“I didn’t see a lot. I never liked going on the road. There was nothing for me to do, and the hotels and motels... I never liked that part. Screw didn’t like to take me on a tour, either; being married didn’t go with touring. I think Screw wanted me to stay at home and keep things organized, and take care of him when he was there.”
“Sounds great,” I said.
“Well, he did want a home, and in some ways I succeeded in giving him the things he wanted.”
“Like...?”
“I think I introduced him to a lot of things, taught him something about food, although he still wanted the kitchen stocked with the kinds of junk food he always wanted when he was high.”
I guess it doesn’t work to hear ordinary things about him while his songs are playing on the stereo. I wasn’t sorry I had decided not to try to tape what she was saying that day. I could have set up the big tape recorder behind the speakers and she would not have seen that it was running. But then I couldn’t have played the albums, and I wanted to listen to them while she was there.
The week before, I did get her to tell me one interesting thing about Screw, and I was taping at the time. I asked her if she had ever inspired any of his songs. Here, I’ll play that section into this tape. I’ll probably get rid of the original with the rest of the junk, but this bit is worth saving. Listen.
“He used to make me tell him my dreams, in case there was something he could use. He said people were only truly original in dreams.”
There. For those three digits I ran two hours of tape.
I crawled over the sleeping bag and put on another album. I kept hoping maybe some of the songs would remind her of something, bring back some kind of painful scene that she would suddenly begin to tell me about.
“Ironed sheets.”
“What?”
“Not the no-iron synthetic sheets, but real sheets that had to be ironed. He loved them. He would snap one over us and then smooth it around us. I can still remember...”
“Were you with him in Chicago? March of 1983?”
“No. I was back in school by then, at Barnard, trying to finish my last year. But I went with him to London that summer.”
“Oh, God, you were at the Wembley Stadium concert.” I started looking for my tape of Live at Wembley.
“Yes. We had a lovely time in London. We went to Harrods. We bought absolutely everything. Everything we saw that we wanted, everything that was perishable or eatable or wearable, we had it all sent to the hotel. But in one whole year that was the only thing we really did together.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“It could happen to any of us. Any moment.”
She smiled, and I thought she wasn’t listening to me, but she explained why she was smiling. She didn’t think it could happen to her.
“Last week after I met you at the museum — wasn’t it Tuesday? I was crossing Park Avenue, on my way to Grand Central to get the three-thirty-five, and I got caught by the light and barely made it across the street, and I was thinking how awful if I were struck down on my way home from meeting you. And then I thought I couldn’t possibly die like that since I had to get home to pick up the kids at the orthodontist’s.”
“Like insurance? As long as you’re covered, nothing’s going to happen.”
“Right. As long as I have to get their breakfasts, patch their jeans, and show up at tennis camp on parents’ day, nothing very terrible can happen to me.”
“You really believe that,” I told her.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I appreciate what I’ve got. I wouldn’t like to lose it. The mornings seem awfully nice to me, all of a sudden. This past week... calling the kids for breakfast, watching them pick the raisins out of their sticky buns... then that panic at eight-thirty when it’s time to leave for school, the search for ponytail holders and schoolbooks, and the odd sums of money they need at the last minute for field trips and library fines. I do like all that.”
“Then why are you here with me?”
“Well, because. I’m afraid of getting old and then wishing I’d done more, lived more. Don’t you find that you never regret the things you’ve done, only the things you’ve failed to do? When I get old, sitting in my rocking chair, I don’t want to be sorry. And I’m here because I’ve always wanted to know something about myself. I just wanted to know. Now I do. I owe you for that. I’ve never lived the way I’ve lived in the past few weeks. It’s very good, as you must know.” As she talked, her hands were moving over me, eating at me with wonderful scoops. I pulled her over me, and we went at it again.
I crawled off the sleeping bag again and put on Blown. A studio album. Lots of craftsmanship, lots of painstaking construction. The title, like the best of Screw’s work, illustrated his gift for ambiguity. I don’t know how many ways that tide can be read. Blown away, dead. Blown by a blowjob. Driven by the wind. Out of breath. Blos-somed-blown. Blowing-it blown. I never knew that I was attracted to ambiguity — Christ, that I loved ambiguity — until Screw. And the vocal.
“Listen to this,” I said to Storey, as if she hadn’t heard it before. Against the technical perfections, he pitched a vocal sound with an energy that came from rage.
It’s much better to listen to this album high. You can listen harder. “You want some hash?” I asked Storey. I had some on my desk somewhere in a twist of aluminum foil. A customer had laid it on my dash instead of a tip.
She nodded and I got up and foraged around until I found a cardboard cylinder from a roll of toilet paper and a straight pin. I took it back to the sleeping bag. Storey watched me cut a penny-size hole on the side of the cardboard roll, shape a little piece of foil over it, stick some pinprick holes in it, and set a lump of hash into the little depression over the hole. I showed her how to put her palm on the end of the roll and wait until the cylinder filled with smoke, then inhale the whole cool tube of smoke from the other end.
“You know what I like about us?” she asked.
I stirred uneasily. Who was she talking about? Us? There was no us. “What?” I asked.
“We do such simple things. We do simple things for pleasure. We never talk about money. We never exchange all those money signals, key words, brand names. Everybody else talks about money. We never spend money, either, have you noticed? We don’t even buy a token, we walk everywhere.”
“Yeah, you’re a cheap date,” I laughed.
“My house is so full of possessions, and I spend so much time cleaning and sorting and maintaining them, sometimes I feel like some sort of suburban shopping bag lady.”
“That’s what you wanted, Mrs. Talbot,” I reminded her.
“Yes,” she said. She lay still for a while, gazing up at the ceiling, her hands pillowing her head. “Listen... I can’t come in next week.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. The girls are going off to tennis camp. There’s a lot to do to get ready. Then on the weekend we’re going to drive them up to Maine. Stay overnight. It’s a big deal. You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, it is.”
“If you can’t make it into town, maybe I’ll come out to Connecticut.”
She turned her head and looked at me. There was such a look of surprise in her eyes. The idea had never occurred to her.
“Let George drive the kids to camp. You stay home. I’ll come out for the weekend.”
“Nooo...” she breathed.
“Why not? Why not, why not?”
“It just wouldn’t work.”
“It wouldn’t do to intrude on your real life, is that it?”
“Nick, don’t do it. Please don’t come to Connecticut.”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. It has nothing to do with you, as a matter of fact. I have connections there. I have to see Doug about some materials for the kitchen. I know where he can get some slate, but I have to do some measuring to get an estimate.” She was quiet for a while. “I won’t be there,” she said finally.