Watch Your Mouth (24 page)

To hit Eight I had to make a list of people I believed I had harmed. The trouble was, I knew that Step Nine was making amends to them, and so far everyone on my list was dead. The faux-marble steps weren’t just decorative; they
went
somewhere, leading from the pool to the bar which was decorated with palm trees, half real, half fake. All day long, I watched my guests use those steps to get what they wanted. Even now, the early risers were dangling their feet in the shallow end, sipping fresh juice poured by Marco, who tended a bar at the top of the steps like a faux-marble prize. As Allyson finished her chapter they trick- led in: the couple enjoying the first honeymoon of their second marriage, the fat man with the girl everyone hoped was his daughter, the three single women who knew each other from

work, the old guy who looked like my family doctor and his silent sunglassed wife propping her book against her bent knees, the mom and her three daughters spending alimony like water, the retired couple who heaped extra entrees onto plates and brought them back to their room because of some Holocaust thing they had. I’d watched them all over the past few days, at a distance. These people were
doing
things on those faux-marble steps: getting tipsy when sober, refreshed when parched, rinsed when hot, always wetter and wetter. Those steps
accomplished
something; my own steps, I vowed, wouldn’t dead-end, either. But what to put on the list?

“O.K.,” Allyson said, tossing the book under the bed. “How’re the vampires?”

“Hungry,” she said, baring her teeth and looking at where they’d do the most damage, before changing her mind and get- ting out her clipboard. “Tonight’s the costume party and every- body is going to ask you for costume help at the last minute. To cut down on the costume rush, Mike suggests that we see if anybody looks bored today. Then we can suggest getting to work on their outfits. So keep an eye out. The Pearsons bring theirs, of course—they always wear these fancy cowboy things— but most people are going to need all the crepe paper we can spare.”

“Who are the Pearsons?”

“The, you know,
older
couple. You don’t know everyone’s names yet? It’s already Day Five.”

“I don’t know
anyone’s
names,” I said. “How could I?”

“The
list,
” she said, pinching open the clipboard. “Here’s a spare copy. I gave you the list at the first Breakfast Meeting.”

She put a piece of paper into my hands and sighed. Outside the palm trees rustled, even the fake ones, like her sigh had travelled all the way to the tourists.

It was a windy day.

“I guess I never got it. Maybe”—here I lowered the sheet a little bit—“you spilled coffee on it.”

She tried to look cross and finally smiled. “Maybe I did. In any case, you’d better go over this. You’re supposed to call the guests by name, you know. Here, it’s alphabetical. The Ander- sons are that couple, you know, with the fat guy.”

“She’s his daughter?”

“Oh. I never thought of that. I assumed she was his wife.” “She looks
thirteen
.”

“Mrs. Bitburg has three daughters: Jenny, Elizabeth and Wendy, oldest to youngest. You can remember who’s who by
Jew
. Jenny, Elizabeth, Wendy. Got it?”

“Jew. Got it.”

“Are
you
Jewish, Joe?” “I used to be.”

She smiled. “
Jesus
used to be Jewish. Margot and Lou Gilt- more, they’re honeymooning. Remember we brought them free champagne the first night?”

“Yes, and I know who Sarah Hackett is, because she made a pass at me.”

“Really? The redhead, the one who’s—?”

“Fat.”

“Joe!”

“Yes.”

“What did she do?”

“She asked me up to her room.” “You know that’s not allowed.”

“What am I supposed to do? Report her?” “No, for
you
to—you know, for you to—”
“Fraternize?”

“You’re smart. Yeah. It’s even supposed to be against the rules for, you know,
this,
so watch your—self. Who else have we got? The honeymooning Kleins. Susan Runnon, with the, you know—”

“Breasts.”

“Yeah, Joe. Thanks. The other woman is Kristin Timball, and then there’s this last couple with a name you will not believe, it’s like the book, this is funny—”

And it
was
funny, the wind rising like that and opening the

door on an illicit couple like it had done so many times before, curling up the staircase like smoke and hovering over the worn carpet in the staff quarters building until it found the right room. That would only happen, you might think, in a perfect universe, but here on the shiny island it could happen all the time, even when the door was latched, even when the boss was walking by. Allyson togaed the sheet around herself and went to close the door, but Mike was already in the doorway like an armed guard. A guy with a gun. A guy who didn’t get the joke.
“Al?”

“Mike,” she said, calmly.

He took another step in. “
Joe?
What are you—the two of you—?”

“Mike,”
Allyson said, “
Excuse
us, please. Could you close the door?”

He stepped farther into the room and closed the door so there were three of us. Two illegal lovers and the whistle-blower. “This is—
Al,
I’m
surprised
at you!
Shocked!
This is—”

“Mike—”

“—against
the rules!
Against
regulation!
You’re not supposed to, you’re not—it’s against the rules to—”

“Mike—”

“You’re not supposed to be doing this,” he said, quieter. Al- lyson gathered the sheet around herself with one hand and put the other one on his shoulder. He shrugged it away. “I
mean
it, Al. It’s in the
rules,
for chrissakes.” Allyson didn’t say anything. “Your primary responsibility—your
sole
responsibility—is to our
guests.
You guys are on duty
twenty-four hours a week.
I
mean
it. A
day
. You
know
what I mean. Deep down you
know
, I
know
you do, and then—
this?
This is
disgraceful.
Al—Joe— you have wronged not our
staff,
but our
guests!
Every last guest depends on you, and
this
is what you do! Joe, you are no longer Al’s assistant. Al, you are no longer—
Joe’s
boss. You have wronged them, really. I want you to think about that. And get out of here, Joe. These aren’t even your
quarters
. This isn’t even”—the wind blew the door open again, and Mike slammed it shut, then looked at it and opened it so he could leave—“this isn’t even your
room.
”
Slam,
but then the door stuck on some- thing.
Slam
again.

“Joe?” Allyson asked me. Only when she put her hand on my shoulder did I see how badly I was shaking. “
Joe?
It’s O.K., Joe. We—he’ll cool down. You’ll see. He’s just upset because—”

“He’s
right.
We’ve done those people
wrong
.” “Don’t be silly. He and I used to—”

“He’s
right.
He’s
right
.”

“He and I used to go
out,
Joe. He’s just
jealous.
Can’t you tell? He wasn’t upset at what he saw, at all. He’s just
jealous.
Jealousy will do that to you. Why is this upsetting you so much, Joe?”

I didn’t know. My spine, inside, was twitching all wrong, bending backwards like a wire hanger. I was shivering, and my head was ringing with a full-orchestra blare, some operatic soundtrack shaking me cold. The flashes of skin from Allyson’s bare shoulders, and my own, were sticking in my eyes but all blurry and underwater. The slide show in my brain was switch- ing from the Glasses to the cops, to the men in the tent and everyone at the bookstore, quick costume changes and curtain calls. The history of doors opening was drowning me. I guess jealousy will do that to you. But even at the bottom of the pool you can see the faux-marble steps, shiny and clean and rising towards the prize. “I was abused. I’m—the door opening like that made me remember, upset me. I’m sorry.”

Allyson’s eyes widened and she came to me. In some untrou- bled corner of my mind I could tell this was going to keep me laid. “You don’t have to
apologize,
” she said, sheet slipping. “That’s
terrible,
Joe. Do you feel like talking about it?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s just—when a door opens suddenly like that, or when I see something muddy, anything with a fam- ily—”

“It was your
family?
Oh my God.”

“It was the
whole
family,” I said. “I’m sorry—”

“
No, no.
Don’t apologize. I can imagine how upsetting this can be. Joe, I hope you’ve sought help.”

I smiled thinly. “I’m around the eighth step now.”

She put both hands on my shoulders so the sheet slipped all the way to her waist. Her breasts were sticking out like they

were reaching for my shoulders, too. “I’m very proud of you. I
mean
it. You’re surviving so well. This kind of thing can destroy so many people.”

I saw the wreckage at the lab. “It
has.
”

“That’s what I mean. I’ve read about this, Joe. When your family abuses you it’s like—I don’t know, but anything can hap- pen, you know?
Anything.
”

I took a deep breath. “A monster.”

“It
is
like a monster,” she said, curling beneath the bed again for the vampire book. “Why do you think people write things like this? I bet it’s a what’s-it-called, an allegory. It’s allegorical. I bet you anything she was abused or something and it felt like a monster was after her. So she wrote about it—”

“But
I’m
the monster,” I said. “I think I am, anyway.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “
You’re
not the monster. You’ve got the allegorical thing all wrong.”

“It’s hard to tell,” I said.

She hugged me, her breasts like tines against my chest. “I know it is,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m so proud of you. It’s hard to tell, and you told me.” She smiled down at my erec- tion and patted it briefly, like a pet that had fetched the wrong thing. “Now we
really
have to get back to work, Joe. Listen, I’ll talk to Mike, if that’s O.K. with you. I’m sure you can be my assistant again. Can I tell him—?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re done with”—she ducked beneath the bed again and found my piece of paper. With a start I realized I had been given a gift. Hire Power hadn’t let me down; the boss they found for me had given me the eighth step. I’d been trying to make a list all the time and it turned out it was a handout from the

Entertainment Coordinator. Mike had said it: I had wronged all the guests here at The Vast Resort, and here was a list of them, alphabetized and everything like some index of a perfect uni- verse. “We’re done with this, right? You know who everyone is?” I took it from her and gazed at it. The Andersons. Mrs. Bitburg and the
Jew
daughters. Giltmores. The horny Hackett. Everyone I’d wronged, all down the alphabet from A to—“Oh, wait. I didn’t get to the punch line. Look at the last entry—it’s just like that book. Frank and Mimi Zhivago. And he’s a
doctor.
Get it?
Dr. Zhivago?
”

It was true. In the cellophane sunshine there was no way you could miss it, the names in neat black ink at the bottom of the page. Zhivago, Dr. Frank. Zhivago, Mimi. I had the allegorical thing all wrong. Cyn, Stephen, Ben: It wasn’t
like
they’d been killed by a monster; they had been. I wasn’t the monster, not at all; the
monster
was. It wasn’t
as if
Mimi, back in the fourth act, had gotten up out of bed and shaken hands with Zhivago over a scene well played; she
had
. Then they’d gone to a resort.

“Yes,” I said, back from flashback. “Yes,” I said, holding the eighth step in my hands like a life preserver. “Yes.” I looked out the window and saw him at once, getting out of the pool and walking on the faux marble. He didn’t look like the family doc- tor, not at all. He
was
the family doctor, and once you knew that, you could trace his path to the silent sunglassed woman propping her book against her bent knees. Once you knew that, it was as easy as climbing stairs, as easy as getting dressed and walking right up to her yourself. “Yes, I get it.”

Step 9

My twin reflections blinked at me, one head each in Mimi’s sunglasses, drained of color so my faces looked like masks, as I stood over her and waited. Frank Zhivago was over at the half- real palms, getting drinks and chatting with Marco over the roar of the juicer. I just waited for her to feel the chill my shadow was casting over her tan body, and look up.

“Yes?” she said politely, and then looked again. The shades came off; I was unmasked. For a second, Mimi looked startled, but then just disappointed: Oh, it’s
you.
Her eyes, her face looked the same as I remembered, except tan. I scanned down her body, glistening in the heat like it had been scorched. Every- thing looked the same, more or less, or not the same but easily fixable, in my mind: slightly larger breasts, hair back, a sharper chin than the face in nightmares. Of course she looked the same. It hadn’t been that long. Yet somehow
I
was disappointed, too, as if I’d expected something else, which I guess was true. When someone’s dead you expect you’ll never see them again.

“I never thought I’d see
you
again,” she said. The juicer stopped. “How are you?”

Years of social systems—the final
S
in CRISIS—almost made me say “fine.” I swallowed but I couldn’t think of a word. “Um—”

“Would you like to sit down?” Mimi moved her legs and I found myself sinking to the deck chair like we were sharing a bed. I heard a sharp crackle and I thought maybe my bones were breaking, but it was just my fist, clenching around the list, damp with sweat, of people I had wronged. Now I was supposed to make direct amends. “You’re looking good, Joseph,” she said, almost conversationally. “You look, um,
good
. Healthy.”