Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (9 page)

Riff put off pleasures, even nearly invisible ones, and when
interested in anything, he became extremely methodical. He liked a lot of small tasks like completing picture puzzles. They filled otherwise empty time with a satisfactory sense of healing and repair. Large chores overwhelmed him. They had no parts. They simply loomed, while Riff tended to stand and stare. Finally he tugged at the zipper and the zipper retreated over the small opening it had made. Bother, I’ve a ladder, Eleanor said. Let me climb it to the stars, Walt exclaimed. Eleanor’s laugh was light but it had no length. Men, was all she said. Walt remembered going then and kissing her leg through one of the ladders, a square formed by threads. After that he kissed the other leg, which was bare; he kissed her hungrily, high on her thigh. Men. She pinched his left earlobe between nails she had coated with red enamel.

Riff drew out a substantial volume. It had no jacket and its spine was badly rubbed.
Barrett Wendell and His Letters
, the cover said. Barrett Wendell and his letters? Who’s Barrett Wendell? Has heft. By M. A. De Wolfe Howe. My my. Hoity. Titled like his letters were his dog. Having made the comparison, Riff wondered what sort of dog. His mind had a habit of wandering off like that.

He blew along Barrett Wendell’s top edge. This Wendell was a professor of law at Harvard. Well. Here’s a book about his letters by a guy at Harvard Law, Riff said. Sometimes he said things out loud. Sometimes he said things under his breath. Sometimes he said things in the dark back of his head. Often he wasn’t aware which. But chitchat had its comforts. The places he went he never heard birds. From 1924. Imagine. The Distant Past. He pushed the book into its slot. Out of Boston of course. Anywhere else old Wendell was doubtless not even a shade. Hoof. I thought these cabinets were supposed to protect books from dust. They don’t do a damn thing concerning that, Riff said, blowing again. Here’s a jazzy paper jacket.
SuperCity … 
SuperCity
. Harry Hershfield. Um. Publish a book, you must think you’re famous. Girls rub up against you like cats. Money pours in. When? 1930. Gone now. Forgotten. Never heard of, hide nor hair. There was an advertisement on its back flap for a volume by Boris de Tanko. Boris de Tanko? If there was ever a made-up moniker … 
The World’s Orphan
. Um. “Read it!” the ad commanded. “It will make a better man or woman of you!”

Better man, baloney, Riff said. They were doubtless dirty before they were racked in the cabinet. Likely they were just lifted off some stack as had been sitting on the attic floor and stuffed in the case to look solemn and pretty. But why put a big old broad like this secretary in such a dinky overnite room? Riff did fidgets with his fingers. Jeez. Grainier than graphite. Need a wash. Riff always closed the door to the bathroom, even when alone, even when his room was safely chained and double-bolted, because he was rarely really alone. He had his little tasks. He had his chat. Riff unwrapped the reconstituted chip of soap and rinsed the secretary off his hands. Then pissed and cursed because he knew he ought to wash his hands again. He had a love of order but order didn’t always return the favor. Riffaterre, you can’t do anything right, Walt said. You kiss good, sometimes, Eleanor said, giving the bed back to his bag.

Back on the bed, Riff sat. Picked out a ceiling corner. Caught a glimpse of himself in the distant mirror. Then, beside the bed where Riff sat, on the little table where a dead digital waited, he noticed a rose leaning out of a clear glass vase, its prominent thorns enlarged by the water in the bowl whose base made a series of semi-circular shadows on the table’s varnished top. A surprise. It was accompanied by three sprays of coarse green saw-edged leaves—ah—through which aphids—likely—had eaten needle-sized holes—maybe while they were growing in the nursery’s fields. So sort of secondhand. No surprise there. The dark clock hadn’t a thing to say either. The punctures, through
which a bit of the wall showed, had to precede the bud toward its unreachable bloom, the bud’s red edges already dark, for it was dead, though it didn’t appear to know it yet, as if bred to be a bud, to open like a door that’s left ajar, to remain say a day in half light, half past, half night, before it’s tossed into the trash by the maid, who may speak Spanish to it while her sweeper hums, who may herself be Rose by name, and who will perhaps lean a little from a little nail she stepped on when she was a kid, and then neglected till it festered a fourth of her foot off, skin a gray-green then, flesh odorous. Riff realized he’d rather put Eleanor back on her back in bed. Yet he couldn’t help reflecting. Examining the motel’s homey touch. The forlorn flower.

Well. Weren’t they cut when kids like Christmas trees? to begin death, their big moment, alive in some water their stems’ll discolor? Yes, Riff thought. Dying, they’ll grow drowsy. Their features will loosen. An eyelid or a lip will be released without a signal, and by one a.m. a bare stem will stand in a shudder of petals. This didn’t cheer him. Spare me your touches. Budget should be budget. Riff laughed when he realized what he’d said. And felt better.

Thought he might as well take a gander at another. Got up. Thin arty thing, title in silver on a limp chartreuse cover, but writ in a swirly hand you couldn’t decipher. Inside, Riff read
Whisps of Mist
. Its gray-green letters were quite legible. Surrounded by holly leaves or some such. Hotsy-totsy. The book was a dusty green, a yellow green. A green gone or going. By … by Gwen Frostic. Come on. Jeez. If there was ever a fakeroo of a nom de plume … Lavishly illustrated by the author. Drawings of seeds, ladybugs, birds, trees, landscape, sky. On rich rough-cut paper. Everything grayed and aged, soft as wood ash. Gwen must be good. You’d love this, mom, listen. Privately printed too. Gwen must be real good to get a private printing. Likely worth a lot, this book. Listen. “On and on it goes …” ah … “each
season in its glory …” um … “blinding …” no … “blending with the next.” Hey, whadya think? Poems.

His mother always sat in the best chair. He saved the best for her to sit in. With her big purse on her lap she sat in the chair he had saved. Knees together under a tent-sized skirt. She sat the way sitters sit: still as the paint they would become. So tonight she’d be sitting in the nearly stuffed chair by the window, next to the air-conditioning knobs. Big white bosomy blouse she often wore for—was it midweek?—for sitting midweekly, quiet unless addressed.

I think a person ought to keep her feelings fastened to her family and not let them fly about on leafs that got, you said, bugs on them. Ladybugs, mom, the harmless ones, with the tiny black polka dots. I think a person ought to keep her feelings fastened to her family and not let them fly about on leafs that got ladybugs on them. A rose in your room though. That’s nice.

How these designs did date.
SuperCity
by Harry Hershfield. I looked at this one already, Riff reminded himself. The jacket pictured a jazzy riff of buildings, shooting up like rockets yet all atumble. Riff. That’s me, but me is hardly jazzy. I never heard of Elf. Some abbreviation? Published in 1930—do tell—what a year!—by The Elf. Elf? “It will make a better man or woman of you!”

Baloney. Don’t need to heft
Barrett Wendell
again. But he did. It did have heft. It did. And this?
Martin Meyer’s Moneybook
. Here—Riff held the book high so she could see—right on the cover—can’t miss it—in redblackyellow letters like a crowd—mom—listen, the cover says, “Yes, you can earn 10.4% to 23.5% on your savings—federally insured.” A subject I know something … I knew … oh well … What?
Once Around Lightly
? Is that a novel? No, it’s travel. I get it. Around the world on small bills and a single suitcase. Just Riff’s speed. These can’t be leftovers, these books, which the motel has recovered from
its rooms.
How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market
. Oh yeah. Not likely, Mister—Mister Darvas. If you’re so rich whadya writing books for? telling people how to make money too, right mom? if he’s so good why isn’t he still hand-over-fisting it? It was funny, Riff thought, because, in a way, Riff unmade money. He made profits take a trip. Once around lightly.

More swill than the sow can swallow—that much money—mom said, repeating a bit of wisdom from her almanac.

When Riff was a kid,
around the world
meant getting your ass kissed and your cock sucked. He had to watch the way he mouthed his thoughts. Eleanor did dirty well enough but she didn’t like the dirties dirty-worded.

Walter was a traveling cut-rate accountant. He wondered what old law school prof Wendell would think of his job, because he moved from town to town and firm to firm—little loose ones mostly, like buttons about to come off—and cooked books until their figures resembled fudge. He issued statements saying all was well, which it was when he got through erasing and rewriting. Ah, but he loved account books, sheets of green-blue lines like represented rain. He loved pawing through papers, he often told himself, licking his fingers to part sheets—there was nothing lovelier than the lavender and amber and violet of faded inks—or sitting in strange offices where stamps were kept in cigar boxes and stacks of flat nubble-covered ledgers loomed and filing cases opened like fridge crispers. Where he faced row after row of drawers with brass name holders and lovely curved tugs. Where lights hung from their wires beneath green metal shades. A lot of the ledgers were dusty too, like these books. He’d had a good deal of dustpuff practice.

When he had slipped over the line and begun his itinerant practice, he had been cocky about his cut corners, his helpful little cheats. He wanted to brag in bars about it—about his legerdemain—but he knew he didn’t dare, and he couldn’t tell
his mom of course or Kim or Miz Biz or Eleanor either. All that pride like held breath. But the breath that would have gone into boasting began to leak out after a while, because he never made much money at it, his clients stiffed him sometimes, he had to keep changing his firm’s name, and sack his secretary, because he had a secretary once, he called her Miz Biz, as odd in his office as this one was here in his measly motel room, hulking up the air, with the books behind glass to pass for fancy, though Miz Biz was easy if empty under her skirt of any love, and when he fired her for financial reasons, and for safety first, of course, she wasn’t willing to become even absent ash in an empty tray, to leave a pin like a shine in some dark desk drawer when she went away. She hadn’t said a swear. Made no thanks. Uttered no regrets. Issued no threats. Not a single expletive was expleted. She didn’t snarl, say: why don’t you get fucked by a prick that’s diseased, or: I hope a tornado gives you a blow job. She didn’t crack a single joke of any coarse kind though she was one of the original cursing kids. No rage. No threats. No regrets. Girl her age too. Couldn’t spell. Miz Biz should have read
The World’s Orphan
. What do you suppose it said? Her glassy black shoes went clack, and that was that.

Maxims don’t make mother happy, mom said, and I bet it was a book of maxims.

Is a book, mom. Is. Somewhere. In the maybe abandoned maybe burned out maybe demolished offices of The Elf.

Clean hands make an honest handshake.

Maxims did make his mother happy but they had to be hers.

He should shower, he thought. He’d had a tough day. All that guy did was deal in apple cider vinegar. Lots of fruit trees along the river down there. Apple cider vinegar. Yet what a mess his loan life was, his inventory. Jeez. Had to pretend he was robbed. Mister Write Off, that’s me. No profit except in loss. Of this he never spoke—of course—aloud. Riff didn’t sing in the shower.
He’d seen too many murder movies. Riff sang sitting on the john. He sang Neapolitans he made up as he went along: O solo meoh O Jones’ cow I can’t forget you Not anyhow. Maybe he should try singing something different. On and on it goes … each … something … season in its worry … yeah … contending with the next.

Gol’amighty, mom, don’t sit so close to the AC, you’ll catch a crink sure. So sit me somewhere else, sonny, she said back, as unwinking as a stuffed toy.

Catherine Carter
. Pamela Hansford Johnson. What a mouthful. Which one’s the author? Catherine Carter sounds canned. Like Betty Crocker.
Politics Among Nations
. Hey. Second edition. Hoo, Heavy. Hans Morganthau. There’s a weighty label. Just the ticket. Germanically serious author—that’s what that Hans has to be. Still, who cares?
Economics. Principles and Applications
. Another something Riff knew … Published in Cincinnati? He didn’t know anything was published in Cincinnati. I should write a book, the know-how I know. But he couldn’t tell mom its title, nor Eleanor neither. Riff had had the canny-author daydream before.
Cooking the Books
, the name would be. Or
The How to Cook Books Cookbook
. Cute. Maybe too cute. He could ask Miz Biz what she thought. Because Miz Biz knew what he was up and down to, though he couldn’t speak to her shoes, couldn’t tell them anything, shiny and black with big bows, or the belt about her belly, or the mole above her eyebrow, even though all were admirable and as kissable as ears. No. Let her go like a fish too big to boat.

Salute to Courage
. That’s the ticket. William Tyler Arms. Gives himself airs like a ritzy hotel. Signed inside: William Tyler Arms. Hey. Printed in typewriter. Riff had never seen a book like that. It said it was an historical novel. Printed by the
Enterprise and Journal
of Orange, Mass., in … 1966. Printed in typewriter, but how? Must be rare. What was it doing here alongside
Czar.
Czar
? As in financial tycoon. Another money book, a novel, yeah, by one of the … hey mom … Wiseman. All these different years: a volume issued in the twenties, another in the sixties, a book from the thirties, then the fifties turns up again. How come? This gathering was no reunion. They weren’t related; they were never in the same class at school or found themselves frat brothers or became World War buddies. Older than the motel, most of them. Tippecanoe and Up in Arms too.

Undo her shoe—the bow’s for show—undo the belt about her belly, kiss the mole above the eyebrow … how’s one? how’s two?