The Summer Garden (78 page)

And Carmen went red, and tittered, and moved even closer to him on the bench seat.

She told Alexander that she and Cubert, married for two years, wanted a bigger place because they were trying for a baby. The truth was, though, that Cubert was not home
so
often, she needed the building of the house to occupy herself because she was becoming “awfully bored.”

Johnny was busy talking to Emily, and so Alexander quietly said, “With him away so often, it might be difficult to have that baby.” He didn’t want to add that blinding proximity still guaranteed nothing.

Carmen laughed. “That’s why I said,
trying
. Not succeeding. But I am late this month, so we’ll see.” She looked slightly sheepish when she said it.

Alexander actually asked, “Do you, um,
want
children?”

“Oh, yes, very much,” Carmen said. “All my friends are having children at nineteen, twenty. I’m starting to feel old at twenty-four.” She smiled, raising her eyebrows. “But I’m doing what I can to keep myself youthful.” She pinched his arm. “Do you have any children?”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “A son. He’s fourteen.”

“Fourteen!” said Carmen. “He’s practically a grown up. Does he look like you?”

“A little.”

“He’ll be a lucky boy,” she said, giving him a diffused stare, “if he looks like you.”

Alexander took a sip of his cold drink and a long inhale of his burning cigarette. “Carmen,” he said, “how in the world did you get together with Cubert?” What Alexander was really saying is he thought Cubert was too pale and small for vivid Carmen, and she must have known it because she threw back her head.

“Why, thank you, Alexander! Coming from you, that’s
quite
a compliment, you are a very reticent fellow.”

He smiled. “I’m not reticent. I’m thoughtful.”

“Oh, is there a difference?” She chuckled. “Cubert, though he doesn’t look it, has a few things going for him that I really liked when we were courting.”

“Like what?”

“Are you being insinuating and naughty, Alexander? How delightful!”

“Not at all.” He kept a straight face. “I’m asking a polite question.”

“Well,” she said, “first of all, he is quite enamored of me.”

“And second of all?”

“He is quite enamored of me.” When she laughed her breasts rose up and down. The more Alexander drank, the more he noticed the breasts.

“So tell me,” said Carmen, “how does a married man get to stay out until all hours on a Friday night? My Cubert is away,” she said, “but where’s your wife?”

“My wife is also away,” said Alexander. “She works Friday nights.”

Carmen’s eyes went wide
.
“The fact that your wife works is shocking enough. But at
night
? In the name of all that is gracious,
why
?”

“You are not the only one who asks this question, Carmen.”

She laughed. She sat close, swelling, laughing at any stupid thing he said. When he lit her cigarette, as gallant men do for ladies, she cupped his hand and, raising her eyes to him, breathed out, “Thank you.” For a moment their eyes met.

And Alexander, suddenly finding himself mental years away, in a uniform, at Sadko, in a different time, in a different life, as a different man, said to Carmen, “Did you girls come in one car?” Though at Sadko he would have said something else. Do you want to go for a walk, he would’ve said. For a walk by the river parapets, for a smoke in the alley?

“Yes,” said Carmen throatily. “We came in Emily’s car.”

“I have to go home, Carmen,” said Emily. “My parents will kill me for staying out this late. It’s absolutely ghastly—why, it’s nearly last call.”

Carmen grazed Alexander’s hand. “Do you think you can give me a ride so Emily can go home now? I’m only half an hour south from here, in Chandler.”

He glanced over at Johnny, who was staring at him with an expression that said, I don’t know what the hell you think
you’re
doing.

Alexander himself didn’t know. But even at two in the morning on a Friday night after five hours of drinking, Alexander knew this: no woman other than his wife could get into his truck. Another woman could not sit in his truck, where Tatiana sat, where his son sat, in which he took his family out. Even when not sober, when youthfully stirred up by an attractive, well-built young woman, all decked out and ready to party, this was something that a 38-year-old Alexander could not do. He also could not explain it to Carmen.

“I can’t drive you,” he said. “I’ve got to go home. My son is waiting.”

“So? He’s likely asleep. You can drop me off on the way.”

“I’m not on the way to anything,” he said. “But Emily is on the way, and she’s leaving. You might as well go with her.”

Reluctantly Carmen stood up, while Alexander paid, remaining behind, as the other three got ready to leave.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“In a minute. Good night now.”

Carmen shooed Johnny and Emily away and sat down again. “I’ll wait with you while you finish your drink.”

He stared at her, wondering if she was worth it. She didn’t seem bright, though somehow that wasn’t so important. “Carmen,” he finally said when minutes passed and she couldn’t figure it out, “I come to this bar every Friday. This is my local joint. People know me here. I come here with my friends, with people I work with. I come here with my wife. Do you understand why I can’t leave this bar with you?”

Why did she look so pleased by that? She left by herself, and Alexander waited a few minutes, and then left, too.

In the parking lot she was waiting, coming up to him to say goodbye. “So will you be here on Tuesday?”

“No, not likely.”

“What about next Friday?”

He shrugged. “That I might.”

“So maybe I’ll see you then.” She smiled. “Have you had any cancellations in your schedule so we can meet some evening, have dinner, talk about the house perhaps?”

“I’ll have to check,” he said, “I might have a cancellation.”

“I hope so.” She planted a slow moist kiss on his cheek. “Well, good night, now.” Her breasts pressed into his shirt.

After she left, Alexander sat in his truck, his hands on the wheel.

He didn’t go home.

He went to the hospital.

He lurched and lurched, scraping away what was left of his clutch, trying to put the transmission in gear, and after parking—badly—meandered his way into ER. There was no one at the reception desk, the unit nurse was out, no one received him. He staggered instead to the waiting room, where half a dozen people were arrayed like sacks in chairs. One of those people was Charlie. Alexander fell into a chair one away from him. “Has there been a sighting?”

“Not yet,” said Charlie. “That just means there might be one soon.”

They waited.

And soon and summarily she appeared in their view. Small, round-faced, freckled, pale, her lips unadorned by lipstick, her neck by perfume, her breath by wine, her hair tied up in a bun inside the nurse’s cap, her legs in white stockings, slender and subdued, Tatiana came, and yet her lips were full and pulpy, her breasts swayed, and Alexander could see them, could feel them warm. She might as well have stood in front of him naked, lay in front of him naked, so clearly could he see all of her, see her, smell her, taste her.

Her white uniform covered with eight hours of a Friday night, her high forehead glistening, her freckles diminished by winter, Tatiana’s green-spoked eyes stared sad and despondent on Alexander. Sitting between them, she took their hands, Alexander’s in one, Charlie’s in the other. “Now, Charlie,” Tatiana said. “Now, Alexander. I’ve told you and told you not to drink so much. It leads to no good. It’s leading you to a bad place. It’s leading you to darkness.” She looked from one to the other as they sat and nodded. “You both have made promises to me. Charlie, you swore that you would not drink this Friday night.”

“And what did I promise you, Tatiana?” Alexander said, slurring his words.

She turned to him and said nothing. A small tear trickled down her cheek. She let go of Charlie’s hand but held on to Alexander’s. “I’m going to go get you some coffees, a little ice for your head. Wait here.” As if either had anywhere else to go.

She came back with two coffees. Charlie said he wanted whisky in his. Alexander put his down on the floor and, taking Tatiana’s wrist, pulled her to him to stand between his splayed legs. “Smell my breath,” he said huskily, breathing on her. “So good, right?” He entwined her in his large, intoxicated arms. “Babe, come home with me,” he muttered. “Come home and I’ll”—he still had the sense to lower his voice to a whisper—“give you some of that drunk true love you like.”

Staring down at him, Tatiana brushed his hair away, and bending, kissed his forehead. “That drunk love is sometimes a little rough on your wife,” she said quietly. “Finish the coffee, put some ice on your head, sober up a little, go home. Anthony is home alone.”

“Ant is with Sergio,” muttered Alexander. “
He
is not alone.”

Gently she wrested herself away from him. “I’ve got broken bones in the tent, a busted median artery, a perforated stomach, and an unstable heart. I have to go.”

As she was walking away Tatiana turned her head. “Next time you come,” she said, “wipe the lipstick off your face first, Alexander.”

O Come, All Ye Faithful

The following Friday night at Maloney’s
, Johnny happily and unexpectedly admitted he was no longer pursuing Emily. Apparently at last week’s Saturday night Christmas party, Emily, nicely drunk and relaxed, had given him some milk for free in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and his thirst thus slaked, Johnny met another girl at the party and was now “courting” her.

“So needless to say Emily won’t be coming here tonight?” Alexander asked, palming his glass of beer.

They all agreed with a hearty laugh that she probably wouldn’t be.

At midnight, Shannon and Skip left; at one Johnny left.

Alexander had two more drinks alone, and then left himself.

He was about to get into his truck when a voice said, “Alexander.”

It was Carmen. She got out of the sedan parked next to his truck. She was wearing a circle skirt, a button-down blouse, a cardigan. Her hair was all teased and prepared. Her lips were painted. Alexander remembered wiping her lipstick off his cheek in the hospital last week. A pang of something hit him.

But just a small pang.

“Well, hello there.” He smiled. “What are you doing here?”

She smiled happily back. “As I’m sure you found out, your slimy friend Johnny did not do right by my nice friend Emily, so now we can’t come here anymore. And I don’t have other unmarried friends that I can drag to bars with me while my husband is on his little trips. So…”

“So…” He looked her up and down. “I like your blouse,” he said.

“Do you? Well, thank you…” She appraised him herself. “Are you done for the night? Do you have to run?”

Alexander chewed his lip.

“Because I brought some wine and beer,” Carmen said quickly. “I have glasses. We can have a drink in your truck if you want. Listen to some music.” She smiled.

“I tell you what,” he said, coming close to her. “Why don’t we have a drink in
your
car where the wine is?”

“Oh, sure. You don’t want to go into your truck? Is it messy?” She glanced in. The truck was spotless. He didn’t elaborate or answer her, but took off his bomber jacket and threw it on the bench in his truck. He didn’t want unfamiliar smells on it he would not be able to explain.

They fit into her front seat, turned on the engine, turned up the radio. Alexander poured her a glass of wine, himself a beer. They clinked. “What do you want to drink to?” she asked.

“To Friday nights,” he replied.

“Amen,” she said, adding cheerfully, “it’s tough when the spouses are away, isn’t it?”

“Hmm.” He lit his cigarette, and hers, too.

“But you know what,” Carmen said, “I’m so used to Cubert not being here, that when he
is
here, I almost don’t know what to do. We’re always fighting over something or other. Is it the same with you and your wife?”

“No.”

“Oh? What’s it like?”

“Carmen, you’re sitting in the car with me, drinking, your hair all coiffed, your lipstick bright. You can’t think of anything else to talk to me about other than my wife?”

“Oh, all right, when you put it like that.” She tittered. “What do
you
like to talk to girls about?”

“I don’t know,” said Alexander. “I don’t talk to girls other than my wife.”

She laughed.

The music played.

“Winter Wonderland.”

“Santa Baby.”

They sat in her car, they smoked, he drank, she drank, she became tipsier, and with every swallow of the wine, she moved closer to him on the bench seat, touching his shirt sleeves, his jeans leg, his hand.

“So…do you
want
to talk about your wife?”

“I can,” said Alexander, “but then I’ll have to leave.” She really wasn’t very bright. But she smelled pretty good. And her boobs were huge.

“I told you about Cubert. Tell me at least what I’m up against. What’s her name?”

What she was up against? What did that mean? He didn’t reply.

“All right, all right. How many years were you married?”

“I’m still married. Fifteen.”

She whistled. “Wow.” She took his hand and sighed. “Me just two, and already I’m not sure if I’m in love with Cubert. Do you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t know Cubert at all,” said Alexander.

Carmen held his hand, placing it against her own. Her hand was long. “What about you and your wife?”

“I’m still in love with my wife,” Alexander said, taking his hand away.

“So what are you doing in my car, Alexander?”

“Drinking,” he said. “Smoking.”

She picked up his hand again. “You’ve got such large hands,” she said huskily.

“Well,” he said, “I am a man.”

She looked at him through lowered lids. “Are you comfortable behind that wheel?”

Alexander palmed the steering column. “I’m fine. Nice car you’ve got.” It was a Ford sedan like Tania used to drive.