Keep the Change (16 page)

“Did you see the little chiquita?” Astrid inquired. Joe couldn’t understand why in this age women in the throes of jealousy always used these ghastly diminutives on one another. The chiquita, the cutie, the little woman, the wifette.

“You know, I missed her. Isn’t that a shame?”

“I think it is a shame,” Astrid wailed, “that you can’t have everything you want every minute of the day. You once employed all your arty bullshit to make me feel that I fulfilled something in you.”

“We grow.”

“You grow. I don’t.”

“Careful now. We want to avoid the emetic side of boozy self-pity.”

She gave him the finger with one hand and raised her glass to her lips with the other. “Joe Blow,” she said with a smile, “the man in translation.”

“My God! We throw nothing away! We never know when we might need it!”

“You lost that round, dopey. Go make some dinner. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut, or whatever they say out here.”

At first he didn’t think he would cook, because she suggested it. He then decided that that in itself indicated lack of independence and went to the kitchen to begin. As he cooked, he watched to see if she would make herself another drink. She didn’t. She watched the news (excitement about medium-range missiles). She was looking out into the world. He was looking into the sink. It had just gotten real slow. The terrible slowness was coming over him. He lifted his face to the doorway and there she was, fast-forwarding world news facts into her skull with the television. It didn’t seem to matter that she was drunk; it wouldn’t make any real difference. It wouldn’t turn medium-range missiles into long-range missiles. It wouldn’t sober her up unless the actual TV blew up in her actual face.

“What are you cooking?” she called.

“Couple of omelets. Not too much stuff in the fridge.”

“No rat poison, please!”

He chopped up some bell peppers and crookneck squash and scallions. He made everything astonishingly uniform. While he beat the eggs, Astrid came in and refilled her drink. She watched him cook. As he heated the skillet, she said, “No,
you don’t want sex with me just now. You were too busy jacking off while I tried to make friends with your dog.” She went back into the living room and fell into her chair. Joe overcame his inertia and finished cooking. He finally got things on the kitchen table and called Astrid. She came and sat down. “I have just seen something very interesting on television,” she said, avidly eating her omelet. “This is good.”

“What did you see?”

“A report on grizzly bear attacks. It’s so exciting here in Montana! The victims tend to be menstruating women!”

“That’s not so hard to understand.”

“Ha ha ha. He tips his hand.”

“I didn’t mean it as a joke,” he said.

He couldn’t eat. His omelet was a folded yellow fright. His hands were sweating. The glare on the kitchen windows was such that you wouldn’t necessarily know if someone was looking in. A shining drop of water hung on the faucet without falling.

“Here’s my exit,” she intoned. “I get my period. I go hiking in Glacier National Park.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

She started laughing hard and loud. She stopped. Her chin dropped to her chest. A guffaw burst through her nose. She covered her mouth and twisted her face off to one side. “I’m so sorry—” She threw up on the kitchen floor.

“That’s enough for me,” said Joe and got to his feet.

“Don’t put any more miles on that rent-a-car,” she shouted as he went out the door. Immediately, he could hear her crying.

“The things alcohol makes us do,” he thought, walking across the yard. “Leading cause of hospitalization, leading cause of incarceration”—he began marching to this meter—“leading
cause of broken families, leading cause of absenteeism, leading cause of half-masters, leading cause of fascination with inappropriate orifices, leading cause of tooth decay, leading cause of communism, leading cause of Christian fundamentalism, leading cause of hair loss, leading cause of dry loins, leading cause of ulcerated chickens, leading cause of styrofoam. Ah, mother and father,” he wheezed, out of breath. “Time to arise. Time to buck some bales up onto the stack.” Moonlight dropped upon him. He walked out into the prairie whose humming had stopped at sundown. A fall of frost had begun and the grassy hummocks were starred with ice. The gleam of canine eyes caught the moonlight.

Joe spent the following day with the state brand inspector, trying to organize all his cattle receipts. When he got home, Astrid was in bed. She was running a high fever and had sunk into a glumly witty state of disassociated illness. She looked so helpless, so dependent, so unlike anything he’d ever seen before in Astrid that he felt an abounding sweetness well up within. He was sorry that it seemed so inappropriate to mention his declining fortunes. He was under a momentary spell of amicability. People at full strength were better able to sustain their loathing, and avoid these vague and undrained states.

“My darling,” said Joe.

“Do you know who’s been just swell?” she asked, propping herself up in bed. She looked like a pretty nun without makeup and with her hair pulled back.

“Who?”

“Smitty.”

“Smitty? How do you know Smitty?”

“He’s been by. And I mean swell.”

“That’s quite strange.”

“He seems so concerned! He’s concerned with everything. He just trains this concern on things. What concern is shown by Smitty!”

“What about Lureen? She been by?”

“She was here too. Now that one isn’t sure about me. But Smitty is so lovely. He thought he might be able to get me some insurance.”

“You didn’t go for it, did you?”

“No, but I gave him fifty bucks for some kind of filing fee.”

“I know that filing fee. It’s called Old Mr. Boston Dry Gin.”

“I couldn’t say. I went for his story. It charmed me. I’m already bored. I wish I was back in Florida, fucking and using drugs. It’s easy to grow nostalgic in a situation like this.”

“Oh, darling, just stop,” he said, annoyed by his own reaction. He thought of vigorous, robust Ellen, ranch girl, heartening the next generation with teaching. Difficult to imagine her saying in the middle of lovemaking, as Astrid once did, “Now I’d like it up my ass.” He had prevaricated, he recalled, then ultimately brooded about the prospects of a second chance.

“You know it’s funny,” said Joe, wondering why he didn’t appreciate Astrid any more than he did. “I’ve had such a thing for this schoolteacher.”

“Do I have to hear this?”

“I’m trying to keep you entertained. We’re beyond any little ill feelings along these lines anyway, aren’t we? Besides if I tell you this in a sarcastic way and make it good and trivial I can write ‘finis’ to the sonofabitch.” It wasn’t true. He wanted to hurt her. He was laying in stores to hate himself.

“Knock yourself out. I really don’t care.”

Joe believed her. There was malice in his continuation of
the story. It was temporarily beyond him to take stock of the gravity of their situation. It was an awful moment.

“Anyway, I’ve been drawn to her innocence, whether or not it exists. It may not exist. But I took it as a working proposition that the innocence was real.”

“Did you stick it in?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“She can’t be that innocent.”

“But we had these wonderful little skits. I knew her years ago. We hit golf balls together. We discussed her background on the ranch.”

“You stuck it in.”

“We stuck it in. We had meals together in an atmosphere that combined lightheartedness and high courtship. We went for a long drive.”

“This is to puke over,” said Astrid.

“Now, Astrid. There was something quite delicate. A picture had begun to form.” Joe felt like a vampire.

“I can see that picture.”

“But wait. I had decided to marry her. We would live together in the picture that had begun to form. I flew to New York and quit my job with Ivan. I was exhausted. When I was flying home, the country unfolded beneath the wings and it all came to me that—I don’t like that smile, Astrid—I would marry this lovely girl. And I must say, that is a very nasty smile, indeed.”

“I shouldn’t laugh,” said Astrid. “I am in the dreary mental situation in which sneezing, laughing, coughing, calling the dog, or ensemble singing are equally uncomfortable. Anyway, what happened is that you thought it over and upon consideration, upon the most serious consideration you—”

“No. Not this time. I called and before I had the chance to
propose, her husband went for a ride with me and told me that they were working it out.”

“There’s a husband?”

“And a right odd one at that. He used to thrash me when I was a boy, beat me like a gong.”

“Well, if you’d had any conviction, you’d have argued with him. If you’d had the kind of conviction that it would take to go back to your painting, you’d have told that hubby off. Now what’ve you got? A trashy-mouth Cuban who doesn’t appreciate you.”

“Oh, darling,” said Joe in a flat and uninterested tone, “don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Astrid’s weeping was real. Joe could scarcely remonstrate with her. She had every right to this. His position had eroded and he could not say a thing. Instead, he gazed through the window at nothing and came to appreciate how wonderful much of the world could seem.

Collecting herself, she said, “Well, what am I to do?”

“I’m not good at this,” said Joe.

Astrid tried to shift her weight slightly. She sighed. “Given my desperation, I wonder if you’d have time to murmur some smut in my ear.”

“Astrid.”

“Something about the schoolteacher possibly. Anything. There was a fly in the room earlier. You can’t imagine my absorption in watching its confused circuit of my room.”

“I hope you’re resisting ideas like that.”

“What easy ideas have you resisted?”

“I hate you.”

“I hate you too.”

The sudden bitterness of these remarks was stunning. Literally, they were both stunned by what they had said. They
had heard it before and it was still utterly stunning, as stunning to hear as to say.

He rose to go. “We don’t mean that.”

“We don’t?” said Astrid. She looked exhausted. He was horribly sorry that he hadn’t headed the moment off. But they had been in this intense snare for so long. It was hard to keep things from just running their course.

The next day Lureen was on the phone at seven.

“Joe, I don’t know if you realize this but Smitty has been bringing seafood up from Texas in a refrigerated truck. I mean, he’s brokering it, not physically doing it himself, and he has run into a hitch.”

“Which is?” Joe asked, knowing that he had just learned where the lease money had gone, some of it anyway.

“I hear your suspicion already. Now, I want you to give this a fair hearing.”

“Sock it to me, Lureen.”

“Well, a big load of it spoiled.”

“That’s a shame. I’m sorry to hear it.”

“But it was insured.”

“When did this happen?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“How much was it insured for?”

“Thirty thousand.”

“Wow, that’s a powerful load of shrimp. Did he collect?”

“Not yet. But I’m sure he will.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that the insurance company has initiated an investigation. They want to actually
view
the spoiled shrimp. Smitty said, It’s a little late now, I buried it. And the investigators said, We want to see the spot. So, Smitty very graciously took them out to the place—”

“Wait a minute. Where?”

“
There
. You were in New York. And up by the burn pit, he showed them the empty boxes, but they wanted to see the shrimp. Smitty couldn’t believe his ears. The what? he said. And real rudelike, the chief investigator says,
The shrimp
,
the shrimp
,
the shrimp!
It’s been three weeks! Smitty told him. They have decomposed! You got it? But—and it’s a big ‘but’—this horrible man, this investigator said, Nope, there’d still be shells. I don’t know where this all leads but, Joe, for my own peace of mind, I know you’ve spent time down in the Florida—”

“Right, Lureen, I’ve seen a world of shrimp.”

“Would there still be, after all these weeks, any indication—I won’t say
evidence
—that there had been any shrimp?”

“Yes. Shells. Tens of thousands of them, by the sound of it.”

“Joe, we’ve tried so hard to be nice to you and make you feel to home …”

It was too late. She had already signed for the cattle. Joe put the receiver down slowly and carefully. At first, he was contrite: he could have said something more reassuring. But, like what? He was entirely limited to exaggerating the speed at which shrimp shells decompose. How else could he explain Lureen’s belligerence? Surely she was not one hundred percent
taken in by Smitty, the bounder. She must know he meant to glom the ranch, mustn’t she?

Joe actually saw Smitty drive up. Smitty wasn’t going very fast when he came in the driveway, but he stabbed the brakes so that the blue and white Ford skidded a little on the gravel. He sort of threw himself from the car, flinging the door shut behind him. At first, he seemed in a hurry but he lost a little speed by the time he actually got to the front door.

“Smitty,” said Joe, opening the door for him. He reached out his hand. Smitty gave it a glance before shaking it.

“Have you got a minute?”

“Sure I do, Smitty. Coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. Where can we sit?”

They went into the living room. Smitty glanced around at the books, the family pictures, the braided riata that hung on a hook by the door, the college diplomas, the brands burned into the wood, the chunks of quartz that old settler had mortared into the fireplace. They sat down.

“What’s the deal, Joe?”

“Sir?”

“The deal. What are you doing back here?”

“Well, I just wanted to come back.”

“You did.”

“And I thought, somewhere along the way, we might do more with the place. The spotted knapweed and spurge are kind of taking over. Russian thistle. The fellows who lease it don’t care about the old ranch. Fences falling. Springs gone.”