New Jersey Noir (11 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
I knew it was getting to be time because I could hardly sleep or eat and no matter how many times I jerked off thinking about Lola’s lips or her black-red nails on my flesh or her muscular legs wrapped around me, it just wasn’t enough. I kept thinking,
Do it now,
but restrained myself because it seemed different this time, it seemed like love, and I never wanted it to end.
Sometimes, on the nights her husband didn’t come home, if the weather was nice, Lola would eat outside at one of the restaurants near the waterfront, and I’d find a spot where I could watch her and take pictures, which I used for a series of paintings called
Lola Eating
.
I guess the thing that finally did it was the night I saw them together.
I was in my safe spot under the awning, Lola undressing in the window, and then I saw the husband tugging her toward him and he was about to switch off the lamp but she stopped him, and it was like watching a play, a horrible play, the window open—I could hear their voices though not what they said—the two of them naked, him kissing her, groping her, and if the damn light hadn’t finally gone off I’d have burst in and killed him and made Lola my own.
I must have walked through all of Hoboken that night, along the waterfront where the air was hot and damp, that fishy smell coming off the river, the view of Manhattan like the Emerald City in
The Wizard of Oz
, so close you could almost touch it, but unreal. Then up to the college on the hill where a bunch of coeds were walking and laughing and I had such murderous thoughts it must have been on my face because they stopped laughing when they saw me. Then along Washington Street, all the restaurants and bars open, people chatting and smiling and having a good time as if everything in the world was okay, when
nothing
was okay. I wove up and down the side streets, sweating, that fishy smell following me, mixing with the garbage stewing in the hot night air, and when I finally got home there was a rat rooting around in the small plot of dirt in front of my place and I got a brick and smashed it, over and over and over, then dragged my rat-bloodied hands across half the Lola drawings, smudging the charcoal until it turned to brown mush because I was finished with her; it was over between us.
After that, I was happy to go to my job every day, building stretchers, and stayed late so I wouldn’t run into her. I was getting over her, the loss and all, and there was this new girl, a blonde, who rode the PATH and lived in Hoboken, alone—I know because I followed her—and she might have become the one—I was getting ready—but then, I saw Lola again.
“Don’t I know you?” she asked. She was standing over me wearing skinny black designer jeans, the crotch right at my face blocking my view of the blonde.
“I don’t think so,” I said, holding my breath, my heart beating fast.
“Sure,” she said. “It was at Caterina’s, you know, the gourmet place? You knocked a bag right out of my hand?”
“Oh—right—sorry about that.”
“No biggie,” she said and started chatting, asking if I lived in Hoboken, and I told her I did, starting to feel lightheaded because I’d been holding my breath, and after a minute, when I didn’t say anything more, she went and sat down opposite me and put in her iPod earphones and crossed her legs, top one bouncing to the beat of the song in her head, her lips moving too, and when we got to Hoboken she gave me a little wave, then got off, and I purposely lagged behind—I really wanted to be finished with her—but when I came out of the station there she was, and she smiled, and that was it, like we’d never broken up.
I started making new drawings and paintings of her and stayed home from work for a week, and when I finally felt ready to show them I showered and changed and combed my hair and went and waited by the PATH train until I saw her.
“Hi,” I said.
Lola looked up sort of confused like she didn’t recognize me, then smiled and said, “Oh, hi,” and I just sort of fell in line with her as she walked. I’d prepared some small talk this time, stuff I’d Googled about Hoboken to impress her.
“Did you know they held the first baseball game here?”
“Really?” Her dark eyebrows arched up.
“And it’s where Lipton Tea and Maxwell House Coffee were made.”
“I didn’t know about the tea. But the big Maxwell House sign is still there, and I like it.”
“Right,” I said, a little annoyed with myself that I’d forgotten about the sign.
“You’re like a regular Hoboken tour guide,” she said, and that’s when I told her I was an artist, a painter, and she asked, “What do you paint?” a question I really hate, but said, “Portraits,” and she said, “Really? Of who?” and I wanted to say,
Of you,
but said, “All sorts,” and she asked, “Where do you show?” which is my other least-favorite question, but I said, “I’m between galleries,” and she said, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and I said, “It’s okay,” and quickly added, “I’m having a show in Europe,” and she said, “Where?” and I said, “Japan,” because it was far away and I didn’t think she’d be going there anytime soon, and she said, “I thought you said Europe,” and I laughed and said, “Oh—it’s all the same to me,” and she laughed too and said, “My husband goes to Japan all the time, to Tokyo,” and I said, “Why?” and she said, “For business,” and I asked, “What kind of business?” and she said, “Finance,” and I said, “My paintings aren’t leaving for Japan for a few weeks if you’d like to see them,” and she stopped and looked at me, dark eyebrows arching up again, and I said really quickly, “I don’t mean to be forward, I just thought you might like art,” and she said, “I do, but—” and I said, “That’s great,” and added my warmest smile, the one I practice in the mirror, and she said, “Well … maybe,” and I said, “How about tonight?” and she gave me that look again, then started laughing and said, “You
are
forward,” and I laughed too so she’d think I was a good sport though I was no longer sure why we were laughing, but she said, “I can’t tonight,” and I said, “Of course, I understand,” which is what people on television say all the time, and that was that. I was disappointed but not defeated, because one thing I have is patience.
I waited a couple of days so it wouldn’t feel forced, then timed it so I’d bump into her on the PATH again.
“Hi,” I said. “Oh, hi,” she said. And right way I started telling her about my job, which she said sounded interesting, and I dropped some names of famous artists I built stretchers for, and she’d heard of a few. But I didn’t push it. I didn’t want to ruin it.
Over the next week, I made sure we happened to meet but I never asked her to come see my paintings, though I’d drop a reference to them like, “I painted half the night” or “I think I finished the last painting for the Japan show,” and finally she asked
me
if she could come see my work, and I said, “How’s tomorrow night?” but real casual, the whole time my brain going,
Lola Lola Lola Lola,
and she said, “Where do you live?” and I told her and she said, “Really? I didn’t know
anyone
lived way back there,” and I said, “Oh, it’s nice, and my studio’s really big,” and she said, “I don’t know …” and I said, “It’s right next door to Pablo’s Towing Station and Pablo’s got guard dogs, so it’s perfectly safe, nothing to worry about,” and used my practiced smile again, and she said, “Oh, it’s not that …” and seemed to be thinking it through and finally said, “Okay, but you’ll have to come get me because I’m not walking all the way back there alone at night,” and I said, “Of course not, I wouldn’t want you to,” and she asked if we could do it on the later side because she liked to have dinner with her husband, and I tried to keep my smile in place when I said that was fine though I was afraid she’d say she wanted to bring him along, which would ruin everything, but all she said was, “How’s nine?” and I said, “Perfect,” and started walking away, my mind seeing Lola in all sorts of naked poses, but she called after me, “Hey, don’t you want my address?” And I turned and said, “What?” And she repeated the question. And I said, “Oh, right,” and laughed maybe a little too hard.
I stayed up all night arranging and rearranging all the portraits till everything was perfect, then cleaned the studio and scrubbed the little storage area behind it, which has stone walls and is dank and dark and must have been used for some kind of cold storage at one time and served my purposes really well. I even sprayed it with Febreze because I wanted it to smell fresh for Lola, and put a clean sheet on the cot, and made sure the cuffs were not rusted from the dampness. Then I showered and washed my hair and shaved and used Old Spice and put on a new white shirt I bought at the Gap just for the occasion.
The air was heavy with that fishy smell and I worried it might rain and I hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella and had forgotten my gloves, so I pulled my jacket over my finger when I pressed Lola’s doorbell.
A minute later she appeared, smiling, but her eyes looked red as if she’d been crying.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said, but the minute she closed the door behind her she got upset because she’d left her keys inside.
“Isn’t your husband home?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He’s working late,” and I thought,
My good luck!
Lola said she had a key hidden under a mat at the back door and I followed her. The whole time she was waving a hand in front of her nose, “Oh, that Hoboken smell, it’s always bad when it’s going to rain,” and said she’d better get an umbrella and unlocked the back door, and I said I’d wait but she insisted I come in.
When she flipped on the lights we were standing in her kitchen, which looked right out of a magazine with Mexican tiles on the floor and fancy appliances and pots and pans hanging over a huge island in the middle of the room, and when I said it was really nice she said she never cooked so it was a waste, then said there were lots of umbrellas in the front hall closet so I followed her, careful not to touch anything, past a dining room with a long table and stiff-backed upholstered chairs and the living room with that abstract painting I could just make out in the dark, and when we got to the front hallway she stopped, and turned, and kissed me, her tongue in my mouth, and I couldn’t breathe I was so excited, but then she pulled away.
“Oh God,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I told her it was okay, but she started crying and said she was a terrible person, that she was unhappy and didn’t love her husband but couldn’t leave him because he was rich and how was she going to make it on her own, and leaned against me sobbing, and I patted her hair and tried to breathe normally, thinking I couldn’t do it
here
, not in her house, and then she pulled away again and said she was sorry but I had to excuse her, that she couldn’t possibly come to my studio, not now, and I stood there a minute thinking how it had all been ruined, but then she kissed me again, and we stumbled into the living room, our mouths glued together, and she hiked her skirt up and practically ripped her panties off and tossed them across the room and tugged my jeans down and we sort of fell onto the floor, and when we were doing it she said, “Put your hands around my neck,” and I did, and she tossed her head back and forth and I asked, “Am I hurting you?” and she said, “No, I like it,” so I squeezed a little harder and felt her nails dig into my back and couldn’t hold on much longer and told her, and she said, “It’s okay, I’m on the pill,” and when it was over she said, “You’d better go, my husband might come home,” and led me through the kitchen and helped me on with my jacket and hugged me really tight like her life depended on it, which was kind of ironic I thought, and kissed me really hard again, and when I got outside I felt confused and it took a minute to gather my wits—my head was spinning—and I hadn’t gone a block when a police car screeched to a halt and two cops got out and one slammed me against the cruiser and twisted my arm behind my back, while the other one fumbled my wallet out of my jeans. “What’s going on?” I asked, but they didn’t answer, just clamped handcuffs on my wrists, then one of the cops kneed me in the balls and I doubled over, and the other cop said, “Shut the fuck up,” and the first one said, “See if the knife’s on him,” and I said, “
Knife?
” as the cop slipped on a rubber glove and brought a small kitchen paring knife out of my pocket, covered in blood, and there was more blood dripping down the side of my jacket onto my jeans, and I heard the other cop on his radio say, “We’ve got him, weapon still on him too, a real bozo. The husband’s dead in the upstairs bedroom, multiple stab wounds. Wife’s okay, but someone from the rape squad should meet us at the OR,” and I said, “No, no, it wasn’t like that—” and the cop elbowed me in the gut.
Then an ambulance pulled up and I saw her, Lola, being led out of her brownstone, leaning on an EMT guy like she could hardly walk, and sobbing, her hair a mess, lipstick smeared across her face, blouse torn, her black-red fingertips fluttering at her neck like it hurt really bad.
We locked eyes for a moment, my mind going,
Lola, Lola, Lola, how could you?
Then another cop car arrived and the first cops gave them my address and told them to go to my place and I pictured all the portraits I’d made of Lola on the walls and the storage room all clean and neat and smelling of Febreze, and the wind picked up and blew that fishy smell off the river as a cop shoved me into the backseat of the cruiser and slammed the door.
I
t has slipped back into obscurity now, like a sun that rose out of nowhere in freakish glory before disappearing once more behind stone-gray clouds. But for a brief moment Grover’s Mill was the most famous town in the country. For it was in this quiet New Jersey farmland hamlet where I was born that the Martians landed on Halloween eve, 1938, to unleash a surprise takeover of Earth with killing machines on tripod stilts.
Our family was no different than others gathered around their Philco radios, their Emersons and RCA Victors, their big Zenith consoles, listening in horror as Orson Welles’s popular Mercury Theatre broadcast broke the news of the invasion from Mars. Except that my parents and my father’s parents and I, forced by the Depression to live under one roof on a dead-end street off Cranbury Road, found ourselves at the epicenter of the attack. Like many in the audience, we had tuned in too late to hear any references to H.G. Wells, and didn’t understand this was all meant to be a dramatic sleight-of-hand. The horror-struck voices of eyewitness field reporters, the screams and state police sirens, the devastating sounds of extraterrestrial machines hurling hellfire heat-rays—it was all so real that even in Grover’s Mill we believed the world was about to end. My mother and grandmother rushed from room to room, whipping the curtains shut, turning off every light in the house, as news flashes of increasing desperation continued to stream in on our Philco gothic cathedral. Seven thousand infantry, the grim newsman reported from the scene, were wiped out by the Martians in a matter of minutes. Pandemonium reigned. Fearing for their lives, people were fleeing, we were told, in cars, trucks, trains, and on foot, up and down the Eastern seaboard. The description of gigantic three-legged metal monsters wading across the Hudson toward Manhattan, like mere men might cross a shallow stream, was terrifying. Nor will I ever forget peeking between the drapes of our front room window, my mother’s trembling hand on my shoulder, as we looked for signs of these invaders from the Red Planet. The gunfire we heard outside was, in fact, very real, though it would later prove to be some panicked farmers shooting at a nearby water tower they’d mistaken for one of the Martian tripods.