Hurley eased the window up and tried the screen. The screen was inclined to stick. He was pleased to have remembered this. It was a gift from his brain, like a coupon for half-price dry cleaning. Even with the screen all the way up, it would be a tight squeeze. One side balked and he had to risk a quick blow with the bottom of his fist. It made the dull noise of a hammer landing on meat. Hurley held his breath and listened but heard only his own body’s ticking. He tried the screen again and it slid open.
A beautiful square of black night and moving air and cricket noise.
Hurley bent down and grasped the bulky metal complications of that thing that thing that was used to get out of high windows. It had two big hooks you fastened over the windowsill, then you let the rest of it drop down, piece by piece by piece. It made a racket, a jangly noise. He hoped it couldn’t be heard from inside. He peered out the window at it. That thing that thing ladder! The streetlight gilded each step, a path for him to follow.
He swung one leg over the windowsill, wiggled around until his foot found the first step. Then, supporting his weight with his good hand, he reached out with the other foot. Nothing to it. Practically his old self. Face to the wall, he lowered himself to the next step. The ladder swayed and knocked him against the wall. One side of him didn’t work right, like the screen. No matter; he took it slow and steady, he wasn’t about to make some foolish mistake. And anyway, there was this amazing night to pay attention to. He hadn’t been out at night since since since . . .
Crickets and black perfume and here was a bird of some sort making its solitary, liquid noise. What kind of bird? He didn’t know. He didn’t think he’d ever known.
Then he slipped and scraped his good side and dangled there like a giant crippled spider. He remembered every swear word in creation and silently turned them all loose. He was still too high up to let himself go, unless he wanted to smash up what was left of his pudding head. Not that he hadn’t thought about it. Go ahead and finish the job.
Just as the effort of hanging on was making his chest squeeze and the sweat slide under his clothes, he managed a new toehold. Inch by inch by inch, he brought himself around, got his legs underneath him again.
In this way he reached the end of the ladder. Just the smallest hop to the ground. He let go, fought for his balance, lost it and toppled over. When he managed to right himself, Claudine had come out of the back door and was watching him.
“Cute,” she said. “One of your better stunts. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Fire drill.”
“Fire drill.” Hurley’s head drooped. His eyes got teary. He couldn’t do anything right.
“Real cute.” Claudine led him back inside. She didn’t even scold him. He was that pathetic.
But later, after she had deposited him in bed, the sheets tucked tight and hard around him, she scooped the ladder up in both arms. It made a bundle of metal sticks. “I guess if the house burns down some night with us in it, it’ll be because I had to keep this under lock and key.” She headed off down the hallway to the guest bedroom, where she slept these days.
Before all this, he had not known just how much she hated him. But then, he had not realized how much he hated her.
All day long he sat in his chair and listened to Claudine talking on the phone to different members of her fan club. Her voice was low, in keeping with the atmosphere of hushed crisis. But he could hear perfectly well, thank you! Sometimes the phone rang, sometimes it was Claudine who started up talking, meaning she’d called someone. “About the same,” she said, or, “Well, I just do the best I can,” or, his favorite, “In sickness and in health. That’s what I signed on to.”
Hurley had taken to laughing his horrible laugh whenever he heard that one. He could still unsettle her that way, get to her by making his noises.
Claudine had shut and locked the windows—did she think that would stop him, if he wanted to jump?—but she hadn’t closed the blinds. Hurley stared at the black square as if it was a television screen. He could stay up and watch it all night if he wanted. She couldn’t stop him.
But here was the window full of bright day, and Claudine shaking him, and his head was all joggly, and always that muddy, waking-up panic, something gone horribly wrong. . . . “Come on, you can sleep anytime. I got other things to do besides haul you up and down.”
Today was a Doctor Day, and so he had to be clean and presentable. He was finally allowed to manage in the bathroom by himself, thank God, though Claudine still shaved him. She didn’t know crap about shaving and dragged the razor across his face like an old plow. Even now when he was alone in the bathroom she set a baby monitor on the sink to keep track of him.
With jerky effort, Hurley lifted the clothes hamper to the edge of the tub. He stood back and gave it a push. It landed with a solid thump. Then there was the sound of Claudine stampeding up the stairs. Hurley stood back and she banged the door open, wild-eyed.
Hurley laughed: “Haaorghhaghha.”
Claudine put her hand on her heart and set her jaw. “One of these fine days you’ll want me to do for you, feed you or tie your tie, and then we’ll see what kinds of tricks I play on you.”
“Hoorhgh,” said Hurley, sulky now. He didn’t doubt that she’d start right away, inventing some special meanness.
Hurley was made ready. The complications of his socks and shoes were mastered, his teeth scrubbed until his gums bled. Claudine had done something to his hair. It felt painted on. His body was made of wood, like a what what what puppet not puppet the other kind. With somebody else jerking the strings so he flopped and flapped. Claudine made him lean on her on the stairs outside. She was too short and he kept rolling into her. Claudine’s neck was fat. Her hair had been hairsprayed. He got some of it in his mouth and spat furiously. Why couldn’t she let him take the GODDAMN stairs by himself? He knew it was because somebody, neighbors, might be watching. They needed to see how devoted she was.
Then he had to watch Claudine drive, from the miserable passenger seat. He had become one of those men whose wives drove them around.
At the hospital they put him in a wheelchair, all the better for Claudine to ram him into walls and corners. They got on an elevator and everyone cleared a respectful space around him. Except for Claudine, who planted herself square behind him so that his head was trapped between her two enormous breasts in their pansy floral bunting. He could smell her. Baby powder and perfume stink.
She rolled him up to the doctor’s window-thing. The woman behind the desk peered over at him. “Well, who do we have here? How’s my favorite fella?”
“Sit on my face, you old trout,” Hurley told her. Of course they couldn’t understand a thing he said. Claudine and the woman got busy talking about him, his progress or lack of progress, his good and bad days. He had to hand it to Claudine. If anybody else was around, she did a great job of putting on that halo. Her voice fluttered. She practically cooed at him.
When it was his turn to see the doctor, Claudine came in with him so she could do some more showing off. The doctor was too young. Hurley didn’t trust a doctor who didn’t wear glasses.
In they went. “Mr. Hurley, how are you?” The kid doctor made a point of looking him in the eye and shaking his hand, and even though that was just something they told them to
do, something they learned in med school, Hurley was so grateful, he felt himself weeping. He cried all the time now. It was mortifying, it was another mysterious broken part of him. He tried to say he was fine, fine, found that his mouth had gone unaccountably loose, and settled for nodding his head.
“He won’t do his exercises,” Claudine said. “I’m after him all the time, but he won’t mind.”
The doctor looked grave. “Now Mr. H., you know if you want to get better, you have to work on it. Balance, strength, and flexibility. We’ve talked about all that, remember?”
“Rather sit and feel sorry for himself,” Claudine said, the spite leaking out from behind her what was it what was it sweet talk fake face.
Hurley squeezed every muscle in his throat, opened his mouth and got his tongue in position, put enough air in his lungs to force out a single intelligible word: “Lie-ey.”
“Mrs. Hurley, why don’t you give us a minute here?”
It took Claudine an extra beat to realize she was being asked to leave. She grabbed her handbag, gave Hurley a curdled look, and stomped out. Hurley showed her his teeth.
Now it was just the two of them. The doctor probed his bad hand bad arm bad leg. All his broken puppet parts were extended, examined, then returned to him. The doctor said, “I’d like to see a little more improvement. Are the exercises just too frustrating? Is that why you aren’t keeping up with them?”
Hurley would have liked to tell him. In his head it came out perfect. How Claudine put his weights and ropes away in different places so he couldn’t find them. How he did the best he could on his own, grasping and stretching and pushing his weak side against the wall to strengthen it, how he’d managed on the ladder, in spite of everything, but how he got tired from nothing these days, nothing at all, him, Hurley, who used to work like a lumberjack!
The doctor bent his head attentively to catch any sounds that Hurley made. But no sooner had Hurley shaped the words he needed then other words crowded in behind them, so much it was important for the doctor to understand, how he’d been his mother’s youngest, her late-born child, how his father had always looked cross-eyed at him, accused the mother of spoiling him, how he’d gone out for baseball, played shortstop, his nickname Killer from the way he dove to make plays, ate his share of dirt, always hustling, never a slacker, never asked for a handout, served his country in wartime, in Korea, was honorable discharged, came home to build up his own trucking company and marry the pretty, button-eyed girl who had become the old hellcat in the waiting room and they’d never had children but maybe that was just as well since they might have turned out like Claudine. And how one perfectly normal night, reading the newspaper after a dinner of fried chicken and coleslaw, his brain had misfired, had flooded with white, paralyzing light that struck him down, robbed him of his peace of mind and body and left him in this miserable state, an overgrown baby making googly noises.
The doctor placed a hand on Hurley’s arm, the good one. “I’m going to arrange for some intensive speech therapy for you. I think if we can get your communication skills to a higher level, it’s going to make a big difference in your quality of life.”
Hurley nodded. Fine. Great. He didn’t think for a minute that anything they came up with was going to help, and even if it did, what then? Nobody was going to want to hear the kinds of things he’d stored up to say.
The doctor seemed pretty pleased with himself though, and he told Hurley he’d be right back. Hurley waited, boring himself with the charts on the wall. The Circulatory System, a freeway laid out in red and blue. The Endocrine System, a heap of rocks you had to carry around inside you.
The doctor was gone so long, he wondered if they’d forgotten about him. He opened to the door to the little room, peered out. Wheeled himself a ways down the corridor. Voices reached him from behind the closed doors he passed, though he couldn’t be sure if it was the doctor. Took himself all the way up to the front desk, hoping his mere presence would serve as a reproach, a complaint.
But nobody was there. You had to wonder about hospitals these days. They didn’t so much run them as run them into the ground. And when he pushed his way out into the waiting room, it was populated by all manner of waiting people, none of whom was Claudine.
Here was the levelevelevelator, now that was silly, he knew exactly what it was. He stabbed the button, down, and when he got on, here was a crowd of nice people anxious to help. Hurley held up one finger. “Lobby, sir?” And when they got there, didn’t they let him off first, all smiles.
He could hardly believe his luck. He rolled soundlessly along the well-carpeted corridors. No one paid him any mind. The great thing about a wheelchair was that people expected you to be all kinds of crippled up, nothing they had to stare at trying to figure out. There was a side entrance with those automatic doors that whooshed open as you approached, and in this way Hurley shot through, a free man.
He decided to stick with the wheelchair, at least for now. It was the closest he’d come to driving in a long time. Lord, he missed driving. He’d come out onto a cement courtyard, and beyond it a busy street, sunlight making him squint, and the only question how far he could get before Claudine turned the U.S. Marshalls loose on his trail.
Hurley chose a direction that looked promising—no hills, not too crowded—and set off at a pretty good clip, even with the obstacles posed by curbs and cracks, even though his weak arm couldn’t push as hard as the other and he kept snailing to his left. The downtown buildings were largely uninteresting, banks and such. He couldn’t remember one block from another, what might be up ahead. Hoping he might come across such a thing as a tavern, foolish hope, because he didn’t have any money, hadn’t seen his wallet in weeks—where had Claudine put it?—and anyway he’d want to walk in on his own two feet like he always had, order his drink as unremarkably as anyone else. Because that was what you missed more than the liquor—which Claudine had also put somewhere he couldn’t find—the comfort of simple ritual, being a man standing among men, taking his ease.
But say he never got any better. It was still possible to imagine a place where they might come to know him, get used to his squawks and thumps, understand that his drink was Jim Beam with a little water, give him a peaceable corner where he could sit and watch a ball game . . .
Hurley was just beginning to think in terms of subterfuge, getting off this particular street, when his own car came screeching to the curb. Claudine was driving, and a young man in green hospital clothes stepped out of the passenger side. The jig was up.
“Mr. Hurley?” Approaching him cautiously, like he was some dangerous wild animal instead of his busted self. He was even younger than the doctor. The world was run by children. “Hi there. We’ve come to get you back home.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me in the head,” Hurley told him, no good, it came out garbage.
Hurley allowed himself to be hoisted out of the wheelchair and placed in the car’s front seat. Claudine was staring straight in front of her. The young man stuck his head inside to speak to her. “Don’t worry about the wheelchair, Mrs. Hurley. I’ll just run it right back.” When Claudine didn’t answer, he said, “You all have a nice day now,” and closed the car door.
Claudine jerked the car into gear. She didn’t speak while she bumped and braked her way through downtown traffic. She drove the way she did everything else, with a heavy hand. Once they were out on the parkway, she started in on him. “Whatever pleasure you take from humiliating me, go ahead and make the most of it. Where is it you think you’re headed on these jaunts anyway? You take the cake, mister. I wish you’d took yourself off before, when you were a whole man. Would have spared me a lot of work and worry. You couldn’t just up and die a natural death, could you? No, you had to do it halfway.”
There was a slow-moving bus ahead of them and Claudine occupied herself with stomping on the brake before she took it up again. “All those years I spent picking up after you, setting your food on the table the exact moment you had to have it. You think I lived for that? You think I never wanted anything else in life? You always begrudged me any little bit of money I spent on myself. Oh how I got tired of that sour face you made over anything I took pleasure in. And don’t think I don’t know about that piece of trash from your office that you snuck around with. I’ve got your number, yes indeed, and it comes in at a big fat zero.”
Right then and there Hurley changed his mind about speech therapy. What a pure pleasure it would have been to answer back.
He had to wonder just which girl from the office she meant. He only wished there’d been a few more.
Claudine put bells on all the doors and motion sensor bulbs in the outdoor lights. His car keys were long gone. There were people he might have called—some of the old birds, the old truckers, were still around—if he wouldn’t have scared them off with his telephone voice. His notions of what he would do once he got away were hazy, a daydream he kept practicing and perfecting. Sometimes it was enough to think of himself out in the world again, enjoying the free air. Sometimes he went further, set himself up someplace quiet where people minded their own business. He could get a dog. Claudine had never had any use for a dog.
The one fight he won was over shaving. The next time Claudine came after him with the razor and the shaving cream and the towel, he rose up and shoved her arm away, hard. Claudine yelped. Hurley could tell from the shaken look in her eyes that she was genuinely afraid. Then she rallied.
“Have it your way, then. Go ahead and look like a complete bum. I’ll just tell everybody you’re too hateful for me to deal with. And if you start in abusing me, I will pack you off to the VA home. Nobody on earth would blame me.”
Hurley wondered what everybody she was thinking of. It wasn’t like they saw other people these days. He didn’t think she’d put him in a home, for the same reason she never let him get away without tracking him down. He had to be there for her to complain about, and for the rest of the world to see how nobly she suffered and sacrificed.
But the thought made for a little yellow flame of fear that he couldn’t quite extinguish.
Hurley had just about forgotten about speech the the the give up, until Claudine got off the phone one morning and said, “They’re sending somebody over tomorrow to help you practice talking. Try not to act like a wild animal.” Hurley figured the insurance was paying for it. He couldn’t imagine Claudine handing out a penny for his thoughts.
The visit put Claudine into a fit of housecleaning. The vacuum revved up. The air smelled of bleach. Hurley himself was dusted off and made to put on a clean shirt. The doorbell rang and Claudine went to answer it. Hurley could tell from the tone of her voice that whoever was there, she didn’t like them. It had to be a girl.
Claudine led her in to him. “This is Miss Lewis. Don’t give her any trouble.” Claudine left and went into the kitchen to throw dishes around.
Hurley and Miss Lewis stared at each other. She wasn’t a looker. Skirt down to there, big black glasses. He couldn’t help being disappointed. “Good morning,” she said. “Let’s hear you say it too.”
“Groming,” Hurley came out with. Hopeless.
“Good breath control. Not bad. Can you say my name? Lewis.”
“Looo.”
“And your name.”
“Killer.” It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but at least he’d said it right.
Miss Lewis probably thought it was just more gibberish. She had a big cloth bag with her and she set about unpacking it. “Music therapy,” she said, hauling out one of those music-playing machines. “We use the music functions in the undamaged part of the brain to help rewire your language functions. I can explain more if you like.”
Hurley shook his head. He could have told her that he wasn’t big on music. Mostly whatever came out of the truck radio, back when they played songs you might actually sing along to. He hoped he wouldn’t have to sing. That would be purely embarrassing.
She got the machine plugged in and a miniature orchestra started up, playing what used to be called longhair music, back before other types of longhairs had appeared on the scene. Music Hurley associated with the unlucky kids back in school who had to tote violin cases around, music that required seriousness and foreign words. But he had to admit it was tuneful enough. Long ripples of notes running up and down. Hurley found his foot, his good foot, tapping along.
“Mozart,” said Miss Lewis. “I like to start with him. He seems to make the brain happy. Let’s try some exercises now.”
She put a red glove on her right hand and a blue glove on her left. Another pair for Hurley. Hurley was supposed to follow her, red blue right left, as the same little piece of music played again and again. It didn’t make much sense to Hurley, but he didn’t mind. He liked the music just fine. Red red blue blue. His brain needed new wires. That was something he could understand, like needing new sparkplugs. He had a short somewhere. The music flew up and down. He reached and tapped, tapped and reached. Red red ready, bluebird blue. Claudine had stopped making her kitchen noise. Probably trying to spy on them. Let her. What color was Claudine? Black, like a black eye.
The music stopped. Miss Lewis put down her red blue hands. “Tell me your name.”
“Henry.” It just came out. He marveled.
Miss Lewis put her thin lips together into a smile. “That’s very good. Let’s try again tomorrow.”
Miss Lewis came every day for two weeks. He learned the whole of the Mozart and now he was on Vivaldi. “Vi-val-di.” He could say it. He thought he liked Moz-art better, though. He still sounded like a moose with a cold. Getting rewired took time. He hummed to himself in the shower. Lefty blue, righty red. He soaped his hair, ran his hands over his beard. It was coming in patchy and needed trimming.
Once he’d dressed, Hurley went in search of Claudine. She was watching one of her television shows, with her short little legs propped up on a footstool. He stood in the door and waited for her to say something. When she just kept staring at the screen, he shambled over and stood in front of it.
“Get out of the way, old man, or I’ll call the loony house and have them come pick you up.”
She said something like that every couple of days. It wasn’t anything he paid attention to anymore. “Where?” Hurley demanded.
“Where what?” Claudine bounced around in her seat, trying to look past him. Hurley bounced too. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if you want something, tell me. I notice you always manage to have something to say when your little friend comes over.”
Only Claudine could have managed anything spiteful about Miss Lewis. Miss Lewis was very not interested in being anybody’s little friend. She didn’t have any more juice in her than a board fence. Hurley rubbed his chin with one hand. He tried to say “shave.” It came out as “vashe.” But Claudine knew what he meant.
“I threw all the razors out. You won’t let me do it and you can’t do it yourself. End of story. Grow hair up to your eyeballs, see if I care.”
Hurley looked at the television and he looked at Claudine. Of the two, the television would be easier. He unplugged it and pushed it on its stand across the floor. Claudine was out of her chair and slapping at him. She grabbed the television and tried to push back. Hurley blew past her. He noted with pleasure how much stronger he was getting. Moz-art! Viv-al-di! He trundled the television cart into the kitchen and all the way to the back door. Opened it and with one hand held off Claudine, with the other rolled the cart to the teetering edge of the back stairs.
“Vashe!”
“Get back in here with that!”
“Hellcat!” It came out clear as a bell. They were both shocked.
Claudine made another swipe at him. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
Hurley regarded the television balancing on the brink of the concrete steps. He was holding it back by its cord, the way you might hold on to a dog’s tail in a fight. He looked at Claudine’s purpling face. He let the cord go. The television fell end over end, hit the steps three times, and landed, smash, facedown.
Now it was open war between them. There was no more of Miss Lewis. Two days after the death of the television, a new television was delivered. Claudine had it carried up to the guest bedroom. She installed a hasp on the door and kept a combination lock on it. Hurley crept down to the basement and threw the breakers in the fuse box in the middle of her shows. Claudine cooked only food that he hated, like oatmeal for breakfast. Hurley spit it out. He suspected Claudine of dosing him with sleeping pills. When she brought him his medicine, which she still did, iron-faced, mornings and bedtimes, there were more pills. If he took them all, he dragged himself through his days and fell into a black hole at night. Sometimes he slept in his chair and woke, dry-mouthed, to find Claudine in the kitchen rustling grocery bags.
Why didn’t she just let him go? Spite, Hurley guessed, revenge for all those years she was forced to spend her days occupied with the television and the telephone, when she could have been the toast of two continents. And if the neighbors were to see him stumping along the sidewalk and Claudine lighting out behind him, trying to lasso him, they might draw conclusions.
Hurley thought it was the blue pills that made him sleep. The others were for all his different jumbled parts, his blood pressure and twitching muscles and fatty heart. He started holding them in his mouth instead of swallowing, and squirreled them away in a matchbox he kept under the bed. Then one morning he pretended to fall asleep in his chair. He heard Claudine swish into the room and stand watching him. Hurley let his mouth sag, sent a wet snore her way.
There was the churning sound of her legs as she left, then the snick of the back door lock, then, more distantly, the car starting up.
He had to hurry, and he wasn’t very good at hurrying these days. First there was the screwdriver to be fetched from the kitchen drawer, then the stairs to climb, resting along the way, then the devilish little screws, his hands shaking, but finally he had the hasp off, the useless lock dangling from it.
The guest room, Claudine’s room now, was scattered with her magazines and face creams and crumpled Kleenex. For all her fuss about housecleaning, the woman was a downright slob and always had been. The new television was set up like an altar. Where to look? Hurley braced himself to search through her underwear drawer, was instantly reminded of parachutes, but here was his reward, a wad of hidden bills, really, she had no imagination. Twenty forty two three four and one hundred and one phooey, counting still hard for him. He scooped up the money and galumphed downstairs.
Out on the street! He needed a a a slow down, a little stroll, nothing to get concerned about calling the police about. Taxi! Taxi! They didn’t have any around here. The sidewalk was too hard. It sent jarring pains along his spine. His leg was lopsided, he was afraid of it giving out. But just when he was starting to feel hopeless, expecting Claudine to come around the corner any minute, a car pulled up next to him and a girl said, “Hey, do you know how to get to the mall from here?”
Girls! Three of them! High school girls with lipstick and pink ears! Hurley hitched his way over to them, trying not to look like something scary.
“Nice. Car.” And it was, a sporty little red he used to know it Japanese thingy. The girls gaped at him. Foolishly, he pulled out the wad of money, peeled off a bill. “Ride?”
“You want a ride to the mall?” The driver had a twang in her voice. She wasn’t the prettiest one. The others were probably only friends with her because of the car.
Hurley waited while they conferred, heads together. Finally the driver held her hand out for the money, and the girl in the backseat got out.
None of them would sit with him; they all crowded into the front seat. It would have been nice if one of them sat on his lap. Hey! But this was all right because he could watch them all he wanted, the soft neck of the one with short hair, their earrings and thin shoulderblades, their faces, when they turned around to giggle at him, made up with pink and blue and glitter. Their perfume smelled like bubblegum. The radio played noisy, bangboom music.
They were out on the highway, going fast. Wind from the open windows buffeted him. There had been an argument about how to get to the mall and now they’d settled it one way or the other, though not all of them seemed convinced. Hurley didn’t care where they ended up. He could have stayed there forever, listening to the girl voices and the racketing music, while the wind tried to blow him all over the sky.
But the car slowed and began circling acres of parked cars. The mall, he guessed. The girls were arguing about what do with him. “We can’t walk in with him, I mean, God.”
“Well, we can’t just dump him out either, come on. They have, like, security cameras.”
“I think he’s got some kind of, like, condition.”
In the end they pulled up to an entrance and one of the girls helped him out of the car and trotted him through the doors. “You okay, mister? Look, you probably ought to put your money away now.”
Hurley realized he still had the wad of bills in one fist, and shoved his hand into his pants pocket. He watched the girl’s tight little behind as she ran out the door. He guessed he was what they called a dirty old man. It didn’t seem like such a bad line of work.
The mall wasn’t any place Hurley got excited about. Claudine used to try and drag him here, turn him into one of those tame husbands loaded down with handbags and packages. But now he felt giddy with possibilities. It wasn’t that crowded, but it was more people than he’d seen in one place in a long long how long and all the lights and all the things for sale and first he was going to get himself one of those scooter carts that people zipped around in. And then maybe sit in one of the massaging chairs and get a pretzel and a cup of coffee and a hamburger.
Once or twice he thought he saw, at a distance, the girls from the car, or maybe they were other girls. Even if he didn’t find them, he figured he could pay somebody else for a ride home or just stay here until everything closed and then somebody else would have to figure out what to do with him. Meanwhile, he was having quite a time. He bought a number of small items, after judicious examinations and considerations. A roll of peppermint Life Savers. A new wallet for his money. A package of bandana handkerchiefs. A hamburger in a paper wrapper that could have been better but so what. And best of all, he scoot scooted into what at first he took for a ladies’ place, a beauty whatsit, then, seeing men go in also, made so bold as to request (in a process lasting some little time, utilizing gesture as well as strangled words), a haircut and beard trim.
And though he would have preferred a proper barber instead of a girl—ah, the universe of girls!—she was so deft and respectful of him, her butterfly hands so light and skilled, Hurley had to make an effort to avoid ignoble weeping.
She handed him a mirror to inspect his newly shorn and clipped self. Hurley held it in his good hand. His beard, trimmed and tamed, gave him the air of a sea captain. His skin was pink and fragrant. He looked, by God, like a whole man, no matter what kind of ruin he was inside. He gave her what he hoped was a big tip.
After that he bought a pretzel, a big soft one dripping with cheese, and negotiated, with difficulty, the public restroom. He found a spot by a giant potted palm to park the scooter. Struggling against sleep, and losing, he wished it would end right here for him, Hurley’s Last Stand, without fuss or fretting or anyone telling him what he couldn’t do for his own good.
No such luck. Someone was joggling his shoulder. “Sir? Sir?” Hurley swam up to the surface of waking, saw a man’s face peering down at him, another man nearby, the police but not the police, the shopping mall kind, anyway, whoever was in charge of old men falling asleep after closing hours.
Hurley tried to tell them his name but he didn’t try very hard, and then there was his brand-new wallet, which identified him as absolutely nobody. He sat in the guards’ office, watching a boxing match on their little black-and-white television while they called around, trying to find somebody to take charge of him. Hurley gathered, from their conversation—nobody ever thought he could hear!—that they believed someone might have abandoned him, like a baby left on a doorstep. Maybe Claudine wouldn’t report him missing. His picture in the newspaper, Do You Know This Man? A houseful of softhearted girls would adopt him, take him home with them to be their honorary grandfather.
No such luck. The real police arrived and gave him a ride home in a squad car. Marched him up to his own front door and rang the bell.
Hurley could tell that they had their suspicions of Claudine. “If you didn’t take him there, ma’am, how do you think he ended up at the mall?”
Claudine said she had no idea, and that he was brain-affected, prone to wandering off, in spite of her vigilance. She tried to look all kinds of concerned and weepy, but the evil light was in her eyes. Hurley clung to the policeman’s arm, gibbering. “Please,” he tried to say. “Take me me me me.” Name of God, couldn’t they see her for who she was? “Hellelel.” Hellcat.
They might have believed him, but they didn’t know what to do about it. They told Claudine to call if she needed any further assistance, and they backed the squad car down the driveway and accelerated out of sight. Hurley’s Last Hope.
Claudine faced him down. Her lipstick was smeared in one corner, as if she had been eating something bloody. “The police! Now you brought the police out here, to shame me in front of everybody! I will not live this way!”
Hurley leered at her. Or attempted to; he wasn’t always sure what his face was doing, and anyway her vampire mouth unnerved him. He stomped out to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door and stood there, bathed in its chilly light. He wasn’t hungry. It just seemed like a good place to ignore Claudine.
She followed him. She started talking. Hurley opened the freezer compartment and stuck his head in. The motor kicked on, humming. Cold noise enveloped him. He thought, This is what it will be like to be dead. All the moving parts of you, frozen. No more thought than a package of corn. He was aware of Claudine behind him, beating on him, pulling at him. I Will Not. Live This Way. I Will Not. Not Live.
The next day phone calls were made. Hurley sensed them rather than heard them. A current of whispers. His breakfast and lunch were left, cold, on the kitchen table. In the basement, laundry machines thundered. Claudine was everywhere and nowhere, like a gas. She had done something to the windows and he couldn’t get them open. Doors too. Maybe he’d already died without noticing it and this was hell. Locked in the house with Claudine’s pissed-off ghost.
Then the suitcases came. Or rather, they came and went, since once Hurley spotted them (at the bottom of the stairs, in the pantry, nudging out of the coat closet), they disappeared again. He heard Claudine yanking drawers open and slamming them shut. He feared the worst. He tried to remember Moz-art, but the notes got jumbled in his head and came out brassy. He couldn’t find the new bandana handkerchiefs he’d bought. He dreamed about the blue pills, woke, and scrabbled around under the bed until he found the matchbox.
He caught a suitcase sneaking up on him outside his bedroom door. Hurley kicked and dragged it inside the room, heaved it up on the bed and wrestled it open. Shirtsleeves waved at him. His socks, rolled into balls, spilled out and bounced across the floor. Here was the bathrobe he’d missed. Layers and layers of his clothes. It turned him cold.
Hurley dumped out the suitcase and went looking for Claudine. He heard her in the bathroom, flushing. He parked himself outside the door, leaning into it, and shuffled his feet. He heard her go still, then draw her breath in with a hiss.
“Get out the way, old man!” Her voice was shrill. The door lock snicked shut.
Hurley put his mouth up against the crack in the door. “Where I don’t go.”
“Oh yes you will. Tomorrow morning I am taking you to the VA Hospital in Danville. They can keep track of you from now on. They’re going to put you in the demented ward so you can talk to the other crazy people.”
Hurley shook the doorknob and heaved his shoulder against the wood. “Bitch whore!”
“Go right ahead, act as ugly as you want. I guess you can talk just fine when you got something nasty to say.” Claudine’s voice gained altitude and assurance. “I can have the police here in two seconds. I can have the crazy people ambulance haul you off. Don’t think I won’t.”
“———!” There was some word word word he wanted to call her, the worst and most poisonous word ever, but he couldn’t think of it or maybe it hadn’t been invented yet.
“So you might as well come along with me peaceable. Because what is there left of you? You used to have some pride. I’ll give you that much. Now you drag yourself around like an old dog. What difference does it make if you rot away here or someplace else? At least at the hospital you’ll be among your own kind. They won’t take as much notice of you. Now get out of my way. Somebody around here has to do a day’s work.”
Hurley stepped aside. After a little while the door opened and Claudine came out. She looked at Hurley as if trying to decide on one more thing to say, but then, seeing that she had already defeated him, she sniffed and headed downstairs.
There was no more escape, unless it was from his old dog’s body. Show some spunk, Hurley. He thought he’d had a pretty good life, except for the Claudine part, and he’d worked around that as best he could. There were things he’d miss and things he wouldn’t. That seemed fair. All divvied up. He wished he could make a speech, put everything together like the last scene of a movie. Hurley, The End. Dead Dog.
There were a lot of blue pills. He decided to wait until morning so he would at least have the ride to enjoy. Get out of the house for a last sniff of fresh air, as well as stick Claudine with the embarrassment of arriving with his dead self. He took apart the blue capsules, emptied out their chalky insides, scraped them together into a corner of his handkerchief. His hands shook worse than usual. It was hard to believe something so small, some little bit of powder, was enough to kill you. But then, the clot that made his brain bleed and his body seize up was small too. The world was full of things that made no sense. Maybe that could be his exit line.
The next morning, even as Claudine was fussing with the car, smacking his suitcases around, he panicked, thinking the blue pills might not be enough to get the job done, or maybe because it was really going to happen. In the bathroom he rummaged through any other pills he could find, pills for forgotten maladies, pills for all the ailments he and Claudine had between them, hoping that something in the mix would bubble up inside of him like a cartoon chemistry experiment.
He thought about writing a note, or maybe a will, except of course his writing was as bad as his speech, nothing landing on the page right. I, Hurley, being of sound mind and unsound body, do give and bequeath my wife of too many years, my brand-new corpse, may it stink up the place.
Claudine had his breakfast set out. Coffee, orange juice, cereal, bacon, toast. The condemned man eats a hearty last meal. The phone rang and Claudine went to answer it. Hurley braced himself against the wall, took out the handkerchief and dumped the mess of powder into his orange juice. It made a little heap in the bottom of the glass. He poked at it, stirred it up with a spoon, trying to be quiet, but his idiot hands made a bad job of it, the very last thing he ever had to do and he couldn’t do it right, his chickenshit body betraying him one more time. The glass clanked and rattled like something caught in an earthquake, and here was Claudine charging back into the room.
“If you’re just going to play with that food, I’ll throw it out.” She snatched the glass from his hand and set it on the counter.
“Back!”
“No, sir. You can have a plastic cup, like a baby.” She reached into the refrigerator for the juice. “There now. Drink that and try not to make a dribbling mess of yourself.”
“Back me!” Hurley lunged forward in his chair, took a wild swipe at her. Claudine sidestepped him, picked up the juice glass from the counter, and, with a slick little smile, drank it down.
“Now then,” she said. “You decide you don’t want that bacon, I’ll take it off your hands.”
Hurley ate the bacon. He was trying to work out what he might say. I. You. Juice.
J’s were especially hard for him. They always came out sounding like he had a mouth full of glue. He put extra sugar on his cereal, spooned it up and chewed thoughtfully. “Hurry up,” Claudine told him, shoving the last of his suitcases out the back door. “I haven’t got all day.”
No, she probably didn’t. He got up from the table and set his dishes in the sink. There was the rolling noise of the garage door and then the car’s engine, VOOM. Claudine always hit the accelerator starting up and fed it too much gas. He figured he’d finally get his chance at driving. It was time to go. He took a last sip of coffee. Killer Hurley, ready for the world.