Sinister Shorts

A weekend came and went without a letter. That Sunday night, her frantic worry had given way to a dark resignation. She called his house, even though he preferred to call her.

“He's not in,” said his mother. “Who shall I say is calling?”

As if she had no idea who Vic was. As if nearly three years hadn't registered with her.

When he did call, he was full of newsy gossip about his weekend. He had studied hard on Saturday, and taken on his brother's paper route for fun on Sunday. They did the route in his battered Karma

“So two hours kinda morphed into three.” Jason chuckled.

“Just you and your brother?” she had asked, unable to stop herself.

He changed the subject, and she knew, somewhere in the infinitesimal portion of rational thought still accessible to her, the colors in her mind began to blur, and the brightness toned down just a hair. She knew, but for a brief time, she ignored what she knew.

The fights began.

Victoria came from an argumentative family. She knew how to argue, how to wield sarcasm, how to twist facts. She had a terrible tendency, she was the first to admit, to bolster her opinions with specious facts.

Jason had a more subtle style. He opened his eyes wide, convinced with a guileless air of calm reason. Which made her crazy. And made her throw things.

Deterioration, particularly when he responded in kind.

He had another lover. She knew it. He knew she knew. The entire thing made her so tired, she spent days when she didn't have school lying on a couch with a blanket over her, moping and crying. He didn't call, just came by occasionally wanting sex. She gave him bitterness and grief.

After a few weeks of this, she came to her senses. She didn't wait for the usual call, the tentative plans that were dependent upon how cheerful she was willing to act. That morning the sun spread down the sidewalks and crept happily over the bushes and trees. Her usual place on the couch, in a cold, shadowy corner of the living room close to the phone, held no appeal.

Like a car in drive, inspired by the impulsive lurch of sunshine outside, she packed a bag with lotion, a paperback book, and a towel, popped sunglasses on her head, and hitchhiked to the beach. The day passed in a pleasant pageant of blue and white, with a touch of orange sun when she tilted her head a certain way. She swam out beyond the breakers, and had a conversation with a recovering heroin addict that made her glad to be alive and not addicted.

Jason was waiting on the porch when she came home. The ex-addict had taken her home on his motorcycle. When he saw Jason, he stopped short at the gate, gave her a wave, and jumped back on his bike and roared away.

She unlocked the front door, wondering what to say.

“Have a good time at the beach?” Jason said, and she heard caverns of unhappiness in his voice.

She let him inside.

“I've been trying to reach you all day.”

The accusation stood there naked for her to see. Seeing it, she didn't like it. “Want something to drink?” she asked. “I'm so thirsty.” She didn't wait for an answer. Tossing her things on the floor, she went into the kitchen and reached into the freezer for ice. “Beer?” she asked. He liked beer.

“Okay.” He drank the beer.

She put on some music, sat down next to him on the couch, and drank wine. While the music wound around them, tight as his arms around her shoulder, he drank another beer and another. Then he tried to steer her into the bedroom. She was surprised to discover she did not want to go there with him.

“Time to go, Jason,” she said, trying to disentangle herself from him.

He planted his feet in her living room. First, he flirted. She was lovely tonight, her skin glowing with the day's sunshine. When that didn't work, he pleaded. How far it was to drive home. He was tired. She didn't want him driving when he was so tired, did she? Then he got demanding and things got ugly.

He tried to force her.

She kicked him in the nuts.

He bellowed with pain and left enraged.

It being the end of the school year, she moved back home to San Francisco. Although her parents in Palo Alto offered her a safe haven, she checked the want ads in the Chronicle. Tom lived in a nice big apartment near Nob Hill with one other roommate, Luther. They needed another person to share the rent.

She liked Tom instantly. She even liked the way he answered the phone. “Whee!” he said. Later he explained that he was taking French, and she had misunderstood the word oui, but by then she was already captivated by his devilish smile and the cute room at the front of an old building fronting a Wayne Thibault-style San Francisco street, all flat planes leading straight up. She put a chair in the middle of the bay window and made that her power spot in the apartment, strewing newspapers, books, and dried coffee cups.

Jason wrote from L.A., and oh, could he write. His letters arrived almost daily through a slot in the front door, and his words balled up her insides until she stopped reading them. So he called. He told her about his fellow workers at the ketchup factory, making fun of them with a fondness that reminded her about the bigness of his heart. He engaged her in the furies of his creative struggles, made her laugh.

During the day she worked in an office, busying herself with the futile task of organizing other people's chaos. She missed Jason, the intimacy. His phone calls, when she took them, had the safety of distance behind them. She felt free to fantasize again, to imagine a closeness between them, to wonder about a future. But on the foggy summer nights, it was Tom, sipping Scotch out of thin glass, who radiated like a heater and drew her closer. Only the rude blare of the telephone could upset the peace when they would sit together at the table playing cards or trading jokes.

“You going to answer that?” Tom would ask.

Sometimes she answered, sometimes not. Always these calls from Jason were awkward because Tom sat there sipping or snacking, his warm, brown eyes fixed elsewhere, but every molecule of his body spi

One night in August, Tom went to a party with an old friend, a social worker named Peggy with muscular legs and a wide smile. Victoria spent the evening fussing, due to return to school in September, to L.A. Did that mean she returned to Jason, too? What about Tom? Tom's absence from the kitchen made her cranky, and when Luther came in to pour himself a little gin, not even drunk yet, she said nastily, “Oh, why bother with a glass when you can take the whole bottle?”

When Tom came home, late, she was waiting for him in the kitchen surrounded by the dirty dishes and cockroaches that had crept out, unafraid of the still, fuming woman at the table.

Tom lounged against the table, bubbling a little, as if the alcohol slogging inside him continued to brew. Ordinarily shy and wary around her, he reached a long arm out to snag her, pulling her close. Sniffing her hair, he said, “Ah. I knew you would smell just like this.”

Maybe if she hadn't been so jealous of Peggy, maybe if her nightly phone joust with Jason hadn't left her angry at herself for leading him on when she suddenly did not want a future with him and dreaded leaving San Francisco and the life she now led, she would have pushed Tom away. She valued their friendship. She did not want to jeopardize that by jumping into bed with him.

But the charged bolts of energy sizzled around them and she couldn't let go.

That first night, she let Tom hold her close.

The next night, they made love in his moody blue room, with the windows open and the cold night air seeping around and between the heat of their bodies, and she was hooked. All feeling for Jason faded into memory, into embarrassment. How could she have loved him? Examining the picture he had sent in a frame, she realized Carol had been right.