Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (10 page)

Men, muttered Eleanor. You still here? Girls go to reunions, not just guys go. He went to one once, Riff told her. Lost in reminder, Riff held
The Egyptian
in his hand. A small-town kid from lower Illinois—hey, nearby Cairo—so fresh even his balls were smooth, Riffaterre had attended SIU in Carbondale and studied business, economics, a bit of law, before ending up in accounting like a pinball come to rest by the binkedybank of chance in a little hole. He had had ambitions, ideals maybe, dreams. But after graduation he had drifted back into small-town life again and lost his love of study, his interest in the new and strange, anything lofty. He shortened his name, dumped earth, severed every connection with the French, ended up a gap. Gradually, as these things usually happen, he became a fixer, somebody the corner store could count on, slow as mold but sure as rust. He would carry all kinds of blank receipts in his valise, and make up expenses, their lying numbers, like words for a story. He didn’t just juggle figures, he rebalanced lives, created costs and catastrophes, invented divorces, begot additional children. Wal-. Waltari. Riff laughed to think his name might have been Waltari Riffaterre before he shortened it. Pretty swish.

He went to a class reunion one time. Hardly recognized anybody,
or was recognized. The whole affair, would Miz Biz have said? was flat as a sat-on sombrero. Papered tables, paper napkins, paper name tags, smiling hello buttons, happy hello hats. He found he didn’t care who was wealthy, who was fat. But driving the short drive home (he’d never have gone if the reunion hadn’t been near as a neighbor), he realized how backslid he’d become, how his tastes had clouded like a sky, and how he’d been sharp-eyed once, quick to retort and genuinely wide of laugh, less suspicious, less cautious, more personally akimbo, not meanjeaned and tightass thin, not closed like the cabinet he was presently pawing books from so that now he could smell the dust, and here was
Ann Lee’s & Other Stories
. What the hell? That was no proper title, Ann Lee’s what? Elizabeth Bow- … the spine was smeared, the black had run. Bowen. Bet it wasn’t Ann Lee’s quim. See? Here he was—playing the coarse and stupid small-town stud, mouth made for a matchstick.

The glass doors were glinting from a bit of outside light. Low sun. On the vase of his poor rose … raised to falsify a rented room with its pretense of friendship. Is it supposed to lead us to lengthen our stay? although we’ve agreed to check out tomorrow or today; which would require Rose, though footsore and weary, to wipe away our street dust once again, cleanse the mirror of our worried face, erase the traces of our restless body in the bed, straighten loose papers, replace the dead bud with another dead bud, vacuum the rug, scour the tub, and routinely carry out the other duties of beauty, so we may rest afresh in our room, in our bed, and talk to our mother as if she weren’t down out of sight in the ground. Rose, dust these books, too, will you?

Riff had always had a deep suspicion of refinement. He was holding the dustiest volume of all, so visibly silted he dared not whoosh it off. He wouldn’t open it either.
Adam’s Breed
was on the cover. By Radclyffe Hall. But he did. Parted the pages in sudden despair. This dust goes back to ’26. That’s what he didn’t
want to grow into, a Riffaterre, a lace-cuff guy named Radclyffe. Sadly slid the book back. Closed the cabinet carefully, a pall upon him. Held his hands in the air like a surgeon beseeching gloves as he went to wash. OK, mom, OK. Keep your seat.

Such a seat as’ll put a crink in my neck? Well, I got no place to go. This room ain’t like your usual, with that Big Bertha sulked against the wall, sure it’s not for sale? It or the books. Maybe there’s a price inside each one. Have you looked? Yet a flower. Fancy.

The account books he had looked at had numbers in them right enough; told stories too, Riff supposed, of success and failure, of tragedy and triumph, of the common bollixes of life, just like, he bet, Anthony Hope’s
Little Tiger
did, and just like Riff, the figure doctor, managed to write, with his long thin fingers and the fancy columns and characters they fashioned. Nice name for an author: Anthony Hope. Made you want to read, implied a happy comeuppance.

Hope you can keep your hands clean, sonny. Hope you remember life’s lessons. Hope you cross at the light going home. I have. I will. I did, dear.

Tonight would he imagine his kiss burning a hole in her nightie clean to the nip? Eleanor had a nice light giggle. Men. Riff was faithful. Not like most. Her groans would grow beneath him like the spring bulbs he had never planted. But only if mom had poufed. Taking her fat lap with her. And her chin with the light white hairs. Of course he had thought a lot about Miz Biz, buxom as she was, with a Scotsman’s knees. Miz Biz, though, kept verging on the real. That wasn’t right, it was disconcerting, and he’d let her go like when a kite pulls free and you don’t chase it into its capturing tree where its twine gets snagged on twig after twig, easy to see caught there because not a leaf is green yet, and the kite’s tail made of cast-off neckties fluttering among the limbs, fluttering though fastened, therefore fluttering helplessly.

It haunted him: this meaningless gathering of meanings. He let the glass doors click. Gloom had settled in his head. That one-watt light. That’s always how he thought of it. With one watt. He’d dream of creamy walls, the corners of creamy ceilings. So Riff decided he wouldn’t fondle the books again. Had he been … had he been fondling them? Now he peered at their backs through an enclosed dusk.
The Spell of the Turf
. Two authors, Hildreth and … and Crowell.
Advanced Figure Skating
. Um … Maribel Vinson.
The Day’s Play
. A. A. Milne. Wasn’t he Pooh? Pooh, sure. If the case had been open, Riff would have taken the Pooh guy out, but he’d made his vow—to keep his hands clean—and held it for now.
The Little Yellow House. The Younger Set. How I Made Two Mil
—Oh yeah, I’ve seen through that one.
Diary of the Great War
. Wonderful. Here they all were: war, money, romance, skating, self-help, kid stuff, verse. Books which had once been open to someone’s eyes. Which lay for a while on a body’s bedside table. Maybe by a bud. And were held in considerate hands, propped on a welcoming tummy. Then doubtless shelved with others. Ultimately attic’d. But death had disbanded the collection. Cartons sold to a dealer for a pittance. Or given to The Good Will. Picked up by a curious browser for a quarter.
Politics Among Nations
maybe. It said second edition even on its spine. Must be important. Hans Morganthau. A popular pick no doubt—to improve the mind.

Their dispersal was easy to imagine. It was their meeting here, in his—Riff’s—motel which was the toughie. Because of the room’s weak light, the darkening day, he could scarcely make the titles out, and Riff regretted not having been more methodical about his inspection, making sure he took account of them one by one and row by row in the accidental order of their shelving. He knew some of the books contained fiction but now each of them (even the volumes on ice-skating and horse racing and making money) would have their own larky tales to
tell: how they happened to be together here, how they went begging before they were chosen, how they came to be written in the first place, where they were in their author’s family—firstborn or midkid or last rite. And there’d be a story, too, or maybe just an anecdote, which would explain a jacket tear here and there, or a badly shaken spine, stretch of water damage, bit of sun fade. Bookmarks made of bobby pins revealed where a reader had ceased; dog-eared pages pointed to a pause; torn slips of paper, inserted receipts, rubber bands, postcards, indicated some interruption: however, none said why: you’ve reached your station; the phone is ringing; it’s dinnertime; boredom has lowered its sleepy head. And the pencil underlining on page ninety-nine: what did that single sentence say, that lining signify? Should he hang his good pants and his jacket up? For just one night? Mom’s face was a faint unsmiling moon, so he pulled the garments from his bag and hung them like scarves from two of the bent wires. No more click or clatter. That left a hanger for Eleanor’s cocktail dress. He’d have her remove.

He’d never been read to, but he remembered some of the drawings in
Pooh
: the fat round bear, a bridge, a honey pot. Gwen whatever her silly name was did birch trees and spumes of grass. Graphs and tables, photographs were in the books on war and economics, maps when it was travel, baby pictures in the bios. He’d seen Pooh at school he supposed, and that tiger too. And the kangaroo. You’d feel real small in—wouldn’t it have to be?—Gwen’s large soft lap, her sleeved arms around you, holding the book in yours, the book’s bright pictures as enticing as a plate of cake, enjoying the coziness of it all he supposed, the odors and textures and comforts of closeness, feeling the breath in her chest, while in his ears from the voice behind him he hears the words on and on it goes. Riff tried to wrap his arms around his head but he couldn’t do it very well.

When he drew the blinds on the parking lot, he knew he was alone. He could call for Kim but she wouldn’t come, only her voice sometimes like a radio’s.
The World’s Orphan
. Hah. So I’ve got to read it, have I? How, hey? He didn’t have a copy, only an ad. Was that a good excuse? So he’d never be a better man. He took out toilet articles. Arranged them around the bathroom basin in the order required by natural law. Out and eat. That was the next thing. Maybe he’d just grab a candy bar from a machine. Round the world for only two mil. He’d need three quarters. Candy prices way up. Chocolate candy especially, especially with nuts. These days costs inflated like an inner tube. Kim cut two syllables from her name and it never seemed to trouble her—what she’d lost. Burly? Take a dare, why shouldn’t she pare, why should she care? But he thought Kimberly Riffaterre pretty spiff. At attention now. Walt Riff! Yo! Out and Eat! Let’s go! Get your ass out of traction and into action!

But Riff was unhappy. He didn’t feel military. He’d eat too many fries. It was already dark, long day’s end, the guy yapping at him like a pissy pup, look, there’s only so much I can do for you, you’ve made a mess in your books. He let the ledger hit the desk like the flat of a hand. Vinegar, for Christ’s sake. Sour apples from annoyed trees.

Sis in Chicago, married up to here in money, doing well like the well was deep. And what about—what about him? his one-night stands were one-night flops. Kim would never come when called, though he could sometimes tune her in, like a voice on the radio. She said her given name reminded her of Kimberly Clark Coated Papers. So she cut it down to its stump. And lost the whole of her born one when she married. Girls got a chance to be renamed, go to another family, live in a different town, lose what they’d been, begin again.

As his eye sniffed idly about, released like a dog from his thoughts, every surface which shaped the room and sheltered
him seemed to be drawing aside like drapes, but their shiftiness made nothing more spacious for him. It was not as if windows streaming with rain or alive with landscape appeared when they parted. Instead, the surfaces of the walls, the napless rug, the bulk of the bed, crowded in, increasingly indifferent, any sensitivity they might have had hardening the way people, compelled into closeness, became calloused, skin pressed against skin like bolts in boxes, holes the heart of the heap. The light, he began to notice, the way it fell upon the floor like a bored sigh; and the bed, which had barely interest enough in life to squeak; his own case, no more now than a bloated sack, almost as bad as a string bag which won’t even hold its own space: their bodies grew near as his clients did when it was time to consult, while their inner selves, their feelings, their natures, fled. The TV, were he to turn it on, would offer him images like packaged pie, the machine as unconcerned about its business as dessert to a diner’s counter.

He heaved the remains of his valise into the closet. Sat where it had sat and tried to gather strength. This was his bedtime story. You could see the orchards from the road as you drove, the trees in long rows like disciplined entries. No Swiss army regimen in the orchard owner’s brain, though. Riff’s facility with figures never made anyone happy, even when he made the dishonest honest, and straightened a crooked path like a paper clip. The seeds of crime grow sour grapes. And the straightened clip was but a useless bit of phony wire.

Out and eat. He’d seen a dingy steak house near the off-ramp. Made of palisaded planks, a bad sign. But doubtless cheap. He’d eat too many fries. If Riff liked anything about himself it was that he was thin. Suddenly, out of … well, you couldn’t say blue here … he realized there was a row of books he hadn’t handled. So what. Why realize? He shoved “so what?” aside, and rose with a reluctance overcome by what he’d call
curiosity but what he knew was fate. No light reached the low row. He tried to pry the secretary open with his fingers. Failing that, he was inspired to push up from the bottom where the door was a bit warped and offered a meager purchase. Open sesame.

Satisfaction settled over him. Success. It was a sign, and now he was holding
The San Felipians
by someone called Roger Cowles. A society novel from 1932. About the successful, Riff bet.
Diary of the Great War
. Dates didn’t interest him anymore, even if they dated a diary. He’d been over the date business and it led to a mystery. Henry Williamson. There was the Radclyffe Hall again. So he had looked at the last row—a little bit anyway. What a slip. Now he was nervous. Luck had lost its luster. That quick—turn of card. Rad Hall would be a tough guy’s name. But Clyffe. Shit.
Guide to Illinois Bed and Breakfasts
. Also to
Country Inns
. A book called
Six of Them
. What? Like
Five Little Peppers
?
Fireweed. The Younger Set. The Golden Door. The Little Yellow House. An American in Italy
. Yes, he’d seen some of these; he’d been here before. The last one, a mystery
—Jink
. Jink?

But he didn’t riffle through the books. He held them gingerly, glancing at the jackets, sampling a bit of the flap copy sometimes, but less and less, nervous without any recognizable reason, drawn and repelled by all these—well—former volumes—books no more now that they were never read. There was something about them—abandonment maybe—which resembled him, alone in his dowdy room, and wasn’t his face covered with little crinkles like the lacquered surface of the secretary? His hands were soiled. He put the last book back but left the doors ajar. Went without washing to curl up on the bed while neglecting to remove his low-topped boots. He didn’t wish for his sis. He didn’t call out for mom or undress Eleanor or anymore miss his gorgeous girl Friday, Miz Biz. His fingers still felt the paper of the pamphlet, very lightly, very slightly
textured, soft though, despite some sense of soil, his tips the fingertips of a typist.