“Sure, uh, I’ll come along. Hey, Charlie, how’s it going?”
Charlie grinned and whistled. People turned to look. “Hey,
Earl,” someone called, from across the room. “Va-va-va-voom.”
They squeezed their way past the other guests, past the apes and the sexy witches. The suction of the sliding door gave way in a whoosh, and Zoë and Earl stepped out onto the balcony, a bonehead and a naked woman, the night air roaring and smoky cool. Another couple was out here, too, murmuring privately. They were not wearing costumes. They smiled at Zoë and Earl. “Hi,” said Zoë. She found the plastic-foam cooler, dug into it, and retrieved two beers.
“Thanks,” said Earl. His rubber breasts folded inward, dimpled and dented, as he twisted open the bottle.
“Well,” sighed Zoë anxiously. She had to learn not to be afraid of a man, the way, in your childhood, you learned not to be afraid of an earthworm or a bug. Often, when she spoke to men at parties, she rushed things in her mind. As the man politely blathered on, she would fall in love, marry, then find herself in a bitter custody battle with him for the kids and hoping for a reconciliation, so that despite all his betrayals she might no longer despise him, and in the few minutes remaining, learn, perhaps, what his last name was and what he did for a living, though probably there was already too much history between them. She would nod, blush, turn away.
“Evan tells me you’re a professor. Where do you teach?”
“Just over the Indiana border into Illinois.”
He looked a little shocked. “I guess Evan didn’t tell me that part.”
“She didn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s Evan for you. When we were kids we both had speech impediments.”
“That can be tough,” said Earl. One of his breasts was hidden behind his drinking arm, but the other shone low and pink, full as a strawberry moon.
“Yes, well, it wasn’t a total loss. We used to go to what we called peach pearapy. For about ten years of my life I had to map out every sentence in my mind, way ahead, before I said it. That was the only way I could get a coherent sentence out.”
Earl drank from his beer. “How did you do that? I mean, how did you get through?”
“I told a lot of jokes. Jokes you know the lines to already — you can just say them. I love jokes. Jokes and songs.”
Earl smiled. He had on lipstick, a deep shade of red, but it was wearing off from the beer. “What’s your favorite joke?”
“Uh, my favorite joke is probably … OK, all right. This guy goes into a doctor’s office and—”
“I think I know this one,” interrupted Earl, eagerly. He wanted to tell it himself. “A guy goes into a doctor’s office, and the doctor tells him he’s got some good news and some bad news — that one, right?”
“I’m not sure,” said Zoë. “This might be a different version.”
“So the guy says, ‘Give me the bad news first,’ and the doctor says, ‘OK. You’ve got three weeks to live.’ And the guy cries, ‘Three weeks to live! Doctor, what is the good news?’ And the doctor says, ‘Did you see that secretary out front? I finally fucked her.’ ”
Zoë frowned.
“That’s not the one you were thinking of?”
“No.” There was accusation in her voice. “Mine was different.”
“Oh,” said Earl. He looked away and then back again. “You teach history, right? What kind of history do you teach?”
“I teach American, mostly — eighteenth and nineteenth century.” In graduate school, at bars, the pickup line was always: “So what’s your century?”
“Occasionally I teach a special theme course,” she added, “say, ‘Humor and Personality in the White House.’ That’s what my book’s on.” She thought of something someone once told her about bowerbirds, how they build elaborate structures before mating.
“Your book’s on humor?”
“Yeah, and, well, when I teach a theme course like that, I do all the centuries.” So what’s your century?
“All three of them.”
“Pardon?” The breeze glistened her eyes. Traffic revved beneath them. She felt high and puny, like someone lifted into heaven by mistake and then spurned.
“Three. There’s only three.”
“Well, four, really.” She was thinking of Jamestown, and of the Pilgrims coming here with buckles and witch hats to say their prayers.
“I’m a photographer,” said Earl. His face was starting to gleam, his rouge smearing in a sunset beneath his eyes.
“Do you like that?”
“Well, actually I’m starting to feel it’s a little dangerous.”
“Really?”
“Spending all your time in a darkroom with that red light and all those chemicals. There’s links with Parkinson’s, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I suppose I should wear rubber gloves, but I don’t like to. Unless I’m touching it directly, I don’t think of it as real.”
“Hmmm,” said Zoë. Alarm buzzed through her, mildly, like a tea.
“Sometimes, when I have a cut or something, I feel the sting and think, Shit. I wash constantly and just hope. I don’t like rubber over the skin like that.”
“Really.”
“I mean, the physical contact. That’s what you want, or why bother?”
“I guess,” said Zoë. She wished she could think of a joke, something slow and deliberate, with the end in sight. She thought of gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages, they would smack each other in the head instead of mating.
“Are you … in a relationship?” Earl suddenly blurted.
“Now? As we speak?”
“Well, I mean, I’m sure you have a relationship to your work.” A smile, a weird one, nestled in his mouth like an egg. She thought of zoos in parks, how when cities were under siege, during world wars, people ate the animals. “But I mean, with a man.”
“No, I’m not in a relationship with a man.” She rubbed her chin with her hand and could feel the one bristly hair there. “But my last relationship was with a very sweet man,” she said. She made something up. “From Switzerland. He was a botanist — a weed expert. His name was Jerry. I called him ‘Jare.’ He was so funny. You’d go to the movies with him and all he would notice were the plants. He would never pay attention to the plot. Once, in a jungle movie, he started rattling off all these Latin names, out loud. It was very exciting for him.” She paused, caught her breath. “Eventually he went back to Europe to, uh, study the edelweiss.” She looked at Earl. “Are you involved in a relationship? With a woman?”
Earl shifted his weight, and the creases in his body stocking changed, splintering outward like something broken. His pubic hair slid over to one hip, like a corsage on a saloon girl. “No,” he said, clearing his throat. The steel wool in his underarms was inching toward his biceps. “I’ve just gotten out of a marriage that was full of bad dialogue, like ‘You want more space? I’ll give you more space!’ Clonk. Your basic Three Stooges.”
Zoë looked at him sympathetically. “I suppose it’s hard for love to recover after that.”
His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. “But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they’ve got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they’re still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they’re … straight.”