“One night a few years ago, he was drunk and looking for a place to hide, where the police wouldn’t run him in for D and D. He found this cave-in hidden away among some bushes. Later on he thought about it, and he got a bright idea. He went back there at night with a spade he pinched somewhere, and he worked on the hole. He made it deeper and made the sides vertical. And whenever the sides crumble from him scrambling in and out, he works on it again. So his hole is always getting bigger. Rain gets in, and water seeps up from the slime, so he keeps adding rags and bags he picks up here and there. It’s a clever little trap he’s made for himself.”
“Trap, sir?”
“That’s what it is. That’s how he uses it. He’s afraid of being picked up drunk and put in a cell and left to scream. So every time he thinks he’s got enough wine inside him to be dangerous, he buys another bottle and brings it back to his kip. Down there in the hole, he can drink until he’s wild and raving. He’s safe down there. Even when he’s sober, it’s hard for him to climb up those slimy sides. When he’s drunk, it’s impossible. He traps himself down there to save himself from being arrested and put inside. Of course, he’s a claustrophobic, so sometimes he gets panicky down there. When his brain’s soggy with wine, he thinks the walls are caving in on him. And he’s terrified that a big rain might fill his pit with water when he’s too drunk to get out. It’s bad down there, you know. When he’s drunk, he can’t get out to shit or piss, so it’s… bad down there.”
“Jesus Christ,” Guttmann says quietly.
“Yeah. He lives in a small hole in the ground because he’s a claustrophobic.”
“Jesus Christ.”
LaPointe leans back in the booth and presses his mat of cropped hair hard with the palm of his hand. “And what do you do if you have to live in a slimy, stinking hole? You brag about it, of course. You make the other bommes despise you. And envy you.”
Guttmann shakes his head slowly, his mouth agape, his eyes squeezed in pity and disgust. LaPointe’s punitive intent in telling him about this has been effective.
“Tell you what,” LaPointe says. “Don’t come by to pick me up tomorrow until around noon. I need some sleep.”
Without turning on the lights, he closes the door behind him and hangs his overcoat on the wooden rack. He flinches when the revolver in his pocket thuds against the wall; he doesn’t want to wake her.
There is a crackling hiss in the room, and the crescent dial of the old Emerson glows dim orange. The station has gone off the air. Why didn’t she turn the radio off? Ah. He forgot to tell her that you also have to jiggle the knob to turn it off. Then why didn’t she pull out the plug? Dumb twit.
The ceiling of the bedroom is illuminated by the streetlamp beneath the window, and he can make out Marie-Louise’s form in the bed, although she is below the shadow line. She sleeps on her side, her hands under her cheek, palms together, and her legs are in a kind of running position that takes up most of the bed.
He undresses noiselessly, teetering for a moment in precarious balance as he pulls off his pants. When he aligns the creases to fold the pants over the back of a chair, some change falls out of his pocket, and he grimaces at the sound and swears between his teeth. He tiptoes around to the other side of the bed and lifts the blankets, trying to slip in without waking her. If he curves his body just right, there is enough room to lie next to her without touching her. For five long minutes he remains there, feeling the warmth that radiates from her, but it is impossible to sleep when the slightest movement would either touch her or make him fall out of bed. Anyway, he feels ridiculous, sneaking into bed with her. He rises carefully, but the springs clack loudly in the silent room.
…at first the creaking bed had made Lucille tense. But later she used to giggle silently at the thought of imagined neighbors listening beyond the wall, shocked at such carryings-on…
At the noise, Marie-Louise moans in confused irritation. “What’s the matter?” she asks in a blurred, muffled voice. “What do you want?”
He lays his hand lightly on her mop of frizzy hair. “Nothing.”
7
“Hey?”
He does not move.
“Hey?”
“Ugh!” LaPointe wakes with a start, blinking his eyes against the watery light coming through the window. It is another gray day with low skies and diffused, shadowless brightness. He squeezes his eyes shut again before finally opening them. His back is stiff from sleeping on the narrow sofa, and his feet stick out from below the overcoat he has used as a blanket. “What time is it?” he asks.
“A little before eleven.”
He nods heavily, still drugged with sleep. He sits up and scratches his head, grinning stupidly. These last two nights have taken their toll—his joints are stiff and his head cobwebby.
“I’ve got water boiling,” she says. “I was going to make some coffee, but I don’t know how to work your pot.”
“Yes. It’s an old-fashioned kind. Just a minute. Give me a chance to wake up. I’ll do it.” He yawns deeply. His overcoat covers him from the waist down, but his thick chest is exposed. He rubs the graying hair vigorously because it itches. “Tabernouche!” he grunts.
“Hard night?” she asks.
“Long, anyway.”
She is wearing Lucille’s pink quilted dressing gown again, but she has been up long enough to brush out her hair and put on eye make-up. There is a slight smell of gas in the room. She must have had some difficulty lighting the gas fire.
In his sleep, his penis has come out of the fly of his undershorts. He manages to tuck it back in with the same gesture as that with which he pulls up his overcoat and puts it on in place of a robe. Barefooted, he goes into the kitchen to make coffee.
She laughs half a dozen ascending notes, then stops short.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. You look funny with your bare legs coming out of the bottom of your overcoat.”
He looks down. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
While he is pressing hot water through the fine grounds, it occurs to him that only one thing triggers her peculiar, interrupted laugh: people looking ridiculous. She laughed at her black eye, at him with soap on his cheek, at herself wearing Lucille’s coat, and now at him again. It’s a cruel sense of humor, one that doesn’t even spare herself as a possible victim.
He gives her a cup of coffee and carries one with him to the bathroom, where he washes up and dresses.