Ride the lightning

XXX

The apartment on Wilmington was neat and smelled of lemon-scented furniture wax, as if Claudia had just a moment ago finished cleaning and everything was still precisely in place. Maybe she wanted to talk to Nudger in surroundings as orderly as possible, so that their conversation would take on the same symmetry and manageability.

She was wearing her plain navy-blue dress and had her dark hair pulled back and pinned behind her ears, from where it was allowed to fall to below her shoulders. She looked startlingly beautiful to Nudger, her lean features made perfect by the late-afternoon light. It was four o'clock exactly. Nudger needed to see Claudia as early as possible in order to get to the Right Steer when Candy Ann got off work.

Candy Ann was on Claudia's mind, too. When Nudger had sat down on the sofa, she said, "Someone at the school was kind enough to show me your photograph in the paper. The one of you stepping down out of a trailer, wearing an expression that must have been a lot like Lancelot's when he left Guinevere's room." A crisp, almost reprimanding tone had crept into her voice.

"I don't think Camelot reads quite like that."

"I was striving for effect."

"This someone who showed you the photograph, was his name Archway?"

She shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "It doesn't matter." She was nervous. She took a few steps left, a few right, and wound up standing again in front of Nudger. "Since you spent the night with that girl, I thought maybe we could find some common ground, come to an understanding."

"You don't object that I saw her?"

"I don't have the right to object. Not to anyone you see. And vice versa. That's what I keep trying to get across to you."

"How do you know I spent the night with her?" Nudger asked.

Claudia seemed slightly surprised. "The newspaper said so."

"Oh, I didn't know; I only looked at the photographs, then threw my copy away. I haven't believed anything in that paper since the crippled-UFO story. The one where aliens broke into a Shell station and stole an ordinary automobile battery-"

"Are you going to tell me you didn't sleep with her?" Claudia interrupted. Nudger thought he picked up a note of jealousy in the question. Yes, he was sure of it.

"I slept with her," he said. He watched Claudia wince ever so slightly. "But without sex. Her fiance was ritualisti- cally toasted to death that day; she needed somebody with her. That was what all our time together was about. She needed consoling."

"And you happened to be the one to console her. All night."

"That's how it went," Nudger said.

Claudia sat down in the chair near the window. The filtered light streaming through the sheer curtains made her look ten years younger, softened her features yet lent them the intensity of youth. He recognized the bloodless, pale tightness at the corners of her lips, the subtle flare of her nostrils. She was feeling plenty ornery now, mad that she was put in the position of having made love to Archway while here was Nudger saying he'd been chaste since their argument, a saint of a guy. This was embarrassing and infuriating.

"I've always heard that men's consciences didn't apply below the belt line," she said.

"That's true about us only up to around age forty."

"It isn't important. The thing is, you spent the night with that woman. I confess I suffered some of the jealousy you must have felt when you found me with Biff. Some of the pain."

"Jesus, Claudia, a guy named Biff."

Her dark eyes narrowed. "Are you making a joke of this?"

"No."

"I want us to start seeing each other again, under different circumstances. I want to see other men occasionally, and you can see other women."

"By 'other men,' do you mean Archway?"

She shook her head. "No. He doesn't really matter. Never did. Besides, he's dating the girls' field-hockey coach, and has been for the past several months."

"She might be more his type. Does she crush the can after she drinks her beer?" "Ease up, Nudger." A warning, not issued lightly.

"If Biff is out of the picture, and you want me back in, why do you have to go out with other men? Are you suddenly becoming nymphomaniacal?"

Her voice rose; she was strung even tighter than Nudger had thought. "Sex has nothing, or at least not everything, to do with it. Dr. Oliver told me you'd been to see him, that he'd explained things to you. Can't you understand and accept this independence and freedom in our relationship?"

"It will take some getting used to," Nudger said. He got up, walked into the kitchen, and got a can of beer from the refrigerator, making himself at home. Miller Lite was in there, not his brand. Whose, then? Biff's and the hockey coach's? He returned to the living room, wiping foam from his chin. "I'm not sure I can get used to it."

"I don't want to hurt you," Claudia said. "That's the thing I've never wanted in all of this. But the marriage with Ralph, what happened to end it… I need to break out of the box that put me in. Completely out. I need to discover who I really am."

That kind of talk made Nudger mad. "That's college- sophomore rhetoric, Claudia. What next? Are you going to tie a bandana around your head and hitchhike cross-country? It's the wrong decade for that. The people who did that kind of thing are living in condos and driving Volvos now, or playing Vegas. If you want to find out who you really are, check your driver's license."

She stood up, her fists clenched. Uh-oh! He knew he'd gone too far. Maybe way too far.

"Damn it, Nudger! If you don't care about me, the hell with you! That's how trapped I am in myself; the only way I can try to express it is in cliches and stilted sixties dialogue. If I could understand and articulate it, do you think I'd be suffering from it?"

"Probably not, according to Oliver," Nudger said.

"Don't criticize Dr. Oliver. He saved my life."

Which was more or less true.

She was calmer now. She didn't want to admit that Nudger had also saved her life, but she realized it and it sobered her. Right now, he didn't want her gratitude.

He took a swig of beer, walked over, and kissed her on the mouth. That felt good. Throw a little unexpected machismo on her, like in the movies. Gets 'em every time.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" she asked, and shoved him away so hard he almost tumbled backward. "I'm trying to talk."

"Maybe all this talk is what's wrong between us." Well, that and timing.

"Fuck you, Nudger. If that's the way you're thinking, go back to your scrawny blonde."

"Ah, you're more jealous than you thought! Dr. Oliver would say that was good for you."

"You son of a bitch!" She picked up a magazine from a table and threw it at him so hard it separated in midair, pages fluttering all over the room. She was left clutching the ripped and crumpled cover in her fist:

He wondered what was going on. Never had he seen her lose her temper this way. He liked it. Archway might flip him around like pizza crust, but he could handle this one. Could he ever!

He dived in on her low, grabbed her around the waist, and wrestled her to the carpet. She was strong, but he'd surprised her. That felt good.

She pounded his back with her fists. "Rape!" she said. "This is goddamned rape!"

"Robbery," Nudger told her, rolling on top of her. "I only want your purse."

"You know I don't have a purse!" she shouted, as he bit her earlobe. "Ouch, you idiot! Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," Nudger said, "maybe it is rape. I suppose I have options."

"The neighbors!" she said. "The neighbors around here will hear this and get up a petition to have me move. You don't know these people!"

"You're probably their entertainment," he said. "They have genitalia; they understand."

"Nudger, I'm serious!"

He ran a fingertip lightly along the side of her neck until she twitched involuntarily. She grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked hard, twisting.

"That feel sexy?" she asked.

"Makes me wish I wore a toupee. The joke'd be on you."

"Some rapist."

She released her grip and let her hand drop. There was a strand of hair snagged beneath one of her fingernails.

Nudger was out of breath. Middle-aged guy rolling around on the carpet. Whew! Out of shape. Not Biff.

She shoved him off her and he fell to the side, laughing. They were both laughing, but Claudia was holding her ear, not laughing as hard as he was.

She sat cross-legged next to him. After a while, she bent down and kissed him gently on the forehead.

"Stay with me tonight," she said.

"Under our new agreement?"

She nodded, smiling down at him.

He rolled over onto his hands and knees, caught his breath, and managed to get to his feet. His side was aching but he didn't care.

"Can't stay," he said. "Not tonight."

She stood up gracefully and brushed the wrinkles out of her dress. She wanted to ask him where he was going, but she wouldn't.

"I'll try to come back later. That is, if you aren't going to be with Archway. I've still got my key; it's just been stabbing me in the hip."

"I told you, I don't plan to see Biff again. What about you? Do you plan on seeing Candy Ann Adams anymore?"

Nudger nodded, tucking in his shirt. "I'm going to see her tonight," he said. "Business."

Claudia didn't comment on that, but it was obvious that she disapproved. She pulled a bobby pin from the side of her hair and clamped it in her teeth, rearranged a few errant strands, then replaced it. All very quickly and smoothly. Elegantly. The deftness of women with bobby pins always amazed him.

He said, "Mostly business, anyway."

He went out in a hurry and closed the door behind him, leaving Claudia alone to get used to their new arrangement.

As he was walking toward the stairs, he thought he heard something break inside the apartment, but he wasn't sure.

The neighbors remembered him from last time. The ones who'd been mowing then were polishing now, the ones who'd been polishing were mowing. They stopped working for a moment to stare. The last time they'd seen him he was walking doubled over like a guy who'd just been shot everywhere that wasn't fatal. He wondered how much they knew about him and Claudia. And about Claudia and Biff Archway. He stared back and they resumed their tidy tasks with fresh diligence.

Nudger started the Volkswagen and pulled away from the curb to the racketing of a dozen power mowers, on his way to the Right Steer Steakhouse.

Halfway down the block, an ancient, gray-haired guy buffing a vintage station wagon grinned wolfishly and gave him a jaunty salute.