Nightlines

IX

Do you wonder what I look like?"

"I'm glad you're curious about whether I do," Nudger told Claudia. He was seated again at midnight in the dimness of his office, wrapped in the soft yellow illumination from his desk lamp, the telephone receiver gripped like a handle affixed to the side of his face. "It suggests that you might be interested."

"In you?"

"No," he told her, "in you."

"Maybe it amounts to the same thing."

"Oh, it does. And I do wonder, Claudia. Why don't you describe yourself?"

She didn't speak for a while. There was a sound in the phone that Nudger couldn't identify, a rising and falling, a distant, rushing roar. Not interference on the line; he was sure of that.

"I'm… average," she said at last.

Nudger harrumphed into the phone. "Average, huh? Tall? Short? Blue eyes, or brown? Young, old, fat, lean, brunette, blonde, straight, or stooped? Nobody's average. Only people who sell things believe that."

He thought she might be annoyed by his persistence, but she wasn't. "All right," she said, with subsurface laughter in her voice, "I'm thirty-six years old, medium height, brunette with brown eyes, not too fat or thin, with reasonably good posture."

"Sounds average," Nudger said.

"I warned you. I never claimed I was a finalist in a beauty contest."

"Who would want you to be? Anyway, a thing so slight as a twitch in the flank can knock you out of the finals in those contests. And maybe I'm enamored of average. Maybe I like ranch houses, four-door sedans, two-fifty hitters, and plain vanilla ice cream-two scoops."

"No," she said, "you're not average."

"I strive not to be," Nudger admitted. "For instance, I often wear my brown shoes with my gray suit, just to shake things up. I try to vary my schedule in all things. Maybe it would be a good idea for us to get out of this rut and talk when the sun is out."

"I work during the day," she said simply.

"Every day?"

"Almost. But not tomorrow." Again Nudger heard that soft, peculiar rushing sound on the other end of the connection, a murmur at first, building to a crescendo and then tapering to silence. He considered asking Claudia what the sound was, then decided not to tip her to the one clue he had as to her whereabouts. "Maybe we can talk again tomorrow," she said, almost grudgingly. "Will you be at your number in the afternoon?"

"I can't promise," Nudger told her. "Why don't you give me a definite time?"

"No," she said. "If you don't answer the phone, I'll try to get through to you again."

"Do you promise?"

"Of course not."

"It would be easier if we simply met somewhere," Nudger suggested. "Are you afraid you'll be disappointed?"

"No. And I'm not afraid you will. Isn't that really what you were implying?"

"Don't get all defensive on me, please," Nudger said.

He heard her breathe out into the receiver. "All right, I'm sorry. It's just that if we talk in person, there'll be no way to cut short a gorilla joke."

Actually, her defensiveness was exactly the sort of response Nudger wanted from her. She seemed to have acquired a degree of resilience. She seemed to have moved much farther away from the gun, rope, pills, or whatever means she had been considering to furnish her transportation beyond this vale of tears. But Nudger knew the unpredictability of people actually contemplating suicide, the dark cloud on the mind, unexplainable, that came and went as if by whims of capricious breezes. A distorted face flashed vividly in Nudger's mind. It belonged to a man he and Hammersmith had found over ten years ago hanging in a garage. He was dressed in women's clothing and had killed that side of himself he loathed. Nudger had been told it wasn't uncommon.

"I don't mean to push," he told Claudia, still haunted by the macabre memory.

She must have picked up the concern in his voice. "You don't push," she said. "I say ouch too quickly; I admit that." Again the rushing roar, then silence.

"Don't say ouch, Claudia, just push back. I won't mind. I have a thick skin."

She laughed loudly, a little too shrilly. "No, you don't. That's one reason you were able to… draw me back from where I was going. When we talked that first night, I somehow knew right away that you were as vulnerable as I."

Nudger felt the heat of an almost adolescent blush. This was absurd, to form a close electronic relationship with a woman he'd never met. A relationship so intimate that she could make him react this way. This was self-deception raised to an art. This was the masochism of truth.

"If I've touched a sensitive nerve, embarrassed you…" Her voice was apologetic.

"No," Nudger lied, "you haven't embarrassed me. Or if you have, I deserve it." The hell with this pain of revelation. "I still think we should get together, lie to each other like other people. It might be refreshing not to suffer."

"Maybe someday," she said. "I'm going to hang up now, Nudger. I've got to get some sleep so I'll be able to get out of bed to go to work tomorrow."

"You told me you were off tomorrow."

"I'm only working in the morning. You probably have to go to work, too."

"Not me. I've got nothing to do but amble to my safety deposit box and clip coupons, then phone my broker. I usually start around noon. It's a good life even if somewhat monotonous."

When she didn't speak, Nudger thought she might have taken him seriously.

"Actually," he said, "I was lying. The only coupons I clip are the kind that save a dime at the supermarket, and my broker doesn't return my calls."

"You weren't lying, Nudger. You were just telling the truth in your own way. A kind of reverse English."

"Freud is dead," he snapped at her, but she had hung up.

He fitted the receiver in its cradle and, with his fingertips still resting on it, sat in the warm dimness trying to figure out the source of the sound he'd heard in Claudia's phone.

Not intermittent rushes of nearby traffic, not distant trains or planes or… ships.

The sea! That was what the sound reminded him of more than anything else. The occasional rush of a wave onto the beach, a loud sigh of surf that reached a higher decibel range when the infrequent huge breaker roared in from the sea.

He rubbed his hand over his face, as if to erase worry lines, and shook his head. The trouble with the surf theory was that the nightlines were strictly local, and the nearest ocean to St. Louis was almost a thousand miles away.

Nudger decided not to think about Claudia or the eerie sound on the phone or anything else for a while. He was tired enough to have slumped in his chair without realizing it, and gravity was getting the better of his eyelids. Forcing himself to sit up straight, he considered drinking a cup of coffee.

Then he decided that staying awake would be pointless. Whatever he might accomplish tonight-this morning- would be easier done after he'd slept. He was at the point where whatever drowsiness he endured now would simply add to his sluggishness after sunup. Rather than fight his weariness, he leaned over the desk, cradled his head in his arms, and dozed with the scent of old varnished wood inches below his nose. There was a memory jogger. Nap time in elementary school. "Heads on those desks, children." Catching a stolen wink or two in high school or college. "Are we disturbing your slumber, young Mr. Nudger?"

He ignored the teacher. He was on the beach, his cheek pressed into a rough, warm towel that gave with the soft sand beneath it. A hot sun made his bare back tingle pleasantly. He heard the ocean nearby, sighing deeply and evenly like something gigantic in hibernation in a dark cave of the mind. A gull screamed. A gull rang. A spindly-legged sandpiper hopped delicately across the hot beach to Nudger, extended a fingertipped wing, and, raising his sunglasses so it could see his eyes, said, "It's for you. Rates are cheaper after nine. Reach out and-"

Nudger was awake in the morning-bright office and the receiver was in his hand. He must have reached for it in his sleep. He brought it to his ear. Danny's voice said, "Short notice, Nudge, but I thought you'd wanna know trouble's coming your way."

Nudger was aware of footsteps, someone climbing the narrow stairs from the street door. He thanked Danny for the warning and hung up the phone, picturing the substantial Hugo Rumbo while trying to recall if he'd locked the office door. He had, he hadn't, he had, he hadn't. He hadn't!

A board on the landing creaked. A familiar sound. Whoever was out there was at the top of the stairs. Nudger would have opened a desk drawer and reached for his gun, if he'd owned a gun. His stomach and heart seemed to be fighting for the same cramped space in his throat as he stood up and leaned steeply forward, supporting himself shakily with his arms locked at the elbows and his hands palms-down on the desk. He found himself unable to look away from the prismatic glass doorknob on his office door.

The knob rotated. The door opened.

Eileen stepped in.

"Startle you?" she asked.

Nudger sat down, leaned back, and breathed out hard. "You startled me," he confirmed.

"I meant to. It seems to be the only way I can capture your attention."

Nudger smoothed back his hair with his fingers, straightened his collar, and gave her his attention. She was still an attractive woman, trim and neatly groomed, with a kind of wholesomeness about her that would have carried her far as an actress playing typical homemakers in television commercials. Though a delicate woman with a certain frilliness about her, she had a robust complexion, large and perfectly aligned very white teeth, and shapely, strong-looking hands. It all suggested that good health meant good sex, and wasn't far off the mark.

Why had they lost both love and lust for each other? Nudger thought sometimes that it was the ungodly and unpredictable hours he worked. Or was it the sterility of the suburban plot they had called home? Whatever had caused the widening gap between them was still a mystery, as it probably remained in most divorces. Nudger only knew that when she suggested the divorce he had felt not only shock but also undeniable relief. A lightning comprehension-or admission. He, too, wanted to live a life different from the one they shared. Eileen had seen that in him as soon as she'd brought up the subject of a divorce as a possible alternative, and that was that. In that instant it had been transformed from an alternative to an inevitability.

Such were the complexities of the human heart. Or maybe it was simpler and less poetic than that. Maybe he'd decided subconsciously to leave her when he heard her use the word "cute" three times in one sentence, there on the phone in that suburban frame house that was like the neighboring houses on either side. But he was being unfair. He knew that his reaction to that triple-cute was probably only symptomatic of their real problem.

"You still have it," he told her.

She smiled. "Thank you."

"I mean, you still have my attention." He hadn't meant to hurt her.

Smile gone. "And you still have a way with words, and I still don't have my money. Almost a thousand dollars now in back alimony."

"Eight hundred fifty-three dollars and some odd cents," Nudger corrected.

"Nine hundred."

He shrugged. "Whatever." Or did he enjoy taunting her? "I have the exact amount written down."

"But not written where it counts-on a check made out to me." He had made her angry. She began to stalk about the office, rotating her high heels slightly with each slow step as if grinding despicable small objects into the floor. She had on those silver shoes with the tiny black bows, like the pair Jeanette Boyington wore. Nudger felt that he might be developing a dislike for those shoes.

"You'll get the money," he said. "You know that."

She stopped pacing and wheeled to glare at him. "But I want you to know that. If I don't have a check in my mail by the end of next week, I'm taking you back to court."

"Eileen, you know what they say about not being able to squeeze blood from a turnip."

He could almost feel the heat from her eyes as she said, "I'll settle for whatever oozes out."

Nudger's nervous stomach growled. It seemed to develop a language all its own when Eileen was around. It was a good thing she didn't know what she had just been called.

"I'm giving you more than a week," she reminded him. "That should leave you plenty of time to raise the money."

"What I don't have is plenty of collateral."

She lifted her shoulders eloquently, flicked lint from her sleeve onto his floor. "That's a problem you let develop. You should have gone back on the police force. You should have been paying me all along."

He smiled and shook his head sadly. "I couldn't go back, Eileen. And I can't get a loan."

She advanced a step and cocked her head sharply sideways. "Are you saying you're not going to pay me?" A long- nailed forefinger was aimed like a gun at him, loaded with ammunition provided by a divorce court judge. They were bullets that stayed in the wounds and festered.

Nudger stared at that steady finger and remembered the divorce proceedings. Eileen's lawyer was about the slickest courtroom manipulator he had ever seen. So convincing was the man that even Nudger thought the exorbitant alimony Eileen had been granted was justifiable, until several hours had passed in the real world outside the illusion- ary but credible world the lawyer had created for just long enough inside the courtroom. By then it was too late. His own lawyer had phoned to apologize, cutting the conversation short so he wouldn't be late for his remedial law classes.

"Of course I plan to pay you," Nudger said to Eileen, wondering how the two of them had come to this. And if they would have if the divorce had been over something simple, or at least definable, like an extramarital affair. They were both basically decent people.

"When and how much?" she asked.

"Soon, and all-well, half."

She smiled as if she'd caught him breaking his diet at midnight. He remembered that beautiful, impenetrable skepticism. "I thought you had no collateral, no resources."

"Someone owes me money from a job," he said.

"And when will you be paid so I can be?"

"That depends. Should be any day. The Ringo case has been wrapped up for weeks."

"Ringo? Sounds like a bookie or police character. What makes you think this Ringo pays his bills?"

"He'll pay. He's from a good family. Breeding tells."

She sighed and scowled at him. Such a naughty boy he was. "All right," she said. "I expect five hundred dollars by the end of next week, or it's back to court. No more deals."

"That's reasonable enough," Nudger said, reinforcing her spirit of compromise.

"And if this Ringo tells you he can't pay, I want to know about it."

"He's not the type to tell anyone that," Nudger assured her.

As Eileen started toward the door, she paused and looked around the office as if finally noticing her surroundings. Her upper lip curled as if she'd just discovered a hair in her salad. Nudger knew that she was making plenty of money selling one of those all-purpose home product lines while recruiting more salespeople. It was like a pyramid. She was a distributor now, with her own network of salespeople and a disproportionate cut of everyone's take. To her, way up near the peak of the pyramid, this was poverty.

"How can you stand it here?" she asked.

Nudger felt anger dig its claws into his guts. But he knew the folly of stumbling into an argument with Eileen at this point. She was inviting him to thrash around in quicksand.

"The roof doesn't leak," he said, "and the rent is cheap, so I can save up and make alimony payments."

She was smiling as she left. He didn't get up to show her out.

To think that theirs had begun as an amicable divorce.

She certainly wasn't the woman he'd married. But didn't every divorced man think that about his ex? And since she'd gotten into sales, Eileen had become particularly bitchy and aggressive. Perhaps that rapacious aspect of her personality had been there all along beneath the surface, held submerged by her socially imposed self-image and the demanding but stifling roles of helpmate and homemaker, and the divorce had freed that part of her. Whatever the reason, the beast was on the loose. Nudger had married a female Dr. Jekyll; now he was contending with Ms. Hyde. These things happened in the chemistry of human relationships. Maybe people should never marry; maybe it was tinkering with the laws of nature and that's why staying married was so tough. It was something for the marriage counselors and psychologists to consider.

Nudger returned his head to the cradle of his arms, and dreamed again of the sea.