Large Animals in Everyday Life Read Free Page A

creates a certain space between us; his small legs in their Wranglers seem far, far away. And even in bed he always leaves his socks on because his feet were ruined standing in the swamp in Cambodia; other Marines had cush duty, he says, but he was in the swamp, always in the swamp, in fact he was a sharpshooter,
in fact
he can say with almost complete certainty that it was his bullet that killed Baby Doc Duvalier’s right-hand man. The few times he’s taken them off, I’ve forgotten to look. And though he chain-smokes Dorals, he is odorless. His dick is small and in the morning when he’s gone nothing’s sore and nothing smells. Lying down he is a big man who yells, who
growls
in bed, but he leaves before it gets light and nothing is left behind, as though all the hair, the sweat, all the
man
of him has gone into his music-playing, soaked up by the Round Bar’s fat old cypress walls.
    â€œI want …” I sometimes say to him in bed, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence. He thinks I’m talking about being unemployed and starts taking dollars out of his wallet for me. I lie there full of desperate, dead-end feelings, a big useless naked girl, an idiot savant. “My dear,” he says, looking me up and down, “being with you is like Saturday night at the movies for a guy like me.” I want something impossible. I want to dance with him to the music he plays. I want to look over his shoulder, feel him solid in my arms, his baby-smelling beard against my throat, but see him set up in the corner at the same moment singing
Love is like a dying ember, only memories remain; through the ages I’ll remember
… I want to go to Nashville.
    A tall man who looks like Jesus or Willie Nelson makes his way over to me, extends his long arm. “Sorry, sir, she cain’t dance,” Ron says. “She’s waiting on her boyfriend over there.”
    â€œFair enough,” the Jesus man says. “You’re pretty,” he says to me. Then he goes over to the tiny, salt-sprinkled dance floor and hops up and down there beside the jukebox’s pink light, keeping his back straight and kicking and stomping his feet, four fat women dancing around him, all of them doing the same steps and keeping perfect time, all of them smiling. “I fell for you like a child,” the singer sings. “I fell into a burning ring of fire.” Watching him, I know what I must do; for once I am spared the shame of decision-making. I dig through my purse for my keys, already picturing which panties to pack, which earrings and shoes, already hearing myself on the phone to my father, asking to borrow just a couple hundred, telling him,
Yes, I have several different projects lined up, various possibilities right now, yes, many paths are still open to me
.
    â€¢ • •
    In the deep end of the Nashville Sheraton’s pool, a young girl will not stop watching me. She is the only child in the pool, and I stare back at her, wondering if I know her from somewhere. But no, I think, I don’t know any children. Despite the drought, the pool’s water level is too high, and I’m hanging on the side with the other adults, all of us sipping drinks from plastic cups and holding our heads at unnatural angles, trying to appear relaxed. The girl floats near me on her stomach on a neon-patterned raft, chewing the ends of her long brown hair and watching me, staring as though she wants to know something. “Why are you looking at me?” she asks finally.
    â€œI’m not,” I say. I stare at her body laid out flat in a maroon one-piece, the small but unequivocal curves of her long legs and short torso.
    â€œWhere’s your husband?” she asks.
    â€œDon’t have one.”
    â€œOh,” she says. She thinks. “I thought I saw this man looking at me before,” she says.
    I swallow the last inch of my red wine, which is hot as coffee, and squint