When the Cicadas Retire

 

 

When the Cicadas Retire

 

            Eddie Parry stood facing the door. He leaned close to it to sense any motion or noise coming from the house inside. Quickly, he glanced at his watch. 9:30. It was dark enough already, a feeling like the summer should be over, but it was still hot, probably still over one hundred degrees. As his arm fell, his knuckles dragged and hit the doorbell.

            After the dim ring, Eddie heard the inside coming through quietly like the soft wafting winds on currents of humming grass heads. As the locks came undone, echoing through the hollow door from the inside out, he faced the peephole and smiled. He treated the smile in the same way he'd smile for a camera and less of the way someone might look with their face at a door's security peep.

            She used no caution as she swung the door open. The light came racing through the thin cloth of her clothes from the distant kitchen and hallway behind her. Her clothes glowed, and underneath them, but in no certain clarity, her dark body was a shadow like negative bones from an X-ray. “Eddie, hello,” she said.

            “Ilene,” Eddie said.

            “What's shaking?”

            “I was just by, you know, on my way home from work.”

            “Oh,” she said. “Hey, come in.” She opened the door wider as she made room for his passage.

            “Is, um, is your husband home?” he asked.

            “Stephen? No,” she said. “Not for hours.”

            “Oh,” Eddie said. He stood on the welcome mat and stared into the house, not at anything particular, just in. “Okay then,” he said.

            “Come in Eddie, you're letting out the cool air.”

            “Oh,” he said. He jumped, moved in. “Sorry.” She closed the door and walked away from it, leaving Eddie as she did. “It's just, I thought I'd come by and see him.”

            “He's the overnight tonight.”

            “Oh,” Eddie said. He slowly followed her into the house. The living room was the first room, the one that connected the house to the front door was lit only by the invading light from the hallway. Eddie watched Ilene as she walked away, as she walked into the hallway to the rear of the house. Alone in the living room, Eddie looked at the collection in the place. It was populated with old things: antique furniture and family heirlooms, not necessarily of their own. Despite the generosity of the furnishings, it was obviously not a place that either Ilene or Stephen spent much time. Any time that Eddie had come calling, either Stephen or Ilene, they always took him deeper into the house or the garden.

            “I think, um, well, he had come by,” Eddie raised his voice, pointed his head to see into the kitchen.

            “What?” she shouted back. She leaned on the tiled kitchen counter and faced him as he wandered into the brightly lit kitchen.

            “Stephen,” he said. “Had come over to my place.”

            “Is that right?”

            “I think so,” he said. “I'd been napping, you see, and I heard him talking to my wife.”

            “Is that right?” She moved to the stove and stared down into the lid of the tea kettle. She couldn't see Eddie, but knew where he was, close by, facing her.

            “Yeah he and my wife were talking.”

            “Oh?” she said.

            “I'd heard her, thought she was talking on the phone, it took a long time for me to hear him.”

            “Would you like some tea?” she asked.

            “Tea? What?”

            “I was going to have some tea,” she said. “To relax, you know?”

            In the quiet to ensue, Eddie heard the rumbling at the bottom of the tea kettle, the noise it made just as the boiling began, bubbles forming, and escaping, the time before steam built up to a scream. “Okay, yeah, sure.”

            “All I have to offer is peppermint.”

            “Peppermint is good,” he said.

            “So, Stephen was talking to Mary?”

            “Yeah, but they were both gone before I could get up.”

            “Oh,” she said. “How is Mary?” The kettle screamed. Ilene clanked the tea cups together as she lifted them from the cupboard. She knocked them together as she put them on the counter. “Well, you could ask him but he went to work.”

            “Right,” Eddie said.

            “The night desk man is out all month, he's foreign, I guess.”

            “Oh?” Eddie asked.

            “Yeah, so he had to go to Lebanon from some reason, a death, I think. I don't know.”  She filled the cups with hot water, pouring it in a controlled manner over the tea bags. “Some sort of family thing, I think. So, everyone at the hotel is pulling shifts at the desk.”

            “I see,” Eddie said.

            “Tonight is Stephen's night.”

            “Oh, well, I see.”

            “And Mary?” she asked. She handed Eddie the cup and then tilted her head toward the sliding glass door, and the garden beyond.

            “Oh,” Eddie said. “Yeah, she's at work too. She pulls five night shifts a month, you know, at the hospital.”

            “Wow,” she said. She pointed to a garden chair, something designed for New England, or at the very least for a relaxing lounge in the mountains of Vermont. The dark paint on the wood was certainly not a desert design. As Eddie put his tea on the chair's arm, he examined the seat for spiders. The wood was still warm from the ambient heat when he sat down. “That must make your relationship strained,” she said.

            “How's that?”

            “Just how she works nights, it's got to ruin the whole next day.”

            “Yeah,” Eddie began. “I guess.”

            “And not seeing each other at night,” she said. Ilene pulled a second chair closer to Eddie, she put another chair between them. As she sat, she used the third chair to lift her feet.

            “Oh, sure,” he said. “I guess we're not home together during the evenings much, anyhow. I still work.”

            “Yeah,” she said. She leaned back into the garden chair. She looked up, the mesquite tree above her was huge, much larger than it should have been. The nature of it, simply stated, a garden tree drinks heavily at the whim of the gardener. Wild trees develop slowly, deeper roots, stronger wood. As Ilene leaned back, stared up, Eddie looked at her, her body first, the thin cloth on her breasts, its looseness around her neck. His eyes moved jerkily under his brows as he looked at her lips, slightly parted above her chin. He hesitated on the bottom of her top teeth barely sticking out from the lips. Her body swelled with each breath. Her hair clung to her skin, she had to be sweaty, he thought, he was. It was so hot, even in the garden. She kept the sliding door slightly ajar, there was a small current of swamp cooler air spilling out of her house. It wasn't doing him any favors, he couldn't feel it, the hot garden air clung stagnantly around him. He watched her hair for a moment like a wisp around her head with only the first layer of her dirty blond hair stuck to her moist skin. The dark circles under her eyes suggested too many late nights, too many cigarettes, too much worry. The deepness of the dark skin should have been unattractive, and it probably would have been on anyone else, but as Eddie looked at her, he saw only the distance, wide open country, green country, like farms and rolling hills, and the vegetated slope moving to wide expanses of oceans.

            Suddenly, a level of discomfort settled on him. Eddie looked quickly up to the branches of the tree above them. “This is the biggest mesquite tree I've ever seen,” he said, stupidly.

            “Yeah, I love it.”

            “I can see how you would, I love it too,” he said. He continued to look up and saw only the lower branches, the undersides of leaves lit up from the house and garden lights. As he looked down, Eddie faced away from the house, over his left shoulder and looked through all the plants to the garden wall. The garden felt safe, secure to him. The walls were high enough to keep the Barrio Viejo separated from their conversation. The walls were high enough, and the gate strong enough to keep the desert out too. He looked from the top of the wall to the floor, the potted plants, the growing world of her design along the old stone pavement. He followed the stone's texture back to her, her chair, the soft cloth of her clothing resting on the floor, and then up the chair leg, to her leg, to her face again. Ilene, staring at him, suddenly smiled when their eyes met. “How was work?”

            “What?” he asked.

            “Work, you said you came from it.”

            “Oh,” he said. “It was fine.”

            “Still playing at Javalina's?”

            “Yeah, but the band has changed, we have a new singer, and I quit playing the Theremin.”

            “Really, I thought you were trying new things,” she said.

            “But, no one really got the Theremin,” he said. “So, I'm back on the sax.”

            “Oh, well, that's good, right?”

            “If the people in this town only got it.”

            “Not a big crowd at Javalina's?”

            “No,” he said. He touched the top of the tea cup and leaned back in the chair. As his head tilted back, he looked up again from his host, Ilene, and looked again into the lower levels of the mesquite tree.

            “Well, it's still summer time,” she said. “When the Snowbirds get here, I'm sure they'll be a larger crowd.”

            “I hope so.”

            “Besides, jazz just doesn't have the draw it used to have,” she said. “You know?”

            “I guess,” he said. “I don't know why.”

            “It's Tucson,” she said. She continued her stare at him. He continued looking up into the tree.

            “Yeah,” he agreed. Eddie looked down from the tree the same way he had before, choosing to look at the far garden wall, then the floor, then the legs of the chair before he looked again at her. He hesitated on her body for a moment, a moment long enough to be noticeable, before he looked into her face. “Oh,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

            “What?”

            “I should go, it's getting late.” He slid down to the front of the chair and quickly stood. The swiftness and sheer clumsiness of the movement upset the tea cup. It bounced only once. The second, and seemingly less forceful impact caused it to break into a dozen pieces. “Oh shit!” he shouted. “I'm so sorry.”

            “It's okay,” Ilene said. She slowly dismounted her chair, and walked to the accident site. “It was the last of a very old set.”

            “Don't tell me that,” he said.

            “There were six of them, it took nine years to break them all.” Ilene crouched beside Eddie as the two picked up the pieces together. He looked at her hands, she had been working, clearly, her fingers were rough, torn cuticles, dirty fingernails, calluses. He leaned closer to her, smelled her, something remotely like coconut and cigarettes.

            “I'm so sorry,” he said.

            “They were a wedding gift.”

            “That doesn't make it better,” he said. Ilene stood first, and then Eddie stood with a handful of the broken tea cup.

            She walked to the house, opening the door with an elbow. Eddie followed slowly. In the kitchen, she pulled out a trashcan from a closet and dropped the cup's pieces in one movement. She looked down at the broken ceramic in the trash as she kicked the can closer to Eddie. She looked at his hands and as his pieces hit the top of the trash, she gasped. “Eddie, holy shit, you cut yourself.”

            “What?” he said. “Wow,” he said as he looked at his hand.

            “Come, quick, let's get you cleaned up.” Grabbing his wrist she pulled him to the kitchen sink. Under the faucet, she rubbed the palm of his hand until the blood was gone. “It's a small puncture,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

            “No,” he said. He looked down through the bottoms of his eyes to the top of her head.

            “Thank goodness,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

            “I'm sorry for breaking your glass.” She grabbed a roll of paper towels with wet hands. Her hand prints were on the top of the roll.  Eddie, palm up, leaned the top of his hand on the faucet handle, the water shutting off with a hiss. “You don't have a water line cooler?” he asked.

            “No,” she said. She tore a towel off the roll and laid the partially wet towel on his hand. She held his hand with pressure. “Do you?”

            “Have to, this time of year,” he began. “The water is too hot, you know?”

            “Yeah, sometimes it seems like the cold water is hotter.” She pulled him away from the kitchen sink and looked into his palm as she slowly lifted the paper towel. “Well,” she said, “it didn't bleed much.”

            “No,” Eddie said. He leaned closer to her, maybe to smell her again, or just to be closer.

            “Did you just hear that?”

            “Hear what?” he asked.

            “The cicadas just stopped.”

            “What?”

            “The cicadas, they were so loud, and now they just stopped.”

            “I suppose they retired for the night,” he said. He moved his hand away from hers. As this happened, Eddie became acutely aware of the silence. Her hands, both of them, fell to her sides. Eddie grabbed the wounded hand with his free hand. “I should retire too,” he said.

            She walked away from the door as soon as she locked it. She wandered through the dim living room, into the kitchen and then to the garden beyond, turning out lights as she went. Back in her chair, she opened a bag of tobacco and began rolling a cigarette. She lit a candle first, then her cigarette. At some point, the cicadas began to sing again.

Anthony I Lacqua

After leaving his job at the sweatshop manufacturing decorative pillows, Anthony ILacqua became an out of print author of two books you’ve probably never read. He co-founded Umbrella Factory Magazine in 2009 and has remained the editor in chief since. His work has most recently appeared in MIDLVLMAG, Discretionary Love and Bulb Culture. Meet him here: https://anthonyilacqua.blogspot.com