In Which You Should Really Eat Something

The Blue Marble

by JEAN HALLMAN

From one angle it appeared she was standing, and from another that she was sitting. She said, "There's a cashier at the Tim Horton's next to Hair Unique who wears a ring on every finger."

I said, "Do you know if it's complimentary or complementary, with an 'e'?"

"I don't understand the difference," Desiree said.

"Oh, it's like if something is free, or if something goes well with something else." She took the gum out of her mouth, glanced at the bottom of her shoe as if that was where she really wanted to put it, and put it back in her mouth while she looked for a better option.

"What's the context?"

"What's the context for you bringing up the cashier?" I asked. The svelt Marlene Elal had only started working at Tim Horton's a few weeks earlier, and I was surprised it had taken Desiree that long to notice her.

Tim Brillstein, who cashes checks over at the bank, came in with a really flushed look on his face. He then composed himself after noticing our reaction to his mien. I ate a bell pepper. He said, "Glen, I don't know why you're sitting here when a raging pitbull somehow got into The Blue Marble and no one can get him out."

"Does he have a white streak on his back?" I asked.

"Yes," Tim said.

"Mrs. Sauerson's rottweiler," I said. "He's not dangerous."

"He went after Marlene," Tim said. "I'd think you would have been concerned."

"I didn't know that, Tim," I said, trying to hint that he should not bring up Marlene, but it did not matter, because Desiree had found a place for her gum.

"Are you coming to my brother's bar mitzvah on Friday?" he asked. Turning to Desiree, he said, "It's the first one they've ever had on the Nautilus."

"I RSVPed, didn't I?" I said, and left the supermarket.

+

Over at the Blue Marble, I saw the owner standing outside shaking his head. He was talking to a firefighter I didn't recognize, but who gave us a hearty nod as we approached.

"How's it going Desiree?" he said. Desiree lifted my hand in the air, smiled and said, "Hey, Tony." I was pretty sure the guy's name wasn't Tony, but who was I to tell him his business?

"Is the dog still at the door?" Tim Brillstein asked, and then crouched like he was going to catch a fastball. He uncurled his fingers and told Desiree, "I used to have one of those when I was a kid." She was checking her phone at the time.

"Sir," I said, "Mrs. Sauerson knows me and considers me a trusted friend." He nodded as if this could possibly mean something significant.

"That old codger said he snapped at him," the owner said, pointing to a wrinkled man in a golf shirt. "The animal control people are on their way."

"I hope it doesn't come to that," I said. I took the bulgy small business owner aside and asked, "How's Marlene?"

"She's fine," he said. "They took her over to Pequot General for observation."

"She wasn't bitten."

"No. She was in shock." I thanked him and got permission to enter the coffee shop. As I neared the door, I could hear a low growling.

"Champagne?" I said. "It's me, guy. Did you see something or someone you didn't like?"

I tell too many lies. Sometimes, when I'm in the middle of a lie, I'm already thinking about the next one. But I would never lie to a woman, no more than I would to my attorney or my accountant. Suddenly I felt her hand on my wrist. I was surprised, but not that surprised. I opened the door and stepped inside the coffee shop. We sniffed an odor of meringue. There was no sign of Champagne, although after I thought about it, the dog could have been named Chablis or Chardonnay. I didn't really know, and I always hated the parts of stories where people debated over what to call each other. It struck me as inconclusive foreplay.

"Champagne?" I said. "Who's a good dog?"

"Maybe she's having babies," Desiree said. "A mother can be very protective of her young." I nodded. I started to say something, but instead I said, "Why do you suppose she has a ring on every finger?"

"I've noticed you have trouble staying on one subject."

"What was your major?" I asked. "Are you chewing another piece of gum?"

"Very funny," she said, touching my knee with her fist.

"I hear the sound of a dog's breath."

Behind the counter sat Champagne, licking a scone.

+

At the hospital I wandered into the gift shop. It was undoubtedly overkill to bring bright flowers to a patient suffering from shock, but if something was already dead, killing it again it wouldn't matter. When I reached Marlene's room she was asleep. I checked her hands but I guess she had taken off the rings. I searched the bedside table but possibly they were in a nurse's safekeeping.

Next to Marlene's bed there was a full-length mirror. I had never looked better. "Hey. Hey." She awoke. I picked up the book on her nightstand, a novel that had been released in the winter of last year.

"Glen," she said. "I like your hat."

"Who gave this to you? Who would do that?" I asked, tossing the book at the foot of her bed.

"My mother did," she said. "I heard it was good."

"I'm here to take you home," I said.

"You don't like the author?" she said, brushing her long brown hair back from her face.

"You have it all wrong," I said. "Who would want to read something sad in a hospital?"

"I think it's supposed to make you feel better about your own struggles."

I fought to express what I wanted to say. I took her hand and pressed it to the tip of my elbow. "It's a bit cynical to derive pleasure from the weakness you find in others." She seemed to consider this. "I'm here to take you home," I said again.

+

Desiree had made plans with a friend that night. She called me around 1:30.

"Glen, I received a very strange letter."

"I'm listening."

"It seemed like it was written on your behalf, perhaps by a friend. It threatens me if I hurt you, if I in any way toy with what you're feeling inside."

"It's not signed?"

"No." I considered this. "I'll be over later, possibly much later."

+

At Tim Horton's, I came across a score of Vikings from the local 217. They had just come back from seeing a one-shot of Star Trek: Generations put on by a local impresario. Across the street the bank glowed like a shrine. A donut abyss named Sev asked me did I want a bear claw? "I don't eat carbohydrates after midnight," I said, "and I'm surprised you would ask."

+

The next morning was the last day of the month. Mrs. Sauerson stopped me after work. She was carrying the largest purse I had ever seen.

"That was a rough business," she said. "Did he give you any trouble?"

"No," I said. "I don't think so."

"I've seen you around with that girl."

"I think it's getting serious," I said. "It's in the air."

"That's good," she said. "It's always nice to know someone's there for you." I nodded. She reached into her handbag and eyed me somewhat critically. When she removed the hand, it was holding a roast. Her fingernail dug against the plastic.

"Thanks," I said. "I'll eat the whole thing."

+

I received a call at 11:14 that night.

"I need you to come over," Desiree said.

"No," I said.

"Please," she said.

"Your mom's there," I said.

"She's watching The Deadliest Catch."

"Sounds like a real proletariat," I said. "I asked you to make plans, but you said you didn't feel like it."

"But now I do," she said. "What if I came over there, Glen?"

Instead, I arrived at her place. Her mother and an older man who looked familiar but who I did not recognize were tapping golf balls into a little hole he'd dug on the lawn.

"Hi," Desiree's mother said. "Tap in a few balls?"

"Not right now," I said. "My elbow's giving me problems. You know." Desiree came out on the porch wearing at least 95 percent denim.

"Are you in love with her?" she said.

"It's not what you think," I said. "May I come in?" Her mother was obsessed with caricatures of her and her daughter. The walls were lined with so many portraits of questionable value; often the pair was consumed with some unlikely activity, like rock-climbing or playing the drums. None of them had anything to do with the people they were.

"I'm feeling a little dizzy," I said. Desiree took out a plastic glass and filled it with tap water. "I feel all right now," I said. "It's just that I'm pretty tired."

"You should eat something," she said. She put some whipped cream on gelato. It made me completely sick to my stomach. In the bathroom, I used a clarifying facewash, rubbed my hands dry with steel wool and left via the window.

+

Tim Horton's was a real shit show. There's a certain point in the evening where the bracing sense of reality that operates on the edge of existence becomes somewhat tangible, and a homeless man turns over a chair. The owner of the Blue Marble was playing Magic: The Gathering with a homosexual in a green tie holding a chow.

"I guess he keeps the chow at home," I said.

"She doesn't look like she's at home," Marlene said. "Listen, I don't want to do this."

I paused and said, "Be more specific, but take it slow."

"I don't know," she said. "It's like one of M.C. Escher's paintings. Do you like his work?"

"He's a little derivative," I said. "Please go on."

"Well, remember the flowers you bought for me the other day?"

"Yes."

"It's like, you can't be here, because you're continously in a state where you're either going to get the flowers or coming back from the florist."

"My florist drives a BMW," I said. "What is that about?"

A tall guy in a leather jacket (Ted? Tim?) came up to us, looked from Marlene over to me, leaned over, and said, "You were extremely good with that rottweiler."

+

On the Nautilus all the women were dressed in effervescent blue; it was a subtle and striking meme. There was a garden on the yacht's stern. I imagined them carting in the soil over the narrow walkway, plants leaving the only earth that they knew.

Somewhere on the exciting menu, a course of Cheez-Its made a brief appearance. A clown taught a den of grandmothers how to salsa. A boy became a man. Late in the evening, the yacht took on some mechanical problems and washed up briefly on a beach. I looked over and Marlene wasn't wearing a single one of her rings. Before I could go over and ask her why, Tim Brillstein sat down next to me, breathing heavily. Despite the fact that he had many eager relatives desperate for his attention, Tim spent over forty minutes explaining a game he had recently begun playing. My attention wandered in and out, but the basic upshot was that in the world of this game, man could no longer survive on earth, not by dint of its own malformed efforts, but through the agency of something or someone else.

Jean Hallman is a writer living in Illinois.

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