Of Song and Water (29 page)

Maureen picks up on the second ring.

“Don't hang up.” He listens to a long silence.

“She's not here, Jason. You never – ”

He cuts her off. “Does she even live there anymore?”

“She'll be home by eleven.”

“Wait,” he says. “That's not why I called.”

“What then?”

“Hold on.” He gulps his vodka. “My check may be late again or at least down a few bucks.”

“Your timing is unbelievable.”

“I know. But accidents happen.” He hears her breathing.

“Are you okay?” she says, the words a bit softer.

“It's not me – it's the boat.”

“Oh.”

“It sank.”

“You went out on the lake?”

“No,” he says. “I put her in this morning and left her at Humbug. She took on water and went down in her slip. She's more stranded than sunk. Her keel's in the muck.”

“What happened?”

“Don't know. Won't know until they pull her out.” He hears nothing but static.

“So what do you want from me?” she says.

“Nothing. I just wanted to tell you – I may come up a little short next month.”

“Tell her yourself. She's a big girl now. Maybe she can borrow a few dollars from her roommate when she gets to school.”

“I always make good.”

“Yeah. But in the meantime I'm the one living with the boarded-up door.”

He pours another drink. “I'll do my best,” he says.

“You do that,” says Maureen. Then she hangs up.

He doesn't turn on the light. He hopes the gathering darkness will feel cooler. He sits in the living room and rests the sweating glass of vodka on his leg. Even with the door wide open, the air doesn't move.

He puts his feet up and thinks about not going to work in the morning, calling in and saying he's had an emergency, something that can't wait. But he won't go to Humbug. Maybe he'll try to find Heather, try to apologize for the third or fourth time.

He rests his head on the back of the sofa and hears a car coming down the street. Opening his eyes, he sees light from the car's headlamps flashing around the room – then comes the sound of a door closing and someone walking up the driveway.

The landlord breezes in without knocking. She turns on the lamp. “Oh my God,” she says, covering her mouth. She reaches for the switch.

“Don't bother,” he says.

She's wearing a tank top, but this time there's no Jesus. Her cutoffs ride low on her hips. Her short hair is wet and combed straight back.

“I saw the dark house and the open door,” she says. “Let me turn this off.”

“Not now,” he says.

He looks at her standing in the light, her breasts rising and falling as she breathes. He sees the lines close to her eyes and mouth, the firmness of her arms – the middle-aged skin, glorious in its imperfection – and her hands, well used, showing signs of work. Her thighs are smooth, not thin, and her flat
stomach shows a tiny scar – a mark or two where the skin stretches and shines.

“It's too bright,” she says, reaching again for the light.

“Don't move,” he says. He stands and walks toward her. “Turn it up.”

She hesitates.

“Turn it up,” he says, almost flinching, surprised by her touch, her warm fingers grazing his hip.

She puts her other hand on his chest as if to keep him from coming closer. She undoes the towel.

He leans toward her and reaches under the lamp shade. He turns the knob until it clicks. He turns it again. The room overflows with light. He grabs her by the shoulders, his hands aching, and kisses her hard on the mouth.

With the sure strength of a dancer, she climbs and floats free of the ground – the air like water – her arms around his neck, her legs circling his waist.

He pushes her against the wall, wanting to feel whatever grace she carries, kissing her shoulders and the firm slope of her breasts. He lifts her shirt.

She slides it off and tosses it away.

His knotted hand follows the curve of her belly.

“Rip 'em,” she says.

He doesn't know if he can. He opens the snap and unbuttons the fly. He pulls. Not a stitch gives way.

“Don't worry,” she says.

He steadies his grip and tries again. This time the fabric tears – a sound almost like moaning – and then it flutters and drifts to the floor. In the bright light, he holds her against the wall, the curtains and the front door gaping, the sharp salt of her body on his lips and tongue. The sweat between them feels like oil. She uses one hand on his shoulder for balance and the other to guide him and keep him from slipping away.

Just moments ago, he'd thought the gulf between them was too great –
tenant and landlord, absurd demands, and the constant Jesus talk – that the grim weight of her beliefs, her faith, would drag him down, force him to surrender his original impulse.

But now, suddenly and without struggle, struck by the rhythm of their breathing, he feels himself unfettered, no longer earthbound, her weightless and perfect body joined to his own, the two of them gliding upward like wind.

When it's over, he carries her into the bedroom and lies in the darkness beside her. He rests his hand on her hip and listens to the fan clicking. Sweat covers his arms and chest, and the air moving across his skin feels cool.

He drifts off without thinking about work or the problems at Humbug, without worrying about Heather or anything he's done.

 

HE WAKES in the semidarkness to the sound of words, a sad drone, as if someone were reciting poetry in a monotone voice, a way of talking that gives equal stress to all syllables, covering and flattening each utterance – each phrase – like a sheet draped over old furniture. He can't locate the sound's point of origin, forgetting – with his eyes just open – that he's not entirely alone. Then he sees the outline of her thighs kneeling on the bed and the silhouette of clasped hands over his chest. Why does she keep talking? he thinks. Finally, the words slow down. He begins to hear the incantation in pieces, bursts of recognizable sound. He blinks and the room comes into focus.

He stares at her in the gray light praying, sees her kneeling naked on the bed, her breasts trembling and her lips moving like a woman mourning a dead lover.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Kneel with me,” she says.

He tries to roll off the bed but she catches his arm.

“You don't have to pray,” she says. “I'll do the praying for you.”

On her face is an expression he's seen before, self-assured and presumptuous, qualities that he'd thought were seductive, an appeal only to his manhood and not the question of his soul, but now her all-knowing eyes unnerve him and he sees in her face, as if for the first time, the hard fire of missionary zeal.

“Let me go,” he says.

He stumbles into the bathroom and turns on the light. He watches her in the mirror still praying.

I need to get away, he thinks. It's her place, after all. I pay her for temporary use. I need to slip out before she finds a pair of pants and explains why she came over and why it all happened exactly as it did.

The room brightens with the sun rising.

He puts on a T-shirt and jeans and listens to her words.
Let me not, oh Lord, be puffed up with worldly wisdom
. . . Her body is even more beautiful than he remembered.

He stuffs a jacket and clothes into a duffel bag. He opens the medicine cabinet and sweeps all the pills and painkillers on the bottom shelf into the bag.
Give us this day our daily bread . . . And lead us not into temptation . . . Instead, grant me compassion . . . love that never abates
. . .

He can't bring himself to kiss her or say good-bye.

He walks out of the bedroom, moves quietly through the house, and realizes that he left the front door open all night. The sight of her station wagon in the driveway makes his stomach jump. He eyeballs the distance and decides that he has just enough room to get around her.

He goes out through the garage and starts the pickup. He's almost to the foot of the drive when she comes out of the house wearing his bathrobe. I thought I'd get away clean, he thinks.

She raises her hand.

He can't tell whether she's waving or wanting him to stop. He waves, puts the truck in drive, and pulls away without checking the rearview mirror.

HE TURNS the corner and Humbug comes into view. Inside the fence is the giant cruiser that no one ever goes near. Patches of brown and black have blossomed on the hull. He remembers the yard regulars calling it a ghost ship – Humbug's monument to damage and disrepair.

He grips the wheel, his hands aching, and looks again at the old wooden boat. Not today, he thinks.

He stops at the Blue Moon Market and uses the pay phone to call Heather. He leaves her a message, tells her that he won't be around until early next week and that he needs to see her before she takes off for school. He hangs up, puts a few more coins into the slot, and punches the keypad.

He waits. The line rings and clicks. Someone on the other end hesitates, a momentary confusion, and then says, “This is routing and dispatch. May I help you?”

“Hi, Irma. It's Coleman.”

“Where are you?” she says.

“I'm not coming in.”

“Why not? You sick? You don't sound sick.”

“No. I need to start my vacation today.”

“You can't do that. You just put in for it.”

“I know. But I gotta go.”

“There's nobody to cover your route.”

“C'mon. You got backups.”

“Not today. And even if I did, what about Monday and the rest of next week?”

“Sorry to put you through it.”

“It won't go down easy,” says Irma.

“You think I'll get canned?”

“I think you can count on it.”

He digs in his pocket. He's out of change. “I'll call you as soon as I get back.”

“Hope you're going somewhere nice,” says Irma.

“Take care,” he says.

He goes into the Blue Moon Market and buys vodka, soft drinks, a bag of pretzels, and a sandwich. He looks at the pay phone on the way out and thinks about giving Heather another try. He makes up his mind not to.

He climbs into the pickup and stows the bottle of vodka in his duffel bag beneath the clothes and painkillers. He leaves the other stuff on the seat.

He drives west on Gibraltar Road to I-75 and then heads north, the road rising over smokestacks and slag heaps, the Ford plant at River Rouge – sulfur stinging his nose. The smell brings back his grandfather's voice: “Ford's river,” said H.M., “runs redder than blood. Always has. And always will.”

Soon after that he sees the Ambassador Bridge and races past the exit and through downtown Detroit. He hits heavy traffic on the ramp for eastbound I-94 and feels a knot in his stomach when the pickup slows. He's in no mood for a tie-up or a bumper-to-bumper crawl. After the merge, he drifts into the far left lane and the cars start moving. He stays there until he sees a cop waiting under the 8 Mile Road overpass. He changes lanes and tries to blend in with the slower cars.

He takes the Metropolitan Beach exit and stops for gas. He cleans the windshield and uses the bathroom. One of the rear tires appears to be low so he takes his gauge out of the glove compartment and checks the pressure. It's worse than he thought. He runs his hand over the treads. Could be a rim leak, he thinks.

A young woman walks over and asks to borrow his gauge. “I think my tires are fine,” she says. “But ever since all those rollovers, I worry.”

He glances at her SUV, sees a small Korean flag, a sticker, on the rear window. He smiles. “Take your time,” he says.

She's very petite with luxurious black hair and shoulders the color of dark gold. He wants to tell her that she's beautiful – one of the most beautiful women he's ever seen. He watches as she crouches in front of her tires and completes her transaction at the pump. He watches her walking toward him.

“Thanks,” she says. “Great gauge.”

He smiles and nods.

Back on the freeway, he turns on the radio, listens to the news, and then scans for a good station. He can't find any real jazz, so he chooses classical: Bach, Orchestral Suite no. 3.

He drives faster than the speed limit, blowing by Mount Clemens and New Baltimore, feeling the sudden pull of Port Huron. It occurs to him that he can make this drive without thinking, without reading the signs or checking the numbers. He likes the comfort in that – the feeling that the road is going precisely where it should.

It seems strange to him now that he learned this route when he was young, driving sometimes with a friend but mostly by himself. Jen was with him once. They were in from Chicago, a long July weekend, but the visit went badly, his father working and sleeping on the boat, a tension in the house despite his mother's good cheer. After a day or two of that, he said, “Let's drive up the thumb. I'll show you Port Austin, the place where I was born.”

Now, like before, he goes up 25, opening the windows when he sees the water, knowing that Lexington's not far, but then remembering the drive at sunset with Jen, and how, when she caught the scent of Lake Huron, she took off her shirt and jeans until all she had on was her white bathing suit, the top tied behind her neck and the bottom tied high on her hips, the hue of her black hair and bronze skin made deeper by the narrow swathes of white.

She put the seat back and stretched, letting the fresh evening air wash over her like water. “I'd like to swim,” she said.