Serpents in the Cold (8 page)

_________________________

Tremont Street, South End

IN A CORNER
of the flophouse a large man wearing a woman's yellow fleece coat lay amid dirty sheets and torn cushions. He hadn't moved since Dante arrived just before midnight: no snoring or stirrings of dreams; only the stink of his bowels, which he'd let go of earlier, now wafted about the derelict room. Candles sputtered on the floor and upon old furniture, white flames flickering in the cold that made their faces look hollow and skeletal and pressed the shadows toward the high water-stained ceilings. Besides the man in the corner, there were four of them. A haggard woman in her late forties, Rosie, was in her own special place on the floor, lying on her back with a childish smirk pulling at her horribly chapped lips. In a wooden chair a doughy man with a perpetually sweating brow occasionally peered at them from thick, owl-eyed glasses. He didn't speak much, and when he did, it sounded like Russian or some other Slavic language.

The only one Dante knew well was Lawrence, an old queer with an overcooked grin and a rusty, well-manicured beard like van Gogh's, whom he and Margo used to buy from at the Tic-Toc Club years back. Tonight he looked bad. He sat cross-legged on the floor, gently rocking to some long-lost ballad that played in his head.

With trembling, nearly deformed hands, he rolled a cigarette, lit a match, and let the sulfur burn off before touching the flame to the tobacco. He looked across at Dante sitting in his chair, blew smoke from his thin, chapped lips. His eyes appeared white in the candlelight.

“Dante, my man,” he whispered. “I'm sorry, I really am. Just trying to place it, you know, how somebody could have so much rage to go and do that to her…

“Why do that, right?” he added, scratching at the crook of his needle-scarred arm. “She broke some animal's heart, that's what she did.”

Dante stared at him for a moment, and then closed his eyes trying to remove the image from his mind. He hoped Lawrence wouldn't bring it up again.

Lawrence relit a candle and placed it on a cracked white saucer. “Not too much space between love and hate in this world,” he said, as if to himself. “Maybe a stone's throw or…”

Dante fixed another round over the candle flame even though he knew he needed to be rationing what he'd bought from Karl, spreading it out so he could try and get clean again. When it was ready, he filled the syringe and pushed the needle into the vein. His head lolled slowly back on his neck. After a little bit he found himself speaking. “I wonder if Sheila is with Margo now, looking down on us sitting here in the slums. Maybe they're laughing at us, maybe they're just shaking their heads.”

Lawrence ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair and extinguished his cigarette in the saucer. The candle flame flickered momentarily and Dante closed his eyes.

The room fell quiet, and all that moved was the flickering candlelight and the shadows at the tops of the walls. He was stepping backward into the white noise that prefaced dreams, and he swung gently in its tide, his breath coming in even rhythms until he saw blue skies open up above him and felt summer air, breezeless and warm, pressing down on him. It felt as if he were being held up to the heavens, but only for a moment before he had the feeling that he was being let go.

“YOU COULDN'T ASK
for a better day.”

Margo reached over the patchwork quilt, damp from the ground, placed her hand on his, and pushed down on it, all to remind him how much he meant to her. Her pale blue summer hat matched the sky above them, and below the wide round brim, a sharp swath of shadow cut through her face, exposing only her chin to the June sun. Her dark lips quivered for a moment, and then turned up in a skeptical grin. He pulled his hand out from under hers and playfully reached around her bare shoulders, held her to him.

“A day almost as gorgeous as you,” he told her, and she tried pushing away from him in mock discomfort.

He tightened his grip around her, amazed at how cold she felt despite it being so warm out. “C'mon,” he said, “you know I mean it.”

“I guess it's the best you can do, my man of so many words. I guess I have no other option but to take it.”

Sheila sat across from them with her legs crossed, closing an old copy of
Life
magazine and dropping it beside an issue of
McCall's.

“It really is so good to see you two taking advantage of this weather. I told you it would do you some good.”

Then the quiet settled in again, despite the sparse Sunday traffic on Tremont and the crowds surrounding the Brewer Fountain, where streams of water arched and sparkled like glass.

The grass on the Common had never been greener. And across it, heading all the way up to Beacon Hill, a lustrous field where couples clustered along its expanse, reminding him of a description in a crusty old English novel where courting couples shared precisely cut sandwiches and well-mannered flirtations. Dante held his eyes shut and let the sun envelop him, felt its warm fingers reaching into the cold spots scattered inside him.

“Ham or turkey?” Sheila asked as she reached into the basket and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, smearings of yellow mustard all over the fold.

“I'm not that hungry,” Margo said.

“Me neither,” added Dante.

“You two and your appetites,” Sheila said as she dropped the sandwich back inside the basket. She stood up on her bare feet, and Dante watched her as she anxiously stretched off the boredom that, he could tell, was growing under her limbs and in her thoughts. The narrow sunglasses didn't cover the thick lines of her brow, and he could see that she was squinting. She pulled at her auburn hair tied back into a ponytail and slowly searched over the park as if looking for somebody.

 “She's getting antsy again,” Margo whispered into his ear.

 Dante looked at his wife and her sleeveless blue dress that once fit her perfectly just a year ago but now covered her like a hospital robe, hiding all those sharp angles that made him ache when he watched her move.

A bead of sweat crept down his widow's peak followed by several others. On the edge of the blanket by his left hand, three red ants crawled. “Make sure that basket is shut tight. We've got company.”

The heat was gathering as humidity filtered into the air, thickening it and making it tough to breathe, and all those people on the Common, figures in a painting, were starting to bend, their shapes muddied like mirages.

And he said it again, only this time to himself:
We've got company.
Between them and the fountain, there were six men watching her, and then suddenly there were eight, nine, ten, all looking at Sheila standing there in the sun. Two of them held bouquets of roses, and in their Sunday wardrobes, hair slicked to the side, their postures steeped in youthful eagerness, as if waiting at a front door for their first date to answer. Two others were bedraggled and unshaven with leering glances. One even massaged himself, rubbing out a growing ache, staring at her in a predatory way, perhaps imagining a knife to her throat and a hand covering her mouth; the others, he figured, were desperate, love-hungry men of all ages, their faces young one moment and then wrinkled and hollow-eyed the next.

“I think we should head back home.” He hated to say those words to Margo, who finally seemed to be relaxing, not secluded in the apartment with heavy curtains on the window and ghostly refrains of muted trumpets bleeding from the radio. “Get ready, you two. I think we've had enough for the day.”

Sheila was glaring down at him, and her upper lip curled into a coy, somewhat sinister smile. Dante clenched his fists and stood up from the blanket. “It's time to go, Sheila.”

“Leave her be,” Margo called out. “Remember it's me you're married to.”

“It's just that we've had enough sun for the day,” Dante said as he watched Sheila reach up her right hand and hook the strap of her dress with one finger, sliding it higher up on her shoulder.

“You can't do anything for her now,” Margo said.

“Will you just fucking listen to me? We're leaving now.”

“But I don't want to go yet. Not until I find the right hole,” Margo said with frustration, her voice terse.

Margo had taken her hat off, and her face was exposed in the sunlight, a lurid and pained anticipation pulling the skin tightly over her sharp cheekbones. Ribbons of open sores ran along her arm, purple and festering barnacles splitting the flesh. And as though she were inspecting fruit to see which was the ripest, she began to press her fingers into each one.

“I can't find a good spot, love. Help me find one, will you?” She pulled out an absurdly fat needle, as thick as a pipe cleaner.

“Jesus Christ, put that fucking thing away.”

As Margo sank the needle down below the crease of her arm, Sheila's sudden laughter slapped at the back of his neck, immediately doubling his panic. Sheila had spotted somebody, and raised a hand to wave. Dante squinted against the sun and saw the man appear again, against the green grass and blue skies above, the shape of him bending in the heat as he raised an arm and waved in return. Sheila left the safety of their blanket and began walking toward him with a possessed grace to her movements, a sleepwalker following a treasure or a trap. A hot wind carried through the park and the fabric of her dress clung to her buttocks and her thin shoulder blades. Dante called out to her again. She turned around, and Dante could see the full profile of her sharp jutting breasts. She gave him a painted smile, a “fuck me” smile, pursed her lips, and blew him a mocking kiss before turning back around. He watched her hips swaying through the thin material of her dress as she continued across the green.

“Get back here now, Sheila. He's no good.” He took a few steps toward her, but Margo reprimanded him again.

“She'll be fine, honey. That's just her new man, the one she's so hung up on. Besides, she'll get attention from wherever she can get it. Come over here and help me find the magic spot.”

Dante watched the man walk up to Sheila, spread out his arms and embrace her. He lifted her momentarily off the ground and managed to keep the bouquet he was holding from falling. He gently placed her back down and, resting his free hand on the crook of her back, pulled her in to him, and they kissed, long and deep. When they were done, he handed her the flowers, and she kissed him again on the cheek. He reached for her hand and she took it and led him back to Dante and Margo.

“Bobby, I'd like you meet my sister and brother-in-law. This is Dante, and that's Margo.”

The man smiled, showed teeth that blazed white against his deeply tanned skin. His hair was styled in a pompadour cut, oiled curls glistening in the sun, and his shirt was a lime color with big pearly buttons and a sharp-pointed collar.

He reached out a hand. Dante halfheartedly shook it. The man's grip tightened around his and squeezed even harder as he spoke. “Hey, Dante. Nice to meet you.”

Dante lowered his eyes, pulled his hand away. “Yeah.”

The man looked toward Margo, nodded with the same self-assured smile. “My pleasure, Margo. I've heard so much about you.” He turned back to Sheila, who was sniffing at the bouquet, and kissed her on the cheek again. “Honey, let's go for a walk. Got lots to tell you.”

Sheila walked toward the picnic basket to where her sandals rested on the grass. She slid her feet into them, carefully rested the bouquet on the blanket beside Margo, and then stood back up, reached back to her ponytail, and pulled off the elastic band. Dante watched her hair spill about her shoulders, watched the way she licked her lips to moisten them, watched how the thin fabric of her dress pressed tightly against her.

“We'll be back in a bit, then maybe we can all go out for a drink. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“We won't be here when you get back,” Dante said, but she turned away and paid him no attention.

He watched the two of them move across the green of the Common, Bobby lowering a hand to one of her buttocks, which he firmly grasped and then squeezed. Sheila began to cackle in high-pitched laughter, and even from a distance, it pierced through him. It was clear to Dante that she was laughing at him.

“Sheila's so private,” Margo said. “We never meet any of her suitors. This one must be real special.”

Sweat stung his eyes and he stood there and smoked a cigarette, seeing them pass up and over a hill heading toward the other side of the park. Margo called out to him again. “I don't feel so good, love.”

Dante knelt back down on the blanket, but now it wasn't on the moist grass of the Boston Common anymore, but on their bed back in the Scollay Square apartment with the curtains thick as velvet blocking out the sun, and the lamp next to them emitting a somber haze. And Margo was dead, already starting to stink, her eyelids peeled back and her eyes pushing wetly from their sockets. He began to weep as he always did, for he'd been through this memory many times, but this time, without a pulse and her skin so cold, she reached over to him and told him to let it out, that it was just a bad dream. And when he turned to her, pulling her closer to him and staring into her face, all he could see was the straightened death-kissed lips and the protruding eyes.

“You're giving up on me, Margo, you can't fucking give up on me,” he screamed, pushing her off him and leaving the bed.

“Dante, dear, what can I do? You gave up on me a long time ago.”

“That's bullshit. How'd I give up? Tell me, how'd I give up?”

“Don't think I'm stupid. I could smell her on you. All those times you'd come home late, you were too drunk to notice.”

“Smell like who? If you know who, then just fucking say it.”

He waited for her to answer, wished that she'd just say her name,
Sheila,
and with that finally spoken, he'd finally be able to say
sorry,
admit to his infidelity once and for all. But she turned her face away from him, rested her head on the pillow, and spoke no more. All the tears, the guilt, were burning in him, and he refused to let them consume him. He moved over to the nightstand, grabbed the glass vial they'd kept their junk in, and squeezed it with his hand until his knuckles went white. It wouldn't shatter under his grip, so he moved over to the wall across the bedroom and released a hard right hook, fist breaking and smashing through the plaster, and pulling his hand back out as shards of the wall snagged deep into his skin, and punched it a second time, pulling roughly so that the gash widened as if caught on a nail, the blood pooling up and gushing over his wrist, dripping down to the floor in blackish streams. He stood back and hit the wall a third time.