and he messed them nightly in his rack while he dreamed of his guitar and his Bill Monroe seventy-eights and the few times the rodeo came to Lake County. You should have seen him around our mother. Your old man held the yarn while she balled it.
11
The work made Annie nervy when she couldn’t stop imagining the date that might kill her: a cell phone salesman from Libertyville in the city on his day off, or an old man with five divorces. Her last sight may be Days Inn wallpaper, or the granite countertops in a Wicker Park loft. She started believing all her dates would strangle her. But playing Goetzler eased her fear, and made her so arrogant she believed herself beyond the edge of things.
Some nights, she even alleged she wasn’t afraid to die, and that made her free beyond the world’s understanding.
But tonight, she had a new client, a young, unmarried futures trader on Randolph Street, and she got scared thinking that a man without a reason to see a hooker might be the snuff john. All afternoon, she walked her apartment and imagined him piling hundred-dollar bills on the table while she explained how she won’t be bound. She’d threaten to leave, but he’d keep dropping them like the cards of a winning poker hand, his face Viagra red.
The anxiety was making her hands shake. The cats ran away when she tried petting them. Since lunch, she jumped at distant sirens, crow caws, and the windy raindrops against her window. She even called Nick three times, the fat guy whose real name was Larry. If she canceled, he’d pitch Goetzler the other Vietnamese girl who called herself Charlize. Annie then tried sweeping the floor, but kept dropping the broom, and decided it was time to stop being a cat. She phoned Nick telling him she’d take her chances with Goetzler.
“That’s your call,” he said, “but these older guys don’t mind the variety.”
Annie didn’t care. She knew things about Goetzler that Nick would spend seven lifetimes trying to figure out. Goetzler wanted to believe he fought for something in Vietnam, and Annie was the gatekeeper to that wish. He needed her thank you, or the men who burned their draft cards would always be right. Vietnam might finally pay. Annie then turned off her cell phone and took a nap with her cats and dreamed that the world was an ice rink.
She woke and took the yoga book from the shelf. It slipped away. She followed the book with her hands until it lay open on the floor. Immediately, the blond, white woman was holding the dying warrior position, her chin upon her shin. Annie envied her calm and cried because yoga failed to ever quiet her mind. Her fingers always felt like the running legs of different people. But she calmed her hands by reminding herself that she wasn’t a cat anymore, scared of stray noise, and then decided this North Dakotan in Manhattan had never entertained a thought louder than a popping champagne cork.
She tried sleeping, but couldn’t keep her hands still for longer than an hour. They ground the feathers in her pillow before knocking her water glass off the nightstand. When she couldn’t hold a blanket corner, she got up, went to the front room, and tried staying her fingers by splaying them on the window glass.
Posing for the cop, like the summer nights, might calm her hands, but his window was rainy dark, and he was off on a long run. His woman was gone because the candles never lit the windows, and men never thought of those details unless a hooker was coming over. But watching the cop run was better than posing, and made her forget she had hands. She imagined him a dog, a German shepherd, who could be ordered into emotions.
Sometimes, the cop went south first, and ran calmly, but if he started north into the city, he came back like a boxer, throwing restrained punches at the darkness: the one-two, but never a third jab. She didn’t want love from him. She knew closeness with an open heart would make him too real, and he’d cease calming
11
The work made Annie nervy when she couldn’t stop imagining the date that might kill her: a cell phone salesman from Libertyville in the city on his day off, or an old man with five divorces. Her last sight may be Days Inn wallpaper, or the granite countertops in a Wicker Park loft. She started believing all her dates would strangle her. But playing Goetzler eased her fear, and made her so arrogant she believed herself beyond the edge of things.
Some nights, she even alleged she wasn’t afraid to die, and that made her free beyond the world’s understanding.
But tonight, she had a new client, a young, unmarried futures trader on Randolph Street, and she got scared thinking that a man without a reason to see a hooker might be the snuff john. All afternoon, she walked her apartment and imagined him piling hundred-dollar bills on the table while she explained how she won’t be bound. She’d threaten to leave, but he’d keep dropping them like the cards of a winning poker hand, his face Viagra red.
The anxiety was making her hands shake. The cats ran away when she tried petting them. Since lunch, she jumped at distant sirens, crow caws, and the windy raindrops against her window. She even called Nick three times, the fat guy whose real name was Larry. If she canceled, he’d pitch Goetzler the other Vietnamese girl who called herself Charlize. Annie then tried sweeping the floor, but kept dropping the broom, and decided it was time to stop being a cat. She phoned Nick telling him she’d take her chances with Goetzler.
“That’s your call,” he said, “but these older guys don’t mind the variety.”
Annie didn’t care. She knew things about Goetzler that Nick would spend seven lifetimes trying to figure out. Goetzler wanted to believe he fought for something in Vietnam, and Annie was the gatekeeper to that wish. He needed her thank you, or the men who burned their draft cards would always be right. Vietnam might finally pay. Annie then turned off her cell phone and took a nap with her cats and dreamed that the world was an ice rink.
She woke and took the yoga book from the shelf. It slipped away. She followed the book with her hands until it lay open on the floor. Immediately, the blond, white woman was holding the dying warrior position, her chin upon her shin. Annie envied her calm and cried because yoga failed to ever quiet her mind. Her fingers always felt like the running legs of different people. But she calmed her hands by reminding herself that she wasn’t a cat anymore, scared of stray noise, and then decided this North Dakotan in Manhattan had never entertained a thought louder than a popping champagne cork.
She tried sleeping, but couldn’t keep her hands still for longer than an hour. They ground the feathers in her pillow before knocking her water glass off the nightstand. When she couldn’t hold a blanket corner, she got up, went to the front room, and tried staying her fingers by splaying them on the window glass.
Posing for the cop, like the summer nights, might calm her hands, but his window was rainy dark, and he was off on a long run. His woman was gone because the candles never lit the windows, and men never thought of those details unless a hooker was coming over. But watching the cop run was better than posing, and made her forget she had hands. She imagined him a dog, a German shepherd, who could be ordered into emotions.
Sometimes, the cop went south first, and ran calmly, but if he started north into the city, he came back like a boxer, throwing restrained punches at the darkness: the one-two, but never a third jab. She didn’t want love from him. She knew closeness with an open heart would make him too real, and he’d cease calming
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