I got out of the car. None of them looked up. The sound of the mower must have drowned everything out. I stood for a moment, watching Rex unfold one of his letters. He was wearing his Hobo Times hat. It was a couple of sizes too big and came down nearly to his eyes.
He stared at a letter for three or four seconds, looking more and more pissed off. He put it back in the envelope, then tore the envelope, not once or twice, but three times, and the third time it took real effort, his knobby old mitts trembling. When he tossed the shreds over his shoulder, they fluttered off in the general direction of the bushes.
The dog tried to scramble past me and I had to reach down and grab it. I held it to my chest, trudging across the grass. The little mutt fought me all the way and I was sure it was about to pee all over me.
Wheeling the mower around at the far end of the lawn, Ramona was the first to spot me. The lawn mower sputtered off. I raised a hand in greeting.
“Afternoon!”
Rex raised his head, squinting at me. Dranka turned, hose in hand, water splashing on the front steps. The corners of her mouth pulled down in a scowl. The yard felt enormous. The mutt nipped at my fingers and when I slapped it, the little creep yipped. Rex glanced at the two women, as if this had to be some sort of joke, but when he saw how teed off they were, he got the picture. A big grin spread across his face.
I held the dog out at arm’s length. “Got a present for you,” I said.
As I handed the puppy over, it squirmed free, tumbling onto Rex’s lap. Rex made an oohing sound, lurching forward to catch it before it fell to the ground. When he picked the dog up for inspection, the mutt gave him a lick on the nose. Rex was beaming like a twelve-year-old at Christmas.
“So what’s his name?” Rex said.
“I guess we’ll have to decide that,” I said.
Dranka tossed her hose into the shrubbery and strode across the lawn like a woman who meant business. Same with Ramona, pulling off her work gloves, her eyes narrowing like Lee Van Cleef in those Sergio Leone movies.
“When was this decided?” Dranka asked.
“I don’t think it was really decided,” I said. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. I was driving around and I saw this sign for the animal shelter and I remembered Rex saying how much he wanted a dog.”
The mutt tried to scramble up Rex’s chest, slobbering all over the old guy’s withered neck. Rex had his chin up, letting it. It was nearly enough to make a man gag.
“Is he housebroken?” Ramona asked. Arms folded, she and Dranka stood shoulder to shoulder behind Rex’s chair like a couple of bouncers.
“You know, I forgot to ask.” I’d only owned a dog once, back when our son was little and my ex-wife thought it would be cute for him to have a puppy. A white scrap of envelope danced across the lawn.
“I was not hired to clean up after animals.” Dranka’s voice rose. “I told Ramona this, I told you both . . .”
“I’m sure we could take it back,” Ramona said, “if it doesn’t work out.”
“Oh, we’re not sending him back,” Rex said.
He set the mutt down on the freshly mown grass. The dog seemed stunned at first, tilting its head, looking back at Rex, one ear cocked. It was as cute as hell, but I could tell from the way Dranka was staring at the dog, she would have drowned the little sucker in the lake if she’d had five minutes alone with it.
The dog gave a sharp bark and went tearing across the lawn. We all looked up. A young mother wheeled a little brat in a stroller down the sidewalk. A second kid, poking along behind, had toddled up on Rex’s yard.
The mutt was headed right toward him like it’d been shot out of a rocket. When the kid spotted the dog, his face lit up with delight. He clapped his hands together and opened his chubby little arms.
“Mommy, Mommy, look . . .”
Dranka sprinted to the rescue and Ramona was just a step behind. The mother had turned and was shouting something. God knows what the mutt’s intentions were—it was just a puppy, after all—but what it did was jump into the kid’s face and knock him on his keister.
The kid wailed as the dog scrambled all over him, barking and nipping at the kid’s Reading Rainbow T-shirt. All three women converged at once, like All-Pro linebackers zeroing in on a loose football. For several seconds I couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, it was just one big melee, but there were a lot of yips and whacks and fresh crying (the brat, abandoned in its stroller, had joined in on the chorus).
Dranka came out of the pile with the dog, holding it by the back of the neck and swatting its muzzle back and forth like a welterweight working out on the light bag. The mother rocked her weeping, red-faced boy in her arms. When Ramona tried to help—brushing off the kid, trying to push one of his shoes back on—the mother jerked the boy away, yelling something at Ramona that I couldn’t make out over all the bawling and yelping.
Neither Rex nor I had moved. I rubbed the back of my neck. “I hope I haven’t created a problem,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.
The kid, sucking on his thumb, stuck his other hand in the direction of the dog, trying to be friends, but the mutt, still struggling in Dranka’s arms, snapped at him, triggering a new round of wails. A neighbor pulled up in a car and got out to see if he could offer assistance. I covered my face with my hand, turning away. Water crept down the sidewalk.
“Maybe I should go turn off the hose,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Rex said. “Just bring that dog back here!” he shouted at Dranka. “Goddamn it, those women are going to get me sued.”
I went to the house and sidestepped through the potted plants, feeling pretty sorry for myself. Here you try to do something nice for somebody, and look what happens. As I bent down to turn off the faucet, I spied a scrap of torn envelope gleaming under some geraniums. I retrieved it. It wasn’t much, just a ragged piece of the return address.
TIVE AGENCY
BASH AVENUE
GO, IL
Over the next few weeks I saw a lot of Rex. Tuesday nights I’d go over to his place and we’d play three-handed hearts with Ramona. Sometimes I’d drop by in the afternoons and he’d be sitting in the living room with one of the students, marking up a manuscript, and we’d all have a nice chat. Whenever I was invited, I’d go along on his research jaunts, floating up a bayou where the pirate Lafitte had once stashed his loot, visiting old battle sites, or driving down to NASA, where the astronauts outfitted him in a spacesuit and let him float around in the pool in the neutral buoyancy room.
We were getting along like gangbusters. In the van he entertained us with his tales of being shot down by the Japanese and surviving three days in a lifeboat, taking peyote with some Comanche medicine man, negotiating safe passage through the Khyber Pass with Afghan warlords.
When people were around, we launched into our F. Horton Caldwell song and dance, with me pretending to be his assistant, and Rex got no end of pleasure out of it. I would make a great show of cutting up his meat or running back to the van to get his sun hat. Everything was, “Mr. Schoeninger, let me unwrap that stick of gum for you,” or “Hold on, Mr. Schoeninger, I’ll get that door.”
For Rex to have buried the hatchet after so many years was a triumph, a dream come true, and he was very proud of himself. Not that he was a saint. During our card games, there was no mistaking the deep pleasure he took in laying the queen of spades on me. Out of the blue, he’d come up with these zingers. “So, Mohle, you’re the stylist here. Tell me this. What do you think those people mean when they say somebody writes beautifully? As far as I can tell, basically it means that they use words like swan and glass a lot.”
It was weird. Why the hell would Rex be going to all this trouble? When you were at death’s door, why would you invite your oldest enemy down, not just for a couple of days, but for nearly four months? And pay him a king’s ransom, to boot?
All I could figure was that whatever had happened betwee
n them must have cut awfully deep. And my guess was, it wasn’t just the terrible things they had said to one another, but the lawsuit and all that came after.
Let’s face it. Rex had pretty much busted the guy financially and every other way. Was Rex to blame for Mohle never writing again and hightailing it off to the wilderness? Rex probably thought so. But look on the bright side. Rex was the one who turned the man into a legend.
Good as we were going, pitfalls were everywhere. One evening Wayne had a small reception for me and Rex and the students at the Fiction Institute. He’d gone all-out. He’d put so many flowers around, you would have thought someone was having a funeral, and the food was terrific. The kids were downing the hors d’oeuvres as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks, and the wine—even though it was served in plastic glasses—was flowing.
I was having a hell of a time. Maybe I’d had a little too much to drink, but I got on a roll, entertaining the students with stories about my childhood in New York, telling them about the time we got in trouble when a buddy of mine killed one of the peacocks in the garden of Saint John the Divine with his homemade bow and arrow, and demonstrating our techniques for getting quarters out of pay phones.
I had these kids in stitches, spilling cheap Chardonnay all over themselves. They were in such a state I could have said the word “barometer” or “spritzer” and they would have roared. Every now and then I would look over and see Rex sitting in a big chair by the door, all by himself. (I don’t remember exactly where Ramona was—off helping Wayne in the kitchen, maybe.) He nibbled grimly on a cracker, his face like stone.
A couple of times it crossed my mind that it would be wise to call him over, make him more a part of things, but then the kids got going, trying to come up with the greatest first line of a novel ever written.
It was obnoxious, really, and it definitely left me out in the cold (try me on the starting lineup of the ‘69 Mets and I’ll show you something), but they seemed to be having a great time with it.
“ ‘Call me Ishmael!’ ” Mel shouted. He was wearing a new blue bandanna in honor of the occasion.
“No way!” Nick said. “That’s way too easy.”
“How about this?” LaTasha said. “ ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ ”
“Oh, God,” Dominique said. “Of course. But doesn’t that sound like something you’d stitch on a doily?”
LaTasha put her hands on her hips, taking offense. “Give me a break. Anna Karenina? Leo Tolstoy? How are you going to do better than that?”
We were all crowded around the mailboxes like spectators at a high-stakes crap game. Bryn raised both arms in the air. She looked like she’d had more to drink than I had. “Hold your horses, guys, I’ve got it . . .” She put her finger to her lips, making sure she had it all right. “ ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged—’ “
Brett coughed into his glass. “No Jane Austen!” Nick shouted, pointing with his proscuitto-wrapped asparagus. “We’ve got to have a rule.”
“You can’t make a rule,” Bryn said. “What kind of a P-I-G are you, anyway?”
“I’m not a sexist,” Nick said. “You’re talking Pride and Prejudice! I’m sorry.”
I glanced out the window. Someone on the dark sidewalk peered in, trying to figure out what was going on. Chester, his long arms draped around at least four people, raised his beer can.
“All right, everybody,” he said, “try this one on for size. ‘I am an American, Chicago-born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle . . . ’ ”
“Not bad,” Dominique said. “I’d say it’s definitely a contender.” I nudged Chester and gave him the thumbs-up, just to let him know I thought so too.
They must have gone on like this for five minutes. It was hard for me, I’ll admit. About the best I could do was try to stay out of the middle of it and give whoever was next to me a poke and go, “Now, that was a keeper, wasn’t it?” or, “Boy, haven’t heard that one for a while.” Sometimes I’d just shake my head in mute admiration as if I would have given my eyeteeth to have written something that good.
They were all showing off and I knew that I was the one they were showing off for. If they only could have known what a pain in the butt I found the whole business—like being stuck in your living room with a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses quoting Bible verses. It seemed to me that everyone had been having a lot better time when I was telling them stories from my childhood. I finally slipped away and headed to the kitchen to refill my wineglass, but as I did, I spied Rex struggling to get out of his chair.
“Hey, Rex, let me help you there!” I said.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said. I caught his elbow and felt him sway as he pulled himself up. “So what’s all the ruckus?”
Out of nowhere Mercedes swooped in to take his other arm. “Oh, Mr. Schoeninger, we need you,” she said. Mercedes, as opposed to the others, had dressed up for the party, in red high heels and a sexy green dress.”We’re trying to come up with the greatest first line of a novel. Ever.”
“Oh, that’s not hard,” he said.
Heads turned and the boozy circle of students parted to greet him. A couple of them patted him on the back. Dominique gave him a gentle hug.
“Hey, Mr. Schoeninger!” Bryn wiggled hello with her fingers.
“Okay, finally we get somebody who knows something!” Nick said.
Rex surveyed them all coldly, as if he wasn’t sure how bright they were. His fingers dug into my arm. “So the question is,” he said, “what is the greatest first line in all of literature?” The row of famous writers, chins resting on fists, stared down from their posters on the wall.
“That’s right,” Chester said. Ramona and Wayne emerged from the kitchen with two trays of baby quiche.
“Okay, then,” Rex said. He lifted a hand like a preacher about to pray over his congregation. “ ‘Riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.’ ”
Talk about sucking the air out of a room! All of a sudden everybody was looking either somber or worried. Mel shrugged and helped himself to a couple of the quiches.
“I’m sure you all know what that’s from,” Rex said.
Eyes began cutting sideways. It looked like there were a few people who thought they knew the book, but they weren’t going to risk making fools of themselves. I smiled at everybody as if the answer should have been obvious. Finally Mel, shifting a mouthful of hot quiche from one cheek to the other, mumbled, “Finnegans Wake, right?”
“Exactly,” Rex said.
“I didn’t figure you for a big James Joyce guy,” Mel said. Dominique shot him a dirty look.
“Sometimes us old guys will surprise you,” Rex said. “You want to hear my number two?”
Who was going to say no? They knew what side their bread was buttered on. Yes, yes, they all murmured, bobbing their heads. Rex let go of my arm, standing on his own. The circle widened, giving him room. The man still knew how to claim the spotlight. He made that little preacher move again.
“ ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my life, or whether that station shall be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’ ”
I’ve never seen a more relieved group of people. “David Copperfield!” they all shouted.
Rex beamed and gave me a backhanded slap on my chest. “Remember?”
“How could I forget?” I said.
If he’d been ready to go home a half hour before, he was now getting into the spirit of things. “What about you, V.S.? What’s your favorite first line?”
“Actually, I was just thinking about checking out some of those lemon squares,” I said.
“Lemon squares can wait,” Rex said. He took Mercedes’s arm to steady himself. “Come on, show us what you got.”
Maybe I was the only one who saw it, but it was definitely there, the har
d, devilish glint in the eye, the part of Rex that wasn’t such a nice guy, that wanted to cause trouble.
The circle had been on the verge of breaking up—tiny quiches were being passed hand to hand, wineglasses refilled—but Rex putting me on the spot had swung everyone’s attention back.
“Come on, Mr. Mohle,” Mercedes said, teetering in her high heels. “I’ll bet you’ve got the best one of all.”
“I don’t know that I have any one favorite,” I said. “There are so many . . .”
“So pick one,” Rex said.
I glanced at him. What was I going to do, quote from the beginning of Treasure Island? “Guys, listen, I’m not very good at this kind of thing. I can barely remember the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“I’ve got one!”
It was Bryn. She waved her hand in the air, tall, lanky, boozed-up Bryn, God bless her. The others stared at her as if she was totally clueless.
“So what you got, Bryn?” I said.
She stepped forward into the middle of the circle, face flushed, and clasped her hands in front of her like a singer before a big audition. Wayne, lugging a giant bag of trash out the back door, stopped to listen.
“ ‘If you’re wondering how crappy a best friend can be, you need to start with mine.’ “
When she finished, she squinched up her shoulders and gave me a shy little Shelley Duvall smile, as if she’d done the cleverest thing anybody had ever heard of. Everyone else looked as if they were about to gag.
I started clapping, very slowly, just so she didn’t feel bad. No one joined me. “Yeah, Bryn, there you go. That’s dy-no-mite.” Now all the weird stares turned on me. “You guys didn’t go for that?” I said. “I know it’s not exactly Finnegans Wake, but I liked it.”
“I guess you should like it,” Mel said. “You wrote it.”
“I wrote it? No way! You’ve got to be kidding me. Rex, can you believe it? What’s happening to my mind?” The way everyone’s mouth was hanging open, you would have thought they were a bunch of dead fish in the bottom of a boat. Wayne, still at the back door with his bag of trash, rubbed his cheek furiously.
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