Subtraction. Mary Robison

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СКАЧАТЬ were pieces of blond rattan furniture. The quilted bedspread and cushions and carpeting were gray-green colors. Tropical-Confederate was the motif here, I supposed.

      Raymond yanked off his heavy boots and kicked them that-away, dropped backward onto the bed, stacked both pillows behind his shoulders to prop himself up.

      Over the dressing-room counter, I slit cellophane from a throw-away drinking tumbler but could draw only warm water.

      Raymond steadied the gray desk phone on the lap of his jeans. He was all business, readying to make calls.

      I went out for a bucket of ice.

      On the room’s far back wall were glass doors that could be jerked open to a catwalk and for a view of the court below. The court had a patio, web-and-metal lounge chairs, an Olympic pool, all-out landscaping.

      I went with my tumbler of ice water through the sliding glass doors.

      It was evening now, and a hundred artificial lights glowed on the court below. Down there were Black Southern Baptist goings-on.

      The Park Inn was hosting a couple of conventions this week—the Baptists, who posed in maillots and swim trunks of sherbet colors on the pool’s concrete patio, and a gathering of foreign scholars, bearded men and pale women in dresses.

      In the water at the pool’s shallow end, the children of both groups spanked up fans of splash.

      There were spotlights on the spears and spikes of junglery overhead. Shadows made jagged stabbing lines across the patio chairs and table umbrellas.

      “Well, fuck it,” Raymond said after a call. “Now you see him, now you don’t. There’s still several people I can talk to, though.”

      I said, “They’re getting up a water-polo game down in the pool. You want a drink? There’s a bottle of Hennessy in my things somewhere.”

      “Just soda pop,” Raymond said. “I’m recovered, they call it.”

      “How long?”

      “Three years.” He clawed at his hair.

      “Then what you especially didn’t need was a visit from my husband, Jack Daniels.”

      “Hell, I like the guy,” Raymond said.

      “I know,” I said and I did. “You gotta like Raf.”

      Raymond brought a swimsuit from the trunk of the green convertible.

      “Would you get tossed outa here if I was to put myself in that pool? I would dearly love to,” he said.

      “No, of course you should. You deserve at least that for all your trouble.”

      “I been enjoying myself, actually,” he said.

      “Is Luisa your wife? I noticed her name painted on the car.”

      Raymond made his smile. He said, “Two years now. Which was all of the original bargain. I married her on an arrangement, see. Her family’s rich. They wanted her in the States. We got a little daughter, Maria, now though. So I’m feeling pretty lucky.”

      The roar from the Gulf Freeway was like thunderstorm wind and with it came blasts of cheetering night birds. These were tiny birds that zipped; flitting birds.

      I had grabbed the last empty chaise. Raymond was in the water. Above, a breeze moved the mighty palms and they hissed like shaken pom-poms.

      I fixed on a conversation the foreign scholars were having at a nearby table.

      “Today, I’m happy. Things look a little better.”

      “The weather?” someone asked.

      “No, I mean in my country. The military removed the state of emergency, so who can tell? Perhaps they fear the October elections.”

      A man with a Czech accent said, “It’s better for us as well, but we don’t forget what happened after Dubcek.”

      The roar from the Gulf Freeway hadn’t quit—a hushing noise, like a river flowing over a low dam.

      “I watched your new film, Bolo,” said an American with a comic’s quick delivery. “Are you crazy? I didn’t understand one thing.”

      “Nothing you liked?”

      Someone said: “Most ideas we have aren’t ours. We just think we thought of them.”

      “Is that your idea or someone else’s?” asked the American.

      “Wait, wait, wait,” the man named Bolo began.

      “Uh oh,” the American said. “Echolalia.”

      “So obvious,” the Czech said and I heard his bored sigh.

      “Example?” someone asked.

      Raymond was swimming a careful sidestroke the length of the pool.

      “Jiri,” the Czech said, “that is not your firsthand knowledge.”

      “Letters from my father, the papers, yes. Reliable origins, I’m sure,” a voice said.

      Bolo said, “Various texts, but they congeal. If I were filming this, I’d include Amida’s frock, her little radio playing Vivaldi. . . .”

      “Scarlatti,” the Czech said.

      “We men, sitting a certain way, competing for her attentions . . .”

      “Selection, no?” someone said. “What it means to be an artist.”

      “That is again, Jiri, not your idea but a received one,” said the Czech.

      I elbowed up and, dragging my chair behind me, moved away from the scholars. They were reminding me too much of Cambridge.

      Raymond sharked the pool from edge to edge now, wriggling along the basin submerged. He did well in the water, although there seemed not enough of it for him.

      He vaulted out, switched around so he was seated with his shins dangling over the cement ledge, his burnished back to me. “I’m ten years younger,” he said without turning.

      He knew I was watching him, though.

      Raymond pulled his Levi’s on over his soaked trunks and made three more calls.

      “Jesu Christay,” he said, banging the receiver. “We just can’t get this old truck painted.”

      “Raf,” I said.

      “I mean, damn! He could be in Saskatchewan or in the next room,” Raymond said. He braced his back on the headboard, finally squinting at me in my poolside outfit: a tank top and jeans hacked off high on the thigh. “Are you real skinny? Or am I just used to different?”

      “My weight could be down.”

      “No, СКАЧАТЬ