Subtraction. Mary Robison

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      “Hunger strike? Or’d the cook run off with Raf?”

      “Raf is the cook, in fact,” I said.

      “Don’t get scratchy with me, darlin’. I know marriage is sacred, even if yours has gone screwy. But I’ll tell you true, I’m glad I’m not married to Raf. Was he embellishing or you really teach at Harvard?”

      “I do but it’s nothing hard,” I said. “A lot of the time it’s like being a camp counselor.”

      “Raf was bragging on you,” Raymond said.

      He lit a cigarette, still studying me. His hair was towel dried, tousled. “So, what’s your uh—what do you teach?”

      “Poetry. Writing it. Reading it some.”

      “Brr,” Raymond said.

      “Poetry forms especially,” I said. “Fixed forms are my area and what I try to write.”

      “Publish any of it?”

      “Four books.” I nodded. “And I’m halfway through another. Well, maybe not halfway. Haven’t got much done since Raf left, though I’m supposed to be writing full-time. I have a year’s leave from teaching. June to next June. I got an arts grant bigger than my Harvard salary.”

      Raymond said, “The more I see you, the more I think it’s a good skinny you are.”

      “What do we do now? I mean, about Raf,” I asked.

      “Oh, there’s still some brick walls we can beat our heads against,” said Raymond.

      Before he left, he said, “ ‘How is the gold become dim,’ Lamentations: four, one.”

      He said tomorrow I should try an address near Viet Nam Plaza, close to the downtown. “No, wait on that until I can take you,” he said. “Or pack a rod, I most strongly advise.”

      And on, “ ‘I am the man that hath known affliction. . . . It was I whom he led . . . where no light is,’ Lamentations: three, verse—don’t remember.” He left.

      The Firecat had cream-colored seats, a radio-cassette and c.d. deck, smoked windows, burglar alarms, willful air conditioning.

      But I was late getting started, having put off awakening till noon and then spent an hour with the street map just trying to figure a route to Viet Nam Plaza.

      As I drove along the South Loop now in dusk’s glow, the banking sun and rising moon were comically big, vermilion.

      I exited where my map was marked with Lumolighter; piloted down a ramp, passed the Phan Dai Butcher Shop, and entered a hopeless ghetto.

      The downtown buildings—banks and towers from before the crash—with their height and cool angles and slick panes, loomed close but unreal as Oz beside these junkyard streets.

      Like a little bit of Saigon, this village was—Hau Dac Ti Place: bombed-out restaurants, shelled shops. The houses were lean-tos, and there wasn’t one lawn.

      My fingernail creased the street map balanced on my thigh. I needed to find Astro Ave.

      The address Raymond had given me was for a converted filling station: a windowless building with CATFISH DEN painted along its forehead. Another sign read, BILLIARDS, WINE SET UPS, AIR COOLED! Razzle-dazzle lights spangled on a third sign out in the gravel parking lot. Most of the letters were bashed out on that sign. I couldn’t guess what it said—L T QU STL Y HA.

      The temperature was a hundred and seven. The air smelled of crude oil. It felt wet but there would be no rain, not here or anywhere else according to the headline of the Chronicle.

      Actually, the address was for the place upstairs, which was a natural-wood box on stilts. The area beneath the box was filled with candy-colored car seats, parts of cars, two refrigerators, a Danish Modern couch.

      The only way up was an unrailed flight of steps. But up there, life! In three windows buzzed noisy fans.

      The woman who answered my knock said, “You’re from Raymond?”

      “I’m Paige. Mrs. Deveaux.”

      “Right, then I’m Jewels,” the woman said. She was light-skinned, green-eyed, blonde, with the face shape and features of a Scandinavian. She wore a flowered kimono.

      Her place smelled like a dinner party—as if she’d made canapés—and of the hot shortening and flour for pastry foods.

      A television vibrated with a man singing “La Tremenda.”

      The window fans made everything that was loose swing or flutter.

      “Grab a beer,” Jewels said. Her accent was all Texas and her voice had rust in its depths.

      “We gotta yell over the fans but I never did believe in air conditioning. You know? I think sweating’s good for your pores—sweat awl the time and stay youthful. You wanna have dinner with me, sweets?”

      “No thanks,” I said, but accepted the lo-cal beer she passed to me.

      I watched her fill a brown-freckled tortilla with beans and rice and green chili picante.

      “Raymond didn’t really explain why I was supposed to come here,” I said. “I’m hunting for my husband. Maybe you know that already.”

      “How do you smoke and keep your skin so smooth?” she asked.

      Over her head hung a door-sized Fuelex poster that showed a growling wolf, “HI OCTANE 93,” the poster said.

      She said, “You belong to Raf, I know.”

      Now she lay back on a couch the color of papaya.

      On an end table, rows of giant novena candles squatted in glass containers big as thermos jugs. One black holder had a cobra on its side. Another was printed with “Iglesia Bisettra!” and the letters dripped blood. Others were painted with little portraits or figures of saints.

      Jewels’s bathroom door wore a wood cemetery cross that was wired around with fabric flowers, white and hot pink.

      She swirled beer in her cheeks as if using mouthwash. She swallowed and said, “Raymond has gotten so damned keerful. I miss the old Raymond, isn’t that terrible? When he drank? But I do. I almost wish he’d have a slip. These are strange times.”

      “What’s Raymond being careful about?” I asked. “Do you know where my husband is?”

      “I sorta do. He’s with Julio. Julio’s mine. He’s a wonderful man.”

      “But do you know where Julio is either?”

      “I sorta do,” Jewels said. “He’s with my sister. Raf and him’re both with my sister Reba. Me and Reba are hairdressers for Nicole Roccio? You know Nicole’s. They’re all over town.”

      “I just got here,” I said.

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