Hush Hush (17 page)

He straightened the rugs, pushed the chairs and the couch around, and ran the old vacuum back and forth, sweating, until the plug jerked out of the wall and he moved it to a new outlet. He left her room until last, stood before the door for a minute, and finally pushed open the door. The floor was littered with coathangers and panties, khaki shirts, sections of newspapers and crisp department store bags, leg weights, running clothes, and small balls of black hair. Tilden let the hose drop, walked over and sat on her unmade bed. He could smell Shalimar, or Emeraude, one of those.

There had been a girl, before he left school the first time, in Boston, a pretty, quiet Italian so shy she could barely speak. He remembered riding her bicycle into an old church, sitting
up by the altar. “I’m the bishop. You’re the bishop’s whore.” He put his hand to the back of his neck, touched the scar. Vodka, that was right. The time he had gotten beat up on Marlborough Street, for taking somebody’s liquor, she took care of him, covered his face with hot wet towels, touched his forehead, and brought him aspirin for three days. “I don’t believe it,” he said, out loud, and looked at the floor, settling for a moment on her discarded underwear, then quickly looking at the vacuum in the doorway.

Tilden stood up, and then sat back down, looking at a
Vogue
on top of a stack of magazines. He thought the telephone was ringing, in the front of the apartment, but listening harder, heard nothing. Jesus, he thought, no thank you.

The girl on the magazine cover, blonde, in a three-quarter pose, her perfect face disappearing under the logo and her soft breasts nearly bare above a pale blue evening dress, holding his eyes, spaghetti straps, that’s what they used to call them, ten years since he’d done this, looked at the goddamn pictures so hard it was as if you were trying to make the photograph start breathing, and he remembered knowing their names, Renee Russo, and Lois what’s her name, and Kim Alexis, and Lauren Hutton, of course, Verushka, way back, and Karen Graham …

“Fuck this,” he said, shoving the magazines off onto the floor so that they slid over the clothes and hangers all the way to the wall. Tilden lay back on the bed, but when he felt his shoulders touch the sheet, jerked back up onto his elbows, then sat straight up and grabbed the clock from the table and threw it against the wall, and then, for good measure, finding nothing else, threw the table the clock had been on and picked up magazines from the floor and threw them too, tearing the covers, listening to the pages slap against each other until they hit the walls.

I am enjoying this, he thought, and looked at the radio, on the carpet. I am enjoying this very much. He brought his shoe down on the imitation wood grain plastic, in which there was a little too much black, and it only sort of squeaked, so he stepped back to kick it into the wall, getting a little lift so that it hit about two feet up from the floor molding, leaving a black dent in the paint and loose plastic below. “Up, and … good!” He was almost shouting, twisting around, turning back, looking, and he tried the bed, with both hands managing to throw the mattress against the other wall, a spinning throw which let him fall, like a dancer, on top of the box spring where he lay looking up, gasping for breath. This is it, he thought. This is the way I used to be. He laughed and looked around. Standing in the doorway, her feet in carefully chosen spots in the pretzel formed by the hose of the vacuum cleaner, Paulie was looking back at him, smiling.

“You taking a break or what?” she said.

He started giggling, watching her, staring at her, the black dress which was all holes, black faded to a sort of charcoal color, her hip cocked, her pelvis pushed front and center by the high heels like the models in the magazines, staring, and he could feel the look on his face, just past a smile, enjoying it, drunk with love, or something like love, thinking, I’m giggling, for God’s sake, like everybody else.

“Tilden? Are you okay? Should I call somebody?” He blinked. “You hurt,” he said, “you know, just standing there in that goddamn dress. But … don’t move. Are you tired?”

She stood, motionless, like a woman on display with her perfect brown eyes, perfect black hair, and glowering dark skin wrapped around the muscles of her neck. “Now?!” she said, reading his eyes. “Now you want to fuck?”

“No …” Tilden shut his eyes. “Yes. I wish you hadn’t said
it that way. We could break some more stuff instead,” he said. “Let’s do that.” He got up, reached down for one of the pastel blue leg weights, hesitated, and picked up the radio, the cord wrapping itself around his leg until he kicked loose and reached out with it, saying, “Yeah. Here. You go first. I’m buying.” He handed her the radio, which, missing only a couple of the clear plastic lenses from the front, felt like a brick.

She kicked her shoes into the room and stood weighing the radio in her hand, taking practice throws, sidearm.

“Hard,” Tilden said. “Throw it hard. It’s a tough little bastard.” He leaned over, kissing her neck just as she threw. The radio hit the opposite wall and fell apart.

“Good,” Tilden said. “That was good. Great. Sorry about …”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It felt … nice. How much shit can we break?”

“A prudent amount.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re buying?”

He nodded. “Get the bourbon,” he said, and then followed her as she walked down the hall, her long arms stretched out so that her hands slid along the walls tearing the Jazz Festival posters in half leaving meandering white edges which looked like the stock charts the newspapers published. She rose up on her toes to slap the sickly beige cover off the smoke alarm, which immediately began howling. In the living room she pushed over a lamp, and Tilden stepped on the shade until the bulb shattered inside. She cleared a bookshelf, hooked her stockinged foot under the table in front of the couch, lifted it a quarter inch, and yelped. Turned around, picked up books from the carpet. “Here,” she shouted, handing him one, pointing at the three plants under the window, and then they threw books, one by one, until the plants were down. She turned and put her arms around his neck, sagging against him,
pulling him down. “Tilden,” she said, lips to his ear to be heard above the screaming smoke alarm, wrapping herself around him, “let’s break a rule.” He reached down, put his hands on her, feeling her through the dress, and felt like he was all hands.

•  •  •

“Tilden?” she said, in the morning, leaning over him, in the nightgown although she had slept without it, standing now with a cup of coffee in her hand, finger marks up and down her bare arms, her eyes clear, her hair shining, brushed to within an inch of its life. “You’ve gotta get up.”

Sitting up in the bed, he set the coffee aside, and drew his fingers along her forearm. “Me?”

She nodded, sat beside him. “I bruise easily,” she said, and grinned. “I was always very proud of that. If you say you’re sorry, I’ll break your face.” She looked at her arms, and the grin turned to a broad smile. “I mean, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked at him.

“How bad is it out there?” he said, pointing out the bedroom door. “The furniture. It’s all coming back to me.”

She shook her head. “Minor league,” she said. “I’ve already put most of it back. I put that ugly plant in some water, in a mayonnaise jar. You’re going to need a new lamp though. You can probably replace that one for a buck and a half.”

“The lady has never bought a lamp.”

“The gentleman has never been to the Salvation Army store.”

“Right,” he said. He put his hands on her breasts, felt her nipples through the thin nylon.

“Work,” she said.

“Screw work.”

“Tilden, you devil. You’re going to break another rule?”

“Hey,” he said, “there’s only one rule. Jesus said. And then there’re a lot of second-rate types making up a lot of extras. Middle management types. And Jesuits.” He drew his hands away. “You in love with this Ryan person?”

“You mean, Did I sleep with him?”

He laughed. “No, I meant what I said.” He kissed her through the nightgown, pulled away, smiled at her. “I assumed you screwed the child’s brains out. Isn’t that what you young people do?”

“That’s it,” she said. “I mean when we aren’t snorting, shooting, smoking, dropping, popping, or tearing the wings off angels. Or stealing stuff or—”

“Hush,” he said. “Hush hush.”

She looked at him.

“It’s a song. Was a song. When were you born, what year?” He shook his head. “Nevermind. In olden times this blues guy, Jimmy Reed, I think he lived in Dallas—He played harmonica and guitar and he had this trashy blues voice, we played him on the radio. A song called ‘Hush Hush.’ It was about noise. How there was too much noise. Sort of wonderful.”

“I don’t know whether I’m in love with him or not. Too soon to tell. He wants me to move in.”

“A girl’s got to find out, I guess.” Tilden lay back in the bed, watching her.

“It was nice, last night, I mean throwing things and the rest of it, mostly the rest of it. I mean, I loved it. I mean, you. But look—” She was drawing circles in the sheet with her finger.
“Look. When I was about six Mama gave me a picture, this glossy picture, of you, of my father.” She smiled, shook her head. “That picture was my favorite thing for about six years. You signed it. When I was about twelve, a girl told me it was Jim Morrison. The singer.” She shrugged. “So I need another picture, see? Girl needs a picture.”

“Let me get this straight,” Tilden said. “Somehow you knew my—”

“Mama gave it to me. Your name? I got it from Mama.”

“Okay. Anyway—”

“And Boston is right, and Baltimore, you living in Baltimore. There is a scar on the back of your neck, I’ve seen it. You want blood tests and shit? Paternity?”

“I want you not to be my kid. I like looking at you. Only not like you look at a daughter.”

“There’re lots of people to look at.” She stood up, reached her hand up and split her hair between her fingers. “I’ve gotta go to work. You know Tilden, you’re really fucked up,” she said, and walked out of the room.

He looked toward the empty doorway. “Now!” he shouted. “I am now!”

But she didn’t answer. He thought of getting up, of following her into the room and talking some sense into her, but when he imagined her shoulder in his hand, his face red and words spewing out in the southern accent which he fell into when he got angry, cared too much, the image reminded him of the bruises all over her arms, made him recall that he really didn’t know what to say, that two women he had married and loved and looked at ended up, after a while, looking at him, just as he ended up looking at them, sometimes fondly, each to the other a special piece of furniture. He let himself settle back into the bed, feeling comfortable and familiar, and he thought,
Nestling, I’m nestling down here—just like everybody else, just before he fell asleep.

•  •  •

Sometime after noon he went into work. Kelli said Loeffler had called him three times. He was supposed to be working on an incentive plan, but he spent most of the afternoon staring down out his office window at a bench and a pathetic tree set in the sidewalk, wine bottles around the tree reflecting the dirty sunlight. The bench, like all the other damn benches, had “William Donald Schaefer and the Citizens of Baltimore” painted on in script. Blue and white. He thought about calling Paulie at work, but didn’t, it became a test of his character, one he passed. When you make love to a woman, he thought, if you accidentally make something, you’re supposed to make a son. If you accidentally make a daughter, that’s all right, but you’re not supposed … It thins out the blood or something. They make this stuff up. He put his feet up on the desk and looked around. Dull, he thought, but not loud, ugly, pathetic, cruel. Decorating an office was like decorating a Buick. He closed his eyes, looking for her, and waited for five o’clock.

When he got to the apartment, she hadn’t come home. Tilden fell asleep.

An hour and a half later he woke up on the couch in the living room, in the dark, and reached up where the lamp had been, but then he remembered. So he sat in the dark. He had been having a particularly gaudy dream, he was sweating, but he couldn’t remember anything except that it had something to do with work. He never remembered dreams. When he
tried, all he could ever bring to mind was the dance dream, which he had had fifteen or more years earlier, a dream about his first wife. Floating around the kitchen of his parents’ house in Richmond, she was dancing in the air, in a short, flimsy dress, a 60’s dress from Paraphernalia, green with big yellow flowers, and he finally caught her and tied her up with white rope.

Guilt, Tilden thought. People are always talking about guilt, and this is what they mean. I’m feeling guilty, like everybody else. He got up, made his way to the wall switch and stood, thinking about turning it on, decided not to.

On the steps outside the front door, he looked up and his car seemed far away, reflecting a dozen colors from the lights up and down the street. He made himself walk the fifteen feet, took a businesslike look at the traffic on the gray street, circled the brown Toyota, got in. I remember this, Tilden thought, pulling into the traffic. This is high school. He laughed.

When he got to the hotel, he left the car on the street, and was inside before he realized he still didn’t know the kid’s last name; Tilden stood looking. In the center of the huge, dim lobby, under a high ceiling decorated with lost chandeliers, was a flat fountain where people were pitching pennies into the water. Others sat on gray couches scattered to one side. Tourists were taking photographs of each other around the fountain, using flashes. On the far side of the fountain a recessed bar faced fat green couches set beside stingy glass tables on a gaudy carpet in a slightly darker green. The bar was railed off in brass, and packed. Another recess farther down, and corridors leading off at each corner. The elevator doors, opposite the fountain, were the same smoky marbled mirror glass as the wall. Tilden retreated to the gray couches, sat down, glanced around for short looking men. Boys. Paulie.