The Baby Blue Rip-Off

15

When the heat of the moment subsided, the cold of the air conditioner took over. My exposed backside was invaded by goose pimples, and they spread to the rest of me and then to the cooling body beneath me. We jumped up and got into our clothes as quickly as we’d gotten out of them. The only pause in the procedure was as I was slipping my shirt on, when Debbie took a moment to caress my bruised side with gentle, sympathetic fingertips.

Dressed again, we sat shyly next to each other on the couch, and as the coldness of the air conditioning had pretty much nipped in the bud any afterplay, we began to kiss, tentatively, like high school kids out parking for the first time. We must’ve kissed for an hour, making up for all that lost time from our adolescence. We kissed till our lips were numb. Necked is what we did, but no heavy petting. For some ungodly reason, after our horny humping on black imitation leather, I found myself chastely restraining my roving hands, touching nary a breast, plumbing not a panty. You figure it out.

After a while we stroked each other’s cheeks-a simultaneous, coincidental touching that made for a nice moment, giving a semblance of depth to our hastily thrown-together relationship. No talking had gone on for some time. We had nothing in particular to say to each other; this was just a renewal of that thing between us that had never gotten off the ground in previous years. There was a juvenile aspect to our coupling, our necking; we were a pair of would-be Wright Brothers who had given up the dream years ago and then come back in an age of jets with a terrific new glider.

We got up from the couch. Debbie straightened her clothes and poked at her hair, none of which affected the pleasantly tousled, just-been-had-and-liked-it look she had about her. I went to the big bay window and glanced out at darkness. We’d necked ourselves into evening. Considering how I had planned to get into my Sherlock Holmes number today, time had been wasted. But sex is never a waste of time, really. Or if it is, name some better way to waste it.

She asked what I wanted for supper, and I told her.

“Mal,” she blushed, “don’t be gross.”

A teenager’s word: gross. It was charming to hear her say that, somehow.

“All right, then,” I said. “What have you got that’s quick?”

“I make a mean plate of spaghetti. I have some French bread I got at the store this morning that’ll go with it perfect.”

“Good. Can I help?”

“What?”

“Can I help? Help you in the kitchen?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. Why would I be kidding?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that Pat….”

“Pat never helped you in the kitchen.”

“Nope,” she admitted, with a little grin. “Woman’s work. He’s never offered to help once.”

“Well then,” I said, rolling up imaginary sleeves, “let’s go into that kitchen and strike a blow for Women’s Lib.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s.”

I made the spaghetti. The noodle part, I mean. Got some water boiling in a big kettle and added some vegetable oil, just a drop, to keep the strands from sticking together, and stood and stirred and preened over the thing. Meanwhile Debbie was making a homemade sauce with an aroma an Italian would die for (or, if he was in the Mafia, kill for). She also took care of wrapping up the French bread in foil and shoving it in the oven.

Again, we didn’t say much as we made the meal, but we had a good time, bustling around together in the kitchen, in mutual effort. The meal was as enjoyable, and as silent, as its preparation. Debbie dimmed the lights in the kitchen, obscuring the contrast of shiny new appliances and ancient wall of cabinets, plopped a fat red candle down center-table, and lit it, sending a soft glow of light around the table as we ate. The candle was scented-strawberry, I think-it added much to the romantic atmosphere. All we lacked was some damn fool playing a violin.

After the wordless, candlelit dinner, Debbie shattered the mood with a flick of a light switch, and we were back in a kitchen again. I helped her clear the table (getting a raised eyebrow of wonderment) and went to the sink and got a sinkful of soapy suds going.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m washing the dishes. You dry.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No big chivalrous deal. I’m just used to a bachelor existence, in which I have to do my own chores anyway. I can’t afford a live-in maid.”

She joined me at the sink, got a towel from somewhere, and I handed her the dishes one by one as I cleaned them. “Well,” she said, “it’s a pleasant change from Pat. He likes me in the kitchen or in bed, and that’s about it.”

I shrugged. “I might be the same way if I were a married man. It’s pretty well instilled in our culture, don’t you think? We see our parents behaving in a pattern and we just fall into it ourselves after a time.”

“Even when we don’t like it?”

“Sure. Because it’s all we know.”

“I suppose you’re right. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“What would it have been like?”

“What would what have been like?”

“Us. You and me. If we had gotten together instead of Pat and me.”

“I don’t know. Different than you and Pat, sure. But not like it would be now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I’d married you straight out of high school, I’d be a different person than I am right now.”

“You mean if you hadn’t bummed around like you did for those years.”

“I take some issue with the term ‘bummed,’ my dear. I worked. Did a little of everything. Construction and cop, and a reporter for a while…. That was the best, I suppose, that last one. Bummed is not the word. Bummer might be, for the short time I was involved in the Haight-Ashbury scene.”

“How heavy were you into that? Drugs, I mean.”

“Not very heavy. Got scared out before much happened… to me, anyway. Was doing grass, which is no big thing, and was just into speed when, fortunately for me but unfortunately for him, this friend of mine overdosed on the stuff.” I shuddered at the involuntary image that flashed through my mind: my buddy Chuck, floating dead in his bathtub, his eyes two big, lifeless marbles, hair like so much dead seaweed. “It was a long time ago,” I said. I gave her a look that said I didn’t want to talk about that subject any longer.

But she pursued it just the same, in an oblique way, asking, “What made you do all that?”

“All what?”

“All of it… all those different jobs, and then the drugs….”

“I don’t know. I suppose it was just getting out of the service, after goddamn Vietnam. Coming home and having my folks die. Had nobody here in Port City, really-no relatives; most of my friends were moved away or married; I couldn’t see sticking around. So I took off and searched around, trying to find some way to make life… mean something, I guess. Same reason for the drug bit, too; some kind of half-ass search for meaning, for identity.”

She thought about that a second, then said, “Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“You think you’ll find it back here? In Port City?”

“No. I quit looking.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I decided to quit wasting my time looking for the Holy Grail. There ain’t none. I decided to accept my lot in life as just another dumb animal who won’t ever understand a goddamn thing.”

“How come you never got married?”

“Don’t know. Maybe I’m gay.”

She smiled and said, “I don’t think you’d have much luck convincing me of that.”

“Well, maybe I just haven’t met the right girl yet. Maybe I never really got over you, Debbie.”

“Don’t be silly! Besides, I’ve heard about you.”

“Heard what about me?”

“I got an aunt that lives over by you.”

“Oh?”

“And she’s told me about you. She’ll say, ‘You know what your old boyfriend’s up to now?’ And then she tells me. I know you sold a mystery book, too. I saw the article in the paper.”

“I didn’t know you’d stayed that interested in me.”

“Who says I was, silly. Maybe I just have a busybody aunt who likes to gossip.”

“Are you talking about Thelma Parker? Is she your aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you do have a busybody aunt at that. Ole Thelma Parker spends half her waking hours giving me the evil eye.”

Debbie giggled. “She even has binoculars.”

“No kidding?”

“She told me you were seeing a girl who worked at the hospital. What was she, a nurse or something?”

“Nope. Dietician out there. She’s the one you can thank for my being so well trained into doing the dishes and such. A real liberated female, that one.”

“I’m jealous.”

“Jealous? Christ, girl, you’re the one who’s married! I’m a poor bachelor who gets it on maybe a dozen times a year if he’s lucky, and you’re a mother and the veteran of a well-worn marriage bed to boot. It’s not like you been sitting around in a chastity belt for the last ten years, waiting for me to come home from the Crusades.”

She laughed and took the last of the dishes from me, wiped it off, and stacked it with the rest on the counter. “I’ll put ’em away later,” she said, and led me into the living room, back to the couch.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” she said, twining her fingers in my hair. “I can’t help being nosy about you. Can’t help wondering what you been up to all this time. And I can’t help wondering what it would’ve been like if things had worked out… different… with you and me.”

The shrill sound of the phone ringing out in the kitchen cut into our conversation.

Debbie rose to answer it, saying, “Be right back,” and headed out there.

I could hear her muffled voice, but couldn’t make out the words. She came back a few moments later, visibly shaken.

“It’s Pat,” she said.

“Yeah? Where was he calling from?”

“Downstairs. There’s a pay phone in the bar downstairs.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he knows you’re up here with me.”

This time he was right, wasn’t he? We had confirmed his suspicions; paranoia, as usual, was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Does he have a key?” I asked.

“No. I had the locks changed after he left.”

“Then to hell with him. We won’t let him in.”

“He says he wants you to come down there and… fight him like a man.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“He says if you don’t, he’ll come up here and break the door down. He… he has a knife.”

Pat hadn’t changed much over the years, had he? He was still sending people around telling me about him and his knife.

“What’s he going to do?” I asked. “Stab down the door? I say the hell with him. Forget about him.”

“No. No, that’s not the way to handle him. I’m going down and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“Oh Christ, Debbie, get serious….”

“Let me try.”

“Debbie.”

“Please.”

“Okay. He’s your husband. Do it however you want.”

“Thanks, Mal.”

“For what?”

I followed her through the bedroom into Cindy’s room. I stood beside the squat brown heater and watched her open the door and disappear from sight, going down the stairs. Her footsteps made slow, steady clops.

I waited. Listened.

I heard Debbie’s muffled voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.

And then a sound I could make out: the sharp sound of a slap. And another recognizable sound followed right after: that of feet scurrying up the stairs, panic-driven feet.

Debbie slammed the door and looked at me, her face crimson on the left side from the slap, and said, “He’s so drunk he’s crazy. He says… he says come down and fight him like a man, or he’ll come up here and… and cut you.”

Well.

Looked like Pat Nelson and I were going to have our showdown at last. High Noon had taken over a decade to get here, but here it was.

I walked to the door and opened it. Descended the stairs, the walls claustrophobically tight on me. Down at the bottom, in a pool of dim light from a twenty-five-watt bulb next to the tenant mailboxes, was Pat Nelson. I could smell the booze immediately, growing noticeably stronger as I neared him.

He was a mess. He was wearing a tee-shirt with booze soaked down the front of it; his blue jeans, too, were wet with liquor. He was tall, thin to the point of undernourishment, his cheeks still spotted with hints of acne; his hair was right out of the fifties: dyed blond greaser’s hair, with long dark skinny sideburns. His eyes drooped and his lower lip protruded, as if James Dean were the latest thing. His nose was pug, the sort a teenaged girl might find cute-which was his whole problem, really; he was somebody who’d been “cute” ten years ago and had tried to retain the image. He was what the phrase “callow youth” is all about, only he wasn’t a youth.

“Mallory,” he slurred, a near parody of a drunk, “you goddamn bastard, Mallory, put up your hands and fight like a man.”

I punched him once, right in his pug nose, and he went down like an armful of kindling wood.

I headed back up the stairs.

Behind me he was pulling himself back together, pulling himself back onto his feet like the Frankenstein monster coming to life for the first time.

“Mallory!” he shouted, and his voice echoed in the stairwell like somebody shouting down a crap hole. “Mallory, you goddamn bastard, what are you doing with my wife in there!”

And he scrambled up the steps, which I’d climbed about halfway, and I turned my head and saw the glint of his knife in his hand. When I turned, he froze, down two steps from me, and held the knife up for me to see and be scared of.

But it was just a little thing-shiny, probably razor sharp, but a real anticlimax, not much bigger than a pen knife. Oh, it could kill you, but I couldn’t see getting upset about it.

I was just high enough above him to be able to kick the thing out of his hand, and it went clumpety-clump down a couple of steps and lay there. Then I gave him a hard forearm across the chest, and he went clumpety-clump down all the steps and lay there. It wasn’t far enough a fall to hurt him bad, and he was too drunk to feel it, and after he’d looked up at me drunkenly for a moment, he went to sleep.

I walked to the top of the stairs, where I found Debbie standing in the doorway, her face ashen. But she said nothing.

We spent a quiet evening listening to old records that had been popular when we were in school, and when we talked, it wasn’t about Pat, but about old times and old friends, and sometimes about her daughter Cindy. We slept on the couch under a light blanket that protected us from the chugging air conditioner; it was cramped there on the couch, but Debbie was small and we made a nice fit, and neither one of us felt like sleeping in their bed-Pat’s and hers-though it never came up in conversation.