Madonna of the Apes (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Fred walked Franklin Tilley to the bottom of the stairs leading to the Charles Street subway, which at that stage of its run was above ground. The evening was getting chilly. Good weather for the trees to put on leaves and flowers. Good weather for tulips and daffodils to poke their buds out of the earth in the little spaces allowed, between pavements, for such activities. Folks on the street were prospecting for a drink before dinner.

“Laundry to do,” Fred reminded himself.

He chose a machine in the Nite-Rite Wash-n-Dry and sat in one of the chairs provided. It was not a bad vantage point from which to observe his fellow citizens. They came in all colors, shapes, ages, and sizes. What they had in common was that they did not live in places that had washing machines. You’d say, you’d assume, that the odds were anyone in an all-night Laundromat on a late Tuesday afternoon was single; but across from the washing machines a young man at a dryer was folding tiny pajamas and laying them into a red plastic laundry basket.

“Damned thing broke,” he told Fred, catching his speculative eye. “Tamara won’t wait for Sears. She can’t leave the kids. Doesn’t want to—she’s tried it—bringing Jenny with her—that’s the youngest—but this is a hell of a place to nurse a kid, and it’s a lot to carry. The kid, the basket. Besides, there’s something on she likes to watch, hospital program, and this gets me out of the house. I don’t mind. It’s not like there’s diapers to do. The man who invented Pampers, he’s the guy that should get the Nobel Medal of Freedom in my book. Or the woman. And you’ll say the next Nobel Medal of Freedom goes to the guy that invents a way to dispose of the disposable diapers, which I don’t disagree with you. Or the woman.”

He folded a little yellow dress, manipulating it on the table as if it were a man’s dress shirt. Was that how a woman would do it? The dress, now a neat square, went into the basket.

“How old’s the oldest?” Fred asked.

“Three,” the man told him, patting the dress. He untangled three brassieres and tried to fold them, gave up, and crammed them into the basket in a state of abandon. “I’ve got one three, one two, and then Jenny. Jenny’s the youngest. She was born last New Year’s day. We missed the exemption by twenty-three minutes. It’s how I knew she’d be a girl.”

He paused for Fred to say something he couldn’t think of.

“She was twenty-three minutes late,” the man said. “You have kids?”

“I guess not,” Fred said. “Not that I know about.”

The young man thought of an answer that he kept to himself.

***

She came in carrying a blue plastic laundry basket. Tabitha? Jasmine? Stella? “Hey,” she said, putting it down beside him. “Fred. Here you are all of a sudden, all fuzzy and domestic!”

Daniella?

She was wearing her wet hair in dark curls. A large green sweater covered the snake tattoo. “I’m starving,” she said, leaving a kiss in the vicinity of his face. “But more important, I’m going to be arrested if I don’t get some laundry done.”

Marie? Marianne? Mary Anne? Anne-Marie? Mary? Frances? Bertha? Annie? Ann?

“The truth is, I forgot your name,” Fred said. “I’ve been beating my head to a pulp.”

“That’s Okay. It’s not a symptom of anything, or anything. There’s a lot of things I forget too,” she reassured him. “I’ll be Anonymous. It could be fun.”

“Then when we’ve finished our laundry, we’ll eat,” Fred said.

“How about Charlie’s?”

“That’s your name? Charlise?”

“God no. To eat. Three blocks away. You know it? I’ll show you. No, my name I’ll keep under advisement.”

Fred strung out his operation as long as he could, but still there was waiting time before her drying cycle was done. When it came time for her to fold the sheets, Fred gave her a hand.

“I like a fresh bed,” she said, “don’t you?”

Side by side they carried their laundry to the antique and whatnot shop over which she lived. She balanced the blue plastic basket while she fished for her keys in the pocket of her jeans. Leading the way up the stairs she suggested, “And if you want, before dinner—after, I’m busy—we can have anonymous sex. At least you can.”

Her apartment was no bigger than it had been, and no more comfortable. The only way there was room in it for two people was if at least one of them was in the bed.

“I can’t keep calling you Anon,” Fred said.

“I like it. It’s like being in New York. Everyone knows your business but nobody knows you.” She put her basket down and Fred dropped his bag next to the door. “But I see what you mean. It doesn’t sound like a girl’s name. Call me Amnesia.

“First we’ll have coffee,” she said, taking off the big green sweater and throwing it onto one of the stuffed chairs. The snake tattoo had slid easily, head first, from under the sweater, though its head itself remained under the shoulder of the pink T-shirt she was wearing underneath, above jeans that had seen a better day. “When I get to this outfit, I know it’s time to do laundry,” she said. “You like yours black I hope. I’m out of milk.”

“Black’s fine.” Fred sat in the available chair and watched her work.

“We’ll have coffee. Then we’ll take off our clothes and make my bed.” She kicked off her shoes and, busy with mugs, without looking, shoved them backward under the chair Fred was sitting in. She curled onto the foot of the bed, a lanky woman, needing a lot of bed. The instant coffee steamed well, but it was not good. “From previous conversations, although our name has slipped our mind, we know that I teach Math,” she said. “Maybe you told me, but I didn’t listen: What do you do, Fred, while you’re not picking girls up in the Nite-Rite Wash–n-Dry?”

“Security,” Fred told her.

“What, like in a store?”

“In a store you sit there and wait for it to happen,” Fred said. “You’d have to say I’m more active than that.”

“So, private,” she concluded. She sipped from her mug. “You carry a gun?”

Fred nodded. “Not now.”

“You’ve killed someone?”

Fred took another drink of indifferent coffee. She looked at him speculatively and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. “Given your size,” she said, “and given how hard you look, I guess when it comes to making people pay attention, you don’t need the gun. In class I sometimes think I could use a gun. Some of the kids we get…”

Chapter Sixteen

She stood, put the mug onto the table, and slipped the T-shirt over her head. The action roiled her hair, which she shook consciously. Her generous breasts swung, but more slowly, less consciously, and in a narrower arc.

“You don’t need a gun either,” Fred said, standing to put his mug down next to hers.

“Wait.” She held up her hands to keep his distance. “We do this in order. First we make the bed. And before we do that, we take our clothes off. In the light this time. It was dark last time. I haven’t really seen you. You first, Fred.”

She gasped as his shirt hit the floor. He’d forget, sometimes, the number and complexity of the scars visible on his body, until someone reminded him. Her consternation gave him cover while he went through the routine of stepping out of his loafers and, more clumsily, getting the sequence of pants both off his body and onto the floor, next to the shirt and shoes.

“Okay,” Fred said. “So far so good. When do you tell me about the snake?”

She was looking him over with frank interest. If she heard his question, she didn’t let on. “Look what I get,” she said. “God, you’ve been through some rough country, haven’t you?” She stepped out of her jeans and was left in a narrow pair of pink underpants decorated with strawberries. “A gift,” she said. “Another signal that it’s laundry time. I didn’t know you were coming. No,” she discouraged his reaching arms; stepped out of the underpants and left them in the heap of clothing Fred had thought of as his. “Let’s make the bed, remember?”

She rooted in her basket until she found the white sheets she and Fred had folded not half an hour ago and, one on either side of the bed, they started to unfold the bottom one.

“See, the part I love most, Fred,” she said, “and don’t get me wrong, because the whole thing’s a blast—you’ve got some protection, yes? For when it’s time—the best part is the anticipation. Like buying stock.”

“Buying stock,” Fred repeated. It was a fitted sheet, the reason it had been hard to fold earlier. He got the elastic of the top corner on his side in place.

“Yes, like my uncle said, the best time to sell stock is right before the big event everyone is waiting for. People buy hope. They love anticipation.”

“Like my guy and his box,” Fred agreed. He moved to the bottom of the bed and tucked in his share of that end. Their heads came close. She smelled of instant coffee, or he did, or both of them did.

“I’m not following,” she said.

“I was doing security for a guy,” Fred told her.

“I’ll turn off the phone,” she said, brushing past him to get to the night table on what must be her side of the bed. “For him or for the box? The security,” she asked.

“For him, I guess. But he has this box to look forward to.”

“And I have you,” she said. “Hold this pillow while I get the case around it.”

***

They lay together on her bed after a while, Fred tracing the serpent’s coil around her arm, beginning at the wrist, and finishing at the flat head behind her shoulder. She was obliged to shift position somewhat, in order to accommodate his exploration. “It might be a good name for the snake,” Fred said. “Amnesia.”

“I’m liking the name,” she said. “I’m enjoying how close we are, and me not having to be anybody.”

“I’m not forgetting on purpose,” Fred said. “It’s like a hole I fall into, maybe, well, when, if I care about someone. It’s not…”

“I said, don’t worry about it. Things come to pass. Like me. Waiting for my big break. You know? If you push it nothing happens, nothing comes.”

“Your big break.”

“I’m not teaching math in Quincy Community College forever.”

“If we stretched it out, uncurled it, how long would it be? Is it male or female?” Fred asked.

“Like I loved making love with you. But next thing you know, it’s done. There has to be the next thing to keep us going. Anticipation, like my uncle says.”

“Like dinner at Charlie’s?” Fred said.

“I guess you could anticipate that,” she said. “Though maybe not as much if you’ve ever been there before. More like that man’s box.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Box?”

“You said some man was looking forward to a box. We were talking about anticipation. Tell me about the man’s box.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Fred said. “I was watching out for the man. I never saw it.”

“See, and that makes it stick in your head. Anticipation. Like stock. People buy what they hope is going to happen. It’s human nature. It’s
la condition humaine.
You remember the box because you never saw it, whereas if you saw it—well, who’d remember a box?

“Let’s go eat. Bring your stuff with you, because I’m not coming back after.”

“My worldly goods,” Fred said.

Chapter Seventeen

She strode along the sidewalk, the big black cloth bag she carried swaying lethally from her left shoulder, making it advisable for Fred to keep to her right.

Charlie’s, six steps down from the sidewalk, on Charles Street, was dressed like an Italian nightclub on a highway outside of town. The music was, or might be, Bulgarian folk rock, and the menu Franco-Lebanese. Once they’d fought successfully for a table, she studied the menu. “You sneaked off the other night. Man of mystery. You left me a ballpoint pen. Touching gesture. I’ve been treasuring it. It said
Bic
on it. I’ll have the vegetable plate and the fat beans they do here. Fava beans. I could kill for their fava beans. And get me any beer they have on draught.”

Fred took their order to the counter, paid, and accepted a woman’s promise to deliver the order to their table.

“Given you know my name and, even after all this, yours has temporarily slipped my mind,” Fred said, “I’m grappling with the question who has the advantage.” He sat across from her with his iced tea. They wouldn’t trust him to carry her beer.

“Knowledge is power,” she said.

“Whereas, on the other hand, ignorance is bliss. Also a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Fred said.

“I’m going to Cleveland,” she countered.

“Just when I was getting to know you.”

“A wedding. Leaving Friday morning, back Sunday. I’m maid of honor. You should see the commotion we went through to get half-decent looking matching dresses with long sleeves.”

“It’s a Muslim wedding?”

“Carla, my friend, the bride—you met her.”

“I did?”

Her food arrived, and the beer, in a slopping mug. “Running. Yesterday morning. Along the river.”

“That was Carla,” Fred said.

The woman put a broad brown bean into Fred’s mouth. It was the size of the first joint of his thumb, and spicy. “Anyway, Carla said either we cover our arms, or five bridesmaids get tattoos like mine. There’s six of us. That would have been a bonanza for Big Sid in Hanover, and it would also have knocked their eyes out in Cleveland, from what I hear. But a couple of the girls weren’t really that interested. A tattoo like mine, you have to want it a lot. You have to want it until you die, or at least lose your arm. So we went with long-sleeved dresses.”

“All the same color,” Fred said.

“A bridesmaid’s first duty is to make the bride look good,” she said. “By contrast. And the color she chose is going to accomplish that end. I won’t even tell you what the color is, or what they call the color. After the wedding I’ll dye it, and if that doesn’t work I’ll burn it. So, Sunday night, after you left, where did you go?”

“I told you, I do security.”

She poked with her fork among her colorful array of vegetables, found a suitable victim, and held it in front of her mouth. “Tell me more.”

Fred said, “Since it’s security, I can’t really tell you. Beyond I was doing security for a guy. Private operation.”

“You have a beeper or something? I didn’t hear it go off.”

She bent a roasted carrot into her mouth and chewed it.

Fred, having drunk his iced tea to the dregs, rattled his ice and fished with her spoon for the lemon slice. He’d ordered something that turned out to be mostly ground lamb. “So she’s going to live in Cleveland? The guy works in Cleveland?”

“Who?”

“Your friend. Carla. In the green shorts.”

“Not only do you remember Carla’s name, you remember her shorts,” the woman said. “There’s hope for you.”

Fred ate some ice. The lower legs of people lined up to get inside were visible on the sidewalk, standing patiently, their owners facing each other, presumably in conversation, the women’s legs for the most part bare, the men’s in pants.

“No,” Fred’s companion was saying, “it’s where the church is, and the family, the bride’s family. He’s from Richmond. Virginia. They met here. School. Her family’s Cleveland, they do the whole Cleveland thing there, people send Cleveland-sized wedding presents like they’re going to live in a big house with silver soup tureens, then they come back to their apartment here and there’s nothing to do with the stuff. Except give it away one by one when their friends get married, which is where most of it came from anyway.”

“Marriage,” Fred said.

“You got that right. Candlesticks. Soup tureens. What is this, 1760? Thank you notes. Is this a parsnip? And they have to rent a storage locker to keep it in. It’s the quandary of our age. Do they rent a locker in Cleveland, where it’s cheap, or do they pay to ship it here and rent here for three times the money?”

“Imagine this,” Fred said. “You’re in your dress with the sleeves, whatever the color is. You all march in throwing the roses, whatever it is you throw. And there, over the altar, is one of those old holy pictures. This one shows the Blessed Virgin, sitting on a rock, with the baby on her lap, but he’s reaching out for a fig a monkey is giving him. Or an ape. Or maybe the ape took it from him. You get the idea.”

“What’s your question?”

***

“Not so much a question,” Fred said. “More along the lines of, Imagine that!”

The woman pushed her plate aside, still with a third of its original burden. “Have to tell you, Fred,” she said. “I’m not much of a believer. Is it a Garden of Eden idea?”

“Hadn’t considered that,” Fred admitted.

“But then there’d have to be two apes. Two of every animal, remember?”

Fred said, “Something like that. You going to finish your beer?” She pushed it across the table to him. He’d chosen a dark draught for her that had gone warm and still. He polished it off.

“Those people would kill for our table,” she said. “Let’s have dessert.”

Half an hour later, after she had damaged and dispersed a bowl of rice pudding, they reached the street again. The sidewalks were thronged with people, none of whom were the woman’s friends to spread out their arms, calling, “Hi, Manuella!”

“I’ll walk you home,” Fred offered.

“Subway,” she corrected him. “Will it rain again, do you think?”

They both looked at the sky, studying the question, as they walked.

“Bound to, sometime,” Fred concluded.

“Back from Cleveland Sunday night.”

“With a new dress with long sleeves,” Fred remembered. “Can’t you take off the sleeves, when you’re done with the wedding?”

“Goddamned right. I’ll tear off the sleeves and shorten the skirt by about a yard and a half.”

“If the dye job works, it could come out looking like your shorts. Red, I remember.”

“Good for you. Maybe I’ll take the whole top off. I hate the top. It makes my breasts look like I keep them in a box under the bed.”

They got her to her stop; she placed a kiss in the vicinity of Fred’s face, and rummaged in her bag for a token.