Do Unto Others

What are you talking about?” “Be at my house around ten tonight, and I’ll tell you,” she said. “No, Ruth, tell me now. I came all the way over here-” “So I could let you know how I felt. And see how you felt.” She laughed, sliding her palms along my back. “And you feel wonderful. This is just a warmup, darling. We need privacy.” She jerked her head toward the door, and I heard a faint murmur of voices beyond, talking about an IV drip. “Ten? Be there, Jordy, you won’t regret it.” She gave me a quick, decorous kiss. “Now I’m going to walk out. You walk out about a minute later. I don’t want my coworkers to gossip about me.” She turned and walked out, leaving me alone in the darkness. I stood there, counting to sixty, then walked out into the brightness of the hallway. Ruth stood at the far end of the hall at the nurses’ station, talking over a chart with a young nurse. I turned and walked the opposite way. I sat in my Blazer for a few minutes.

Ruth sure liked to dangle carrots in front of your face, hoping you’d take a bite. She knew from my response that I was attracted to her. I was, physically. But I didn’t care much for this secretiveness. If she thought it was alluring, she was wrong. I wiped her lipstick from my face with my handkerchief. I wasn’t sure that I would go see her at ten. I started up the engine, but I didn’t particularly feel like heading back to the library and seeing Candace. I didn’t feel guilty per se, but I wasn’t comfortable about talking to Candace right after I’d been kissing another woman. And I hadn’t even kissed Candace. Go figure. Instead of heading back to the library, I drove in the direction of Bob Don Goertz’s house. I’d meant to get back to see him, but I hadn’t had a chance. Seeing Ruth reminded me about the fight she claimed to have witnessed between Beta and Bob Don. I thought it was high time I found out a little more about that particular incident.

Odd the whims that take us, and forever change our lives.

13

I heard glass shatter as I walked up to the Goertzes’ front door.

The door was made of thick wood and beveled, frosted panes that you couldn’t see through. My first thought was that someone had dropped a glass in the kitchen, but my finger hesitated above the doorbell. I wasn’t even sure what I’d heard. I stepped back from the door and looked up at the sprawling colonial home. The car business didn’t seem to be hurting too badly, I thought. I put my head back to the door, leaning my forehead against it, strangely reluctant to ring the bell.

I heard voices raised, Bob Don’s among them, pleading. I pressed the button and the bell rang, echoing inside the home. I heard a shouted “No!” and stepped away from the door, thinking this was not the time for a social call. I’d made about three backward steps when the porch light snapped on and the door opened. It wasn’t just an entrance; it was a crutch. A woman I recognized from the framed photos in Bob Don’s office leaned against the door; she would have fallen if the door hadn’t been there. In the pictures in her husband’s office she looked like a typically meek, quiet small-town housewife. Now she looked like a street-worn harridan. The hair-sprayed halo in her pictures was gone; a lank length of graying dark hair hung past her shoulder. She was in a rumpled pink housecoat that looked as if she’d slept in it.

Her eyes, dulled as dusty marbles, blearily blinked and found me in the porch light. “Mrs. Goertz-” I began, ready to beat a hasty retreat. I wanted no part of a drunken scene. Sister was right; I could smell the whiskey on Gretchen Goertz like she’d bathed in it.

“Well, here you are. I know you. I know you.” Her voice sounded like a thumb scraping a dry, empty bottle. I couldn’t remember that I’d had the formal pleasure of meeting Mrs. Goertz; Lord knows she would have made an impression on pert’ near anybody. “Mrs. Goertz-” I tried again, taking another step back. “You come in here. You come in here and watch me kill him,” she rasped. I stopped moving backward. She swayed in the doorway like a snake and I decided to try charm. I’d talked a drunken high-school friend down from the water tower when I was a teenager; I could handle a wasted Gretchen Goertz. “You doing okay, Mrs. Goertz? You feeling all right?” I said in my most syrupy, friendly good-ol’-boy voice. “Fuck you,” she said in clear, ladylike enunciation. “I told you to come on in here and watch me kill him.”

“Now, you’re not wanting to kill anyone, are you, Mrs. Goertz?” I wheedled. God, no wonder Bob Don smoked heavy and kept a pint at work, if this was his domestic life. She was scaring me, and now I wondered what might happen to Bob Don if I didn’t check on him and get her sobered up. He hadn’t come to the door, and I didn’t think most men would let their wives hold drunken tete-a-tetes with the neighborhood.