In the bathroom, he mixed hot and cold water until it ran tepid, cupping his hands until they were partially filled with water. He smeared his damp palms over his penis and pubic hair before he cupped his hands and splashed water on his face. He reached for the towel and buried his face in it. Spencer got up and followed Haveabud to the doorway. When Spencer left without looking at him — when Will looked at the wide empty bed — Will had felt frightened for the first time. He got up and walked to the bathroom door. It was closed now, or pulled almost closed. There was a paper bathmat on the tile floor. Haveabud was on his knees, and this time he was licking Spencer’s nipples. Will watched his mouth move lower, leaving a snail-trail of slime as it moved down Spencer’s body.
TWELVE
Since quitting his previous job, Wayne had taken a job with a lawn-and-landscaping service. Also, on Friday and Saturday nights he delivered groceries to the big retirement complexes that had sprung up in the past few years: no big tips, but decent people who probably wouldn’t put a bullet between his eyes the way loonies did when they got antsy in supermarkets. A month before, a kid bagging groceries had been threatened with a pistol, and another kid, loading groceries into a car curbside, had been robbed of what little money he had, and had gotten his wrist broken in the process. The first incident made the papers, but as far as he knew the second incident had merely gotten around by word of mouth, so Corky probably wouldn’t hear about that. She already had objections to his working nights, and reports of violence would just fuel her anger, though she had quieted down since she had started to work two nights a week herself. If she had her way, he would quit smoking no matter how much weight he gained, never socialize with his friends, and sit around the house like Corinne’s husband, who had been missing from the weekly softball game since his daughter’s birth. The baby was suffering from jaundice. At first Eddie had recruited his friend Buzz to play catcher, but after three weeks he just resigned from the team. Corinne had pitched him a fastball with the unplanned baby (planned by Corinne, unplanned by Eddie, as Corky had told him, swearing him to secrecy), and now he was as in-tight with family life as a fastball hitting the pocket of a catcher’s mitt.
He pulled into the hotel parking lot to take the short stroll across the sand to the Azure Skies, a thatch-roofed beach bar where every day there was happy hour from five to six: free Pepperidge Farm goldfish, free peanuts, and on Fridays a second drink provided gratis with the last one you ordered. A nice, simple, good-time sort of place that Corky, of course, wouldn’t set foot in. The owner’s twin brother ran the supermarket where Wayne had started moonlighting. It was from him that Wayne learned the supermarket needed delivery boys. It rubbed him wrong when Dalton said “boys,” but he reminded himself that it was just an expression. Why get mad about that when things were so screwed-up in the world that now the person in charge of a meeting wasn’t a chairman, but a chairperson. Hurricanes were now named for men. Next, people would be referring to sailboats as “he.”
What sort of man would leave different women three times? Wayne was wondering to himself as he locked the door of the Toyota. He had taken off his socks and tennis shoes and left them in the car so he could feel the sand between his toes. A dip in the ocean would be even better, but if it came to a fast swim or a couple of drinks, his preference was the barstool. Just for the moment, he was entertaining the notion of breaking up with his wife. That would mean that he had left Carol Ann, and Jody, and then Corky. A man who needed to be independent would do that. A man who knew that he was better off on his own. A man tired of women’s expectations.
For a few seconds the notion of being on his own made him feel powerful. Then he tried the flip side and decided that to walk three times meant that he had had unreasonable expectations of the women he had chosen. Probably some shrink could tell him the truth, but he had about as much intention of seeing a shrink as he did of swimming for the horizon. After a couple of Buds he’d feel either one way or the other: that he was entitled, or that he was a coward. If he decided he was a coward, he’d just have another beer before six o’clock; delivering groceries did not exactly require complete sobriety.
“My man,” Dalt said, giving the high five. The fan above the cash register was blowing. Dalt was slightly cross-eyed. He was wearing one of his many baseball caps studded with fishing lures. Some of the caps had buttons with funny sayings on them, and one — a gift from his daughter, which the customers sensed wasn’t to be laughed at — had a small heart-shaped frame above the brim that contained a picture of Dalt’s fat-cheeked granddaughter, Melanie Rae. Customers found out the child’s name even if they drank at the bar only one time. Large photos could be pointed out on the bulletin board above the cash register if he didn’t have her silver-framed image riding high above his forehead.
Wayne gave the bar the once-over. Agnes was there, in a purple muumuu patterned with birds of paradise. She was barely tolerated at the bar, although she was a regular, and when she had one too many she was not tolerated at all; one of the people working the counter would load her across the highway, get the front-door key from under her doormat, and tell her to shower and stay home. One night after allowing herself to be taken home she had gone out and started thumbing. A week later — in an account she found more humorous than did anyone forced to listen to it — she found herself in Boston. That Agnes had hitched to Boston and back in one of the muumuus without encountering any harm was testament to the strange ways of the world.
“How’s my brother treatin’ you?” Dalt asked. Before he had his back operation, Dalt had played third base in the weekly game. Sometimes he still came to the field, bringing a lawn chair with him, impulsively hollering bets that he’d later make good on when the batter showed up at the bar. One such batter was there this evening, having a Stoli on the house to celebrate his home run. His nickname was Boat, and he installed tape decks. He knew everything that was new in the antitheft department. A few days before, the last time Wayne had been at the Azure, Boat had told him about the kid who got his wrist broken outside the supermarket. Boat’s wife was taking a music-appreciation course at the community college, so he was free to drink as long as he wanted on Friday nights. He did what Wayne imagined was a very good imitation of the way his wife reclined in her chair, listening to classical music through earphones with a dreamy expression on her face. “Don’t matter what kind of noise goes on, she don’t react,” Boat said. “Mower starts up, paperboy throws the newspaper against the door, nothing. Nothing but harps and oboes going into her head.” It baffled Boat that his wife was taking a course in music appreciation. The only thing he obviously liked about his wife was that she had been part of a twenty-year union with him. Also in the bar this evening were two flaxen-haired girls flashing each other Farrah smiles and moving their eyes only between each other and their glasses of wine, a few tourists who had stumbled into the place, and Nick from the tackle shop.