Hum: Stories Read online

  We arrived late, so there was no turn-down service that first night. Instead we found a bottle of champagne, along with a tasty spice cake. The next morning, we got up early and walked downstairs to the big, beautiful room where they serve breakfast. As we were walking into breakfast there was a group of people walking out. A guy, three women and a baby. The guy was my age, though tremendously good looking. He was carrying the baby, which was also tremendously good looking. The three women, possibly his wife, her mother and her sister, were unmemorable. He looked like he had been the captain of his high school football, or, I should say, futbol team. The baby was no more than a year old, but I could tell that the guy and his wife had been married a while. He had cheated on her before, I could tell right off. How did I know? I suppose it’s easy, really, if you pay attention, if you watch the details.

  As we were walking into the breakfast room and futbol guy and his wife were walking out, he slowed down. It was perfectly choreographed, as if he’d done it many times before. He casually gauged where his wife was, his sister-in-law, and his mother-in-law, and then he slowed a bit more. Without doing anything out of the ordinary, he was suddenly a step behind his group, out of their field of vision. He shifted his baby over to the other arm, and then he glanced over at my wife. All so measured, all so subtle. It was as if he had already planned a long-term affair with my wife, and now he was simply being careful to conceal the evidence.

  “It looks like you’re going to the prom,” I said to my wife.

  “With futbol guy?” she said, smiling. “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  Later that night, we were in our room, still marveling at the view. We were preparing to go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, when there was a knock on the door. I pulled on my pants and went to answer. It was the housekeeper. She said something in Spanish, something that I probably could’ve translated from ten different languages. I turned to my wife, “She wants to know if we would like turn-down service.”

  “Turn-down service!”

  My wife squealed with joy, jumping up and down. Literally, she was jumping up and down—that’s how happy she was. Nobody jumps up and down, but she was. It was terrific.

  Just then, in the hallway, behind the maid, futbol guy’s mother-in-law walked by, holding the baby. Then his sister. Then his wife. Then him. With everyone out of range, he quickly glanced past the maid and into our room, past me, and to my wife. She was barely dressed, her hair wildly out of control, her nails still painted white from our wedding, her hands in the air, jumping up and down, totally beautiful.

  All in a second.

  And in a second, I had my first full déjà vu since I had met her. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a déjà vu, but it was a very clear and unavoidable memory.

  Years earlier, I had had a different job with a smaller company. We were nearly bankrupt, and things were looking bad. My boss, the owner, felt that if we could just finish this deal we’d been working on, it would save the company and everyone’s job. We had a receptionist and two accounting clerks who were depending on us. The deal involved this slightly eccentric older guy. Everyone else was ready to agree, but he had final approval. Unfortunately, it was June, and he had just returned to his homeland for the entire summer. It was his wish that he spend one last summer at his family’s old cabin in this remote rural village. The problem was three-fold: his homeland was far away, there was a war going on, and the village had no phone service. Idiotically, I volunteered to go see the guy in person.

  About the country: it was a beautiful place with a discouraging, endless war. As far as I could tell, the war was between a bunch of people who all looked pretty much the same, killing each other for being so different. The war had been going on for two years, and most of the fighting took place in the new capital. You probably saw it on television. All of the tall buildings were destroyed, windows broken, concrete missing. Snipers were hidden in every nook and cranny. The main street, the Boulevard of Heroes, was littered from one end to the other with old cars and dead drivers, all the product of one or two small bullet holes. The snipers were so prevalent and determined, that if someone was shot in the middle of the Boulevard, they would have to die where they lay because no one could risk running out to get them. Needless to say the place was a ghost town.

  The eccentric guy did not live in the new and dangerous capital, but rather in a small village only six kilometers away. Through copious research, I learned that, after two years, the Ministry of Transportation was going to resume bus service to the new capital. It was a symbolic thing, a desperate attempt to reestablish some semblance of normalcy. The Ministry didn’t actually think anyone would take the bus anywhere near the brutally violent city. When I, an American, showed up on that first morning, asking for a ticket to the town just barely west of the new capital, the ticket agent was stunned. She tried to talk me out of it, but I had no other form of transportation.

  When we left the first station, there were six people on board, including the driver. By stop number four of ten, it was just the driver and me. He was very fidgety, nervous but oddly jovial. I tried to speak with him, but our languages had not a single word or gesture in common. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and chain-drinking liter bottles of beer. It took hours to cross the rough terrain. Every now and then a road would be out, and we would have to take a detour. I sensed he was making the detours up as he went, winding in the general direction of the capital, hoping I’d change my mind. Around three in the morning, it began to snow. I had been traveling for 38 straight hours, if you count the taxi ride to the San Francisco airport. I was very sleepy, utterly exhausted. I was starving and thirsty. I hadn’t even brought a coat. The windows iced over, and I was freezing.

  Although the driver had turned up the stereo loud, some pan-flute folk music with a surprisingly catchy chorus, I still was having tremendous trouble fighting the urge to sleep. And that was the problem: if I fell asleep, I would miss my stop, stop number nine. Stop number ten, the final stop, was at the wrong end of the Boulevard of Heroes. Past the littered cars and bodies, past all of the determined snipers.

  And that’s it. That’s the memory, the déjà vu, whatever. Standing there in the doorway to our beautiful suite in the luxurious Llao Llao Hotel, caught between the futbol hero and my wife, all I could remember was a late night on a freezing bus, snow coming down, sleep almost irresistible, rocking back and forth in my uncomfortable seat, repeating to myself over and over, “Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep.”

  HOSPITALITY

  My wife and I had just left the party and were driving across the Bay Bridge toward the Oakland Hills. Or rather she was driving, because she was in control and wanted me to know it, wanted to be certain I harbored no illusions about my own potency or free will. “Look buddy,” she was saying, without so much as opening her mouth or looking my way, “our Friday afternoon and our general direction, our speed and velocity, indeed, our very lives, are at my discretion, no need for input from you, thank you very much.”

  My wife was staring straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. At the party, which was held in the faculty lounge of the community college where I serve as Dean of Administrative Affairs, my wife had been treated viciously, as she often is at these gigs, because my colleagues do not appreciate her role as a high-powered defense attorney, and they were in an uproar over her latest case. The victim was a fifty-four-year-old politician who had shady dealings involving the new airport, but despite this he was much beloved by educators because he built a city park and was a big supporter of city funding for the college. He was found two weeks ago in the stairwell at the Civic Center with three stab wounds to his neck. My wife is representing the suspect.

  Half an hour into the party I found her near the exit, surrounded by a theology professor, an English adjunct, and a guidance counselor, my wife’s only defense a Chinette plate which she held aloft, the food untouched: a miniature sau
sage wrapped in a Pillsbury biscuit, a Wheat Thin topped with Cheez Whiz, and four pretzel sticks.

  “How could you defend that monster?” the guidance counselor asked, tugging at my wife’s sleeve. “Really,” said English adjunct, “isn’t it open and shut?” The theology professor, who used to be the pastor of a Southern Baptist church that was in the papers some years ago over a scandal involving a group of teenaged evangelicals, just stood there silently, staring at my wife’s earlobes, about which he had once remarked, inappropriately I thought, “Your wife has the most delicate ears.”

  She looked to me for salvation.

  “Hon?” I asked, prepared to assume the role of rescuer, chivalrous knight, defender of defense attorneys. I stepped into the circle and made a subtle indication with my watch.

  With a look of relief, she said to the gang of aggressive pedagogues, “We have to be going.” She was wearing a dark blue suit in which she looked very good, very sexy, even though that was not her intent. Her hair was pulled back and twisted at the nape of her neck with a little velvet contraption I’d acquired by calling a 1-800 number. It was called the Hairdini, and it came with an instructional video. With this device my wife was able to contort her hair into serpentine shapes that suggested mystery and warmth and intense sexual energy, all of which she has, although I would never say that to her, because saying it would be a breech of etiquette, for reasons that I can’t quite explain.

  Something in my wife’s tone was so forceful that the three inquisitors parted when she spoke. As she moved away from them I saw a row of New Yorker cartoons descending the wall where she had been standing, each framed in black construction paper, and I suddenly felt ashamed of this institution that had become my life, the predictable humor and petty battles that played out daily in this bastion of lesser academia.

  My wife took the cracker smeared with Cheez Whiz, pressed it past her very red lips, and tossed the Chinette plate into a trash can. She chewed meticulously, staring at me. I felt a soft and unsettling erection, and I imagined she was swallowing me up, imagined I was dying in the embrace of her magnificent teeth, and I thought of the lines from a Brautigan poem—“the beautiful woman that became my wife, the mother of my children and the end of my life”—only in the poem, of course, the wife is at home making dinner for Brautigan’s friends, and my own wife would never do such a thing.

  Outside, we snaked our way through the parking lot, past Jeep Grand Sports, the dusty Volvo station wagons, and Andy Sartello’s Harley, which my wife looked at, I am convinced, in a wistful manner. Approaching the luxurious green sports car, a gift from one of her clients, my wife said in that controlled voice of hers that parts crowds and convinces juries and calms the most virulent defendants, “I’ll drive.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Oakland.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “Thirty minutes. Maybe an hour. Jolina isn’t expecting us.”

  “Jolina?”

  “Frank’s wife.”

  “Why do we need to see her?”

  “She’s Frank’s alibi,” my wife said. “I have to ask her what he was doing on the night of you-know-what.”

  Frank was my wife’s client, the guy who’d stabbed the politician on the stairwell at the Civic Center. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to Frank’s wife explain why her husband couldn’t possibly have killed the politician. But earlier that day, as my wife and I were getting ready for the party, she said, “Afterwards, we’ll drop by and see this woman I need to see,” and I said, “Okay,” because everything between us is a give and take, a contract borne out in silent agreement and unspoken animosity, though that is not to say we are not both gracious in our compliance with the terms of the contract. Marriage, I have found, is a kind of lifelong hospitality, a polite observance of protocol executed daily and with a good measure of deceit.

  Traffic was thick and the bridge seemed to go on forever. Out the window I could see the bay, steely and bleak in the fog, and up ahead the shining gray triangles of the bridge, connecting and parting, dissecting the sky, a complex industrial geometry that never fails to make my head swim, and beyond the bridge the shipping towers, huge and almost Orwellian in the mist. Then we were driving up Grand, past the Grand Lake Theater, and every light was yielding to my wife, who was so sure of her timing that she didn’t even bother to slow down when she approached a red light, she just kept barreling forward, and each light miraculously turned green just as she was about to break the law. What killed me, I mean what really killed me, was the fact that she didn’t even seem to notice the whole goddamn machinery of the planet was wired in her favor.

  I said, “So did he do it?” and she said, “Who?” and I said, “Frank,” and she said, “Of course not,” and I said, “What about the blood on his boots? What about the DNA? What about his fingerprints?” and she said, “That’s all circumstantial.”

  We pulled onto a cul-de-sac, something out of the fifties with perfect lawns and blonde children on bikes. My wife looked in the rearview mirror and smoothed her already smooth hair. “This is it,” she said. The house was very clean and new. I was feeling nervous, but excited; as far as I knew, I’d never been in a murderer’s house before. As we walked up the sidewalk, edged with ice plants thrusting their spikes toward the sky, I imagined Jolina opening the door. She would be dressed in a silk kimono, wearing suggestive heels with straps barely wide enough to keep her toes in, and she’d be sporting plenty of jewelry and makeup, some real strong perfume, and she’d be talking on the phone with one of her shady lovers, who was telling her what a time they’d have, just the two of them, now that old Frank was in jail. She would want me badly, and I would want her, too, the sexual energy between us in the room would be a thing to contend with, but we would communicate to one another with subtle and meaningful glances that it was not meant to be.

  My wife rang the doorbell and adjusted my tie and said, “Be polite.”

  The door opened. An average-looking woman stood before us, wearing a pair of jeans, a pressed white shirt, and sensible black boots. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.

  “I just wanted to chat with you about Frank,” my wife said. Chat. She’s something. “This is my husband,” she added, an afterthought. “We were out and about, so I invited him to join me.”

  Jolina smiled. “Come in.”

  We passed through a long hallway into the living room. There were a couple of framed prints of flowers on the walls, like the ones you get from Ethan Allen, the kind of art that’s designed to match the furniture while revealing nothing about the owners. Everything was neat and tasteful, with the exception of a plaster statuette of two lovers embracing in a rather acrobatic way. “Have a seat,” Jolina said. “Would you like something to drink?”

  My wife pinched my elbow, by which she meant that I was not to have a drink. I almost said no thank you, but then I thought, I am a grown man. It is Friday afternoon and I am a responsible person, the Dean of Administrative Affairs at the top-ranked community college in the northern part of the state, no less, and, unlike my wife, I am not under any professional obligation to this woman, and the appropriate thing to do in this situation is to have a drink. It even occurred to me that if I turned down the drink Jolina might think I was a recovering alcoholic, and I didn’t want to give her that impression, so I said, “Why yes, thank you.”

  “What will you have?”

  I tried to sound casual, as if I was not here with the defense attorney, who held Jolina’s husband’s life in her hands. “What are my choices?

  Jolina glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen, as if she shared with it some unspoken communion, as if it held the key to mysteries as yet unconsidered by the majority of the human race. “Gin, bourbon, vodka, Scotch—blended and single-malt—and, of course, all the necessary mixers,” she said, her green eyes bright with possibility. “Wine, white or red. In the beer department, I have Anchor Steam, Amstel Light, Miller Genuine
Draft, Guinness, and Grolsch. Oh, and if it’s too early for that, I have the usual: Calistoga, Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, milk, an assortment of Mexican soda, a variety of fruit juices.”

  I was impressed. Here we were, unexpected guests on a Friday afternoon, and this woman had every right to be nervous, downright frantic. Instead, she played the perfect hostess. Not only was she in full possession of her wits, but she also had every possible drink to offer. I must admit I was humbled in her presence. I remembered the first party my wife and I ever threw as a married couple. Back then, we were what might be classified as “the intellectual poor,” and we’d spent far more than we could afford on an assortment of liquor and some fancy swizzle sticks. Half an hour into the party we ran out of mixers, and there was a great commotion over who would go where to purchase all the necessities we’d forgotten. By the time my friend Bob came back with tonic and orange juice, crushed ice and Coke, bev-naps and sugared almonds and pistachios and chips, the guests were disgruntled and forlorn and moving toward the door. The party could not be salvaged. We haven’t thrown one since. I’ve begun to suspect that a person’s value as a human being is directly proportionate to his or her ability to host a party.

  “What will it be then?” Jolina was saying, with that air of firm, no-nonsense patience that all good hosts possess.

  “Gin and tonic,” I said, immediately regretting my choice, which, though refreshing, might be taken as a sign of weakness. I should have asked for Scotch.

  “Will Tanqueray Ten be all right?”

  “Perfect.”

  I could go on about the exquisite geometry of the three cubes of ice stacked in the small square glass, which shone slightly blue under the pleasing skylight and fit perfectly in my hand. Or about the pleasing quinine tinge of the tonic blended so expertly with the Tanqueray Ten, or the plate of miniature spinach quiches and the fragrant cheese board Jolina set before us—as if she kept such things around the house in case of unexpected guests—or about the cool Art Deco music emanating from invisible speakers, or the way she made me feel so at ease as I sat there on her plush white sofa—more at ease, in fact, than I felt in my own home. But that is really beside the point. After all, we were there for her alibi.