Joss and Gold

Six

Six Che"er fl,hed the Times our of the garbage conrainer . There was a brown smear where the pages had been mashed into a banana peel; otherwise it was clean. He unwrinkled the tom page, cut out the Parks article, found a roll of transparent tape and gently fitted together the three torn edges. He left the article, tape shining like slimy tracks across its square, on the kitchen table and went out ofthe house. Except for not talking to him, Meryl had spent the morning on her normal Sunday routine. She steeped herself in a bubble bath, shampooed her hair, daubed her face with Elizabeth Arden's Purifying Clay Mask, cuticled her finger nails, and was now watching an interview with a state senator on television. Chester waited for her to say she was sorry. He knew he had been unreasonable, but he felt she had been cruel and should apologize. He folded himself into the Volkswagen reluctantly-he didn't want Meryl to think he was running away from an argument . But he knew he was running away, if only to Skivvy's for rice pudding. The street was empty, and for the first time he wondered why there were no children playing in the yards. He drove slowly down the block but could see no one through his neighbors ' glass windows, which were full of reflected shrubbery and sky. He wondered if he should tell Meryl about his child. JOSS and GOLD "There must be other men like me," he thought. Since Friday's reaction to the painkillers he had been troubled by tremors of nausea, and his stomach twitched uncomfortably as he talked to himself. "The world is full of bastards. One night here, one night there. How to count the children you may have fathered?" He was surprised at the grief he felt. It gripped his body in a tight shell and seemed to lock his thoughts in a crazy rhythm that exhausted him. He steered the car up the ramp onto the parkway. A gray Datsun swerved to the left lane to make room for him, but he continued to edge along the shoulder and did not accelerate into the free lane. He heard a honking and suddenly a brown Oldsmobile shot from behind to his left. Chester swung the steering wheel to avoid hitting the Oldsmobile. Briefly he glimpsed a contorted male face and an upright finger, then the Volkswagen went into a spin. For a second he thought the car would tum over, but it came to a stop with one wheel on a boulder and the two back wheels stuck fast in the black churned dirt beside the road. The Datsun and the Oldsmobile were already out of sight. To Chester the accident was implausible. He sat in the car with the engine still running, his heart racing and a high singing in his ears. His seat was tilted and lifted upwards as if he had tried to clamber up the boulder with his car for a ringside view. More cars passed by, looking like speeding stunt acts through his angled windscreen. He felt quite content to stay in his seat. After the first fear he was almost pleased to find himself in a situation where he didn't have to decide what to do next but could ponder what it was that was making him so miserable. The state police were there in ten minutes. The older man who knocked at the car door looked suspiciously at Chester as he climbed down from his suspended roost. "Been drinking?" he asked as he thumped the door shut. The Volks shook and rattled as if all its rusty bolts were giving way. The younger man checked the license and 146 CIRCLING registration and took down Chester's account while his partner radioed for a tow truck. Chester watched the soft spread of the belly around the grizzled officer as he was talking into the crackling box and wondered if the soft flesh would have turned to muscle had he caught a drunk instead. He didn't wait for the tow truck but accepted the offer of a ride home. The yellow Yolks, his contribution to a more sustainable planet thirteen years ago, would never drive again, he knew. The crazy alignment of the wheels could never be made straight. Whatever the reason, he was not concerned about losing the...