E. A. Gale
BLOTTO
Getting to and from work was the best part of the day for Jack. The walk downhill to the bus stop and the bus ride itself were pure pleasure on spring mornings, and this particular spring morning was special. Last night he had managed to end his relationship with Jill. Their on-again off-again affair had dragged on for over a year and now it was done and finished. The entanglement was broken, and it was as if he had thrown off a heavy winter overcoat. The air was free and sweet again. He felt good, and he looked good in his tie and jacket. That was one good thing about his paper-shuffling job; he got to wear a tie and a jacket, which was much better than the fast-food uniforms some of the people his age had to wear.
As he walked down the hill he passed row houses and old trees which lined both sides of the street. The trees had grown too large and their roots strained the sidewalks, lifting and cracking them in places. Jack bent his head back as he went, to look up at the excited birds among the fresh young leaves. Walking with his head back like that caused him to stagger on the uneven walkway and he had to stop for a minute to restore his balance. Anyone watching him would have thought he was drunk.
What bothered more than anything else about this thing with Jill was that, no matter how many times he tried before this, he had not been able to keep away from her and break it off. At first she was like cream and sugar in the coffee that was his dreary life and it was lovely, until he realized that a flavoring like this changed the taste of everything, and that it was powerful enough to take him over completely. He felt as if he were being gently nudged into a box, like some wild thing to be tamed. The affair started quietly enough, with small talk on the bus coming home, and on the walk up the tree-lined street after the bus. Soon it was petting and then more when they could manage it, in the back of the bus, against the trees, in doorways, and on her parents' couch when no one was home, with the glow from the TV screen as their only light.
Jill was not his type at all; it was as simple as that. She was six years younger than he and just out of high school. If they happened to meet on the street she would begin talking to him in a loud voice as soon as she caught sight of him, even when they were still some distance apart. She said things like, "What time will yez be comin ovah," and "Them people, them people is all pigs." At these times Jack pretended to be puzzled and he would make believe that she must be talking to someone behind him. He would turn his head, as if to see the person she might be speaking to back there, and Jill would run to him, throw her arms around his neck and whisper, with her hot breath against his ear, "No, no, not back there, Dummy. It's you. It's you."
Later, she got a job in her aunt's beauty shop and was suddenly very busy. They had to schedule their meetings for weekends, or for quick moments during the week, in the shadows of trees and doorways. She was like a sorcerer's apprentice in the beauty shop and she conjured up a variety of exotic hair styles for herself, to model for the customers, she said. These were elaborate things, not for everyday. They were formal hairdos, the sort worn by women dressed for big family weddings or by showgirls in Las Vegas, the kind of thing people on the street would turn their heads to look at, then forget to watch where they were going, risking a fall. She mixed her potions and cast her spells until, like a weird medieval daughter, she was able to make herself shorter or taller and change the shape of her face, depending on the hairdo she was experimenting with. Jill loved it all, the shop and the sisterhood together, the gossip and the "we're gonna fix you" conspiracies, She swore that someday she was going to own her aunt's beauty shop, or one just like it, and Jack believed her. It seemed to him that she had the energy and ambition to do just about anything that pleased her.
Jack had no interest at all in business projects. He'd had some college and his ambition, he would tell her, was to know "life." There were too many things in this world that were not understood. He said he needed to spend a lot of time thinking about the great questions of humankind. Jill told him that one of the first things she had noticed about him, back on the bus before they ever spoke, was his faraway look. She just loved to watch people think, she said. It was so cute, you could almost tell when the little wheels inside their heads were turning.
Jack did not understand why no one else could interest her the way she said he did. He encouraged her to go out with some of the neighborhood boys so that she would have a basis for comparison. Possibly, she might find someone closer to her own age, someone more suitable than he. She admitted that she had dated one or two of these boys in the past but, she said, they were all as common as poop.
Each time Jack attempted to break things off, Jill would give him a "hear-we-go-again" sigh and a slow smile, but no words at all. He expected her to argue and make noise, but by not doing any of these things she added to his confusion and depression. After a few days without her, alone with his freedom, he would surrender and return to her, sick with his lack of willpower, but with the thin hope that her perfumed arms might be more like a cure than the Venus's-flytrap he imagined himself falling into.
But now, as far as he was concerned, her spell was broken. The grand mismatch was over and finished forever. As he walked along, down the hill, under the old trees to the bus stop, he was as sure of himself as he was ever sure of anything in his life. This day, today, was the sort of spring morning that promised new beginnings and new starts. Last night when he told her for the final time that it was all over she sighed, as always, and smiled her usual slow smile. That was the only thing that bothered him. She was so confident, as if she could read his thoughts before he could even think them.
The best part of his trip to work was always the bus ride itself, with the women going to their offices, all washed and combed and sprayed. It was standing room only in the morning and the bus was a perfumed box on wheels, lurching along and swaying on the turns. Soon there were too many hands trying to hold on and it was hard for him to secure a grip for himself. The worst thing was the jolting of the bus which might cause him to lose his balance and touch someone's hair or something soft, and he wished, as they crowded in, that his arms and hands could be like landing gear, retracted when not needed. More and more women got on and they jammed in together, increasing his risk of falling against them, but they rocked along and, it seemed to him, quietly smiled at each other like knowing sisters, none of them afraid of anything. The perfumes, soaps, and hair sprays mixed together to form an invisible soup in the air. His sinuses filled with the mix and it was going to stay with him all day no matter how he fought it. Later at work, if he closed his eyes, the inside of his skull would become a perfumed box and he could savor the idea of sweet surrender.