Big Picture: Stories

Dicotyles Tajacu

Michael Lawson didn’t believe his wife when she told him that she was tiring of his periodic depressions, nagging headaches really, bouts that would often last for a couple of weeks. The headaches manifested themselves in overly quiet behavior and some grumpiness, but mostly in minor absent-mindedness and seeming apathy. He didn’t believe Gail when she said that she didn’t like the way he talked to her when he was “lost in his own little world,” nor when she informed him that she was falling out of love with him, although he had actually noted the germinating distance in spite of his ostensible lethargy and inattention. He didn’t believe any of it when the message was conveyed by a “concerned” third party, his wife’s friend Maggie, who had never seemed to like Michael anyway. Maggie made a special trip over for a chat, knowing that Gail was not there, and in fact admitted early on in the chat that Gail was waiting at her house. It didn’t appear to bother Michael that Gail had a new close friend named Bob who was “fun” and “bright” and single, although the friendship hadn’t, contrary to Maggie’s accusation, gone without regard. He was some kind of skin doctor who lived way out with other skin doctors in a cul-de-sac in the foothills north and west of Denver. But when Michael came into the house from his studio, which was just seventy yards away, and found that all of the spots where the furniture had been were now merely spots, he could only do what the note on the bare wood of the kitchen floor said—“Believe it.”

Michael didn’t go to the foothills to talk to Gail, or to finally get a good look at Bob the skin doctor and his house with the bathroom the size of a barn. She left in the middle of one of his depressions and he somehow wanted her to be okay, at least he talked himself into believing that was what he wanted. He folded the note neatly and placed it on the counter. He thought perhaps he had never really loved Gail, and was saddened by the knowledge that she had loved him, had wasted her time loving him. Michael walked back out to his studio and collected his paintings, twenty-seven large canvases. He heaped them in a pile in the yard, doused them with gasoline from a can he kept for the mower, and tossed on a strike-anywhere kitchen match that he held until he burned his fingers. It was a big fire that caused a neighbor to call the fire department, who put it out quickly with fat hoses stretched across the yard, red lights twisting in the predawn sky, while the marshall wrote out a citation for Michael. When the fire fighters roared away, he packed all the clothes he could into the two suitcases that his wife had left behind, got into his pickup truck, looked into his mirror, and saw that a smattering of neighbors were still rooted, loitering and gawking and whispering. He then drove away, stopping at an automatic teller before heading north toward Wyoming.

For years, doctor after doctor had said, “We have to do something about your headaches,” and let that pass as treatment. Finally, failed drug after failed drug, and one neurologist’s insipid question, “Are you sure they’re headaches?” led Michael to give up and admit that the pain was a part of his life. Evidently the headaches were not going to kill him, a lamentable thought, so he decided to get to know them, to feel them, to accept them, to, in what he thought was the Zen way, become one with them. He didn’t mention them, just endured them. He didn’t miss them when they left, and was not surprised when they returned: different headaches with disparate associative symptoms, which located themselves in various parts of his head, where they moved, pulsed, or sat immobile for hours behind an eye or ear like cheetah watching gazelle.

Michael drove north on Interstate 25, then west toward Fort Collins. Clouds were already collecting over the front range, just a few then, but soon there would be many, and he was glad to be out of Denver where the weather was always sudden and extreme: hail and tornadoes or clear, blizzards followed by sunny days of sixty degrees with gentle breezes from the south. He made his way through Fort Collins and stopped for breakfast at a diner on US 287 that sported stuffed animals everywhere he looked: heads of deer, elk, and moose were hung over the tables of booths, and bobcats, coyotes, and badgers marched along a mantle that separated the dining area from a little store with cold drinks, doughnuts, and sundries. The headache he nursed was a sharp, needling pain behind his left eye that spread toward the back of his head like smoke, becoming duller, but fingering out with a scratching at the base of his brain. He cataloged it as he fell into a booth beneath the head of a wild boar with a conspicuously missing left eye. The brass plate under the trophy read, “Javelina, Dicotyles tajacu, taken July 1967, Red River, NM by C.C. Wilcox.”

The waitress, a plump woman, looking to be near thirty, was wearing off-white nurse’s shoes and a too-short navy skirt and holding a pot of coffee. She said, “You can sit somewhere else, if you want.”

Michael looked at her.

“If the Dicotyles tajacu bugs you,” she said. “You can move to another booth. The Odocoileus hemionus is available. So is the Antilocapra americana.”

Michael looked at the other dead animals over the empty booths. “I’m okay here,” he said, turning his cup mouth up for the coffee.

“A lot of people don’t like the Dicotyles tajacu,” the woman said as she poured. “That missing eye.”

“I see.”

She pulled a menu from the large front pocket of her apron and set it on the place mat in front of him.

“You know all of these animals?”

“They’re here every day, all day long. I’m here every day, all day long. You hunt?”

Michael shook his head.

“I’ll come back for your order.”

Michael studied the pig. At that moment, Gail was probably in bed with Bob having her skin examined. He recalled when he and Gail had first met: she had claimed to understand his pain, claimed she wanted to be near it, and wanted to watch him at work. They were standing in front of a canvas of Michael’s at an exhibition of his in Santa Fe.

“There’s so much pain in it,” Gail said from behind him as he faced the painting.

Michael turned and looked at her. “Where?” he asked.

“Everywhere,” she said.

“I don’t see it,” he said.

Gail was confused, but pressed on. “Here,” pointing to a sweep of maples edged with Indian Yellow across a field of pthalo blue. “Here, this looks like acute pain to me, like intense loss.”

Michael looked where she pointed, got up close, and touched the paint with his fingers. “You don’t really believe that shit, do you?” But when he looked back at her face he saw she was near tears. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right about the pain.” A lie only because he believed that indeed he was lying every time he attempted to articulate how painting made him feel. In the middle of putting the paint on the canvas, when the desire to slide a razor across the arteries of his forearm was large and explicit before him, he recognized the urge as indulgent and decided it was made up, thought no one really had such feelings and so would sit down, leaving the work alone and rub his temples until he forgot his bad mood. But as Michael said to Gail that she was correct about the emotion she saw in his picture, he felt pleased to be able to share the pain. He was genuinely interested in this woman and what she was saying, but he also experienced considerable guilt because he knew that he was viewing this conversation as a hasty way to get her into bed.

“I’m Gail Lybrand.”

“Michael Lawson.”

“I know.”

They had sex that night and continued to have sex for eight years and in that time Michael had sex only with Gail, although he was tempted once to be unfaithful with an anthropologist whom he’d met in the hills south of Santa Fe, but didn’t because the thought of sex with another woman made his head hurt more and more and he took the pain as a sign. And so he went home to his wife of seven months and found that his headache didn’t go away, but in fact got worse, and then Gail became angry with him because he was too sick to make love.

“What’s this?” Michael said, looking at the chocolate-covered doughnut the waitress put on the table. The doughnut had been microwaved and the brown veneer had become thin on top and formed a series of puddles around the circle.

“On the house. Because you don’t hunt.” The waitress pulled her pad from her apron pocket and took the pen from behind her ear. “What’ll it be?”

“How much for the pig?” Michael asked, surprising himself.

“Excuse me?”

“The head.” Michael pointed up. “I think I’d like to buy it.”

“The Dicotyles tajacu?”

“Yes.”

“You want to buy the Dicotyles tajacu?”

“I believe that’s what I’m saying.”

The waitress tapped her pad with her pen and looked at the boar’s head as if for the first time, then turned and walked away across the room and into the kitchen. The single door swung after her with a barely audible squeak. The bearded face of a large man suddenly appeared from the kitchen and disappeared just as quickly. Then all of him appeared, dressed in white or what was once white. Michael liked the stains on the man’s clothes, ochre and Permanent Rose and a deep green like an avocado’s skin.

“Waitress tells me you want to buy the Dicotyles tajacu,” the cook said.

Michael nodded, but felt a little afraid sensing the man’s displeasure.

“Why?”

“Because I like it,” Michael said.

The cook sat across from him in the booth and looked absently across the room and out the window at the highway. “I’ve never had anybody wanting to buy one of the animals before. What would you do with it?”

“I’m an artist. I just like it. I wouldn’t do anything to it,” was what he said, but he wanted to say that he was unsatisfied, agitated, desolate in heart and entrails, sick with pain, and sickened by curiosity, of all things, and that the Dicotyles tajacu had become an object of that sickness. “I’m not going to hurt it.”

“He’s got an eye missing,” the cook said. “The left one.”

“I realize that,” Michael said. “I think that’s why I like it so much.”

The cook scratched his thick neck and pulled up at the back of his shirt collar. “The Dicotyles tajacu has been here since 1967.”

“Taken by C.C. Wilcox,” Michael said.

“You know, business has been pretty rough, what with the freeway and all those fast-food places in Fort Collins. A breakfast burrito. An egg McNuthin’. It’s hard for the little guy to make it now.”

Michael nodded. “Are you C.C. Wilcox?”

The cook shook his head. “Kirk Johnston.”

“My name is Michael Lawson.”

The cook stared off into space.

“I can see you’re attached to the pig …”

“Dicotyles tajacu,” the cook corrected.

“Dicotyles tajacu,” Michael said. “How does one-fifty sound?”

The cook looked up at the head on the wall and his eyes seemed to well with tears, the meaty fingers of his right hand were wringing the meaty fingers of his left. “Business has been awful slow.” But the cook was speaking more to the taxidermied head than to Michael.

“One seventy-five,” Michael said.

The man was openly weeping now. His big head fell forward to his hands; his big sides were heaving under his short-sleeved white shirt. The waitress had come out of the kitchen and was walking across the room, tossing them a sidelong glance but not approaching. A man with blond hair and his blond wife, who were seated across the room in a booth beneath a moose, stared and whispered.

Through his tears, Kirk the cook managed to say, “Would you consider the Ovis canadensis?”

“No, I want this one,” Michael said. The idea of owning it was getting all twisted inside him. He didn’t want to hurt the cook, but the head, the head, the idea of the head was calling to him. “Two hundred.”

The cook let out a loud wail. His sobs caught in his throat, choking him; tears were glistening in his beard.

The blond couple from across the room climbed out of their booth and scurried out. The bell hanging from the door was slapping against the glass.

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Waitress,” the cook called. When she came he said, still crying, “Wrap up the Dicotyles tajacu.”

The waitress began to sob as well, her mascara streaking quickly as she turned her face from the stuffed head. Her crying voice was higher pitched than her talking voice and Michael paused to observe this.

The cook stood. “Wrap it nicely, waitress.”

Michael counted out two hundred dollars onto the lacquered wooden tabletop. The cook picked up the bills along with a paper napkin and, without counting, stuffed the money into his breast pocket, then walked on unsteady legs back across the room and through the swinging door of the kitchen.

Michael moved his coffee to the next table. Then he and the waitress stood on the maroon vinyl seats of the booth, on each side of the boar’s head, and took it down from the nail on which it was hooked.

“I’m going to miss you, Dicotyles tajacu,” the waitress said. “I’ll get some newspaper.” She stepped back and looked at it there on the table before walking away.

Michael was able to examine the head more closely now. The hair was worn away on top of the skull between the eyes, and the tusk on the right side was broken. The surface of the protrusion was Indian Red and mustard. The hole where the left eye had been, and later whatever kind of glass ball had replaced it, was full of caked dust and cobwebs. He imagined the pain when the wind blew through an empty socket to the exposed nerves.

The waitress returned with a stack of Rocky Mountain News and spread a few sheets out on the floor. She made a mat using masking tape to secure the seams. Michael regarded how carefully she worked, as she kept adding more paper. Her hot-pink-painted nails sliced the tape precisely; the palms of her small but fleshy hands pressed the adhesive flat as the plane of paper grew into a rug. Michael stood, lifted the head from the table, and set it down. The two of them stepped back and studied the head.

The waitress got back down on her knees and brought the opposite edges of her newspaper rug up to meet at the bald spot between the eyes. She taped it closed, then proceeded to fold shut the gaps by using more paper until finally the Dicotyles tajacu was securely wrapped.

“I never did get anything to eat,” Michael said, looking at the waitress. “I don’t imagine it would be a good idea to order something now.”

The waitress didn’t say anything, nor did she move her head or any other part of her round little body, but she made it clear she was in agreement.

Michael picked up the head; the newspaper crackled in his arms. “Okay, then. Thanks.” He left the restaurant struggling with the door; the bell hanging from the door handle hushed as it caught between his thigh and the glass. Michael put the pig on the passenger seat of his truck. He left it wrapped in spite of his urge to open its one-eyed face to the world. He put the truck into gear, released the brake, and rolled away, listening to an exhaust tick in his engine that he had not previously noticed.

Michael stopped in Laramie outside a pawn shop to use a pay telephone. First he checked the answering machine at what used to be his home, noting with some disappointment that his action betrayed a failure to completely disengage. That failure was underscored by his feeling of deflation on not finding any messages. He placed a second call to his agent in Santa Fe.

“Hello, Gloria,” Michael said. “I’m on the road and I can’t be reached for a while.”

“What’s the matter now?” Gloria asked.

Michael imagined the stout woman sitting in the overstuffed chair in front of her television. “Nothing’s the matter. My wife is having her pimples cured by the handsome Dr. Bob; I’ve left the house; and I burned all the new paintings.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. Like I said. I can’t be reached. I’ll call you soon. I never loved her anyway.”

“When you loved her, you became despondent and tried to kill yourself. Now, you claim you never loved her and so you destroy your work.”

The head of the Dicotyles tajacu was wrapped in newspaper, sitting on the seat of the truck, dead for twenty-five years, but still breathing. Michael could hear it. He left the boar while he went into the deli near the train tracks for lunch since his stomach was complaining and feeling tight. He sat alone, undisturbed, and ate a vegetarian sandwich from which he pulled out the cucumbers and heard the waitress say, “I don’t like those either.”

Outside, the air had turned crisp and Michael found himself stepping quickly toward his truck. He was struck suddenly by the distance, not the physical distance, not the miles, nor the change in landscape, but the remoteness from the life he had known just a few days before. He was still a painter: he could buy oils and brushes and canvas and make pictures and there were paintings in the world bearing his mark, but he was no longer a husband, no longer a lover, and he no longer resided in that house in Denver with the detached studio and pool he never wanted.

“Michael?” the voice found him just as he was opening the door of his truck.

Michael turned around. It was Harley Timmons, a sculptor who lived in Laramie, who worked in steel and found objects, who by all measures, in Michael’s thinking, was severely untalented, although not unsuccessful. Harley was a heavy man, brawny from lifting steel and working with welding equipment. He had wide-set eyes and an extremely narrow and large nose, which looked like a fin on his face.

“Michael Lawson,” Harley said. “I don’t believe it. I saw the truck and I said, hey, that looks familiar, then I saw this black guy getting in it and I said, hey, that must be, and it is. How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Michael said. “How are you, Harley?”

“Great.” Harley pumped Michael’s hand and showed big muscular teeth. “I’m just great. What brings you up here?”

“Came up to do a little camping and fishing,” Michael said, noting as the last word was out, that he had no camping and fishing gear in his truck. “Headed up to the Winds.”

Harley nodded, still flexing his smile. “Why don’t you spend the night here and have dinner with Sumiko and me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I insist. We’ve got a new guest room we haven’t tried out on anyone yet. Come on. You can tell me about the new work.” Harley’s face seemed so close.

Michael fell back, if not physically, inside. New work? The prospect of discussing the nonexistent was just depressing enough to sound intriguing, he thought. He said, “Okay.”

“Well, great, just great,” Harley said. “I’m sure there’s stuff you’ve got to do, so I’ll just tell you that dinner’s at seven, but come anytime you want.”

“Thanks.”

“Great.”

“Great,” Michael said. He watched Harley walk away and disappear into the Whole Earth Grain Store in front of which a young woman in a peasant dress swept an already tidy sidewalk.

Michael got into his truck, agreeing with Harley that he probably had some things to do, like maybe buying some camping gear or a fishing rod. That’s what he did. He went to a sporting goods store and bought a sleeping bag, a backpack, a campstove, a couple of bottles of white gas, a small tent, a canteen, a four-piece pack fly rod, a reel, two fly boxes, and an assortment of flies, stoneflies, Woolly Buggers, Royal Coachmen, Zug Bugs, sizes 8 to 12, and a fishing license. His bill came to 418 dollars and 47 cents. He paid with his American Express card and a young man helped him carry his new stuff to his truck.

After he bought all of this gear, Michael was eager to get on the road and do some camping; he felt an excitement he hadn’t felt in years. But he had told great big Harley that he would be there and, although Harley was not important to Michael, it would be impolite not to show up and awkward trying to explain why he was leaving Laramie just late enough to find a campsite in the dark of night. Michael drove out Ninth Street and into the canyon north of town where he pulled off onto a side road, sat in the back of his truck, and sorted the flies into the compartments of the fly boxes. He classified them slowly, by kind and size, and paid careful attention to their placement.

He left for Harley’s house just as the sun was nearing the top of the Snowy Range. He drove into Laramie on Ninth, then turned left on Grand Avenue over to Seventh where in 1913 or so a black man had been lynched on a pole that was still standing, now shouldering power and phone lines. The man had been dragged out of jail by citizens who were chastised the next day by the editor of the town paper for being such poor shots. Out of the hundreds of rounds fired at the hanging man only one bullet found its mark. Michael always looked at the pole as he drove by; the cracked and weathered brown pole pressed against the sky, which tonight was washed lavender at sundown.

At the door of the sizable, but modest house, Michael was met by Sumiko who was as small as Harley was large. Her smile was no less brutish or feral, in fact it was even more savage, coming like an ambush from this little creature.

“It’s great to see you,” Sumiko said, as her little feet somehow got her behind him. She pushed him into the house, into the vestibule floored with tiles that had been carved by hand, a fish here, a primitive bison there. Michael felt the unevenness of the floor through his shoes. He put down his suitcase.

“It’s good to see you, too, Sumiko.”

“Harley’s not back yet. He’s at the chiropractor. He’s got a bad back. You know, all that lifting.”

Michael nodded.

“Come on into the kitchen,” Sumiko said. “You can keep me company while I finish dinner. This is great.”

He followed Sumiko through the living room, walking past one of his early paintings. He realized that he had made it, but didn’t know how he could have.

“We move that piece around the house,” Sumiko said. “I liked it when you used more form.”

Michael smiled and hoped she heard.

In the kitchen, Michael found the light white and harsh, discharging from broad panels implanted in the ceiling and ricocheting mercilessly off stainless steel cabinets, stove, and refrigerator.

“What do you think of our new kitchen?” she asked.

“It’s very … metal,” Michael said.

“We like to think so.” Sumiko walked to the stove and looked into something she had simmering on a burner. “Sit down, sit down.”

Michael sat at the table and watched her tiny feet carry her from refrigerator to stove to cabinet to refrigerator as she tied on a little apron. “How about some wine?” she asked, suddenly.

“I don’t drink.”

“I remember not liking that about you.” She laughed. “May I get you anything to drink? Juice?”

“I’m okay right now,” Michael said.

Sumiko took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured a glass for herself. “A little wine never hurt anybody, Michael.”

Michael nodded.

“So, how’s Gail?”

“I think she’s well,” he said.

Sumiko looked at him over the rim of her wine glass. “You think?”

“We’re trying out a separation.”

“Here’s to a successful one,” Sumiko said, raising her glass, then taking a sip. “I never liked her anyway. She’s not strong enough for you.”

“What’s in the pot?” Michael asked.

“Oh, it’s cream of eggplant soup.” She rose to her toes to catch a glimpse of the activity in the pot. “It’s the first time I’ve made it. You’re a guinea pig, I guess.”

“I’m willing,” he said.

Then Sumiko’s face changed, she sighed, and her eyes, although not really softening, showed that they wanted to soften, and she walked to Michael and touched his face. “I’m so sorry. Poor, poor Michael,” she said, sitting at the table with him. “But isn’t this great? Sitting here, together and all.”

Michael nodded.

Harley came in through the front door, and said with his booming, smiling voice, “Some fool left a fortune of camping gear outside free for the taking.”

Michael stood up as Harley entered the kitchen. “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” he said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Harley said. “This is Laramie, not Denver.”

Michael sat back down.

Sumiko handed a glass of wine to Harley. “What did he say about your back?”

“Well, he cracked it this way and he cracked it that way,” Harley said, twisting his body to indicate the treatment. “Then he stretched me and told me not to pick up anything heavy. I laughed in his face. I had half a mind to pick him up and laugh right into his face. Like this.” He grabbed Sumiko by her waist and she squealed and then he hoisted her to eye level and laughed right in her face and then they laughed together.

“Where’s your bathroom?” Michael asked.

“Down the hall,” Harley said, letting Sumiko’s feet down to the black and white tiles. “You’ll see it.”

Michael walked down the corridor and before he turned into the bath, he heard Sumiko whisper to Harley, “They’ve split up.” He closed the door behind him and switched on the light, nearly collapsing as he did so: everything was so bright. The room was white everywhere, white fixtures, white walls, white tile, white bidet, white towels, and even the soap in the white dish was white. He wanted to pee just to create some contrast, some relief not merely for his bladder but for his suffering eyes. He was dizzied by the brutal starkness of it all and the headache that had been at work in the back of his brain rose another notch in intensity. He imagined walking into this room and switching on the light in the middle of the night, having just come out of a sound sleep. He might have to do just that. He shuddered as he approximated the magnitude of the headache that might be caused by such a visual concussion. He flushed, washed his hands, reluctantly dried them on a stiff white towel, and went back to Harley and Sumiko in the kitchen.

“Do you have another bathroom?” Michael asked.

“There’s one in our bedroom,” Harley said, his big smile filled with concern. “Something wrong with the other one?”

“No, nothing,” Michael said. “Just wondering. Your house is done very nicely.”

“Thanks,” Harley said.

“Taste this,” Sumiko said, coming to Harley with a spoon, her free hand cupped under it. “Be careful, now, this is hot. Blow on it first.” She blew on it for him.

Harley blew on it too, then sucked in the soup. “That’s great.”

“Want a taste, Michael?” Sumiko asked.

Michael sat down at the table again. “Thanks, but I think I’ll wait.” He squinted against the pain in his head.

“Something wrong?” Sumiko asked. “You’re squinting. Is the light hurting your eyes?”

“Nope.”

“Hey, man, you want to lie down before dinner?” Harley asked, sitting across the table, crossing his legs, and playing with the laces of one of his enormous boots.

Michael shook his head.

The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Eddie and Simon,” Harley said and left the room.

“You’ll love these people,” Sumiko said. “Eddie’s a writer and Simon, he’s a doctor and well, you’ll see.”

Harley came rolling into the kitchen with the guests who were laughing loudly with him. “Michael,” Harley said, “Edwina Johns and Simon Seys.”

Simon belched out an even louder laugh. “That’s really my name,” he said to Michael. “Can you believe my parents named me that? I’m just lucky they didn’t name me Yadont.”

Michael squeezed a smile into the chorus of guffaws. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said.

“I like your paintings,” Eddie said abruptly, sitting in the chair that had been Harley’s. She looked at Michael’s eyes, seeming to get too close, yet they were separated by the table. “Your paintings remind me of my work.”

“Sumiko tells me you’re a writer,” Michael said.

“Yes.” She was not laughing now, but looking at Michael with a serious expression.

Michael looked to Simon. “What do you do, Simon?”

“I’m a physician,” Simon said. “A dermatologist. I just thought I’d squeeze that in.” He laughed again and the rest laughed with him.

“Are you two from Laramie?” Michael asked.

“No, we’re from Denver,” Eddie said, serious once more.

Michael’s heart sank at hearing the word Denver and the word dermatologist together. He figured that all skin doctors in Denver must know one another. Simon must know Bob and therefore, these two people, if not all four of them, were probably all too familiar with the details of Michael’s private life.

“Where do you live?” Eddie asked, accepting the glass of wine Harley handed her, but keeping her eyes on Michael.

“I’m kind of floating these days,” he said.

“Floating,” Simon said and he lifted his arms like a ballerina and pretended to float about the kitchen. “I’m floating. I’m a feather on the wind.”

Sumiko danced with him.

“I’m too big to float,” Harley said.

Eddie still studied Michael, sipped her wine. “That’s what I try to express in my writing. That floating.” She put down her glass and gestured, making circles with her limp hands.

Michael nodded to her as if he understood and that made her smile at him. He watched her trace the rim of her glass with her finger.

“You should have seen the rain we drove through on the way up here,” Eddie said, breaking away from Michael.

“Not just rain,” Simon said, starting to break into a chuckle again. “It was hail getting here.”

“Hail?” Sumiko said.

“Not bad,” Eddie said.

“The hail you say,” said Simon.

Harley’s and Sumiko’s laughter had wound down into smiles and Michael could sense that Eddie was irritated.

“Why is it,” Simon asked, “that hail is always the size of grapefruit or baseballs and never the size of hail?” He laughed more softly, his sounds twisting into the rather sad silence that had come over the room.

“Let’s eat,” Sumiko said.

“By all means,” Eddie said.

Harley and Sumiko expertly herded their guests into the dining room. A glass-topped table stood on an expanse of tan carpet, the wrought-iron legs curved down and back under, and pressed into the nap of the wool. Harley sat Michael beside Eddie with their backs to the wall farthest from the door to the kitchen. Simon sat opposite them. Harley and Sumiko sat at each end of the oval.

The soup was good, Michael thought, but then he was terribly hungry and the taste of anything would have served as a distraction from his headache. He could still see and feel the white light of the bathroom.

“So, how’s the skin trade?” Harley asked Simon.

“Very good,” Eddie said.

“Oh, he’s been waiting to use that all week,” Sumiko said. “So, it’s not as spontaneous as he would have you believe.”

“Put in my place again,” Harley said, sounding a little irritated.

Michael felt his mouth opening. He was talking only because, as a guest, he was supposed to say something at some point and he said, “I’d call that Dylan off the bottom.”

Eddie, Simon, Harley, and Sumiko looked at him without speaking. They seemed puzzled.

Michael felt compelled to explain. “Dylan Thomas wrote Adventures in the Skin Trade.”

“Oh, yes,” Eddie said.

Everyone laughed.

Eddie looked at Michael with her serious face again and held his eyes just a second too long.

“So how is business?” Harley put the question to Simon once more.

“Breaking out all over,” Simon said and laughed.

Harley chuckled politely. Eddie shifted in her chair. Sumiko sipped her wine.

“Business is good,” Simon said.

“How’s the writing?” Harley asked Eddie.

“I have a story coming out next month. A little journal out of Seattle.”

“Great.” Harley or Sumiko.

“What kind of things do you write?” Michael asked. “Or is that a stupid question to ask a writer?”

“I’m more interested in tonal columns and color than story,” Eddie said. “I’m into texture and contexture. I’m interested in the way opposites fit together, the way they interlock.” She took a sip of wine and licked the corners of her lips.

Michael nodded and looked at the others.

“I love your work,” Sumiko said to Eddie.

“How do you think of your art?” Eddie asked Michael. “What are you exploring these days?”

“Same as always,” Michael said. “I like colors. Sometimes I like yellows. Sometimes blues.”

They ate without speaking for a while. The only sounds were the soft dipping of spoons into puddles of cream of eggplant soup, the parting of soup-moistened lips, the clinking of spoon handles against the rims of bowls. The sounds grew louder and louder in Michael’s head, especially the smacking of Eddie’s lips as she sneaked glances at him.

“You know,” Michael said, “I’ve got a long drive tomorrow and I’ve got to leave early. So, as good as this is, I’ve got to get to bed.”

“That’s okay, Michael,” Harley stood, put his napkin on the table. “I’ll show you where you’re bedding down.”

“If you’ll all excuse me,” Michael said. “Thanks for dinner, Sumiko. It was really good.”

“Good night, Michael,” Sumiko said.

“It was a pleasure meeting you two,” he said to the other guests.

“Same here,” Simon said, standing and shaking Michael’s hand.

“Maybe I’ll see you all in the morning,” Michael said.

Eddie gave him one last ogle before he followed Harley, who was saying, “I already grabbed your bag.” They walked down the hallway, past the bathroom of monochrome torture and into a small den.

“I forgot Eddie and Simon were staying over, so we’ve got to put you on this sofa,” Harley said.

“Fine with me.” Michael looked around the room, at the short couch on which he would be sleeping, at the blond wood paneling, at the green carpet.

“This is the room we haven’t done yet,” Harley said, apologetically. “The television works if you want to use it.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, we’re at the end of the hall if you need anything.”

“Okay.”

Harley left Michael and closed the door. Michael sat on the sofa, ran his hand across the scratchy fabric, and leaned his head back.

The far-off chatter and laughter interspersed with an occasional booming “great” was gone. Michael assumed that they had all gone to bed. He uncoiled himself from the sofa and went to the door to listen. Nothing. He had to relieve himself, but he refused to go back to that white bathroom. Although he believed that even without knowing the layout well enough he might do all right in the dark, the room just flat out scared him; his head hurt simply considering it; his stomach tightened into a knot, which, given his present condition, was an unfortunate circumstance. He felt irrational, but hell, being irrational was the least of his worries. Being irrational didn’t hurt and didn’t poke like pins into the backs of his eyeballs. No, he couldn’t go in there. At the front door, however, he was shocked to find that, even though this was “Laramie, not Denver,” there was an alarm system. A green light flashed, but Michael didn’t know what it meant, whether it was armed or off. He dared not open the door for fear of waking the whole house and maybe summoning every deputy in the territory — cowboys bored shitless at coffee shops just waiting to speed over and point their hair-trigger pistols at him while he squatted next to the holly bush.

He went back and stood in the hallway outside the bathroom. He felt the already piercing pain in his head and was truly afraid of what the light in that room would do to him. He would open the door, flip the switch, and his brain would rupture. If only the room had a window, then at least there might be a small amount of moonlight from outside. He couldn’t bring himself to use the room with the door open, because of the obvious potential for interruption and embarrassment. He hadn’t liked the feeling he’d gotten from Eddie at dinner, the way she licked her lips even when she wasn’t licking her lips, so he was particularly sensitive to the possibility of her finding him in a compromising position. Down at the end of the corridor was the door to Harley and Sumiko’s room and in there was another bathroom. It occurred to him that there might be a flashlight in the kitchen. He believed that everyone had one of those messy drawers with rubber bands, pliers, empty matchbooks, and maybe, just maybe a flashlight. He went into the kitchen and prowled about using the moon through the windows, finding the flatware and a drawer full of corkscrews, and finally their equivalent to his junk drawer, but it seemed frighteningly neat and was, after all, without a flashlight. As sometimes happens when one is engaged to the point of distraction, the urge to go suddenly disappeared. Michael decided to return to his room, close his eyes, and consider his predicament. He went back and put himself on the sofa only to find a leg already stretched across it. He jumped up and hit the switch for the overhead fixture. It was Eddie.

“What are you doing in here?” Michael asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She was wearing a gown made of flannel.

“You shouldn’t be in here. What if Simon wakes up? What if he were to come in here? What would he say seeing you sitting there like that?”

“Who cares what Simon says?”

“Well, Simon didn’t say you could come in here.” Michael felt silly saying that. “Is that really his name?”

Eddie nodded, sitting up and leaning toward him. “Sumiko said you tried to kill yourself.”

“What?”

“She said you ate paint.” Eddie swallowed. “I love the passion of that.”

“I see.” He walked over and sat beside her on the sofa. “I did eat paint, but I didn’t try to kill myself. I’m just a dumb shit. Now, I don’t know what kind of romantic picture you’ve concocted of me, nor what kind of game you’ve conjured up for us to play, but I’m not going to be a part of it.”

“You haven’t heard what I have in mind,” she said.

“I don’t need to hear it.” Michael’s brains pushed at the walls of his cranium. “I really think you should go on back to your room, okay?”

“A kiss first.”

“No.”

“Just one,” she said, pouting. “I’m good at it.”

“I’m sure.” Michael sighed. “Please?”

Eddie stood and slinked across the room toward the door, trying to achieve a seductive look in her flannel nightshirt. “I’m going,” she said.

Michael looked at her feet. They were enormous.

“Good night, Michael.”

When she was gone and his door was closed, he shut his eyes and pushed out a breath. His stomach began to hurt and he felt pressure again to find a toilet. There was no putting it off this time; he’d have to suffer the consequences of using the white room. He went out into the hall only to find the door closed and a stripe of light at the threshold. Eddie was in there doing god-knew-what and he didn’t dare knock and make it look as if he were coming after her. His stomach did a flip. He was in pain and in a hurry.

He made his way down the hall to his hosts’ bedroom door. He turned the knob slowly and pushed into the room. He could hear breathing. The darkness of his room and the hallway had helped his eyes adjust and with his pupils all dilated he was able to see around the bedroom by the light from outside. He saw what must have been the bathroom door and treaded softly toward it. About halfway across the room, he realized that the breathing he was hearing sounded a certain way. He then heard Sumiko’s small voice cooing, “Oh, my big steel baby,” and Michael thought he was going to die. He got into the bathroom and felt around on the wall for the light switch, then closed the door before throwing it. Pain detonated in his head like a blasting cap and the heat of it ripped through his eyes. This room turned out to be just as bright white as the other one. He was reeling and losing his balance, but he had a reason for being there and he managed to drop his trousers and sit on the toilet, covering his eyes with his hands.

Finished, Michael automatically reached back and flushed and immediately cringed at the subsequent noise. The tank filled and he listened at the door, learning that Harley and Sumiko hadn’t heard the plumbing because of their involvement. He tried not to focus on their sounds, but couldn’t help hearing them since his headaches always heightened his auditory capacity. He switched off the light, sat on the floor, and realized that when they were done, one of them would probably be headed his way.

Michael crawled across the floor to the tub and climbed into it. He pushed his back up against the cool enamel and waited, trying to think and not think at the same time. What was it with these windowless bathrooms? He froze at the sound of the door opening and closed his eyes, anticipating the light being turned on, but no switch was thrown and the room remained dark. A mere twelve inches and the shower curtain separated him from whom he was sure was Sumiko sitting on the toilet urinating; the sound was just like Gail’s. She even pulled paper off the roll before she was done like Gail. Michael’s heart was racing, but strangely his headache was letting up — yet another bit of evidence against the theory that his symptoms were stress-related. Sumiko finished, yawned, flushed, and left the room with the door open.

Several minutes dragged by and Michael thought he could hear Harley’s snoring. He pulled himself out of the tub and crawled across the icy tiles to the door, where he paused and satisfied himself that, indeed, Harley was snoring. He stayed on his hands and knees as he moved across the carpet of the bedroom and bumped into someone.

“I’ve been searching all over for you,” Eddie said.

Michael felt faint.

A light came on and the very first thing Michael saw was Eddie’s gangly and naked body on hands and knees right in front of him.

“What in the hell is going on?” yelled Harley who was sitting up in bed.

Michael stood up quickly, looking in horror at Eddie and then at Harley and finally Sumiko. Sumiko had the covers pulled up to her neck, but Harley was now standing, butt-naked beside the bed. Michael saw the man’s little penis and looked away, but what he confronted were naked Eddie’s enormous feet. Michael wanted to scream, but nothing rose from his throat, although a scream would have served as an appropriate and suitable accompaniment to the way he tore out of there.

Michael ran to the den, grabbed his shoes, jacket, and bag and bumped into Simon, who was coming out of the guest room into the hallway. Again, Michael wanted to let out some unintelligible shrill bellow and again his lungs failed him. He ran away from Simon, who stood confused and uncharacteristically silent in his red flannel pajamas. He reached the front door, turned the lock, and set off the loudest alarm he’d ever heard, a screeching horn that penetrated his head. In the background he could hear Harley say, “What in hell is going on here?!” and Simon say, “Edwina!” Michael ran to his truck, fumbled with his keys, got the engine started, and drove off as the lights of neighbors’ houses began to snap on. He looked over to find the head of the Dicotyles tajacu still on the seat beside him, still neatly wrapped.

Michael drove north out of Laramie into stiff and increasingly frigid wind. He thought of the fire that had consumed his recent work, recalled the odor of the burning oil-covered canvases. The Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow was dark, lonely, and most significantly, closed when he arrived there at three in the morning. He bundled up in his new sleeping bag and huddled up against the wall out of the wind. In the morning when the doors opened, he would sit down and order the mediocre breakfast fare for which the hotel was regionally famous and then continue north for the Big Horns where he would camp, fish, and probably freeze. He thought about the head of the Dicotyles tajacu on the passenger seat of his truck and wished it were alive; alive, so that he could let it go, watch it trot off on short, sturdy legs across the prairie. But it had no legs, it was just the severed head with a hole where an eye had been, and a fake eye at that, seeing nothing even in its newest, most firmly inserted condition. The head was only a head.