THE RENTAL

“I drove past the house this morning on the way back from the bank,” I said to my wife, Jessica, and she received the news with dispassion.

“Mmhmm.”

“The yard is a prairie.”

“Perhaps you should have stopped.”

“I thought about it.” I stood in the doorway and waited for her to look at me. What occupied her attention was feline nail-trimming.

“Haranguing capitalist isn’t my forte.”

“What do you think we should do then?” she asked tactically.

“I guess I’ll stop by this afternoon.” She stared coolly at me.

“You’re better with that sort of thing.”

“Haranguing?”

“Yes. I suppose. That and driving across town.”

“I think I’ll go now then if there are no plans for dinner.”

“There’s soup you could heat…OUCH! Dammit Chamomile.” She sucked her finger where the cat had drawn blood—this set rather diminished her resolve.

“I’m on my way out the door. Do we need anything from the store?”

She didn’t know. The kitchen was not particularly her province, and mine only through default. It was an uncommon marriage. We were a mismatched and incongruous pair: she was sane and I could navigate the social world nearly well enough. Yet the union endured, if not in excitement and romance, then in levelheadedness and obstinacy, in intellectual contest, in relaxed silence. Moreover, she had my mother’s legs.

“There is change in the fruit bowl.” She had the cat secured now in a stranglehold, applied with the finesse of a birddog clutching a shot gunned duck between cotton-soft jaws.

I pulled off a light sport jacket and slacks and changed into blue jeans and sweatshirt and baseball cap and gathered the quarters from the bowl. On the way out the side door I said goodbye.

“Okay. Be careful.”

She had to have meant the drive, the destination, our property, boded no more danger than a declawed Chamomile. It was Jessica’s idea to invest in rental properties. At the time I did not actively resist her initiative but I had reservations and expressed them.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Wouldn’t you rather rent from someone nice like us?” she argued. Her brunette hair draped to each cheek; wire-rimmed glasses rode close to brown eyes.

“Are we doing it for monetary or philanthropic reasons?”

“Why can’t it be a little of both?” She envisioned a quaint house on a quiet street rented to a young couple starting out who would appreciate the care and fairness we ascribed to as we put aside a certain amount from the rent each month for ourselves.

“You can’t mix oil and water,”

“You make it sound dishonest.”

“Landlords and tenants are ancient nemeses. It is the rooted dynamics…in the psychology.”

“What psychology?”

“Spite for the overlord…regardless the intent.”

“Couldn’t we be a benevolent monarchy?”

“That evokes a deeper resentment than what is felt for the tyrant. I don’t mind the debt so much if I can hate you for it.”

“You twist a psychology to support your argument.”

“You want to know why?”

“No, David.”

What convinced me in the end was her assurance she would manage the property, the monies and the paperwork, anything having to do with bookkeeping functions. I would be the grunt, the working partner, the handyman. The deeper voice on the phone. She would screen prospective tenants, employ powers of intuition and common sense in selecting the right combination of neediness, financial wherewithal and personality to suit our quaint rental: 2 bdrm. Quiet street. Garden space. Deposit. $675.00 a month.

I remained skeptical. No good, I divined, would come of it. I couldn’t dim, however, the entrepreneurial spark by which Jessica devised our solvency and retirement.

We found a house and purchased it and worked on it evenings and weekends, applying paint, refinishing wood floors, repairing and remodeling, checking items off the list—the 100 most likely problems to arise with a rental property. I admit I took more interest in its renovation than anticipated, but I liked working with my hands, and hadn’t much chance the last few years. I constructed amenities—these, though inconspicuous and likely to be taken for granted, gave me a proprietary pride and sense of accomplishment and increased the value of the property. Jessica chose the curtains and paint scheme with practical taste and we felt at times like a younger couple starting out and filled with hope and promise for the future. We weren’t exploiters—not at that point—we were homemakers.

We quite naturally came to feet an attachment to the house and when the time arrived to put our investment to work…we hesitated. I think the kitchen trim needs touching up, I’d say. Or Jessica would revise the lease. But we were making two mortgage payments so we had no other choice than to put it on the market.

The first interview was disappointing because illusions vanished. They drove up in an old van. They were underbelly Americana, backwoods and undistilled. The husband and wife and four children between the ages of five and fifteen looked as if they had camped out the last month, subject to inadequate facilities. They were not clean and did not smell fresh and the man’s teeth were bad, his breath worse, and he had a habit of pressing up close to with whomever he spoke. He was unshaven.

She was overweight and looked worried, tired and pale, and glanced nervously around the living room. They gave vague replies to questions about jobs and finances and the man asked if the deposit were necessary.

I shrank. I wished I were elsewhere. A dark prophecy haunted me. Jessica was understanding. She did not speak down to them, but she did lie effortlessly, innocently, and said others had already been there and would have first choice. They left and I remarked that perhaps we hadn’t asked enough for rent.

“You’re the one who kept the price down.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Become rather the patrician, haven’t we?”

“I am a man of the people.”

“Well Bucko, there’s the people.”

“You won’t rent to them.”

“I don’t claim to be Mr. Righteous.”

The second to arrive in answer to the ad was a young couple who looked as if they were on their lunch hour from high school. He puffed himself up, while his wife, pregnant and frightened, stepped gingerly, timidly through the house’s five rooms, her arms folded across her breasts, resting atop the baby. He said he worked as a mechanic. Compelled by Jessica’s sympathetic silence and benign third degree, and betrayed by his youth, he launched into an extended narrative. His job was prone to layoffs he admitted, but he could pick up other work with his brother who ran a tree-trimming crew out in the county. They had been living with her parents but he got in a fight with the old man and her mother was sick and they thought it would be better all around if a move were made.

I followed the young mother from room to room and indicated the added features, like the built-in lazy susan for spices. She allowed that was nice but she seasoned exclusively with salt and pepper. I showed her the combination heater/fan in the bathroom. That she liked and saw a practical use for. Drying underwear, I speculated to myself, thinking about conflagrations. In the end, they were not quite who we had in mind to rent our cottage to, not the quiet, clean-cut, professional young family who would put to use the opportunity we afforded. I envisioned a discrimination agency swooping down upon us.

“We’ll call you if the previous couple decides not to take it,” Jessica lied as they walked down he front steps to black pickup truck with orange flames on its hood.

“Well?” I said to my wife when they were gone—though I knew what her answer would be.

“He smokes.”

“One can’t discriminate on that basis.” I knew the law.

“He’s only eighteen.”

“Nor that.”

“I think he’s irresponsible. What do you think?”

“She doesn’t use any spices.”

“Well, there you have it.”

I rationalized they could return to her parents.

This went on for a week.

“You know what I think?” she said one morning over coffee.

I lifted my eyes over the morning newspaper. “Mmm?”

“I think we’re waiting for ourselves as we were fifteen years ago to come walking up those steps.”

I thought so too, and not for the first time—to regain what we had lost and wouldn’t come to admit was gone.

“I’m not sure I’d rent to us then,” I said.

“Why not? We were nice.”

“You were nice. I was moody, prickly, insecure, stilted, dark and aloof …a very bad conversationalist.”

“Well, we weren’t the genteel and sophisticated pair you see before us today, certainly.”

“Would you have rented to me?”

“I suppose I have had an ameliorative affect on you.”

“Nice word.”

“Thank you.”

We decided that out of the three appointments that afternoon and evening, we would rent to one of them…regardless of race, creed, color of skin or make of car.

The first couple was homosexual. They were unashamed and made no effort to suggest their sexual preferences were anything other than what they were. I showed the less assertive one the amenities and he cooed appreciatively.

“Did you do the work?”

How to appear modest? “Yes.”

“Very nice.”

“Thank you.”

With the other, Jessica steered the conversation adroitly to finances and learned each had a decent job. The one with whom she spoke had a sharp and suspicious mind and dropped references here and there about fair housing laws, civil rights, and so forth.

“They could be trouble,” she said when they had gone and we collapsed on a porch swing in the back of the house.

The back yard was one of the primary reasons we decided on the house. It extended nearly one hundred yards and ended not in a fence or obvious property line, but in an undeveloped tract of neighborhood where we had heard children’s voices echoing out of the gullies and thick, entwined underbrush. Children discover the secret pathways of any neighborhood. It is a rabbit world of minute passages and grass rooms and adults are verboten. A house on one side had grown enormous shrubbery and rampant lilac to occlude respective views. On the other side the neighbor had raised a ten-foot high fence. Same occlusion. One could sunbathe nude the entire summer.

“What time are the next prospects arriving?” I asked6.

She looked at her watch. “About ten minutes.”

I sighed.

“You didn’t realize being a real estate tycoon could be so wearying, did you?”

I said nothing.

At five-thirty, a half-hour late, three restless silhouettes appeared on the front porch. We observed the erratic flow of limbs and loose material from the dining room.

I answered the door (this was our modus operandi) while Jessica waited like a fortuneteller behind invisible sheets of investigative intent. I lumbered toward the door. I was inclined to bend my tall body and demean my posture so as not to unduly intimidate anyone—but Jessica said there was no danger of this.

“Hello,” I said amicably to the three.

The girl, or young woman, spoke first and assumed the role of negotiator and interpreter. She was of medium height and had long, startlingly straight brown hair, eyes that bore into me with unblinking sincerity. She wore an ankle-length blue-jean skirt, a white, frilled blouse with elaborate stitching, low over a freckled bosom. Around a thin and lovely neck she wore a cross on a gold chain.

“Hi. We’re here in answer to the ad.” She spoke in singsong and flung her head to the side and her hair ululated like a wave.

“Oh yes.” I smiled and held the greeting and scrutinized the two males with her. I had been transported back a couple generations and shrugged off a spurious déjà vu. The alpha male had unruly black hair and an equally black beard. Under bushy eyebrows his eyes bore a defiant, down-with-the system anger. He was in jeans, sandals, and Harvard track team T-shirt. I met his glare ingenuously.

The second male was the first’s antithesis: pale, fair, ethereal, tall, thin, wispy blonde hair, elusive, expressionless blue eyes that reflected the evening’s light. He wore bell-bottoms—technically too short to be accurate period piece—gym shoes and a faded yellow tie-dyed shirt.

“Come in. Come in.” They passed by me and I glanced to the curb for a look at a van decorated with stickers and slogans. Instead of decrying “Impeach Nixon” and “Fighting for Peace Is Like Fucking for Chastity”— these firebrands demanded the system “Save the Rainforests.”

Jessica greeted them and surprised me when she chose to communicate not with the girl but with the wispy blonde. The prearranged script was she would corral the one who in all likelihood would be assuming responsibility. I would lead any others on innocuous tours. She and the blonde boy were a peculiar mix: Jessica enigmatic and owl-like, speaking with that sane and impeccable intellect—and the blonde metamorphosing from gawking boy to animated and erudite conversationalist. I escorted the girl and the alpha male through the house.

“Oh cool!” the beard exclaimed when he saw the bookshelves I built in the dining room, removing a section of wall to inset the panels. He scrunched down like an Indian to have closer look. “That’s cherry.”

I was not sure if he coined the once popular expression of admiration or identified the type of wood. “Maple.” I corrected.

He turned around and looked up at me. “You sure, man?”

“Reasonably. I built them.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “C’mere and look at this.”

I scrunched down next to him

“You see this here.” He extended a finger and ran it across the edge of the wood. “The flecks and speckled streaks. That usually indicates cherry.”

I concentrated on the markings. “They’re difficult to tell apart sometimes.”

“Yeah. Especially after staining.”

“Well. It’s either maple or cherry.”

“Or birch,” he said and I laughed but he saw no humor in it “How come you used this wood for a bookshelf in a rental?”

Because he was no more than 21 and knew his wood, I let it pass. I fact, I responded.

“I don’t know. No time for anything else.”

He gave me a look that suggested that was what was wrong with the system, the abuse and theft of time.

“What would you have done with it?” I asked.

Jessica’s laughter rang from the kitchen. Long ago, or not so long ago, I don’t remember exactly when because it left in increments, I had put jealousy aside. What could be humorous though? It was I who made my owl laugh.

“I don’t know man. Maybe a table or a desk.”

“I don’t think there was enough of it.”

The girl had seated herself in a window seat and gazed around the room as if she were outside at midnight and zeroing in on a distant galaxy. The idea of their being drug users did not suggest itself to me until then. That had been fundamental to the hippie ethos, the era these three parodied. I had left the period behind the day it ended—whenever the hell that was.

“Do you like the house?” I asked the girl.

“Oh, yes,” She immediately replied. “It’s, you know…like really centered. Do you know when it was built?”

Odd question, that, for her. “Nineteen-thirty seven.”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded her head as if this year had significance, as if the date explained a conclusion she had come to.

Jessica and the fair-haired one entered the living room. Her eyes were lively and amused. And why not? She’d been laughing. His face had lost its fragility and was slightly mocking. At that moment a gust of wind shoved the door open and a few leaves skittered across the hardwood floor. Who, I wondered, would be the first to take it as a sign? Utter the hushed shibboleth: Far out.

“Gnomes,” the fair one said in a low, concentrated voice that precluded response and the rest of us looked at him.

They left with Jessica’s assurances she would be sure to let them know within the day. Once they were gone I put an arm around her but she was unresponsive and cool. It must have been possessive. I retreated and asked her levelly, what she thought.

“Let’s wait until the last appointment,” she said distractedly.

We waited an hour and no one showed. Apparently, we weren’t coming. The house grew dark and we sat in silence for forty-five minutes.

Finally, I got up. “Let’s go.” I extended my hand but she pushed herself up.

The silence continued on the ride across town. This was not unusual. We had settled into that unspoken communion of married couples, or…unspoken separation. It was comfortable but not stimulating. We knew the other’s parries and repartee and less and less entered into the play of wits and intellectual games. Age had effected too many stalemates.

“I think we should rent to them,” she announced upon arrival at our home. The engine was still on and headlights lit the garage door.

“The gays?”

“No. The college students.” She knew I knew who she meant.

“The university is all the way across town. Why do they want to rent on the south side?” I turned the motor and lights off and the radio low. This is where we spent an uncommon amount of time discussing problems. It might have been the mobility—escape inherent within it.

“They like the neighborhood.” She was distant, shrouded in herself, sounding mechanical. I knew the symptoms.

“Does it remind them of home?”

“And they like the house.”

“So did the others.”

She turned to look at me. “You’re not very helpful.”

“You want my okay?”

“Keith said they all have independent means of support. School loans, parents. That sort of thing.”

“If they only rent for nine months that means we go through this again next summer. What if they have a falling out? You remember that idealistic and impressionable age, don’t you?”

“They’re all sophomores and one or the other will keep it through the summers.”

“Will they sign a document to that effect?”

“Listen to you all of a sudden. You were the one who said no leases. Let’s just go month to month.”

“Oh hell,” I said. “You’re the manager.”

They moved in the next week: Keith the blonde; Mack the beard; and Iris the cosmic. I didn’t think much about them for a week or two, but Jessica’s curiosity burned. What had they done to our progeny? And so it came as relief rather than bother when Mack called and said the plumbing was screwing up and would we mind fixing it. I said I’d be by that evening. We disguised eagerness and braced for disappointment. What would be the esthetics of hippie throwbacks? That Zeitgeist had no particular interior decorating style but barest functionalism and psychedelic chic. It could be anything. Jessica huddled in a wool sweater and asked if I’d roll the window up even though it was 73 degrees outside.

After prolonged ringing Iris answered the door. “Oh hi.” She said and took her two small hands and wiped each eye as if waking and brushed the sleep away. Our presence was a mystery to her until I mentioned the plumbing. “Oh yeah…right. I forgot about that. Come on in.”

We crossed the threshold and discreetly inhaled, the first impression is gotten not by appearance, but by scent. It smelled like an occult bookstore, sandalwood incense, wax and coconut, no fried meat. Iris wore a karate gi, roomy, loose-fitting white pants up to mid-calf—also a tight fitting tank top, no brassier. She padded barefoot to a large cushion and curled up Buddha-like under an unframed print of Einstein.

“The bathroom is down the hall. Ooh…you know where it is.”

Sweet and nubile, she was…desirable and enchanting to a less jaded and faithful soul such as I.

The furnishings were as expected, sparse and eclectic. It looked as if each had liberated an article or two from home: an oak telephone table that bore a plaster cast of an Eastern deity; a polished redwood burl propped on bricks surrounded by cushions; a wicker desk with a computer; a gray couch with an Indian blanket tossed over it. On the walls hung reproductions of understated oriental landscapes.

I carried my box of tools in the direction of the plumbing and Jessica flopped down on a cushion next to Iris with her best forget-I’m-your-landlord impression. It worked, for by the time I had tightened the toilet bowl bolts, caulked and halted the leak, the two were chattering like sorority girls at a slumber party. I was dour from delving in another’s toilet and in no mood to linger and Jessica took the cue I offered and we prepared to leave just as Keith came running up the steps in a jogging outfit. The shoes were expensive and he had his hair tied in a ponytail. The skinniness I had attributed to philosophic angst was in fact a well-proportioned and athletic body. Jessica smiled and said hello. He chose, however, to speak to me.

“Got her all fixed?” he asked chummily.

“Oh yeah. Nothing to it.”

“I’m a real klutz when it comes to fixing anything mechanical.” He smiled as if this should excuse his ineptitude—but there was no doubting his guilelessness.

Infused with runner’s high, his pale skin glowing healthily, he smiled and expected me, fresh out of the toilet basin, to share his euphoria. Jessica stepped in. “How are things with the house?”

“Oh fine. Just fine.” His features were delicate though the chin was hard and set, the cheekbones prominent. His vulnerability was invitation to the unscrupulous were it not for unconscious impulse that seemed to propel his movements. His aura of happiness and trust was infectious and irritating. Jessica warmed to him and absorbed his radiation and gave it back in attention. I wanted to get home and in a shower, forget where I had just been rooting.

“There is one thing though,” he said reluctantly. His hands were large and awkward, anomalous to the rest of him, operating independently of his thought, and disposed to explore diverse anatomical parts. One scratched his thigh.

“What’s that?” Jessica asked.

“Well.”

“Yes,” she encouraged.

“There are strange noises in the night sometimes.”

“He’s right,” Iris intoned.

“What kind of noises?” Jessica asked.

He described bumps, scratching, chirping, squawking.

“It sounds like something has moved into the attic,” I said. I was sure the rental manual had a section on this. “Give it a week. Let us know if it doesn’t stop.”

“Okay. I gotta shower now,” he announced. “See ya later.”

He left the room and I glanced at Iris, curled up with her book. She rolled her eyes.

“What do you think of him?” Jessica asked on the way home.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Does he remind you of anyone?”

“Besides me twenty years ago?”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I didn’t know you twenty years ago.”

“You know how to add.”

“Were you like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose there are some similarities.”

“Like what?”

“I too was oblivious.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Mmm.” We rode in silence a few moments. “He might make an eager and pleasant lover for you,” I observed.

“You can be a real bastard. You know that?”

I can. It was a more honest, prophetic me. Not likeable, but I was nearly over that insecurity.

Two months later on the ride over to admonish our tenants for not mowing the lawn, I rehearsed what I would say. I notice the grass is excessively high. Would you like to borrow our mower? No. All right then, I’ll take care of it.

Iris answered the door. It was six-o-clock and she was indolent, her eyelids were heavy and purple, her body too relaxed—the cocked hip looked like it would buckle if angled any further. She had bundled the vertical hair atop her head and pressed it flat by a forearm flung there. Her hang-lidded expression suggested I was an intrusion but not an unwelcome one. She wore tight jeans and a man’s long-sleeved shirt, untucked, the tails flapping.

“Come on in. I was just having tea.” She turned and started for the kitchen. I was meant to follow and did. “Do you want some? It’s herbal.”

I said that would be nice. Accept hospitality and then deliver the loathsome message: cut the grass. The first couple months they had hacked at it fairly regularly, borrowing a push mower from a rental store—but the last couple weeks it had been neglected and several rainfalls effected a growth spurt. I began to feel petty and bullying. Cut the grass! Goddamn it! Do you think you live in a zoo or on a farm where the meek and submissive beasts will graze?

“It’s rosehips and a bunch of other herbs,” Iris said, bent over the counter. Strands of errant hair escaped the nest piled atop her neck and dangled downward.

The kitchen had been the one concession to practicality and tradition. One of the parents must have contributed a dining set. The table was solid and accompanied by five matching chairs. I sat down and cautiously let my eyes stray. Potato chips, health foods, screw-topped wine bottles, chocolate, beer cans, and exotic foodstuffs littered abundant counter space. In one corner was a ten-speed bike. A pair of socks and women’s underwear dried on the handlebars.

Iris presented me the tea and said, “Mack and Keith are up in the mountains. Wisps of steam snaked upward and the brew smelled sweet and pungent. Unfamiliar with a tribe’s ceremony, I customarily wait and watch. Iris sat across from me.

“I didn’t mean to drop in so unexpectedly.” This was not meant as apology, but simply conversation.

She raised a thick mug to her lips and sipped and sized me up. Straight. I drank the tea. My mouth curled into a phony smile but I dropped it and the pretence.

“How do you like it,” she asked.

I prefer explosive black coffee in moderate doses. “It’s fine. Is it your own blend?”

“No. Store bought.”

“Oh.”

She drilled eyes libidinously into me.

“So, Mack and Keith are in the mountains. How long have they been there?”

“Two weeks.”

“When are they due back?”

“I don’t know.”

What about classes, young lady?

Something was taking place amid the fine art of language. Her toe caught my shoe and spider-walked to unleathered ankle. Heat spread through me like the flameless fire in a peat bog, or tire dump. I was not slow in deducing her intent. She touched my hand and her bare toes slid under my pantlegs. How, I wondered, did I extract myself without insulting her or damaging her sexual self-esteem? Was this part of the ceremony? How much was I expected to adapt to cultural practice if it advanced beyond footsie and handholding?

I took refuge in my logical and pedestrian stick-in-the-mud self. Here was a young sensual co-ed, unrefined but certainly no neophyte in matters of the flesh, who, from outward indications, had uninhibited designs on my maturity. She had been alone, as I had been informed, for two weeks. That would explain the unshorn lawn and the unaffected interest she expressed in me. My morals were moderately suited to my temperament: don’t hurt anyone. Anyone in this case would be Jessica and Iris. For ten years I had been a model of fidelity. I could not say for sure if the same were true for my wife, but I assured myself I would survive if she had not been faithful. Before our marriage I had slept around. Jessica, however, who had been a few years younger than I, claimed she came to the connubial bed a virgin. I had spoken of the inequity of our respective backgrounds and though I never overtly condoned her experimentation, I expressed no horror over its possibility. If she had strayed it had been discreet. In fact there had been times over the years, not often, when I thought I detected a new flavor, an extra shadow in the bed, but, because she had been more open, more provocative at these times, I never questioned. For me, her sexual appetite and passion blossomed, and discouraged philandering. Besides, it would require too much physical and emotional effort to stray.

But now Iris’s fire lapped through me. When her hand fell to my knee and edged its way up I called a halt. Who was I, after all? “Iris,” I said avuncularly, trying not to sound like a prude.

“Mmmm…”

Before I could formulate protest she got up and stood behind me and sank her hands into my shoulders. “Oh my god,” I inadvertently moaned. Her small hands were remarkably strong and adept and my muscles relaxed.

“That’s very nice,” I said and I was hers. My morals shut up.

“Come on,” she said and pried me from the chair and pulled me by the hand to the bedroom. Whose? I didn’t know. From what I had seen, the three shared both bedrooms. There was a double-sized mattress on the floor and a wood chair beside it. She pulled my pants down and I stood there, my savoir-faire dwindling.

“Don’t worry,” she coaxed, though I hadn’t been.

I returned the favor. I unsnapped her tight jeans and tugged at the zipper but something caught and the damn thing jammed. She giggled.

“Sorry,” I said and lugged her to the chair. I tried to peel the jeans over her hips but they wouldn’t come, too tight. I focused efforts on the zipper but it was stuck. “Damn!” I muttered.

She giggled the more and squirmed and I broke into a sweat. By then I had nearly pulled her off the chair. Her body was straight, her head propped against the middle of the backrest and her ankles on the floor, me tinkering with the fly.

I pulled my pants up

“Wait here,” I pleaded. “I’ve got some tools in the car.”

She laughed but I was serious and I scrambled down the hall and out the door to the car and flung open the trunk and grabbed my emergency tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, bits of hose, utility knife—not your customary S&M fair.

“Nice day, isn’t it?”

I lurched and bumped my head on the trunk. It was Mr. Worth, the neighbor to the east, the one on the opposite side of the hedgerow.

“Yes sir, it is.” I straightened and faced him and read his expression, a talent I was in no position to perform with my id and conscience razor-edged.

Mr. Worth, as far as Jessica and I could tell, was a self-appointed neighborhood watchdog and gossip. He’d stopped by on occasion during our remodeling and delivered three lectures on community history. Age, which usually confers dignity and wisdom, had been less than generous with Mr. Worth. However, I always showed him the respect I felt his years were due.

“Problems?” He nodded at my kit.

“Oh no…no. Nothing major.” Except the gods hating me. I was certain he suspected. “The toilet again. A washer leaking.”

“Need any help?”

“Oh, no sir. Thanks though. I almost have it.”

He gazed at me through his glasses, noncommittal, letting me dig the hole deeper. He could suspect and accuse with impunity because he had done his time.

“I hate to rush off but I don’t want to soak the floorboards.” I turned away.

“Didn’t you turn the main water off?” he called after me, like any idiot would know.

Self-consciously I retreated to the house, stooped. I tried the handle. The door had locked behind me, thanks to a spring I had installed. I turned and Mr. Worth watched. I smiled weakly at him and dodged around the side of the house. Luckily the back door was open and I hustled to the bedroom. Iris had removed her jeans and thrown them in a pile at the foot of the bed. She lay naked on the mattress and I sighed.

“I’m back.”

“You’re very strange, you know that?” she observed, dispensing the thought casually.

“Yes, I know. Still game?” I shouldn’t have asked, just acted.

“I don’t know.” She pouted and rolled on her stomach.

Desire should have flared at the sight of her perfect pink bottom, but her child-like mood tugged at a despair I had hidden. Who was I kidding? I make to love to the mind.

“What were your SAT scores?”

“What?”

It was no use. I set my tools down and dejectedly sat in the chair. “How come you haven’t cut the grass?” I asked disappointedly.

“What?”

“I may have to evict you, you know.”

“You’re crazy.” She attempted a laugh.

“No I’m not. I know the law.”

She sat up and crossed her legs and grabbed a sheet to pull around her midriff. Her breasts bobbed over a fold in her belly. “Mack and Keith cut the grass.” Her mouth was confused and twitched. She was not long in the world and despite her carnal knowledge she knew little about leases and cruel landlords.

“They’re not here, so it’s your responsibility.”

“You can’t evict someone for not cutting the grass,” she said uncertainly, suddenly afraid, picturing herself on the sidewalk when Mack and Keith returned.

By nature I am not ruthless—Jessica might disagree—but here I had a taste of what dark and primeval satisfaction can be derived from exerting one’s power over a weaker being. This, however, was anathema to my sense of self and I suffered indecision. I had no idea what my machinations would affect with this appetizing 60’s anachronism, but I pressed blindly on.

“Jessica and I had a case similar to this last year,” I lied.

“Oh Jessica,” she sniffed, recouping—one with insider information. “She was here balling Keith last week. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

I could vividly picture her five years younger in high school snapping gum and hanging out with her friends in the cafeteria. “What are you majoring in?” I asked, machinations complete.

“What?” Again with the quizzical twist to the mouth. Was I crazy or what? It was conceivable, had I met her mother and become sexually active at the age of fourteen, that I was old enough to be her father.

“Your major in school.”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea.”

I bent over and untied my shoes and re-tied them—same with the other foot. I sometimes find myself ensnared in these pointless actions. The only way out is to proceed as if the derangements are justifiable. She witnessed my performance and was not without a trace of fear. I was sorry for that. As slowly and non-threateningly as possible—my snail-like motion probably had the reverse effect—I stood up and walked, shoulders hunched, to the door. I hoped she wouldn’t write a short story about this in Composition class. I glanced back at her, still naked, the mouth crooked, the look of a child confronted with an algebraic equation.

“Don’t worry about the grass. I’ll cut it.” I passed through the living room and let myself out.

Jessica was in what we call the parlor when I got home. She read a recent best seller. She’d gotten it through the library after a long wait. Why buy it? Who’ll remember the book in ten years, she reasoned. I was determined to handle the situation diplomatically, maturely, openly, intelligently, compassionately, even with humor—the model of a postmodern marriage.

“Well, are they going to cut it?” the lamp above her was the only lighted one in the room and highlighted her face. There was no nonsense here. This was a woman with whom one had to contend. I remained in the shadows for safety. I stuck my hands in my pockets.

“Keith and Mack have been camping.”

“Iris can’t push the mower?”

“They have the van.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She suspected something now but I maintained my position.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

It would be foolish to blurt out accusations, or even innuendo, without first determining the veracity. Iris had been hurt and might have lashed out in pain and defense rather than in truth—though it would have been difficult to lie to me in that state.

“Iris told me you and Keith have been balling.” The direct attack, I decided, would be most expert.

Because I was prepared and calm and had numbed my emotions, I discerned her attempt to disguise reality. Astute and demoralizing in this game I initiated, she struck a sharp counter-blow—parrying not with denial but with parallel charge. Every military strategist understands the technical advantage of swift counter-offensive.

“In what state of dress was Iris when she told you this?”

It was a brilliant selection of words and intuition and I would have been inclined to admire her attack and accede to her mastermind had I not been drained—but it was, ironically, this weariness that gave me strength and insight.

“I’m leaving you.”

She laid the book down on her lap and was unflappable and disbelieving. “Of course you are.”

“I mean it.”

“Oh come on, David. We go through this at least once a year.”

True. True enough—and generally…no, exclusively at my provocation.

“A hippie tart blurts out a jealous lie and you’re leaving? It’s me who should be filing for divorce. Just what the hell went on over there?”

I remained in the shadows, my hands in my pockets, and I bowed my head low. “What has gone on over the last two years.” The reconstruction of a false reality? Our marriage buoyed through artificial means “The end of our life together.”

“What are you talking about?”

I had gained the slightest advantage, but it had taken a powerful strike. If I were to attempt to explain what we tried to exercise with the rental though, I would have become mired in rhetoric and this is what she angled for—the dismantling of my argument through mockery and unsubstantiation. I knew what I meant, that her mind was the matrix of our marriage, that I had been manipulated by emotion, dominated by the absence and pretence of hers. That I had gotten close to the truth and she had to reestablish the lie.

The cat entered the room and sat midway between us and blithely licked a forepaw

We were stalemated.