Midnight at the Oasis

What happened happened on a Thursday night, late. I was in the gym, on the bike, not overdoing it. The attendant and the only other customer were sleeping on weight benches. My dog, Dolores, slept at my feet. The front doors were open, so you could hear the city--buses and trucks changing gears. The music was Lou Rawls. That kind of night.

Outside the gym, a cream-and-chocolate-colored Rolls pulled up. Nobody got out. Finally, somebody did. A woman maybe 35, dressed to kill, coming into the gym looking murderous. She was very unhappy. She was also splendid to look at. White stockings and a silver-gray dress with a shimmer to it. Tall. Tan. She breezed by me without a glance. Came out of the changing room in this costume. Leg warmers and leotards, self-praise worn skintight. Began attacking the machines. Grunted, sweated, slammed things around. Dolores woke up. The attendant and the other customer woke up.

The Rolls, I noticed, was still out there. Every now and then, you could see the brightening glow of a cigarette behind the steering wheel. Eventually, the driver came in. He was old and slow but somehow stately. Suit definitely money. The skin of his neck was even browner than the woman's, and his collar cut into its looseness. When he got to the woman, he stood still for a moment. In his face, only his eyes moved. They were dead-alive eyes, as if in perpetual observation of unhappy occasions. Finally, he said, "I'd like (continued on page 156) the oasis(continued from page 111) you to come home with me now, Jane." Jane wasn't talking. Jane was doing lat pulls. The old guy kept it dignified. Laid down a roll of bills, called it taxi money, made the slow exit. At the door, he said, "Good night, Miss Jane." Then the big car wheeled away.

Jane stared for a time out the window, as if at things only she could see, then regarded the attendant and the other customer and, finally, me. It was her first square look at me, and she seemed to be thinking me over. After a moment, a smile sneaked across her face. "You or the dog have to be at work in the morning?"

"No, ma'am," I said, for both of us.

She would need a ride to Palm Springs, it turned out. We were in L.A., 100 miles away. She would pay me--she counted out all the bills the old man had given her--$500. In 50s. She bent close and slipped them into the waistband of my shorts, front and center. There were circles of sweat around her nipples, which affected me, and she had a salty smell that affected me, too. With this look in her eyes, she said her name was Jane L. Wooley and, in case I was wondering, she was a free agent, by virtue of widowhood.

"The car," I said. "I should tell you--" I stopped. I didn't know what I should tell her. "That it's just a little, shall we say, irregular."

The woman was unperturbed. "Long as it gets us there," she said and disappeared into the shower. Dolores looked at me with the wide brown eyes of astonishment. "!Caramba!" I said. I said it merrily. It was a merry world.

•

Palm Springs is known for its dry heat, sloppy morality and expensive living, which may explain why so many of our older stars die there. I myself had been there just once, and that was with Em, the night we were married. Took a suite at Gene Autry's joint. After Em went to sleep, I found a Ramar of the Jungle on one of the local stations. Jon Hall was everywhere, looking dynamic and earnest. What I remember is that in spite of many obvious good qualities, he wasn't very likable. I watched and watched. There were a lot of commercials, after every one of which Ramar returned, even when you were sure at last he wouldn't. "Em! Em!" I shouted, coming into the other room. "We've got ourselves an honest-to-gosh Ramar marathon! A Ramarathon!" I whooped this message; it seemed important at that moment to make it sound like a large charge. But Em turned without waking.

•

The widow Jane and I were eastbound on the interstate. Dolores slept on the seat between us. The windows were down, and warm summer-night air moved into our clothes. In conversation, Jane called me soldier. She asked a lot of questions. "So tell me, soldier," she said finally, "what do you do for a living to be up all night on a Thursday night?"

The question I dread. I sell insurance, have my own office, employ four older but zealous men and women who for five months now have covered my rear end. Every month, I tell them they'll see more of me soon. I told Jane a different tale. I pointed to the freeway in front of us and said, "See those reflective lane markers? Those are called Botts dots, after the inventor, but my family manufactures them. I oversee the swing shift." Before Em left, I never lied about my job; since then, I never tell the truth. I can't tell you why. Sometimes I even give a bogus name. I think it's probably something as simple as this: Say you meet a woman who is spunky, bright, beautiful and not averse to monogamy. Experience tells you she will not fall in love with you. Better, then, that she not fall in love with someone not quite like you than that she not fall in love with the exact unvarnished you.

On the freeway, I stayed to the right. From the faster lanes, we were getting looks because of the fuzz. I should mention the fuzz. It's pink, and every square inch of the car, interior and exterior--except moving parts--is covered with the stuff. Hood, fenders, bumpers, doors, dash and seats are all plastered with pink fuzz. "I've got another car that's more conventional," I explained to Jane, "but it's in the shop."

Jane thought it over and said, "I've never seen a car more ideal for cruising the outer ring of Saturn."

I thought that was a pretty good one and stashed it away. For Em, probably. With the flat of her hand, Jane was matting the fuzz, then watching it spring back to form. "Pink Plush is its actual catalog name," I said.

Jane snuffled. "So how is it in the rain?"

"Well below average," I said, and Jane laughed, but not undividedly, and used an old-fashioned bottle-and-bulb atomizer to clear up her sinuses. She asked how I'd come by the car.

"From a friend," I said, a little lie. It was actually Em's car. Em had driven it in a Kiwanis destruction derby, though you wouldn't know it now. This was prefuzz. The Kiwanians were not happy with the prospect of a woman in their derby. Neither was I. Too risky, I said. Em said it was because of all my clients in Kiwanis--a cheap shot, I thought--and just like that the argument dissolved into unbudging silence. (I'll admit, though, that Kiwanians are dandy clients; buy a lot of whole life.) Em, anyhow, vanished and didn't reappear until derby day, three days later. Pulled into my office parking lot, sitting inside her jalopy Dodge. I've got this Thomas duck call. She asked if I'd come to the derby and whistle it for her.

I said, "You've been gone three days"--a long time for your wife to be gone.

"I left because I was mad," she said, looking straight ahead; then she turned to me and her face softened. So did her voice. "I'm going to be in this derby thing, Harry"--she touched my hand--"and I came by because I really want you there."

The separation of two people is an accumulation of differing inclinations badly adjusted for. Little mistakes adding up. But usually, one or two stand out. This one, for example, stands out. I said, "There are oodles of things I'm not doing today, and one of them is going to watch my wife in a demolition derby."

She drove off fast and there I was.

I went, of course. At first, I cringed every time Em got hit and hoped the Dodge would fritz out early; but after a while, I found myself rooting for Em and the jalopy Dodge to keep rolling. My jaw clenched. My hands fisted. Under my breath, I gave instructions. "Get that number seven! There! Watch out for the Pontiac! OK, now, creamatize the Chevy!"

Em and that Dodge took shots you wouldn't believe and wobbled on. They were excellent, just excellent. In the end, it got down to Em and a guy in a Buick Electra built to last. Em and the Dodge had only reverse, and for almost ten minutes the Electra bashed them to kingdom come before the deed was done. The Buick dragged itself away. The Dodge was dead.

I started down to the arena. I'd already thought of what I'd say to her, but halfway down something stopped me. Em had shinned herself up through the window and people were closing around her, friends, all of them grinning and glowing, and I thought, On the other hand, it's not my party. A mistake, looking back. I might've been made welcome and carried along by the festive point of view. I did have the right thing to say. I was going to lean close and whisper, "You're a peach."

•

"This Banning?" the widow Jane said, looking out at the lights passing by.

"Bingo," I said. We went over the low pass, slowly descending. The desert looked black down there.

I slid the dial through the stations. Jane took another blast from the atomizer.

"So who was the old guy who came into the gym?" I said.

"Raymond," Jane said. "Raymond has money, soldier."

Raymond, I thought. The name suited him. He resembled Raymond Massey. "What does Raymond with the money do?" I said.

"Defaces self-images," Jane said amiably. "Nobody's better."

"I meant--"

"He sells things. Started with junk yards, then real estate, then drugs. He's got a nice little mountain home outside Bogota. He calls me his little widow. He collects vintage cars and Sixteenth Century Venetian paintings. What else would you like to know?"

"Something juicy," I said, just for something to say.

She looked at me for a time. "Maybe I'll tell you about our dinner tonight," she said. "Tonight, we had the number-two table at Ma Maison, the two of us and this small Italian with a muscular neck. Over dinner, Raymond negotiated the cost of having the Italian unhook--that's what they called it--a painting by someone called Tintoretto from a museum in Turkey. All dinner long they haggled. The Italian's name was Elmo. Elmo kept saying, 'Elmo doesn't think so.' Once, when he left to take a phone call, Raymond told me that the negotiations were entering a tricky stage and that I should help try to put the wop at ease. That the painting was important to him. When Elmo returned, they began to talk in French. Elmo looked at me appraisingly. Nodded, finally. Shook Raymond's hand. You probably get the picture. The idea was that I grant Elmo the favor in the back seat of the Rolls. 'He's a small man,' Raymond said, if you can believe it. 'There'll be plenty of room.'"

"Jesus!" I said. Room where? I was thinking. Inside the car or inside her? Sexual ambiguities throw me.

"Afterward, I felt numb," Jane was saying. "I told Raymond that. I told him I couldn't respect either of us anymore. That I wasn't going to see him again. That's what the argument in front of the gym was about. I couldn't wait to sweat the feeling out, shower it off."

I felt bad for her. But after a minute or so--I couldn't help it--I said, "So what was Raymond doing while you were in the back of the Rolls?"

"Watching."

I chased after the idea. "For somebody who might come by?"

"So he said. But whenever I looked up, he was looking in." Jane gave me a quick study. When she talked again, she sounded weary. "Well, true love doesn't come easy," she said. "Fact, nothing comes easy." She leaned forward, tuned up the radio, fell silent.

•

After the derby, the Dodge sat for a year before Em started rebuilding it. She had the frame straightened by a mechanic she knew, a girlfriend took off the top with a cutting torch, and Em herself began to pound, patch and fill. It was ragged work, but Pink Plush covers a multitude of sins. Friends came and helped, made a project of it. Em rode in it in the Doo-Dah Parade in Pasadena, Thanksgiving week. Driving her was a fully liveried chauffeur (she'd asked me to do that; I wasn't about to), and she had Dolores sitting regally up front, with sunglasses on. Em sat back on the deck behind the rear seat, wearing a crinoline prom gown and striking cheesy poses. She was pretty good. I ran alongside and fiddled with the thermostat every 50 yards or so to keep it from boiling over. We were behind a Yard-Vac drill team, and they were pretty good, too.

I mentioned some of this to the widow Jane, except I referred to Em as "this friend of mine."

After a time, the widow said, "This friend of yours being your wife?"

"We're separated," I said.

"But not divorced."

"Right."

Jane didn't seem to mind. "Sometimes that's worse," she said.

On the highway, a mouse, in confusion, scuttered first out of our lane, then back into it. Froze. Looked up as we bore down. Afterward, I checked the rearview. Nothing but dark roadway.

Dolores, who'd raised her head when I decelerated, abruptly slapped her head back down to Jane's lap when I resumed speed. Jane started to smooth her hand over Dolores' long ears. Dolores writhed with doggy pleasure.

"Didn't know Dobermans could be so sweet," Jane said. "I'm glad you didn't crop the ears. She looks nicer lop-eared."

Dolores is a sentimental brunette, a shameless seeker of affection and comfort, something people have a hard time squaring with their Doberman notions.

I said, "Em and I were arguing one time. Loud and long, one of those. Finally, Dolores clapped her paws to her ears the way dogs do in cartoons. Like this"--and here I steadied the wheel with my knee and put my hands over my ears and rolled my eyes. "Anyhow, Em stopped yelling midsentence and said, 'You know, Dolores definitely has a sense of humor.' I said I couldn't go that far. I said droll was as far as I could go." I grinned at Jane. "I guess I wasn't ready to quit arguing yet."

Jane laughed. It was a salty laugh. One was gone and you wanted another. I told her a story about a high school buddy of mine named Oops Lucas. The story was A Visit to Tuckenroll. It was about a sexual excursion south of the border. Jane laughed at all the right places. I was feeling just excellent. "Your turn," I said.

Jane told a story about her cats, Vera, Chuck and Dave. Before her husband's death, Jane said, they had lived in an old house in the center of an avocado grove. When it came to avocados, the cats were a model of cooperative action. In the dead of night, Vera, the calico, would knock them from the tree; Dave, the one with the glossy coat, liked to chew a hole in the skin and eat the meat; and Chuck, the dullard with the enormous mouth, would carry the pit indoors, trot to the head of the uncovered wooden stairs and roll it down--thunk! thunk!--again and again, until Jane's husband got up and heaved it out the window. This may not seem funny or sad now, but the way she told it, it was both.

Jane took a deep breath. "Sage," she said dreamily and became quiet. She was staring out there at the desert. It was July. The kind of middle-of-the-night heat that could take you other places. I imagined it was taking Jane back to a snug home with a healthy husband in it, and it seemed suddenly possible that her beauty was not merely external. That it extended inward. Was taprooted to a good soul.

Dolores needed to pee. We'd already turned onto 111 when she began to whimper. I pulled off near the Whitewater, where I'd fished once with Oops Lucas, the buddy I mentioned.

Dolores peed and shat, waded in the water, rolled in the sand, a happy dog. She trotted off into darkness.

"Scorpions out there!" Jane sang out. I smiled at Jane. "Not tonight, there aren't," I said quietly. Things seemed too dreamy for scorpions.

On the warm, fuzzy hood, we were sitting close enough to touch. When she shifted her legs, I could hear the whish of those white stockings crossing. The air moved gently and there was a chorus of frogs and the riffling of water. I hummed along.

"So define your wife," Jane said out of nowhere. "Sketch me a sketch."

I didn't collect my thoughts. I just started. "Well, she's red-haired," I said, "head to toe, A to Z, and I'm queer for natural redheads. Our first kiss was a monster kiss. It went on awhile. We peeled down and made love without breaking contact. We were more alike then. She was--is--a legal secretary, worked like an army ant in poverty law. Drafting petitions, slapping actions, exacting justice. I took up whatever came easy. One day, she found out I'd joined an upscale Presbyterian church for business contacts, and in front of friends--as if, in fact, I wasn't there--she said, 'Harry's gone. Lost. One more good man folded into the batter.'"

"I don't see what's so bad about making Botts dots," the widow said and took from her bag a straw, cut diagonally, a safety razor and a mirror, onto which she began to tap the atomizer's last contents. She offered and I declined.

Dolores emerged from the darkness, made sure we were there, loped off again.

"Em left me," I said, "not vice versa. Came to me on a Saturday afternoon and said she needed time to look over the old life circumstances. But that it definitely wasn't curtains for us."

I stopped talking. I didn't feel like it anymore. It was OK, though, because Jane did. She was rattling on. One thing I remember is her claiming that Poison Ivy, one of The Coasters' big hits, was about V.D. After that, she got into Vee-Jay records and I drifted a little. Somewhere along the line, I asked her to repeat something I thought I'd heard her say.

"To a certain extent," she said, "I am not a widow."

"I've never heard of being partially widowed," I said. "How do you do that?"

Her husband, it turned out, was alive but not well. Besides living in an avocado grove, he'd been a Yalie, a pilot, a hero; a sailor, skier and rock-climber, which was how he'd been injured. Jane said, "His problem is paraplegia," a funny way of putting it, I thought. She was telling me about the accident. Accidents put me in mind of insurance. I was wondering who the carrier was and was about to ask when Jane let it be known that her husband was at the Mayo Clinic for experimental therapy. She brought out a photograph I couldn't make out. I turned on the headlights and held the picture in front. It was of a man, evidently her husband, leaning forward from a wheelchair, grinning. His outstretched hands held the corner of a building. Attendants stood by. They were grinning, too. On the back, in handwriting, it said, Your Hubby Holding The Mayo!

I flipped the photograph over and studied him in this new light. Decent, I thought. The kind of guy you might like passing time with in the neighborhood bar. I handed the picture back. Looked off. On the opposite riverbank, staring back, caught in the headlights, was the eyeshine of something. A rat or an enormous lizard or maybe something else altogether. It gave me the willies. I whistled in Dolores. We all climbed into the car.

When we were back on the road, Jane said, "His name is John."

I just drove. Kept my eye on the line. Finally, I said, "What does husband John think you're doing tonight?"

"Working at Lawry's, slinging cocktails. I used to."

"Before Raymond?"

Jane nodded.

"And what if husband John called Lawry's and asked for Jane?"

"He wouldn't."

Trust is interesting. Like hope, it's one of the things on which double crosses depend. Without trust and hope, we'd have far fewer double crosses, but it wouldn't be a million laughs. I mentioned some of this to Jane. She seemed to think I was pointing a finger. She said, "OK, hot-shot, let's hear your spiel on honor."

I saw her point. There wasn't much I could say, wheeling down the highway, en route to Palm Springs, where I hoped to have doings with an invalid's wife. I decided that honor was changing shape.

•

Jane's bungalow was to the rear of the others, with a private entrance. It was furnished for permanent, not transient, residence--books, plants, stereo; note board by the telephone. Doors led elsewhere. On a pad in a rocker, two cats slept. "That's Vera and Chuck," Jane said. "Dave expired." It was because of the cats that Dolores stayed in the car.

Jane went about the room, cuing up music, drawing curtains, adjusting the A.C. She didn't turn the lights off. We sat down on the edge of the bed. She unsnapped one of those white stockings, rolled it off her leg and onto her arm, slid the stockinged hand inside my shirt. Things began to happen.

I didn't close my eyes. On one wall was an enormous mirror in which we could see ourselves reflected. It was as if Jane were performing for me in that mirror. She made a slow production of her clothes' coming off. Struck attitudes. We didn't kiss. Her looks got hungrier, crueler, like she was going to devour me and enjoy doing it. There was nothing gentle about it. She knew what she wanted and seemed to like watching herself get it. Me, too, in a remote way. It was vivid, but not since the visit to Tuckenroll with Oops had I felt such distance. Tuckenroll was our joke name for Tijuana. Oops'd heard that The Blue Fox was closing and wanted to see the deal before it did. It was your standard donkey routine. The donkey did a big woman, then a small one. The place was roaring. It was tawdry, but it wasn't tedious.

Quiet, Jane wasn't.

And then, eventually, she was. She smiled. Looked human again. Let me know it was my turn. Took a handful of her long hair and teased it under my foot, across my ankle, up the leg. I closed my eyes. On the reel-to-reel, a crooning sax took over. We were alone, me and this woman who was less and less Jane. These were more and more Em's arms and breasts and body, and the hair washing over me felt like Em's red hair, and this was Em's voice in my ear, saying so precisely what I wanted to hear that a voice that didn't sound like mine murmured her name, and she was gone.

There was then this silence. Finally--she was staring at the ceiling--Jane said, "So how you feeling?"

"Good," I said. "Gooder than good." I lay there trying to believe it. Honor was changing, all right, but not fast enough.

The silence deepened. Got eerie. That much I began to feel.

Jane turned toward me, propped on her elbow. "Look," she said, "I'm glad I ran into you tonight." Something soft came and went in her face, as if she were having to smuggle it. Then--and it took a long moment for this to sink in--she turned off every light in the room from a single switch at her side of the bed.

It would be hard to imagine a deeper darkness. Within it, the air conditioner still hummed, the sax still crooned.

Behind us, a door quietly opened.

A tall human form slowly crossed the room and, before slipping out the front door, said, "Good night, Miss Jane."

Raymond.

Jane and I lay perfectly still.

"This Raymond's place?" I said finally.

Jane said it was, and what about it? We just lay there in the dark. I pictured a lighted telephone booth I'd seen along the parkway. I stood and began to dress.

"You can stay here to sleep," she said. "Nobody said you couldn't." And then, "We'll be left alone."

I cinched my belt. My heart walloped. From my billfold I started counting the 50s onto the dresser. "Keep it," she said, but I didn't. I was getting out of there free and clear. Only I wasn't.

"And what about you, soldier?" Jane called after me. "What were you in it for, other than enriching my life?"

•

I went straight to the telephone booth. Dialed Em on my credit card. It was ringing. It rang and rang. Still ringing.

"Hello?"

She's there. I could see her. Standing barefooted. Her red hair touching the Kings hockey shirt she always sleeps in.

"Em?" I said.

"Where are you?" Sleepily.

"Palm Springs. We can be there in two hours. We need to see you. Dolores and I."

Em wasn't jumping at this opportunity. "It's four A.M.," she said. There was something hidden in her voice. "Why now? Why this morning?"

"Because it's important to me," I said, "and because why not?"

She hesitated. "Well, for one thing, this new dog I've got--he's very territorial. He's a champ until another dog crosses the threshold; then he just loses it."

A new dog? Into whose ear she would whisper? Who she would accuse of having a sense of humor? Who would snarl at Dolores?

I heard Em on the telephone say, "His name's Chester."

I couldn't help it; I was dying to know what he looked like. "Limp?" I said. I was thinking of the gimp on Gunsmoke.

"No, no. Cheshire. He comes and goes."

What? I scrambled along behind. I heard her say, "There's something else." A moment passed. "Some body else, actually." Another moment. "He's here now."

I didn't know what to say. I said, "Dolores is right here. Say hello to Dolores."

I held the receiver to her ear. Her nubby tail was wagging, then it wasn't, so I knew Em wasn't talking anymore.

I put the receiver gently down. Walked toward the arroyo behind the bungalows. Stared off. I could see that something had happened. That while I'd thought I'd been simply driving a hot number from L.A. to Palm Springs, I hadn't been. I'd been driving out of one life and into another. Leaving the redhead behind for good, forever, for always.

Along the parkway behind me, a line of sprinklers started up, the shush-shush-shushing of Rainbirds. When they stopped, others farther off kicked in. Otherwise, it was quiet. No cars in the distance. No planes overhead. The mountains just black silhouettes.

Dolores began to whimper for no apparent reason, and when it grew insistent, I followed her gaze to something moving at the fringes of my visibility. Dolores jacked her whimper up to a whine, cowed close to my feet. There, coming into view, trotting warily, looking hangdog, was a single coyote. I looked at Dolores. Her eyes were enormous.

The coyote lapped water from the parkway gutter, glanced up, lapped some more. I didn't mind him, even if Dolores did. He was making survival a creative act. When he'd quenched his thirst, he gave us his direct look. Just stared. Such was the shape of his long snout that I thought I could see him grinning.

Behind the black mountains, I noticed, the sky was beginning to lighten, a vast gray with a single streak of red. When I looked again, the coyote had vanished. Dolores, all courage now, sashayed about chestily, as if taking personal responsibility for driving the riffraff off. I found myself smiling.

"¡Caramba!" I said. I said it saltily. It was a salty world. Like peanuts. You get one day, you want another. I headed for the car. Dolores ambled alongside. We were going. We weren't going great guns, but we were going.

"A smile sneaked across her face. 'You or the dog have to be at work in the morning?'"