Suttree(161)

He surveyed the face in the mirror, letting the jaw go slack, eyes vacant. How would he look in death? For there were days this man so wanted for some end to things that he’d have taken up his membership among the dead, all souls that ever were, eyes bound with night.

Climbing again these stairs with their tacked runners of worn carpet, dark varnished wainscot panels finely veined like old paintings, the flowered paper, the light in the ceiling thirty feet above like some dim nebula viewed from the pit. An inexplicable picture in a gilt frame, two birds composed of actual feathers dyed bizarrely like hats and defying forever the orders of taxonomy. Down the hallway to the door with no name where he lived.


He passed the car almost every day going to and from town. It sat in the front row of Ben Clark’s lot and it looked vicious and barbaric and feline crouched there among the family sedans. These warm days they had the top down and leaning on the wooden sill you could hang your head over the cockpit and drink in a heady smell of rich leather and admire the cluster of black dial faces in the dashboard like an aircraft and the fine red carpeting to match the hide of the seats and the polished burl walnut and the silver jaguar’s head snarling from the center of the steering wheel.

Let me fix you up with that today, said the smiling salesman.

Suttree stood up and stepped back and ran his eye along the sleek cream lacquer flank of the thing. What year is it? he said.

Nineteen fifty. Just got twenty-two thousand on her. Spare’s never been on the ground.

Suttree felt himself being slowly anesthetized. The silver wire wheels gleamed in the good spring sun.

Look here, said the salesman, lifting the decklid.

Inside the pristine tire so told. And little tools in a fitted case.

Next he had the long bonnet raised and they walked around it looking in at the polished aluminum camshaft covers and the neat little pots that housed the carburetor dampers.

Crank it up, called the salesman, holding open the little door.

Suttree deep in the leather cockpit turned the key, the fuelpump ticked. He put the gearstick in neutral and pulled the starter. It sounded like a motorboat.

He looked up. What do you want for it?

The little car will go for two bills, said the salesman, leaning confidentially on the door.

Suttree blipped the throttle a couple of times and shut it down. The salesman stood up. Take it for a ride if you like, he said. But Suttree was climbing out. He shut the door and turned and looked down into the car again.

The top’s perfect, the salesman was saying, unbuttoning the canvas boot that covered it.

It’s all right. Dont bother. I’m going to bring my old lady down to look at it.

It wont be here long my friend.

You may be right, said Suttree.

When she came back from Huntsville she had six hundred dollars. He put her in a cab and they went downtown. I’ve got something I want to show you, he said.

She walked around it and looked at it and she looked up at Suttree. Well, she said. It’s beautiful.

We’ve got enough money to buy it.

Bullshit.

I’m serious.

She looked at him and at the car and at him again. Well, she said. Let’s buy the fucking thing then.

He sought out the salesman while she looked it over. He found him in the little wooden box of an office where a fan stirred the humid air about. He was shuffling through papers and talking on the telephone. He nodded to Suttree and held up a finger. Suttree leaned in the door.

Right, said the salesman, hanging up the telephone. Okay. You ready to take the little car today?

Suttree eased himself into a chair. Look, he said, I’ve got a little over eighteen hundred dollars. Can we do business?

How much over?

Maybe eighteen and a half.

Eighteen and a half.

Yes.

You want the car?

Yes.

My friend, the little car is yours.

They drove to Asheville North Carolina and spent four days at the Grove Park Inn, a cool room high in the old rough pile of rocks and lunch each noon on the sunny tiled terrace overlooking the golf course and the mountains beyond in range on range of hazy blue. They went about the premises leisurely, these apprentice imposters, or sat by the pool while she told outrageous lies to the other guests. In the cool evenings they cruised through the mountains in the roadster and came back to have drinks in the lounge where a small orchestra played music from another era and older couples twostepped quietly over the dimlit dancefloor.

The summer passed in monotone, days run on days. The apartment was hot and unventilated. Lying in the damp sheets with sweat trickling coldly in the folds of his sated skin he fell victim to a vast inertia. She came naked through the room bearing glasses of iced tea and they sat in the barred and tepid gloom behind drawn blinds and sipped and held the cold glass to their faces. She lay there pale and streaked with sweat, wearing a dreamy cat’s look, one leg cocked obscenely, the dark foiled hair below her belly matted, dewbeads nesting there. She placed a cool hand across the nape of his neck. A car started up in the street below and pulled away. In the distance a radio. They lay like fallen statuary. Suttree held a piece of ice against his tongue till it was numb with cold, then leaned and licked her nipple.