying—” She did a little mimicry of Cecily saying: “‘He’s watching so don’t back into it’. And then of course I get tense and I—”

“It’s okay, really, there’s no damage done,” Darry interrupted.

“She scratched your bumper, Mr. Bentworth,” Cecily said, rolling her eyes.

Marla was looking at his wedding ring. She looked up into his face. “Really? ’Cause see, I don’t have any insurance—”

“Ooh big surprise there,” Cecily said.

“—and I don’t know how I’d—”

“Seriously. It’s okay.”

Marla cocked her head and the mimicry this time was of a you’re-my-knight-in-shining armor look; an irony meant to show real gratitude.

“Well thanks. I owe you one. For true.”

He hadn’t noticed her fingernails before. They were the same color as her lipstick and shiny as a beetle’s wing, about an inch too long, long enough to curl a little, and on each one there was little quarter-moon of spangle.

“Can we go, Marla?”

“I don’t even know the man’s name! Ex-cuse me!”

Cecily gave a sigh; he heard the sigh at least half a dozen times a day from various kids. The world on my shoulders is more than heavy, it’s flawed, and it’s all I’ve got. “This is Mr. Bentworth, Marla.”

He shook her small hand; the long nails reminded him of seashells in his palm. “Darry Bentworth.”

“Darry?”

He shrugged. “It’s short for Darius. My old man was into Hellenic history.” He almost added: Actually that gives the impression that Darius was Greek whereas in fact he …

Stopped himself in time.

Cecily was looking anxiously at passing teenagers and pulling her aunt by the arm. “I think I’m being summoned to the car, Mr. Bentworth … Darry … but I do, I owe you one!”

She waved with the tips of her fingers, her curved nails, and they got into the car and after backing and filling four or five times, they got out of the spot and drove down the street, only about ten miles an hour past the speed limit.

BETTE WAS STILL in her nightgown and pink slippers.

He heard the TV when he came up the walk to the condo. What was it, Rosie O’Donnell? Rikki Lake? It was a talk show of some kind. Then it abruptly cut off and he knew she’d seen his shadow on the window shade as he’d stepped onto the front porch. When he came in she was poring over bills on the coffee table.

He debated telling her he knew she hadn’t been working on bills, she’d been watching TV, and she’d switched it off as he’d arrived to make it look as if she wasn’t just watching TV all day. But he knew where that would end.

He stood in the archway between the dining area and the living room, looking at her. Seeing her, in that moment, as if seeing a stranger. He felt almost that he’d intruded in someone else’s house.

She looked up from the phone bills. “Oh hi. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Uh-huh.

“Hi.”

“You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look funny.”

“You’re pretty funny-lookin’ yourself.” He smiled so she’d know it was a joke.

She looked back at the bills. He wondered how her calves got so big and so white. Her cheeks were round and white and heavy. She’d remembered to put on those half-glasses she wore for reading as she pretended to squint at the bills. Her long black hair was stringy, its washing at least a day late.

Think how you’re perceiving her, he told himself guiltily. It isn’t fair. It’s your mood. And she’s not at her best. The ashtray beside her was brimming with cigarette butts.

Irma, their miniature collie, lying at Bette’s feet, woke up when he came near the sofa. She leapt up to stand on her hind legs, put her front paws on his knee, gazing raptly up at him. He laughed, reached down and grabbed her nose and shook it, making her snuffle.

“She’s been flirting with that dog next door again,” Bette said, smiling at Irma.

He sat on the arm of the couch, petting the dog. “Didn’t you tell her she’s been spayed?”

“She’s ready to party anyway, I guess. I don’t know where she gets the hormones. Today she ran down the walk after the postman—and she’s always been nice to him, he’s never been scared of her, but I was afraid he was going to mace her.”

“Why?”

“She jumped up and grabbed a cardboard box that had some kind of sausage sample in it, right out of his bag!”

They laughed, and he patted Irma. “You’re the lady pirate, Irma.”

For a moment there was a warmth between him and Bette; the dog was the medium for it. He thought: We relate to each other through the dog or not at all …

He got up and went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator. It was amazing how something so stiff and crispy as celery could become as limp and droopy as one of Dali’s watches, hanging over the edge of the metal fridge tray. There were some moldy pickles; lonesome condiments; two cartons of half-eaten Chinese food that’d been there for two weeks. Nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” she called from the living room. “I forgot to shop.”

“You forgot?” He closed the fridge door.

“Yup.”

He went to the door, looked through the dining area at her, still on the couch in the living room. “You’ve forgotten for a month. I always do it or we order out.”

“It hasn’t been a month.”

“Yeah it has. Want to go over some receipts together?”

“Not necessary, Inspector Clouseau. I’m sure I must have …”

“Bette—you haven’t gone out in a month. I’ve even taken the garbage out.” He thought: Don’t say it. But he took the leap. “Does the word agoraphobia speak to us at all?”

She stared at him. “You’re saying I’m mentally ill because I’ve been a little depressed and haven’t gone out much?”

“Depressed? Agoraphobia is not depressed, it’s a step beyond it. It’s fear of going outside. And it’s not in the mental illness category. It’s just neurotic. But you could get a little therapy or Prozac or something.”

“Now you’ve gone from Inspector Clouseau to Dr. Kildare.”

“God. No one remembers Dr. Kildare.”

“You spend too much time around high school students.”

“Yeah, well, that I won’t argue with.”

“You know what, I could take a shower, put on my special nightie—”

“Don’t put yourself out.”

He regretted it as soon as he said it.

Her face crinkled up. “You’re right. You’re right.” She made gulping sounds as she cried, her head bowed; her hair drooping. “You’re right I’m just … I’m a lump. I’m a fucking lump. I’m neurotic and scared and I’m a lump. You should leave me.” The crying went into a higher gear.

He wanted to go to her and tell her it wasn’t so but he was too angry and he was surprised at how angry he was. It wasn’t like this was unusual or anything.

“Look—just … calm down. Have some of that calming tea, watch one of your shows, I’m going to the grocery store, get us some stuff. I’ll make some soup, you’ll feel better.”

It was a way of trying to make up to her for provoking her to tears and then not comforting her. And he was hungry.

“No, I’ll go.”

But he knew if he waited for her to go, she’d make excuses and then it’d be ten PM and she still wouldn’t have gone and there’d be no dinner and they’d both be in foul, low-blood-sugar moods and it’d escalate into a huge fight.

As he went into the bedroom and changed his clothes, he thought: I ought to be able to do something more to help her.

But there was something between him and what he knew he should do to help her, and he couldn’t see what it was and he couldn’t get past it. It was like one of the force fields in a science fiction movie. He felt a burning when he tried to cross it, to get to her, and he knew the burning was all in him.

“I can’t even have a baby, I just have bloody pieces of baby,” she sobbed.

He didn’t want her to talk about the series of miscarriages. He very badly didn’t want her to talk about it.

“Hon—just … take it easy. I’ll be back. Bring you some ice cream.” Just what she needed. Ice cream.

Oh come on, he thought, as he went out the front door. She’s only fifty pounds or so overweight. Some people at the mall, you couldn’t believe they could get into a car to get there.

He stopped at his little blue Mitsubishi and looked at the condo. It was attached to the other condos, same shape and color, a deep red brown that was supposed to look foresty somehow, and there were little leafless trees in front of it; the little trees were the same size as TV antennas and almost the same shape. People had stopped using TV antennas, he thought, so the antennas had disguised themselves as trees for survival.

He got into the car and drove to the mall.

“EL LORO MEANS ‘The parrot’,” the bartender told Buck.

“No shit.” Buck ran his hand over his bristling jaw. Two days short of a shave, he thought. “I wonder why they’d call it after fuckin’ parrots. Parrots don’t come from California.” He drank some more of his rum and coke.

“People let their parrots get out and they get wild and we end up with quite a few wild parrots. Maybe named after that, some of them local wild parrots. The town is only about thirty years old, see.”

It was one of those Howard Johnson’s bars attached to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant, which was attached to the Howard Johnson’s motel where Buck was staying. Usually nobody was ever in those bars except for traveling salesmen, fat and sullen.

But sometimes you could get some pussy there: somebody’s runaway wife, or whatever. They go right to the motel bar from their room.

Buck liked the Howard Johnson’s because you didn’t even have to leave the motel to get your food. The less you had to leave, the more you could leave when you didn’t have to. Good to remember. Crimebuster tip.

In the joint, in Vacaville, they’d loved it when he’d say “I gotta crimebuster tip for ya” and then he’d tell them how to slip the cops.

Of course the inevitable question would come up.

Why you here, if you so smart motherfucker?

Because, he’d said, every time, assholes like you need my help. It’s charity, why I’m here.

Usually got a laugh. A motherfucker was laughing with you he wasn’t sticking a piece of tape-handle shit-metal in your back.

The bartender, here, he was an old guy, kind of guy who lived to get away to Vegas when he could.

“You in town looking for work?” the old guy asked.

“No. Why?”

No particular belligerence in the way Buck said it, but the bartender could tell Buck didn’t like the question about work. It implied more, unspoken questions, like: Where do you get your money, and what have you been doing recently, and are those jailhouse tattoos on your wrist?

“I don’t know,” the bartender was saying, “there’s some work at the motherboard plant, lot of people come here to try and get some of that …”

“What’s a motherfucking motherboard?”

The bartender tossed his head the way some people did instead of laughing. “A computer part.”

“Oh, sure, that’s right. No, me, I work in construction.” Last job he’d had, ten years before, that’d been construction. He’d got seven hundred dollars for the company’s truck and tools, when he left. “No, I came to town to pick something up belongs to me.”

“Get you another rum and coke?”

“Nope.”

Buck was looking out the window. A cop was rolling by. The cruiser went on, two small-town cops with their dicks in their hands.

Buck decided to go back to his room, look through the phone book.

THE MUZAK WAS playing the “left the cake out in the rain” song, and there was a sale on Lunchables on aisle three. Darry was trying to remember what else they needed at the house. Dog food? Probably. Ice cream? Definitely.

Then Marla came wheeling fast around a corner of the aisle and ran her cart broadside into his.

“Oh my god—twice in one day! It must be destiny!” She laughed and he had to laugh too. She saw he’d changed his clothes, he was wearing an X-Files T-shirt one of his students had given him, only because it had been clean, and she burst out, “Where’d you get that tee! I haven’t got that one. I thought I had all the X-Files T-shirts!”

“Umm—one of my students gave it to me. He’s kind of a fanboy or something …”

“Oh you’re a fan of the show too, oh my god, that’s so—what’s your sign?”

He blinked. Had he said he was a fan of the show? He’d seen but one episode of the show, which had seemed pretentious to him—pretending it wasn’t ordinary TV when it was—and …

And he said …

“Oh yeah I love the show, never miss it.” He hoped he sounded sincere. Uh—my sign is … Scorpio.” Actually his sign was Libra but Scorpio sonded sexier.

“Oh … my … god I knew you had to be a Scorp … So am I! I could see all those Scorp fires in you, seriously, I mean I know how that sounds but it was just like you were one of those gas fireplaces.”

“Uhh … Hell yes, my gas is burning, you bet. Especially after the school cafeteria.”

She laughed. Her cart contained Lunchables, a half gallon of tequila, chicken wings with a packet of barbecue sauce, pork rinds, Doritos …

“You know what I don’t have anybody to talk about The X-Files with …”

… Oscar Mayer franks, white bread, a twelve-pack of Budweiser …

“Well—one of these days we should—”

What was he doing?

“How about now!”

“Um—” He felt like a crevice had opened up in the tile floor of the supermarket and he was pitching into free fall, as he said, “What the hell, yeah.”

Something in him knew: It was happening so fast.

He found himself following her to the checkout. She was saying something about having to drop off all this stuff and did he have anything to drop off and he said no, don’t worry about it.

In the parking lot he thought he saw Jan, she of the questionnaires, sitting in her minivan, watching him as he walked out with Marla. So, let her look.

In a kind of dream, Darry drove behind Marla’s car—her sister’s car—to a flaking white crackerbox house between two enormous pine trees; there was a silt of red needles on its roof.

He parked well back from the house, at an angle, as she drove into the driveway; she ran over the wheel of an overturned bicycle. She carried the bulging bags to the house, one in each arm, with no visible effort.

He thought: I should have carried them in for her. But he was hoping Cecily wouldn’t see him out here, let alone in the house.

A police car cruised slowly by, and the crewcut young cop riding shotgun looked at him. Darry became uncomfortably aware that he was parked crooked, rear end of his car sticking out into the street.

But the cops cruised on, slowing in front of Cecily’s house but not stopping. They turned the corner and were gone and then Marla came running up from the house, grinning. She’d left the two bags leaning on the front door.

“I don’t have a key and my sister’s gone and Cecily’s gone but they’ll be back soon so I guess the stuff’ll be okay.” All this as she opened the door and got in. “Well let’s go!”

They went. She seemed unaware of the bike wheel crimped under the car she’d left in the driveway. He decided to say nothing about it.

They drove to the town’s main drag, Silbido Avenue, and he turned right and immediately regretted it, thinking someone who knew his wife was sure to see him on this street. But then, who knew Bette, anymore?

“Um—where we going?” he asked, smiling, trying to make a joke of his vertiginous uncertainty.

“I should’ve brought the tequila. Well, let’s go where we can have some drinks. Any ol’ place. You know what, I don’t watch X-Files all that much, really, some of them kind of bore me, I just like the alien ones. My favorite show is Sightings.”

“Sightings. UFOs, right?”

“Oh yeah UFOs bigtime, man, but for real, and they also have, you know, ghosts and bigfoot.”

“And the ghost of bigfoot?”

“I didn’t see that one. They had this one where they showed a crop circle getting made, this light was flying around over a field and this crop circle appeared … ”

He’d read about it. The film had been analyzed and it was a hoax. And he thought about telling her this. But he could see her cleavage, from where he was sitting.

“Oh I know,” he said. “That was mind-blowing. You’d think the president would say something about all this. Flying saucers. I mean, it’s evidence.”

“Oh exactly, I’m so glad you think so. I really think I was, you know, from there, in my last life.”

“From …?”

“Another planet. Well, I think it was Mars because, see, Mars used to be this really green planet thousands and thousands of years ago but then they had a catastrophe? And what they had there, you see, was an Egyptian civilization, and they brought it to Egypt, but see the first pyramids and sphinxes, they were on Mars. That’s why I’ve got this Egyptian jewelry, because really it’s my connection to Mars.”

“Yeah? How about this place? I mean, for a drink. ‘Shady Corners Bar and Grill …’ Most places that say ‘Grill’ don’t have a grill though …”

“Whatever. And they had a catastrophe on Mars? And the people all went underground … and all that’s left is that Face on Mars thing … But see I was one of those people in a past life … ”

“Did you have, uh, hypno-regression, whatsit, to find out?”

“No. I don’t think so … ”

They got out of the car and he looked around at what the neighborhood was like, and he checked twice to make sure he’d locked the car doors. She was already on her way into the bar.

He followed her in. It was dim inside. There was a juke with colored lights in it. The place had a collection of beer signs on the rafters. There was a lifesize cardboard cut-out of a sunnily-smiling Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader in a bikini; the bikini was made of Budweiser labels. There were no windows that he could see. Only one customer; an old man—a shaking, sunken-faced barfly—sat at one end of the bar, talking to himself or maybe to the TV set tuned to an afternoon talk show. Darry felt a twinge of guilt, seeing the talk show. Knowing Bette was probably watching the same show, right now.

“Um … two margaritas,” he told the lady bartender. She was about fifty and wore a remarkably short skirt, gold-mesh hose, and had a bell of yellow hair. Her swooping eyebrows were cartoonishly inked in.

“We don’t do margaritas, honey,” she said, as Marla put on a song from a solo album by Stevie whats-her-name from Fleetwood Mac.

“Tequila-up for me!” Marla yelled, punching more buttons on the juke.

“Ummm … for me too,” he said.

They sat in a booth and drank and Marla told him a rambling story about why she’d left Texas. A boyfriend she’d been with five or six years: he’d abused her, knocked her around, and he sold her big-screen TV one day when she was at work, and he talked her into ripping off her boss and got her fired, but it was a sucky job anyway, working in one of those little glass booths at a gas station. But it wasn’t so much that kind of thing. If she just knew where he was going to be on Christmas eve and on her birthday because on your birthday a person should, you know …

Darry agreed with her completely. She’d done the right thing, going to live with her sister to get away from the guy. Sounded like an abusive jerk.

“Oh he wasn’t so bad, some ways.”

And she told him about the dreams that had informed her she was a reincarnated alien princess, and he acted as if it were entirely believable, and they danced, and he drank several more tequilas, and he’d begun to get the spins halfway through “Hotel California” and then he’d run to the bathroom and when he came out she handed him some little white pills and said these’ll fix you up and for some reason he took them and, after the glass of water she made him drink, he surprised himself by drinking more tequila …

They talked about favorite bands, and then the pills hit him, and his blood came up into his ears into a kind of roaring high tide, and the beer-signs seemed to be grinning conspiratorially at him, and then she was pulling his arm and he was throwing a twenty and a ten at the bartender and then they were in the car, and the car blurred into the grubby little office of the Happy Now Plenty Motel, which was run—and apparently named—by some Vietnamese people who scowled a lot when he and Marla signed in, and she astonished him, as they went into the equally grubby little motel room, by referring to the people in the motel office as “fucking slopes, excuse my language”, but then they were kissing on the bed and his hard-on was like an open pocketknife blade under his pants …

… then she jumped up and turned on the wall-mounted TV and he was surprised, once more, to see they had a pornography channel here, that this was an adult motel, and she was laughing at the girl blowing the black guy, “little cunt polishes that nigger’s knob like she had a lot of practice” and he felt he ought to say something about these racist remarks, enough was enough, but then she had given him more small white pills and another tequila …

… and then he was throwing up again in the little bathroom and in a fit of giddiness deliberately aimed a stream of vomit at the cockroach on the floor and he had to spend ten minutes cleaning it up with a towel which he felt compelled to get rid of so he threw the soiled towel out the bathroom window into the airspace and then he had to rinse out his mouth with the Lavoris that was on the bathroom shelf which had to be the single worst-tasting mouthwash in the history of oral hygiene and then …

… Then she was pounding on the door and saying she really had to pee but …

… as he was going out the bathroom door, thinking that his head felt like a beach ball with dozens of little race cars spinning around on its inner surface, she said, “You don’t have to leave while I pee, we can talk. We don’t need to stand on ceremony … You know what, why I think I started doggin’ on you, because you remind me of this English teacher I had when I was in ninth grade, I wanted to fuck him bad but he wouldn’t even talk about it, but he was so cute … ”

And he stood awkwardly, hands in pockets, trying to look out the little bathroom window, rather than stare at her as she talked on and tried to pee, with her red lace panties down around her ankles, sitting on the toilet smoking a cigarette, and he thought:

We just met… she’s the aunt of one of my fifth period kids …

Then she said, “I can’t pee yet … come here …” And she took his hand and pulled him down beside her and put his hand between her legs and he gasped and she said, “Rub to help me … help me pee … rub to … ” And almost immediately he felt a warm aromatic stream twining his palm, his wrist, ticking onto the porcelain, and she pulled him close and peed into the toilet and on his arm and kissed him on the mouth; she tasted of cigarettes and tequila.

She dropped the cigarette into the metal trashcan, and pulled him to stand in front of her and drew his dick from his pants and laughed when it jumped springily at her and then her mouth was on him, he could see lipstick on it, and she was still peeing, and he almost came that way, but in a few minutes she had led him into the other room and he was on his back, his hand still wet, and she was straddling him, with her skirt still on, her panties in one hand, a cigarette—when had she gotten another cigarette?—in the other hand and she pushed the panties into his mouth as she bounced on his dick and he clawed her blouse down so he could weigh her breasts in his palms and she said, “Pinch the nipples, pinch ’em, pinch ’em, come on … shit, pinch ’em, yeah …” And on her breasts were tattoos above each nipple: sweet and sour. There was a name in the cleavage, two letters curving down one tit BU and two more curving up the other CK and then he came in her and he felt sick and wanted her to get off him and she just laughed and kept rocking on him and—maybe it was the pills—he stayed hard and then …

Can’t remember … can’t remember …

He first thought about Bette and how late it was when David Letterman came on the little TV.

“Eleven o’clock … ” he muttered, seeing Letterman.

Marla was sitting up beside him, eating the Chinese food she’d sent out for. Sweet and Sour pork. He hadn’t been able to eat any of it. She was wearing the panties now, and the leopard pattern blouse. He could still taste the panties.

She put the Chinese food on a cigarette-burned lamp table by the bed, under a lamp shaped like a glass swan. She lit a cigarette. Marlboro Lights. “You haven’t said much for, hell, hours,” she said, reaching for the channel changer. There was an old cigarette burn on the channel changer. “David Letterman, I just don’t git him. Let’s see what else is on. Oh, Jay Leno, I like him … ”

“Yeah, he’s … ”

Eleven o’clock. Bette would be looking out the window.

Good. Looking out the window was almost as good as going out the door.

“You should have somea that Chinese food, slopey little fucks did it up good.”

He winced. “What’s up with this racist stuff, Marla?”

“Ooh, Is that not politically connected?”

“You mean—politically correct?”

She turned a look on him that would have set him on fire if he’d been doused with gasoline.

“I guess you think I’m just a stupid kinda bimbo?”

“What? No! I mean—if you have some prejudices, everybody gets, you know, conditioned somewhere …”

“Conditioned. Con-ditioned. Somewhere. ‘She’s conditioned somewhere’. You saying I’m white trash? My mama was a racist?”

“Um—no, I’m just … hey, forget it. I have my kneejerk responses to stuff, you know. I mean, the irony is that my objection to racist comments is a reflex of my class status … It’s itself, um, ‘classist’ and … ”

The look she gave him now would have set him on fire without the gasoline.

You dumb shit, he told himself. Patronizing fuck.

“I’m sorry,” he began, “I’m just … babbling. Drunk. Still drunk. Those pills—first they get me high, then, you know, confused.”

“You don’t know what drunk is, faggot.” She got the fifth of tequila they’d sent out for and poured him four fingers. “Go for it.”

“I don’t wanna throw up again.”

“You’re past throwing up. Listen to Mama Marla, she knows.”

He drank about half the tumbler. His stomach burned. He laughed. She drank the rest.

A thumping came on the door. Marla sat up straight. She was like a cat hearing the call for dinner; looking around to see where it came from.

“Marla?” A low voice from the door.

Darry felt a long, shimmering chill.

“Marla!”

She was up and he was standing, the room spinning, and only then did he realize he had on the X-Files shirt but no pants, his scrotum banging against his thigh. He looked around blearily for his pants, thinking maybe it was just her sister’s husband. Obviously she did this sort of thing all the time and they had to fetch her home … And everyone would hear about it from the disgusted Cecily …

Marla was talking sweetly through the cracked-open door, the brass chain locked over it. “I’ll meet you downstairs, baby … ” Deep basso mumbles and rumbles from whoever was out there. “No baby … I wasn’t running from you, I just needed some, you know, breathing space. Didn’t you get my note?” More mumbles. The word bullshit. Rumbles. “… no I meant it, I was coming back … ”

Darry had found his pants and was pulling them on but it was the wrong leg and they faced backwards so he had to start over.

“… No baby, I’ll be right down because someone might—Buck, baby, don’t be stupid …”

Buck. BU on one tit, CK on the other.

Each of Darry’s blood cells iced over individually.

“No, baby, you’ll attract—”

Then the door gave out a thud and the chain snapped and flew across the room and Marla was sliding backwards across the floor on her butt and the door was slamming and Buck was there, big tattooed guy with his hair shaved off on the sides and long on top, little pony tail. His lower lip hung a little bit too far. He wore a guinea tee and oversized jeans and Nikes. He was looking at Darry with his mouth open, looking more stunned than angry. But his hand went behind him.

Marla shot to her feet and went to him, hands raised in front of her. “No you’ll get ’em all over us—”

He straight-armed her so she flew with her feet six inches over the floor, smacked into the bathroom door and slid down it.

She sat there panting. Darry realized that she was aroused. “Okay, baby … okay, baby …”

He reached behind him again and drew the gun out, slowly. It was a .45 automatic, blue steel.

“Hey, no problem, I didn’t know she was your girl, I’m outta here …” Darry said, desperately sorting words in the hope of coming up with the combination that wouldn’t set him off.

As he spoke, he walked past Buck, his neck prickling, and got all the way to the door.

“He’s the kind of guy, might call the police, Buck,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to meet you downstairs, he might get ’em down on us—”

Darry turned to stare at her. Had she really said that? He jerked at the door handle—

Darry felt a big hand on the back of his trousers, flew backwards, off his feet, flung to the floor much the way Marla had been. Found he was sitting on his ass, his back against the bed. “You get some good pussy, you punk-ass motherfucker?” Buck asked, his voice a rasp. His expression unchanging. Sort of flat, vaguely curious.

“Um—no we just—”

“He’s so full of shit. He did me hard, Buck.”

Darry gaped at Marla.

She went on, chattering happily, hugging her knees against herself like a Campfire Girl at a sleepover. “But he was such a fag about it, I had to lead him along by the dick and he let me sit on him …”

Buck laughed. “You rode him like a donkey?”

“Shit yeah!”

They both laughed. Then, almost affectionately, Buck turned and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet and back-handed her, knocking her back to the floor.

She was weeping now, weeping happily. “I deserve that. Running out on you and fucking this asshole. I do.”

“You deserve a lot worse.”

Darry began to see the depth and width of it. He jumped up and stumbled to the window, tried to yell for help. “Hey! Somebody call the police! Hey—!”

He heard her small footsteps behind him and heard a crash through a sudden burning in his scalp and he fell through the sensation, fell backwards, onto the bed. At the end of a tunnel very far away he saw her standing over him with a broken table lamp in her hands. “That’s my girl,” Buck was saying, as the tunnel shut down, and Darry lost consciousness.

HE HEARD THEM talking for awhile, before he really completely came to. His hands were tied behind him with lamp cord. He couldn’t feel his fingers. There was something jammed in his mouth: his own salty socks. He kept still and listened.

“For real, you’re right over there in the Howard Johnson’s?”

“For real. One block down the fuckin’ street.”

“We almost went to that one! But I think the cheap fag wanted to save money.”

“You like assholes like this? Full-of-themselves assholes with Ph.Ds and shit?”

“Lord no, baby, you know I don’t. I just wanted to go out and I didn’t want nobody like you because it would just, you know, make me want you. You went to my sister’s house?”

“Yeah she saw you leave with some asshole. She thought you was going to the motel strip. I ask a few people and, guess what, you stand right out. ‘Yeah that little slut’s over in that shit hole right there, I seen her go in’.”

“Well I guess I surely do stand out! It’s not like I was hiding that much, baby, don’t you git that? If I wanted to hide from you, would I come to my sister’s?”

“You got any more of that speed?”

“Right here, darlin’.” He heard her rummaging in her purse. “Here you go … I mean, baby darlin’ if I wanted really to get away from you would I go to my sister’s? Like I didn’t know you wouldn’t look there?”

“Stupid little cunt you should’ve picked some place closer. Drove my ass three nights getting here.”

“You drove all that way? But you see there, now I know what you’d do for love, to come out here and get me … ”

“I start to come onto this speed I’ll show you what I’ll do for love you stray bitchin’ dick dogging whore.”

“Say that again.” Her voice husky with arousal.

“You heard me. Dick dogging whore … turn your ass over … ”

“Just don’t break nothing please baby … ” The sounds of slapping and her grunt of tearful happiness as he sodomized her.

Darry tried to wriggle around, get to the door, but he felt Buck fishing for him, felt callused fingers on his scalp, twisting his hair, jerking him to sit up, and then Buck was banging Darry’s head on the wall beside the bed with one hand, while slamming himself into Marla, another fuck and a slam, a fuck and a slam, Darry trying to pull loose but kitten helpless, a fuck and a slam, Buck’s fingers around her throat from behind, jerking her back onto his dick with that hand, the other slamming Darry on the wall, Darry starting to swallow the socks, realizing he was going to choke to death like this, a fuck and a slam. “How’s that feel, you two bitches, both of you bitches, how’s that, how’s that—”

That’s when the door opened and shut and Darry heard Buck shout “What the fuck—?” And Buck let go of him, Darry rolling onto his back to see the police—

It wasn’t the police. It was …

Jan? The computer science teacher from school. Was here in the room with him.

“Hi, Darry.” Jan had a snub-nose .38 in her hand. She held it very steadily.

“You know this bitch? This your old lady?” Marla asked, with real wonder. She had separated from Buck; the two of them turned to look at the door; she reached down and pulled the socks from Darry’s mouth. He gasped, and found his voice.

“Jan—run for the—” He gagged, and tried again. “—the cops!”

Jan shook her head. “I don’t think you really want the cops to find you like this … Your wife would have to hear about it and everyone else too … ” She was still in her school work clothes. She was smiling, very gently.

Marla and Buck were naked, on the bed. Buck made a grab for the his .45 but Jan was already scooping it up and stepping back from him. She pointed the .38 at his chest as Buck got ready to lunge at her.

“I took those classes for women—the ones where they teach you to be aggressive, to fight thieves and the like,” she said, looking him in the eye. “They taught me to aim and to shoot. I really will shoot. And there’s no reason for that to happen unless you insist. You’re not going to jail … ”

Buck sat back on the bed. “You his sister or what?”

“I’m a friend. I knew he was getting into trouble. He was due for it. Exactly due. I’ve been following him since the supermarket. When I saw him leave with her. I’ve sort of been expecting her … Can you stand up, Darius?”

“Uhhh … I think … oh shit my head hurts.” A sob escaped him. Blood trickled hot on the side of his head.

“You see? He’s such a sucky little shit,” Marla said.

Buck laughed. “He is that, ain’t he?”

Darry felt a rising fury. He pictured getting loose, getting the extra gun, shooting them both.

He wobbled over to Jan and turned his back to her. “You take off these wires?”

“No—turn your back to the bed. Marla? Would you do the honors?”

Marla looked at Buck. “Go ahead, darlin’,” Buck said, grinning.

Marla untied Darry and feeling came painfully back into his hands. But they continued to hurt and so did his head and all his muscles. His heart was hammering; his stomach lurched. He wanted to throw up. But he managed to get his clothes back on; one of the most painful things he ever had to do. He found his wallet; they hadn’t emptied it yet.

“We’ll get you checked for a concussion,” Jan said. “You got your wallet? Good … Come on …”

“You in love with him, huh,” Marla said, lying back on the bed, eyes wide.

“That’s right.”

“I like that. That’s romantic. See what she’s doing for love, baby? I’d do that. I’d do way more than that.”

Buck put his arms around her and said nothing, just watching the other two balefully, like a half tamed lion, as they backed toward the door.

“I need some money,” Buck said. “He took some pussy off my woman.”

“No,” Darry said. “You took it out of me already.”

“Best to leave everyone feeling equitable, Darry,” Jan said. She handed Darry the smaller gun. She reached into a skirt pocket, pulled out five twenties. Darry realized she’d had the money ready for something like this.

The guy hammers my head against the wall and we’re going to pay him too.

She tossed the money on the bed. Darry suddenly became aware of the agreeable weight of the gun in his hand. He came close to shooting. His fingers tightened.

But the fury was dissolving. I like that. That’s romantic.

Buck looked at him and knew that Darry was thinking about shooting. “You one lucky motherfucker,” Buck said. “I was going to kill your punk ass,” deliberately pushing Darry.

Darry turned away and Buck smiled.

Jan ejected the clip from the .45, checked for bullets in the chamber, tossed it back to Buck.

Darry looked at her. “You’re going to give him the gun?”

“He can’t fire it now. He can get a new clip. Those things are expensive. I respect guns. I respect these two, really. Except he shouldn’t be beating that girl up.”

“I know I shouldn’t,” Buck said, evenly. But without sorrow.

“He knows he shouldn’t,” Marla said, nodding. Without judgment.

Darry couldn’t stand it anymore. He lurched out the door. Jan came after him and closed the door behind her. As they went down the stairs she took the .38 from him and discreetly put it in her purse and they got into the minivan.

He retched in the minivan, as they drove to her place, but nothing came out.

“Was it the models?” He asked, after he was done retching. “You did that detailed a computer model of … of my behavior … my life?”

“Yes. I knew you’d get in with someone like that. And that she’d have someone like Buck. I modeled most of it—roughly what’d happen. So many variables, it’s hard to be sure. It might not’ve happened. But I’m right about sixty-three percent of the time, computer modeling; projecting from personality with behavioral spreadsheets and probability ratios, weighing in primary environmental factors.”

This kind of talk, just now, was ungraspable for him. All he understood at the moment were things like I was going to kill your punk ass.

“I called your wife, just before I came in, and said I heard you were the victim of a hit and run, and you weren’t hurt bad, just stunned and wandering around, but I thought I knew where you were and I was going to get you to a doctor. She was interested but not, you know, frantic.”

“Jesus. What a story. You should be the writer, not me.”

“I’m taking you to my place to clean you up, then you go home to her but … Do you want me to tell you what you should do then?”

“What the hell. You just saved my ‘punk ass’.”

“That’s the Darius I love. Well—you should divorce your wife, but see to it she has therapy first. She doesn’t want to be married to you. I got her to do the questionnaires too.”

“No, come on.”

“Oh yes. Came to the house. Had to, to get your model right—you weren’t detailed or honest enough. I used to bring her treats. Pastries and lattés. Told her not to tell you … She’ll have a series of crushes on therapists and then she’ll find someone amenable. She’ll lose weight, too. She wants to be as free of you as you are of her … ”

“Really?”

“Fifty-nine percent probability. And then you should … You sure you want me to go on?”

“Yeah. It takes my mind off the way my head feels.”

“You should live with me for awhile and see if you’re ready to be serious with me. We’ll be traveling. We’re going on one of those cruises to Alaska first. I always wanted to see Alaska.”

“Cruises?”

“We’re quitting our jobs.”

“We are?”

“I only stayed there for you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Not kidding. I don’t need to work. I don’t really like teaching all that much. I’ve got $680,000 in the bank. Plus another half million in shares. Software royalties.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“That’s such a revolting expression.”

“Sorry … Alaska? All this sounds … ”

“Like I’m as crazy as Marla in my way. Not really. Only a little. But we’re such a good fit, you and I. Now me, I want, um, to take care of someone, very completely take care of them, and you, well, you really, really like to be taken care of. You’re quite … passive, honestly. Deep down. You want excitement but you don’t want to … to be the leader in getting there.”

He didn’t like that. He didn’t really admit that it was true till about five months later …

… when during the day they watched an iceberg shuddering parts of itself into the sea, shattering in the spring wind: Temporary gems of ice falling, splashing in evanescent transparent lace.

And Jan’s lace …

Her lace was black, in their little ship’s cabin, at night: Narrow shoulders, wide hips: holy shit, she fucks like a goddess!

… and only then could Darry admit that it was true … when they were on the cruise ship, and Jan was bouncing on his dick, and he asked her to stuff her panties into his mouth.