Read Online Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Matthew Derby
Tags: FIC028000
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why I don’t say anything to anyone. My wife preferred it this way — she could get more done.
This business with the pool continued for some time, with these characters who had barnstormed the periphery of my life sitting around in the heat with pinched, dumbfounded expressions. I’d had enough, and put everything back the way I had found it.
The house I went to that day was loud, filled with the dull, inlaid memories of a hundred lives. The clients would be disappointed in the reels — none of these people were especially upstanding or even had anything of interest to contribute to a conversation. Light hit the walls and floor in strange, unanticipated waves of grief. The bedroom keened softly the whole time I was there. Ancient prints of bodies lolled and shifted in the adjoining hall. The tone of the place was marbly, clotted. This would drive the price down considerably, although the tub made an exquisite sound. It was the centerpiece of the whole place, probably because nobody had chosen to mark it with the indelible effluvium of her life.
The foreman asked me what I’d gotten.
“You know when people ask you to think of a bad thing and multiply it by ten?”
I handed him the envelope with the reels. He felt at it for a long, self-absorbed moment, speculating on the relative value of the contents.
“This fucks us.”
I told him that the house would never be sold, that the whole place was caked over. He filed away the envelope in one of the big diagnostic machines. I went out and had a cigarette. The day, with all its bitter, ridiculous interstices, had been killed.
The next morning that unnamable sense, the thing that made me take out the microphone the day before, was back. My wife was up again, in the bathroom, preparing her face for work. The girl had wandered in during the night and was sleeping cross-wise on the bed. I held my stomach, thinking about the father, that place she had made in the world that was now gone. Where was I, then, on the morning they squatted in that cheap pool? How would my own life appear on that day from someone else’s perspective, from
his
perspective? How did I tick away those hours, useless and alone in South City? Could I have those gestures, that day, back again?
I got in my car and circled the neighborhood a few times, waiting for my wife to leave. Everything was curiously dead in the sharp streets. When I was sure the house was empty, I went back and turned on the machine. There was a narrow crack in one of the floorboards, from which I extracted the yellowed flap of an envelope, glue and all. Something about the offhand way it had been discarded drew me to it. Under the slim trowel of the microphone’s horn it seemed to shimmy and buck. It took longer than usual to draw out a signal — what did come was brittle and insubstantial. I was hard-pressed for detail and clarity. By interpolating the middle C with a B-flat, though, I was able to conjure up the sound of the father. He stood naked to his socks in a dim, brownish room, talking to a couple of people sitting on the couch. It came at me fiercely, out of the late morning. His body, barely distinguishable from the washed-out, underlit background, was thin and frail, and the way he moved suggested the palsied antics of a small boy. I couldn’t follow the thread of his talk — he said things like “The greatest fucking year I’d like to fuck.” Occasionally the noise would list toward the couch, where the other couple was laid out, shamefully distended and half dressed. The father danced by the empty cavity of a fireplace, the bowed tine of his dick swaying, half erect.
I listened, cradling the lozenge-shaped recording deck like a tender football. Forgive me for saying that it was something that couldn’t
not
be heard. It flickered before me, monstrous and immense, the realization of some deep, long-choked fear. Here was the soft, purloined limb that had held my wife’s time and energy hostage for nine
This business with the pool continued for some time, with these characters who had barnstormed the periphery of my life sitting around in the heat with pinched, dumbfounded expressions. I’d had enough, and put everything back the way I had found it.
The house I went to that day was loud, filled with the dull, inlaid memories of a hundred lives. The clients would be disappointed in the reels — none of these people were especially upstanding or even had anything of interest to contribute to a conversation. Light hit the walls and floor in strange, unanticipated waves of grief. The bedroom keened softly the whole time I was there. Ancient prints of bodies lolled and shifted in the adjoining hall. The tone of the place was marbly, clotted. This would drive the price down considerably, although the tub made an exquisite sound. It was the centerpiece of the whole place, probably because nobody had chosen to mark it with the indelible effluvium of her life.
The foreman asked me what I’d gotten.
“You know when people ask you to think of a bad thing and multiply it by ten?”
I handed him the envelope with the reels. He felt at it for a long, self-absorbed moment, speculating on the relative value of the contents.
“This fucks us.”
I told him that the house would never be sold, that the whole place was caked over. He filed away the envelope in one of the big diagnostic machines. I went out and had a cigarette. The day, with all its bitter, ridiculous interstices, had been killed.
The next morning that unnamable sense, the thing that made me take out the microphone the day before, was back. My wife was up again, in the bathroom, preparing her face for work. The girl had wandered in during the night and was sleeping cross-wise on the bed. I held my stomach, thinking about the father, that place she had made in the world that was now gone. Where was I, then, on the morning they squatted in that cheap pool? How would my own life appear on that day from someone else’s perspective, from
his
perspective? How did I tick away those hours, useless and alone in South City? Could I have those gestures, that day, back again?
I got in my car and circled the neighborhood a few times, waiting for my wife to leave. Everything was curiously dead in the sharp streets. When I was sure the house was empty, I went back and turned on the machine. There was a narrow crack in one of the floorboards, from which I extracted the yellowed flap of an envelope, glue and all. Something about the offhand way it had been discarded drew me to it. Under the slim trowel of the microphone’s horn it seemed to shimmy and buck. It took longer than usual to draw out a signal — what did come was brittle and insubstantial. I was hard-pressed for detail and clarity. By interpolating the middle C with a B-flat, though, I was able to conjure up the sound of the father. He stood naked to his socks in a dim, brownish room, talking to a couple of people sitting on the couch. It came at me fiercely, out of the late morning. His body, barely distinguishable from the washed-out, underlit background, was thin and frail, and the way he moved suggested the palsied antics of a small boy. I couldn’t follow the thread of his talk — he said things like “The greatest fucking year I’d like to fuck.” Occasionally the noise would list toward the couch, where the other couple was laid out, shamefully distended and half dressed. The father danced by the empty cavity of a fireplace, the bowed tine of his dick swaying, half erect.
I listened, cradling the lozenge-shaped recording deck like a tender football. Forgive me for saying that it was something that couldn’t
not
be heard. It flickered before me, monstrous and immense, the realization of some deep, long-choked fear. Here was the soft, purloined limb that had held my wife’s time and energy hostage for nine
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