No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  I expect to discover Libby missing, maybe off somewhere having an affair, or doing something to punish me for being a lousy husband, or for sending her to Florida while I vacationed on Orcas Island, or for letting our son drown.

  But here she is, in the kitchen, putting away groceries – and the very domesticity of this makes me feel ashamed about my doubting her.

  Two shopping bags of food sit on the kitchen table, waiting to be unpacked. One overflows with fresh corn, husks trailing brown silk over the edge of the bag. The other has a folded newspaper, The News-Press, peeking over the rim.

  I slap my car keys on the table and put down my briefcase. Libby glances up briefly, then goes back to arranging the contents of the kitchen cupboard. ‘How did it go?’ she asks the cupboard.

  ‘Uneventful.’

  She doesn’t come over to kiss me, I notice, or to say hello. But at least she’s talking.

  I sit down behind the shopping bags. ‘There was an incident,’ I say.

  That’s her cue to ask something like, ‘Oh yeah? What kind of incident?’ – but she doesn’t. I wait. Finally I say: ‘Yeah, so one guy pissed on the floor.’

  She looks up. ‘That’s a new one.’

  ‘Stood on top of his desk, and pulled out his dick, and started urinating in my direction.’

  ‘My God. What did you do?’

  ‘I backed up.’

  She laughs. I don’t tell her about Vanderbeek’s threats, or about how he claimed to know that money was being stolen from the company. That would just reopen old wounds – make her worry that I wasn’t sticking to the programme. The Protect-Tad-At-All-Costs Programme.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asks

  ‘David Paris.’

  ‘Which one is he?’

  ‘Marketing.’

  ‘Oh, Marketing,’ she says, knowingly. She takes the newspaper from the grocery bag and throws it on the table in front of me. She begins unloading the bag, lifting cans and Tetra Paks. Two cans of Del Monte peas. One box of Swanson low-fat vegetable broth. One pack of Nature’s Goodness aged tofu. I wonder absently if she has invited the Dalai Lama for dinner.

  ‘Don’t you have some sort of theory about Marketing VPs?’ she says, as she tucks the tofu into the fridge. ‘That they’re the most unstable people in the company?’

  ‘That was my old theory. I have a new theory about Marketing VPs. That they have the biggest cocks in the company.’

  ‘You’re disgusting.’

  ‘I didn’t piss on the carpet, baby.’

  My gaze falls on the newspaper in front of me. It’s numbingly local: an article about the Lee County school-board election, a full-colour furniture ad offering a no-cash-down living-room set, and a handful of wire stories. But a headline just above the fold catches my eye. ‘Bank Executive, 36, Injured in Crash, Dies.’

  I pick up the paper.

  Stanley Pontin, Chief Technology Officer for Old Dominion Bank, headquartered in Tampa, died of injuries sustained in a car crash that occurred last Thursday morning. Pontin’s 2008 Ford Mustang ran off the road on July 23 at approximately 2 a.m. Pontin was found in his car, in a ravine eight miles from his home. The accident left him paralysed and brain dead, his wife, Nadia Pontin, reported.

  Police are investigating whether drugs or alcohol played a part in the crash. Pontin called 911 from his car shortly before the accident, and reported that his automobile brakes were not functioning, and requested police assistance. Toxicology reports are due to be released on Friday morning.

  ‘That’s disturbing,’ I say.

  I remember that strange phone call with Sandy Golden – how he agreed to do business with us, even though Tao’s software failed during our demonstration; and the way he asked that odd question after agreeing to the deal: ‘So we’re square?’

  From the dates in the newspaper article, he called me a few hours after Stan Pontin’s accident.

  ‘What does it say?’ Libby asks. She is standing behind me, looking over my shoulder to see which article has caught my attention.

  I tap the paper. ‘He was a guy I met recently. He died.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘Young kid. I was just sitting across the table from him, just last week.’

  Her eyes scan the article. ‘Drunk driving,’ she says. Which means: It’s his fault. ‘A shame.’

  ‘Yeah.’ But I don’t know a lot of drunk drivers who make the effort to dial the police on their cellphone, or to report malfunctioning brakes.

  My cellphone rings. I take it out of my pocket and glance at the Caller ID. PERK STILL ATTNY. Pete Bland’s law firm.

  I answer and Pete says, ‘So, how did the lay-offs go?’

  ‘Fine. No problems.’

  ‘We’re still on for tonight? Six o’clock?’

  Damn. I forgot about this. Earlier in the week, I received a phone call from Pete Bland’s secretary, scheduling tonight’s dinner. I suppose the idea was that Pete would cheer me up after a dreadful day firing half the company. A nice gesture, but the truth is that I don’t feel particularly dreadful. Firing people comes with my job. You develop a thick skin. And also, I recognize in Pete’s invitation a cynical motive too: his desire to bond with a client, to make sure Perkins is retained as law firm, even during a period of cost-cutting.

  But still. I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house.

  Pete says: ‘I got us reservations at the Gator Hut. We’re bringing our wives, right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I better check with Libby.’

  I look up at my wife. I make a point not to cover the phone, so that anything she says can be heard by Pete. ‘Want to go out to dinner with my lawyer, Pete Bland, and his wife?’ I say very loudly.

  Her sour face tells me that there is nothing in the world she would like less to do. But she has always been a good corporate wife, always willing to take one for the team. She fills her voice with cheer and says airily, ‘That sounds wonderful!’ The effect is slightly diminished however when she pantomimes putting a finger down her throat and gagging.

  Into the phone, I say: ‘Libby says it sounds wonderful. We’re on.’

  The Gator Hut is a South-west Florida Tradition.

  I know this – not because I was born in South-west Florida, nor even because I have spent two weeks here. I know this because the sign above the restaurant proclaims it: ‘The Gator Hut – A South-west Florida Tradition’. Ours is the only country in the world where you can invent your own history, by painting it on a billboard.

  The Gator Hut is on the other side of the river – the redneck side – in North Fort Myers, about as far east as you can go before you start being glad you’re not black. You take I-75 to Bayshore, then follow the signs to a gravel road, and then follow more signs, the gravel beneath your tyres growing progressively finer, until at last it ends up as dirt. Then you park next to the river, at the end of a long driveway. That’s where you find the Gator Hut. The restaurant is a squat wooden box, cantilevered over the water, nestled under a canopy of live oaks draped with Spanish moss.

  Libby and I park the Jeep. The parking lot is fifty yards from the restaurant. We walk past a small pond surrounded by chain link. A few onlookers stare through the fence.

  I follow their gaze. The pond is shallow and muddy. In the centre is a cement island, twelve foot square, atop which sit five alligators, warming their bellies on concrete. The gators stare lazily at me and Libby. A sign on the fence says, ‘Feed the Gators – Meat Provided – $5’.

  Nearby, a teenage girl in a ‘Gator Hut’ T-shirt sits on an ice chest, watching us as listlessly as the gators.

  ‘Want to feed the gators?’ I ask Libby.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Meat provided,’ I try, enticingly.

  ‘Whose meat?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I turn to the teenage girl. ‘Whose meat?’

  ‘Cow,’ she says, chewing her gum morosely.

  I hand her five bucks. She reaches into the
cooler and gives me a package wrapped in newspaper. ‘Y’all watch your fingers, now.’

  We stand at the perimeter of the fence, next to a family of four – a mother, father, two kids – each one plumper than the next, like little redneck Matryoshka dolls. The kids are poking their fingers through the fence, dropping balls of raw hamburger onto the ground. But the alligators remain perfectly still, resting on their cement island a dozen yards away, staring at the meat with cold reptilian disinterest. Either they have already been sated by dozens of pounds of hamburger, or they are more intrigued by the two porcine children just beyond their reach, and are biding their time.

  ‘Not very active, are they?’ I say, to the father.

  ‘Not yet, but when gators move, they move fast. Most vicious animals on earth.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I turn to Libby. ‘Here you go, baby.’ I open the newspaper and hand her a ball of raw meat.

  She looks disgusted. ‘You’ll get salmonella from that.’

  ‘I’m not eating it. It’s for the gators.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to wash your hands,’ she says.

  ‘If I don’t do it after defecating,’ I explain, ‘I certainly won’t do it after feeding alligators.’

  I note to myself that Libby isn’t much fun these days – and hasn’t been in a few years, come to think of it. So I give up on her and decide to feed the animals myself. I push a large chunk of raw hamburger through the chain-link fence, watching it extrude like Play-Doh.

  The meat hits the ground. The suddenness of the gators’ movement startles me. Four dive off their concrete island, disappear into the water, and then reappear, just feet from me, on the other side of the fence. They fight for the hamburger, whipping their tails, snapping their jaws. I hear the clack of gator enamel when they bite. When I look at the spot where the meat landed, it is gone.

  ‘You see that, Dad?’ the little fat boy shouts, excitedly.

  ‘Yup,’ the father says, not sounding impressed.

  I hand my remaining stash of hamburger to the little boy. ‘Here you go,’ I say. With great solemnity I add, ‘Now, I want you to share this raw meat with your sister.’

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ the boy says.

  Libby and I leave them, and go into the Gator Hut to find Pete Bland and his wife. Inside, I do as Libby demands, and wash my hands at the bathroom sink. When I return to the lobby, I see Pete Bland standing near the door, with his arm around the waist of a stunning blonde.

  My eyes meet Pete’s. He waves. I take Libby’s hand and guide her to my lawyer and the blonde.

  Pete is wearing jeans and a polo shirt. He looks even younger than I remember, now that he’s not wearing a suit. His wife seems younger still – maybe not quite thirty.

  ‘Perfect timing,’ Pete says. ‘Jim, this is my wife, Karen.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I say, making a point to keep my eyes on her face. Not easy, given the body it’s attached to.

  ‘And you. I’ve heard a lot about you,’ Karen says, offering her hand. She has a Southern accent – genteel, charming – which I place somewhere between Savannah and Charleston.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I’m the sucker who took the job at Tao.’

  She laughs. ‘That is exactly what Pete told me about you!’

  I introduce Libby, who responds with a grim smile and tepid handshakes, as if we’re meeting in a funeral director’s office. We go out to the veranda, where we find a table overlooking the river. There is a gaping round hole cut into the centre of the table, under which sits a garbage can.

  ‘That’s for the claws,’ Pete explains, as we take our seats. ‘Just pump and dump.’

  ‘Funny,’ I say. ‘That was my nickname in high school.’

  When the waitress comes, Pete, Libby, and Karen order a round of beers. I ask for an iced tea. Pete glances at me. ‘Trying to cut back,’ I explain.

  ‘I hear you,’ Pete says. But now he knows. I know that he knows.

  Everyone orders the all-you-can-eat crab legs, and soon they arrive, steaming hot, overflowing their wooden serving bowls, like giant alien insect legs.

  I am surprised by my own hunger. I crack the claws apart, ravenously, dig inside the shells with a flimsy plastic fork. Working on my second claw, my fork snaps in half. No matter – I keep at it with the remaining half-fork, wielding the broken tool like a shattered prison shiv. I splash meat into melted butter, swallow it whole. Ten thousand years of human civilization slough away, as I find myself sucking arthropod joints and muttering to myself, ‘Damn good, damn good,’ over and over.

  I crack a claw, sending salt water across the table into Karen’s eye.

  ‘Ouch,’ she says, winking.

  ‘I think your wife is winking at me,’ I say to Pete.

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first man,’ he says calmly, sucking his claw. He takes a swig of beer.

  ‘‘What do you think?’ Pete asks.

  ‘Excellent,’ I say. ‘They’re excellent.’

  ‘Yeah, me and Karen come here a lot with Kyle and Ashley. Any excuse we can get.’

  ‘Kyle and Ashley?’ I ask.

  ‘Our children,’ Karen says. She beams. She has the face of an angel, and it glows at the mention of her kids. ‘They’re four and six.’

  ‘Thank god for babysitters,’ Pete mutters.

  ‘They don’t really eat crabs,’ Karen goes on. ‘But they love feeding the gators out front.’

  ‘Impressive creatures,’ I say. ‘The gators, I mean.’

  ‘What about you two?’ Karen asks. ‘Do you have children?’

  It’s a question that inevitably comes, and I suppose I should be ready for it, but nevertheless it always feels like a roundhouse punch.

  ‘No,’ I say, trying to keep my countenance as placid as a mountain lake. No sadness. No pain. ‘We don’t have any children.’

  I glance at Libby. She is staring at the table – seething, maybe – hating me, certainly – for what I did. For letting Cole drown. For getting high and leaving him in a bathtub.

  Pete senses something wrong – God bless him – and he tries to rescue me. ‘So anyway,’ he says, wiping butter from his lips with a crumpled napkin. ‘Tell me. How did you and Libby meet?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a very romantic story,’ I say, relieved to change the topic, even to one that involves my wife. I turn to her. ‘Why don’t you tell them, baby?’

  She looks at me, warily. ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘You first,’ I say.

  ‘You first,’ she replies.

  ‘All right,’ I say. This is not the first time that Libby has been sullen and uncommunicative in public. But it is strange that she is refusing – utterly refusing – to tell the story about how we met. As if she wants to erase me from her memory. Or maybe already has. ‘Libby was my waitress,’ I say.

  Karen laughs and claps her greasy hands together. ‘That’s wonderful! What did she serve you, Jim?’

  ‘Scotch,’ I say, too happily. Even the name of the drink does something to me. ‘Actually, I can’t remember. I think it was scotch.’

  ‘If you can’t remember,’ Pete muses, ‘then it probably was.’

  ‘I asked her out four times,’ I say.

  ‘Four times!’ Karen says. ‘You were persistent!’

  ‘Yes I was. If nothing else, I am persistent. Try and try again.’ I turn to Libby. ‘Remember what you told me the first time I asked you out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘“Go to hell”,’ I say. ‘That’s what she told me, I mean.’

  Karen laughs politely. ‘If every woman answered as honestly as your wife, I do believe the human race would have died out, long ago.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Pete says. He’s still busy with his claws, though, sucking on them with great intensity, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t paying much attention to anything anyone is saying.

  ‘And the second time I asked Libby out,’ I continue, ‘she just laughed at me. “Very funny, Jimmy!” That’s what she sai
d. “Very funny!” Like I was joking.’

  ‘But you weren’t joking,’ Karen says.

  ‘No I wasn’t. But I had to convince her, apparently. Now, let me see. Attempt number three... ’ I look to the sky, theatrically, pretending to recall that incident long ago. ‘Attempt number three – she was at the bar, serving me a drink, and I whispered into her ear.’

  ‘And?’ Karen asks. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. She pretended not to hear me.’ I think about it. ‘Or maybe she really didn’t. The bar was very loud.’

  ‘That’s three,’ Karen says. ‘You said there were four tries. How did you finally succeed?’

  ‘The last one – well, that was magic.’ I turn again to Libby. ‘You want to tell them what happened? Where we finally met?’

  My wife looks at me with a curious expression. Not anger, exactly. Not even annoyance. Something like – could it be fear?

  She rises from her seat, too quickly, knocking over her bowl of butter, which spreads in a slow puddle across the table towards Karen and Pete.

  ‘Oh my,’ Karen says, backing away with good grace. To Libby: ‘Let me help you.’ She drops a stack of napkins on the spilled butter, then hands a clean one to Libby.

  ‘No,’ Libby says, too loudly. ‘I’m fine.’ She turns and leaves the table.

  The three of us watch her stalk away, in a half-run, across the patio, into the interior of the restaurant.

  Pete says, ‘She all right?’ He’s still got a claw in his mouth, and doesn’t look very concerned.

  ‘Maybe it’s just a lady’s emergency,’ Karen offers.

  ‘Oh,’ Pete says. ‘OK.’

  ‘I should go and find her,’ I say tepidly. Half wishing they would tell me not to.

  Just then another round of crab legs arrives.

  ‘Sit,’ Pete says. ‘Have a crab. Libby’s fine.’

  I love Pete Bland, I decide; and I will retain him as our company’s lawyer for as long as I can.

  The three of us continue eating, and Karen talks about how she met Pete – ‘at a corporate event’ – whatever that means – and how it was love at first sight.

  ‘Then she got to know me,’ Pete says. ‘And it was all downhill from there.’ Pete and Karen both burst into laughter at the same instant. Even their laughs sound weirdly alike – little rhythmic snorts through buttery noses. Karen playfully pushes her shoulder into Pete’s side.