Fragile (5 page)

“Go ahead girls, salt it. This is the way we eat it.” Her mother must love them very much, in spite of the wanting. When Tris went away I never had another—never had Tris in that way as a matter of fact. I kept myself whole, I saved myself for you Tris, but you never came back, you never came, and so I kept you in my heart. I kept us together in my heart, and you have always been here with me even though you are still so far away. I kept myself for you all these years, went to work after high school, Father said if you're not going to get a man you have to get a job. Went to work at Grain Dealers Mutual for thirty-eight years, they gave me early retirement when the company was sold, and lived with Karl while he was a minister here, while he stayed here. He came back from Philadelphia and then Dennis died in the war, the Purple Heart is still on the bureau in Karl's room. It will always be there, along with the Bible Karl left me. I have it here and read it every evening.

I never read it straight through or follow what the Sunday teacher says, I flip the book open and see what it has for me today:

Phillip came and told Andrew. Then Andrew and Phillip together went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, The time has come for the Son of man to be glorified and exalted. I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just one grain; never becomes more but lives by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest. Any one who loves his life loses it. But anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal–Whoever has no love for, no concern for, no regard for his life here on earth, but despises it, preserves his life forever and ever.

The car rolls by slowly, big town car color of champagne, big Lincoln with its headlights on against the dusk, slowly rolling and watching, looking for something on this street. The drugs and the women are a problem now, this neighborhood used to be so nice with the tall trees lining both sides of the street and the houses set up on the hills, but now these fellows roll by in their old cars looking for something, looking for trouble.

“Come on girls.” Her pigtails flounce in silent reply, turning to look at me, questioning, sensing the fear in my voice. “Let's finish the melon inside.”

We go inside through the front door tonight for a change, Holly wants to make it more of a proper date instead of sneaking into the kitchen from the service entrance at the back. She ignores the cordon of hostesses lined up at the front to stop people and take their names—the wait is typically at least an hour and a half by this time of night. Who knows what they come for? Holly has convinced herself that the food isn't really that good, but you get less of it, so people flock here thinking it must be something special. And it has become somewhat of a scene at the large dimly lit bar in the back of the restaurant: People come here to see and be seen, to show off their cars and their jewelry and their facelifts and boob jobs and trophy wives and mistresses and designer T-shirts and handbags. These fads come and go, however. In six months, the same crowd of social climbers will have determined through some unseen, unspoken mutual decision that the Midtown Grill is no longer the place
and some other newly named or freshly opened disco or bistrot or Thai-Cuban gastropub will assume the mantle of hot spot in this prosperous, slightly-behind-the-times Midwestern city. Holly feels a pinch in her chest as she strides through the clattering din of the main dining room: She is one of them, part of the scene. Eyes lock on her as she floats her way towards the bar, taking her in, watching, calculating, assessing—is this someone I know, or someone I should know? What's so special about her? She knows she's being examined like a model strutting down the runway, and she does her best to hold up her end of the bargain even though she's only a single-parent hairdresser who grew up in a farm town twenty miles away. The fullness in her chest grows until she's back at the bar, smothered by the throng of people standing there, safe in her accustomed domain.

She scans behind the bar for Rick, but doesn't see him.

“Hey Charlie!” she calls out, raising her voice against the competing throb of the piped-in technopop music and the mumble of the baseball game on TV. “Where's Rick?”

Charlie gives her a welcoming smile as he slings gin into a tumbler. “Cigarette break.” He slides the G and T to a man with slicked-back hair in a business suit and without asking pops open one of the saccharine sweet malt liquor beverages that have become Holly's mainstay over the three weeks since she started seeing Rick and spending as many evenings as she can possibly manage here. She promised herself on the way over that she would play it a little cooler tonight with Rick, not let herself look quite so desperate to see him when she arrived, and
she felt that she was all set to go through with the act, but now that she's here and he's not, she feels the need pressing down on her even more acutely, an unbearable weight that must be lifted.

Holly sips on the cool sweet liquid, like drinking the syrup they use to make Sno-cones but laced with alcohol, the benefit being that she can consume three or four of these in rapid succession to quickly get a buzz going. Rick always tries to make her do a shot, but she hates the burning feeling of the raw alcohol going down. This way is much more pleasant, like drinking your desert. The alcohol taste is almost completely hidden.

The man in the suit is looking her over, trying not to appear obvious as he stares down her shirt. She gives him a smile and turns away, peering up at the TV screen where a baseball player tugs at his crotch, waves his bat back and forth peremptorily, and spits. Still no Rick.

She really doesn't want to do this—it is counter to her plan of action for the night—but she circles around the bar with drink in hand and goes into the bright noisy whiteness of the kitchen searching for him. She finds him, standing with his tall lean back to her, his short-cropped black hair thinning on top, gazing out the open back door at the night sky beyond. His form is for her essentially nothing more than a template of a man: the broad shoulders, narrow waist, small bottom, and lean legs evoke a rush of all the old feelings, an aching sick need that wells up from a tight precious sanctuary within her. The thinning hair, the bald spot, is a trigger too: He is older. She needs him, has something to give him, so she can connect with him.
She must make him want her. And so, without a word of warning, she silently comes up behind him and wraps her arms around him, holding on. Holding on tight to my hand again, the youngest one is afraid as I go to the door. I shouldn't even answer it. Maybe Tassie Jensen came by again to talk, maybe Dolores or one of the Salgados, could be anyone, but that car was watching us, slowed down to take a look in our direction, inspecting as it went past. There's another series of raps on the window of the door, slow and careful and precise, determined and patient, not wanting much to intrude, just letting us know he is here. I can tell it is a man's knock, the weight of it heavier, more direct, slow, careful, and precise, letting us know he is here by the elevators, Tris punches the button with the arrow pointing up and waits, the meal done, the twelve ounces of beef sitting heavy in his stomach, the acidic flavor of Hal Pope's anger and disappointment still settling over his palate, mingling with the aftertaste of the beer from the green bottle. The meal was essentially ruined by a series of unpleasant and disjointed phone calls to track down a technician within short driving distance of the New Jersey plant to deal with the meltdown on site, and now the gurgling water from the fountain that dominates the hotel lobby seems to flow through him like time passing, moments of his life trickling away, lost, never to be recaptured again.

He wonders why it's taking so long for the elevator to arrive, and his impatience makes him punch the Up button again, as if
pressing the button another time will make the elevator come sooner. He stares at the brushed metal doors in front of him, willing them to open, when he sees out of the corner of his eye a woman walk up to the farthest of the four elevators and go in. This doesn't make sense—the arrow is supposed to blink off when an elevator arrives—but now he glances down at the button as he hurries to the far doors and sees that it is indeed dark. He senses that the doors will soon close on him and he'll be left behind. The feeling of running late, being slightly behind the curve, descends upon him again, a brief flutter in his chest like a bird landing on a power line. He launches himself towards the rapidly closing doors and thrusts a foot and an arm in just before they close. It seems as if the doors will clamp down on him with a crushing force, and he braces for the hit. Somehow, though, the doors stop short with a jerking clunk. The woman has put her arm in front of them just as he leaps in, triggering the automatic stop mechanism. The doors suddenly slide all the way open again, and Tris pulls himself up short, slowing down the momentum of his leap and trying to maintain a semblance of grace as he steps lightly into the dim glass box and swivels around to get a look at his savior.

She's tall, slim, surprisingly pretty. Thick reddish brown hair straight past her shoulders, a color that makes Tris think of a fox's tail. She's wearing business clothes: form-fitting slacks and a russet-brown jacket cut above the waist. The doors stand completely ajar for a few seconds now, dumbly awaiting any further passengers who might choose to board, and Tris presses 18, the button for his floor. Tris smiles at the woman and notices
that she doesn't press another button, as the doors slither shut and the floor starts to lift, the sensation of rising up making it seem for a transitory instant as if he is floating there in the box with her.

Only 18 is lit.

For several seconds the elevator passes through a gaping interval where the only view out of the three glass walls away from the doors is a black shaft of darkness, as if instead of going up he is descending deep into the earth. Instinctively, both Tris and the woman stand facing the doors at the front of the elevator, and Tris politely keeps his gaze focused on the bank of thirty or so buttons, staring at the glowing 18. Then, a sudden wash of light floods the box and both of them irresistibly turn to face the back of the elevator as it soars above the vast open space of the lobby. Having been buried in darkness, they are now rocketing up to heaven. The hotel is one of those that has been designed around an atrium—Tris can see the floors stacked one on top of the other as they swiftly rise over the fountain and the potted trees and lobby where people walking here and there dwindle to the size of ants. The woman surprises him by talking.

“I don't like these elevators that you can see out of. It's such a long way to fall.”

Neither does Tris. As a matter of fact, this glass box being hoisted into the air is one of the least pleasant places he could find himself in. His claustrophobia is only slightly offset by the sense of open space that the glass walls afford, and that benefit is marred by the fact that he is also profoundly afraid of heights,
but usually when he's in a high, open place such as the corridors of this hotel. The combination of being in an enclosed place that's also soaring up to the sky engenders a feeling of floating, drifting nausea, the dinner he just ate churning like a chunk of molten lead within him.

“I'd rather fall,” Tris says airily, “than be trapped inside here.”

“It wouldn't be bad, if you had the right person with you.”

Tris wonders at first if he's heard her correctly, then checks himself to see if he has not misinterpreted the meaning implied by her remark. She must be twenty years younger than him, but he has been told by many people that he looks much younger than his age. And after forty, he thinks, who cares? We're all damaged goods, even this woman, soon to be no use to any one, not even ourselves. Tris allows himself to glance at her, and she returns his look with a smile that is dazzling, gorgeous. His first impression was correct: she is young, attractive, and flirting with him. His mind spins through the possibilities that unfurl from her smile, a businesswoman traveling for work like him, lonely, perhaps single or divorced, looking for some excitement where the opportunity presents itself. Discreetly, he places his left hand, the one with the ring on it, in his pocket, hoping she hasn't already noticed. Yet even in doing so, a wave of conflicting images ripples through his head—his wife's number scrolling across the phone, this woman standing naked in his hotel room, the gently twisting, glowing tape measure that haunted him earlier in the evening, the lone scrabbling lobster being snatched from its tank. Tris turns away from the yawning
chasm outside the glass box to face the doors again, anticipating his stop, and she turns with him.

Staring straight ahead, he catches a blurred reflection of himself from the burnished metal doors. He can make out only the faintest impression of a nose, a mouth, a shock of black hair, but no eyes; only the glinting of light from the rims of his glasses. The digital readout above the doors flashes in rhythm, 14…15…16…17, as if counting his heartbeats, then pauses an extra long moment on 17 as the lifting force decelerates, finally lurching to a stop on 18. The doors swoosh open and a bright, quiet anteroom awaits him, empty hallways to either side, no one watching, no one here to witness what is happening. An invitation to do whatever he decides.

As is customary at these hotels, the front desk for some reason has given him two keys when he checked in. Tris finds this practice vaguely annoying, because he typically keeps his room key in his wallet and he doesn't like leaving the extra key lying around where the maids or service people can get it—an irrational fear; they're already in your room if they can take it from your desk. Still, just to be safe, he always puts both keys in his wallet, the two plastic cards making it extra thick and bulky in his pocket. Tris allows the woman to step out of the elevator ahead of him, and as she does so, he deftly retrieves one of the room keys. Then there is a moment when she is just in front of him, as they both step into the quiet vestibule together, when he can smell her fox-colored hair only inches from his face and peer down her spine to the tight slacks that cling to the curve of her bottom.