Betty Blue

19

A few days later I took the morning off to tar-paper the roof. I worked easily and quietly, then went off in the car, a local station spitting songs out on the radio.

When I came home I found Betty busily moving the furniture around.

“You heard the latest?” she said. “Archie’s in the hospital!”

I threw my jacket on a chair.

“Shit, what happened?”

I helped her move the couch.

“The damn kid spilled a pot of boiling milk on his lap.”

We moved the table across to the other side of the room.

“Bob called right after you left. He was calling from the hospital. He wanted us to open the store for him this afternoon.”

We unrolled the rug in a different corner.

“Shit, he doesn’t miss a trick, does he…”

“It’s not that. He’s afraid the old ladies’ll block traffic on the sidewalk in front and cause a riot.”

She stepped back to take in the new arrangement.

“What do you think? You like it like that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s a change, isn’t it?”

We fucked in the afternoon, after which I grew suddenly languid, lying on the bed with cigarettes and a book. Betty cleaned the windows. What’s nice about selling pianos is that there’s never a rush. You have time to read Ulysses between sales without even having to dog-ear the pages. Yet it made us a nice living-we paid our bills on time and could fill the gas tank whenever we felt like it. Eddie didn’t ask us for money. All he asked was that we keep the store afloat and replenish the stock whenever we unloaded a piano. We did. I also handled the deliveries. The cash went directly into my pocket-why complicate the bookkeeping?

Best of all was that we even had some money put aside, enough to last us a month or so. This was reassuring-I had already had the experience of being out of a job, with barely enough in my pockets to buy two meals. Finding myself with money ahead was like finding myself in a fallout shelter. I could hardly ask for more. I hadn’t yet started planning my retirement.

So I took it easy. I watched Betty cleaning her nails by the window, laying on a coat of blinding red nail polish while her shadow climbed the wall behind her. It was wonderful. I stretched out on the bed.

“That going to take long to dry?” I asked.

“No, but if I were you I’d keep an eye on the time…”

I had enough time to hop into my pants and plant a kiss on her neck.

“You sure you can handle it alone?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

There were already four or five ladies on the sidewalk. They were trying to see inside, through the windows, talking loudly. I got the key from the backyard and hurried up to the apartment. I spotted the small pool of milk on the kitchen floor. A stuffed animal was floating in it. I picked it up and put it on the table. The milk was cold by now.

Downstairs, things seemed to be heating up. I went down and turned the lights on. The ladies were shaking their heads. The ugliest one turned her arm toward me so I could see her watch. I opened the door.

“Easy does it,” I said.

I plastered myself into a corner while they stampeded through. When the last one was in, I took my position behind the cash register. I thought of Archie and the teddy bear, draining on the kitchen table, losing all its blood.

“Could you give me a slice of headcheese?”

“But of course,” I said.

“Where’s the owner? Not here anymore…?”

“He’ll be back.”

“HEY, DON’T TOUCH MY HEADCHEESE WITH YOUR HANDS, YOU MIND!?”

“Jesus,” I said. “Sorry…”

“All right, just give me two slices of ham instead. The round kind. I don’t want the square kind.”

I spent the rest of the day slicing this and cutting that, running from one end of the store to the other, with six arms and ten legs churning, biting my lip. Somehow I began to understand Bob. I realized that if I had to do that job every day, I wouldn’t be able to get it on with a woman either-all I’d want to do at night is watch television. I’m exaggerating a bit, but what’s true is that sometimes life puts on such an abominable show that no matter where you look, all you see is fury and folly. Charming: this is what we have to put up with while waiting for old age, illness, and death-walking right toward the storm, each step bringing us a bit further into the night.

I closed the store on a last pound of tomatoes. Spirits were at their lowest. This sort of thing can really bring you down-turn your heart to stone. You have to know how to say whoa. I did a quick about-face, grabbing three bananas and eating them one after the other. After that I went upstairs for a beer. I felt neither here nor there. Having a little time on my hands, I wiped the milk off the floor and washed the teddy bear, hanging it by the ears to dry over the bathtub. It had a kind of surrealistic grin on its face, perfectly in keeping with the mood of the day. I sat with it for a while, the time to finish my beer. I split before my ears started hurting.

When I got home, I found Betty lying on the couch, with a yard-high elephant at her feet. It was red with white ears, wrapped in clear plastic. She lifted herself up on her elbows.

“I thought it might cheer him up if we went to visit him-look what I bought him…”

After what I’d just been through, I found the house quite calm. I would have loved to just slide right into it, but there was no way, with a red elephant standing in the middle of the living room, its eyes following me everywhere.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said.

I got a wink as consolation prize.

“You want to eat something before we go… a quick bite?”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

I let Betty drive. I held the animal in my lap. I had a bad taste in my mouth. I told myself that when one lifts the goblet of hopelessness to his lips, one oughtn’t be surprised if one winds up with a hangover. The streetlights were unspeakably cruel. We parked in the hospital lot and walked to the main entrance.

It happened just as we went through the door. I don’t know why. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a hospital. I knew about the odor, the people ambling around in pajamas. I even knew about the strange presence of death. I knew it well, and it had never gotten to me before-never, No one was more surprised than I was when my ears started ringing. I felt my legs get stiff and wobbly, all at once. I started to perspire. The elephant tumbled to the floor.

I saw Betty gesticulating in front of me, leaning toward me with her mouth moving, but I could hear nothing except the ringing of blood in my veins. I leaned against a wall. I felt horrible. An icy shot went through my skull. I couldn’t keep my balance. My heels slid out from under me.

A few seconds later, the sound started to return a little. Eventually everything came back. Betty was wiping my face with a handkerchief. I was breathing deeply. People kept coming and going, without paying any attention to us.

“Jesus, I can’t believe this-what happened to you? You scared me to-”

“It must have been something I ate… must have been the bananas…”

While Betty cheeked at the information desk, I went and got myself a Coke out of a machine. I had no idea what was going on-I didn’t know if it was the bananas or a sign from the Beyond.

We went up to the room. There wasn’t much light. Archie was sleeping, Bob and Annie sitting on each side of his bed. The baby was asleep too. I put the elephant down in the corner. Bob stood up to tell me that Archie had just dozed off-the poor kid had really been through the mill.

“It could have been worse, though,” he added.

We stood there quietly for a moment, watching Archie move around softly in his sleep, his hair stuck to his temples. I felt sorry for him. I also felt something that had nothing to do with him. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t rid myself of the sensation that I had been sent a message I could not decipher. It made me nervous. It’s always unpleasant when you feel uneasy and don’t know why. I bit the inside of my month. When I saw that things weren’t getting better, I motioned to Betty. I asked Bob if there was anything we could do for them, told him not to worry about a thing. But no, no thanks, so I backed out the door as if there were snakes falling from the ceiling. I took off down the hall. Betty had trouble keeping up with me.

“Hey, what kind of bee’s in your bonnet? Not so fast!”

But I continued straight down the hall. I nearly tipped over an old man folded up in a wheelchair, who tried to enter my lane, jackknifing his vehicle. I didn’t catch what he called me-I was out the door in two seconds flat.

The fresh air relaxed me, made me feel better immediately. I felt like I’d just come out of a haunted house. Betty put her hands on her hips and gave me a sideways, worried smile.

“What’s wrong? What did that stupid hospital do to you?”

“Must be that I haven’t eaten-feel a little weakish.”

“A little while ago you said it was the bananas.”

“I don’t know. I think I better eat something…”

I turned around at the bottom of the steps to look back. Betty didn’t wait for me. I examined the building carefully, but couldn’t see anything abnormal-nothing particularly terrifying. It was rather pretty, in fact-well lit, with palm trees all around and nicely trimmed hedges. I really couldn’t fathom what had gotten into me. Maybe they’d been poison bananas after all-enchanted bananas, mysteriously breeding fear in one’s stomach. Add to that a small burned child, rocking his head in a dark room, and you have your answer-no more complicated than that.

I would be lying if I said that a slight feeling of uneasiness didn’t linger. It was barely perceptible, though-nothing to drive myself crazy over.

I knew this joint uptown where the steak and fries were edible and there was lots of light. The owner knew us-we’d sold him a piano for his wife. We sat down at the counter, and he got out three glasses.

“So… things working out all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, great. The scales are driving me out of my gourd…” he said.

There were quite a few people in the place-a few single men, a few couples, and a bunch of brush-cut twenty-year-olds without a wrinkle on their brows. Betty was in a good mood. The steaks were good enough to make a vegetarian wobble. My fries simply swam in their catsup. It put the hospital incident completely out of my mind. I was lighthearted. The whole world was swell. Betty smiled. I fired off jokes at the drop of a hat. We ordered up the Super Giant Strombolis-one full pound of whipped cream.

I downed two big glasses of water, then, naturally, had to hightail it to the men’s room. The urinals were Indian pink. I chose the one in the middle. Every time I find myself in front of one of those jobs it reminds me of the time I startled a six-foot blonde in the men’s room, straddling the urinal, who told me, Don’t fret, baby, I’ll give you your thingamajig back in just a minute. I’ll never forget that girl. It was back in the days when there was a lot of talk about women’s liberation-they bombarded you with it. It was that girl, though, who drove the concept home-I had to admit that something had changed.

I was thinking about her, undoing the buttons of my fly with one hand, when one of the brush-cut dudes came in. He sidled up next to me and stared at the big silver button that makes the water flush.

Nothing was coming on my side. His either. The silence he tween us was deadly. Every few seconds he’d look over at me to see how I was doing, and clear his throat. He was wearing baggy pants and a colored shirt. Me: tight jeans and a white T·-shirt. He was about eighteen. Me: thirty-five. I gritted my teeth and contracted my abdominal muscles. I felt him do the same. I tried to concentrate.

The silence was interrupted by the characteristic tinkle that squirmed out in front of me. I smiled.

“Hha,” I said.

“I didn’t have to go, anyway,” he muttered.

When I was his age, Kerouac told me, Be in love with your life. It was only normal that I pissed quicker. Still, I didn’t want to rest on my laurels.

“Got to take advantage of things,” I said. “Who knows how long they’ll last?”

He scratched his head. He made faces in the mirror while I washed my hands.

“By the way,” he said. “I was thinking… I may have something that might interest you.”

I turned my back to him to dry my hands. I tore off the regulation ten inches. I was in a good mood.

“Oh yeah?” I said.

He came over and unfolded a small piece of paper under my nose.

“There’s a good gram here,” he whispered.

“Is it good stuff?”

“Must be. But don’t ask me, I never even tried it. I’m doing this to raise money for my vacation. I want to go surfing.”

God, how youth can lead you astray, I thought. Not to mention that he hadn’t even washed his hands. There was quite a bit of crystal there, though. I tasted it. I asked him how much it was. He told me. It had been a long time since I’d dealt in such things-the price had doubled since. I stood there with my mouth open.

“You sure you got that right?” I asked.

“Take it or leave it.”

I pulled a bill out of my pocket.

“What’ll this buy me?”

He didn’t seem impressed. I forced his hand a little.

“This’ll buy you a pair of Bermudas at least…” I said.

He laughed. We locked ourselves in a stall, and he got it ready for me on top of the toilet tank. I blew my nose conscientiously before snorting. After that I was ready to face a brand-new day-my mood was electric. I grabbed his arm before leaving.

“Just remember one thing,” I told him. “Places with only sand and surf do not exist. Blood flows everywhere.”

He looked at me as if I’d just solved the riddle of the Sphinx for him.

“Why are you telling me that?” he said.

“Just kidding,” I said. “At thirty-five you wonder if you can still make people laugh.”

It’s true that I felt the world getting more and more somber with each passing year, but it never mattered much to me. I always tried to stand tall, to not let my life turn to shit. It was the best I could do, and I did my best to do it. It wasn’t easy. One thing I’m proud of in life, though; I’ve always tried to be a decent guy. Don’t ask any more of me-I wouldn’t have the strength. I went back to Betty, sniffling. I grabbed her in my arms, almost yanking her off her seat. People looked at us.

“Hey,” she said. “Nothing personal, but we’re not alone here.”

“Fuck ‘em,” I said.

I believed I could have bent the stool in half.

On the way home, I felt like I was at the helm of a runaway engine that nothing in the world could stop. Betty had drunk a little wine. The whole world had drunk a little wine, and I was the only one still lucid-the only one still faithful at his post, steady at the wheel. Everybody was signaling me to turn on my headlights. Bums. Betty put a lit cigarette in my mouth.

“Maybe you’d see a little better if you had a little light in front of you…”

Before I had time to look, she’d bent over the dashboard and flicked on the high beams. It was better, okay, but so what?

“You don’t have to believe me,” I said. “But I could see like it was broad daylight.”

“I believe you.”

“Just because it’s dark out doesn’t mean we have to act like blind people, you know…”

“I know.”

“Damn straight…”

I had an itch to do something extraordinary. We were back in town, and all I could do was crawl down the streets, avoiding pedestrians, stopping at red lights like a wimp, while the dynamite coursed through my veins.

I parked in front of the house. The night was soft, calm, and silent, underlined by moonlight; yet the general feeling was one of incredible violence-blue and pearl-gray. I crossed the street, inhaling the cool air, not feeling sleepy at all. Betty had been yawning since the end of the trip. I didn’t want to notice.

We went upstairs and she fell on the bed. I tried to shake her.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” I yelled. “Don’t you want another drink? Let me get you something.”

She struggled for a little while, smiling, but her eyes kept closing. I wanted to stay up all night talking-I wanted to TALK, goddammit! I helped her get undressed, explaining that to me things were totally clear. She hid her mouth with her hand, so as not to offend me. I gave her a slap on the butt as she slid under the sheets. Her nipples were soft as rags. It wasn’t even worth it to try feeling her up-she was sound asleep.

I took the radio and a beer and went to sit in the kitchen. The news came on, but there was nothing important to report-everyone was more or less dead. I turned off the sound when they came to the sports. The moon was nearly full, and veritably perched on the table. I didn’t have to turn the lights on. It was quite restful. I got the idea to take a bath. My head was as clear as a sunny winter’s day-I could touch things with my eyes, I could have heard a piece of straw snap a hundred yards away. I chugged the rest of the beer down like a waterfall. It was good shit I’d bought, I had to admit, though the price of a gram still made me shiver.

An hour later I was still sitting there, bent slightly forward, staring between my legs to verify-yes or no-if I still had balls. I was holding a knife to my throat. I stood up with a bemused smile, short of breath. I went and got what I needed, then came back and sat down.

A little while later I had scrawled three pages. I stopped. All I had wanted to see was whether I was still capable of writing. Just one page. I didn’t ask for an epic. I hadn’t done too badly-far from it. No one could have been more surprised than me. I reread the pages slowly. It was one surprise after another. I couldn’t remember ever having written like that before, even at my peak. It was reassuring, like getting back on a bicycle after twenty years and not crashing after two turns of the pedal. It gave me a boost. I held my hands out in front of me to see if they were trembling. You would have thought I was waiting for them to put the cuffs on.

Not looking for trouble, I conscientiously burned the pages. I had no regrets, though. Once I write something, I never forget it. It’s the sign of a writer who has the touch.

Around two in the morning, a cat started meowing outside the window. I let him in. I opened up a can of sardines in tomato sauce. We were certainly the only two creatures still awake on the whole block. It was a young cat. I petted it and it purred. It climbed onto my lap. I decided to let it stay there for a while and digest its meal before getting up. The night didn’t seem to be moving. Taking every precaution possible, I leaned backward to grab a bag of potato chips. It was nearly full. I spread a few out on the table. It made the time pass.

I finished the bag, wondering if the cat was planning to spend the rest of the night sitting on me. I shoved him off. He rubbed up against my legs. I got him a bowl of milk. The least you could say was that the day had passed under the sign of Milk-at once gentle and scalding, mysterious, unpredictable, unfathomably white-and with bears, elephants, and cats, what more could you ask? For a guy who hates milk I’d had quite a bit that day, and I hadn’t left a single drop. You have to acknowledge that force that makes you drink to the dregs. I poured the milk slowly for the cat. I didn’t spill any. I sensed it was the last such test of the day-I kind of have premonitions about these things.

I put the cat back out on the windowsill. I closed the window behind him, while he stretched in the geraniums. I put on some music. I had another beer before going to bed. I felt like doing something, but I didn’t know what. To get my body moving again, I got Betty’s things together and folded them.

I emptied the ashtrays.

I chased a mosquito.

I checked out all the channels on the television, but there was nothing that wasn’t so boring you’d die twenty times watching it.

I washed my face.

Sitting at the foot of the bed, I read an article reminding us of the fundamental precautions to take in case of nuclear attack, such as staying away from windows.

I filed a fingernail that was coming unhinged, then got into it and did all the others.

According to my calculations, there were still one hundred eighty-seven cubes of sugar left in the box on the kitchen table. I didn’t feel like going to bed. The cat meowed outside the window.

I got up to go look at the thermometer. Seventy-three degrees-not bad.

I got out the I Ching and pulled The Obfuscation of Light-not bad either. Betty rolled over and moaned.

I spotted where the paint had run on the wall.

Time passed. I plunged to the depths and came back up with my brain on fire-burning a cigarette. The most charming thing about this generation is its experience of solitude, and the deep uselessness of all things. Good thing life is swell. I stretched out on the bed, the silence taking on the form of leaden shell. I tried to relax, to calm this stupid energy that ran through me like an electric current. I turned to face the calm and beauty of a wholly redone ceiling. Betty jabbed me in the hip with her knee.

It wouldn’t be reasonable to start making chili for the next day. It had now been thirteen thousand days I’d been alive. I saw neither the beginning nor the end. I hoped the tar paper would hold for a while. The small lamp was only twenty-five watts. I put my shirt over it anyway.

I got a new pack of chewing gum out of Betty’s purse. I pulled out a stick and folded it in my fingers like an egg roll. No matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out why they put ELEVEN sticks in a pack. It was like they just had to throw a monkey wrench into the works. I grabbed a pillow and lay down on my stomach. I tossed and turned. I was determined to fall asleep. I took the eleventh stick-the one that had caused me so much suffering-and poked it with my tongue. I swallowed it.