Cape Cod Noir

VIVA REGINA

BY BEN GREENMAN

Woods Hole



I was minding my own business.

I was at home watching television.

The show was a police drama.

Everyone told me that it was fantastic.

I didn’t see the appeal.

The older detective was always shouting at the younger detective.

The younger detective was always champing at the bit to solve the cases quickly.

Their female sergeant wore her uniform comically tight.

The show was set in Boston and the accents were broad.

I couldn’t keep track of anyone’s names.

I had started with the sense that I would watch the entire hour and while I did my best I was soon overcome with fatigue and I started to lean back into the couch and consequently into sleep.

I was so tired I thought I would never be alert again.

I could not afford to be tired.

I had too much to do.

I needed to stay awake.

That was the first thing I had to do.

I went out for a walk.

My father always told me to walk when I was tired.

He said that no one ever fell asleep in the middle of a walk.

My father had died some years before in bed.

His words on sleep seemed especially important as a result.

Off I went into the night.

I walked up Bar Neck Road.

The night was quiet and I said so out loud.

When I had taken about thirty steps I turned and looked back at my house.

It was a riot of rectangles and triangles.

The upstairs windows looked like eyes.

My father had died in the right eye.

I turned away and went off down the road.

It was spring but it did not feel like spring.

I had been in Boston all winter long surrounded by trees but also by cold and I worried that I had lost the ability to relax into weather.

My reasons for going to Boston over the winter were stronger than my reasons for returning home in spring.

I had gone to forget a woman and I had returned because I thought I had forgotten her.

I had gone with another woman and I had returned when she was gone.

I made a right onto Albatross Road.

It was mild because it was spring but I shivered.

I still felt I was in winter and I said so out loud.

After the aquarium I turned onto Water Street and went up toward Luscombe Avenue.

The water was off to my right making the faintest noise as was the wind coming through the trees.

It was going right to left like a sentence being read in reverse.

The idea reminded me of the past and so I felt for my phone and called a woman.

She was not the same woman I had been seeing over the winter though they had the same name give or take.

One was named Gina and the other was named Regina.

Names were important in a situation like that.

I called.

This was the second thing I had to do.

She was home.

She was Regina.

I asked her if I could come over.

She said that would be nice.

She told me her husband was in Boston for the weekend.

I said that I hoped he was having a good weekend.

I vaguely remembered that he played in a band and I took a stab at the name.

One of those two things made her laugh.

She hung up the phone.

I went to her house up on School Street.

She opened the door before I knocked.

She was wearing a man’s dress shirt and women’s underwear.

She said she was psychic.

Then she said she wasn’t psychic somewhat apologetically.

She said that she had seen me out the window.

I told her that I knew she wasn’t psychic.

I told her that if she was really psychic she wouldn’t have gotten married to her husband.

She told me not to mention him.

I said okay but reminded her that he was in Boston.

I told her that if she was really psychic she wouldn’t have introduced me to Gina.

She told me not to mention her either.

I said okay but reminded her that Gina was in Maine.

I told her that everyone was so far away.

I told her that whoever was left should stick together.

I asked her if she wanted to take a walk.

She said that she was too tired.

She asked me if I wanted to come in.

I said that I would.

I went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.

Regina went to the couch and turned on the television.

The same cop show that I had been watching at home was still on.

There was a clock on a mantel over her.

It was an antique clock that was probably the most expensive thing in the house.

More than an hour had passed since the show started.

I expressed my confusion.

She said it was a two-hour season finale.

I didn’t say anything.

She said she loved the show more than life itself.

I didn’t say anything.

Once I had told her the same thing about herself.

At that time we were younger.

Back then she had a habit of wearing men’s underwear and no shirt.

We had watched many television shows and almost always ended up in the same pleased position.

I had pledged my love and she had responded with an identical pledge.

We had decided that she would do away with her husband and come to me.

In my mind I saw it all play out and in my mind it was glorious.

My love for her was a blinding light and admitting that to myself did not feel melodramatic in the least.

Shortly after that my love for her had turned into something else.

I was not sure what it had turned into exactly.

It had turned into something darker and more solid.

It had started to darken when she told me that she was not sure that she could leave her husband and had solidified when one evening she introduced me to Gina.

She had told me that the two of us would get along nicely.

We did not.

I was still thinking constantly of Regina.

I did not know how I would get through the winter without her.

I got through it with Gina in Boston and mostly in bed.

From the outside it might have looked a little bit like love.

When she left to go back to Maine I felt nothing.

I did not even have a twinge of sadness seeing her go.

I returned to Woods Hole in the spring and my heart started racing.

Regina and I sat and watched the show.

The younger detective was certain he knew where the killer was hiding.

The older detective had his head buried in a file.

The female sergeant kissed the younger detective in a stairwell.

The older detective drank too much and looked at himself reproachfully in the mirror.

The killer got a job mopping floors in the police station.

The female sergeant had a dream that the younger detective shot and killed the older detective.

I poured us more wine and moved closer to her on the couch.

I was no longer tired.

I told her that I was tired earlier but had been revived by the walk.

I told her that I had taken the walk when I had remembered my father’s advice.

She had known my father and at the mention of him she moved closer to me.

The outside of her thigh had a noticeable pulse that I always said was her leg’s heartbeat.

She always told me that if it was pulsing that much on the outside of her leg I should feel the inside.

I did for a moment during the commercial.

That was the third thing I had to do.

When the show came back on she asked me what I thought would happen.

I said that I thought that the female sergeant’s dream would come true.

She said no.

I was hoping she would say that she was not asking about the show.

I was hoping she would say that she was asking me what would happen with us.

I told her that.

She said no.

She said that the female sergeant had dreams every episode and they never came true.

She said they were supposed to be read as clues for future cases but that they had nothing to do with this episode’s case.

I asked if the female detective was psychic.

She said that’s what she meant by saying that her dreams were clues to future cases.

She told me to be quiet so we could watch the show.

A baby I did not recognize was rescued by a woman I did not recognize.

A man I did not recognize beat another man I did not recognize with a tire iron.

This elicited a gasp from Regina.

She said that the man might die.

I said that was too bad but that I would feel worse if I knew who he was.

A boy on a bicycle rode across the screen ringing his bicycle bell excitedly.

She asked me if it was that time already.

I told her I didn’t know what she meant.

She explained that ten minutes before the end of every show there was some kind of scene like this.

Once it was a tugboat blowing its foghorn.

Once it was a dog leaping right at the camera.

She told me that the last ten minutes were always a doozy and this was a way of reminding audiences to stop getting snacks or going to the bathroom or talking.

I said that was interesting.

Or talking she said.

The older detective died of a heart attack.

The younger detective came upon the killer as he strangled a woman with a scarf.

The younger detective shot and killed the killer.

The female sergeant wept at the older detective’s funeral as she held the hand of the younger detective.

The killer’s funeral was not shown.

The show ended.

I did not like it any more than I had at the beginning.

I turned to tell her that I didn’t see the appeal.

She was crying.

That prevented me from saying anything critical about the show.

I told her that my father had always told me that when I saw a woman crying I should do something about it.

She said she always liked my father.

She said that she was crying because she couldn’t see me anymore.

She said she thought this was the last time.

She was standing right beside the antique clock.

Her words on time seemed especially important as a result.

She unbuttoned her men’s dress shirt and pulled my hand inside it.

The touch of her skin created both pleasure and pain for me.

I withdrew my hand from both.

She said that she didn’t know how she would get through the summer without it.

I agreed that it was a great show and much better than I had expected.

She took me to the bedroom.

She took off the shirt and the underwear.

She was not talking about the show anymore but she was still crying.

She told me that she thought something big was about to happen.

She said that if she had a bicycle bell she would ring it.

I told her that maybe she was psychic after all.

She pulled my hand toward her.

I withdrew my hand again.

This time there was more pain in it for me than pleasure.

I walked around the room.

I was so alert I thought I would never sleep again.

I found the shirt she had removed and wrapped one sleeve around each of my fists and placed the span of the shirt across her neck.

At first she was amused because she thought that I was making fun of the show.

Then she was excited because she thought that I was not.

Then she was terrified because she knew that I was not.

She tried to say my name and then her husband’s name and managed to say both in a sense which meant that she was saying neither.

She said my father’s name which I did not understand.

She said no.

Her right eye went blind and the left eye soon followed.

I lowered her onto the bed.

That was the fourth thing I had to do.

I took the shirt and went back through the living room collecting the wine bottle which was the only other thing I had touched with my bare fingers.

I went out onto the road.

The night felt warmer and I said so out loud.

After twenty steps or so I turned and looked back at Regina’s house.

The television was still on and its blue light flickered through the windows.

I turned back around and found a trash can and stuffed the bottle inside of it.

I found another trash can a half-block later and stuffed the shirt into it.

I went back up School Street just as I had come with nothing in my hands.

I drifted right and wondered what the sea and wind would sound like coming from my left.

I wondered if it would sound like a sentence being read forward.

Two policemen in a car passed by and gave a small wave and I gave an even smaller one.

I was minding my own business.