Where the Current Takes You

The arriving cars snaked around the loop of road that ended at the cul-de-sac and her treacherous driveway. The Oldsmobile gleamed with blue avarice; the station wagon growled with hunger. From her perch at the window, she considered calling the whole thing off. She was irritated by this intrusion, this glut of strangers who sulked the air with greed and voids to fill. To take- and specifically to take from her.

And then: a nip of fear. Something she couldn’t quite place.

Three sharp raps. She pulled at the seams of the dress and sucked in to zip up. Her legs and feet were bare. She could make out muffled conversations and coughs as she imagined the line forming because now it was officially Time.  She swallowed, and opened the door.

“Nem.” The man seemed impossibly tall, or perhaps a bit less as he wore platform shoes of silver. His coat was purple, and blessed with elbow-deep pockets. From one he procured a small ledger book, and from the other, a black pen.

The Accountant. He sashayed to the center of the living room, clotted with her life, each big and tiny object sullied by white tags taped to string. 

The Accountant swayed on his heels and glided through the mess, a ting here on a Turkish samovar, a stroke down the arm of a velvet chaise lounge, a kick here on a box of books, an overlong glance at the Olivetti, lipstick red with keys sprung like rows of rotten teeth.

He smiled.

“The riff-raff is waiting, dear. And you have no shoes.”

Nem looked about the prizes of her life huddled like sleeping children. She must need money. Her mind itched with a question that she could not quite purchase. 

“Shoes,” he repeated, and she stepped into her pumps as the Accountant turned the knob.

Nothing planned, everything happened. Always the object of her life, Nem thought darkly, flitting between two poles with little agent. The black, the white, those fancies of her life fleeting and seeping out into air that became molecules of intention but not completion. She turned car keys and men’s eyes and, for a time, another poet’s pen for which she never received due. In the end, all exploded in the air. For her breath to exhale and others to imbibe without a footprint. Her strange wit. Her savage sexuality. That time when she whispered: “and when you are dead, I will learn to swim.”

She swam, but she swam with the current. So much easier than fighting her way back to shore.

The Accountant turned the knob, and Nem braced her bones for the onslaught. Dozens of eyes, mouths, hands, all fevered with want of possession. For what, though, they did not know, and would wonder, years later as they held their own sales, what had ever possessed them to want so much?

Yet no bodies were surging through the door, no body at all. Rather, she faintly heard the Accountant just outside, caught the words “line, please,” and “no, no exceptions.” Then something else and then a quite loud susurration and people clapping. What on earth was this man saying?  She glanced at the once over-stuffed couch with its shallow sag of a bottom, her bottom. It would shift in time to other shapes, other bottoms, wed together until the couch became a crater of unlonely creatures. Could she sit in her shape, just for one last time –

“It’s this I’ll be wanting.”

Nem startled to see an old woman in the room. She wore no gloves and was wrapped in a gray biscuit coat and black stockings. She looked familiar, but then, perhaps old women shared faces, the waning moon peeping bright eyes through craters and rivers. She slid her eyes briefly to Nem.  Nem started to ask her if she might be a neighbor, she was in need of a friend, when the Accountant flourished his ledger and asked the woman to sign. 

“Now,” said her Accountant. “We’ll both carry it out. It’s rather heavy.”

Nem stared as the man and this crone each took a corner of the object, somehow hefted it outside the door.

Gerald would be horrified to see me now. He loathed the things, these semaphores of mediocrity and ignoble entertainment for the masses. But then, he was a snob and quite cliché. Bowser and I are quite content these days to pop some corn and snuggle into Mr. Sullivan- yes, a gaudy show and the man has no neck- but just last night we watched Les Ballets Africains which really was high culture, Gerald. Bowser that good dog took kernels from my fingers as if he were dining with the queen, and we only had to adjust the rabbits twice. Gerald, my Magnavox gives great comfort, shall I say more than you- and so off to the wind you go.

The Accountant was back, ushering in someone new. This time, Nem hissed for him to come to her.

“I see you are wondering why only one at a time. Because, Nem love, we don’t want to have a fracas. A misunderstanding of what they desire. This is longer, but much more…meaningful.”

Nem tried to protest – damn if he didn’t work for her- but the Accountant had slithered over to the next customer. 

This one seemed all lathered in money. A froth of curls flirting out from her Julianne hat, white cloth gloves and coral lipstick that, Nem noticed with some satisfaction, had smudged in a corner of her prim smile. She was not young, but clearly well preserved. Nem was sure she had spied her before, maybe in the A&P. The town was not large, after all.  

She could not quite see what the woman was holding, which looked very small in her clutched hand.

“Ah,” cooed the Accountant. “A valuable choice.” 

And he procured the object from her fingers. A jangly duo of keys with an unmistakable chain. 

Nem screams, My scarf, and he laughs and yells in the wind that he’ll buy her another, even better. She laughs, too, and turns to watch the pink and yellow silk retreat in a whipping farewell. It will kiss the sky and become our sunset tonight, he tells her later. Also, I think you’ll want this, to savor our weekend. He dangles a swaying figure before her, gleaming in tiny resplendence. Lady Liberty, for your lady liberation and our toast to New York. I’m too old, she began to protest, I can’t even- he stops her with a finger to her lips. When I am that scarf, he murmurs, you will drive out to the wild night to curse me. And then you will drive on with your wild life.

The green-hatted lady was gone. Nem saw through a frost-clouded window the taillights of it gone, too. Her Buick Electra. A gasp of exhaust floated in its old place for one shimmering moment.

“Next,” and the door slightly opened. Nem discerned some dim conversation that did not sound pleasant before the customer heaved inside.

Silence, then, as Nem apprised the newest pilferer. He thumped around the room, opening a box of plates, sniffing, then off to a boxed tea set, which he eyed and then held the porcelain pot in three fat fingers, pretending to pour. He sneered. 

Nem wanted him out immediately. She smelled him, aftershave like spray on a Christmas tree, armpits filled with chemicals. Whiskey tangled in his beard. God, she knew this redolence.  She felt like choking.

“I want this shit.”

His rude hand pointed to both the box of dishes and the tea set, the exquisite bone china and the box of her best dishes, the Royal Daulton that she had used, oh, not much at all.

“Of course,” said the Accountant, noting notes in that ledger. And he let the man heave both boxes in his massive arms through the door.   Nem heard another curse and a rattling of shards.

Yer mother is a cunt and so are you. Dishes are breaking and she is trying to find a place to hide. For gods sake, he yells, you’re a grown woman. Take this dirty bitch out and both of youse go whoring. She tries to find a white in this black, to get to her mother and out of the house. But her mother is curled in bed, crying and telling her to leave, it’s just another one, just go the hell out. Mama, you’re dying, don’t you see? No, I’m an old woman and he is what he is and you get along now. Mama, he’s going to kill you. And then be it. Charlie Parker’s sax wailing Now’s the Time. Scratch. Skip. Repeat.

Nem wasn’t feeling well, was it that horrible customer, or the fact that there seemed to be so much less in the room than she had remembered? Only a few items were sold; surely she would have remembered if the Accountant had let in more.  Her head began to throb.

A slight, light, rangy man with an incongruous mane of silvery black was reposed on the chaise lounge, a Lucky Strike dangling from delicate fingers. A butterfly flapped deep in Nem.

She had seen him in the Woolworth’s, she was sure of this.

He flicked a long ash onto the balding Turkish rug and sighed.

“Yeah, this sings to me. I could shoot some twixt and water!” 

Her hair is soaked, tears are pooling from her eyes, god all is wet and slime and funk. Pant-pant, now pants on, he regards her from above. Bends and licks with a tiny flick the newest tear. You were great, he exhales, but I wasn’t your first. Did I ever say you were, she croaks. Guess this ends a beautiful friendship. We’ve been at it in brains for 11 years, he laughs. We just collaborated from a different angle this time. You didn’t protect yourself, she says, you didn’t protect us. Oh, I protect us, he soothes, I protect us from the nabbers of truth, the disease of hypocrisy, the smile of the politician. That’s not what I mean- I know what you mean, he kisses an ear. We’re all just animals. 

The Accountant looks hard at this man, makes a note in his ledger, then takes one end and the chaise is out the door.

What had become of her things? The boxes, the lamps, the side chairs, the samovar- the room was nearly empty.  Nem was having minor breathing issues, as if a small hook caught in her throat. She tried to flag the Accountant with a wave, but he was already going to the door. She was scared of that door. She did not want to feel the little wind as it opened again, she did not want to keep her eyes open to see the face of the next customer.

“Hello, sir.”

Nem jolted. 

Before her was a little girl, maybe nine in all, with wide-set brown eyes and a springe of twisting locks. She must be dressed up for a costume party, Nem considered. She wore wool stockings, and her grey dress was hemmed with lace. She stomped out the cold in black seal boots. More oddly, she wore a wreath of white clover around her head.  Wherever did she find clover in winter?

Nem liked that girl. She made to go to her.

The Accountant held out his palm to stop Nem, and kneeled down to meet the girl’s eyes.

“What is your pleasure,” he asked softly.

“Please, I’d like that, and also the box if I don’t mind seeming rude.”

Nem was trembling. She knew that girl.

The Accountant tilted the box so Nem could make out its contents. Just books. No, just children’s books. Colored covers aswirl: Oz, Anne, Rebecca, Peter Pan!  Where had this box been? Nem tried again to falter to the child, but stopped as the girl retrieved something from the floor. She held it tightly to her chest.

The Accountant gently pried it from her. “Let’s look at this.”

Then Nem rushed in. 

The girl didn’t startle or budge. She met Nem’s eyes.

“My bunny. This is my bunny, now.”

She is sick with the ague in bed. Her darling mother feeds her consume in a tiny spoon, and plies her to eat a tea sandwich. Just want bunny and a story. Her bed smells like perspire and peppermints and also her mother’s cold cream. Mama has slept with her now for two nights, and promises she doesn’t mind, it’s just the two of them, and what if her baby cried when the moon was high? When she couldn’t hear? She clutches bunny, sucks on his ear, and waits for chapter three.  Her beautiful mama wraps her close, holds open the book. She, hot with fever, has never been happier.  Maybe, she drowses, I never will.

All was gone. No, there was one thing left.

“Anyone else?” Nem wondered. She was in a high poster bed, and felt woozy. Her feet were bare.

“Just two more, I think.”

Nem squinted through her burning head and watched a young woman enter. She wore a patterned tea dress and was clearly in a hurry.

“I don’t really want this, just want to buy a message,” she exhaled. “Do you have paper?”

The Accountant procured one leaf, and pulled it through the roll. 

Nem was feeling hotter. She listened to the clat-clat-clat and then the woman pulled the paper out and strode over to Nem. 

“I bought this, but I think it’s yours.”

She types out the message, which takes two days. Dear Gerald. This is painful, and I will take and hold that pain. Guilt you say? Yes, I will take that, too. She brews her thoughts and writes some more. Then she opens her flask, drinks hard, and writes the final lines. 

He’s yours. I can’t.  Raise him well.

“The sale is over.”

The Accountant is hovering over her, far too close. His eyes- those chocolate irises- kiss hers. She never knew eyes could kiss.

“Rest well.  I’ll come out to share the final ledger in a bit.”

Nem dozes and cradles her bunny and drinks a bottle of coca cola from her mother’s icebox. She reads all of Three Children and It. She tiptoes to a door that is barely cracked, that emanates soft lemon light.

“It’s just me,” she says to the person behind the door.

She steps into a pale glow and a forest. Strange, a forest room! 

“And here’s the last customer.”

“Did we do well?” asks Nem. 

The Accountant comes to her. 

“Yes, we did fine. You sold everything.”

Nem struggles to find a word. The room with the trees is getting dark. 

“Time to sleep, Mama,” the Accountant whispers.

She pushed and he was out and he was perfect and she loved him so.