Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [121]
He is murmuring. Yes, he knew Gleinya Roberts, and, yes, they did own a predator tape she had found somewhere, but, no, he did not listen to it more than once. Yes, he had lived with her for a while, but she was insane (his father had been dead for a year; she had lied about that, too), and she was insanely jealous, hysterical, actually, and given to lies and lying, habitual lies, crazy bedeviling lies, and casual lies: lies about whether the milk was spoiled, lies about how many stamps were still in the drawer, lies about trivial matters and large ones, a cornucopia of lies, a feast of untruth. Gleinya Roberts was not married, for starters. He could prove that.
I’m just what I seem, he says. A modest man who loves you, who will love you forever. Did Gleinya tell you that I beat her up? Do you really think I am what that woman says I am? I used to get into barroom fights, but that’s different. I never denied that. She’s deluded. If what she said was true, would this dog be here with me?
Jodie looks at Walton and at his dog. Then she says, Raise your hand, fast, above Einstein’s head. Look at her and raise your hand.
When he does what he is asked to do, Einstein neither cringes nor cowers. She watches Walton with her usual impassive interest, her tail still wagging. She has what seems to be a dog smile on her face. She approaches him, panting. She wants to play. She sits down next to where he kneels. She is the fool’s dog. She looks at Walton—there is no mistaking this look—with straightforward dog love.
Jodie believes this dog. She believes this dog more than the woman.
Let me explain something, Walton is saying. You’re beautiful. I started with that the first time I saw you. He does a little inventory: you lick your fingers after opening tin cans, you wear hats at a jaunty angle, you have a quick laugh like a bark, you move like a dancer, you’re funny, you’re great in bed, you love my dog, you’re thoughtful, you have opinions. It’s the whole package. How can I not love you?
And if I ever do to you what that woman says I did, you can just walk.
One day he will present her with an engagement ring, pretending that he found it in an ashtray at Clara’s Country Kitchen Café. The ring will fit her finger, and it will be a seemingly perfect ring, with two tiny sapphires and one tiny diamond, probably all flawed, but flawless to the naked eye. They will be walking under a bridge on the south end of Lake of the Isles, and when they are halfway under the bridge, he will show her the ring and ask her to marry him.
Then she will sit for a few more days on the sleeping porch, considering this man. She won’t be able to help it that when he moves suddenly, she will flinch. She will be distracted, but with the new radio on, she will from time to time do her best to read some of the books she never got around to reading before. Literature, however, will not help her in this instance. She will take out her tarot cards and place them in their proper order on the table.
This covers him.
This crosses him.
This crowns him.
This is beneath him.
This is behind him.
But the future will not unveil itself. The newspapers of the future are all blank. She will in exasperation throw all the tarot cards into the Dumpster. She will buy a copy of the Rolling Stones’ album Let It Bleed. She will listen to “Gimme Shelter,” the song Walton had quoted, but now she hears two lines slurred hysterically and almost inaudibly in the background—lines she had never heard before.
Rape, murder, are just a kiss away,
Kiss away, kiss away, kiss away.
She will throw away the album, also, into the Dumpster.
Once upon a time, happily ever after. She will look occasionally for the hideous fat man at the breakfast counter on Hennepin Avenue, but of course he will have vanished. When you are awarded a wish, you must specify the conditions under which it is granted. Everyone knows that. The fat man could have told her this