A Few Small Pieces

One early evening I got punched in the head. I didn’t know, first of all, nor feel it. No preamble. No anticipation. I could have been anywhere, drinking beer, avoiding nuisance. But an unplanned decision and I get the job.

I arrived, the girl in bits. I had no way to play it. She was alone and not coherent. I was tired. I don’t like to work nights. I did four that day: load, drive, unload. Four may not sound much. But 90 minutes a piece, plus drive time – and I drive, end to end of the city. It’s nine hours, with lunch and getting a whiz. Seven in the p.m. Dark. That greasy dark of November. And it’s me, because I’m closest. Urgent, meaning now.

When people call a move, they want to start early. Everyone wants the early slot – get it done, get settled in daylight. I get people in my ear about why I can’t come early, when they must have spoke to the office and the office must have sold them the vacant slot. If you want to be eight in the a.m. book your house move last year. Or hire a truck and work your muscles. This didn’t have muscles for lifting, though her arm got a workout yanking Kleenex from the box. It was not a great scene. I pull up to the building. Call the number like I’m told. It rings out. I call again, thinking I got punked. She answers with oxygenated crying. I had to ask, twice, the apartment number. Told her three times: hit the door release so I get in. Crying in the apartment. I tap the door, say I’m the removal guy. Feel – in my spine – neighbor eyes through peepholes.

Then business with the locks, till she succeeds at letting me in. Nice apartment – not my choice, but clean and useful. And nothing packed. “I’ll make a start.” Maybe I said it loud, but I could see myself getting home gone ten, with no proper drink before bed. She fanned her eyes, making this low, piercing sound, shoveling Kleenex at her face. Pretty: I saw, straight off. Not specific, with crying and clutching her head, but a definite something. An interesting something. “The booking. Ms. Olivia Acevedo. That you?”

A shake of that strawberry mop. “She’s my friend. Where I’m sleeping tonight.”

I necked around, in case I missed something. No crates, no trunk, no bubble wrap. “What is it I’m here to move?”

“A few small pieces. And me.”

Drinking with the boys, we say we met That Woman. The one who tries your muscles. Who gives extra. It’s a transitory moment in people’s lives. Certainties are suspended. That rock someone maybe thought permanent turns out to be paste. Intimate, this transport of lives. You don’t hit on someone’s low ebb. She tried fixing her face – as a confidence boost, maybe – and I’m in the bedroom checking the closet, which I presume are her clothes. I see a lot of people’s homes. I’m inside their arrangements. I see the difference between a place where a couple moved in together, and where a partner arrived on someone already there. You could have split that bedroom lengthways: his and hers. The place was his and she moved in, perhaps lacking time or persistence to make it her own. For some guys, a woman is shapewear: sculpting their look without changing their life.

This man, absent the scene, I understood would return soon. Itchy to work, I needed where to begin. “I’m told: urgent. An urgent job. You in a hurry?”

When she walked in the bedroom, a little unsteady in her display of walking, that’s when I saw. It doesn’t need explaining. “He said leave before he got back.”

She tells me about this hero. How they met. How it was first sight. Four years coupled, and this.

“I was in a low place.” She batted those furious lashes. “He raised me up.”

Guys like things easy. They like not to hang on a wire. I’m with that. I like it my own way.

“I always tried.” Now some women, gripped with sorrow, would sit on that bed a casual way. Slump, their limbs untidy. Not Roxxie. “Two X,” she said, letting me work it out. She sat stiff-spine, legs tight, trailing fingers through red-blonde hair to guide my eyes to her face. “He’s a wonderful man.” She watched the words through the air. “I’m not easy to live with. We talked it through. I thought we figured it out. You ever been thrown?”

“Yes.”

“He bought this.” Her hands demonstrating the lushness of this room where, I guess, she felt settled. “I don’t earn much at the library. I got a college degree. But I don’t got luck finding jobs.”

I’m sure she made an impression at interviews. “What things do I move? It’s half-seven nearly.”

“I’m sure you want to get home.” A sorrowful voice. But that struck hard.

“I just meant, to get to your friend in good time.”

“I still love him.”

“He went out and told you scram before he gets back.”

“I can still love him, Dave.”

I was the living ass of a husband. Twice. Since I became a one-room drunk I’m way less temperamental.

Through wet eyes and that rainy voice, Roxxie still had pride to show me her wardrobe. Easy to see where her paycheck went. Nice stuff. Clothes to flatter her height and shape. As a slob, I like to go out with a neat dressed woman. It’s cultural.

She took time folding and packing dresses and skirts, shirts and tees, lingerie and boots – it filled four cases. Every third minute she’d hold up a blouse or dress, say where she got it. What the two of them were doing when she got it. Where she wore it. “He got movie tickets. In his old job. We’d go maybe twice a week. I tried not to wear the same things. This is a pretty piece. Though it has this tomato stain. Can’t shift it.”

“Ain’t so bad.”

“But once you see it, it’s there. A waiter slopped tapas on me.”

“These guys are all thumbs.”

“No, he did it purposefully. Steve was all out to hit him but then he’d be in trouble.”

I’m with that. When the powder’s lit I fly loops. “I’d be sore if my woman got splotched by some waiter.”

“You have a woman?”

“I’m taking time to work things through.”

“Did you tell anyone to get out?”

“I did not.”

She folded and packed, lingering on well-cut, juicy cloth. “I love this. It’s mercerized.”

The shirt was glazed. Luscious pink. “I’ll load up. You don’t want to be late.”

“I’ll wear this.” She held the pink shirt against her chest.

I didn’t look at her. I looked at the mirror. Her makeup needed salvage, where sorrow came hard. Her hair was due styling. But she never neglected that poise, punching her hips side to side like that kept her alive. Hanging the shirt off her shallow chest. “I’m downstairs when you’re ready.”

Renewed distress caved her cheeks. “Steve locks up. I like not to worry about it. Suppose I’ll have to get used to it.”

“I’ll lock up.”

“It’s so I don’t worry about it. I don’t want Steve thinking I left the place open on purpose.”

“I’ll come back do it.”

“I don’t want him thinking I acted malicious.”

November, at this latitude, is grim days and short light. Both my wives said I got worse in November. I sometimes think to call Tessa or Susan. Susan more so. Tessa got fixed with a salary earning man and a house by clear waters. Her repulsion at me got her that. Last I heard, Susan’s still single. Works all hours. Getting prominent, someone told me. I’ve no clue what that means. Both called me a summer man. No use come fall.

Eight in the p.m. Dark spread through those apartment streets, solid and sticky. A touch of cold. Even my hard-baked skin felt it. The ache of lengthy weather. Moving boxes, dark to dark. The goodbye houses, the hello houses. Treasured memories already fading. New hopes already stained.

She changed to that pink shirt, a suede skirt and light jacket. She brushed her hair.

“What brought this to pass?”

“I’m not easy to live with.”

I couldn’t think to say it the right way. Just words from reality shows. “Takes two to break up.”

She was poking at corners, like something important got lost. She turned to me. Strong face. Thick jaw. “Guess he got tired of drama.”

So I lead her downstairs. Unlock the truck. Put her in passenger side. Then back upstairs to lock the apartment. It was nice. Sort of place a young couple might be happy. No rattle room, no great vista and the heat was marginal. But somewhere to keep your stuff and lay your head. I had homes that way, with wives who didn’t believe their drunk husband getting fired was funny even the first time. Roxxie told me drop the keys on the kitchen counter. I figured she’d leave this guy a note. This guy so buff for hygiene, he wouldn’t dirty his hands with her bags.

What Roxxie left on the kitchen counter was a picture. An eight by ten she must have had printed for some occasion. The both of them on a mountain trail, striped with light through summer trees, a little sunburned, a little bashful, like they got caught having too much fun. This Steve was the style of good looking chunk other guys call a bro. He wore hiking clothes and looked intentionally rugged. Roxxie had a peach gingham dress and work shoes – a diner waitress snuck off to the woods. Her solid shape carried it well, she looked all business. Of course, the casual moment was posed, an unseen someone else behind the camera. A souvenir of some tourist park. Above them, beyond the trees, a crow was framed in the moment of flying across the sun, its black wings translucent. No message on the back of the picture. No final love note. I laid the keys on his face, thinking somehow that had meaning. Switched off the lights and went down.

Vexed-looking leisurewear barreled the hallway. A sinewy thick-neck, he pushed himself into my eyeline. I never like guys doing that.

“You take it out?” A hard bone voice.

“Take what out?”

“The trash.” He gave me prosciutto breath. “We don’t want it in this building.”

“What don’t you want?”

His bloodied eyes said I was lacking. “You see it, right? Dressed up in pantyhose wiggling its ass. You take that faggot out and keep it out. We’re respectable people.”

Every day, all day, I load and unload. Five, six story walkups. Elevators so tiny, you take one chair at a time. I lift weight and at night I drink. My knees hurt and my patience is shot. So I take that man’s sweaty shoulders and cannon him into the wall. My knuckles smooched his gut. “I don’t want that shit talk. You follow me, buddy? This is me after anger management.”

He laid a solid fist to my head and we’re brawling, crashing over the little tray of dried flowers, scattering coupons for girl scout cookies. An itchy bastard and strong, I pummeled his skull a half dozen times before he felt it. Then his old lady comes out with the yard brush. Cracks it over my chest, splintering me with the smell of dog-eared roses. She whupped my spine, so I kicked her man in the balls. He rolled around, hugging his crotch like a beat quarterback.

Roxxie moved silkily through the door, thinking maybe I was gone too long.

This flailing jerk, who had to be hurt, he raises his biblical finger. “Fucking faggot.”

So I walk on his chest and his wife snapped the brush on my neck. Then Roxxie drags me out, pawing my arms to get moving. Her scent hypnotic and vital. The scumbag makes his noise, but Roxxie propelled me down the stoop. “I had him,” I told her. “One clean punch … ”

“It’s not helpful for Steve. He still has to live here.”

I plant my feet so she has to stop. “Steve, the guy who eighty-sixed you?”

“I care about him.” She got a look of me in the lights. “Your head’s bloody.”

“I got band aids. And a six of brandy.”

We sat in the truck. She patched my head. She thought brandy to sluice the wound. That wasteful sting. Her fingers firm and careful. She was adept with damage. “Can you drive like this?”

“How you mean ‘like this’?”

Arms folded beneath that evolving chest. “Well, you have a head injury. I’m thinking that might impair your reactions.”

“The fuck my reactions.” See, I want to be that knight in shiny pants, who lays down the dragon for some damsel. Or at least catches a Thank You for my blood beneath her nails. With hideous sobriety, I saw her twice. The flesh and a concussed echo, gleaming around her outline. “You always get trash from that guy?”

“Well, not just him. I wear music outdoors so I don’t have to listen. Guys get personal. Women are worse.” She carefully smoothed the band aid pack, tidying scraps of backing film on the greasy dashboard. “You shouldn’t wade into fights that way. You could screw up your job.”

Each strike of the broom and that old fucker’s fist laid in a burning trail by brandy I’d been saving for the drive home. I like a drink when I drive. Makes the road more comfortable. Spots of rain mussed the windshield, their patterns, their attachment, unobtrusively unique. The cold motor whined. “Electric,” I tell her. “Company values.”

“Guess that’s nice.”

Rain waits around the corner. A density of water. “That guy’s mouth stank.”

“Some people get scared when they don’t understand.” Said exactly like reading a cracker box.

“Steve stands up for you, right?”

“Four years back things were different. He had to adapt a lot.”

“But he said he’d stick by you?”

“You’re not being kind, Dave.”

“A crunch to the head blunts my impeccable manners.”

She pressed her hand to the window, tracking diagonals sliced by the rain. Her silence keen and persuasive against that whiney engine. The rattle of junk in the tray.

I tell her, “My dad was surly. You wouldn’t get spit from that bastard. We’re drunk different ways. Mom was a foreign country to the both of us. Had tremendous enthusiasm. These tiny hopes she pissed her life on. My sister’s smart, she went to college. Worked a table club to pay her tuition. ‘Table club’ is me being polite. She’s still at that college. She’s someone’s assistant or something. In our family, she’s the interesting story. I work jobs where I don’t need graces. Any mindless, back-breaking labor will do. I wade into fights.”

“Steve’s kind to me.” She scrapes her breath from the windshield. Her handprint, hung against headlights. “There’s so much on the calendar. The meetings. The drugs. The procedures. It’s remarkable, the details to think about. Even using this voice. Do you have to think about using your voice? The legal stuff is hurtful. It can’t ever be just done. Our friends are kind. Though I guess they feel sorry for Steve. We were a different couple before. I’ve caused a lot of distraction.”

I never heard anyone sigh that way. The damp stench of the truck stilled with wistful perfume. “People should mind their fucking business.”

“You can’t make everything a fight.”

Prim and unavoidable, her voice a wall of those little flowers mom planted to pretty the yard.

The position box blinked locations. My phone lit with tomorrow’s tasks. Early start. An old guy getting evicted. “Worst is people with kids. They won’t leave. Landlord calls the cops. It becomes an event.”

“I hope Steve can make the rent. I’d hate he got evicted.”

“Sure, it’s bad for them. But I got jobs down the line. I got people who need things done this certain time.”

“I don’t earn much at the library, but I try to pay my share.”

I struggled – I gripped that wheel and struggled – at such soft concern so bewilderingly in play. “The guy slung you. He hadn’t decency to be there when you left. Why so mawkish?”

“I suppose your breakups are more sensational.”

Rain closed us in. To follow that thin angle of light into this downpour. At careless curves I put up a flood on the sidewalk. Water sloshed the wheels. Little waves, from the tiny oceans of mom’s imagined voyages. Roxxie sat poised. Pink shirt, suede skirt, light jacket. Dark pumps and tan pantyhose. A compact woman, flat and frugal. “Why do this? What’s to gain?”

She breathed out, slow and complete. “You think life is profit and loss?”

“When I’m paid I’m up. When I’m broke I’m down. Simple math.”

“When you drink you’re winning.”

“Oh yeah.”

That voice, diligent to fill every space between rain. “You know how we’re born. That bureaucracy, right at the bedside. You slip out, wet and steaming – already, you’re on a chart. Words get written. Assumptions. It’s instant and brutal. No one says: let them grow for a time and figure it out. No one thinks, when you lay in that crib, how wrong they are. To your point: what I gain is myself.”

“And your boyfriend don’t like that?”

She punched the door. Actually made a fist and grazed the plastic. “You keep setting me on and then get mean. Any more, I walk.”

“In this?”

“Do you actually think it’s hard to walk in rain? And you so butch.”

She focused on herself, which was right. She had a lot of self to focus on. No space to cross her legs, she tugged that suede skirt, moving it nowhere near her knees. Irregular matter, suede. Leather for introverts. Made from the under skin. The private side.

Rain lashed those miserable streets. A corner bar spilled steam, as bodies hit the weather. “You want a drink?”

The lit phone drew shadows against her fingers. “Olivia’s waiting for me. And I’d appreciate you not drinking while you drive me around.”

“There you’re mistaken.” My voice caramel. “A little drink, I drive righteous.”

“Do you make a virtue of everything?”

One innocent question. “Mom said you got to talk up. Else how can anyone hear.”

“I’m sure she’s right. We always talk up.”

“You Martians, you mean?”

She drops the window. A view of aching streets, slashed with waterfall lights. Some guy on a stoop did a thing with his mouth. Don’t know he was spitting or kissing. She snatched a handful of rain. “Anyone down from Mars they’d put in a cage.”

I jump a light because, why not? “They’d kill ’em first.”

“How often you say you were married?”

I told a little of Tessa and Susan. A few small pieces. Both were good. Solid good. They had to divorce me. They would never progress otherwise.

“Must have been fine at the start, though.”

“If I could have one back, I don’t know to choose. Both smart. Funny. Those good things. Where I run short,” I let the truck drift to plow gray water, “I promise much at the outset. Then I ease up.”

“I don’t guess you’re impressed by what I been through.”

“On the contrary. I don’t see you could have done without it.”

Her fingers moved the phone that slick, busy way. Younger than me, she studied being young. Part of whatever perfection she set herself chasing. “When do we get there? Olivia’s worried.”

“Ten minutes, maybe. I got to go careful this weather.”

“She thinks you might be a threat.”

“No, just not insured for passengers.”

“Is that why you’re cheaper than the female-led service she suggested?”

“We’re contractors. The office takes its cut. I find it hard to keep hold on money.”

She continued to chat with this caring friend, phone light silvering her thin, high cheeks. “Would you say your problems are your fault?”

Rain slammed the roof. The hiss of water curtained the world. “Are you giving me a review?”

“Most men are very on-fire with themselves. Yet another way I have to edit.”

“Did you not edit enough with Steve?”

She trails her arm out the window like summer, seeming intrigued how the downpour slicks her flesh. “Told you, Dave. I’m not easy to live with. My interventions, my progress, occupies most my thoughts. I have a temper because I have always to explain. I face ignorance and oppression on a daily basis. So how about you, Dave? Why are you like there’s crabs in your butt?”

Drinking with the boys, we’d joke the job. Those faddy old ladies. The filthy kids. The evictions. A bar room culture strung around loading trucks, driving distance, unloading. This merry-go-round of objects taken from this room to that room. From city to suburb to repo store. “How you think life would be if everyone stayed where they were?”

“Sounds a horror story.” She thumbed a few miniature videos. Those ten second cuts of genius.

“Everyone moves. But I stay put. All that changes is I get older.”

“You didn’t have kids with these wives?”

“They never quit birth control.”

“They didn’t see you as daddy.”

“Thanks, Roxxie.”

“So you got cause to be sour. Your friends are drunks. Your family’s gone. No one wants to perpetuate you.”

“Sure glad I’m paid to listen to this.”

“Yeah, I meant to say about that.”

We made the peaceful streets, southwest of town. Tidy runs of quiet homes, among brigaded trees still hanging off their fall colors, in deep November. Mulchy stacks of molten leaves contoured the sidewalks. Blinds and drapes shut against cold, against dark, so children could sleep in the warm imagination of cozy rooms. Glimpsed adults at table, at rest, acting with exquisite responsibility toward each other. Not driving through wearying night. Not riding a chemical trail from one checkbox to another. Most choices are binary choices: we can’t handle much else.

The position box drew me up by a bijou apartment building, settled between a pink ranch-style and a noble trunk of old brownstones. Roxxie was out of the truck before I could check I parked in the lines. I’ve had it with neighborhood jocks preaching the life-or-death value of tidy parking. Roxxie moved clean through the weather, her jacket blooming with rainfall. The muscular punch of her shoulders was all woman.

Ms. Olivia Acevedo in the lobby, clutching her phone, waved with expansive vigor. One of those lithe, pertinent women whose mom looks exactly the same. They hugged and she fussed Roxxie’s strawberry hair and told her how men are bastards. So I interject on the crucial point of where to bring Roxxie’s things. Ms Olivia Acevedo was gratuitously polite, like pacifying a simpleton.

Ten minutes, I’m unfolding it all from the elevator and hefting it to the apartment. Something happened with my arms. My shoulders stung. My load-bearing muscles grumbled against what, really, was no weight at all. A few small pieces, a few pretty things, to make a body feel good.

I don’t know what’s wrong with young people. Their apartments are too clean. Olivia plainly took care of the place. The walls might have been fresh paint: no scuffs, no stains, no evidence of clumsy times. The rugs were vacuumed. Metal and glass shone like it had in the store. I don’t recall when young people started to care about those things. It seems the wrong rebellion.

Olivia made coffee, which I drank because I was thirsty. I didn’t bother to drop a manly hint about something a little stronger. Roxxie went to unpack. Keen, I guess, to end the day on a sense of establishment. My arms drooped, my legs were lead.

“Thank you for helping out at such short notice.” That’s another thing with young people. They’re fucking polite. Olivia talked that stilted language of negotiation. “It’s a terrible night to be driving. I appreciate your looking after Roxxie.”

“I just moved some clothes.” I wanted to make it dirty. To be that scuzzy guy with a truck and no graces. Who picks his pits and farts in bed. Who can strip an engine and joke with cops.

“I’ve told her.” Olivia had things to prove. “She did all she could for Steve. It’s sad he’s hurting, but she needs to become herself.”

“She’s doing pretty good on that.”

A hardness crept over her eyes. I’ve seen it before. On the faces of ex-wives’ relations. “It’s a vulnerable time for her, in midst of these changes. These necessary steps. Her well-being is paramount.” She said it like an engineer, making statements about building control. “I’m sure you respect the requirement for tolerance.”

Olivia wasn’t happy I needed the bathroom but obviously felt to refuse would make her a crank. “We are women here,” she reminded me. “Please respect that.”

When I’d done all I could to clean up, when I made double-sure I was buttoned the right way, I stopped by the guest bedroom. I tapped my open palm on the frame. Roxxie snuck her head round the door. She’d been crying again. Like always, I started wrong. “Don’t worry about the money.”

She looked baffled. Then scrunched her face to a watery smile. “Thank you, Dave. It was good of you to work late.”

I wanted to swallow my hand, to yank out what stopped me speaking. Choking on years of being That Guy. “I was thinking … ”

“It was kind of you to ask if I wanted a drink. I should have said at the time.”

“I was thinking maybe … ”

“I have hopes things might work out with Steve. Four years and all. He knows me right through.” Her eyes were liquid. Not from sadness. With seeing the future. “I’m at a really fragile time right now.”

“You got my number. If you need anything moved.”

“I need a second closet for in here. For my dresses.”

“You need it fetching from the store.”

“I have your number.”

If I put the hammer down, I could make the bar for a few late drinks with the boys. I sat in the truck, my hand by the switch. I watched that apartment an hour, two hours. Till the lights went out. Then I sat some more.

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