The First Bad Man (7 page)

When the meeting was over I asked Michelle to stay for a moment.

“I wanted to discuss something.”

“I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wanted to ask you about Clee.”

Her face grayed. “Are Carl and Suzanne mad at me?”

“Was she mean to you?”

She looked at her hands.

“She was. Was she violent? Did she hurt you?” I said, continuing.

She looked surprised, almost aghast.

“No, of course not. She just . . .” She was choosing her words carefully. “Her manners were different than I’m used to.”

“That’s all? That’s why you kicked her out?”

“Oh, I didn’t kick her out,” she said. “She just left. She said she wanted to live with you.”

I ENTERED THE HOUSE SILENTLY,
even though she was at Ralphs. I had never snooped through her stuff or wanted to, but it was no crime to sit on my own couch. Her nylon sleeping bag released a puff of body odor when I sat down. I was careful not to move the old food wrappers or the hairbrush clotted with blond hair or the bulging pink vinyl bag with colorful thong-style underwear spilling out of it. I lowered my head onto her pillow. The scalp smell was so intense I held my breath for a moment, not knowing if I could handle it. I handled it. I inhaled and exhaled. My body was rigid, almost floating, to keep the purple sleeping bag from touching my skin. I counted to three, drew up my knees and slid into it, burrowing down. It was so dirty it was almost moist. Was that the door? I jumped up, caught, speechless—no, just the rain; it roared against the roof. I pulled the nylon maw up under my chin. Her nest without her was utterly vulnerable, each of her junky things exposed in the bleak afternoon light. I swallowed with emotion, smiling a little as my globus tightened. We were in this together. I had a partner, a teammate.

Tonight I’d pop. Butterfly. Bite. Kick.

She chose me.

THE ONLY WAY I COULD
get to Ralphs quickly enough was to run. The urgency predated cars—it had to be me alone thrusting through space, chest out, hair blown back. Each driver who saw me thought,
She is running for her life, she will die if she doesn’t get there
, and they were right. Except it was quite a bit farther on foot than I had anticipated, and the rain had thickened. My clothes became heavy with water, my face was washed again and again. Each driver who passed me thought,
She is a giant rat or some other wet, craven animal whose hunger strips her of her dignity
. And they were right.

I scared people as I walked through the grocery store, a monster whose grotesqueness is how wet she is. Cashiers’ jaws fell and the man behind the deli counter dropped a fish. I squished along the row of aisles, looking, looking. The skinny redheaded bagger boy smiled knowingly and pointed toward aisle 15.

Her back was to me.

She was unloading condiments from a pallet onto a shelf. Yellow mustards in their pointy hats, four at a time. She turned tiredly;
What man is staring at me now?
she was thinking. But it wasn’t a man.

Her head reared back in an automatic flinch. Like seeing your mother at school.

“What are you doing here?”

I ran my fingers through my dripping hair and steadied myself. I had no plan for this moment; she was just supposed to see that I knew now—I was in on it. We were playing a game, an adult game. I smiled and raised my eyebrows a couple of times. Her mouth curdled; she wasn’t getting it.

“I know,” I said. “What’s going on.” And in case there was any confusion I pointed back and forth between us a couple times.

She blushed angrily and quickly looked behind herself and all around, then turned back to her mustards and began slamming them onto the shelves. She got it.

The rain had stopped. I dried and grew taller as I walked home. Each driver who passed me thought,
Now there is a person who either just graduated or just got promoted or just won an award
. And they were right.

I WAS DOING THE DISHES
when she came home. I kept the water very low so I could hear her. Turning on the TV. Doing each thing in the usual way. She walked into the kitchen, got her meal, stood behind me as she watched it spin, and then ate it on the couch. Suddenly it occurred to me that nothing might be happening. I’d done that before. I had added meaningful layers to things that were meaningless many, many times before. It was silly to think Phillip was still rubbing Kirsten’s jeans. He’d slid them off by now and done just fine without my blessing. I let the water run over my hands. Clee was twenty; nothing she did meant anything.

I put on my nightgown and went to bed early, lying with my hands folded over my chest. The faucet was dripping in the kitchen. I heaved the covers off and stood up.

When I opened the door she was right there, about to come in.

I was so startled that for a moment I forgot it was a game. I walked past her to the kitchen, dripping faucet, must turn off. She was right behind me. The moment I was through the door she pressed me against the kitchen wall, same as the first time. The pressure began, my bones panicked, and then a kind of rhythm began to hum in my veins, something like a waltz—so I waltzed. I butterflied her elbows and they bent reflexively. I slid along the wall, using it for balance as I tried to bang her head against it. When I started to can-can she threw me down to the ground face-first, pinning me easily with her knee. Last time she’d been holding back—that was obvious now. Something huge was grinding into my spine and I couldn’t keep from screaming, an ugly little noise that stayed in the air. I tried to get my arms under me and push up but she bore down with her upper body, her hard skull against mine.

“You’re not allowed in the store,” she hissed, her lips against my ear. “I’m there so I don’t have to look at you.”

I gathered all my strength and tried to roll her off with a guttural bellow. She watched me, unmoving. I gave up. And just when my back began to spark into flames, the endorphins arrived, just like last time but stronger. My throat was a warm easy puddle; my face against the floor felt cold and wonderful. An immensely satisfying adult game, just as Ruth-Anne had said. Looking sideways I could just see the tips of her lowered eyelashes and the top of her upper lip, dotted with sweat and panting. She probably thought I couldn’t see her. It was almost poignant to me, this moment we were in, although there was something excruciating about it—or maybe the pain radiating out of my back was excruciating, or maybe that was what I meant by poignant: painful. She slowly rolled off me, I quietly whimpered with relief. Instead of rushing to the bathroom she just lay there, catching her breath, our shoulders lightly touching. The floor spun lazily, my arms and legs trilled and quivered. Was she feeling this too? Minutes passed kaleidoscopically, then, very gradually, the kitchen reconstituted itself, the counters, the sink, up there. As Clee shifted and began moving to her feet, a ridiculous wave of abandonment washed over me. Her blank, dumb face headed to the door. And then, at the last possible moment, her eyes flicked back and met mine. I quickly rose to my elbows, readying myself for a question, but she was already gone.

I WAS SO EXCITED TO
see Ruth-Anne that I arrived fifteen minutes early. I cleaned out my car then I browsed the gift shop in the lobby of her building. It smelled like vitamins and was overly warm. A very pregnant Indian woman was inspecting elfin figurines. I turned a spinning rack of reading glasses until I was certain, then I stood discreetly beside her, picking up a skiing elf. The woman’s stomach protruded so far that its belly button was closer to me than it was to her.

Kubelko?

Yes. Am I in you?

No. You’re in someone else.

A sad and awkward silence followed. I cast about for some way to express the bereavement I felt every time we came across each other. A text vibrated in my pocket.

Excuse me.

SHE STRIPPED FOR ME: SAW HER PUSS AND JUGS. UHHHH. KEPT MY HANDS TO MYSELF. My blessing still reigned. Of course it did. I had to have faith in him. We’d been prehistoric together, medieval, king and queen—now we were this. It was all part of the answer to his question
What keeps us coming back?
He wasn’t done with me, and I wasn’t done with him. And the details—the text messages—were just riddles from the universe. Clues. When I turned back to Kubelko the pregnant woman was gone.

RUTH-ANNE’S COUCH WAS WARM
from her previous patient and she looked flushed and radiant.

“Good session?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You look happy.”

“Oh,” she said, dimming a little. “I just had my lunch hour—I took a catnap. How are you?”

So the heat of the couch was hers. I pressed the leather with my fingers and tried to think of how to begin.

“The thing you do with Dr. Broyard, that—what did you call it?”

“Roles? An adult game?”

“Right. Would you say that’s unusual?”

“Define
unusual
.”

“Well, how common would you say it is?”

“I’d say it’s more common than you would think.”

I told her what had happened—starting with what Michelle said and ending on the kitchen floor.

“And my globus is gone, still! I don’t know if you can tell”—I leaned forward and gulped—“but it’s much easier to swallow. I owe it all to you, Ruth-Anne.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a box.

Sometimes people say thank you before even opening the gift—thank you for thinking of me. Ruth-Anne didn’t do that; she glanced at her watch while brusquely pulling off the wrapping paper. It was a soy candle. Not the little kind, but a column in a glass jar with a wooden lid.

“It’s pomegranate currant,” I said.

She handed the candle back to me without smelling it.

“I don’t think this is for me.”

“It is! I just bought it.” I pointed down, indicating the shop on the ground floor.

She nodded, waiting.

“Who do you think it’s for?” I said, finally.

“Who do
you
think it’s for?”

“Besides you?”

She nodded by slowly shutting her eyes and opening them again. I held the candle nervously, like a hot potato.

“My parents?”

“Why your parents?”

“I don’t know. I just thought because this was therapy that might be the right answer.”

“Who might you want to give a candle to? Candle, flame, light . . . illumination . . .”

“. . . wick . . . wax . . . soy . . . ”

“Who? Think.”

“Clee?”

“
That’s
interesting. Why Clee?”

“That was right? Clee?”

THE WRAPPING PAPER WAS STILL
good so I just retaped it. When Clee was in the bathroom I put it on her pillow but it rolled off with a bang; she came in just as I was reaching under the coffee table. I hadn’t wanted to hand it to her in person.

“Here.” I put the heavy cylinder in her hand. The fragrance was abundant and nothing like pomegranates or currants, neither of which is famous for its smell. It was so obviously a candle, the very dumbest present you could give a person. Clee undid the tape and she smelled it cautiously. She read the label. Finally she said, “Thank you.” I said, “You’re welcome.” It was horrible and there was no way to undo it.

I locked myself in the ironing room and wrote a long-overdue e-mail to the entire staff about recycling, overpopulation, and oil, then I toned it down a little, then I deleted it. The shower turned on. She was taking a shower. I called Jim and we talked about the warehouse staff.

“Kristof is lobbying for a basketball hoop,” he said.

“We tried that once and no one got any work done.” I hoped he’d keep pushing for the hoop so I could be really emphatic, but he dropped it. His wife was waiting for him; he had to go.

“How
is
Gina?”

But he really had to go.

It was dusk when I came out of the ironing room. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, knees wide apart. Her wet hair was combed back, a towel hung around her neck; a boxer is what she looked like. Her hands were interlaced in front of her and she was staring past them with a furrowed brow. The TV was off. She was waiting for me.

I’d never really sat in my armchair before. It wasn’t comfortable.

She ducked her head, acknowledging my arrival to the meeting, and made a sound in her throat as if she was pulling up phlegm.

“I may have given off the wrong . . .”—she searched for the word—“impression.”

She glanced at me, to make sure I was familiar with the word. I nodded.

“I appreciate the gift but I’m not . . . you know. I’m into dick.” She coughed huskily and spit into one of the empty Pepsi bottles on the coffee table.

“We’re in the same boat, as far as that goes,” I said. I saw us in a little dinghy together, liking dick on the big dark sea.

“For me it’s a little more intense.” She was bouncing her knee unconsciously. “I guess I’m ‘misogynist’ or whatever.”

I’d never heard the word used like this, like an orientation.

“I’ll stop if you want,” she said, looking abstractly into the distance. At first I thought she meant talking, stop talking. She didn’t mean that.

“Do you want to?” I asked.

“What?”

“Stop.”

She shrugged, utterly indifferent. It was probably the meanest thing she’d done yet. Then she shrugged again, exactly the same, but added “No” afterward, like that’s what she’d been saying the first time. No, she didn’t want to stop attacking me.

I felt a little winded, a little light-headed. We were making an agreement; this was real. I gave her a shy glance and realized she was fixated on a repulsive cluster of purple spider veins on my exposed calf. A shiver shuddered through me—she was attached to the super-special angry feeling I gave her.

“Do you want to make a contract?” I murmured, completely inaudibly.

“Make what?”

“A contract that says what we want to do and don’t want to do. We can download one from the Internet.” I said this too loudly, as if she was deaf.