by Richard Ford
“Well, I take a hot bath sometimes. Or a midnight walk. Or I read a catalog. Get drunk. Sometimes, I guess, I get in bed and think dirty thoughts about women. That always makes me feel better. Or I’ll listen to the short-wave. Or watch Johnny Carson. I don’t usually get in such a bad state, Walter.” I smile to let him know I’m at least half-serious. “Maybe I should more often.”
Upstairs, I hear Bosobolo walk down his hall to his bathroom, hear his door close and his toilet flush. It’s a nice homey sound—as always—his last office before turning in. A long, satisfying leak. I envy him more than anyone could know.
“You know what I think, Frank?”
“What, Walter.”
“You don’t seem to be somebody who knows he’s going to die, that’s what.” Walter suddenly ducks his head, like a man someone has menaced and who has barely gotten out of the way.
“I guess you’re right.” I smile a smile of failed tolerance. Though Walter’s words deliver a cold blue impact on me—the first clump of loamy dirt thrumping off the pine box, mourners climbing back into their Buicks, doors slamming in unison. Who the hell wants to think about that now? It’s one A.M. on a day of resurrection and renewal the world over. I want to talk about dying now as much as I want to play a tune out my behind.
“Maybe you just need a good laugh, Walter. I try to laugh every day. What did the brassiere say to the hat?”
“I don’t know. What did it say, Frank?” Walter is not much amused, but then I am not much amused by Walter.
“‘You go on ahead, I’ll give these two a lift.’” I stare at him. He smirks but doesn’t laugh. “If you don’t think that’s hilarious, Walter, you should. It’s really funny.” In fact I have a hard time suppressing a big guffaw myself, though we’re at basement-level seriousness now. No jokes.
“Maybe you think I need a hobby or something. Right?” Walter’s still smirking, though not in a friendly way.
“You just need to see things from another angle, Walter. That’s all. You aren’t giving yourself much of a break.” Maybe a hundred dollar whore would be a good new angle. Or an evening course in astronomy. I was thirty-seven before I knew that more than one star could be the North Star; it was a huge surprise and still has the aura of a genuine wonder for me.
“You know what’s true, Frank?”
“What, Walter.”
“What’s true, Frank, is that when we get to be adults we all of a sudden become the thing viewed, not the viewer anymore. Do you know what I mean?”
“I guess so.” And I do know what he means, and with a marksman’s clarity. Divorce has plenty of these little encounter-group lessons to teach. Only I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to trade epiphanies with Walter. We don’t even go in for that stuff at the Divorced Men’s Club. “Walter, I’m pretty beat, I’ve had a long day.”
“And I’ll tell you something else, Frank, even though you didn’t ask me. I’m not going to be cynical enough to ignore that fact. I’m not going to find a hobby or be a goddamn jokemaster. Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren’t smart.”
“Maybe so. I wasn’t suggesting you take up fly-tying.”
“Frank, I don’t know what the hell I’ve gotten myself into, and there’s no use acting like I’m smart. I wouldn’t be in this if I was. I just feel on display in this mess, and I’m scared to death.” Walter shakes his head in contrite bafflement. “I’m sorry about all this, Frank. I wanted to keep improving myself, by myself.”
“It’s all right, Walter. I’m not sure, though, if you can improve yourself much. Why don’t I fix us both a drink.” Unexpectedly, though, my heart suddenly goes out to Walter the self-improver, trying to go it alone. Walter is the real New-Ager, and in truth, he and I are not much different. I’ve made discoveries he’ll make when he calms down, though the days when I could stay up all night, riled up about some point d’honneur or a new novel or bracing up a boon pal through some rough seas are long gone. I am too old for all that without even being very old. A next day—any new day—means too much to me. I am too much anticipator, my eye on the future of things. The best I can offer is a nightcap, and a room for the night where Walter can sleep with the light on.
“Frank, I’ll have a drink. That’s white of you. Then I’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Why don’t you just bed down here tonight. You can claim the couch, or there’s an extra bed in the kids’ room. That’d be fine.” I pour us both a glass of gin, and hand one to Walter. I’ve stashed away some roly-poly Baltimore Colts glasses I bought from a Balfour catalog when I was in college, in the days when Unitas and Raymond Berry were the big stars. And now seems to me the perfect time to crack them out. Sports are always a good distraction from life at its dreariest.
“This is nice of you, Franko,” Walter says, looking strangely at the little rearing blue Colt, shiny and decaled into the nubbly glass from years ago. “Great glasses.” He smiles up in wonderment. There is a part of me Walter absolutely cannot fathom, though he doesn’t really want to fathom it. In fact he is not interested in me at all. He might even sense that I am in no way interested in him, that I’m simply performing a Samaritan’s duty I would perform for anyone (preferably a woman) I didn’t think was going to kill me. Still, some basic elements of my character keep breaking into his train of thought. Like my Colts glasses. At his house he has leaded Waterfords, crystals etched with salmon, and sterling goblets—unless, of course, Yolanda got it all, which I doubt since Walter is cagier than that.
“Salud,” Walter says in a craven way.
“Cheers, Walter.”
He puts the glass down immediately and drums his fingers on the chair arm, then stares a hole right into me.
“He’s just a guy, Frank.” Walter sniffs and gives his head a hard shake. “A monies analyst right on the Street with me. Two kids. Wife named Priscilla up in Newfoundland.”
“What the hell are they doing way up there?”
“New Jersey, Frank. Newfoundland, New Jersey. Passaic County.” A place where X and I used to drive on Sundays and eat in a tur key-with-all-the-trimmings restaurant. Perfect little bucolic America set in the New Jersey reservoir district, an hour’s commute from Gotham. “I don’t know what you’d want to say about either of us,” Walter says.
“Nothing might be enough.”
“He’s an okay guy is what I’m saying. Okay?” Walter clasps his hands in his lap and gives me a semi-hurt look. “I went over to his firm to cash some certificates for a customer, and somehow we just started talking. He follows the same no-loads I do. And you know you can just talk. I was late already, and we decided to go down to the Funicular and drink till the traffic cleared. And one conversation just led to another. I mean, we talked about everything from petrochemicals in the liquid container industry to small-college football. He’s a Dickinson grad, it turns out. But the first thing I knew it was nine-thirty and we’d talked for three hours!” Walter rubs his hands over his small handsome face, right up under his glasses and into his eye sockets.
“That doesn’t seem strange, Walter. You could’ve just shaken hands and headed on home. It’s what you and I do. It’s what most people do.” (And ought to do!)
“Frank, I know it.” He resettles his tortoise-shells using both sets of fingers. There’s nothing for me to say. Walter acts like a man in a trance and waking him, I’m afraid, will only confuse things and make them go on forever. With any luck this will all end soon, and I can hop into bed. “Do you want to hear it, Frank?”
“I don’t want to hear anything that’ll embarrass me, Walter. Not in any way. I don’t know you well enough.”
“This isn’t embarrassing. Not a bit.” Walter swivels to the side and reaches for his glass, looking at me hopefully.
“It’s right there.” I point to the gin.
Walter goes and pours himself a drink, then slumps back in his easy chair and drinks it down. Bolting, we used to call it at M
ichigan. Walter just bolted his drink. It occurs to me, in fact, that I could be in Michigan at this very moment, that Vicki and I might’ve driven out to Ann Arbor and be eating a late supper at the Pretzel Bell. Flank steak and hot mustard with a side of red cabbage. I have made an error in my critical choices. “Do you know who Ida Simms is, Frank?” Walter looks at me judiciously, his lower lip pressed tightly above his upper. He means to imply an icy logic’s being applied—the rest from here on out will deal only in the bedrock and provable facts. No gushy sentiment for this boy.
“It sounds familiar, Walter. But I don’t know why.”
“Her picture was in all the papers last year, Frank. An older lady with a Nineteen-forties hairdo. It looked like some kind of advertisement, which in a way it was. The woman who just disappeared? Got out of a cab at Penn Station, with two little poodles on a leash, and nobody’s seen her since? The family ran the ads with her picture, asking for calls if anybody knew anything. Somebody dear to them who walked right out of the world. Boom.” Walter shakes his head, both comforted and astonished by what a strange world it is. “She’d had mental problems, Frank, been in hospitals. All that came out. You’d have to figure the signs weren’t too good for her if you were the family. The impulse to do away with yourself must get pretty strong in those circumstances.
Walter looks at me with his blue eyes shining significantly, and I’m forced to look up squarely at Block Island again. “You never can tell, Walter. People are gone ten years, then one day they wake up in St. Petersburg on the Sunshine Skyway, and everything’s fine.”
“I know it. That’s true.” Walter stares down at his loafers. “We talked about the whole business, Frank. Yolanda and I. She thought the picture was some kind of a fake, a massage parlor or something phony. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know anymore than she did. Except here was a picture of this woman, Frank, looking like somebody’s mother somewhere, yours or mine, her hair all done up like the Forties, and a scared smile on her face like she knew she was in trouble, and I just was not ready to think fake. I told Yolanda she ought to believe it wasn’t a fake just because it might not be. You know what I mean?”
“I guess.” I saw the picture, in fact, twenty times at least. Whoever was running it had had the bright idea of putting it on the sports page of the Times, which I read just before the obits. I’d wondered myself if Ida Simms wasn’t a unisex barber shop or an erotic catering service, and sombody’d just thought of using a picture of his mother as an ad. I finally forgot about it and got interested in the spring trades.
“Now one day,” Walter says, “I was looking at the paper, and I said, ‘I really wonder where this poor woman is.’ And Yolanda, which was typical of her actually, said, ‘There isn’t any woman, Walter. It’s just a come-on for some damn thing. If you don’t believe me, I’ll call and you can listen in on the extension.’ I said I wouldn’t listen in on anything because even if she was right, she ought to be wrong. I wouldn’t want somebody giving up on me, would you?”
“What happened next?”
“She called, Frank. And a man answered. Yolanda said, ‘Who’s this?’ And the man I guess said, ‘This is Mr. Simms speaking. Do you have any word about my wife?’ It was a special line, of course. And Yolanda said, ‘No, I don’t. But I’d like to know if this is on the level.’ And the man said, ‘Yes, on the level. My wife’s been missing since February and we’re crazy out of our minds worrying. We can offer a reward.’ Yolanda just said, ‘Sorry. I don’t know anything.’ And she hung up. This was about six weeks before she left with this Pitcock character.” Walter’s eyes grow narrow as if he can see Pitcock in the cross hairs of a high-powered rifle.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s just cynical, is my point. That’s all.”
“I think you’re way too finicky on this, Walter.”
“Maybe so. Though I couldn’t get it out of my mind. That poor woman wandering around God knows where—lost, maybe. Crazy. And everybody thinking her picture was an ad for something filthy, just a dirty joke. The helplessness of it got to me.”
“Anything’s possible, Walter.” I can’t suppress another yawn.
Walter suddenly presses his hands together between his bald knees, and fixes on me an odd supplicant’s look. “I know anything’s possible, Frank. But when I mentioned it to Warren, he said he thought it was a tragedy, the whole thing, and a shame nobody had called up with some news to put her family at ease. Even that she was dead would’ve been a relief.”
“I doubt that.”
“Okay, that’s a point. We all have to die. That’s not going to be any goddamn tragedy. The bad thing is a shitty, cynical, insensitive life, somebody like Yolanda calling those poor people up and making their lives miserable for an extra five minutes just because she couldn’t stand not to make a joke out of dying. Something that’s all around us.…”
“Oh, for Christ sake.”
“That’s okay, Frank. Never mind. I still want to tell you the rest, at least the part that won’t embarrass you.”
Though how could hearing about Walter’s moment of magic do anything but bore me the same as watching an industrial training film, or hearing a lecture on the physics of the three-point stance. What could I hear that I couldn’t figure out already if I was interested? The private parts of man are no amusement to me (only the public).
“It was like a friendship, Frank.” Walter is suddenly as sorry-eyed as a pallbearer. “If you can believe that.” (What is there for me to say?) “I guess I can’t really explain my feelings, can I? All I know is what he said. ‘Death’s no tragedy,’ something strange, I don’t know. And then I said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Just like you would with a woman you thought you were in love with. Neither of us was shocked. We just got up, walked out of the Funicular onto Bowling Green, got in a cab and headed uptown.”
“How’d you choose the Americana?” I have absolutely no earthly reason to want to know that, of course. What I’d like to do is grab Walter by his Barracuda lapels and throw him out.
“His firm keeps some rooms blocked up there, Frank, for the fellas who work late. I guess that probably seems pretty ironic to you, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Walter, you have to go somewhere, I guess.”
“It sounds silly, even to me. Two Wall Street guys going at it in the Americana. You get caught in your own silliness sometimes, Frank, don’t you?” He’s aching to tell me the whole miserable business.
“So what’s going to happen, Walter. Are you going to see Warren, or whatever his name is again?”
“Frank, who knows. I doubt it. He’s pretty happy up in Newfoundland, I guess. Marriage to me is founded on the myth of perpetuity, and I think I’m wedded pretty firmly to the here and now at this point in time.” Walter sniffs in a professional way, though I have no idea on earth what he could be talking about. He could as easily be reciting the Gettysburg Address in Swahili. “Warren doesn’t feel that way from all I can learn. Which is fine. I don’t think I’m made to be one of those guys anyway, Frank. Though I was never closer to anyone in my life. Not Yolanda. Not even my mom and dad, which is pretty scary for a farm kid from Ohio.” Walter offers me a big, scared, kid-from-Ohio-grin. “I gave up all that perpetuity business, which after all is just founded on a fear of death. You know that, of course. It’s the big business concept all over again. I’m not afraid of dying suddenly, Frank, and leaving everything in a mess. Are you?”
“I’m nervous about it, Walter, I’ll admit that.”
“Would you do what I did, Frank? Tell the truth.”
“I guess I’m still stuck on the perpetuity concept. I’m pretty conventional. I don’t mean to disapprove, Walter. Because I don’t.”
Walter cocks his head when he hears this. He has just heard some unexpected good news, and his blue, sad eyes narrow as if they saw down a long corridor where the light had gone dim as all past time. He holds me in this bespec
tacled gaze for a long moment, maybe a half-minute. And I know exactly what he is seeing, or trying to see, since from time to time I’ve assiduously tried to see the same thing—with X before she left me for good.
Himself is what Walter’s trying to see! If some old-fashioned, conventional Walter Luckettness is recognizable in conventional and forgiving Frank Bascombeness, maybe things won’t be so bad. Walter wants to know if he can save himself from being lost out in the sinister and uncharted waters he’s somehow gotten himself into. (For all his recklessness, Walter is basically a sound senator, and not much a seeker of the unknown.)
“Frank,” Walter says, cracking a big smile, wriggling back in his chair and giving his head an incongruous shake. (For the moment he has staunched badness.) “Did you ever wish somebody or something could just pick you up and move you way, way far off?”
“Plenty of times. That’s why I’m in the business I’m in. I can get on a plane and that happens. That’s what I was telling you about traveling the other night.”
“Well, that’s how I felt when I first came in here tonight, Frank—when your colored boy let me in and I was just wandering around here waiting. I didn’t feel like there was any place far away enough, and I was caught in the middle of a helluva big mess, and everything was just making it worse. Do you remember how we used to feel when we were kids? Everything out of bounds, just off the map, and we weren’t responsible.”
“It was great, Walter, wasn’t it.” What I’m thinking about is the fraternity, which was great. Splendid. Whiskey, card games, girls.
“Before I got here tonight everything seemed to count against me in some crappy way.”
“I’m glad you came, then, Walter.”
“I am too. I do feel better, thanks to you. Maybe it was us swapping some ideas back and forth. I feel like some new opportunity is just about to present itself. By the way, Frank, do you ever go duck hunting?” Walter smiles a big, generous smile.