Exclusive Excerpt: "Fugue"
A New Novel by Paul A. Toth

Chapter Eight Continued: She left

     She left. She said more prayers. I turned on my piece of shit TV, The Postman Always Rings Twice on channel 52. The black and white cooled me, flecks and ticks of debris floating across the screen. I still smelled like Rosie. Let's just say Rosie didn't smell like roses after a good round in the ring. With all that grabbing and holding, and no referee to step between and separate us, bodily fluids had a way of trading places.
     Meanwhile, I was having private dick thoughts about that letter and second thoughts about the whole idea of leaving. The movie wasn't helping. I guess the crew at Channel 52 would have had a good laugh if they knew I was watching their programming right then. They probably had a guy in my backyard with a stethoscope against the house. He'd phone the studio and say, "You're not gonna believe this, but there's this guy out here in the middle of nowhere who -- never mind. Just keep running The Postman Always Rings Twice. I'll explain later. You're gonna shit yourself when I tell ya."
     It was no crazier than Mary Whitcomb sending me a letter across all that space and time, brushing off the black hair that fell on the envelope when she sealed it. She had the flapper girl hairchop down and never did she change that style. She would smoke herself to death trying to look like she belonged in movies, and if they wheeled in a camera to film her demise from emphysema, she would Louise Brook no regrets. But when nobody was looking, she'd pull out her supply of stuffed animals, the bears and tigers fluffed with love, and squeeze them tight, snoring through an extra supply of phlegm.
     Oh, Christ, why I was going? Was I having a spell? It felt like one, like I'd been mesmerized. No point in lying about it. I was already thinking of laying Mary Whitcomb across the bed like a sheet of rolling paper and wrapping myself inside. I'd be her tobacco, laced with all the poison inside me. And if Rosie stayed behind, I bet Jesus would be at her side when I returned, armed with two by fours and nails.
     I'd take my laptop computer. Late at night, I sometimes looked up those other women. They were all still located right where they'd been when I left them. And if they did move, I knew from junk e-mail that real private dicks could find "anybody, anywhere, for $29.95." Because for all I knew, somebody was playing a trick on me through Mary Whitcomb, using her to lure me into a trap.
     As I fell asleep on the couch, the cloud of Rosie rose above while the exhaust from the factory I'd left behind spiraled toward me in a thousand-mile wisp, even though the factory wasn't there anymore. A song played over and over again in my head: "Oh, Rosie. Oooooh, Roooooooosie. Steal away now, now, steal away." I imagined that factory splitting down the middle, forming a bullethole-shaped vagina that spat me out. And the postman hadn't even bothered ringing once before delivering that envelope.
     "Get up, bitch."
     There must have been eighteen eggs cooking on the stove, two for me, plus one of the three stacks of waffles and two of the eight sausage links. It was a rare morning our home didn't smell like The International House of Pancakes, but I wasn't expecting breakfast today. In fact, I had planned on being gone by then.
     "Got to eat, Tom."
     Life with Rosie had imparted a taste for food I hadn't always possessed. I weighed 150 when we met and 200 now. Sideways, I looked like a pregnant anorexic, my legs still skinny but topped by a beach ball. I'd already planned on resuming smoking after I left. I'd need something to do on the road, and the nicotine would cut my food expense.
     "Get your ass to the kitchen table," she said. "Might as well stuff your fat face one last time."
     I bowed for the blessing.
     "Thank you, Lord, for this food, which we all know this lazy motherfucker is lucky to provide. We acknowledge the luck comes from you, not him. How he ever got lucky twice, once with money and once with me, is beyond the both of us, Jesus. Amen."
     As usual, I crossed myself like a kid trying to sign his name for the first time. I wasn't being sacrilegious; I didn't want to sign off on Rosie's religion, just in case.
     "Here's what you think of me, you goddamn racist," she said, squeezing the Aunt Jemima bottle until a lake of syrup flooded her plate. "I ain't your damn aunt. But you're still Uncle Tom."
     "Knock it off with that, would you?"
     She reached across the table and tried to smack me, but for once I backed away in time.
     "Shut your ass and eat."
     Despite appearances, Rosie was not earthy. Sometimes I thought she ate to weigh herself down, so spacey was she with her weird conceptions. Mother considered Rosie well-grounded, and I suppose like a wide-bodied jet on the tarmac, she was. But she was even more than met the eye. She soaked up books and made them into something new, every word supporting not the author's intent but Rosie's self-design. Each year, the slaps came harder. Each year, she was more in charge, until she finally handled all the finances, keeping the investments in line and telling me what I could spend on what. The accounts might be joint, but Rosie was the tendon, the muscle.
     Finally, I said what I had originally intended to skip. "I got to go to the bank."
     "It's your money."
     "That's not what you usually say."
     "That's what I'm saying now." She stuck her fork in the stack of waffles. It stood straight, a reed in Lake Syrup. "You do what you gotta do. Rosie will survive. You think I didn't open up my own account, just in case? I got plenty. You can't surprise me. I knew you'd pull something sooner or later. If you don't come back, I can always get a job cooking down at the truck stop. You know I can cook. Men in truck stops get lonely, and there's plenty of men as smart as you down there. Or maybe I'll just take a break from cooking at home, now that I think of it, and take myself out to eat every now and then. Can't say what I'll do while you're gone. That's my business, just like you got your business."
     The thought of some guy hanging his NASCAR cap on my bedpost gave me yet another second thought. But this was all happening so easily, Rosie just letting me go, that it seemed I was meant to leave. It was now or never.
     I wiped my mouth clean of syrup and crumbs and went to the bedroom. I found my old luggage bag in the closet and packed all the clothes I could fit. I strapped the laptop to my shoulder. I washed up in the bathroom and packed my razors; if and when I came back, the sink would be clean of another man's beard.
     I was leaving before the mail would arrive. If Mary Whitcomb had sent a second letter, after sobering up and remembering what she'd written the night before, I'd never receive it.
     Rosie met me at the door.
     "I loves you, Bess," she said.
     "You got it mixed up, Rosie. I'd be Porgy, the crippled one. Why you always trying to make a fool of me? You know I'm a guy."
     "Mmm."
     She laid a French kiss on me, a melting Eiffel Tower down my throat.
     "Well," she said, "goodbye."
     "Bye, Rosie."
     After I threw the suitcase and laptop in the back seat and climbed behind the steering wheel, I planned to wave goodbye, but the door was already closed. I started to cry. Maybe Miles Davis should have played I Loves You, Porgy. Since he couldn't make it, I turned on the radio. All I could find was the country music those boys at the truck stop favored.



                                                                                                    << previous| next >>