"You drank too much," Elaine says. "You fell into a deep sleep. You had an accident. Everything does not require a diagnosis."
She gets up, pulls the sheets back, and looks at Paul. He is still in his shirt and tie. He is not wet. She smells the bed. "It's not you," she says.
He cries.
Elaine looks up. "The roof is leaking," she says. "It's raining."
Paul can't stop crying.
"It's the hole," she says.
He looks up. A drop falls.
"Move the bed," she says.
He gets up, and they push the bed off to the right. Paul takes the damp bedding off and stuffs it into the hamper.
"I'm sorry," he says, still sobbing, great gulps. "I'm sorry."
"It's late, Paul. It's very late," Elaine says, remaking the bed.
Elaine can't sleep. She goes downstairs, gets her tools, and fixes Daniel's doorframe. Reconstructive surgery. Putty and glue. Waiting for it to dry, she reads the book Pat gave her, How to Fix Almost Anything-there's a handwritten card from Pat tucked into page forty-three, the laundry section: "Elaine-My ideas don't come from nowhere. My ideas aren't always my own." The page is about how to remove a coffee stain. Elaine remembers splashing the coffee, taking off her shirt, Pat slipping the pot holder under her head. Fine. Everything is fine.
When the glue is dry, Elaine repaints the frame around Daniel's door. She washes her paintbrush. She cleans up after herself.
In the middle of the night, Elaine is sitting on the sofa in the living room. She is thinking about what she wants. She is reading an alphabetical list of occupational titles: candy puller, elephant trainer, fatback trimmer, feather washer, felt finisher, female impersonator, field attendant, fig sorter, film inspector.
The cop car whisks by, siren silenced; red light flashes over the walls, flickering like fire.
Elaine is not alone.
NINE
THE WRECKING BALL WAKE-UP. A hard knock shakes the house. They don't so much hear it as feel it-slapping them out of their sleep, pushing the air out of their lungs.
Elaine rolls over. "Wrecking ball," she says as it slams into the house a second time.
Paul sits up. "Are we safe? Do they know we're in here?"
"What do you want to do, wave a white flag out the window?" Elaine says, turning onto her back.
Paul goes to the window and waves frantically at the men in the backyard. "Were you expecting them this morning?"
"I wasn't expecting anything," Elaine says.
One of the guys waves back. "They see us," Paul says. "They know we're in here. We're okay."
Again the ball slams into the house. Elaine wonders what would happen if it came crashing through the bedroom wall. She pictures the swinging ball, like a black bomb, coming toward her; she imagines jumping on it, riding away, like Tarzan or Jane, legs wrapped around the hard metal, fingers clutching the chain-white knuckles. She gets out of bed.
"You're in a weird mood," Paul says.
"What?"
"You're standing in a puddle of pickle juice."
She looks down. There are jars surrounding her-artichoke hearts, olives, debris from dinner-an odd altar to appetizing. She's knocked over the bread-and-butter pickles, green juice has splashed her toes.
The wrecking ball slams the house again, percussion, punctuation, punch line. The capers dance in their jar.
"Get me a towel," she says to Paul.
Nude. Bent over, gathering wrappers and jars, sorting trash from leftovers, her thin belly and breasts hang, everything is a little loose on the bone. She catches Paul looking at her, taking inventory. "Can I help you?" she asks.
He hands her the towel.
She wipes the floor, puts on her robe, and goes downstairs.
Paul is in the bathroom, staring at himself. Things are beginning to grow back. His body is covered in rough fuzz, itchy bristle. Pimples. He applies hydrocortisone and decides that he will leave himself alone, no more experimental grooming. So what if his head looks like he's wearing a broken halo, a ring of chestnut stubble, a crown of thorns? What's the big deal if his chest hair turns into silver-wired topiary, if he becomes dotted with liver spots and his leggy down disappears, revealing shining varicosities? He checks the tattoo-still spooked every time he sees it. It's crusty now, the hair is growing back-sharp pubes, like bristles, poke out of his skin. Soon the inky line of ivy will be buried, it will be hidden in a forest, it will be something you always know is out there, lurking.
He is thinking about Henry, and the date. He is thinking about McKendrick and how he's got to drop off the tapes. He is thinking about work, about the corner office, new carpet, a new chair. He is thinking about aging, about failure and reinvention. He needs to get back into the game, to be on top, to win.
Paul looks in the mirror. He cannot leave himself alone; he cannot surrender to nature. Everything that you can't see, everything undercover, he will skip, but his head, his exposed dome, he will continue to groom-a shaved skull is a kind of power play, mental nakedness, brain display. He sprays his head with shaving cream and scrapes it clean.
Elaine comes in, she pees, she flushes.
These are the moments Paul likes, moments of intimacy, of familiarity. At Pat and George's they took turns; somehow they weren't comfortable going into the bathroom together. "You were really good last night when I wet the bed," Paul says to Elaine.
"There are six men out back," Elaine says. "The yard is full of rocks. Let's not forget to tell them about the hole," Elaine says.
"I wonder how long it will take?"
"They seem to be moving quickly," she says, walking out.
Elaine's mother is downstairs, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
"Morning," Elaine says, finding her there.
"The lock on the front door is broken," her mother says.
Elaine shrugs. She's not surprised at how other people are able to float in and out as if they have special powers-can walk through walls and travel great distances at a blink, etc., whereas Elaine is always earthbound, stuck.
"You should get the lock fixed," her mother says. "You don't want just anyone to be able to waltz right in."
"It's on the list," Elaine says.
"Would you like some coffee?" her mother asks.
"I made it an hour ago," Elaine says.
"I'm sure you did," her mother says. "It's not really strong enough for me. Can I pour you a cup?" "I'll get it myself."
Her mother wanders into the dining room and stands near the plastic wall. It's as if a curtain has been pulled around the scene of the accident, a blanket over a corpse, in an effort to be discreet, to spare everyone the upset, the embarrassment.
On the other side of the plastic, there are men working-muted voices, hammers.
"Is this a good idea?" her mother asks.
"What?"
"Adding on to the house?"
"We're not really adding on," Elaine says. "We're repairing. We had a fire."