Back at the condo, I spread the paper out. There’s an article revealing the best places to use a metal detector. An article about a wild boar that startled some beachgoers. A girl in Fort Myers was shot while sitting in her car. I read every word. I’m trying to lose track of time, and it’s working. A soldier went berserk in a post office. A new podiatry clinic is opening.
When I fold the paper back up, it’s the middle of the afternoon. The coffee pot has been on all day, and I finally shut it off. I shouldn’t call my wife’s phone, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I do. I take a shower and eat something, then I open a beer and go to the front porch. 20-Point Turn is no good all alone. It’s just people parking and nothing more, people coming back from dinner before it’s even nighttime. I can hear the card games from the other porches — outdated games I don’t know the rules to. There are silences, murmurs, peals of laughter. Lara’s space is taken now, by a long, gray Lincoln. I find myself doubting very much that Lara has a friend in Sarasota, or that that friend has a boat, or that my wife would want to be on that boat.
I pull out my phone, as I knew I would, and when I call my wife it goes straight to voicemail. Lara’s phone gives me the same treatment. It’s possible they’re offshore, out of cell range. I have no way of knowing.
At lunchtime the next day, they still haven’t surfaced. What I understand is that my wife hasn’t been my ally for some time. It’s true we love each other. It’s true that eventually she’ll return from wherever she is and all this will pass. But we’re not allies.
I wonder what to do next. There’s a mammoth sporting goods store nearby that I wouldn’t mind walking around in. Doubtless there’s a coupon booklet in the mailbox. On the muted TV there will be sobering news from Africa, from the Pacific Rim, from everywhere. The rain is going to cease soon — later today, tomorrow — and the thought worries me. All the old people will rejoice, beaming in their tennis clothes and grilling steaks and rubbing down their long automobiles to prevent water spots. They will cherish those little duties. Our neighbors are finished with the tasks they toiled away at in life; they know what it is to be finished, to have worked a lifetime toward a satisfaction that begins rotting after a week.
THE DIFFERING VIEWS
The man did not offer to buy Mitchell a coffee. He described the job as a sales position but managed to avoid saying exactly what Mitchell would sell. Mitchell found he could not get a word in, and after a while he quit trying. The man seemed like he’d been to prison, something about how cloudy and expressionless his eyes looked. His pinstripe suit was like a disguise. He had made several allusions to a payment of $300 and Mitchell finally understood that the man wanted him to pay $300. The man made wisecracks about some starving-artist types that were haunting the coffee shop, making fun of what they did with their time and also making fun of their clothes. He was holding a laminated graph. It showed a steep increase in something. Mitchell’s mind went to the gas he’d wasted driving into Albuquerque. His mind went to all the things he’d at one time or another studied in depth — the history of Paris, North American hummingbirds. He’d once known the entire Book of Psalms by heart. To buy himself an espresso drink would be, at this point, an extravagant expenditure.
***
Mitchell had spent six years with Bet. Bet had family money and fancied herself a writer and moved every few months, on whims. Mitchell had met her when she’d passed through Chattanooga. He’d agreed to tag along with her, had left his crappy adjunct job at a branch of the state college to drive the open parts of the country with the windows down. That was the kind of thing he’d always been able to do — make his escape when others were afraid to. He’d come to know Bet better than he’d ever known another person, and perhaps they’d grown too close. This last move they’d wound up in some bleached, dusty town out east of Albuquerque, and after only two days Bet had said she wanted to pack back up and move again. She’d said she had complaints, but they weren’t really about New Mexico. There’d been a convoluted fight during which Bet had used the term “curdled” to what she believed was great effect, and then she’d left. Six years. She’d driven away in her tasteful little SUV, crying in sharp breathy yips. It was the same way she cried at anything — the death of an animal, songs. She produced these high-pitched whimpers and her nose got stuffed up, but only a tear or two would fall. It was one of the only things Mitchell didn’t like about her, her crying, and he was glad that this was the last image he’d had of her as she left. If she’d driven off with one of her resigned frowns, it would’ve crushed him. If she’d flashed him that look of distanced amusement, the one cheek bunched up and her eyes barely squinting, he’d probably still be standing out there, frozen at the edge of the parking lot like a cactus.
Mitchell had been alone for a week now. He could see that he was worn out too, though not of Bet. He was tired of the road, of packing and unpacking, of learning new streets and new restaurants and new neighbors and new weather and suffering new allergies and not knowing the name of the county he lived in. He was tired of looking for work.
He had a two-bedroom condo all to himself and the first month and security deposit were paid. He had a last-legs Isuzu Stylus he’d bought cheap a couple stops ago, when the only job he could find was twenty miles outside of town. He was a bachelor. That was the situation. Big clean appliances. He had nothing to put in the second bedroom but a folding chair and a lamp. He had $4,100.
Left to his own devices, he ate twice a day, all his meals working out to about $7. Sandwich and potato salad and a Coke. Burritos and a Coke. Three stiff slices of pizza and a Coke. Chicken fingers and cheap beer. He knew his crappy diet was one of the reasons he felt sluggish. He and Bet had always gone out to good restaurants, usually on her dime, or if they ate in they had salads and expensive cheese.
Bet had taken her laptop, which they’d used to read articles or listen to the radio. Mitchell had an old box TV, but they’d never used it as a TV. It hadn’t been plugged in since Chattanooga, and had become an ornamental artifact. At a villa he and Bet had rented in Maine, they’d used the TV as a centerpiece for their dining room table. In Baltimore, they’d taped a tropical beach scene over the screen, something to look at during the winter weather. This condo Mitchell was in now didn’t have cable hooked up, but he doubted the TV would work anyway.
Before Mitchell and Bet had driven to New Mexico, they had planned a number of desert outings, and now Mitchell couldn’t find the gusto to undertake any of the outings alone. One of the places they’d planned to visit was a farm of gargantuan satellite dishes that monitored the webby corners of the galaxy for sonic anomalies. They’d planned to hike out into White Sands. Tour the pistachio groves. All these places had seemed foreign and enchanting before, but now, as a guy alone, they were just radio apparatus, just a wash of pale dirt, some nut trees.
Mitchell bought a package of heavy paper and drove to a small library the color of tired earth. He obtained a library card and sat down at a computer and typed an up-to-date version of his work history. He put his fancy paper in the library printer and came away with a purposeful stack of résumés. It was eerie to look at his new résumé, to see all the places he’d been with Bet, all the things he’d done with his hands for money, to think at one time of all the warehouses and mills and machine shops where he’d logged a month or two, all these places he hadn’t been suited for and that had already forgotten him. And teaching hadn’t suited him either, if he was honest. He could remember clearly, even all these years later, feeling like an impostor in front of the students. He could remember acting like he cared about whether they learned, could remember drumming up just enough enthusiasm within himself before each class meeting.