If it wasn’t for Theresa treating him like that, Kevin Kaczorowski never even would’ve looked at the woman in the bar.
The bartender was taking his sweet time pulling Kevin’s second beer. That was the way it was when you were the new guy in a neighborhood tavern. He’d been the new guy in plenty, driving kids all over the city to sell newspapers. Sometimes the bar he ended up at was lively, exciting, like sometimes the neighborhoods were lively, exciting. And sometimes he was in Hampton Heights, where no one he knew lived and where the tavern was a weird mix: black and white, old and young, everyone seeming to recognize one another but also staking out their own space.
Down at the end of the bar, the tender wiped the counter with a towel like a bartender in a TV show, talking to an older blonde in a Packers jersey. She nodded and laughed at something the bartender said, then looked down Kevin’s way. Kevin had been waving his cardboard coaster to get the guy’s attention, but shifted the move—smoothly, he thought—into a greeting to the blonde. She lifted her cocktail. Her long earrings sparkled in the beerlight. Even from here he could see how long her nails were.
He stood the coaster on its edge, flipped it back onto the bar. There was basically nothing to look at in this tavern, which resembled every other tavern in the city. A single room, square, lit by neon beer signs. Low ceilings to keep things warm. Wood-paneled walls covered in Packers and Badgers schedules. The TV was showing some cheesy horror movie, a shapeshifting monster taking men apart. A sign on the wall, above the liquor, caught his eye.
Our Credit Manager
Is Helen Waite
If You Want Credit
Go to Helen Waite
What a weird thing to put on a sign. Why would a shitty bar like this even have a credit manager?
“You need another one?” The bartender had finally sauntered over and noticed Kevin’s empty glass.
“You bet,” Kevin said. Did he ever. Theresa was sleeping with Crazy TV Barry again.
She said that Barry wasn’t like he was in his TV commercials. “He’s just a normal guy,” she said. A normal guy Kevin was sure she’d slept with last year, during their fight. A normal guy Theresa still called sometimes, just coincidentally when they weren’t getting along. A normal guy who drove an Audi. What normal guy drove an Audi?
In his commercials, for the big appliance store out on Brown Deer Road, Crazy TV Barry ranted and raved, a nonstop stream of come-ons and shrieks and gobbling noises. Everyone told him he was CRAZY to cut prices this low! He wielded a giant pair of scissors to slice big cartoony price tags in half. His competitors despaired! His customers celebrated! Sometimes the guys in white coats hauled him away to a padded room, but that’s what it takes to offer low, low prices on Amana freezers. His commercials appeared so frequently—between innings of Brewers games, during time-outs in Packers games, sometimes two or three commercials in a row during the late movie on Channel 18—that Kevin, like everyone he knew, had parts of his patter memorized. “They said I was nuts when I asked, what’s lower than zero percent financing?!” Even Crazy TV Barry’s phone number was as familiar to Kevin as his own: 466-1987. Last year it had been 466-1986. He imagined Crazy TV Barry, eyes bugging out, haranguing some poor asshole at the phone company to secure the numbers in advance. “Whaddya mean you don’t have 1996? You gotta have 1996!”
Kevin knew that Crazy TV Barry drove an Audi because this afternoon, parked kitty-corner from Theresa’s duplex, he’d watched Crazy TV Barry pull up in an Audi, deep blue and sleek as hell. He’d watched Theresa clip-clop out of her house in heels, smiling and waving at the car. She’d looked happy, at ease. Kevin tried to remember the last time she’d looked that happy to see him. When she got in the Audi, she hugged the entirely recognizable driver. His hair was combed and he wore a suit, not a straitjacket, but it was definitely him. His license plate read CRZYBRY.
He’d waited until they pulled away, then driven home, glumly flipping from ballad to ballad on the radio. It was true that things hadn’t been great. When they first got together, five years ago now—Jesus!—he was twenty-one and they went out all the time, drinking with buddies or to the bowling alley or just driving. He had money because he had a job, one that at twenty-one had seemed amazing—someone paying him just to drive newspapers around? Now she worked a lot of nights at Froedtert Hospital, so she came home tired and they were always renting a video or talking about her fucked-up family. Sometimes they had sex, depending on whether she fell asleep during the movie. His job, once a stepping stone to something else, was now just what he did. He started work at four in the morning, but he still wanted to have some fun.
But if she was so tired, what was she doing going out tonight? She had a midnight-to-eight in post-op. But there she was, dressed for dinner, more decked out than he’d seen her in a long time. When they watched movies at her place, she wore pajamas and put her hair up and they’d eat on the couch, some green salad or pesto pasta—she was on a health food kick so she hardly ever cooked burgers anymore.
When he’d finally gotten home, he’d turned the van off and then simply sat in silence. The only sound was the wind blowing outside. The forecast was for snow. In the mirror, his eyes were red. What did Crazy TV Barry have that he didn’t have? Money? A nice car? Fancy suits? Celebrity? A successful business? The list continued; he didn’t need to go on. But he’d loved Theresa for so long. He couldn’t believe she was going to dump him for a guy who appeared on TV foaming at the mouth.
When he finally snapped out of it he went inside, ate a can of ravioli. She was probably dining on steak downtown. After his shower he stood naked in the bedroom, pawing through the underwear drawer. On his dresser sat the Hampton Heights master list he’d pulled from the giant printer at work. It was slim pickings, probably, a neighborhood without too much extra money to spend. He was well behind his quota, hopelessly behind for the year, probably. Well, what was the paper gonna do? It wasn’t like there were people lining up to take this job. Were there?
Kevin was completely out of clean underwear. In the depths of his closet, he recalled, he had a pair of flannel boxers Theresa had given him for his birthday in July. “They’re warm,” she’d said. “You’ll love them this winter.” He pulled the boxers out of the gift bag and tore off the tags. They were soft and plaid, navy blue and black. They did look warm, he had to admit. He wasn’t really a boxers guy, liked his shit a little more secure, but it was gonna be a cold one tonight. He pulled them on, brushed a few pieces of navy blue fuzz out of his leg hairs, then got dressed.
Now at the bar, he felt those boxers bunching up as he shifted on his stool, trying to get comfortable. They were warm, but in the overheated tavern they were too much. He had to keep surreptitiously pulling them down through his jeans. A third beer got the bartender to deign, finally, to engage in some conversation. He thought Randy White was the answer at QB; Kevin argued in favor of the new kid, Majkowski. “We finally got a chance to put a Pole in charge,” he said. People loved Randy White, all out of keeping with his actual skill level, just because he used to be the Badgers’ quarterback. This was nuts, he explained to the bartender. Just because you were the star on the mediocre Wisconsin college team does not mean you deserved to start for the Wisconsin professional team! There are other quarterbacks out there!
“I gotta take some orders,” the guy finally said, which was maybe true. The tavern was filling up. “But you should talk to Laurie down there.” He gestured down the bar to the blonde with the jersey, who was digging through her purse. “She can argue about the Packers forever.”
“Oh yeah?” said Kevin. Talking to a random chick at a random bar had not really occurred to him. In fact, he’d never picked up a woman in a bar, never even tried to. He knew he should approach her, should start talking to her, but he felt honestly exhausted by the idea of starting at zero with a whole nother woman. She would have so many things to say! She would have so many problems she’d want to unload on him! He directed his attention to the TV instead, only to see the movie fade out and Crazy TV Barry appear. He was dangling upside down from some kind of winch, unshaven, shouting about how Santa Claus was going to spring him in time for National TV and Appliance’s Pre-Christmas Madhouse.
“You know what?” he said to the bartender. “Tell her the next one’s on me.”
He’d never tried to pick up a woman in a bar because he’d been so loyal for so long. He’d met Theresa on his twenty-first birthday, when his old high school coach had brought her along to drinks. She was Coach’s neighbor, a year older than Kevin, in nursing school. “I’ve known her since she was just a little thing!” Coach had said, and he’d liked the way she laughed, full of affection for the guy. He remembered walking with her after last call that night, not wasted but buzzed. It must have been warm—it was July. He made a joke about growing up next to Coach and she rolled her eyes, probably said something funny, she was always joking about Coach’s wandering eyes. They ended up at some elementary school in Tosa, sitting on the swings like little kids. Just talking. He barely remembered anything she’d said, he was so wrapped up in the feeling. Discovery. Like he was Indiana Jones and every new moment opened up a fresh room full of treasures.
Well, he thought bitterly. Everyone knew what happened once Indy got his hands on the treasure. Here came the giant rolling rock.
The blonde at the end of the bar had accepted her drink, and she raised it to him with a nod. He shifted uncomfortably on his stool as he nodded back. Theresa’s fucking boxer shorts! They reminded him of her every time he moved. Maybe he should go to the john and fix them, or even just take them off and go commando. He was just buzzed enough to chuckle at that idea. He had to piss anyway.
But just as he was about to stand she got up, the blonde. She didn’t approach him but walked to the far corner of the room, to the jukebox, a surprisingly fancy model considering it didn’t seem to get much use. (So far, all there’d been to listen to was boring oldies from behind the bar and the screams of men from the TV.) As she leaned up against the machine, pressing buttons to flip through the records, he had the opportunity to really check her out.
Her hair cascaded from her feather bangs down over her shoulders, obscuring the name on her home jersey. Number fifteen: Bart Starr. Her jeans were tight in the back, looking good, and she wore low heels, nothing dramatic like Theresa. She was short, but there was a lot in that little package. She had the kind of tan you didn’t see that often in December.
She plugged a quarter in, pushed some buttons. To Kevin’s disappointment, her song started slow and keyboardy. Why would you make a whole big show of your walk over to the jukebox, then pick a song this boring? Just some guy bitching over synthesizers about praying for strength or something.
But oh, then the drums kicked in.
And oh! the guitars rang out. And oh! the singer made up his mind. He wasn’t wasting no more time!
Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Kevin was slapping his legs to the beat, nodding his head. He lifted his beer in tribute to the woman who’d picked this fucking incredible song and she, leaning against the jukebox, pumped a fist in response. There was something electric in her eyes. A glint he could see from here. The whole tavern was singing now, a dozen people or more, all these people who hadn’t cared a bit about one another before, united by this song, and the bartender drummed on the counter furiously. On the final chorus, as the tavern clapped along, Kevin found he had tears in his eyes. And now he was standing at the pay phone, receiver at his ear, listening to the ring through the line. Like a drifter, he was born to walk alone.
To his surprise, Theresa answered. “It’s me,” he said. The bar was quieter now, a different song playing, but he still felt the pulse, the power, of the song in his heart.
“Where are you?” she asked. “I thought you were canvassing tonight.”
“The kids are out. I’m waiting for them to be done.” At the bar, the blonde was high-fiving everyone in sight. “We need to break up.”
He could hear the TV in her living room. Tony Danza’s voice. She must be watching Who’s the Boss? He was about to ask if she’d heard him when she said, “Why are you telling me this now? Don’t you have to pick up the kids soon?”
He turned to face the wall of the bar. What did she mean, why now? And why didn’t she sound surprised, or upset? She sounded like she was appraising him—like she’d suddenly seen something in him and was curious to know more.
“Why now is because what were you doing tonight?”
“I went out with Barry tonight.”
He spluttered. He punched the wall. The bartender was giving him the look of death. “I know you went out with Barry!”
“I know you know, because I saw your fucking van when he picked me up.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
She made a noise of exhaustion. Her! How dare she! “A, it’s none of your business. B, no, I didn’t happen to sleep with him tonight.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It is right. It is right.” Theresa had maintained, for a year now, that Barry had always been a perfect gentleman, that they were just friends. He liked going to the symphony which, news to Kevin, she said she did, too.
“Why him?” Kevin asked, then immediately remembered all the reasons he’d previously come up with. “Don’t answer that. I have been loyal to you for five years!”
“Ugh,” she said. “Loyalty.”
“And what does that mean?” He was covering the phone with his hand now, trying not to appear to everyone in the bar as if he was arguing with his girlfriend.
“I’m loyal, too, and what do I get for it? You giving me shit all the time. You not taking my job seriously. You call it loyalty. I call it punishment.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kevin, what do you think I need?”
Kevin laughed, or rather, he simply said “Ha.” “What you need is to come to your senses and realize—”
“Forget it,” she said. “You never listen.”
“Oh, I heard you,” he said. “You’re making excuses for cheating when you—”
“I didn’t even cheat on you yet,” she hissed. He sat down heavily on the wobbly stool that lived by the pay phone, had lived there since cavemen first fashioned it from primordial trees. “Of course I want to sleep with Barry!” she continued. “But I’ve been waiting for you to give me a reason not to.” She snorted. “What a dumbass I am.”
“But,” he said, but nothing.
“I gotta go to work and deal with patients all night,” she said, finally. “I would love for us to talk, really talk, at a reasonable time and place. You drunk in a bar is not reasonable.”
“I’m not drunk yet,” he said, but she’d already hung up. He placed the phone on its hook and slowly turned around on the stool, feeling like everyone in the bar had heard not only his side of the conversation but also, somehow, hers. But no one was even looking at him.
Except the blonde. She smiled.
He stood up. This was stupid. It was stupid for him to feel so bad. He’d spent his prime years dating the same woman, he’d stuck by her even as she became a boring nurse, a nurse who likes the symphony, and this was how she treated him? And then he was standing next to the blonde, but he hadn’t figured out what to say. He settled on “Hey.”
“Hey there,” she said. She gestured to the stool next to her. “Heavy conversation?”
“It was nobody,” he said.
She smiled brilliantly and looked him right in the eye. He felt suddenly like he’d had the air knocked out of him, that’s how hot she looked. “That’s good,” she breathed.
He was Kevin. She was Laurie. He complimented her Bart Starr jersey. “What a player,” she said.
“A leader,” he agreed, flagging down another beer from the bartender. “I don’t really remember the glory days. You and me, we were too young for those.”
She laughed tolerantly, confirming his belief that she was older than him, maybe even in her thirties. “You’re hilarious,” she said.
“You know, everyone wears their Packers shit but it’s never, like, Eddie Lee Ivery. It’s never someone from now. It’s always the guys from way back.”
“We had legends walking among us. Now they’re just”—she wrinkled her nose—“men.”
“I thought about trying out this year, during the strike, but I didn’t want to be a scab.” In October all the NFL teams had replaced their rosters with nonunion players for three games. The Scab Packers had won two of them. “A lot of the guys I played with went to the tryouts and said I would’ve had a chance.”
“Oh yeah?” She gave him a once-over, like a scout. It had a frank sexual air that thrilled him. “What position?”
“I was a safety.”
“Quarterback of the defense.”
“You know your shit.”
“I’ve watched football for a long time,” she said.
It was true: At safety he’d had to call the plays, keep guys organized, be a leader of men. After Tosa, Kevin had done two years at Stevens Point but got kicked off the team by the has-been coach. His buddy Travis, who’d played at UW, had made it to final cuts at the scab tryouts, but told him that most of the players there had some NFL experience, even if it was just a couple of training camps. They weren’t really plumbers and weightlifters, the way the news made it out.
“Those teams in the ’60s, they were something to see,” Laurie said. Her nails curled around her glass, and her face shifted into a smile. “My last boyfriend had a tattoo across his back.” She reached toward Kevin and his breath caught, but she merely turned him by the shoulder so she could touch a path across his back, five touches for five letters. “G R E G G, like on his jersey. The damnedest thing.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And now Forrest Gregg’s the coach and they suck and that tattoo is embarrassing.”
“To permanent devotion,” he said, raising his glass.
“I haven’t seen you around here,” she said after she sipped. “You new to Hampton Heights?” She leaned in to hear what he had to say. Her eyes were deep, brown, rimmed with red. She was smiling. Her teeth were bright.
“Just here for the night.” He explained about his job, tried to make it sound more managerial and less like babysitting. “I’m killing time while they’re out canvassing.”
Her smile got wider somehow. “You brought a bunch of cute little paperboys here?” she said. “The old ladies are gonna eat ’em up.”
“Well, the elderly tend to already be subscribers.”
“There’s families been here for a century or more,” Laurie said. She pulled a maraschino from her old fashioned, set it on a napkin, and speared it with a fingernail. “Nights like this, when the mist comes off the creek, you might as well be in a village in Bavaria.”
“So you’re saying they’re not gonna sell a lot.”
“There are some newer families, in from the city. They might be interested in your boys.”
“Sounds sorta dirty when you say it like that.”
She shrugged and brought the red, red cherry to her red, red mouth. “I’m not interested in boys,” she said. “I’m interested in men.”
They each did a shot and then left so fast he mistook the black looks the other men in the bar gave him for jealousy. He didn’t even see the bartender pick up the twenty Laurie had left under her coaster.
Out in the cold, shocking after so long spent in that hotbox. He didn’t feel normal. He felt gloriously out of his head. He was taking advantage of the moment, or the moment was taking advantage of him. He was glad he didn’t see any of his carriers as he stumbled, giggling, after her. He checked his watch: still half an hour before he had to meet them back at the van. By the time he won the battle with the zipper of his coat, they’d arrived at her house.
She lived on the right half of a side-by-side. He stared at the door, at its knocker, ornately carved in the shape of a tree. He could stare at the knocker forever and find new details: the intricate leaves, the roughness of the bark. The hole in the trunk where creatures lived, into which he felt himself falling. Around him the traffic on Hampton echoed; the jingle of her keys sounded like sleigh bells. Somewhere, far away, wolves howled. Down, down, into the trunk he went. It was safe here, and dark, and all around him was the living tree, ancient and implacable. All around him sprouted the most beautiful blue flowers, tiny and brave against the winter’s chill. Each had four skinny petals that unfurled and beckoned him forward like fingers. He could smell them, bright and clear. He could reach out and touch them. But—
The tree was gone. She had opened the door and swung it away. He couldn’t believe how cold he was now, every part of his body freezing except under those flannel boxers, so when she beckoned him in, he followed. Inside it was hot, almost steaming, and something smelled delicious: a sharp, herbal scent, with a lingering rusty note, like his grandma’s house when she’d been frying steaks. His nose was up in the air like a beast’s, he realized, but she only laughed. “You hungry?” she asked. “I bet you are. I’ve been cooking.”
Was he hungry? That can of ravioli had been a long time ago. And as the warmth returned to his limbs, he felt ravenous, like he could eat anything you put in front of him. “We just made some lapskaus,” she said. “Come on in.” The kitchen was the first room in the house, just past the front hall, cozy and narrow, a rope of garlic hanging on the wall and a big pot burbling on the stove. She pulled out a Zippo and set it to a trio of candles on the counter. Lapskaus, he dimly recalled, was some kind of Scandy stew. “Norwegian,” she confirmed when he asked. “Been simmering all day.”
“You’re Norwegian?” He looked around for someplace to put his coat, now that he was in the sauna of the tiny kitchen, and, failing to find a good place for it, held it over his arm.
“Going way back. But I’ve been here a long time.” She winked and delivered a joke she’d made before: “Don’t ask me how long.” He laughed dutifully. How old was she? She was definitely a hot older lady, but he couldn’t nail it down. From different angles and in different light she changed; in the bar she’d seemed like she could even be in her forties. But here, in the flickering candles, her face looked smoother, though her voice was still raspy and sexy. She was so little! She even had to reach up to ladle the stew from the tall stockpot into a bowl, the muscles working under her browned upper arms. He wasn’t that tall of a guy, but he towered over her. He imagined what it’d be like to pick her up, to move her from one place to another. He knocked his head gently against a pot hanging from a hook. The pot clanked against others, a clattering chorus.
His mom would be disappointed in his manners. He devoured the stew, hunched over the kitchen counter, but he felt as though he hadn’t eaten in days. He stared into the bowl, the slick of fat on the broth’s surface, iridescent, ever moving. It spread across the bowl like a thunderstorm filling the sky. Inside the bowl there were secrets, and he felt himself diving down, down.
He blinked. He’d finished his stew. He felt faintly embarrassed, but it was clear Laurie didn’t stand on ceremony. “I love to watch a hungry man eat,” she said, opening Miller Lites for them.
“So how long have you lived here?” he asked, trying to keep it normal.
Maybe that was the wrong question, because she screwed up her face in disgust and took a long pull from the beer. “Ugh, forever,” she said. “Way too long.” But then she kept talking. She lived with her sister—“She’s in her bedroom in the back”—and had been here with her for years, kind of supported her. The way she glided over it, Kevin suspected some kind of disability. Laurie worked as a travel agent, specializing in Scandinavia. “Beautiful place. Anyway, I sell package tours, old people visiting the Old Country one last time.”
“I bet you’re good at it,” Kevin said. “I know about sales.”
“I’m sort of the weird one in the office.” She reached up and ran a nail along the rope of garlic. “A lot of these girls, they’ve settled down, settled in.”
“Not you.”
“I always want something new. They think I’m a bitch because I can’t stand their boring husbands. They should be glad I don’t set my sights on those boys, because they wouldn’t stand a chance, right?” Kevin nodded with one hundred percent sincerity, and she laughed delightedly. “That’s right. You know.”
“So if you’re not settling down . . .”
“I’m gonna travel, Kevin. Get out of Milwaukee. Get away from—” She gestured around her, everything, but it was clear that what she wanted to say was my sister. “I’ve almost got it all set up. Wherever I go, I’m gonna be a whole nother person. Like a butterfly. I’m going to shed my skin and spread my wings and just fly.”
“That’s amazing,” said Kevin, though he didn’t think that was how butterflies worked. Wasn’t there a whole thing with a chrysalis? “You want to be a different person.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I’ve spent my whole life being what I’m supposed to be. I want to be me.” She grimaced as if she’d revealed too much. Probably she worried that he was so perceptive he’d see right through her, suss out her secrets. He felt it polite to move on.
“I’m not a big travel guy, myself,” he said. “I went to Chicago once with some buddies, but we got so lost we bailed and drove home before someone killed us.”
“A homebody.”
“I guess. It’s just—my friends are here. My girlfriend’s here.” She raised an eyebrow. “My ex. We just broke up. Today, actually.”
“Oh, honey.” His chest tingled where she laid her hand on it. And then she was in a different place, by the door at the end of the kitchen, and she said, “Follow me.”
Wasn’t that the door to the front hall? No: It led deeper into the house, into a living room as warm and alive as a greenhouse. There were houseplants everywhere along the walls, growing from deep corners, vines erupting from pots, leaves fluttering in an unfelt breeze. There didn’t seem to be windows, so he wondered how she even kept them alive. Must be magic. Here the scent was piney and peppery. “Are those, like, juniper candles?” he asked of the flickering lights, and when he turned she was so close to him, looking up into his eyes. She breathed deeply and kissed the corner of his mouth. Then she walked away toward the stereo.
Well, in a cartoon, he’d have squeezed his can of beer so hard it spurted all over the place, but this was real life, no matter how much it was starting to resemble every Penthouse Forum he’d ever read. I never thought I’d be writing in with a story like this, he thought, grinning. He couldn’t stop grinning. He took one glug of the beer, two, three, set it down on the coffee table.
He had to pee, was the problem, but there was no way he was interrupting this story for something that stupid. He would just hold it. Chugging the beer had not been a good idea, actually. While she dropped a CD into the tray and tapped it closed, he laid his coat on the back of the couch and then unbunched his stupid boxers, which were gathering all up in his butt. Then he held his hands before his face and watched them flicker and shimmy in the candlelight. The shadows moving across them held a message, if only he could read it.
Don Henley was playing. Laurie sat on the couch and beckoned him forward. Now that he was moving, the room seemed so big, like a cavern. It seemed impossible he would ever reach her—it was so many steps, and each step required such concentration: lift the foot, throw it forward, plant it, repeat. It was with a real sense of accomplishment that he arrived, finally, at the couch, and settled himself next to her.
“So what about you?” he asked. “Your boyfriend Forrest Gregg still in the picture?”
She shook her head. “It was too much. My sister and all.”
“Family’s hard.”
“Yes!” she replied, so ardently that he wondered if he’d said something accidentally profound. “They have this hold on you, and it takes so much to break free.”
Kevin, who felt no particular obligation to his parents—he went home for supper with them once a month or so, and that was fine—nonetheless nodded understandingly.
“Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices for the people you love.”
“Totally,” he said. At that she gave him a glance, and he worried he’d sounded too stupid, so he added, “At least you know what’s the most important, for you.”
“I guess,” she said. “It’s just—” She looked away and let a silence linger, Don Henley crooning in the background, the plants swaying to the music. He didn’t know what to say, so he was grateful when she picked back up. “I’m so close to getting out. I’ve been so close.” She looked back at him. “I know it’s going to happen soon.”
“Cheers to that.” He raised his hand, which did not have a beer in it. She looked down at the table and slipped a coaster under his can. “I wish I was like that,” he continued. “You know—confident. Comfortable in my own skin.”
She traced a fingernail along his bicep. “Nice skin,” she said. Her interest in him was intoxicating, although he supposed that could just be the beer. She leaned close and breathed in. He felt himself pulled closer to her from deep inside. She touched his collar with her hand, unbuttoned his top button, and slid a finger between his undershirt and his skin so it rested just on his collarbone. He could feel it there, thrumming with his pulse, the nail sharp on his skin but not hurting him, just resting, waiting for whatever the next thing would be.
The next thing was a kiss. It lasted so long that Kevin’s attention started on his own breath—surely beer and stew and Marlboro Lights—but then had time to move elsewhere, to how much he needed to piss, to the plants in the corners and the candles flickering the smell of gin into the air, her fingernail at his neck, her tongue coaxing its way alongside his, exploring his mouth, and it was as if it were filling him up, drawing his very breath out, and the sensation was so surprising and wonderful that he pulled away, overwhelmed.
Her cheeks were flushed. “Hey, here’s the thing,” she murmured. “I’m on my period, so I can’t do everything.”
“Okay,” he said, dazed.
“But we can still have some fun.”
“Okay.”
She chuckled and kissed him again so he felt the chuckle in his own throat. Her hand was on his chest, and he could feel his heart thump-thumping against it. He edged his hand to her waistband, felt the skin of her stomach moving, and she shook her head no against his mouth. “I’m too ticklish,” she breathed. Instead he reached around her back and pulled her close. The slick Packers jersey was distracting, its mesh fabric, the vinyl iron-on of Bart Starr’s name. But it was getting easier not to think about things. It was getting easier not to think about anything outside his body and hers and the places they touched each other: his lips, her lips; her hands, his chest; his dick, the leg she’d thrown over him. He knew by now she had to be aware of his boner, pushing hard into his boxers and jeans. What he wanted now was for something to push back against it, and as if reading his mind, she eased him back and climbed on top of him. Her mouth never left his. She was pulling something out of him with her breath and her hands and, yes, this was what he wanted, that pressure as she moved herself up and down.
From another room somewhere he heard a scuff, a thump. Laurie winced and exhaled and Kevin caught his breath, came back to himself. She tilted back on the fulcrum of her pelvic bone, lines appearing in her face as she looked at the door. Had the door been there before? He only remembered a jungle of ferns. “Is that your sister?” he asked.
She looked back at him, placed a finger on his lips. “I promise you she’s not coming out,” she whispered. “She’s not dressed.”
He grinned. “Sounds like she—” But the sudden blankness of her expression, as if desire had been wiped from her face with a cloth, stopped him short. Clearly he’d stepped wrong. He was about to say Just kidding, just kidding, but she rearranged her mouth back into the winning smile and brought her face down to his.
The instant their lips touched he lost himself again. She rocked slowly along his dick. They’d reached the part where their movements were not coincidental, where they were coordinating without speaking. She was pushing where she wanted to push, where he wanted her to push. She was moving with purpose, drawing everything—him, the candlelight, the room itself—into her with concentration. It was so different than it was with Theresa, who always let him take the lead, who—no need to think of her. They’d found a rhythm. She moved one of his hands around to her front, placed it square on the jersey’s number 1. He could feel the softness of her breast underneath. He could feel one of her fingernails sharp at the base of his skull. She made a noise of encouragement in her throat that pulled him forward, into her somehow. Their boundaries were dissolving.
Then she grunted and turned her mouth away from his. Her face, in the candlelight, was alive with feeling, like a hundred faces at once. One of them was the person she’d been in the tavern. One of them was the person she was here. One of them was Theresa’s, and one of them was dark and smeared.
He felt his breath return. He hadn’t come—had been moving in that direction but hadn’t quite gotten there. It seemed like Laurie had. She was breathing hard and resting her weight forward, catching his bladder, so he guided her away. Her face was familiar again, had settled back into itself after its moment of transfiguration. Kevin had never gotten a woman off that way. More accurate, he thought, would be to say that a woman had never gotten herself off on him that way. He had been helpful, it seemed: the hard place. Now that it was done, he couldn’t tell if she even wanted him there. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be there. What had he seen, exactly?
She smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.” She reached for her beer and took a sip. Another song started on the stereo. There was a sound once again from deeper in the house, and she grimaced, then shrugged. “It’s distracting having her back there, but it’s her house, too.”
“You’re ready to get out.”
“God. Yes.” She already seemed far away. “I’ve got six months, maybe a year, helping my sister out, and then she’ll be complete.”
He might have wondered what she meant by complete but had really just been waiting until she finished because he’d thought of something he wanted to say. “It’s like, you just have to put in the time sometimes. That’s how it was for me and Theresa, I think. It was good that we were together so long. I learned something. I grew.”
“Did she grow?” Laurie asked. The sister made a noise again, way off in the distance.
“What?”
“Theresa, or whatever. Was it good for her that you were together so long?”
“I mean, yeah. She’s a nurse now,” he said.
She nodded. She didn’t seem satisfied with the answer, and he wondered if there was something she’d said that he’d missed. Theresa was always claiming he didn’t listen, and it was true that sometimes toward the end of some declaration she’d been making he would realize he’d gotten lost and would have to scramble to respond. Like now, he realized, Laurie was just finishing a sentence: “. . . gets me closer to leaving.”
“What gets you closer to leaving?”
She touched the front of his jeans. “Every guy who comes over.”
He laughed uncertainly. He thought if he were more sober he definitely could figure out what she meant by that. She unzipped his fly and reached in but then gasped and drew her hand back as if burned. “You’re wearing something she gave you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he managed to croak. He could hardly breathe. The pressure in his chest, in his bladder, was unbearable. He stood up. “I gotta piss. Where’s the bathroom?”
She sat up and brushed back her hair. “Down the hall on the left,” she said. “Don’t get lost.”
He took a step toward the door and felt an uncomfortable tug on his boxers, like his dick was caught on something. He gave a little jostle. The candles on either side of the door had burned swimming pools of melted wax into their surfaces. As he opened the door he looked back and saw some indescribable expression moving over her face like weather. Had he fucked it up? If only he hadn’t drunk that last beer.
Well, maybe he could salvage things. He was in a long hallway lined with framed photographs. The figures seemed to move in the candlelight.
This chick really loves candles, he thought. That’s cool.
The bathroom on the left also held a flickering candle, but to his relief he also saw normal switches on the wall. He clicked one and the roaring shower fan kicked on. He cursed and turned it off. The other switch lit up the bathroom. He winced at the glare, winced again at the sight of himself in the mirror: flushed, lips red with lipstick, wet spot on the front of his pants. He remembered her promise to take care of him. He wondered what she’d do.
The bathroom was tidy and small, with a Stephen King book on the toilet’s tank. Makeup and washcloths neatly arranged on the counter next to a clean sink; two toothbrushes in a metal holder; a little cactus in a pot on a footstool. The candle smelled like apple cider and bones.
Jesus, did he have to piss. He pulled his half-hard dick from the boxers and a blizzard of flannel fuzz wafted onto the toilet seat and floor. These goddamn underpants! He should’ve washed them before he wore them. Or he shouldn’t have worn them at all.
On closer inspection, he discovered that the head of his dick was completely covered in black and blue fluff. “Huh,” he said, his voice hollow against the tiles. He guessed the fuzz had gotten caked to his dickhole, stuck there by that wetness, the stuff that leaked out while they humped—the stuff Forum called “pre-cum.” Bodies, man. Weird shit! He plucked at the cemented fuzz but now he could feel the urine coming, unstoppable thanks to his stance and the very presence of the open toilet before him, damn the torpedoes, he would just blast that funny flannel cap off the head of his dick with the power of four beers. Here it came.
Piss sprayed everywhere. Everywhere! Everywhere! All over the toilet tank! All over the book! Backward into his shirt! Straight up into the air, like a sprinkler, pattering the wallpaper with a sound like spring rain. He tried to clench to stop the flow, but he was helpless now—it was just coming and coming, splashing onto his face, and he grabbed at the head of his still-spraying dick, trying to pluck off the flannel plug. It didn’t work, he just sprayed hot piss all over his hand, the mirror, the toilet paper. He crouched lower and lower, trying to catch it all inside the toilet bowl, but a new jet shot directly left as if from a poorly attached garden hose, arcing over the sink, extinguishing the candle with a hiss. He heard himself cursing, cursing, stumbling, knocking over the footstool and its cactus, which scattered gravel all over the now-wet floor.
From far away, he heard a voice. He couldn’t distinguish it, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what it was asking. It was asking if he was okay in there. “Everything’s cool!” he shouted in what sounded to him like a very uncool voice. Finally, finally, he scraped the fuzz off, and his stream straightened just as it petered out. He looked down at his traitor penis, at the underwear that had ruined everything. In the toilet bowl, the fuzzwad floated, its damage done. Theresa had done this, he thought. Laurie had known. Theresa had reached out and touched him from far away with her gift, ensuring that though he might try to move beyond her, she would stay stuck to him, attached at his tenderest places.
He looked around at what he had done to the bathroom.
It was like a murder scene, but with pee. He could see spots on the ceiling. The cover of the book was soaked. Worse than that: the sink, her makeup, all the bathroom stuff, all dappled with piss. He blotted everything with toilet paper. He found Scrubbing Bubbles under the sink and cleaned everything as best he could. He wiped the counter, the mirror, poor Cujo. He rinsed out her makeup brush. He flushed, flushed again, the last of the TP headed down the pipe. He cleaned up the gravel, shoveled it back into the cactus pot, stabbed himself in the hand. At least her plant got watered, he thought, and coughed a bitter little laugh.
Last of all, worst of all, oh fuck: the toothbrushes. He stared at them, one blue, one yellow, standing at attention by the sink, covered in god only knew how much piss. He looked at himself in the mirror: his mess of a shirt, his overheated face. He knew that face; he knew what kind of person that was. He narrowed his eyes at himself. He’d never much liked his face, felt his eyes were too beady, too stupid looking, but he’d always thought it was the face of an honorable man.
This was a crucible. This moment would define him. He hadn’t solved Laurie’s problems. He hadn’t solved Theresa’s problems. He caused the problems—he was the problem. Could he walk away from this house knowing that these women would pick up these toothbrushes and open their mouths and—it was too gruesome even to imagine.
But what was the alternative? To tell Laurie what had happened? To stand in that living room, illuminated by candles, listening to Don Henley, and tell her he’d pissed all over her bathroom and her toothbrushes were now off limits?
Instead, he plucked the despoiled toothbrushes from their holder and buried them in the trash can under the Kleenexes and tampon wrappers, buried them so deep that, he hoped, they’d never be found—would simply be a mystery the women would never solve. It was better for them to wonder than it was for them to know something happened at all.
He picked up the soap and rinsed it off before he washed his hands with it. Then he washed them again. It was while he was washing for the third time that he finally, for the first time in what seemed like forever, glanced at his watch. It was nine fifteen, which meant he was more than half an hour late to meet the fucking kids at the fucking van.
It was as if a mist lifted. He caught his breath once and for all. What the hell was he doing in this bathroom? What was up with this weird woman who’d been dry humping him?
And what was that horrible groaning sound?
He burst out of the bathroom into the narrow hallway. There was a door at the far end of the hall now, open into a bedroom that looked more like a cavern, flame-lit and dripping, and standing in the cavern was a woman. The groaning was coming from her. She had a shape he couldn’t understand, a color mottled and red, like raw hamburger left too long in the fridge. She was facing away from him but was beginning, with terrible purpose, to turn in his direction. With each move her skin—the skin—jiggled and sagged from her shoulders. Printed across her back he could see the letters G R E G G.
He shouted, maybe words. Pictures clattered off the wall as he fumbled behind him for the doorknob. Laurie’s sister took a step toward him, took another. The skin she wore swayed in every direction like a loose skirt. She opened her mouth wide, too wide, and Kevin thought her groan might turn into roar, but instead she inhaled—her eyes bulging wide. Kevin felt his chest collapse as if someone were sitting on him, felt the air rush from his lungs—and then he got the door open and fell through it and slammed it behind him.
Laurie was still sitting on the couch. She looked miserable. “I guess you’re outta here, huh?”
Kevin gasped for air. “Fuck!” he managed to wheeze. A plant brushed his cheek and he swiped at it. The vines tangled in his hand and the pot smashed to the floor. Laurie winced.
“You never listen,” she said in a rush. “You never notice.” Her face shifted one last time, into an expression of determination. “I have got to get out of this house,” she said, reaching for Kevin with her razor-sharp nails. He leapt away, grabbed his coat, and ran. Ran through the kitchen with its fresh pot of simmering lapskaus, the meat bobbing to the surface. Ran through the front door with its tree-shaped knocker even now howling like the wind. Ran into the cold, still wrestling the coat over his arm, shocked sober and awake by the chill. He ran up 54th Street, ran away from that house and that bathroom and the hags, his shoes kicking up ice and snow. He skidded around the corner at Hampton House. In the parking lot there were spatters of blood on the snow. The kids were nowhere to be seen. The van, the van, was gone.
He bent over, hands on his knees, weeping and gasping for air. He thought he might never catch a full breath again. He heard from inside Hampton House the muffled thumping of drums, the dampened wail of guitar. “Go to Helen Waite,” he said in despair.