Daughter of Regals (43 page)

They were out late at a
large party where acquaintances, business associates, and strangers drank a
lot. As Creel unlocked the front door and came into the living room ahead of Vi,
he looked more than ever like a rumpled bear. Whisky made the usual dullness of
his eyes seem baleful. Behind him, Vi resembled a flower in the process of
becoming a wasp.

“I don’t care,” he said,
moving directly to the sideboard to get himself another drink. “I wish you
wouldn’t do it.”

She sat down on the
sofa, took off her shoes. “God, I’m tired.”

“If you aren’t
interested in anything else,” he said, “think about me. I have to work with
most of those people. Half of them can fire me if they want to. You’re
affecting my job.”

“We’ve had this
conversation before,” she said. “We’ve had it eight times this month.” A vague
movement in one of the shadows across the room turned her head toward the
corner. “What was
that?”

“What was what?”

“I saw something move. Over
there in the corner. Don’t tell me we’ve got mice.”

“I didn’t see anything.
We haven’t got mice. And I don’t care how many times we’ve had this
conversation. I want you to stop.”

She stared into the
corner for a moment. Then she leaned back on the sofa. “I can’t stop. I’m not
doing
anything.”

“The hell you’re not
doing anything.” He took a drink and refilled his glass. “If you were after him
any harder, you’d have your hand in his pants.”

“That’s not true.”

“You think nobody sees
what you’re doing. You act like you’re alone. But you’re not. Everybody at that
whole damn party was watching you. The way you flirt—”

“I wasn’t flirting. I
was just talking to him.”

“The way you
flirt,
you
ought to have the decency to be embarrassed.”

“Oh, go to bed. I’m too
tired for this.”

‘Is it because he’s a
vice-president? Do you think that’s going to make him better in bed? Or do you
just like the status of playing around with a vice-president?”

“I wasn’t
flirting
with
him. I swear to God, there’s something the matter with you. We were just
talking. You know—moving our mouths so that words could come out. He was a
literature major in college. We have something in common. We’ve read the same
books. Remember
books?
Those things with ideas and stories printed in
them? All you ever talk about is football—and how somebody at the company has
it in for you—and how the latest secretary doesn’t wear a bra. Sometimes I
think I’m the last literate person left alive.”

She raised her head to
look at him. Then she sighed, “Why do I even bother? You’re not listening to
me.

“You’re right,” he said.
“There
is
something in the corner. I saw it move.”

They both stared at the
corner. After a moment, a centipede scuttled out into the light.

It looked slimy and
malicious, and it waved its antennae hungrily. It was nearly ten inches long.
Its thick legs seemed to ripple as it shot across the rug. Then it stopped to
scan its surroundings. Creel and Vi could see its mandibles chewing
expectantly as it flexed its poison claws. It had entered the house to escape
the cold, dry night outside—and to hunt for food.

She wasn’t the kind of
woman who screamed easily; but she hopped up onto the sofa to get her bare feet
away from the floor. ‘Good God,” she whispered. “Creel, look at that. Don’t let
it come any closer.”

He leaped at the
centipede and tried to stamp one of his heavy shoes down on it. But it moved so
fast that he didn’t come close to it. Neither of them saw where it went.

“It’s under the sofa,”
he said. “Get off of there”

She obeyed without
question. Wincing, she jumped out into the middle of the rug.

As soon as she was out
of the way, he heaved the sofa onto its back.

The centipede wasn’t
there.

“The poison isn’t fatal,”
Vi said. “One of the kids in the neighborhood got stung last week. Her mother
told me all about it. It’s like getting a bad bee-sting.”

Creel didn’t listen to
her. He lifted the entire sofa into the air so that he could see more of the
floor. But the centipede was gone.

He dropped the sofa back
onto its legs, knocking over the endtable, spilling the flowers. “Where did
that bastard go?”

They hunted around the
room for several minutes without leaving the protection of the light. Then he
went and got himself another drink. His hands were shaking.

She said, “I wasn’t
flirting.”

He looked at her. “Then
it’s something worse. You’re already sleeping with him. You must’ve been making
plans for the next time you get together.”

“I’m going to bed,” she
said. “I don’t have to put up with this. You’re disgusting.”

He finished his drink
and refilled his glass from the nearest bottle.

The Sumps’ gameroom.

This room is the real
reason why Creel bought this house over Vi’s objections: he wanted a house with
a gameroom. The money which could have replaced the wallpaper and fixed the
ceiling of the living room has been spent here. The room contains a full-size
pool table with all the trimmings, a long, imitation leather couch along one
wall, and a wet-bar. But the light here isn’t any better than in the living
room because the fixtures are focused on the pool table. Even the wet-bar is so
ill-lit that its users have to guess what they’re doing.

When he isn’t
working, traveling for his company, or watching football with his buddies.
Creel spends a lot of time here.

After Vi went to bed,
Creel came into the gameroom. First he went to the wet-bar and refilled his
glass. Then he racked up the balls and broke so violently that the cue ball
sailed off the table. It made a dull, thudding noise as it bounced on the
spongy linoleum.

“Fuck,” he said,
lumbering after the ball. The liquor he had consumed showed in the way he moved
but not in his speech. He sounded sober.

Bracing himself with his
custom-made cuestick, he bent to pick up the ball. Before he put it back on the
table, Vi entered the room. She hadn’t changed her clothes for bed. Instead,
she bad put her shoes back on. She scrutinized the shadows around the floor and
under the table before she looked at Creel.

He said, “I thought you
were going to bed.”

“I can’t leave it like
this,” she said tiredly. “It hurts too much.”

“What do you want from
me?” he said. “Approval?”

She glared at him.

He didn’t stop. “That
would be terrific for you. If I approved, you wouldn’t have anything else to
worry about. The only problem would be, most of the bastards I introduce you
to are married. Their wives might be a little more normal. They might give you
some trouble.”

She bit her lip and went
on glaring at him.

“But I don’t see why you
should worry about that. If those women aren’t as understanding as I am, that’s
their tough luck. As long as I approve, right? There’s no reason why you
shouldn’t screw anybody you want.”

“Are you finished?”

“Hell, there’s no reason
why you shouldn’t screw
ail
of them. I mean, as long as I approve. Why
waste it?”

“Damn it, are you
finished?”

“There’s only one thing
I don’t understand. If you’re so hot for sex, how come you don’t want to screw
me?”

“That’s not true.”

He blinked at her
through a haze of alcohol. “What’s not true? You’re not hot for sex? Or you do
want to screw me? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Creel, what’s the
matter with you? I don’t understand any of this. You didn’t used to be like
this. You weren’t like this when we were dating. You weren’t like this when we
got married. What’s happened to you?”

For a minute, he didn’t
say anything. He went back to the edge of the pool table, where he’d left his
drink.  But with his cue in one hand and the ball in the other, he didn’t have
a hand free. Carefully, he set his stick down on the table.

After he finished his
drink, he said, “You changed.”

“I
changed?
You’re
the one who’s acting crazy. All I did was talk to some company vice-president
about
books.”

“No, I’m not,” he said.
His knuckles were white around the cue ball. “You think I’m stupid. Because I
wasn’t a literature major in college. Maybe that’s what changed. When we got
married, you didn’t think I was stupid. But now you do. You think I’m too
stupid to notice the difference.”

“What difference is
that?”

“You never want to have
sex with me anymore.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,”
she said. “We had sex the day before yesterday.”

He looked straight at
her. “But you didn’t want to. I can tell. You never
want
to.”

“What do you mean, you
can tell?”

“You make a lot of
excuses.”

“I do not.”

“And when we do have
sex, you don’t pay any attention to me. You’re always somewhere else. Thinking
about something else. You’re always thinking about somebody else.”

“But that’s
normal,”
she
said. “Everybody does it. Everybody fantasizes during sex.
You
fantasize
during sex. That’s what makes it fun.”

At first, she didn’t see
the centipede as it wriggled out from under the pool table, its antennae searching
for her legs. But then she happened to glance downward.

“Creel!”

The centipede started
toward her. She jumped back, out of the way.

Creel threw the cue ball
with all his strength. It made a dent in the linoleum beside the centipede, then
crashed into the side of the wet-bar.

The centipede went for Vi.
It was so fast that she couldn’t get away from it. As its segments caught the
light, they gleamed poisonously.

Creel snatched his
cuestick off the table and hammered at the centipede. Again, he missed. But
flying splinters of wood made the centipede turn and shoot in the other
direction. It disappeared under the couch.

“Get it,” she panted.

He shook the pieces of
his cue at her. “I’ll tell you what I fantasize. I fantasize that you
like
having
sex with me. You fantasize that I’m somebody else.” Then he wrenched the couch
away from the wall, brandishing his weapons.

“So would you,” she
retorted, “if you had to sleep with a sensitive, considerate, imaginative
animal
like you.”

As she left the room,
she slammed the door behind her.

Shoving the furniture
bodily from side to side, he continued hunting for the centipede.

The bedroom.

This room expresses Vi
as much as the limitations of the house permit. The bed is really too big for
the space available, but at least it has an elaborate brass headstead and
footboard. The sheets and pillowcases match the bedspread, which is decorated
with white flowers on a blue background. Unfortunately, Creel’s weight makes
the bed sag. The closet doors are warped and can’t be closed.

There’s an overhead
light, but Vi never uses it. She relies on a pair of goose-necked Tiffany
reading lamps. As a result, the bed seems to be surrounded by gloom in all
directions.

Creel sat on the bed and
watched the bathroom door. His back was bowed. His right fist gripped the neck
of a bottle of tequila, but he wasn’t drinking.

The bathroom door was
closed. He appeared to be staring at himself in the full-length mirror attached
to it. A strip of fluorescent light showed past the bottom of the door. He
could see Vi’s shadow as she moved around in the bathroom.

He stared at the door
for several minutes, but she was taking her time. Finally, he shifted the
bottle to his left hand.

“I never understand what
you
do
in there.”

Through the door, she
said, “I’m waiting for you to pass out so I can go to sleep in peace.”

He looked offended. “Well,
I’m not going to pass out.

— I never pass out. You
might as well give up.”

Abruptly, the door
opened. She snapped off the bathroom light and stood in the darkened doorway,
facing him. She was dressed for bed in a nightie that would have made her look
desirable if she had wished to look desirable.

“What do you want now?”
she said. “Are you finished wrecking the gameroom already?”

“I was trying to kill
that centipede. The one that scared you so badly.”

“I wasn’t scared—just
startled. It’s only a centipede. Did you get it?”

“You’re too slow. You’ll
have to call an exterminator.”

“Damn the exterminator,”
he said slowly.
“Fuck
the exterminator. Fuck the centipede. I can take
care of my own problems. Why did you call me that?”

“Call you what?”

He didn’t look at her. “An
Then he did. “I’ve never lifted a finger to hurt you.”

She moved past him to
the bed and propped the pillows up against the brass bedstead. Sitting on the bed,
she curled her legs under her and leaned back against the pillows.

“I know,” she said. “I
didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was just mad.”

He frowned. “You didn’t
mean it the way it sounded. How nice. That makes me feel a whole lot better.
What in hell
did
you mean?”

“I hope you realize you’re
not making this any easier.”

“It isn’t easy for
me.
Do you think I like sitting here begging my own wife to tell me why I’m not
good enough for her?”

“Actually,” she said, “I
think you do like it. This way, you get to feel like a victim.”

He raised his bottle
until the tequila caught the light. He peered into the golden liquid for a
moment, then transferred the bottle back to his right hand. But he didn’t say
anything.