Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(38)
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 facade 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 *: 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. Round, candid 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?