After Bathing at Baxters (2 page)

And if Mom had Larry Vosper – who had twice proposed to her, once on the sofa after dinner, once during the course of a day trip to Salt Lake (Mom was not averse to coaxed confidences) – Susy supposed that she had her job. That was, if you could call the three days a week she put in at Rosati's delicatessen a job. Rosati's delicatessen lay in a grimy sidewalk that ajoined the main street and sold pizza to truck-drivers too shell-shocked to travel the extra quarter-mile that took you to McDonald's. Trade, inevitably, was bad (there was hardly any trade in Tara that could positively be described as good), the schoolkids and garage hands who slouched in at lunchtime indifferent to the delicate strands of tagliatelle, the pert blobs of tortellini that Mr Rosati arranged with some artistry in his window. ‘Animals,' he would say, as another trucker sniffed suspiciously at a tray of bubbling lasagna before moving on to finger the discus-shaped pizzas, ‘fuckin' animals. For Chrissakes. Give those bastards a truffle and they'd probably think it was a fuckin' meatball.' Susy, stationed behind the counter in a pinstripe waitress's miniskirt, blue cap askew athwart her right temple, found these performances acutely embarrassing. Generally they were of short duration and he would disappear upstairs to apply himself with deep loathing to the accounts, leaving Susy to wiggle her backside at exopthalmic bikers and juggle with the change. On one occasion, however, a
pasta con funghi
of generous dimensions and enviable texture having failed to attract sufficient custom, Mr Rosati had gone outside and thrown it against the side of a passing truck. ‘That,' he had been heard to remark subsequently, ‘was a fuckin'
art statement
.' In a small way the gesture established him as an ally.

Summer wore on. Larry Vosper took Mom on a trip to Yellowstone which culminated – Larry Vosper's shiny estate car having negotiated the winding mountain highway – in a tour of the Vosper ranch. Mom had been impressed. ‘Thirteen hundred head of cattle,' she reported, ‘a nigger houseboy and ya can walk for three hours and the land ain't nobody's but Larry's.' ‘Great,' Susy retorted, ‘Larry Vosper has a nigger houseboy. Is that any reason to haul your ass over there?' This had been sufficient to silence Mom, but it was not enough to silence the feeling of disquiet. From afar came other signs of the essential instability of the middle-aged. Postcards came from Aunt Berkmann in Amsterdam, Helsinki and Freiburg. Though Susy rather disliked Aunt Berkmann (whom she had once described to Mom as a fat klutz), this itinerary awakened her envy. There was a world out there, outside of Tara City and the hills, in which things happened; a world in which Susy felt, obscurely, she was being denied a role. Susy tried explaining this to Lulu Sinde over afternoon tea in Lulu Sinde's smart little chocolate box of a house, a house whose portals you were not allowed to cross without wiping your feet. ‘For Chrissakes,' Susy had said, ‘you never used to be like this.' ‘Paul says I have to smarten up a little,' said Lulu Sinde. ‘Like he says it's a personal and a social responsibility.' ‘Cock,' said Susy. ‘No, I agree with him,' said Lulu Sinde defiantly. It was hard to evoke sympathy from Lulu Sinde, dumbly awaiting the arrival of the dentist's progeny. ‘And Christ the
names
of places,' Susy instructed. ‘You ever realized how weird they are? How'd they get there. I mean, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan … You ever been there?' ‘I been to Missouri,' said Lulu Sinde, curving the palm of her hand over the slight bump of her stomach, ‘yeah with Paul, two years back, I remember, I was awful sick …' Susy gave it up as a bad job, went home to dream long, comfortable dreams of US road maps in which squat, green-coloured states went on for ever like the squares in a patchwork quilt.

Halfway through August Larry Vosper bought Mom a plunging black cocktail dress which he wanted her to wear for a party at the Vosper ranch. ‘It's kinda nice ain't it?' Mom asked doubtfully as together they manhandled the stretched fabric into place. ‘You look about a hundred,' Susy told her and then, relenting slightly, ‘Shit, you look OK. Enjoy yourself.' That night Susy allowed Artie Tripp to take her to a movie, Christ, just like it was eight years ago and Artie Tripp still the same octopus-handed youth who had tried to get fresh with her in the back of his father's car. Though she had allowed Artie Tripp to put his hand inside her blouse the expedition was not a success and went unrepeated. Most evenings Susy spent in her room, the view from whose window presented a vista of leprous concrete and cunning piccaninny kids playing baseball, reading Kerouac and thumbing through her record collection. ‘What you doing in there?' Mom would enquire through the door about once an hour and Susy would reply: ‘Just shiftin' the stale air around Mom,' and slide over to the record deck to whip another disc out of its sleeve. Sixties music. ‘Hippy junk' Artie Tripp used to say in the days when he ventured opinions. The sixties and Susy went back a long way: The Dead; the Airplane; Steppenwolf singing ‘Born To Be Wild'. Susy discovered that the loud electric music cutting through the empty air had a strangely galvanic effect. As the song reached its crescendo she drifted around the room, propelling her limbs with jerky, ataxic movements. At times like these it was possible to imagine that you were seventeen again, smoking dope at weekend parties, screwing Artie Tripp on his parents' wide double bed with the flock mattress, thinking that any day now Peter Fonda would be sailing over the horizon on a Harley Davidson 950, just waiting to light out with you, engines gunning, into the sunset. The illusion seldom persisted. Christ, Susy thought, sometimes when you were twenty-four and a half years old and your experience ran only as far as Tara City and Artie Tripp then imagining yourself as a biker's moll was pretty goddamned funny. In fact it was about the funniest thing Susy could think of.

Saturday was a bad day in Tara City, though it possessed its consolations. Prominent among these was the fact that Mr Rosati let her have the afternoon off from the delicatessen. Things were at a low ebb in Rosati's. The fans, suspended so uncompromisingly from the ceiling that customers ducked instinctively as they approached the checkout counter, rasped lackadaisically. A monstrous
lasagna alla buoni
lay unregarded in the window. Two apprentice street hoodlums – baseball caps and wrapround sunglasses – sat drinking 7 Up by the door. Mr Rosati perched by the till, a thin, saturnine Italian with greying hair and a resentful expression. Occasionally he would raise his head and snap his eyes at the
lasagna alla buoni
, a glance that mingled the pride of the creator with the contempt of the entrepreneur … ‘Peasants,' said Mr Rosati, not looking up as Susy, changed out of the waitress get-up into slacks and a ZZ Top T-shirt, lingered in front of the counter. ‘Better put it back in the cooler,' Susy advised, ‘sure as hell won't last in this heat. Hey, you got a match?' She leaned over the bar, whipped a box out of the bulging shirtfront and lit a drooping Marlboro.

‘For Chrissakes,' said Mr Rosati, a shade more amiably. ‘Buy your own goddamn matches.'

Taking a rise out of Mr Rosati was an activity from which Susy derived inexhaustible pleasure. ‘Hey,' she said. ‘You wanna see me dance?' Mr Rosati shook his head. ‘Guess I'll show you anyway.' Beneath his indifferent gaze she described an inelegant pirouette, hands raised above her head. ‘Waddya think?' ‘Shit-awful,' said Mr Rosati. ‘Anyway,' Susy went on, ‘you owe me twenty dollars,' ‘Monday,' said Mr Rosati defensively, eye flickering for a moment over the two baseball caps and then returning to rest on the
lasagna alla buoni
, ‘pay you Monday.' ‘Well
fuck you
,' said Susy.

Outside in the street it was appallingly hot, the interior of Rosati's seen through the green plate-glass strangely aquarium-like. Susy stared back sullenly at the neon sign, experiencing a sudden stab of hate at whichever fate had ordained this monotonous thraldom. Much was made in Tara City of Mr Rosati's idiosyncrasies which were thought possibly to compensate for more obvious disadvantages. As Susy saw it, she had been taking shit from Mr Rosati for too long. About three years too long. Leaving Rosati's behind, a blur of green glass and reflected sunlight, she set off in the direction of the main street, past the accumulation of loping mongrels, fat woman in out-of-date frocks and gook kids that were just part of the scenery at this time of the day in this part of Tara fucking City.

In the foyer of Baxter's she flashed her membership card at the blonde receptionist. ‘Swimming or solarium?' enquired the blonde receptionist. ‘Swimming huh? Honey it's seventy-five degrees in there, the water I mean, so it won't make much difference.' Susy nodded, stood a while on the faded red carpet reading the noticeboard, her nose wrinkling slightly at the faint smell of chlorine. Baxter's gymnasium and solarium represented all that was lustrous and go-ahead in Tara City. When a local politician talked about civic amenities the chances were that he meant Baxter's. Prompted by a half-hearted public wrangle about facilities, nearly stifled by a committee that had sat for eight years, its funding frozen or misappropriated by a succession of suspicious mayors, Baxter's had – rather to its own surprise – emerged into the glare of public scrutiny. Nominally it was a sporting club. Which was to say that you paid your fifteen dollars a month and could swim, work out, flap ping-pong balls across green baize to your heart's content. But the crop-headed youths and the gap-toothed girls who clustered round the bar drinking coke out of plastic cups didn't come to Baxter's to play table tennis. No. Baxter's was a social catwalk. If you were anyone in Tara City – that's to say if you weren't a nigger or a pauper or congenitally insane – you came to Baxter's to see and be seen. Susy had met Artie Tripp there, light years ago when the world was green and Artie Tripp's Pontiac the nearest thing Tara City possessed to Dennis Hopper's dirt-bike.

In the women's changing room Susy traded gossip with Lulu Sinde who was glumly cramming her breasts into a somewhat otiose bikini top. ‘Jesus,' said Lulu Sinde, ‘my tits are swelling up, I can feel it. Hey, waddya think?' Susy prodded the profferred torso without interest. ‘I guess you have to accept that sort of thing.' ‘I guess you do,' said Lulu Sinde, squatting her rump on a nearby radiator while Susy changed into her one-piece bathing costume. ‘Christ. The
heat
. I nearly passed out out there on the sidewalk. But Paul said I ought to take some exercise: I guess he was right.' ‘I guess so,' said Susy, wanting to say: For God's sake
shut up
about your fucking husband. Together they walked through the chlorinated footbath towards the swimming pool.

The pool was deserted, apart from a couple of kids torpedo-diving off the springboard at the far end: twenty yards of calm, sticky water. Susy swam a couple of lengths on her back, dived downwards to touch the palms of her hands on the bottom, rose to the surface. Lulu Sinde was wading resentfully through the shallows, hands clasped over her stomach. ‘Hey,' she called, ‘d'ya think it's showing?' Susy dived, swam three or four strokes under water to end up within clutching distance of one of Lulu Sinde's bolster thighs. ‘Hey,' said Lulu Sinde nervously, several hundred cubic feet of water away, ‘be careful.' Susy relinquished the fistful of flesh, wondered about upending Lulu Sinde, thought better of it, contented herself with directing cascades of water in her direction. ‘You be careful d'ya hear?' squeaked Lulu Sinde. Susy floated on her back, gazing skywards at the scalloped overhang of the ceiling, remembered long-ago excursions to Baxter's, a fourteen-year-old Lulu Sinde shrieking in terror because Artie Tripp had threatened to snatch off her bikini top, drinking coke with Lulu Sinde, short-skirted and expectant in the bar, Lulu Sinde saying she thought she was pregnant and was her father going to get mad or wasn't he? As the water swirled and receded above her head, the lineaments of the pool veering jaggedly in and out of focus, Susy contemplated a Lulu Sinde whose pregnancy was indubitable, legal and approved and felt a swift, sharp pang of regret. ‘Paul said I ought to take care,' Lulu Sinde confided from the pool's edge and Susy twisted and dived like a versatile eel down into the murky water, wanting to get away from Lulu Sinde, from Lulu Sinde's foetus, but most of all from this disturbing, unheralded vision of the past which the two of them had managed to engender.

It was this image that remained afterwards in the changing room as Lulu Sinde conjectured that she might be about to throw up, persisted as she declined Lulu Sinde's offer of a drink (‘just a coke you know') and strode out into the sunlight. Outside Baxter's the street was empty, apart from a Rican on a skateboard and, on the far side, a fat cadillac with white-wall tyres. For some reason, probably the mental activities of the past half-hour, this prompted Susy to think contemptuously of Artie Tripp. As she watched, the car's engine revved and in an elegant semi-circle it came to rest beside her. Rather to Susy's surprise Artie Tripp leaned out of the window.

‘Hiya Suse,' he said. There was an odd jauntiness in his manner that Susy could not remember having seen before. ‘Like the car?' ‘Sure,' said Susy, ‘sure I like it.' ‘Well get in,' said Artie Tripp easily. He was wearing his blue shirt and a white BMX biker hat. There was a suitcase, Susy noticed, lying on the back seat. ‘So where are we going?' asked Susy warily as they bowled down the High Street (Please God, am I dreaming? Artie Tripp in a Cadillac?), one eye on Artie Tripp, the other on the clouds of dust that swarmed out on to the sidewalk. ‘Out East,' said Artie Tripp. ‘Out East?' ‘Like I said,' he went on, ‘I couldn't take that shit from the old man any more.' They flashed past Trapido's so that the nigger kids scrabbling in the dirt scuttled for safety, watched wide-eyed as they passed. ‘You want to get out?' Artie Tripp asked. Susy shook her head. Afterwards she was only able to remember it as one would a scene from a film: the empty street, the girl turning to meet the car, and beyond (fire over the guns and
explode
…) the open road and Artie Tripp, his enormous forearms resting on the steering wheel, beside her.