The Decent Proposal (17 page)

“UCLA.” He and Elizabeth exchanged another glance; he was happy to keep up the fiction. He needed to fit in if his plan was going to work. But he also
wanted
to fit in, and it was this realization—that Orpheus Washington, the erstwhile contrarian, the onetime proud defier of expectations and blazer of his own trail, had been reduced to this adolescent yearning to belong—that laid him lower in this moment than all the years of vagrancy preceding it.

In the last two months he had become a pariah who no longer belonged among his fellow pariahs. Most of his homeless cohorts were drunks or junkies, and it was no fun being the only sober one. Orpheus lost the dazed docility integral to his previous popularity. His old self resurfaced—quick-witted, ambitious—and he grew dissatisfied with his lot. For the first time he noticed how the homeless population swelled in the summer months, like bugs swarming. He saw people sniff the air when they passed him, or go out of their way not to pass him at all. The pokes and prods, the offhand interrogations from police officers began to anger instead of frighten him. Begging became intolerable, so he scored the lowest of low-rent jobs standing in the middle of the Boardwalk with a sign that read “Frozen Lemonade 99¢” on one side and “Giant Slice Pizza $1.99 (cheese)” on the other. (His “interview” had consisted of a patdown and a Breathalyzer.) With a mixture of amusement and anger, his homeless brethren decided he was putting on airs and taunted him from the sidelines: “Big man! Got a
sign
! Got a
job
!” Sometimes they ran up behind him and knocked the board out of his hands. In this regard, his new job was more humiliating than begging for change, but he was allowed to eat as much leftover pizza as he could stomach, and together with
Lily's breakfasts and Saturday dinners, this meant he didn't have to spend any money on food. The few bucks he earned each day accumulated slowly. Every time he checked it, the bulge in the zippered compartment at the bottom of his wheeled suitcase had grown a tiny bit bigger.

“I was just in the neighborhood. . . .” He faltered, staring at them helplessly.

It sounded like the sort of outdated phrase a foreigner would use, something acquired in a language course—an elegant yet empty address that hung there, helpless and lost. What did he think he was going to do anyway? Why was he so intent on banishing this beautiful boy beaming in front of him? That would be like dumping a precious painting among the trash heaps he used sometimes as bedding, or lobbing a priceless sculpture into the fathomless ocean.

“I'm glad you stopped by,” said Elizabeth a little too brightly, as if she were projecting for the benefit of the cheap seats. “We were just eating pizza and watching a movie. Do you want to join us?” She glanced at Richard. Allowing a third person in on one of their sessions was technically forbidden.

“Yeah, join us!” he said. “It's so rare I get to meet one of Elizabeth's friends.” He paused. “And by ‘rare,' I mean never.”

Elizabeth?
Orpheus looked at her, but she refused to meet his eye. “Elizabeth” was obviously her real name. So why had he been calling her Lily all this time?

“
Elizabeth
likes to keep herself to herself, doesn't she?” replied Orpheus, switching allegiances to the boy with an ease he didn't know he was capable of till after it happened.

Richard grinned. “You can say that again.”

Orpheus clapped him on the back. “I just might. Huh.”

THE LAST THING
he wanted was more pizza, but Orpheus stuffed himself dutifully while they sat in a snug little row on the sofa
watching
Driving Miss Daisy
. He had to will himself not to fall asleep; it seemed outrageous to be expected to sit for two hours on a soft surface indoors without talking, and to stay awake. The movie didn't help either. The old Orpheus Washington would never have made it all the way through such sentimental garbage, and when they got to the final scene, Morgan Freeman feeding little bites of pie to a senile Jessica Tandy, Orpheus leaned toward Richard to make a crack, an observation—
something
to cut through this offensively tender scene—when he saw an unmistakable dampness, a flurry of blinking. Was the boy . . . was he
crying
?

“Gets me every time,” said Richard matter-of-factly, or perhaps even a little defiantly, wiping away his tears with the heel of one hand.

“Huh,” responded Orpheus, surprised that anyone could be moved by a story so obviously constructed to do just that. He supposed there was still a bit of the contrarian in him yet. Now that he knew what
real
heartbreak was, it felt not only cheap but disrespectful to fabricate such emotions, only to resolve them a mere hour or so later. He looked at Lily, whose eyes were as dry as his, and as she stood up from the couch another flash of understanding registered between them. How could he not have seen it before? She too knew real tragedy; she had a calamity all her own. It was so obvious. But why had she never told him about it? He looked at the boy again, who was sipping a fizzy drink contentedly, and a shiver of something akin to jealousy ran through him, bursting like a geyser on the crown of his newly shorn head. Did
he
know, this boy who just as obviously didn't have a care in the world? Had she told
him
?

“Did you guys eat
all
the pizza?” cried Elizabeth.

Both Richard and Orpheus whipped their heads toward her. She was standing at the counter, staring in horror at the empty pizza box.

“I only had one slice!”

The two men looked at each other like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and laughed.

Elizabeth forced them to carry the conversation to the kitchen, where she announced her intention of making spaghetti for herself. “And you guys can't have any!” Richard and Orpheus leaned on the counter while she retrieved a pot and colander from her well-ordered cabinets. In the harsh fluorescent light, Richard couldn't help noticing the finer points of Orpheus's ruined face, and Orpheus couldn't help noticing Richard's fascination; it reminded him of the little girl on the Boardwalk with the ice cream, and he raised a hand to shield himself from view.

It was only earlier that afternoon, after Lily had told him Richard would be coming to Venice that evening, that he took a bath in the ocean with a bar of soap purchased in a liquor store on the corner of Venice and Pacific. Afterward he headed to a hippified secondhand clothing store next to Café Collage. The woman behind the counter was a former flower child—faded, but still sharp enough to ask to see his money before letting him touch any of her merchandise.
So much for free love
, he thought, struggling to contain his ire. He desperately needed the clothes.

Fifteen minutes later he was wearing his new outfit out of the store, just as his daughter, Sherry, used to do, so excited was she to acquire new clothes. Down the street was a hair salon called Rock Paper Scissors. He hoped that in his new outfit he'd pass for a dirty hippie and not quite a homeless man. The receptionist was sorting receipts, and didn't look up as she greeted him:

“Hullo, you have appointment?”

She sounded Russian. He shook his head,
no
.

She glanced up at him and her eyes froze, and then her smile after it, as if a frost were racing down her face. Orpheus's heart sank; she was going to ask him to leave. Another memory bubbled to the surface, this one from long, long ago: his mother
dragging him at seven years old on some errand that took them out of their way, and stopping off at an unfamiliar grocery store, not their usual place. He remembered there was no one there except an old white woman with puffy blue hair and a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She looked up at them from her cash register where she was sorting receipts, and immediately looked down again. “Out.” This was all she said: the single syllable, pointed toward the floor. It didn't even seem as if she was addressing them. His mother faltered—confused, disoriented—and the woman repeated herself, “out,” her voice raised slightly, though she still refused to look at them. He remembered his mother pulling him away, and sensing more from her mood than a true understanding of the situation that he wasn't to ask her any questions.

Looking at the Russian girl now, he waited to hear that same syllable again, but instead she gestured to the swivel chair farthest from the window:

“I take care of you, yes? Am in training. Reduced rate. Here, please.”

When she wrapped the black plastic cape around him, her hand brushed against the tiny dreads stuck to his neck and she jumped back, as if they'd pricked or burned her skin. Their eyes met in the mirror—hers startled, his accusing.

“What do you like?” she asked, tying her long brown hair into a ponytail.

“A buzz cut.” He imitated a razor scraping across his scalp. “Short as you can get it. And a shave too.”

She nodded, relieved.

Fifteen minutes later she announced: “All done!” and swiveled the chair to face the mirror.

He was balder than he realized under all those dreads: his hairline had retreated at least an inch or two. He'd been steeling himself for the resurrection of the old Orpheus—the husband,
father, and professor—and for the fresh batch of painful memories this image would bring to the fore. But the old, shrunken man who stared back at him was like one of those age-progressed photos of a lost child printed on milk cartons, not so much a reminder of who he was as evidence of what he had become. He saw now that the Orpheus of years ago was gone, as dead as his wife and children but still separated from them. Forever.

“You look good,” the woman beamed.

He sprang out of the chair and handed her all the cash he had, which amounted to a 50 percent tip. She called out to him—gratified, amazed—but he was already out the door, head down, eyes averted, and he assumed this posture now in the tiny kitchen, staring at the fake tiles on the linoleum floor. He must have looked so old, so hideous to this beautiful boy.

“Gotta wear sunscreen,” he mumbled, massaging a large red lump—the worst offender, though it had plenty of competition—beneath his left eye.

“For real,” said Richard, “Especially for a pasty white guy like me, ha. But I'm
so
bad about it. I know I should wear it every day but I hate that greasy feeling, you know? And even when I go to the beach I never put on as much as I should. I got the
worst
burn of my life, a while back, in Greece? My stomach was seriously
purple
. It was insane.”

Elizabeth asked him which islands he'd visited, which led to an improbable discussion of Greek mythology, and before any of them realized it three hours had passed. It was nearly ten when Orpheus succumbed finally, falling asleep with his head propped up on the back of the couch. Richard raised his eyebrows and made a “sh!” gesture with his index finger over his lips.

“I'm going to let him sleep here,” Elizabeth whispered. “He lives alone, just around the corner, and he looks so peaceful, doesn't he?”

Richard nodded, watching enviously as the old man's con
cave chest rose and fell. He was dreading the ride home, which would bring him that much closer to another day of confronting the Retch Heard 'Round the World. It was easy to pretend it had never happened while he was here, even though this made no sense, since Elizabeth was the only person besides him who had been physically affected by the incident.

The pause between them lengthened. Richard kept staring at Orpheus to avoid the inevitable goodbye. It was childish, but he had an idea that if he stared long enough, eventually she'd ask him to spend the night.

“Do—do you want to spend the night too?”

He swung his head toward her, nodding vigorously.

“Let me go get my AeroBed,” she said. “I'll blow it up in my room so I don't wake him up. Be right back.”

She reappeared a few minutes later, lugging the mattress behind her. Richard jogged over to help her push it into the middle of the floor.

“Thanks,” she said. “There're towels and an extra toothbrush in the bathroom.” She placed sheets, a blanket, and a pillow on top of the AeroBed, and draped a blanket over Orpheus, who by this point had managed to assume a somewhat horizontal position. She retreated to her bedroom.

“Elizabeth?”

She turned around, framed by the open doorway.

Richard hesitated.

She waited.

If she had been anyone else, he would have begun singing “Thank You for Being a Friend” from
The Golden Girls
, to simultaneously acknowledge and mock the sentiment he was feeling. But there was a good chance Elizabeth had never watched
The Golden Girls
, and he was well aware by this point that mockery was not her style. And yet he still wanted to convey the emotion somehow, because she
had
been a good friend to him
last night. And tonight. She was, in fact, a friend. When had that happened? It didn't really matter.

“Thank you,” he said finally.

Elizabeth paused. “You're welcome,” she said, turning away, and closing the door firmly behind her.

SECONDS LATER ELIZABETH
locked the doorknob, unwilling to take any chances while trying on the skirt she'd vowed hours earlier never to touch again. It fit perfectly, of course, and was even more beautiful on her hips than it had been in her hands. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, watching it sway gently, back and forth:
swish-swish
,
swish-swish, swish-swish
. . . By the time she roused herself from this skirt-induced reverie, she was unwilling to risk waking or otherwise encountering Richard on the way to the bathroom. She was too tired to brush her teeth anyway. She was exhausted, actually—more tired than she'd been in ages, deliciously spent after the prolonged adrenaline rush of an evening spent with her boys.
Her boys?
Now there was a ridiculous phrase. But she was too tired even to laugh, so instead she simply climbed into bed, skirt and all, and slipped beneath the covers, repeating the ridiculous phrase to herself over and over, sleepily, like a mantra: