Cardinal Numbers: Stories (2 page)

And he did not open the shop on Thursday, but instead hiked uptown to the park, shivered on a bench near Belvedere Castle. There were blowing papers, decrepit pigeons, and a smoky, tenuous sky to complete the scene. Schenck’s appearance might have been one of pathos or absurdity or fecklessness or withdrawal, any and all; or within lines firm and definitive, he might be the emblem of aging, a painter’s subject (or object) with brown, oatmeal-grain coat against green bench slats, a messily furled umbrella resting across his knees.

Gloveless, his hands twinged and tingled so badly that they could not stand the pressure of his pockets. He hurried down Madison Avenue, losing the race with nightfall. Already there were happy drunks, and surly drunks, and to complete the scene, store windows dressed with plush reindeer and cotton snow.

Blue exhaust clouded in his way led to a mental picture: Sheila coming back to the city on a bus, coming away from a company town in western Pennsylvania, from the diligent miseries of her visit. Schenck’s rarely exercised imagination frisked with detail: the artificial tree, the wreath of painted pine cones, Father pouring rum from a holiday decanter, kidding unpleasantly; diabetic Auntie with her blotched face and white fur slippers; icicles cracking off the eaves outside; her now unfamiliar bedroom with a fresh box of Kleenex and a clock that ticked too loudly; and finally, knees together, handbag grasped to her stomach, there on the bus reviewing the variations of her life, indifference and cruelty, chords and arpeggios.

ON
Friday, when he came to open up, a man was waiting at the door, a junkie with a carton of worthless paperbacks. Schenck gave him ten bucks, realizing they’d all come now, and thinking: Let them. It had just begun to snow, lightly, in dry, tufted flakes that were easily blown.

He looked through his shelves, at a tissue fold-out map from an Alpine geography, at photographs of Bedouin herders, Alban Berg, a Kyoto hotel; at the ludicrous jacket copy of a Baroness Orczy romance, and recognized the absence of a coziness that should by rights have been there, inside the steamy heat with snow feathering against the windows, among his books and books and books in their hammer-dented, varnish-wanting shelves.

He closed at noon, no sales recorded, and went to the Hellas for lunch. There, beside the steam table, like Italians in a barbershop, the brothers had taped postcards of home, a scenic hill town overlooking the Aegean. Outside, the snow was building. There was no wind. Schenck thought: All my insurance is up to date. The meat loaf was dry, and needed extra gravy; the green beans spurted warm water when bitten.

Morning came dry and crisp and gray. Schenck ironed his corduroy jacket, shaved carefully. His hat was tight, both hands throbbed, but the arrangement of smudges on white wall seemed lovely, undifficult. He went slowly, like someone his age, planting both feet on a step before the next move down. At the empty street he paused for minutes. Children stared, and he turned the corner, thinking of all that had not proved inexpressible across an air shaft. There was her name on the bell board. The bridge swayed. He decided to flip a coin.

[1]

THEY WORKED AT THE
enclosed mall in King of Prussia. They wore plastic nametags, the corporate logo above a deep groove accommodating a Dymo label. Jenelle for the record store, Courtney for the bookstore. They had received reprimands for lateness.

[2]

Dinner is interesting. The plastic bag doesn’t melt in the boiling water. You cut off the top with scissors and lobster Newburg comes out.

From the paper: “Dartmouth Warnell, 19, of North Philadelphia, while attempting to escape from police custody, was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Afro-American Cultural Museum. A warrant for driving-while-suspended had been outstanding.”

The table is a phone company cable spool which occasionally insinuates a splinter. The VCR format is unchic: Beta. The movie from the rental store traces an anchorwoman who finally turns into a werewolf on the air. They’ve seen it before.

[3]

Saturdays there are special events at the mall. It could be a ho-ho banjo band in red vests and sleeve garters. Or a begonia club. Or a cat show. There might be Cub Scouts all over the place. Everyone seems to put in the extra effort on a Saturday. Their jaws ache from smiling.

[4]

Courtney and Jenelle together in a bath. Pubic hair is ugly, but they’re afraid to shave. Many products for the hair, each based on a wholesome foodstuff. Plastic bottles bobbing.

J: I wish my toes were long and thin like yours.

[4A]

Courtney and Jenelle in a stall shower, embracing in soap foam. Why they’re late all the time. Mist.

[4B]

Courtney and Jenelle washing clothes by the Orinoco. (Black-and-white, dubbed.)

C: Why can’t I get my skirts as bright as yours?

J: You’re not beating them hard enough.

Rising smoke in the distance, music of chain saws.

[5]

She had enough imagination to feel molten plastic when she took the albums from the carton. These were red mostly, with lettering in white. There was a song about land reform, another about mascara. She thought of wearing leather next to the skin.

“Where would I find language instruction tapes?” She shelved the travel guides in overstock, felt once more this alien regret at not being able to type. Letters to show the way. Orange signs in her sightline: Romance Cooking Health & Fitness. She thought about her eyes in someone else’s face on posters all over town.

“Do you have
How to Avoid Probate
?”

[6]

Jenelle’s mother lives by herself in Cherry Hill in a house that’s almost paid for. Dad is trying to make a cleaning service go in south Alabama; he calls often, seems not to be doing well. She has brown hair, type O blood, allergies to shellfish and aluminum foil.

Courtney’s mother is Japanese, a war bride. Her father died last summer of asbestosis. Her brother is in his third year of biochemistry at Drexel. She is right-handed, underweight, wears glasses to correct a mild astigmatism.

[7]

They could be married to men like sleds on rails: top ten percent of the class, membership in a rowing club, an ability to anticipate currency fluctuations. They could be plain in Quaker bonnets, humming as they card wool, shaded sweetly by belief.

[7A]

Rod turned back to her in his belted leather coat of a too-shiny material that was not leather. His wide dark eyes glistened with forgiveness. Courtney inhaled the coat’s laboratory musk as he gathered her up in his arms.

[7B]

Jenelle heard the whispers in passing, her gray skirts brushing the cobbles, the black book cradled in her hand. She had broken the silence in fear, but her quiet simple words had then seemed to lift all eyes in the meetinghouse.

[8]

Was it a party? Jenelle is lying in bed, cold cucumber slices balanced on her face. She has unplugged the stereo, forbidden music. Wondering if he really will phone tonight, Courtney wishes for an interesting birthmark. Someone downstairs is raking leaves. Jenelle has an enema and feels better.

J: Why don’t we have towels that match? With our initials intertwined in a contrasting color?

C: I don’t know.

[o]

Strollers were unconsciously arranged around the fountain; the mothers could not wake their children. Earring Emporium had not had a customer all day. An NCR repairman set down his tool kit and wandered aimlessly. The sound track was muddy for Cinema III’s matinee. A man with no family bought a badminton set and charged it. An aquarium burst spontaneously at Petsateria; there was a brief waterfall over jagged glass, and then little flips on the carpet….

Courtney took the taped package out from behind the stockroom fire extinguisher. Her mouth was dry. The package felt funny. Too heavy? Too light? She was late for the rendezvous….

Jenelle put the mustard on her pretzel left-to-right, signing everything was go. Slowly, as if browsing, they moved toward the Westgate exit, past Jeans World, Muffy’s, the Cookie Castle. They were being followed. The two men wore state trooper glasses and trim black chin beards, but weren’t as young as they thought. Were they DEA? Libyans? No hesitation. Jenelle took the silver gun from under her rabbit jacket and gave each one two in the face. JFK time, brains on a pink dress….

Courtney and Jenelle hydroplaning in a white Camaro, spinning across three lanes of expressway, coming out of it and going harder on. The windshield a gray boil. Hiss of the police-band radio. Swerving headlights. The needle edging past 100….

“Don’t you read?” Courtney said.

“No, I’ve finished school.”

“Read and you’d know nothing ever happens to us. Just these little vignettes we’re not even aware of.”

“You mean it?”

“Anyway
they
do.”

“Okay.”

Jenelle threw the package out the window, bit off the tip of the silver barrel. The gun was made of wax and contained a thin lime syrup.

[—1]

Courtney and Jenelle in a cemetery with hoagies. From this elevation it is possible to see a white church, the empty river. New shoots of grass are just starting. The air is soft, receptive to the least aroma trace. Starlings forage between grave aisles, behind bronze-doored crypts. Oil trickles over Courtney’s lip. Jenelle catches it on her finger.

C: I wish we were in our eighties and could look back.

J: Me too.

[oo]

What then do we want words for?

The tab on a file.

To say this was in Pennsylvania, during the second term of Reagan.

T
HE OUTLAW CAMP WAS
on the middle fork of the Flathead between Horseshoe Peak and the Divide. Ponies nodded over their hay in the corral and jaybirds called from out of the big pines. Inside the loghouse, Buzz (Dan Duryea) was feeding the stove from a basket of cobs to heat a kettle of red beans and jerky. The wall behind him was hung with snakeskins and calendar art. He couldn’t remember the name of the song he was humming and by now he’d stopped trying. He spat on the stove and it hissed.

Wiley (Andy Devine) came in from the dooryard and went to rummage in his medicine box. They called him “El Paciente” because he never stopped whining about his ailments. Lumbago today and bursitis tomorrow or palsy or milk leg or grippe. He brought over his packets of herbs and put a pan of water on the stove to make tea.

Wiley said: “Smells good.”

Buzz snorted. “Jerky and beans. Like always.”

Wiley said: “Put in plenty of chili pods. It cleans out your system.”

Buzz said: “I like mine to stay dirty.”

Out by the hayrick, Midnight (Marlon Brando) was planting geranium slips in a rusted-through pump trough. One night he’d lost three fingers blowing a safe, but he was still deft anytime he worked with his hands. His long lank black hair fell down the back of his buckskin shirt. His boots glistened with mink oil. Midnight had an Oglala wife somewhere and two boys, but it’d been years since he left.

Jackdaws were squawking in the dusk. Hard rain began to fall as Costain (Rod Taylor) came down off the ridge in his linen duster, four cutthroat trout in his bag. A wide Stetson brim darkened features that were already nut brown and fixed in their usual blank expression. They called him “High Wide and Handsome.” He opened the loghouse door and saw the stable hand naked on the end bunk. He had Wiley’s cock in his mouth and Midnight was greasing his butt with lard.

Buzz said: “Juanito got drunk on liniment again and he’s ready for love.”

Costain’s granddaddy had ridden with Quantrill’s raiders. Costain lit a cigarillo and …

(two pages missing)

… so Wiley and Midnight took the weasels down to the river edge for skinning. The water ran heavy with spring melt and the beach was halved. They scrubbed their knives with sand and it soaked up the blood. They pegged out the pelts to dry and threw the meat in the water because Wiley said these weasels and stoats and martens and so on carried disease like the rats in Europe.

Wiley said: “Plague.” He nodded in that way that meant he’d studied up on whatever he was saying.

Midnight said: “We better wash our hands real good then.”

The stink of copper smelters down the valley came on the freshening wind. Costain knew it was 1910. People were starting to laugh at just the idea of road agents.

Buzz kicked out at the barbed-wire fence. He said: “These Basque bastards and their sheep.”

But Costain knew better.

He said: “Perreault ain’t no Basque. He’s a general from France. Got drummed out of the Foreign Legion. Married a rich girl in Boston. Her father give him the ranch so’s he’d go away.”

Buzz said: “Fuck him anyway,” and took out his wire cutters.

Town was asleep at that time of day. There was only one horse tied to the railing in front of the pharmacy. The green mortar-and-pestle sign squeaked on its hinges. Costain and Buzz put on bear masks made out of paper. They busted the glass out of the door on their way in. Buzz swung on an old farmer who reached inside his black coat.

Costain warned him: “Watch my .38,” but the old man kept reaching and Costain spun him with one shot and put a hole through his neck. The outlaw pair took four hundred in gold and paper and a brass-bound chest full of cocaine syrup and ether and belladonna and sleeping powders. A boy ran up in the street outside and Buzz gut-shot him.

Buzz said: “Mask slipped. He saw my face.”

The boy went into convulsions in the dirt. Red foam came to his mouth.

Costain said: “Finish him.”

The cut load took the boy’s skull apart and Buzz wiped brain off his boots. Then they rode hard up the draw and crossed the Flathead at the first show of treeline. Costain swept their trail with pine boughs. Then they cut north through the shallows …

(remainder of page mutilated)

… and threw his cards down.

Midnight said: “Plainly it ain’t or I wouldn’t be asking.”

Wiley said: “Don’t you read three queens?”