Truths of the Heart (13 page)

“Plain bullshit!”

“That bad, huh.”

“Bullshit.”

Smelling the rum on his breath, “How many rum and Cokes did you have on
the plane?”

“Fifty.” He lit a Kool.

“Carl, I'm sorry....”

“Goddamn it, how could you do that to me, I've been on a goddamn smelly
planes, tired, hungry … shit fire, Rachelle.”

“Carl, I'm sorry, a student had a problem....”

“A student had a... she's got nothing to do all day but breastfeed a
bunch of punks and I gotta wait at a goddamn airport, curbside, with the
peasants, in the fucking rain!”

She thought:
I have a full class load, nine hours plus the new
course, Grad Advisor to two students, research writing, publication demands,
Lansing Symphony Board of Directors....
“Carl, we can't go through this
every time....”

“We shouldn't have to if you gave a good goddamn.”

“I don't understand why you just don't drive to the airport.”

“I'm not parking my Beamer at any goddamn airport parking lot demolition
derby.”

“Okay, take a cab.”

“Take a cab, take a cab.”

“What are you going to do when you start the WJJ thing in three weeks?”

“THING! Jesus Christ!” He slammed the dash.

“Okay, okay, the radio show.”

“If you'd quite that goddamn stupid teaching job and move to Detroit, discussion
over.”

“We've been through....”

“Shut up.”

“Carl, you are being an asshole.”

“Fuck you.”

“You too.”

Windshield wipers flapping, Rachelle smiled to herself,
So this is
it, been married three weeks … how soon the honeymoon is over. Was it something
in the water or what? It's not like you could not have seen this coming. I
know, what we do for love, that’s a stretch or a song and this is not music
101.

The slick street, traffic slowing things down, as she drove, he took
her right hand in his and put it on his maleness. “I'm sorry, it's just that I
love you so much.”

She removed her hand from his grasp.

Twenty minutes later she pulled into the garage of the Lake Lansing
home.

Miffed at her rebuff, Carl got out, slammed the door, retrieved his
garment bag and went up the stairs to the kitchen. Inside, he kicked at T.S.
but, knowing better, missed.

Rachelle entering behind him, said, “You know if you ever actually kick
T.S. I'll throw you out.”

“Bullshit,” he threw his garment bag on the floor, went to the bar,
mixed himself a double rum and Coke, sat on a barstool, and lit a Kool King
cigarette.

Rachelle put her things in the kitchen, checked the phone to be sure
the message machine was on, then went to the bar and sat beside Carl: “Carl,
I'm sorry….”

“Shut up.”

“Don't tell me to shut up.”

He stirred his ice around in his drink with his left index finger and
said, “You don't love me.”

“Carl, Carl, Carl … look, if this airport business is going to upset
you every time I'm a little late....”

“A little late!”

“Okay a lot late.”

“Why do you let it happen?”

“Carl, I'm … my schedule….”

“Your schedule … what am I, fucking cat food?” He threw his glass at
the fireplace. It shattered. Liquid ran down and around the stones.

T.S. hissed and ran up the spiral staircase.

Rachelle, standing, said, “Carl, don't ever do that again.”

He threw another glass at the fireplace. “Fuck you.”

“Asshole.” She started up the staircase. “As far as I'm concerned you
can walk, drive, take a cab, stick your Beamer up your ass … I'm not moving to
Detroit and I'm not going through this juvenile airport nonsense anymore.”

He moved quickly, thrust his hand through the iron grate railing, and grabbed
her right ankle. Her black pump came off and dropped to the floor.

Struggling, she, for the first time, felt fearful of Carl. “Let go of
me.”

“You're not going anywhere.”

“Carl, you're hurting me.”

Holding on tightly, “Come back down here, you, join me for a drink.
Let's talk this thing over.”

“Stop it.” She kicked his hand loose and ran up to the bedroom.

Carl followed, playfully tackled her, pinned her to the floor. She struggled
but as he forced her, for some reason from somewhere, that third-rung lust rose
in her. She stopped resisting. He picked her up, tossed her on the bed,
stripped her naked, tore his clothes off, devoured then entered her. Clutching
the bed sheets, she screamed in pleasure.

Then Carl did something new. He withdrew from her, stood beside the
bed, pulled her face to him and forced his penis into her mouth. Moaning like a
volcanic mountain about to explode, he ejaculated in her mouth then fell on the
bed.

Rachelle went to the bathroom and vomited.

****

Returning to the bedroom, Carl on the bed snoring, she put on a white
silk night gown, took her journal and went downstairs to the great room. T.S.,
asleep on the sofa, she sat beside him and looked out the window. The
thunderstorm had passed and the setting sun was sending streaks of red through
the darkening twilight sky. She took her pen and wrote:

It's not like this is a surprise. That oral thing was. You could have
seen this coming if you had just let yourself see. It was there all the time. I
see things there that I was blind to before. Hah! You were not blind, you chose
to ignore.

I have a sick need to be dominated and it scares me … affinity for
animal lust … for some reason from somewhere, that third-rung hunger rose in
me. I gave in, loved it, then the little surprise, new twist. Male with his hot
tool needing a tweak … the hunter … the stronger … woman his receptacle …
mother … what is this? Is it in everyone? Maybe from the past … male and female
… So la-de-da and here we are but I can't do that oral thing anymore. In
affairs academia you do well, Z. But when it comes to picking men,
affairs-of-the-heart, you are a total disaster. Recall beau Anthony, ogled you
while he ministered to himself.

At least, not like some we know, he kept his little load to himself.
This one you knew (yes, now I know I knew) was for the wrong reasons, date for
the Christmas party … no, dear, what it was, plain and simple, was LUST! Okay,
so maybe I made a mistake. Everybody is entitled to one. I've done pretty well
until … how stupid it was though … a whopper. Now what to do? You've only been
married three weeks. How would that look? You, always with the how would that
look....

She noticed her pen seemed to be writing by itself, Carl … new job … Detroit
… apartment!

CHAPTER FOUR

After leaving Chapel Hill, Seth took a bus to East Lansing to visit his
frequent hang out,
Pudd'nheads
. The popular tavern featured a
twenty-stool U-shaped bar, cozy lounge with green-covered booths, and a 15x20
dance floor.

Exiting the bus, Seth noted, the rain stopped, the early evening sky
had turned a milky red-gray. He entered the foyer and was greeted by a
paper-mache life size replica of Mark Twain dressed in typical white three
piece suit.

Seth knew the person who had created the Twain statue: Lansing native
of some local notoriety, Laura Toth. By profession a photographer (weddings,
graduations, portraits—still and video), she ran a lucrative business. Her
hobby was dabbling in the life size paper-mache sculptures. Many notions came
to mind when he thought of Laura: sex, bizarre, intrigue, sorcery, sex, ribald,
courtesan, liaison, intense never-blinking green eyes, bright red page-boy-cut
hair, triangular face, six foot 23-22-23 figure, fashion models' runway strut,
knock-out clove perfume.

Seth had met Laura a year ago, at a Lansing art show. She had attempted,
in a Ouija board kind of way, to possess him ever since. Laura said she was
twenty-nine but, hanging onto her girlish figure like a kite in the wind, he
thought closer to forty.

Entering Pudd'nheads through a plate-glass door, Seth heard the lilting
violin version of “Night and Day” played by Jude Wisdom. Jude, a sophomore in
the M.S.U. Music Department, performed at Pudd'nheads for tips and did very
well. She didn't need the money. Her Ford Executive father provided her every
wish. Rather, she performed because she liked to, and had a loyal following.
Monday through Friday, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Jude wowed 'em with her renditions of
Rogers and Hart, Gershwin, Cole Porter. Occasionally she dropped in a Bach,
Beethoven, Schubert.

This night, as usual, against the walling of Jude's Stradivarius, the atmosphere
in Pudd'nheads was muffled and mellow.

She sat on a black stool. Her black violin case open on the stage. The
red velvet lining was laced with dollar bills, some fives, and a few tens.

Jude mirrored her mixed parental stock: her mother, a full blooded Sioux
Indian, her father Chinese/African. Jet black hair to her waist, dark chocolate
eyes with a slight Oriental fold, her skin was the color of polished mahogany.
Her clothing, free and casual, was tonight a long-sleeve silver silk shirt
tucked into black silk slacks. As she played, her black clogs were planted firmly
on the stage floor.

She spotted Seth and smiled. Sure of herself, giving of herself, she reminded
Seth much of his sister, Natalie.

Playing her violin, swaying with the melody, she frowned at Seth as he placed
a dollar in her violin case. He nodded, noticed the room full, went to the bar,
took a favorite seat where he could see Jude, and ordered his usual
nonalcoholic drink, ginger beer.

Jude segued into “All of Me.”

As he watched her, he remembered the night he had first met her. It was
a year ago when, walking to class in a winter snow storm, he saw a green and
white Mustang skid off the road into a ditch. Coming to the rescue, a female
driver's beautiful ebony face beamed from a rolled down window. Her first words
to him were, “Shit, look at me.” Noting that she was not hurt, he pushed, she
gunned it and, making room for him by putting her violin case on the back seat,
gave him a lift across campus. Smoking a Kent cigarette, she explaining that
the Mustang was a gift from her father, and he would “have a cow” if there was
a scratch, dent, or scrape.

Seth assured her, he had looked, the foot deep snow had saved her.

Ginger beer served in a copper mug, Seth sipped. Jude finished “All of Me”
and amid light applause, she headed for Seth. He watched her approaching and
she really did remind him of Natalie.

She arrived, said, “How's it going, Tru?”

“Fantastic.”

“Here's your dollar.”

He pushed it away, “Don't do that.”

She sat next to him. “You need it more than I do.”

“I will not accept that dollar … you're embarrassing me.”

Stuffing it in her shirt pocket, “Heaven forbid.”

“Thank you.”

“What ya doing?”

“Drinking ginger beer.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Wrong.”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, be that way … later tonight, want me to model for you, fool around?”

“No.”

“What's a matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Lot of nothing going on in that baroque head of yours.”

“Want something to drink?”

A bartender with a name tag, Hank, came to where they sat and nodded to
them both. “Folks.”

Familiar, Seth nodded back, “Hank.”

Hank said: “You want something, Jude?”

“Coffee, black.”

“You got it.” Hank left. Seth said, “'My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness
pains my senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk….'”

“Oh, okay, so who's that from?”

“Keats, Ode to a Nightingale.”

“Good, real good.”

“This is nuts, I don't even know her.”

“Aha, the nothing comes forth, who is she?”

“Some apparition I saw this afternoon, can't get her out of my head.”

“Like wow, tell me more.”

“Grad class.”

“What you doing taking a grad class?”

“Long story.”

“Oh, okay, so give me a one line sketch.”

“No.”

“No? You brought this up.”

“I don't know.”

Jude's coffee served in a white inch-thick mug, she said to Seth, “Come
on Tru, tell me.”

“Later.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“That's what happens when you hang around with grad students.”

“What?”