He made sure the sound was turned down, then turned on the old console set. When the picture came on, a young blond woman in iridescent tights was leading three other young women through a series of stretches. Effrom guessed that there was music playing from the way they moved, but he always watched with the sound turned off so as not to wake the wife. Since he had discovered his exercise program, the women in his dreams all wore iridescent tights.
The girls were all on their backs now, waving their legs in the air. Effrom munched his graham crackers and watched in fascination. Time was when a man had to spend the better part of a week’s pay to see a show like that. Now you could get it on cable for only…. Well, the wife took care of the cable bill, but he guessed that it was pretty cheap. Life was grand.
Effrom considered going out to his workshop and getting his cigarettes. A smoke would go good right now. After all, the wife was gone. Why should he sneak around in his own house? No, the wife would know. And when she confronted him, she wouldn’t yell, she would just look at him. She would get that sad look in her blue eyes and she would say, “Oh, Effrom.” That’s all, “Oh, Effrom.” And he would feel as if he had betrayed her. Nope, he could wait until his show was over and go smoke in his workshop, where the wife would never dare to set foot.
Suddenly the house felt very empty. It was like a great vacant warehouse where the slightest noise rattles in the rafters. A presence was missing.
He never saw the wife until she knocked on his workshop door at noon to call him to lunch, but somehow he felt her absence, as if the insulation had been ripped from around him, leaving him raw to the elements. For the first time in a long time Effrom felt afraid. The wife was coming back, but maybe someday she would be gone forever. Someday he would really be alone. He wished for a moment that he would die first, then thinking of the wife alone, knocking on the workshop door from which he would never emerge, made him feel selfish and ashamed.
He tried to concentrate on the exercise show but found no solace in spandex tights. He rose and turned off the TV. He went to the kitchen and put his coffee in the sink. Outside the window the hummingbirds went about their business, shimmering in the morning sun. A sense of urgency came over him. It became suddenly very important to get to his workshop and finish his latest carving. Time seemed as fleeting and fragile as the little birds. In his younger days he might have met the feeling with a naive denial of his own mortality. Age had given him a different defense, and his thoughts returned to the image of he and the wife going to bed together and never waking, their lives and memories going out all at once. This too, he knew, was a naive fantasy. When the wife got home he was going to give her hell for going away, he knew that for sure.
Before unlocking his workshop he set the alarm on his watch to go off at lunchtime. If he worked through lunch he might miss his nap. There was no sense in wasting the day just because the wife was out of town.
When the knock came on his workshop door, Effrom thought at first that the wife had come home early to surprise him with lunch. He ground out his cigarette in an empty toolbox that he kept for that purpose. He blew the last lungful of smoke into the exhaust fan he had installed “to take out the sawdust.”
“Coming. Just a minute,” he said. He revved up one of his high-speed polishing tools for effect. The knocking continued and Effrom realized that it was not coming from the inside door that the wife usually knocked on, but from the one leading out into the front yard. Probably Jehovah’s Witnesses. He climbed down from his stool, checked the pockets of his corduroys for quarters, and found one. If you bought a Watchtower from them, they would go away, but if they caught you without spare change, they would be on you like soul-saving terriers.
Effrom threw the door open and the young man outside jumped back. He was dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans — rather casual, Effrom thought, for someone carrying the formal invitation to the end of the world.
“Are you Effrom Elliot?” he asked.
“I am.” Effrom said. He held out his quarter. “Thanks for stopping by, but I’m busy, so you can just give me my Watchtower and I’ll read it later.”
“Mr. Elliot, I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness.”
“Well, I have all the insurance I can afford, but if you leave me your card, I’ll give it to the wife.”
“Is your wife still alive, Mr. Elliot?”
“Of course she’s alive. What did you think? I was going to tape your business card to her tombstone? Son, you’re not cut out to be a salesman. You should get an honest job.”
“I’m not a salesman, Mr. Elliot. I’m an old friend of your wife’s. I need to talk to her. It’s very important.”
“She ain’t home.”
“Your wife’s name is Amanda, right?”
“That’s right. But don’t you try any of your sneaky tricks. You ain’t no friend of the wife or I’d know you. And we got a vacuum cleaner that’d suck the hide off a bear, so go away.” Effrom started to close the door.
“No, please, Mr. Elliot. I really need to speak to your wife.”
“She ain’t home.”
“When will she be home?”
“She’s coming home tomorrow. But I’m warning you, son, she’s even tougher than I am on flimflam men. Mean as a snake. You’d be best to just pack up your carpetbag and go look for honest work.”
“You were a World War One veteran, weren’t you?”
“I was. What of it?”
“Thank you, Mr. Elliot. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Thank you, Mr. Elliot.”
Effrom slammed the door. His angina wrenched his chest like a scaly talon. He tried to breathe deeply while he fingered a nitroglycerin pill from his shirt pocket. He popped it into his mouth, and it dissolved on his tongue immediately. In a few seconds the pain in his chest subsided. Maybe he would skip lunch today, go right to his nap.
Why the wife kept sending in those cards about insurance was beyond him. Didn’t she know that “no salesman will call” was one of the three great lies? He resolved again to give her hell when she got home.
When Travis got back into the car, he tried to hide his excitement from the demon. He fought the urge to shout “Eureka!” to pound on the steering wheel, to sing hallelujah at the top of his lungs. It might finally be coming to an end. He wouldn’t let himself think about it. It was only a long shot, but he felt closer than he ever had to being free of the demon.
“So, how’s your old friend?” Catch said sarcastically. They had played this scene literally thousands of times. Travis tried to assume the same attitude he always had when faced with those failures.
“He’s fine,” Travis said. “He asked about you.” He started the car and pulled away from the curb slowly. The old Chevy’s engine sputtered and tried to die, then caught.
“He did?”
“Yeah, he couldn’t understand why your mother didn’t eat her young.”
“I didn’t have a mother.”
“Do you think she’d claim you?”
Catch grinned. “Your mother wet herself before I finished her.”
The anger came sliding back over the years. Travis shut off the engine.
“Get out and push,” he said. Then he waited. Sometimes the demon would do exactly what he said, and other times Catch laughed at him. Travis had never been able to figure out the inconsistency.
“No,” Catch said.
“Do it.”
The demon opened the car door. “Lovely girl you’re going out with tonight, Travis.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
The demon licked his chops. “Think what?”
“Get out.”
Catch got out. Travis left the Chevy in drive. When the car started moving, Travis could hear the demon’s clawed feet cutting furrows in the asphalt.
Just one more day. Maybe.
He tried to think of the girl, Jenny, and it occurred to him that he was the only man he had ever heard of who had waited until he was in his nineties before going on his first date. He didn’t have the slightest idea why he had asked her out. Something about her eyes. There was something there that reminded him of happiness, his own happiness. Travis smiled.
12
JENNIFER
When Jennifer arrived home from work, the phone was ringing. She ran to the phone, then stopped with her hand on the receiver, checked her watch, and decided to let the answering machine get it. It was too early to be Travis.
The machine clicked and began its message, Jennifer cringed as she heard Robert’s voice on the answer tape. “You’ve reached the studios of Photography in the Pines. Please leave your name and number at the tone.”
The machine beeped and Robert’s voice continued, “Honey, pick up if you’re there. I’m so sorry. I need to come home. I don’t have any clean underwear. Are you there? Pick up, Jenny. I’m so lonely. Call me, okay? I’m still at The Breeze’s. When you get in-”
The machine cut him off.
Jennifer ran the tape back and listened to the other messages. There were nine others, all from Robert. All whining, drunken, pleading for forgiveness, promising changes that would never happen.