Trang flashed an uneasy smile. “Well, good night, then, Mr. Corman,” he said. “I am glad we understand each other.”
“Me, too.”
The smile vanished, the eyes grew small again. “I am sure I will be hearing from you about rent.”
Corman nodded quickly, turned and walked to the elevator.
Mrs. Donaldson was playing Chinese Checkers with Lucy when Corman came into the apartment.
“He’s going out with Joanna tonight,” Lucy told her matter-of-factly.
“Is that so now?” Mrs. Donaldson said, as she turned quickly and gave him a faintly disapproving glance, as if he’d once again failed to deliver on some vague promise of paternal responsibility.
“That’s right,” Corman said. “And I was wondering …”
“If I could stay at your house,” Lucy blurted to Mrs. Donaldson.
“Yes,” Corman said. “Until around midnight, something like that.”
“So he can be with Joanna,” Lucy said.
Corman dropped his camera bag on the small metal chair he kept by the door, unstrapped his police radio and walked into the living room.
“Did you finish your homework?” he asked as he sank down in one of its chairs.
“The child did it all,” Mrs. Donaldson declared. She looked at Lucy and smiled sweetly. “Like the grand little girl she is.”
Corman continued to stare at Lucy doubtfully. “Did you?” he repeated.
Lucy shot him a withering glance. “I said I did,” she cried. “Jeez.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” Corman told her.
Lucy returned her attention to the checkerboard. “It’s not due till Monday anyway,” she muttered.
Corman stood up again, walked into the bathroom and slapped some cold water onto his face. In the mirror above the sink, he could see that he was losing a little hair, and that small puffy patches had begun to form beneath his eyes. He’d noticed them in Joanna, too, and Lexie before her. Far out in space, he imagined, you could turn around and see puffy patches on the earth itself, wrinkles forming, gray wisps, the whole vast process slowing down. At times, it even seemed the best solution. And yet?
Joanna ordered a margarita. When it came, Corman watched her move her finger around the salted edge of the glass just as she always did. He had known her for almost two years, and little things had become predictable—the way she lit a cigarette, always with the tip held slightly upward, or the way she rubbed her eyes, never with her fist, her palm, her little finger, but always with the side of her index finger. It was as if there was a code which dictated these movements precisely, locked all history in a helpless chain reaction.
“Have any luck today?” Joanna asked.
“In what?”
“Money.”
Corman shook his head. “I pitched a few things,” he said, “but nobody moved on them.”
He added nothing else and instead let his eyes rove the restaurant, taking in its ocher walls, dotted with huge red sombreros and cowboy gear, bridles, stirrups, a pair of leather riding chaps, the tools of someone else’s trade.
Joanna smiled sympathetically. “It’s been a long dry spell,” she said.
Corman glanced up from his own drink. “It’s been raining for two days.”
“I mean as far as money’s concerned,” Joanna explained.
“Trang’s threatening eviction,” Corman told her.
Joanna looked alarmed. “Really? Is it that bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“Well, I’m good for …”
“No, thanks.”
“It happens to a lot of people,” Joanna said gently. She remained silent for a moment, then added hesitantly, “There’s an alternative.”
“A steady job, I know. I’m looking into something.”
“What?”
“With one of the dailies,” Corman said. “Light stuff.”
Joanna smiled. “That seems promising.”
“It’s society stuff,” Corman added. He elbowed away a bowl of taco chips. “Trivial stuff. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, it does,” Joanna told him flatly. “It means money. Survival. That’s what it means.”
Corman nodded resignedly and took a sip from the beer. “So, how’s Larry?”
Joanna’s face darkened slightly. “You really shouldn’t ask me about him.”
“Why not? He’s your husband.”
Joanna’s eyes darted away. “Well, what can you say? Kids make strange bedfellows.” Her finger circled the rim of the glass again,dislodging small granules of salt. “Does Lucy know about him?”
“Larry?”
“Yeah.”
Corman shook his head. “No. Why should she?”
“Honesty.”
“Bullshit,” Corman said.
“Travis knows about you,” Joanna said.
“Travis is in college.”
“What are you afraid of, Corman?” Joanna asked him, her face turning very serious. “That your kid will hate you because you slept with a married woman?”
“It would complicate things a little,” Corman said dismissively. “She’s nine years old.”
Joanna smiled weakly. “And you want to protect her?”
Corman ducked behind his drink, took a quick sip.
Joanna’s finger made a third circle, as she eyed him carefully. “I’m not sure I love you, you know,” she told him bluntly. “I never have been.”
Corman smiled softly as he lowered the glass. “Same here,” he said.
They made love late in the evening, slow, already somewhat tired, Friday night love. When it was over, Joanna walked to the window, her body wrapped in a sheet, and stared out at the city.
She’d come from the Midwest, and her body had a lean, prairie emptiness to it, a sense of something which lived openly and needed very little tending. The urban crouch Corman often noticed in other women was completely absent in Joanna. She walked the streets almost heedlessly, as her mother must have walked the limitless fields of Illinois.
“Larry’s in Florida,” she said, without turning toward him.
Corman said nothing. He lay on his back and watched her. He could see how the folds of the sheet nuzzled her softly, rested smoothly on her hips and clung with a kind of ghostly affection to her shoulders.
“He’ll be back on Monday,” she added.
Corman sat up, pressing his back against the back of the sofa bed. “What’s the matter, Joanna?”
She didn’t answer, and Corman slid back down beneath the cov-ers, thought of the old city, wondered if love had been simpler there. If it had been, he was reasonably sure it was oppression that had done the trick, made everything look harmonious. “Want a drink?” he asked after a moment.
She shook her head, still watching out the window.
His eyes drifted away from her, and he could see the small red light of his closet darkroom. On the small shelf just inside the door, the woman still lay sprawled across the rain-swept street, her doll nestled in a soggy blue blanket. To the extent that history would remember her, it would be like that, just as it remembered all victims in their darkest moment. The old shooters had known exactly how to capture the dead in their muddy fields, the stricken in their frozen grief, the bony faces gathered behind the rusting wire. He wondered if, in a moment of irony, they’d ever been tempted to call out some brief instruction: Okay, now, say cheese.
“I’d better get home now,” Joanna said as she suddenly turned from the window.
Corman nodded softly. “Okay.”
She gathered her clothes and walked into the bathroom. When she came out again, she looked exactly as she had in the restaurant, hair neatly combed, not so much as a loose strand to betray the night.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she came up to him. “I’m a little down.”