Stone Mattress: Nine Tales Read online

  I am of a forgiving temperament, I know they have the best of intentions at heart. I’ve put on my white burial dress, my white veil, as befits a virgin. One must have a sense of occasion. The twittering voices are very loud: it’s time for me to take flight. I’ll fall from the burning rooftop like a comet, I’ll blaze like a bonfire. They’ll have to say many charms over my ashes, to make sure I’m really dead this time. After a while I’ll become an upside-down saint; my finger bones will be sold as dark relics. I’ll be a legend, by then.

  Perhaps in Heaven I’ll look like an angel. Or perhaps the angels will look like me. What a surprise that will be, for everyone else! It’s something to look forward to.

  THE FREEZE–DRIED GROOM

  • • • • • • • • •

  The next thing is that his car won’t start. It’s the fault of the freak cold snap, caused by the polar vortex – a term that’s already spawned a bunch of online jokes by stand-up comics about their wives’ vaginas.

  Sam can relate to that. Before she finally cut him off, Gwyneth was in the habit of changing the bottom sheet to signal that at long last she was about to dole him out some thin-lipped, watery, begrudging sex on a pristine surface. Then she’d change it again right afterwards to reinforce the message that he, Sam, was a germ-ridden, stain-creating, flea-bitten waste of her washing machine. She’d given up faking it – no more cardboard moaning – so the act would take place in eerie silence, enclosed in a pink, sickly sweet aura of fabric softener. It seeped into his pores, that smell. Under the circumstances he’s amazed that he was able to function at all, much less with alacrity. But he never ceases to surprise himself. Who knows what he’ll get up to next? Not him.

  This is how the day begins. At breakfast, a disaster in itself, Gwyneth tells Sam their marriage is over. Sam drops his fork, then lifts it again to push aside the remains of his scrambled eggs. Gwyneth used to make the most delicate scrambled eggs, so he can only conclude that the scrambled eggs of this morning, tough as boots, are part of the eviction package. She no longer wishes to please him: quite the reverse. She could have waited until he’d had some coffee: she knows he can’t focus without his caffeine hit.

  “Whoa, hold it a minute,” he says, but then he stops. It’s no use. This isn’t the opening move in a fracas, a plea for more attention, or an offer in a negotiation: Sam has undergone all three of these before and is familiar with the accessorized facial expressions. Gwyneth isn’t snarling or pouting or frowning: her gaze is glacial, her voice level. This is a proclamation.

  Sam considers protesting: what’s he done that’s so major, so stinky, so rotten, so cancerously terminal? Nothing in the way of mislaid cash and illicit lipstick besmearing that he hasn’t done before. He could criticize her tone: why is she so crabby all of a sudden? He could attack her skewed values: what’s happened to her sense of fun, her love of life, her moral balance? Or he could preach: forgiveness is virtuous! Or he could wheedle: how can a kind, patient, warm-hearted woman like her whack a vulnerable, wounded guy like him with such a crude psychic bludgeon? Or he could promise reformation: What do I have to do, just tell me! He could beg for a second chance, but she’d surely reply that he’s used up all his second chances. He could tell her he loves her, but she’d say – as she’s been saying recently, with tedious predictability – that love isn’t just words, it’s actions.

  She sits across the table from him girded for the combat she no doubt expects, her hair scraped severely off her forehead and twisted at the back of her neck like a tourniquet, her rectilinear gold earrings and clanky necklace reinforcing the metallic harshness of her decree. Her face has been made up in preparation for this scene – lips the colour of dried blood, eyebrows a storm cloud black – and her arms are folded across her once-inviting breasts: no way in here, buddy. The worst is that, underneath the shell she’s enclosed herself in, she’s indifferent to him. Now that every kind of melodrama has been used up by both of them, he finally bores her. She’s counting the minutes, waiting for him to leave.

  He gets up from the table. She could have had the decency to postpone the dropping of her writ until he’d dressed and shaved: a man in his five-day-old PJs is at a pitiful disadvantage.

  “Where are you going?” she says. “We need to discuss the details.” He’s tempted to come out with something hurt and petulant: “Onto the street.” “As if you care!” “No longer any of your fucking business, is it?” But that would be a tactical error.

  “We can do that later,” he says. “The legal crap. I need to pack.” If her thing is a bluff, this would be the moment; but no, she doesn’t stop him. She doesn’t even say, “Don’t be silly, Sam! I didn’t mean you had to leave right this minute! Sit down and have a coffee! We’re still friends!”

  But they are not still friends, it appears. “Suit yourself,” she says with a level glare. So he’s forced to shamble ignominiously out of the kitchen in his sleeping gear printed with sheep jumping over a fence – her birthday gift of two years ago when she still thought he was cute and funny – and his downtrodden woolly slippers.

  He knew this was coming, just not so soon. He should have been more alert and dumped her first. Kept the high ground. Or would that have been the low ground? As it is, the role of aggrieved party can be his by rights. He climbs into his jeans and a sweatshirt, throws a bunch of stuff into a duffle bag he’s had for a while, part of a seafaring project he’d never carried out. He can come back for the rest of his junk later. Their bedroom, soon to be hers alone – once so charged with sexual electricity, then the scene of their drawn-out push-me pull-you tug-of-war – already looks like a hotel room he’s about to abandon. Had he helped to choose their graceless imitation-Victorian bed? He had; or at least he’d stood by while the crime was being committed. Not the curtain material, though, not with those dumb roses on them. He’s innocent of that, at any rate.

  Razor, socks, Y-fronts, T-shirts, and so forth. He segues into the spare room he’s been using as an office and whisks his laptop, phone, notebook, and snarl of charging cords into his computer bag. A few stray documents, not that he trusts paper. Wallet, credit cards, passport: he slots them into various pockets.

  How can he get out of the house without having her see him – him and his abject retreat? Twist a sheet, climb out the window, shimmy down the wall? He’s not thinking clearly, he’s slightly cross-eyed with anger. To keep himself under control he slides back into the mind-game he often plays with himself: suppose he was a murder victim, would his toothpaste be a clue? I judge that this tube was last squeezed twenty-four hours ago. The victim was therefore still alive then. How about his iPod? Let’s see what he was listening to just before the carving knife went into his ear. His playlist may be a code! Or his awful cufflinks with lion heads and his initials on them, a Christmas gift from Gwyneth two years ago? These can’t be his, a man of taste such as himself. They must be the murderer’s!

  But they were his. They were Gwyneth’s image of him just after they started dating: the king of beasts, the forceful predator who’d fling her around a bit, do some toothwork on her. Hold her down, writhing with desire, one paw on her neck.

  Why does he find it soothing to imagine himself lying on a mortuary slab while a forensic analyst – invariably a hot blonde, though wearing a lab coat over her firm, no-nonsense lady-doctor breasts – probes his corpse with delicate but practised fingers? So young, so hung! she’s thinking. What a waste! Then, nosy, pert little detective that she is, she attempts to recreate his sorrowful snuffed-out life, retrace the wayward footsteps that mixed him up with a sinister crowd and led to his tragic end. Good luck, honey, he beams at her silently out of his cold, white head: I’m an enigma, you’ll never get my number, you’ll never pin me down. But do that thing with the rubber glove just one more time! Oh yes!

  In some of these fantasies he sits up because he isn’t dead after all. Screams! Then: kisses! In other versions he sits up even though he is dead. Eyeballs rolled right up into
his head, but avid hands reaching for her lab coat buttons. That’s a different scenario.

  One more sweatshirt stuffed into the top of his duffle: there, that should do it. He closes the bag, hoists it, picks up his computer case in the other hand, and canters down the stairs, two at a time, as he has done before. Replacing the worn carpet on those stairs is no longer his concern: that’s one plus for him, anyway.

  In the hall he grabs his winter parka out of the closet, checks the pockets for gloves, his warm scarf, his lambskin hat. He can see Gwyneth, still in the kitchen, elbows on the upmarket glass-topped table sourced from his end of things but that would now be hers, as he has zero intention of squabbling over it. He didn’t exactly pay for it in the first place, anyway: he acquired it.

  She’s studiously ignoring him. She’s made herself some coffee; the scent is delicious. And a piece of toast, from the looks of it. She’s certainly not too upset to eat. He resents that. How can she chew at a moment like this? Doesn’t he mean anything to her?

  “When will I see you?” she calls as he heads out the door.

  “I’ll text,” he says. “Enjoy your life.” Was that too bitter? Yes: rancour is an error. Don’t be a dickhead, Sam, he tells himself. You’re losing your cool.

  That’s the moment when the car decides not to start. Fucking Audi. He should never have accepted this hunk of luxury-car junk in lieu of settlement from a guy who owed him, though it looked like a great deal at the time.

  Talk about a definitive exit spoiled. He doesn’t even get to roar off around the corner, va-voom and good riddance, the sailor hitting the high seas, and who needs the ladies dragging you down like cement blocks tied to your ankles? A wave of the hand and away he’d go, cruising to ever-new adventures.

  He tries the ignition again. Click click, dead as November. His breath turning to smoke in the freezing air, the tips of his fingers whitening, his earlobes numbing, he phones his usual service outfit to come and jump the battery. All he gets is a recording: a representative will be with him shortly, but he should be advised that due to adverse weather conditions the average wait is two hours, please stay on the line because we truly value your business. Then on comes the upbeat music. Freeze your nuts off, go the unsung words, because all praise to the polar vortex, we’re making a bundle here. Wise up. Get a block heater. Kiss my ass.

  So back into the house he slouches. Good thing he still has a key, though Change the locks is no doubt top of Gwyneth’s list. She is a list-making woman.

  “What are you doing back here?” she says. Hangdog winsome smile: maybe she would be kind enough to see if her own car would start, and then maybe she could give him a jump? So to speak, he adds to himself silently. He wouldn’t mind taking a crack at jumping her to see if he could win her back, at least long enough to cash in on the reconciliation passion, but this is not the time.

  “Otherwise I’ll have to wait here until they send the truck,” he says with what he hopes is an insouciant grin. “It could be hours. It could be … I could be here all day. You wouldn’t want that.”

  She doesn’t want that. She heaves a long-suffering sigh – a car that won’t start is one more item on the endlessly unfurling scroll of his fecklessness – and begins to insulate herself in winter coat, mittens, scarves, and boots. He can hear her rolling up her invisible sleeves: Let’s get this done. Hauling him out of scrapes, dusting him off, polishing him so he shone like new – that kind of thing was once her cherished avocation. If anyone could fix him, she could.

  But she’s failed.

  When they first hooked up, after she’d walked into his store looking for a match to an ugly antique Staffordshire china spaniel she’d recently inherited, Gwyneth found him next to irresistible: edgy, thrilling, but entertaining, like a supporting character in a ’50s musical. Some loveable comic gangster, naughty but trustworthy at heart. Possibly no man had ever paid the kind of attention to her that he had – that in-detail tactile scrutiny, as if she was a valuable teacup. Or possibly she hadn’t noticed the come-on lines of males past because she’d been too occupied with her sickly parents to put much time in on men, or to allow them to put much time in on her. So to speak. Not that she wasn’t beautiful – she was, in a cameo kind of way – but she didn’t seem aware of what she could do with it. She’d had a few boyfriends, true, but as far as he could tell they’d been pathetic wusses.

  But by the day of the china spaniel she was ready for action. She shouldn’t have been so open with strange men, namely him. She shouldn’t have volunteered so much information. The dead parents, the inheritance: enough so she’d been able to quit her school-teaching job, begin to enjoy life. But how?

  Enter Sam, on cue, knowledgeable about Staffordshire and smiling at her with polite, appreciative lechery. He was good at enjoyment, a talent few possessed. He was happy to share.

  He’d been relatively upfront with her; or rather he hadn’t outright lied. He’d told her his income came from the antiques shop, which was partly true. He didn’t mention where the rest of it came from. He’d told her he was in business for himself – accurate – though he had a partner, also accurate. What she saw in him was an exciting man of action, a sexual magician; what he saw in her was a respectable façade behind which he could hunker down for a while. It would be nice to stop living in motels or camping out in the back of the shop, so it was handy that she already owned a house, one with room in it for him when he was there. Which, as things eased up, he increasingly wasn’t. His work involved a lot of travel, he told her. Checking out antiques.

  He can’t say he didn’t enjoy the convenience of being married to her, at first. The pampering. The comfort.

  He wasn’t a total asshole: he’d talked himself into the marriage, he’d even believed it could work. He wasn’t getting any younger, maybe he should settle down. So what if she wasn’t, to outward appearances, a hot babe? Hot babes could be stuck on themselves; they were demanding and fickle. Gwyneth wasn’t so alluring that she didn’t appreciate what she was getting. One time he’d laid her out naked on the bed and covered her in hundred-dollar bills: heady stuff for a good girl like her, and what an aphrodisiac! But the periodic and increasingly serious lack of hundred-dollar bills, once she found out about that lack – the first time he’d had crap luck and hit her up for a loan – that had the opposite effect. Narrowed her eyes, caused her nipples to shrink like raisins, dried her up like a prune. Just when he could have used a dollop of sympathy and comfort, bang! He was locked into the virtual refrigerator, despite his big blue eyes.

  He’s relied on them all his life, those big blue eyes of his. Candid, innocent round eyes. Con-man’s eyes. “You look like a baby doll,” one woman had said about his eyes. “And I’m so breakable,” he’d replied, winningly. Gazing into those eyes, what woman could find it in her heart to disbelieve whatever excuse he was laying out before her like a street peddler’s designer-label silk scarf?

  Though his big blue eyes are shrinking, he’s convinced of it; or is that that his face is growing? Whatever the cause, the ratio between his eyes and his face is changing, as is that between his shoulders and his belly. He can still do the blue-eyed thing; it still works, most of the time; though not of course with men. Men are better at telling when other men are bullshitting. The trick with women is to stare at their mouths. One of the tricks.

  He and Gwyneth don’t have kids, so the wait in the divorce queue shouldn’t be too long. Once they’ve gone through the formalities, Sam will be at loose ends, yet again. He’ll be wandering the world like a snail, house on his back, which is possibly how he feels most comfortable. He’ll whistle a merry tune. He’ll ramble. He’ll smell like himself again.

  Gwyneth’s car starts without a problem. She cuts the engine, stares cow-like out her window at him, a smug witness to his frozen-fingered manoeuvres with the jumper cables, hoping perhaps that he’ll electrocute himself. No such luck: he signals to her to switch on, and juice flows from her car to his, and he’s mobile
again. Strained smiles are exchanged. He eases onto the icy street, gives her a wave. But she’s already turned away.

  His parking spot behind the building is unoccupied for once. The store is west on Queen, just where the advancing wave of grooviness hits the barren shore of down-at-heels. On one side, trendy coffee purveyors and boutique nighteries; on the other, pawnshops and cheap dress stores, their merchandise yellowing on cracked mannequins. Metrazzle, proclaims the lettering on his sign. In the display window is a teak dining room set from the ’50s, complemented with a stereo in blond wood. Vinyl is back: some kid with rich parents is going to find that cabinet irresistible.

  Metrazzle isn’t open yet. Sam jingles his way in through the multiple locks. Ned is already there, in the back, engaged in his usual occupation, which is furniture forgery. No: furniture enhancement. Ned is his name, or the one he goes by; distressing is his game, or one of them. He’s the Botox doctor of wood, except that he makes it looks older rather than younger. The air is flecked with fine sawdust, and reeks of stain.

  Sam heaves his duffle bag into a vintage steel Eames chair. “Bitch out there,” he says. Ned looks up from his hammer and chisel; he’s adding a few faux cracks.

  “More on the way,” he says. “It’s dumping on Chicago right now. They shut the airport.”

  “When’s it due here?” says Sam.

  “Later,” says Ned. Tap tap, goes his chisel.

  “Guess it’s the climate change,” says Sam. That’s what people say, the way they used to say, We’ve angered God. And like that, not a fucking thing anyone can do about it, so why even mention it? Party while it lasts. Party if you can. Not that he feels much like partying today. What Gwyneth has done to him is sinking in, sinking down. There’s a cold spot right in the middle of him somewhere. “Fucking snow, I’ve had enough of it,” he says.