by Jack Ketchum
He saw limos and cabs in the parking lot and people standing in front wearing business suits and long fancy summer dresses and a half a dozen horse-drawn carriages all waiting on the tourist trade. There was a doorman in some old-fashioned livery and a tall hat The front doors were elaborately carved wood with panels of etched glass, like they’d come off some English mansion.
He was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable about this but Kath walked him in like she owned the place. Walked him through the paneled, carpeted hallway to the big oak desk manned by two tall skinny guys in tuxes with Valentino-style slicked-back hair and said that they were here for drinks in the garden.
One of the guys smiled and said certainly, right this way and held the door for her. They stepped out into a great wide courtyard full of trees strewn with potted flowers and carefully tended hedges and white wrought-iron chairs and tables. There were white tablecloths on the tables and folded linen napkins. The trees were all hung with japanese lanterns, dozens of them. To his right through the wraparound windows he could see diners in the restaurant inside leaning over their dinners, bathed in an amber glow. Music was coming from somewhere, some kind of easy-listening rock ’n’ roll. Ordinarily the music would have annoyed him—in a car he’d definitely have changed the station. Here though, it seemed just about right. He could put up with nearly anything tonight anyhow.
Look who he was with.
A terrific long-legged blonde in a white shirt and tie and tight black skirt smiled and told them they could seat themselves wherever they liked. About two-thirds of the tables were full and packed close together. Katherine took him by the hand and led him through the crowd past one tree to another slightly off to one side and they sat down.
Already they’d got some glances. He definitely felt conspicuous. A lot conspicuous. For one thing everybody here looked over thirty, easy, unless you counted some of the little kids they’d dragged along. The one possible exception was the couple directly to their right who were probably in their late twenties but dressed as though they were in their thirties, young-Nixonite conservative style.
Plus, everybody looked like money up the ass. Solid upper-middle-class or better. He guessed he could smell cash as good as the next guy. And he smelled it all around him. He shook his head. He had to laugh.
“Kath, what in hell are we doing here?”
“We’re having drinks, silly.”
“Where’d you find this place? Your dad?”
She nodded. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. See that big old oak tree over there? My mother once shattered half a glass of banana daiquiri all over it.”
“What’d she do that for?”
“I guess she didn’t like her drink. Or else she was pissed at my father. I don’t remember. I just remember that tree with banana daiquiri running all down the trunk like some kind of milky goo.”
The long-legged blonde came by to take their order. He said scotch and soda. He figured that would do the trick sophistication-wise.
Kath laughed. “Banana daiquiri,” she said. “For old times’ sake.”
The waitress just smiled and said thank you. He guessed you learned not to question stuff in a place like this.
“You must have been embarrassed as hell. For your mom I mean.”
“Huh? Oh, not really. We got used to things like that from my mother.”
“You mean, like, she was just in the habit of throwing her drinks around and all?”
“You don’t want to know about my mother’s habits, believe me. They’d make all that pretty, wavy hair of yours stand on end.”
“You like it? Really?”
“What? Your hair?” She laughed. “Sure. Though I might go with a little less gunk on it if I were you.”
“It’s not gunk. Honest. Here, feel it.”
He bent his head a little and she smiled and reached over and ran her fingers lightly through his hair.
He wanted those beautiful fingers all over him.
“See? Vitalis. Not Brylcream or that greasy stuff.”
“You’re right. Not gunk. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.”
She rubbed her fingers together and sniffed them.
“A little on the oily side, though.”
She dug in her purse and came out with a pack of cigarettes and shook one from the pack.
“Got a light?”
He took out his own pack of Marlboros and his Zippo and flipped back the top with his thumb and lit hers first and then his own. The click of the top drew glances. Some of them lingered. Fuck ’em.
“Want to play a little game?”
“What kind of game?”
As a general rule he didn’t like games unless they were ones of his making. He was wary.
“It’s called Truth.”
“Yeah?”
“I ask you a question, you have to answer it truthfully. No bullshit. You have to answer completely and truthfully and give it the best shot you can. Then you get to ask me a question. Same thing. Each person has, say, three questions each for starters.”
“I don’t get it. Who wins?”
She shrugged and took a drag of the cigarette and exhaled.
“Sometimes nobody wins. Sometimes everybody does.”
He thought about it.
“I dunno. Weird game.”
“You think so?”
“Sounds like some kind of head game to me.”
“No, it’s the opposite. See, head games are meant to fuck you up. Head games are when you’re messing around with illusion. Smoke-and-mirrors stuff. Not the truth. The truth can’t fuck you up, can it?”
He thought he knew about a hundred ways the truth could fuck you up, but he didn’t say so. From the look of her she did too.
She was daring him, that was all.
The drinks arrived and their waitress said she’d run a tab for them. He liked that. Back home it was strictly cash on the bar. Pay as you go. Though he did wonder what they were charging for the drinks here. It was New York City after all. Kadi’s daiquiri was pretty substantial but his scotch and soda could have been a whole lot bigger. He’d have to do two or three of them even to feel anything.
The daiquiri had a cherry on top and a wedge of orange perched on the rim.
“You’re not gonna heave that thing at any trees, are you?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t tasted it yet.” She took a sip through the straw. “I think I’ll just drink it for now. So what do you think?”
“About what?”
“About the game.”
She had him over a barrel here. If he said no it’d look like he was chicken. Like he had something to hide. Of course he did have a thing or two to hide. Everybody did. On the other hand if he played along he was supposed to tell the truth to her about whatever the hell she asked him. He didn’t mind doing that, depending on what she asked him. He wondered how good her bullshit detector was. Maybe he could finesse her.
“Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Go ahead. Ask me something.”
He took a hit of the scotch. She squinted, like she was considering him.
“We’ll start out easy. Ray, do you dye your hair?”
He laughed.
“Not personally, no.”
“Unh-unh. You’re supposed to answer truthfully and completely, remember?”
“Okay, all right. I have this girl who does it for me once a month. A shop over in Newton. Cuts it and styles it and gives it a touch-up. I guess it’s kinda unusual for a guy but shit, everything’s unisex these days anyway. My real-color hair’s not bad but it’s a little mousy brown for me. I just happen to like this better. And then, you know, there’s the band.”
Not bad, he thought. In fact he thought he did pretty good. He’d admitted to an eccentricity, sure. But also to having a certain amount of taste that set him apart from other guys, guys who were just run-of-the-mill, everyday slobs sitting in barbershops. And he’d done it without sounding defensive.
Not bad at all.
“My turn now, right?”
“Right.”
He thought about it and sipped his drink. The drink was almost gone already.
“Okay. What do you really think of me?”
She laughed. “Well first of all, I hardly know you. But all right. You’re funny, quirky in a way I kind of like. Good-looking, conceited.”
“Conceited?”
“Conceited. And in this game you’re not allowed to interrupt. Let’s see, what else? You’re a good driver. You’re a pretty good dresser though I’m not too sure about the leather jacket and cowboy boots in August. You hang around with a bunch of losers. But I can’t much blame you for that. Sparta’s ninety percent losers anyway from what I can see. And you have secrets. You talk a lot but you don’t say much. I find that . . . kind of interesting.”
“That’s it? That’s all?”
“For now. My turn. Are you actually fucking Jennifer?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Never?”
“Isn’t that another question? I thought it was my turn now.”
He got her. She smiled and then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
He resolved never to fuck Jennifer again, which would make what he’d said fairly close to the truth. It was no huge loss. Especially not if he was going to be fucking Katherine.
“So. Are you attracted to me?”
She laughed. “You see? I told you you were conceited. That’s two questions and they’re both about you.”
“No they’re not. I’m trying to figure out how you see me is all. Your own personal perception, I mean. That’s different, isn’t it?”
“Sure, Ray. If you say so. Okay. Yeah, I find you attractive. That doesn’t necessarily say I’m going to do anything about it, you understand. But yes. In a strange sort of way, yeah, sure. I do.”
He wasn’t so sure about what that strange sort of way stuff was but now he knew at least he had her going. She sipped her daiquiri and stared at him.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she said.
Maybe it was the beers and the daiquiri working on her but she said it loudly.
He felt suddenly like everybody in the courtyard was staring at him or at least stealing sidelong glances, dozens of eyes on him sitting there with an almost empty glass of whiskey in front of him, Ray in a T-shirt and jeans with a silver chain around his neck while everybody else was wearing white shirts and ties, college grads for sure most of them while he hadn’t even finished high school, all these people waiting to hear the answer to her question, what was the worst thing this out-of-town guy who obviously didn’t belong here had ever done.
The music didn’t seem loud enough. The talk and laughter at the tables didn’t seem loud enough. There was no way he could tell her anyway. Though there was a moment there when crazily enough, he actually wanted to.
Which itself was fucking scary.
“I trashed a house once.”
She waited for him to continue. He decided to give it to her pretty much straight.
“I was fourteen, fifteen. Me and Tim, who I guess was like, twelve, we’d both run away from home. He had his reasons and I had mine though mine were basically that I was pissed at my parents, that’s all. It just seemed like a cool idea. Run away, just get the hell out of there.
“Anyhow there was no place we could crash where somebody’s parents wouldn’t tell our parents but Timmy knew of this place up on Stirrup Iron Road where his father’d done some work as carpenter. Used to bring Timmy along on weekends, show him how to hold a hammer. Some macho bullshit. Make a man of the kid, that kind of stuff.”
“It didn’t take, I guess.”
“Hey, Timmy’s all right. You just got to get to know him a little.”
“Sure I do.”
He decided to let it pass.
“Anyway it was way the hell out in the boonies and he knew that the owners only used it in the summer and here it was March or maybe April so the two of us broke in there. Big four-bedroom job. Rich people. So rich that now they don’t even bother to use the house at all anymore or even to rent the thing out. It just sits there all year long. Fully furnished. You believe it? Sheets over all the furniture. Man, I don’t get it. Goddamn fucking waste if you ask me.
“But breaking in was easy because they had these big glass double doors off the patio in back that were easy to jimmy. We stayed two, two-and-a-half weeks. All they had to eat was this brown rice and pasta, some canned stuff, tuna and fancy soup and canned tomatoes and Spaghetti-Os for their kids I guess. So we lived on that. Man, to this day I hate brown rice and Spaghetti-Os. But the liquor cabinet was full and we found a case of beer in the cellar. I figured out how to turn on the pump so we had running water but no electricity and it was cold out there in March so we busted up some of the furniture and made fires in the fireplace and by the end there wasn’t much furniture left because we’d burnt it all.”
The leggy blond waitress appeared and asked him did he want another drink. He decided he did and to hell with the price. He was feeling expansive sitting there in the warm night breeze, expansive because of Kath and because of the story. Kath was still sipping her drink and said she was fine for now.
The next part was possibly a little risky but he decided to tell her anyway.
“I found a twenty-two rifle in the master bedroom closet and a thirty-eight Ladysmith revolver in the nightstand along with some boxes of shells. We were amazed they’d just leave them sitting there and nobody home more than half the year. But see, the worst thing about running away was the fucking boredom. You couldn’t watch television or listen to any of their records which were mostly classical anyway because there wasn’t any electricity, the pool was drained in back, so all we did was smoke dope all day and drink and look at magazines and hang around the house.
“So we took to trying to pot birds and squirrels and shit out from the glass double doors. The idea I guess was to vary our diet so to speak with some squirrel meat stew but what it really was was to relieve the goddamn boredom.
“We never hit anything. I mean, we were lousy shots. I got better eventually but at the time I couldn’t hit shit and neither could Tim. So we started target practicing inside the house. Set a plate up on the mantel, shoot it. A lamp, a bottle, a beer can. Some of those dumb china figures they had. It was fun because whether you hit the thing or not, you had to dodge this bullet whizzing around after you, you had to dodge the ricochet. I guess we were pretty stupid. We could have got killed in there. But we were pretty stoned and it was a kick. We even shot the television. It wasn’t any use to us anyhow.
“Anyway to make a long story short one morning we get up and realize that the house is a fucking disaster. I mean, we never washed a dish or a glass never mind pots and pans so the kitchen’s a wreck, the living room’s a wreck with broken glass swept up into little piles everywhere and hardly a stick of furniture, the liquor cabinet’s empty and we’re out of tuna and sick of Spaghetti-Os. There’s no more pot, we’re bored shitless, so we said, fuck it, we’re outa here.”
“Where’d you go?”
He shrugged. “Home. Told ’em we’d spent two weeks or whatever it was just hitching around. We both got grounded for I don’t know how long, but I guess they just decided to believe us. We never did get caught or anything. But that house—that house was a wreck, man. I mean, the second or third night we were there Tim had too much to drink and puked all over the bed-sheets. All he did was move to another bedroom. I mean, that house was funky.”
His drink arrived and he thanked the waitress.
If he lived in New York he’d have chased her ass to hell and back. The waitress was a stone looker. He lit a smoke.
“So,” he said. “What’s the worst thing you ever did?”
“That would be lying to my mother.”
He laughed. “Lying to your mother? That’s the worst
thing?”
“One lie in particular.”
He waited.
“The complete truth, right?” he said.
“I remember.” She sighed. “My mother was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic when I was somewhere around twelve. But she was crazy long before that. I hardly remember her sane in fact. She went from being this decent mother I guess and this terrific painter, an abstractionist—she had shows in San Francisco, Rhode Island and even here in the City at the OK Harris Gallery, this real prestige place run by the guy who discovered Warhol. Anyhow she went from there to thinking the entire art world was out to get her. And not just the art world either but the cops and the Mafia, aunts, uncles, cousins. Pretty much her entire family. And oh yeah, the FBI too.
“But my father refused to commit her. I guess he still loved her or maybe he just couldn’t do it. So she’d be in and out of hospitals all the time. On and off every kind of drug you can think of. You think you know about smashing up houses? My mother could have given you guys a few lessons.
“Anyhow this one Saturday afternoon, I was fourteen, my mom’s in one of her rages, she’s off her medication again and she’s tearing up the flower garden out in front of the house, in front of the neighbors, it’s a nice day and half the street is out there and she’s insisting I help her, pulling up violets and begonias and shrubs and I don’t know what else and scattering them all over the lawn and rushing over to me and grabbing my wrists and insisting I help, yelling at me to go and get the shovel from the garage goddammit because there’s somebody buried in there. It’s a plot by the police and art dealers to pin some murder on her and get hold of all her paintings.
“Finally I’d had it up to here with all this crazy bullshit so I told the lie.