Highway Trade and Other Stories

by John Domini

  Again the booze? Sitnell surprised himself, he went for his martini as if he wanted to hide his face. And once Kroh started talking—took the publicist a moment to realize the speech was over—Sitnell slurped up his olive and winced.

  “Oh Walter, oh wow,” Kroh was saying. “That was beautiful.”

  “Nnn.” The pulp was so fat and sour that Sitnell couldn’t straighten his tongue. “Gw, gw.”

  “I mean, you say I’m a special talent. Hey. I’d say there’s room for two at this table.”

  Didn’t this guy ever stop? Sitnell knew that he’d blown the speech, after all. He’d cut it in half and taped on the end. Forcing down the olive, he shook his head.

  “No Walter, don’t be coy. Don’t be modest. When you talk like that, man, I can see ’em starting to pack the halls already.”

  “What’s this?” Never; Kroh never stopped. Sitnell found himself grinning. “What’re we talking about now?”

  “We’re talking about getting out and selling your book. We’re talking about speaking engagements, Walter.” And when the guy nodded, he even made the candlelight interesting. A yellow V, inverted, flared up and down his naked dome. “And I’ll say it again, you’re going to pack the house, Walter. I mean, I’ll make it a promise. Because this kind of thing, this kind of thing, really. It brings people together.”

  Sitnell felt the roots of his hair tug, he realized he was at it again. Yet the small pain made him grin that much more. He even started to nod. It was the astonishment of finding himself still here—and knowing for certain, at last, that he could never have pitied Jimmy Kroh. No, not even at the guy’s whiniest, over the phone. You didn’t pity a sharpie like this, so much body English all the time that the lighting here left a black outline around him. So loud and handsy that the lugs along the bar still gave a look every now and then. It’d been fun, Sitnell had to admit. Fun enough to set him aching. In fact between the tug at his scalp and the olive sting in his gums, Sitnell had rarely felt so aware of his skull. A bony oval jigsaw so close to the skin. But this guy, this cartoonist. You could almost imagine Kroh twirling the narrow tip of a long mustache. “Walter,” he was saying now, “compared to most men these days? You’re going to be like the last of the gunslingers.” Sitnell had to laugh. He dropped his chin, looked over his bifocals.

  “You got the picture, Walter? You see how it can happen?”

  “Oh God, Jimmy. You are a con man.”

  “Hell sure. How do you think I made it this far?”

  “A con man and a liar.”

  “And I’m working for you.” Kroh kept grinning, his face a booze-bright moon. “So tell me. Where’d you like to have the first performance? In town?”

  Sitnell shook his head. “Come on, Jimmy. We understand each other better than that by now.”

  The publicist of course still tried to slick around. He talked about “smaller gigs, Corvallis maybe.” Sitnell had to say no four or five different ways. He flattened his bifocals and got them back in his pocket, hulked up with his elbows on the table so he could use his height advantage. He pointed out that he’d tried to tell Kroh nicely, he’d tried to explain how he felt. “You’re the performer here.” Sitnell said. “In fact I should never have let things get this far, I should have known that a faker like you would want me to put my own face on the line.” The publicist didn’t so much give in as run out of room to maneuver. Sitnell once or twice allowed himself to sweep one stiff hand across the tabletop, out from the crook of his elbow and back. Otherwise he stonewalled it. Nonetheless he may have said more than necessary—made a couple more wisecracks about con artists than necessary—before he realized that Kroh had gone silent.

  At once he was sorry he’d taken off his bifocals. Something had changed, Kroh had gone still. Squinting, Sitnell saw that only the man’s mouth was moving. Kroh sat gnawing a cuticle, so wet and active about it that Sitnell checked the man’s drink. Surprise: still almost full. But then he should have known the man wasn’t drunk. A drunk couldn’t have kept his look so flat and simple.

  “What about that fine speech you just gave, Walter?”

  Sitnell straightened his back.

  “What about it, hey? All that fine talk about brave men dying. Didn’t you mean it when you said that?”

  “Now, Jimmy, I just admitted that I let things go too far…”

  “Call me a liar. Walter, the way it looks to me, you’re the liar. Your whole pretty little speech was a lie. It was probably just something you plug in whenever anyone crowds you. I mean, what’d you write the book for?”

  Sitnell leaned closer, making fists in his lap. “How dare you. How dare you talk to me about lying. That book’s more honest than anything you’ve done in your entire fast-talking life.”

  “Oh yeah? Then what’re we even doing here if you don’t want to get out and sell it?”

  Sitnell wished the zipper on his reversible were as loud and final as the one on Kroh’s portfolio. He regretted how the liquor had slowed his hands.

  “Oh, would you answer a goddamn question for once? Jesus, I swear I’ve never seen a man pansy around as much as you do. Staring at the girls, staring at the wall. Would you for once show some balls and give a person a straight answer?”

  Sitnell had been taking a squint at the rain. But after that last shot—well what did Kroh expect? Plus now the publicist had worked up a glare that seemed to pull his whole upper body into it. The gleamy forehead, that fist still at his teeth, those flattop padded shoulders. Sitnell felt his own chest and arms fluttering, tightening. He figured it’d be best to begin with a lie.

  “I came here,” he said, “because I pitied you.”

  Not bad. Kroh started working his thumbnail against an incisor.

  “You see this isn’t New York, Jimmy. You should have realized.”

  “Realized what, Walter? What are these chickenshit—“

  “You should have realized that when anyone behaves as wildly as you did, out here it’s news. It’s news all over town.” He made sure of the noise level, cocking an ear to the overhead speaker: something cheating something hurting. “New York is big, Jimmy. Big and crowded and nasty, and that’s why people have always moved out here. They’ve always wanted to get away from all that and build a new life, a respectable life. Respectable and solid. So when someone starts crashing around like a bear in the woods, the way you did—well as I say, it’s news.”

  “You mean my marriage, right?”

  “No Jimmy, I mean you.” Kroh was keeping up a good front, fist and shoulders holding steady. But the folds round his eyes had softened. “I mean the way you ran off when your wife was pregnant. You ran off a couple of times, once for more than a month, and I do believe there are people in town who could give you the specific dates. Oh, and there doesn’t seem to have been any particular woman involved, not just then at least. You simply couldn’t take it and ran.”

  Definitely softened. Kroh’s fist had started to open.

  “Though after the baby was born, auspiciously soon afterwards in fact, you did start to shack up with someone else. But the most revealing part of the story, the punch-line I’d say, is what comes next. The punch-line is, as soon as your wife went back to New York with the baby, you up and left the other woman as well.”

  “That one,” Kroh said, “was more like we both saw the light.”

  What? The guy was making jokes? But the publicist had spoken more quietly than Sitnell had expected, as well. Kroh had almost whispered. And his look had wobbled off, the hand at his lapel appeared to tremble. Sitnell told himself it was all another trick. He kept frowning, hard enough to feel it in his ears. After all, how long had they spent telling the truth? A minute and a half? A minute and a half, and now Kroh looked so slapped and gut-shot, how was Sitnell supposed to take that? Too many tricks and switches, crowding him, crowding him.

  He was back at the bar before he could think why he’d gone there. But even with his boot on the rail and his fists on the naugahyde,
the rack of liquor behind the bar was no more than a colorful dim array. Battle ribbons or totem poles. When the pig-tailed young mother stepped in front of him, Sitnell had to look somewhere else. Again, somewhere else. But up on the soundless TV they had a city in ruins, the mill-worker nearest him reeked of sweat and machine oil, the girl repeated “Sir?” with such insistence: he was back in the war again. The barmaid had brought it on. Sitnell used to picture his wife that way, pregnant and with her hair too long, just before going into combat. He’d chase that picture across the enemy line, so blindly sometimes that later he didn’t know where the nightmares had come from. But tonight, in a lounge like this—it was the last thing Sitnell needed. It had to be the gin flashes. Even the businessman and his pin-up seemed to be part of the action. The couple was bent together over the present she’d given him, as if huddling for protection against the bursts of crumpled bright wrapping paper on the tabletop. Sitnell asked where the Men’s Room was. Of course he didn’t have to use it, he wound up reading the walls. “Kill the faggots,” “Kill the niggers,” all with the glare pinching his eyes. It was something he’d always hated about Oregon, how fast neighborliness and the good life gave way to prejudice and a quick trigger.

  As soon as Sitnell came out, Kroh had his elbow.

  “Look man.” Kroh was right in his face, too close for Sitnell’s height to matter. “Perfect concerned family man, everything’s so set and clear for you. Shit. Did I ask you to judge me? Did I ask for any of this?”

  He waved his free hand at the rest of the lounge. Sitnell didn’t even want to look.

  “Did I ask to come out West and have, have all you assholes out here hang my guts on a line? Did I? None of you know what it was like. Not when I was really up against it, none of you assholes know! You don’t know the loneliness.”

  Sitnell didn’t know whether he’d pulled his arm free himself or Kroh had let go of it. In any case now the publicist stood waving both hands as if the air itself in here had to be clawed out of the way. And was he about to start crying? Somebody else might have said something but the words didn’t register, it was all Sitnell could do just to keep up with this man in front of him. Kroh had moved on to some story about trying to get his baby to sleep. “I just couldn’t get it to close its eyes. And then I’d think of Eunice, when I kissed Eunice these days—I couldn’t get her to close her eyes either!” Which one was Eunice? Pointless gossip. Yet even as Sitnell realized that much—how pointless talking was, compared to this man’s pain—he suffered crazier thoughts. A tune came to mind: Gotta sing. Gotta dance. Wicked gin flashes. What was Sitnell turning into, here? It was that Motown jacket, and the way the fat little man had started to stamp his feet, paw his eyes.

  Sitnell tried to clear his head. He spread his hands to get a better sense of how much room the two of them had. Close enough so his bifocals didn’t matter, he tried to keep track of the whole man for the first time tonight.

  “I know what loneliness is,” he said. “Listen Jimmy, please. My wife and I were separated for two years during the war.”

  “Do you two mind?” This time he couldn’t ignore the other voice; Sitnell himself had been speaking so much more gently. “The lady and I would like a little quiet.”

  The businessman. And somehow it stung Sitnell worse to see the girl, her neck bent and her face out of sight behind one hand.

  “I’m so sorry.” The words were a reflex. “Honestly sir, I apologize.” Blind reflex, and Sitnell was practically standing at attention. “I don’t know how we’ve—“

  “Oh, hey. Are we disturbing you? Are we really disturbing you?” Kroh had already spread his hands on the couple’s table. “Do you find us two rather disagreeable types?”

  That fast, Kroh and this other guy were on their way. Sitnell hadn’t seen two men so determined to start a fight in years. And he didn’t want to look anywhere else either, he knew everyone in the place was lined up against him by now. Sitnell shuffled a step closer. Already the businessman seemed nothing but knuckles and an upthrust chin. Kroh’s muscling in had knocked the girl’s gift out where it could be seen, it was some art book with a fleshy triangular design on the cover. But Sitnell looked past it and tried to catch the younger man’s eye.

  His smile felt awful, the limpest kind of fake. The shouting didn’t seem to leave room for him.

  “What’s your problem?” the businessman was saying. “Are you two from New York?”

  “Do you have a job for me, sir? Do you have some money for me, sir? Because if none of you laid-back West Coast pricks has any way I can get some money right now, you can just get out of my life!”

  Almost crying again. Though nobody else noticed that of course, in fact Kroh’s belligerence kept jacking up so fast that Sitnell himself was frozen a step or two away, his hands folding towards his jacket.

  “Because one thing you should all know, I’m no goddamn publicist!” Kroh’s gestures had gone cockeyed. Sitnell had the thought that he needed his portfolio for balance. “You should all know. I came here bareass! Here, you think I’m lying all the time, take a look at—“

  Kroh had just about got the wallet out of his jacket’s inside pocket when the businessman jumped him. No doubt everyone had expected a gun. As it was, Kroh could only flip the empty billfold away short-armed; the first of the mill workers in knocked Sitnell sideways, and so he could see it flop open and fall among the well drinks. He hadn’t needed to see it was empty. Sitnell already felt so sorry for Jimmy Kroh that what he wanted most just now was somehow to get the man out of there and maybe share some coffee in a quiet place. But the rest of the crowd were in too fast. One guy actually stiff-armed Sitnell. The shot to the chest made him aware of his age, all loose skin and fragile bones, and he couldn’t catch his breath as he stumbled back. Though he knew they wouldn’t chase an old man, he couldn’t run. He could only keep staring. The businessman’s girl had disappeared. Kroh was throwing elbows and hopeless jabs, screaming—“You think I’m lying? You think Ymkidding?”—as he circled from man to man. Or rather, as he and one other man circled each other. Not the businessman; he’d backed off almost as far as Sitnell. But though everyone there had gotten a piece of Kroh in the first moment or two, so that one leather sleeve was coming off at the armpit and his lapel hung torn, now the artist appeared to have squared off inside a loud and obscene ring of the others with the biggest cowboy in the place. Red-cap type. Extra studs on his belt, real liquor in his look.

  Sitnell couldn’t say where he sat. He found he’d started shivering, but he couldn’t do a thing with his reversible. The zipper itself seemed like too much for him, a black V of teeth made into a triangle by his own aching head. When the first punch landed, he swore he could hear a bone crack.

  Could this have been what he’d wanted, coming here? Maybe it was like his wife had said when, two months shy of forty, she’d told him she was pregnant again. She’d said then that Sitnell just didn’t believe in things till they hurt him. Sitnell just kept moving on—“like a goddamn pioneer,’” she’d said—till something hurt him. Of course he’d played it cool, he’d pointed out what a comfortable life they had. But he’d gone on wondering. And no question, this book had shaken him worst. He’d started out wanting simply to cheer on the brave men he’d fought with, to celebrate their time together, the way he’d sat here and cheered the night the bartenders had nailed Maurice Lucas’s sneakers to the wall. But in order to write he’d put himself through it all again, even that sham picture of his wife he’d used to get himself running towards the enemy line. So in the end it seemed he’d done the opposite of what he’d wanted to. It seemed he’d proven that he and his company had been miserable. They’d rushed to their death out of a blind crush of silly notions and baby-talk, seeking elbow room, seeking a minute or two more of comfort and a good cigarette, and instead they’d come up hard against the nightmare.

  He was finding it easier to think, there wasn’t so much noise. Had the fight ended already? A man was cryi
ng, anyway.

  “Hey you!” the barmaid shouted. “You!”

  He turned to the window, needing a minute. But Mt. Hood was gone, and under the rain the neighborhood had turned black and white.

  Minimum Bid

  BY THE NIGHT of the art auction Kath had achieved the look she wanted, the wallop of a freethinking woman in her fifties. Endless sessions at the Fitness Center had honed her for the role (that, plus the calcium pills), a New Year’s resolution made a fact by mid-autumn. For the auction she chose a black pantaloon one-piece, a romper with a tank top, showing off flat and burnished pectorals. Round her waist she knotted a thong strung with native medallions, gargoyle faces, and she pegged on witty earrings. She was Katherine Wick, divorced and remade. If people wanted to talk about her, if they wanted to whisper and glance sidelong—then she might as well be the talk of the night.

  And Kath’s biggest coup was to arrive at the event with one of the artists. She paid the ticket for a prodigy, a pretty girl young enough to be her daughter.

  Kath introduced the girl, Dory, as “my date for the evening.” When someone asked, she made it clear that Dory was a housemate. Might as well be the talk of the night.

  Kath wouldn’t cling to the youngster, either. In the three years since she’d at last gotten out of her marriage, she’d made a few runs at this crowd, the money crowd, and she’d learned who she could count on for the least hypocritical reception. She introduced the girl to a few of those—heteros, but not entirely tongue-tied in Kath’s presence. Then, alone, Kath found a table beneath the auctioneer’s podium. She set down her bidding paddle and made it over to the art work up for auction. Local stuff, varied in size and splash, it was strung like a Miracle Mile halfway round the function room. Only after she’d checked the first several pieces against the descriptions in her program did the woman allow herself a look back at Dory.