Greedy Little Eyes (15 page)

“Tell Money whatcha’d do with a ten-spot.”

I looked at it. Said nothing. Beth was coming down the stairs now. I could hear her slippers scuffing toward the kitchen.

Money watched me. “Go head, sweetheart, pick it up.”

Didn’t want to look him in the eyes. I looked at the bill some more. Then picked it up off the counter and held it, running a nail along the sharp edge. Beth’s slippers were sliding across the kitchen floor now. Money looked away from my hands and smiled at Beth as she came up beside me.

I looked at Money smirking at Beth.

He said, “How ’bout you, Angel, what would you do with ten bucks right about now?”

Beth smirked back and gently took the bill out of my hand. She only had it a second before she tore it in two and handed half back to me. “I always share,” she said and rested her hand on the back of my neck.

Dad had already started up again as we left the kitchen: “What’d I tell ya. In a nutshell. In a goddamn nutshell!”

Beth’s face kept a hard look after that. We stayed in her room mostly and mostly she’d sit in silence, nodding all the while as if someone were giving her instructions. We didn’t talk much about Money, said almost nothing about what had happened, probably because it was still happening.

About a week later, she sat me down. For the next couple of days, she said, I was to be nice to Money; we were both going to be very nice to Money.

And it was two nights later that she asked me in the hallway upstairs if I’d like to go down to the river. The toilet flushed and Money came out the bathroom door, face to face with Beth’s queer smile.

At ten o’clock that night we were standing upriver in the shallows, Beth peeled to her underwear and me in the smallest of her old dresses. It was July but nights were still a little cold to be standing half naked with water rushing over our legs. We knew he’d show up,
though, weasel out of whatever drunk fest our father had planned and look into the friendly reception he’d been getting from us lately. So we stood and shivered a while and, sure enough, about fifteen minutes later we saw him, lead-foot-drunk, tripping his way along the rocks, wearing the same dirty buckskin coat he wore all year round, a bottle in one hand, his Johnny Cash tape in the other—he seemed to think there’d be a cassette player everywhere he went.

My sister waded a little farther out, up to her knees, her long body icy in the moonlight; she was the irresistible decoy, “Money, you bad boy, did you follow us out here?”

He cackled and splashed out into the water, throwing his arms wide as if they were old army buddies. I smiled, scared, trying to look like sex, like Beth. My sister walked to meet him and I followed, taking care not to slip on the smooth rocks, straight legs sticking out under the faded wet flowers on my dress.

“It’s a party,” he said, and belched wolf calls in the air, drowning them in another swig of Scotch. He reached Beth, ran his hands down her neck and brushed the strap of her bra down her shoulder. “You waitin’ fer me, beautiful?” and he took another drink and left the bottle in his mouth, holding it between his teeth while he stooped to roll up his drenched pant legs, showing off the serial number tattooed on his left ankle as if he were a sailor showing us the panther on his chest. He showed that number a lot, had showed it to my father a few times, said it was the number on the first fifty he ever won at cards.

He straightened and took the bottle from his mouth, ran his tongue over a chipped side tooth (he’d been showing my father how to uncap a beer without an opener the day before when my mother walked in and distracted him).

My sister moved out of his reach and he turned to her. “Where ya goin’? Show me those pretty tits of yours, Beth.”

She giggled. “You gotta give a little to get a little.”

Money gave a snort as he tried to undress. He jammed the bottle between his knees and stuffed Johnny Cash in his back pocket, freeing himself to yank off his coat, pulling the sleeves inside out in his impatience. He threw it to the nearest tree overhanging the river. He missed.

“Turn around and let us look at you,” my sister told him.

He was giggly and flattered and he staggered himself around, showing off his rangy old arms. My sister motioned me closer with her head. I winced. Couldn’t bear the thought of him touching me.

She said, “Doesn’t Sarah look pretty tonight? This used to be my dress.” She paused to finger the tiny pink bow at my neckline. “She’s never seen a man, you know—naked, I mean.”

“Is that so! Shit you girls are hot tonight.” Money looked at the thin straps on my shoulders and worked his eyes down to the wet hem hanging not much below my behind.

I stayed close to Beth as he yanked off his dirty T-shirt and threw his arms wide. I tried to giggle and
look happy the way my sister did, and he chuckled, going for his belt.

Soon he stood there naked, smiling like he’d just shot himself a deer. Looking down, he stoked himself, and I looked away, scared. But Beth laughed like I’d never heard her, the way our mother did, and splashed at Money with her foot. He splashed back and gave her a smile.

“Beth, can I have a piggyback?” I asked.

“No, sweetie, my ankle’s still sore. Get Money to give you one, he looks strong.”

Money glowed. “Sure, I’ll give ya a goddamn piggyback. Com’ere, darlin’.”

He bent low for me. I climbed aboard and tried to hold straight as he romped around the river like an old nag.

My sister laughed as if this were the night to end all nights. Money galloped me in circles, yelping and barking, whinnying, slipping now and then, until finally he tired and Beth splashed through the water toward us. She stopped where he had, the two of them gulping summer air. She licked her lips and reached for his hand. He panted chuckles and she swung his arm between them like a skipping rope before cupping his palm to her breast. From over Money’s shoulder, I stared at the hand glued to Beth’s bra until he ducked his head and the sight was lost.

Beth pulled his head up and pushed her tongue into his mouth. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she pulled his head back and tilted his mouth away, licking down
his chin, his neck. I stared, sick. Couldn’t tell if she winked or if I just wanted her to. Then her left eye splashed wide, ordering me.

I shook myself smart again, still hanging off Money’s neck, and swallowed the sour sound of their mouths together, concentrating, feeling for the metal in the pocket of my dress. Money’s moans strained from his throat as his head fell back and he gazed past my ear.

I pushed myself up higher on his hips, pulled the blade from its slot in the handle and did what my dad took pains not to do every morning—dragged the edge hard into his throat.

Quiet. Like the quiet in a room after a joke nobody gets. Money’s arms jerked from my legs and I slid down his back into the water. He caught hold of my wrist with one hand, the other on his throat. “What the hell are you tryin’ a—?” His words cut off in a choke and he let go. My sister’s mouth fell open a little while she watched him stagger backwards—she almost looked hurt.

Money was confused, too drunk to know what was happening, and his head fell forward, blood pouring through his stiff fingers. His face caught the light as tears trickled out to join the red.

I got a stillness in my ears as if I were holding my breath under water. Looking down the river, I saw everything blue and swaying, the trees, the rushes across the way, the water swirling over rocks and broken branches. I could feel the air against my skin moving little hairs on my arms and legs and giving me goosebumps. It seemed like someone should fall in love right now. I
turned back to Beth’s face and it had taken on a sweet sort of calm too. She was watching a child taking his first steps. Coughing. Gurgling.

She looked at me finally. “Well. What should we do? Would you like to bring him down the river?”

I said I would and looked down at the straight razor still in my hand, ran my finger over its round tip. Dark and light drizzles sparked against the moonlight. I knelt and folded the blade under water, let the river wash it clean, before dropping it back into one of my drooping pockets. When I stood back up, Beth and I took Money by the arms like a doddering old man. I held his hand, Beth asked me if I was cold, if I’d like her to wash my hair when we got home, and he let us lead him downriver as if we were taking him to safety.

Do Not Touch

Y
OU ARE NEVER AS LONELY
as when you are lonely in the company of your lover. I know I’m not the first to say that. Thomas used to say, “Another duckbilled platitude from my funny valentine.” On the other hand, Thomas said I could synthesize information quicker than anyone he’d ever encountered. They made me assistant manager at the music store where I work when Thomas told them that. Thomas has clout in the music world.

The first time we met was when he walked into the store one week before a big interview he had to do. He asked me for everything we had from Diana Krall. He was chewing a stir stick. His hands dashed around, pushing his glasses up with one hand while he yanked on that stir stick with the other.

I walked up and down the jazz section, pulling from here and there and the next thing Thomas knew he was
standing in the aisle with an armload of Diana Krall solos, duets, and the miscellaneous liner notes of other artists who had worked with her.

“God, you’re, uh, you know your stuff.” As he spoke, the stir stick fell out of his mouth and hit the floor. Staring down at it between his feet, he looked devastated.

I wanted to pet the scant hair on his oddly round head. The thing with me is nervousness—other people’s nervousness, that is—I find it very calming. A stutterer slows my pulse down to about thirty, I swear to god. Perhaps it’s a maternal instinct of some sort.

I wrote him a list of other related notables we didn’t have. He could download them from iTunes, I suggested. Thomas shook his head. Like a smoker, he said, he enjoyed the ritual: it was like unwrapping a little gift—the sight of that fresh, shining CD.

I printed my name on one of the store’s business cards. “Call me if I can help.” And I gave him a new stir stick from our coffee station.

He came back looking for me the next day.

Thomas interviewed highfalutin people for the arts section of the biggest magazine in the country. I was so impressed in the beginning—a big-brained guy like Thomas taking a shine to nobody-me. I had just cut off all my hair to about an inch from my skull. I used to have crazy curly long hair. For years I had been the girl with the hair, and I decided that that was getting me nowhere. I wanted to be wanted for something harder to come by and harder to lose. Be careful what you wish for.

I should have known something was wrong when Thomas sucked back the better part of a twenty-sixer of Glenlivet before he could kiss me the first time.

I met the watchmaker when my Timex broke; I was embarrassed to take it in because it was just a cheap old drugstore thing. But the watchmaker took it all very seriously, opening up the back, turning its face to his own, his hands brushing its. Seeing him touch my watch there on the glass display counter lulled me, as though he were brushing my hair or whispering fingertips along the inside of my elbow. Eyelids thickening, jawbone slack, I thought I might fall across the glass into his arms.

When he was done, I smiled, relaxed and dreamy. It was just a simple thing, he told me. Handing him ten dollars, I felt slightly desolate, anxious about there being no coins in the transaction, nothing that might bring our hands closer.

I went home and knocked on Thomas’s office door.

“Working,” he grunted.

Thomas had asked me to move into his house three months after we first touched.
Yes!
I said. I thought he was crazy about me, that I was turning him into a mad, impetuous lover.

“I’m thinking of having a bath,” I told him now. “Do you want to join me? I could add some bubble bath and make us a couple of mojitos.”

“Working!” It wasn’t quite a shout, more like a cry from between gritted teeth.

I put my hand on the door, let my fingertips trace the grain.