“Which means Rick is, too. And Rick didn’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid that’s right. Except like I say I’m sure there was a good reason for his not.”
Lenore slowly reached for the open can and poured some more wine into her Road Runner glass. She hunched forward in the white burlap chair until her face was right over the table. She could see some of Lang in the top of her wine, erratic and shimmery, with mint eyes, in the yellow.
“And for his more or less ordering me not to tell you, either,” Lang was saying. He looked at the side of Lenore’s face. “The thing is, Lenore, he more or less ordered me not to tell you, which is why I didn’t tell you.”
Lenore shook the glass a little, rattled the bottom against the tabletop. The wine in the glass sloshed; Lang was broken into pieces that didn’t fit.
“Which means I’m afraid I need to ask you maybe to promise not to tell R.V. I told you, for fear of my job and all,” he said.
“Just like you yourself apparently promised Rick not to tell.”
Lang took his shoe off the table and leaned forward too, so his head was alongside Lenore‘s, a big curl of her hair hanging in the air between them. Lang looked at the curl. “I guess that promise has to get chalked up to what you might call strategic misrepresentation,” he said, very quietly.
“Strategic misrepresentation.”
“Yes. ‘Cause I made it before I ever got exposed to your good qualities and began to care about you as a person.” Lang set his glass of wine down and slowly took hold of some of Lenore’s curl and twisted it this way and that, all very gently.
“I see.”
“Not entirely sure you do, here, Lenore.”
“Oh, I think I do,” Lenore said, getting up and gently getting her hair out of the reach of Lang’s fingers. She walked over to the window and looked out at the houses across the Tissaws’ dark street. All the houses seemed to have their lights on.
“Well then maybe I should ask what do you think,” Lang said from back at the couch, where Lenore could see in the window he’d recrossed his legs and picked up his wine again. “What do you think about it, then,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Lenore said after a minute, breathing on the cold window. She watched how what she said made it hard to see out. “I don’t know what to think, old Wang-Dang Lang. Tell me what to think, please, and then I’ll think that way about it.”
“Well now that’s no way to talk, Lenore.”
Lenore didn’t say anything.
“And you should call me Andy,” said Lang. “You shouldn’t call me anything but Andy, I don’t think.”
“There, that’s what we need,” Lenore said, nodding, with her eyes closed. “We need it explicit. We need this control thing made explicit. No more games. People tell me what to do and think and say and call them, and I do it. It’ll all be simple. Then everybody can stop whispering when I’m asleep, and hiring each other behind my back, and wearing gas masks. They can just start making sense.” Lenore turned around. “So let’s really do it, OK? How are you supposed to be mixed up with my great-grandmother?”
“Now let’s just hold up here a second, Lenore,” said Lang. He put down his glass and came over to within a few feet of where Lenore was standing, at the window. On one side of them was the television screen; behind Lang was the way to the door. “Whoa there,” Lang was saying. “I don’t know anything about any great-grandmother mix-ups. And all‘I got to do with your family is basically you.” He shook his head. “Far as I know there’s nobody sneaking around about you and me.”
Lenore looked at the floor and put one of her curls behind her ear and crossed her arms. Lang was between her and the door. Her eyes began to get big and hot, and she felt as if there was wood in her voice box. She looked at Lang, who had his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his pants.
“Then how come I feel like the whole universe is playing pimp for me with you?” she said quietly. She thought she felt herself beginning to cry.
Lang looked at her. “Hey now please don’t cry,” he said.
“When I didn’t ask for it at all?” Lenore said. “When I didn’t even like you? I didn’t want you.” She looked past Lang at the door and began to sob, felt her shoulders curl down over her chest.
Then there was Lang, and her face was in Lang’s shirt, and a Kleenex got pressed into her hand from out of nowhere, and the wood in her throat seemed to break apart and go in all different directions, hurting.
Lang was making a soft rhythmic sound with his mouth into Lenore’s hair.
“I hated you,” Lenore said into his shirt, talking to his chest. “You came in that time, and terrorized us, and were drunk, and that guy’s stupid bottom, and Sue Shaw was so scared. ”
“It’s OK,” Lang was saying softly. “It’s OK. We were all just kids. We were just kids. That’s all it was.”
“And I say I don’t want you, that I’m mad, and have a right to be, and everybody just winks, and nudges, and gets a tone, and pushes, pushes, pushes.” Lang’s shirt was getting wet. “I’ve just felt so dirty. So out of control.”
Lang pushed her away a bit and dried her eyes with his sleeve. Lenore looked into his eyes for a second and thought for no reason of mint, lima beans, tired grass. His eyes were totally unbloodshot. “Lenore,” he was saying, “it’s OK. Just believe I don’t want to push you, OK? Just believe it,” he said, “OK? You can believe that, ‘cause it’s true. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, one bit.” He rubbed at his perfect eye and Lenore went back to smelling his chest. It was true that even while she was crying she had been able to feel him through his clothes, and her clothes.
“Lenore?” Lang said after he’d let her breathe into his shirt for a while. “Hey, Lenore?” He bent and cupped his hands around her ear and made as if he were talking into a bullhorn. “Lenore Beadsman.”
Lenore laughed a convulsive laugh and brought the Kleenex up to her face. It was hot, and wet, and little bits of it were all over her hand.
“I’ll just say it, Lenore,” Lang said. “I sure don’t want to control you at all. Believe that. But I’ll just go ahead and say that I think the one’s maybe trying to do more controlling than’s good for anybody is old R.V.”
For no reason Lenore looked up past Lang at Misty’s ceiling, her own floor.
“Lenore,” said Lang. He stroked the white sleeve of Lenore’s dress with a big warm hand, and through Lenore’s body from the hand went heat.
“Lenore,” he said quietly, “R.V. sat there in that plane, with his little feet dangling and all, sweating like a freaking pig”—he put his hand through his hair—“and just flat out told me you were his, and said I had to promise not to even try to take you away from him.” He looked down at her. “I just thought you should know that.”
Lenore took Lang’s hand from her sleeve and held it while her eyes dried. She could smell herself.
“Like you were his car, or a TV,” Lang was saying, shaking his head. “He wanted me to promise to like respect his ownership of you, or some such.”
His arm brought Lenore into his chest again. She felt something pressing against her stomach, and didn’t even think what it was until later.
“How does he think something like that’s going to make us feel?” Lang was saying into her hair. “Where’s what’s fair in that?”
/h/
“Just sorry, is all.”
“….”
“If such is appropriate.”
“….”
“Which I rather think it is.”
“Ricky that’s silly, don’t be sorry. There’s no need to be sorry.”