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Number Fifteen: Albert Einstein
Our second entry in the giant-head
category. Although the bust is not original (those telltale seams), the hair
certainly is. The Professor’s famously frazzled spikes are now thin lengths of
rebar, twisted and tormented into shape. The green is a logical follow-up to
Sinatra’s martini: a question mark, which affords an infinity of rebound
angles.
Along the shorefront road between
Point Brown and Point Damon sits the Shrimpboat, a deli that resembles
somebody’s beach bungalow. The back view is toward Westport, a thin slice of
land across the choppy gray waters of the harbormouth, but today the
attractions are skyward, where an enormous stormcloud resembling a locomotive
is making its approach.
David and Abbey have appropriated the
windowside table, nicely proximate to a woodstove, bathing them in waves of
warmth. They’re eating Ruebens and being disgusting, licking the juice from
each other’s fingers. Abbey takes David’s index finger, gives it a pornographic
suctioning and cracks herself up.
“We are so, so bad!”
“Yes we are.”
She makes another study of the
stormcloud and goes all serious, leveling her eyes at him.
“Are we doing damage?”
He takes her hand and rubs the backs
of her knuckles. He worries that he lavishes too much attention on these five
digits, like a grieving father doting on the surviving sibling.
“Elena?”
“No. I worry about Elena winning you
back someday – and don’t even start
with the reassurances, it’s just a thought. Pablo, hell, Pablo’s a marvel. He
could survive anything. So I guess that leaves Derek.”
“But Derek adores you.”
“That’s just it. I’m cheating. I am
the godmother of Derek’s writing. I have a shortcut to his heart. So he has to like me, even though I am
cuckolding his mother. I know he’s brilliant, yada yada yada, but still, he’s a
teenager, and his self-identity is
still forming.”
David holds her hand to his lips.
“I worry about that, too. But Derek’s
different. I saw that brainpower early on and I challenged it. I have raised
him to seek out the dusty, seamy corners of truth, to accept the way the world
actually is. If I revert to a façade
marriage just to improve his memories of high school, he’s the first one who
won’t buy it. Besides, I deserve you, you most certainly deserve me, and we do
not always have to give in to the whims of children.”
Abbey sprouts a smile that morphs
into guilty laughter.
“And thank the Lord for Jenny
Felicetti.”
“She’s the best.”
Abbey takes a big bite of Rueben,
runs a finger along the side and offers it up for a thorough licking.
“We are so, so bad!”
“But probably not as bad as Billy and
Joyce.”
Billy stands on the balcony outside
his room. It’s cold, but not raining, and he craves isolation. After so many
years of solitary living, he finds himself joined at the hip, and he’s having a
hard time adjusting. He hears the door slide open behind him but doesn’t turn.
A hand wraps around his elbow and there she is, his recurring surprise. Her
hair is parted down the middle, short, flapping to either side like the ears of
a puppy-dog, the sheen of obsidian. Her nose is small for her face, her mouth a
heart-shaped purse of red. The eyes are a novel he’s read hundreds of times. He
has fetishized her features like lucky charms, and the process has begun to
seem disrespectful. She speaks, a bashful whisper.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He kisses the heart-shaped
lips.
“We get the room till twelve?”
“Yep. Tell me again.”
She snorts with laughter. “No!”
“Come on.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times
already.”
“Have you ever known a child who can
hear the same bedtime story over and over?”
“Yes. And they’re obnoxious!”
“So I’m obnoxious. Tell me.”
She rolls her eyes, but the smile
gives her away.
“I was in my apartment, Saturday
morning, making a late breakfast. My brother knocked on my door and handed me a
copy of Sports Illustrated. We read
it together and I said, Bobby? Can I borrow your car?”
“Because he keeps an old Corolla
around for emergencies.”
“Hey! Who’s telling the story?”
It’s always been Billy’s contention that
Joyce’s playful swats are anything but. Sometimes, they leave marks.
“You are. Mistress.”
“Damn straight. So! I showered,
packed up, Bobby drove me to his house and I took off. Somewhere around Marion, I
thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ For one thing, when it comes to
driving I have no endurance. But I did the math, and I figured if I could
squeeze out 200 miles a day I would make it by New Year’s. I took 40 through
Albuquerque, and Phoenix, and Bakersfield, then I took I-5 all the way up through
California, and Oregon, and up to Olympia. I drove 1300 miles along the
West Coast, and the first time I ever saw the Pacific Ocean was a New Year’s
morning, from this very balcony.
“So I did it. I got here for New
Year’s Eve. I sat in the back row, because I didn’t want to distract you – and
then you made your entrance through the back door, about ten feet away, and
thank God you didn’t see me. You were so
wonderful, even better than before. I think all those years of wandering have
added a depth to your singing, and, well, I didn’t want to say anything before,
but that band in Memphis was never up to your level. These guys, wow! Especially the pianist.
“And then you sang ‘That’s All,’ and
I started crying. And I stayed in my seat until you were down to your last
visitor, and I walked down the aisle. My legs were shaking. I thought you would
see me and run away screaming. And then I stepped onto the dance floor, and you
looked up and saw me. I will never ever
forget that look.”
“And you love me?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh. Y’think?”
“And you’re going to marry me.”
She laughs. “Ha! Is that an offer?”
By nature and habit, they are a pair
of jokers. Billy works hard to assemble a serious expression.
“Yes.”
Joyce stops laughing, and begins to
cry.
At the moment that Gillian discovered
the existence of a five-star restaurant up the coast – the Ocean Crest – a
stopwatch began to tick in Thomas’s head. Whereupon Thomas demonstrated how a
man stays married for fifty-plus years and, within the hour, called for reservations.
They sit before the window, watching the fog snake through a hillside of Sitka
spruce like a scene from the Ring Cycle. Gillian smiles and sips from a glass
of 20-year-old port. The sudden burst of luxury makes her laugh. Roused from a
deep thought, Thomas gives her a look.
“I’m sorry, dear. Did I say something
funny?”
“No, Groucho. I thought something funny. Do you recall my proletariat phase? Late
seventies?”
Thomas snickers. “Oh God yes. I would
arrive home in my Brooks Brothers three-piece to find my wife dressed like Mao
Zedong.”
“I was a godawful hypocrite.”
“Best-looking communist I ever saw.”
“Capitalist American pig.”
“But I’m glad you got comfortable
with wealth. Because I never intended to stop making money. Ah, here be our
elitist appetizers now.”
The waiter gives an interested look.
He sets down a tray of escargot and gives a friendly smile.
“You know if you take things down to
basic definitions, what you are eating are common garden pests.”
Thomas smiles. “Is there an extra
charge for rationalizations?”
“Strictly on the house.”
“Tree-mendous. Have a mollusk,
honey.”
Gillian watches the waiter go. “I
could get to like it here. They’re quite witty, but they don’t make a deal about it.”
She forks a snail, chews it down and
gives an expression of overwhelming pleasure.
“The bugs are delish, honey. So, Sir
Thomas of Blaine, tell me a little something…”
Thomas responds like a good straight
man.
“What’s that, Lady G?”
“Are we staying here?”
“We’re staying at the Shilo, dear.”
“I mean, here as in Ocean Shores. As
in, not Baltimore.”
Thomas pulls the old lawyer trick of
gazing out the window to give the impression of thoughtfulness.
“Would you mind if we did? Say, for
the year? Get the golf course going?”
Gillian gazes out the window, too,
for different reasons. To feel her place on the continent, to attach herself to
the pull of the ocean just beyond the spruce.
“I do like it here. I like this odd
little family we’ve developed. The one-armed poet, the seven-foot pianist,
Shoeless Joe Saddle. It’s a charming little freak show. I would miss the
family, the friends, Veronica, cousin Julia. But think of the stories we can
tell when we get home! Let’s do it, Tommy; let’s have an adventure.”
She consumes another snail, dabs at a
drop of butter on her lip.
“And let’s be certain to make regular stops at this restaurant.”
Jenny wears dark red lipstick, which
makes the most of her porcelain complexion but also presents Derek with an
irresistible target. Problem is, if he gives in and kisses it all off, he turns
himself into a drag queen and forces Jenny into a five-minute reapplication.
Once he gets her home, of course, all
bets are off. Jenny’s family lives in one of those big new houses near Point
Brown, which adds to the sensation of dating above his caste. They slip into a
shelter next to the porch – home to boots, jackets and lawn mowers – and he
dwells on those lips for hours. (This also explains why Derek now gets
erections from the smell of fresh-cut grass, a constant danger during P.E.)
Breastplay has become a regular
attraction, and Jenny has taken to removing her bra on the drive home. Tonight,
she raises the ante, removing her sweater, too. Fighting the anxiety of a
sudden parental appearance, Derek takes turns suckling and squeezing her nipples,
wondering if it matters whether he favors one over the other. One thing’s for
certain: there is a direct neural connection between these two points and the
rest of Jenny’s body. Five minutes in, she’s writhing like a woman trying to
pull on a pair of overtight jeans. He’s hanging on for dear life when he feels
her hand on top of his head, and realizes she’s trying to get his attention. He
looks up to find her in a half-destroyed frazzle, eyes half-closed like
Marilyn'’ at the golf course.
”I’m sorry. Is this too much?”
She takes a deep breath and bites her
lip.
“It’s not enough. Derek? Are you a
virgin?”
He has no idea how to answer, so he
doesn’t. She smiles.
“I am, too. Would you like to… Would
you like to…”
“Graduate?”
She gives him that slow-growth smile
and he can’t feel his limbs.
“My parents are in Seattle for the
weekend.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been reading up. I
think we can do this.”
Derek gives her a look of unbelieving
gratitude.
“You are… you are…”
She laughs. “Oh, shut up!” She grabs
his hand and drags him into the house.
Photo by MJV
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