The Quick & the Dead (28 page)

Carter emptied ice cubes into a bowl, added water, and immersed a fresh dish towel in it. He carried it into the living room and sat on the sofa, tipping back his head and laying the cold cloth across his eyes. Donald had suggested tapas sex.

He had.

“Tapas!” Carter had cried. He thought they were those small, warm, oily appetizers served in Spanish bars. At least that’s what they’d been in the days when he and Ginger were roaming around over there, watching those stupid bullfights, throwing the cushions in indignation, driving fast and gaily through the sharply edged Castilian landscape. He had wanted to go north to Montserrat, where Wagner’s genius had placed the Grail, but they had never made it, he couldn’t recall why. It hadn’t been Ginger’s fault, he was almost certain; they hadn’t quarreled so much in those days, hadn’t disagreed about every last thing, their innocent wishes had been more synchronized. Still, they had never made it to Montserrat, huge rock reared high in the clouds.

Back then, she had called him her stroke oar.

He pushed the cloth through the ice. “What!” he had cried. “Sex tapas?” Evidently—as Donald had quietly explained it—it was a union between two individuals wherein the sex organs are used, only not in a conventional manner. Sexual energy is controlled with
intense
concentration as it rises to a climax, the orgasm is experienced in the
head
, and the sexual fluid is reabsorbed
back
into the system, giving the individual extra energy. Physical desire is conquered in the same instant that it is fulfilled. It sounded quite refined the way Donald described it.

Carter stirred slightly against the cushions. He liked the idea of sex conquering physical desire—inappropriate physical desire, it might be argued—at the same time that it satisfied it. It sounded like a resourceful, streamlined process, not exactly fun but thoughtful and mature.

When Carter had politely inquired if Donald had ever attempted this unconventional sex before, the boy had softly expressed himself in the negative. Not that it mattered, of course, Carter said, but he guessed what he was asking was, if it went badly—well he supposed there was no way it could go
badly
but if it turned out more
conventionally
than they might have wished—would Donald be disappointed, would he think less of himself, less of Carter, less of both of them together for it? Because that would be … that would be unfortunate, because Carter was fond of Donald, very fond.

Who was that guy, Carter wondered, sprawled upon the pillows, who spent eternity up to his neck in water, parched with a thirst that could never be assuaged because every time he bent his head to drink, the
water fled away leaving the ground all around him parched and dry? He felt a little like that guy. Frustrated.

He was in a mythical state of mind this morning—sinister punishments, great opposing armies clanging around in his head, visions of boyish sport. He groped in the bowl for an ice cube and put it in his mouth. He was willing to give this tapas sex a try, he had told Donald, though maybe they should put it on hold just for the moment. He’d been sober when he said these things just as Donald was leaving for the day, which was only yesterday; it was only when he was alone, which was only last night, that the nice brown drinks kept topping themselves up, producing the debilitation of the moment. He lay there chewing ice, a cool cloth over his eyes, thinking dartingly of Donald—those dazzlingly clean T-shirts he wore, that little pursed gash on his clear face that drew the eye right down into it … Carter groaned. They should try it out, but
where
? Not in this house. He could see Ginger capering around as they tried to concentrate. He wondered what it entailed—far more than just hauling out the old hose, he would imagine—but he’d been so excited that he hadn’t pressed for details.

“I don’t want to be a careerist,” Alice said. “A career, no thanks.”

“I certainly don’t want one either,” Annabel said. She was almost out of avocado body butter again, she could scarcely fathom how this had happened. “There’s nothing special about not wanting a career.” Alice thought she was so idiosyncratic. “Having a career has never preoccupied me. I want to—God—live a little, at the very least.”

Corvus lay between them like some creature in hibernation, though not curled. Annabel would protest, and she would protest loudly, if Corvus were lying curled in the classic fetal position of the inarguably depressed. She was spending too much time at Green Palms, that unscrupulous place from which emanated foul tales that just got worse and worse. That poor Mrs. McKenney, who kept a ten-dollar bill under her pillow to tip the girl who would have to wash her up after she died, had been robbed. She checked on that ten-dollar bill a hundred times a day, and someone had managed to swipe it while she was sleeping. It had
been an employee, of course, a member of the rotating staff. Everyone kept rotating and rotating, they were there, then they weren’t there, then they were back again and you thought there was some schedule to it just before they were gone for good. The only ones who seemed even semipermanent—practically there since inception, which hadn’t been all that long, though the residents must have felt it comprised their entire lives—were those two nurses, one of whom was a total fright. Corvus shouldn’t involve herself so much in that place. Why didn’t anyone ever tell Corvus anything? Like, you must do this or you mustn’t do that? Corvus was throwing herself against a wall over at Green Palms. And Annabel thought that no matter how brave you were, if you just kept throwing yourself against a wall, what was the use?

“Corvus,” she said, “would you like the last of this body butter?”

Corvus opened her eyes. “No, thanks,” she said.

Annabel smiled at her. “It’s important to keep your skin moisturized.”

Corvus closed her eyes again.

“I don’t want to be part of a control group,” Alice was saying. “You know, when doctors give people placebos and other people medicine that might help them, I don’t think that’s ethical. I don’t want a placebo, and I don’t want the other stuff either. I want to be free.”

A hot breeze raised the scalloped edges of the pool umbrellas. It sounded like wavelets lapping far away. Corvus was making it sound like this, against any will she could muster not to: it was the sound of water filling her ears, the memory of the water her mother’s friend had offered. An early call to chaos and calamity, to the other side. But she had survived that moment and was now surviving sorrow.

There was something shameful about surviving sorrow. You were corrupted. She was corrupted. She was no good anymore. She was inauthentic, apocryphal. She wanted to be a seeker and to travel further and further. But after sorrow, such traveling is not a climbing but a sinking to a depth leached of light at which you are unfit to endure. And yet you endure there.

“Corvus?”

She didn’t open her eyes, just breathed in, breathed out. She’d had her own brief career as a lobbyist in the arcade for the still-living dead. She had wished to restore them to some success. She had talked and
talked to them, projecting herself without words. She had clasped their worn, warm hands. They had thought her a fool. She needed to tamp herself down now, tamp herself down, measure out her breaths until they were gone. No one had to know she was doing it.

“Although sometimes people can get better if the placebos are administered in an enthusiastic way,” Alice said. “I don’t know, it’s a complex issue. I don’t want to be indifferent to anything, I don’t want to think of anything as inevitable.”

“Things are inevitable,” Annabel said. “Lots of things just are.”

“I don’t want to be”—Alice wasn’t sure about this—“credulous? But maybe I do.”

“You’ve really got us in a state of suspense here.” Annabel looked irritably at her stomach—flat, though not so flat as she’d like. Beaded with perspiration and oil, it looked pretty good, she thought, though utterly wasted on present company. She hoped she could hold on to her good skin, not hold on to it literally of course, but an awareness of the importance of proper maintenance, which she had, must surely give her an advantage over girls who didn’t give it a second thought. A phone rang. It was never for her. No one even knew she existed up here, out in the desert in this stupid house.

“You can still see the moon,” Alice said. “I like it when you can still see the moon in a daytime sky.”

Corvus opened her eyes, moved her eyes without moving her head, breathed in, breathed out, tamping herself down into that leached and lightless depth. She saw the moon, almost empty, standing hollow. Her mother’s friend had always pointed such a moon out to her. It appears that way because it’s carrying the dead, she’d told Corvus in her quick, low, gay voice. The moon is killing itself from carrying so many dead; you can expect to hear something strange when the moon lies like that. How had her mother happened to have as a friend such a Lilith? How had they met? For that matter, how had her parents met? She had never been told. She would never be told now. The hair of our heads will be like clouds when we die, her mother’s friend had said, your hair and mine and that of everyone we love and hate. I don’t hate anybody, Corvus had said. Like clouds, this woman said, when we become as clouds.

Carter hung up the phone. He and Donald had planned a most satisfactory evening for themselves, although that ambitious union Donald had in mind was still on hold. They were going to hear a string quartet downtown—opera companies never came within miles of this burg—after which they would enjoy a late supper. He felt better. Everything seemed fresher now, even though he was still uncertain about how precisely to proceed. “Should I order cyanide,” he sang, “or order champagne?” He should throw another party soon. Get that piano player back.

A
lice’s granny and poppa were looking at a puzzle in the funny papers, a block of wavy, unfocused multicolored lines. They would bring the page close to their faces, then push it slowly back.

“I see it,” her poppa said.

“I see it, too,” her granny said. “Why don’t you try it, Alice?”

Alice studied it, crossing her eyes even. She wanted to be the kind of person who could see things that weren’t initially or even necessarily there, wanted the surprise of seeing the other something that was in everything, its hidden nimbus, its romance. “I don’t see anything,” she said. She felt hot with disappointment, as though in this simple optic failure she had failed the challenge of life.

“You don’t see the kayak?” her poppa asked.

“Kayak!” Alice said. “All it is is a kayak?”

“When I was a girl, it was Jesus opening his eyes,” her granny admitted. “These big heavy-lidded eyes, and they’d just slide slowly open and bore right into you.”

“Didn’t have to explain, just proclaim,” her poppa said. “That’s the way it was in those days.”

“Why bother, if it’s only a kayak!”

“Don’t get so upset, honey. Go get Corvus. See if she can spot the kayak.”

“She’s sleeping,” Alice said.

“That young woman sleeps too much,” her granny said. “I wish there was something we could do for her.”

“A locked heart is difficult to unlock,” her poppa said. “We’re giving
her shelter for the moment, that’s the important thing. Shelter is what she needs right now.”

He cleared the table of the Sunday papers, and put out the supper things. They were having tortilla soup and coffee cake tonight. They had their favorites frequently.

“Do you know they’re raising pigs now for their organs alone?” her poppa said. “No more bacon or those barbecued ears that Fury likes. They’ll be too valuable for that.”

“I think Fury buries them directly, to tell you the truth,” her granny said.

“Seeing animals as food is so primitive,” Alice said.

“That’s what they’re saying. This is more civilized. Pigs will be bred for hearts and valves adequate for transplanting into needy humankind.”

“That is so wicked,” Alice said.

“If you needed a kidney,” her poppa asked, “would you accept one from a guinea pig just to tide you over?”