Blue Field(24)

24


Sunlight bladed through the blinds. The sheets felt oily slick. He lay sprawled carelessly as litter across his side of the bed and part of hers. Littermate. Her uncovered bare legs seemed to stretch far from the rest of her. Across the room, paint strokes wavered unevenly where the walls met and a watermark she’d never noticed before oozed. He stirred and the sheets seemed to foam. Her peripheral vision flanged—an occlusion then a flare. The wall stain fluxed and she fixed on the dresser and then the windowsill as if fighting seasickness. He sighed in his sleep and she remembered. Last night, bestride her, he’d wiped her lips with his glans, pre-ejaculatory liquid seeping from his urethra, his testicles high and tight. She’d opened to him and he f*cked her face like a drawer slamming repeatedly. Then they’d arked at their trunks, torsos rearing. Pure humping. They were all each other had. Until an image of Jane bobbed like an apple in Marilyn’s vision. She howled and clawed. Mistaking her efforts, he pinned her hips and came, then fell into a fast slumber still inside her. She slept too, awoke in the night with his dick shrunken and slipped from her.

The wooden floor beneath her feet with its boards in even strips steadied her now. Full morning. He began to snore and she backed from the room.

Jane. Wide-spaced eyes and pale wheat-coloured brows. Two days ago, a girl soon to be stolen to darkness, she’d reclined in a summer meadow on an island called Flowerpot, her teeth picking around the pit of a plum—the single piece of fruit she’d agreed to eat from the robust picnic supplied by her friend while Rand and Leo post-lunch dipped in the bay. I know it’s exciting, Marilyn could have said then. You’re all caught up but maybe you should slow down, take things one step at a time. And then Marilyn could have suffered Jane’s hall-of-mirrors retort. Like you did? Because isn’t the danger the attraction? The attraction, the danger? Which is exactly when Marilyn might have just said, Stay the f*ck away from my husband.

Descending the townhouse stairs, she squeezed the railing as if she might wring moisture from it. Two days ago on that island Jane’s eyes had shone like ball bearings. She was, Marilyn thought now, a woman not yet stolen. But already called.

She took refuge in her office with its shelves arranged with boxes of computer programs and manuals and colour swatches, stacks of spiral-bound drawing pads. Her multi-screen workstation was ornamented only with a framed photograph of her and Rand on a boat, formally attired in their tuxedo-black drysuits. The happy couple.

I spoke to them, he said from the doorway.

Hey you, wait for me, Marilyn had called to Jane two days ago—they’d finished eating, the tasteless remains of costly cheese and bread and chocolate for Marilyn, the plum for Jane, who was striding up the rocky hill away from the shore where in the distance Rand and Leo basked like walrus-lords. Her toned calves bulged and her sandals smacked the bottoms of her small strong feet, her butt swished athletically. Wait up, Marilyn had called, struggling to keep pace. Wait for me.

I can’t hear you, Jane had yodelled and kept on.

I told them you were too upset to talk, he said, advancing toward Marilyn in her chair. She turned her back but his fingers were cold and unearthly as starfish at the nape of her neck. If you can manage to go, he said, it would mean a lot.

Go? she said, picturing Jane walking briskly along the hill’s crest to ramp, intact, down the other side and out of view while Marilyn remained here, breaking apart.

His thumb and forefinger pincered slightly then released. To the Allens, he said. They’ve asked us. This afternoon with just the family. It might help you too, both of us.

Help? she said.

Finally she had her mission. She gathered clothes and laid them on the bed, tucked panties inside pants and bra inside shirt. Her creation seemed to regard her. You putting me on? Then, while her husband stalwartly manned his phone in the living room, she slathered her face with make-up to conceal her self-inflicted bruise from the motel’s bathroom door.

Outside, clear as ether. Her car sliced with a metal-glide ease through the Sunday morning of the long weekend’s mostly vacant avenues and lightly staffed checkpoints. In Old Downtown she hung left and left among the glittering multiplexes and into the relative darkness of a mostly vacant car park where she ascended a series of elevated rings. The flowers she’d picked yesterday emitted a fetid scent from the back seat. After parking she stashed them in a trash can near the elevator. Then down she went and outside again onto the bright street with its glossy surfaces and gadgets behind every storefront. Searching, searching. She leaned into a narrow alley between the closed establishments and puked a white froth in a mechanical uh-uh-uh. And then she was climbing back into her car. A package lay on her lap, a pretty cardboard box wedged between her gut and the wheel. She opened it, dimly recalling glazed pastries looped in rows like glistening pods behind display glass. An old-fashioned cash register’s ping. Now, in the car, she poked then tore off a chunk of crust then scooped and gulped leaving only a single staring berry, a salt-sweet mineral-tart, stuck to the foil pan.





25


Randall, Malcolm said, and Rand entered the Edwardian row house, shutting the screen door in her face. She clutched the fancy replacement pie closer and took in the veranda dishevelled with dirty running shoes and rain boots and trikes, rolled-up umbrellas, a broken wooden chair she considered collapsing into in hopes of splinters spiking her too-tight skirt, of blood-letting and pain loss—if only. Instead she let herself into the small dark hallway congested with toys and winter coats hanging from hooks and quickly negotiated the too-quick passage into the living room with its tribunal of silent Allens—each so pale as to appear powdered. Mr. and Mrs. Allen senior on the loveseat. Malcolm—Jane’s brother, eldest of the three siblings—by the brick fireplace and Jane’s older sister Amy hulking on an ottoman with three tots around her knees. Fair-haired to a person, but Jane had been fairest of them all. Not one of the Allens seemed to notice Marilyn. She chewed the inside of her cheek and shifted from foot to foot, feeling like a spare hour on a clock. Where was Rand? If only she could announce herself or some news, an important development, impart an understanding. Prick herself awake. Growing up, she’d envied Jane for having a large family. She could disappear into the crowd. Many times Marilyn had sought refuge from her parents’ scrutiny in the Allens’ living room while the TV blared and the kids sniped over which channel and how many saltines per. She’d blissfully burrow in with her sketchpad. Now she stood outside Malcolm’s living room, desperately wanting and not wanting to break in, to look and not look each of the Allens in the eye. To act.