What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Read online

  He said, “They’re what gave me this.”

  I took a good look at those hooks.

  “Thanks for the coffee and the use of the toilet. I sympathize.”

  He raised and lowered his hooks.

  “Show me,” I said. “Show me how much. Take more pictures of me and my house.”

  “It won’t work,” the man said. “They’re not coming back.”

  But I helped him get into his straps.

  “I can give you a rate,” he said. “Three for a dollar.” He said, “If I go any lower, I don’t come out.”

  WE went outside. He adjusted the shutter. He told me where to stand, and we got down to it.

  We moved around the house. Systematic. Sometimes I’d look sideways. Sometimes I’d look straight ahead.

  “Good,” he’d say. “That’s good,” he’d say, until we’d circled the house and were back in the front again. “That’s twenty. That’s enough.”

  “No,” I said. “On the roof,” I said.

  “Jesus,” he said. He checked up and down the block. “Sure,” he said. “Now you’re talking.”

  I said, “The whole kit and kaboodle. They cleared right out.”

  “Look at this!” the man said, and again he held up his hooks.

  I WENT inside and got a chair. I put it up under the carport. But it didn’t reach. So I got a crate and put the crate on top of the chair.

  It was okay up there on the roof.

  I stood up and looked around. I waved, and the man with no hands waved back with his hooks.

  It was then I saw them, the rocks. It was like a little rock nest on the screen over the chimney hole. You know kids. You know how they lob them up, thinking to sink one down your chimney.

  “Ready?” I called, and I got a rock, and I waited until he had me in his viewfinder.

  “Okay!” he called.

  I laid back my arm and I hollered, “Now!” I threw that son of a bitch as far as I could throw it.

  “I don’t know,” I heard him shout. “I don’t do motion shots.”

  “Again!” I screamed, and took up another rock.

  Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit

  I’VE seen some things. I was going over to my mother’s to stay a few nights. But just as I got to the top of the stairs, I looked and she was on the sofa kissing a man. It was summer. The door was open. The TV was going. That’s one of the things I’ve seen.

  My mother is sixty-five. She belongs to a singles club. Even so, it was hard. I stood with my hand on the railing and watched as the man kissed her. She was kissing him back, and the TV was going.

  Things are better now. But back in those days, when my mother was putting out, I was out of work. My kids were crazy, and my wife was crazy. She was putting out too. The guy that was getting it was an unemployed aerospace engineer she’d met at AA. He was also crazy.

  His name was Ross and he had six kids. He walked with a limp from a gunshot wound his first wife gave him.

  I don’t know what we were thinking of in those days.

  This guy’s second wife had come and gone, but it was his first wife who had shot him for not meeting his payments. I wish him well now. Ross. What a name! But it was different then. In those days I mentioned weapons. I’d say to my wife, “I think I’ll get a Smith and Wesson.” But I never did it.

  Ross was a little guy. But not too little. He had a moustache and always wore a button-up sweater.

  His one wife jailed him once. The second one did. I found out from my daughter that my wife went bail. My daughter Melody didn’t like it any better than I did. About the bail. It wasn’t that Melody was looking out for me. She wasn’t looking out for either one of us, her mother or me neither. It was just that there was a serious cash thing and if some of it went to Ross, there’d be that much less for Melody. So Ross was on Melody’s list. Also, she didn’t like his kids, and his having so many of them. But in general Melody said Ross was all right.

  He’d even told her fortune once.

  THIS Ross guy spent his time repairing things, now that he had no regular job. But I’d seen his house from the outside. It was a mess. Junk all around. Two busted Plymouths in the yard.

  In the first stages of the thing they had going, my wife claimed the guy collected antique cars. Those were her words, “antique cars.” But they were just clunkers.

  I had his number. Mr. Fixit.

  But we had things in common, Ross and me, which was more than just the same woman. For example, he couldn’t fix the TV when it went crazy and we lost the picture. I couldn’t fix it either. We had volume, but no picture. If we wanted the news, we had to sit around the screen and listen.

  Ross and Myrna met when Myrna was trying to stay sober. She was going to meetings, I’d say, three or four times a week. I had been in and out myself. But when Myrna met Ross, I was out and drinking a fifth a day. Myrna went to the meetings, and then she went over to Mr. Fixit’s house to cook for him and clean up. His kids were no help in this regard. Nobody lifted a hand around Mr. Fixit’s house, except my wife when she was there.

  ALL this happened not too long ago, three years about. It was something in those days.

  I left my mother with the man on her sofa and drove around for a while. When I got home, Myrna made me a coffee.

  She went out to the kitchen to do it while I waited until I heard her running water. Then I reached under a cushion for the bottle.

  I think maybe Myrna really loved the man. But he also had a little something on the side—a twenty-two-year-old named Beverly. Mr. Fixit did okay for a little guy who wore a button-up sweater.

  He was in his mid-thirties when he went under. Lost his job and took up the bottle. I used to make fun of him when I had the chance. But I don’t make fun of him anymore.

  God bless and keep you, Mr. Fixit.

  He told Melody he’d worked on the moon shots. He told my daughter he was close friends with the astronauts. He told her he was going to introduce her to the astronauts as soon as they came to town.

  It’s a modern operation out there, the aerospace place where Mr. Fixit used to work. I’ve seen it. Cafeteria lines, executive dining rooms, and the like. Mr. Coffees in every office.

  Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit.

  Myrna says he was interested in astrology, auras, I Ching—that business. I don’t doubt that this Ross was bright enough and interesting, like most of our ex-friends. I told Myrna I was sure she wouldn’t have cared for him if he wasn’t.

  MY dad died in his sleep, drunk, eight years ago. It was a Friday noon and he was fifty-four. He came home from work at the sawmill, took some sausage out of the freezer for his breakfast, and popped a quart of Four Roses.

  My mother was there at the same kitchen table. She was trying to write a letter to her sister in Little Rock. Finally, my dad got up and went to bed. My mother said he never said good night. But it was morning, of course.

  “Honey,” I said to Myrna the night she came home. “Let’s hug awhile and then you fix us a real nice supper.”

  Myrna said, “Wash your hands.”

  Gazebo

  THAT morning she pours Teacher’s over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

  I go, “Holly, this can’t continue. This has got to stop.”

  We are sitting on the sofa in one of the upstairs suites. There were any number of vacancies to choose from. But we needed a suite, a place to move around in and be able to talk. So we’d locked up the motel office that morning and gone upstairs to a suite.

  She goes, “Duane, this is killing me.”

  We are drinking Teacher’s with ice and water. We’d slept awhile between morning and afternoon. Then she was out of bed and threatening to climb out the window in her undergarments. I had to get her in a hold. We were only two floors up. But even so.

  “I’ve had it,” she goes. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  She puts her hand to her cheek and closes her eyes. She turns her head bac
k and forth and makes this humming noise.

  I could die seeing her like this.

  “Take what?” I go, though of course I know.

  “I don’t have to spell it out for you again,” she goes. “I’ve lost control. I’ve lost pride. I used to be a proud woman.”

  She’s an attractive woman just past thirty. She is tall and has long black hair and green eyes, the only green-eyed woman I’ve ever known. In the old days I used to say things about her green eyes, and she’d tell me it was because of them she knew she was meant for something special.

  And didn’t I know it!

  I feel so awful from one thing and the other.

  I can hear the telephone ringing downstairs in the office. It has been ringing off and on all day. Even when I was dozing I could hear it. I’d open my eyes and look at the ceiling and listen to it ring and wonder at what was happening to us.

  But maybe I should be looking at the floor.

  “My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.”

  “Holly,” I go.

  WHEN we’d first moved down here and taken over as managers, we thought we were out of the woods. Free rent and free utilities plus three hundred a month. You couldn’t beat it with a stick.

  Holly took care of the books. She was good with figures, and she did most of the renting of the units. She liked people, and people liked her back. I saw to the grounds, mowed the grass and cut weeds, kept the swimming pool clean, did the small repairs.

  Everything was fine for the first year. I was holding down another job nights, and we were getting ahead. We had plans. Then one morning, I don’t know. I’d just laid some bathroom tile in one of the units when this little Mexican maid comes in to clean. It was Holly had hired her. I can’t really say I’d noticed the little thing before, though we spoke when we saw each other. She called me, I remember, Mister.

  Anyway, one thing and the other.

  So after that morning I started paying attention. She was a neat little thing with fine white teeth. I used to watch her mouth.

  She started calling me by my name.

  One morning I was doing a washer for one of the bathroom faucets, and she comes in and turns on the TV as maids are like to do. While they clean, that is. I stopped what I was doing and stepped outside the bathroom. She was surprised to see me. She smiles and says my name.

  It was right after she said it that we got down on the bed.

  “HOLLY, you’re still a proud woman,” I go. “You’re still number one. Come on, Holly.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.”

  She finishes her drink. Then she begins to cry. I make to hug her. But it’s no good.

  I freshen our drinks and look out the window.

  Two cars with out-of-state plates are parked in front of the office, and the drivers are standing at the door, talking. One of them finishes saying something to the other, and looks around at the units and pulls his chin. There’s a woman there too, and she has her face up to the glass, hand shielding her eyes, peering inside. She tries the door.

  The phone downstairs begins to ring.

  “Even a while ago when we were doing it, you were thinking of her,” Holly goes. “Duane, this is hurtful.”

  She takes the drink I give her.

  “Holly,” I go.

  “It’s true, Duane,” she goes. “Just don’t argue with me,” she goes.

  She walks up and down the room in her underpants and her brassiere, her drink in her hand.

  Holly goes, “You’ve gone outside the marriage. It’s trust that you killed.”

  I get down on my knees and I start to beg. But I am thinking of Juanita. This is awful. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

  I go, “Holly, honey, I love you.”

  In the lot someone leans on a horn, stops, and then leans again.

  Holly wipes her eyes. She goes, “Fix me a drink. This one’s too watery. Let them blow their stinking horns. I don’t care. I’m moving to Nevada.”

  “Don’t move to Nevada,” I go. “You’re talking crazy,” I go.

  “I’m not talking crazy,” she goes. “Nothing’s crazy about Nevada. You can stay here with your cleaning woman. I’m moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.”

  “Holly!” I go.

  “Holly nothing!” she goes.

  She sits on the sofa and draws her knees up to under her chin.

  “Fix me another pop, you son of a bitch,” she goes. She goes, “Fuck those horn-blowers. Let them do their dirt in the Travelodge. Is that where your cleaning woman cleans now? Fix me another, you son of a bitch!”

  She sets her lips and gives me her special look.

  DRINKING’S funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on our drinking, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey. When we made up our minds to move down here and take this job as managers, we sat up a couple of nights drinking while we weighed the pros and the cons.

  I pour the last of the Teacher’s into our glasses and add cubes and a spill of water.

  Holly gets off the sofa and stretches on out across the bed.

  She goes, “Did you do it to her in this bed?”

  I don’t have anything to say. I feel all out of words inside. I give her the glass and sit down in the chair. I drink my drink and think it’s not ever going to be the same.

  “Duane?” she goes.

  “Holly?”

  My heart has slowed. I wait.

  Holly was my own true love.

  THE thing with Juanita was five days a week between the hours of ten and eleven. It was in whatever unit she was in when she was making her cleaning rounds. I’d just walk in where she was working and shut the door behind me.

  But mostly it was in 11. It was 11 that was our lucky room.

  We were sweet with each other, but swift. It was fine.

  I think Holly could maybe have weathered it out. I think the thing she had to do was really give it a try.

  Me, I held on to the night job. A monkey could do that work. But things here were going downhill fast. We just didn’t have the heart for it anymore.

  I stopped cleaning the pool. It filled up with green gick so that the guests wouldn’t use it anymore. I didn’t fix any more faucets or lay any more tile or do any of the touch-up painting. Well, the truth is we were both hitting it pretty hard. Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you’re going to do a good job with it.

  Holly wasn’t registering the guests right, either. She was charging too much or else not collecting what she should. Sometimes she’d put three people to a room with only one bed in it, or else she’d put a single in where the bed was a king-size. I tell you, there were complaints, and sometimes there were words. Folks would load up and go somewhere else.

  The next thing, there’s a letter from the management people. Then there’s another, certified.

  There’s telephone calls. There’s someone coming down from the city.

  But we had stopped caring, and that’s a fact. We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.

  Holly’s a smart woman. She knew it first.

  THEN that Saturday morning we woke up after a night of rehashing the situation. We opened our eyes and turned in bed to take a good look at each other. We both knew it then. We’d reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start.

  We got up and got dressed, had coffee, and decided on this talk. Without nothing interrupting. No calls. No guests.

  That’s when I got the Teacher’s. We locked up
and came upstairs here with ice, glasses, bottles. First off, we watched the color TV and frolicked some and let the phone ring away downstairs. For food, we went out and got cheese crisps from the machine.

  There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.

  “WHEN we were just kids before we married?” Holly goes. “When we had big plans and hopes? You remember?” She was sitting on the bed, holding her knees and her drink.

  “I remember, Holly.”

  “You weren’t my first, you know. My first was Wyatt. Imagine. Wyatt. And your name’s Duane. Wyatt and Duane. Who knows what I was missing all those years? You were my everything, just like the song.”

  I go, “You’re a wonderful woman, Holly. I know you’ve had the opportunities.”

  “But I didn’t take them up on it!” she goes. “I couldn’t go outside the marriage.”

  “Holly, please,” I go. “No more now, honey. Let’s not torture ourselves. What is it we should do?”

  “Listen,” she goes. “You remember the time we drove out to that old farm place outside of Yakima, out past Terrace Heights? We were just driving around? We were on this little dirt road and it was hot and dusty? We kept going and came to that old house, and you asked if could we have a drink of water? Can you imagine us doing that now? Going up to a house and asking for a drink of water?

  “Those old people must be dead now,” she goes, “side by side out there in some cemetery. You remember they asked us in for cake? And later on they showed us around? And there was this gazebo there out back? It was out back under some trees? It had a little peaked roof and the paint was gone and there were these weeds growing up over the steps. And the woman said that years before, I mean a real long time ago, men used to come around and play music out there on a Sunday, and the people would sit and listen. I thought we’d be like that too when we got old enough. Dignified. And in a place. And people would come to our door.”

  I can’t say anything just yet. Then I go, “Holly, these things, we’ll look back on them too. We’ll go, ‘Remember the motel with all the crud in the pool?’” I go, “You see what I’m saying, Holly?”

  But Holly just sits there on the bed with her glass.