“Get your nasty paw off my leg,” the girl said flatly. She picked up his pinkie finger and craned his hand up and to the side. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said under her breath, letting go.
Jeb ignored her. He swayed his head in painful reverie. “Oh, my sweet Betty Ann. She left a closet full of clothes, too. Great dresser,” he said. “Real style. And you know me, so sentimental, I couldn’t part with those nice dresses. I always thought maybe one day someone would have a use for them. Like you, for instance. Hey!” In a comic pantomime, he exhaled as though struck by lightning, sticking his arms out in front of him and letting his head loll and his tongue dangle from his mouth. “Here’s an idea,” he said. His face brightened. “Do you like old things? Vintage, as they say? I’ve got skirts, tops, and the dresses. Shoes too. You’re welcome to try anything on. Just up the stairs.” The fleshy wrinkles around his mouth deepened as he grinned.
The girl looked at her drink. “If the kid isn’t coming, I should just go home.”
“But you’ve only just arrived.” Jeb opened his hands, flittered his fingers. He reached across her lap for the Kenny May, filled both glasses, although neither was empty. Outside, the storm paused for a minute. They sat listening, waiting to see if it was really over. Then the rain started up again.
“I don’t believe you ever had a wife,” the girl said after a while. “And this whiskey tastes funny.” She set her glass on the coaster. “It tastes cheap,” she said.
“Lie down for a bit,” Jeb said, not getting up off the couch. “Take a load off. Stretch out if you like. Mi casa es su casa. I know a drop of Spanish. And French. Voulez-vous? Comment ?a va?”
The girl yawned and shook her head. “I’m not lying down with you,” she said.
“But these dresses,” Jeb said. “They’d fit you perfectly. Let me bring one down so you can see it. My wife was quite the fashion plate. And just your size. Shall I bring one down? It’d be such a pity to throw them all away. You can come up and look through them yourself, if you like.”
“No, thanks,” the girl said. She was only pretending to be bored, it seemed, fingering the lid of Jeb’s cigar box.
“It’s all just sitting there, waiting to be revived,” Jeb said. “Take whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.” A bolt of lightning flooded the room with pale blue light.
“If I wanted to be fooled into your bedroom, you wouldn’t have to ask twice,” the girl replied. “I already told you, I see your game.”
Jeb looked up at the ceiling. The loose, spotted skin of his throat flapped as he ground his jaws. “So you’re not interested,” he said, crossing his arms. “You’ve gone and changed your mind.”
“Changed my mind?”
“I was only trying to be courteous, neighborly. And here you come, wanting to be comforted.”
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” the girl said sarcastically. Her mismatched eyes crinkled in derision, Jeb thought.
“You’re lucky I’m not a creep,” he continued. “I could do anything I wanted to you, you know. A young girl, drunk on my couch. You should be more careful. My wife—” Jeb gasped suddenly, dabbing pretentiously at invisible tears. “God bless her soul. She was a good woman. An honest woman. No tease or hussy like you find nowadays.” He stared down at the girl’s bare feet on the hardwood floor and licked his lips. Still the girl did not get up.
“I’m not feeling well,” Jeb said, leaning back against the couch and closing his eyes. The girl turned and moved closer. The scent of coconut made him queasy. The hand she placed on Jeb’s bony shoulder was warm and damp through his thin T-shirt. He froze. He felt her weight shift on the couch, heard the springs whine, and then she was on him, straddling him,her breasts shoved up against his chin. Jeb could barely breathe.
“Is this what you were hoping for?” she asked, watching his face for his reaction.
Jeb kept his eyes shut, licked his lips again. The girl could smell the stink of his breath, like a sick cat’s. She sniffed his mouth, wincing happily. Their faces were only a few inches apart. “I was hoping . . .” Jeb began to say. The load of her body against him ground at his bones. He felt himself blush, harden. He lifted his hands.
The girl just laughed and hopped off him before he could touch her. Her dress had been hiked up in the maneuver. Jeb watched her thighs tremble with the impact of each step she took across the living room floor. In the hall she laughed to herself some more, put her boots on, and whipped her raincoat off the rack.
“Let me see you to your door,” Jeb called out. But she was already gone.
An hour later, the nephew called again. “My whole damn building lost power,” he complained. “I can’t even watch TV.”
“You could have spent the night here,” Jeb chided him. “I had a fine time with the neighbor girl without you. But I don’t think you’d like her much. Sort of a dud, if you ask me. A fish in a bucket, as they say. No fun for the hunt.”
“I’ve got other girls,” the nephew said and hung up.
In the morning, pale mist filled the air like smoke. The girl’s house was obscured by the fog. Jeb awoke on the couch, got the Kenny May, and assumed his position in the basement once more. A small drop of water trickled from the crumbling concrete wall down to the floor. He drank. All he heard from the girl’s house was drawers and cabinets opening and shutting, the faucet running, and then her radio dial crackling up and down, landing finally on bright, snappy pop songs. She listened to one after another, singing merrily along as though she were completely innocent, as though nothing at all had happened.
? ? ?
Days passed. Jeb spent them sitting at his kitchen window. He watched the girl carry cans of paint into her house, smoke cigarettes on the front steps, pick up debris from the yard, drag bags of trash to the curb. Her figure appeared now and then through the wispy drapes of her bedroom when she opened or shut the window. The mail came. The sun rose and fell. Jeb neglected the dead leaves that had blown from the girl’s yard into his. He didn’t want the girl to see him out there raking. She was a tramp, a tease, nobody worth his time, he told himself. He read the Sunday paper and fried his bacon while the girl painted and cleaned and hammered at her walls. Despite his neighborly instincts, he refrained from going over to offer his help or counsel.
“She’s a plain Jane” is what he told his nephew when he came over for breakfast. “No substance, no depth. Full of herself for no good reason.”