“How can she call him Odd?” Liberty asked.
“ ‘Odd’, she says. ‘Put that chicken pot pie in the microwave for three minutes.’ She says, ‘Odd, pick up your feet for godssakes.’ Things along that line.”
“I hate that woman,” Liberty said. “You have no taste.”
“I have no odor. Sterile men have no odor. We’re like vodka. Didn’t you know that? That’s why we’re in such demand.”
Everything was very quiet. Then she heard ice tinkling in a glass as Charlie swallowed.
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“Liberty, Liberty, Liberty,” Charlie said.
Liberty imagined being with Charlie — two lovers in a melting embrace floating in a glass of whiskey on a sponged Formica table in an unfamiliar town.
“I have been a drunk for fourteen years,” Charlie said. “That’s seven years twice. I have spent this day in the contemplation of this crucial number, for it’s widely known that every seven years one’s nature changes. There are seven changes of personality in each of us whether our life be long or short. There are seven faces we will eventually show. There are seven attachments that must be broken. Yet seven, too, is the number of perfection. If one does not change, one remains perfected. Completed and therefore solved. Indeed, considered finished and so—”
Their connection was abruptly interrupted by a piercing whine, followed by a hum, followed by silence. Liberty replaced the receiver and pressed her hand against her ear. She sometimes had a grim vision of herself being this ear alone, a large and pale organ attuned only to complaint, bewilderment and sorrow — the antennaed hairs rough and sturdy as swamp grass, its intricate whorls pink and cute as a nest of rat pups — her true self teetering beneath it.
She looked at the phone, a black, horrid, hunkering thing. It rang.
“I hate being disconnected like that,” Charlie said. “It brings to mind The Big Disconnect, you know? They’re teaching Death to little children now in the schools. They have to write essays on How I Would Feel If I Had to Die at Midnight and they have to write it neatly. Neatness still counts.”
Liberty wrapped the phone cord around her arm. “Death’s always been in vogue,” she said.
“How’s the kid’s egg?” Charlie asked. “Is he still carrying it around? What a cute kid! He and you and me could really make it. I’m telling you our time to change has come. I’m talking life! By my calculations you have been married to this Willie person for seven years. Clem, your holy hound, is seven as well, am I right? And so is Reverdy.”
“Why does everyone want to change Teddy’s name,” Liberty said. “Reverdy, the Phantom, Odd …”
“We give many names to the things that matter most,” Charlie said. “Like, as you know, the Eskimos and snow.”
“Duane wants to dye Teddy’s hair a different color so he won’t remind him of his wife.”
“Watch out! He’ll do it. He’s a very sincere man. I met him just the other night at a party they gave. I had to keep my distance from Janiella but I chatted up the other ladies. Turquoise, teal and aqua are the big colors for the upcoming season, I told them. Mauve is out. Peach is still holding its own. White and bleached woods are very big. Country French is still in style, but Scandinavian never caught on. Beds are being emphasized, Euro-modernist is in. Then I chatted up Duane for a while. We drank. We spoke fornication, weaponry, engines, you know, boy talk. I know my business, I told him. If you want to sell a house, you’ve got to have a house that’s happening. Anecdotes, I told him. The buyer loves anecdotes. If a house has character, you can add another five grand to the sale price. We drank. Well, something clicked. He went into the bedroom, took his twelve gauge from the closet, strode over to the pool, wherein there were people, I might add, and took a bead on this little rubber frog that was drifting around in it. The little frog trails chlorine from its bottom, you know. Nice little frog with a happy smile, his rubber legs crossed and his rubber eyes happy? Well, Duane blasted that poor little froggy to smithereens.”
“That’s how it happened?” Liberty said faintly. “The crack in the pool?”
“He had misinterpreted my remarks a little. He thinks in terms of ballads. Everyone thought it was fairly amusing once they realized they hadn’t been maimed. After that event, we were all given a hamburger, another drink and a tour of the garage. Included in the garage tour was the freezer tour. There’s a big white humming mother out there filled with neatly wrapped packages that Duane made out of various Bambis he’s bagged. Chillness, obscurity, disarray, extremis. The mind stirs with no thought of future life when it contemplates that thing, let me tell you. Did I ever tell you what my mother keeps in her freezer? It’s not her underwear. She keeps her underwear in the refrigerator, in the crisper bin. What she keeps in the freezer is the fruitcake my grandmother was bringing over to the house on Christmas Day when she was run over by a motorcycle. That fruitcake has been in the freezer for five years. It’s wrapped in green paper and has a red string around it.”
“You’ve never told me that before,” Liberty said. “I’ve never repeated myself to you, have I?” Charlie said, shocked.
“You told me that your grandmother died from plucking a wild hair.”
“That was my other granny,” Charlie said. “Everybody has two grannies. You think you know my limits, don’t you. You believe you sense my deficiencies. You think I’m the sort of fellow who would lie about his grannies. You think I’m the kind of fellow content to maintain intimacies with a beautiful woman by the fluctuation of a magnetic field, that is, the telephone. You think language is just the human medium after all, and I’m employing it because basically I’m shallow. This human business has gotten a little out of hand you think. Drinkers can’t be lovers, you think. Oh the bleak, gnawing, crushing painful things you think! Your silence is a little black garden. You know everything there by heart.”
Liberty said nothing. She listened to his voice, which seemed to be blowing to her from across some blank expanse of water.
“Silence is Liberty’s little hidey-hole,” Charlie said.
She heard more liquid being poured into a glass.
“C’mon, talk to me,” Charlie said. “With practice our language will grow to accommodate the event of you and me and Reverdy.”
“Charlie,” Liberty said. “Where are you calling from?”
“Where am I calling from? I am calling from home, specifically from Room 303 of the Paradise Hotel on the corner of Coconut and Main. Every time I wake up in this room, I think I’m a case of mistaken identity. Do you see Room 303? The linoleum floor painted red, the single window scraped by palm fronds, the hostile eye of the TV, the ant cakes in the corner, the bureau, the bed, the bottle, me?”
“I see it.”
“Room 303 is where I don’t want to be, and I have been in Room 303 for years.”
“You have plenty of money,” Liberty said. “You could move out tomorrow.”
“That palm is suffering from palm leaf skeletonizer. Have you heard of that disease? I’m sure this palm has got it. Everything’s got something these days. A guy told me his car has arthritis … I do have money. After I saw you at breakfast I made another three grand in commissions. A young couple buying their dream house, deciding in my hearing where to put the Bokharas, the highboy, their marital bed, the baby’s nine-foot toy giraffe. They stood beside the caged pool and I could see their heads practically glowing with visions of pool sex, fulfillment, happiness, dreams of God knows what. It was so depressing. Stop! I wanted to scream at them. Your destiny is one of chaos. You will find only disappointment behind these walls, beneath this roof. Your desires are petty, irrational, unattainable. Your infant will grow to detest you. Your husband will be unfaithful. Your wife will scream at you with her bathrobe open. Intimacies will only occur between you when incited by parties, alcohol or aberrant fantasies. You must change your life! Become wanderers. Possess nothing. Confront your solitude. Go forth into the world.”