by James King
“English, of course,” April answered, but Bill caught the hesitation.
He wanted to hug her. “Forgetting our deal already?” he asked.
April stared at him.
“You don’t really have an essay assignment, do you?”
Her face reddened.
Bill laughed. “Your mother was a lousy liar, too. But she wasn’t as creative. Not nearly.”
He dug into his pocket for his car keys and dangled them in front of him.
“Ready for life lesson number three?” he asked.
The sun streaming through the front window caught one of the keys, sending sparks to the walls, to the ceiling, to April’s widened hazel eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It took the sight of bare branches reaching up to the sky, like the naked limbs of skinny old men, to remind Mike Warrington of the surprising number of trees that lined the main street of Cranston, Illinois. Cranston had always been small, but through the eighties it had been a moderately thriving hub of machine-tooling companies that supplied parts for every major industry in America. Now it was home to just two major employers. Mike could see one of them from his booth at the Waffle House: a call center for an insurance conglomerate headquartered on the East Coast. It was located in a strip mall in what used to be a discount electronics warehouse. Rumor along the Waffle House counter was that the 250 jobs—held primarily by locals with, at most, a high school diploma—would soon be outsourced somewhere, probably India.
The other business, and one of two reasons Mike made the seventy-mile trip down from Schaumburg, was ten miles outside of Cranston. Power Industrial Supplies used to be one of the biggest buyers of the precision metal-cutting tools and drills manufactured by Transcon Tooling, the company Mike represented as a regional sales director. Power-I, as they had branded themselves, didn’t seem to be faring much better than the call center. Two of their major customers had gone belly-up over the past six months, and the industry itself was trying to extricate itself from a two-year slump. Consequently, Power-I was buying less and less product from Transcon.
Still, Transcon’s account manager for Power-I, Stephanie Kraus—the other primary reason Mike traveled to Cranston—was starting to turn things around. Stephanie was one of the few women in the business and the only female sales rep who reported to Mike. Still, he knew that once the novelty of buying from a woman wore off, sales would slide again. It might take a while, since Power-I’s buyer, Frank Chadwick, acted as if a thirtyish redhead with an athletic build, an MBA, and a boatload of ambition didn’t notice the gut hanging over his belt, the bad comb-over, or his sophomoric attempts at humor. When Frank revealed, between not-so-discreet glances at Stephanie’s chest during dinner the previous night, that Power-I had entered into an exclusive agreement for milling inserts with one of Transcon’s major competitors, Mike finalized his decision. He kept the decision to himself, though. He didn’t interfere when Stephanie set up a meeting with Frank for this morning.
“Just you today, honey, or will your wife be joining you again?”
The waitress was about his age, Mike guessed. Tight uniform, unaware or unconcerned about the bulges it revealed. Mike pushed his coffee cup toward her for a refill.
“Or is she your daughter?” she asked as she poured. No smile. Eyebrows raised ever so slightly.
“My colleague,” Mike said evenly. Screw these small-town snoops. “She should be here in a few minutes.”
“Sorry. Colleague,” the waitress said, nodding her head, her lips slightly pursed. “Y’all want menus?”
“No, thanks. We’ll probably just have coffee.”
The waitress offered a small, flat smile as she walked away.
Mike was a little ashamed of himself. He’d been in this restaurant at least a dozen times and always pretended it was the first time he’d laid eyes on the waitress. A good salesperson would have chatted her up. Salespeople were friendly, genuinely interested in other people. And for years Mike had played the part, psyching himself up to ask about the kids, the latest scores, the goddamned weather. He knew how to play the game. He’d learned it from his father years ago. Wherever he went with his dad, people called out to talk with him, be with him, get the surefire flattery they knew was coming their way. Everyone in the goddamned state of Ohio, it seemed, loved Bill Warrington. But they didn’t know, really know, Bill Warrington.
Mike was much more comfortable in his current managerial role than with selling. He knew what had to be done. He could tell others what had to be done and how to do it. But he didn’t actually have to do it himself—at least, not as often as he used to. And he didn’t have to kiss ass.
Unless he wanted to.
Mike’s back was to the door, but he knew Stephanie had arrived by the soft, fragrant cloud that seemed to surround her at all times.
She slid into the booth, pulling her briefcase in with her. She glanced around. Mike thought she was about to lean over the table and try to kiss him.
He took a sip of his coffee. “Did you check out?” he asked.
“Mmm hmm,” Stephanie said, arranging herself.
“Receipt?” he asked, checking the inside breast pocket of his jacket for his own.
“God, you’re paranoid. Have I forgotten before? Besides, do you really think some dweeb in accounting is going to compare expense reports and make sure we had separate rooms? He’d probably recommend you for a promotion for cutting expenses.”
Mike offered a tepid smile.
“Would you like a menu, miss?”
Stephanie looked up at the waitress, who had picked up some dirty plates from the next booth.
“Just coffee, please,” Stephanie said.
“Surprise, surprise,” the waitress muttered as she started to walk away.
“Um, just a second,” Stephanie said. “You know, I should have asked months ago, but I don’t know your name.”
“My name?”
Stephanie nodded. “You always give such great service, and you’re the reason I keep coming back here. I should at least know your name.”
Mike could see that the battle-ax wasn’t buying it. “Edna,” she said, voice as flat as the syrup-stained table that Stephanie now had her elbows on.
“Get out of town! That’s my younger sister’s name.”
“Nobody names their kid Edna.”
“Oh, I know!” Stephanie said, turning toward her. “And, no offense, my sister hates the name. But my mom had an aunt Edna who took care of her after my grandma died when my mom was a little girl. Auntie Ed, as my mother called her, was a saint.”
Edna’s face softened. “What’s your sister call herself?”
“Edie,” Stephanie said without hesitation.
“Me, too.” The waitress was smiling now.
“How about that? Well, Edie, it’s so nice to know you.”
“I’ll be right back with your coffee.”
And she was, placing it down carefully and with a smile for Stephanie but not so much as a glance at Mike. Stephanie winked at him as she took her first sip.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Mike said.
“I don’t. I just didn’t want that judgmental old biddy spitting in my coffee.” She was wearing a cream-colored top that revealed nothing unless she leaned forward, as she did now. “You seem preoccupied this morning. You were preoccupied last night. What’s up?”
Mike took another sip of his coffee to avoid looking at her. He never was good at this part, and he hadn’t expected things would get to this point so quickly. Or maybe he was just getting impatient with the age difference. Let’s face it—it wasn’t particularly arousing when he mentioned an event or something that had happened to him as an adult, only to realize that she hadn’t yet been born. Maybe he was crazy to even consider doing what he was about to do. Any guy who looked at Stephanie, and almost every one she walked by did, would think so.
“Hey!”
Mike jerked from both Stephanie’s voice and her foot, w
hich was in his crotch. “Stephanie,” he said, in a low voice.
Stephanie slowly removed her foot. “Somebody’s a little sleepy this morning,” she said. “Or doesn’t want to talk with me. Which is it, Michael?”
She sometimes acted young enough to be his daughter; other times, old enough to be his mother.
“No meeting,” he said.
Stephanie frowned. “Canceled? Why? He didn’t call me. How do you—?”
“He didn’t cancel.”
“What do you mean?” She was sitting straight up now, her head cocked. “What’s going on?”
Mike took a deep breath. He’d made a mistake. He had thought a public place would be safest. But this was Stephanie. Had he really thought a crappy little breakfast joint filled with truckers and retirees would stop her from saying what was on her mind?
“I’ll handle the call,” he said. “We’re cutting Power-I loose, Stef.”
Stephanie didn’t react.
“Purely a bottom-line decision,” Mike continued. “The margins aren’t good enough to justify an account manager. We’ll shift them over to our telesales group.”
Stephanie remained quiet for another second. She looked Mike straight in the eye. “Sales are up 10 percent over the same date last year,” she said, her voice even. “They’re picking up new customers. Two big ones in Asia. And your margin argument is bullshit.”
“Stephanie.”
“That’s my bread- and-butter account, Michael, and you know it. You cut them loose and I’m—” She stopped. Her eyes narrowed. She sat back in the booth. “I see,” she said.
“It’s not what you think,” Michael said, careful to maintain eye contact now. “It’s just one of those things. You just need to find prospects with a stronger need for some of our bigger tickets. And I’ve been telling you for some time now the importance of keeping your pipeline filled.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie said, no slouch in the eye contact department. “The pipeline.”
Mike looked at his coffee cup. “I have no doubt you’ll pull in some big orders soon. You’ve got the brains, the motivation, the—”
“Don’t,” Stephanie said, her eyes wide now, warning. “I’m in no mood for some bullshit sales pep talk. Maybe instead you can tell me how I’m going to pay the rent now that 90 percent of my income has just disappeared.”
Mike nodded, trying to appear sympathetic but firm. “You knew this was a commission-based job when you took it, Stef. Shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“Is that your secret to success, Michael? Lots of baskets to put your eggs in?”
Mike resisted the urge to glance behind him. He felt the waitress’s eyes on the back of his head, like infrared targets. “You might want to keep your voice down, Stef.”
“Might I?”
He waited. She usually calmed down quickly, but this was new territory. He was tempted to look at his watch. The meeting with Power-I was in fifteen minutes. He’d pick up the PO for the order Stephanie sold last night, then explain how Transcon’s “Customer First” telephone representatives would take care of all of Power-I’s future needs. The horny old bastard there wouldn’t like it, especially when he realized he’d seen the last of Stephanie’s boobs, but his business still needed several of Transcon’s lines. Mike’s numbers wouldn’t take a complete hit.
“Look,” Mike said. He reached across the table and took her hand. She didn’t pull away, as he feared she might. “Line up some solid prospects, and I’ll make some joint calls with you next time I’m down.”
“Yeah? When will that be?”
“Whenever you say. You know that, Stef.” Mike squeezed her hand. “Let’s not mix up the business thing with us.”
Stephanie inhaled deeply, and then covered Mike’s hand with her own. “I should tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Mike smiled. Crisis averted. For now. “But you won’t?” he asked, dropping a twenty on the table with his free hand.
“I won’t,” Stephanie said. “But you’d better not be bullshitting me. Things would get ugly. Fast.”
Mike had no doubt. “I think you know me better than that,” he said, standing.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, he saw in his rearview mirror that Edna was at Stephanie’s booth. She was holding the coffeepot and talking to Stephanie, whose head was bowed, as if examining something on the table.
Mike glanced at his watch. He’d be a few minutes late for his meeting, but he wouldn’t rush. He would enjoy his last drive through Cranston.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As he waited for her in a booth at the Filling Station, sipping on his second cup of coffee and watching the incoming customers pull their jackets and Windbreakers a little more tightly around themselves, Nick realized that he no longer wanted to love his sister.
There were plenty of reasons a rational person wouldn’t. She was embarrassingly loud. She still swore as much as she did as a teenager—a vice for which, admittedly, he and Mike would have to accept some measure of responsibility. It had been eight years since Patrick Shea took off and she still acted as if she were the first and only woman ever to be duped by a nice-looking guy. It wouldn’t surprise him if April were grown with kids of her own before Marcy stopped talking about the challenge of raising a girl alone, as a single parent, a single woman, in today’s ridiculously permissive society.
And now, as usual, she was late.
Try as he might, Nick was incapable of being late. Even when he left at a time he was certain would make him run late, the traffic cleared, lights turned green, he made all the correct turns, and he was always, invariably, maddeningly early. He was early for meetings, early for social events—even those he had no desire to attend. Marilyn had tended toward the fashionably late side of the equation, and it was one of the few things about her that irritated him. Nick would maintain a stony silence as they drove to whatever they were late for. Marilyn would ignore his anger and sit quietly, watching the passing landscape, maybe even humming softly. She might lean over to change the radio station, and Nick would catch a hint of her perfume. By the time they got to wherever they were going, he usually wished they could just go back home to be alone together.
Nick opened the menu for the third time since he’d arrived. Should have brought a book, he thought. That would be a good strategy for any time he and Marcy agreed to meet.
He wanted to not love his sister, but every time he resolved not to he was defeated by memories of when they were younger and in it together, she and he, against their father’s drinking, against their mother’s cancer, even against their brother’s sudden interest in girls that put an end to the sorts of antics—the faces at the dinner table, the obscene gestures when their father’s back was turned—that made all three of them laugh.
And so Nick agreed to meet Marcy despite his fears that her negative energy might bring him down after he’d been feeling pretty good. Thanks to Peggy, he saw a sliver a hope, like hallway light pulling itself through the bottom gap of a closed door, that just maybe he didn’t have to be so stunningly alone for the rest of his life. Nick’s inability to not love his sister, in fact, made him willing to enter into a conversation with her about a topic guaranteed to throw a black cloud over his recent high spirits. No good would come of this meeting, Nick decided, unless the news was that the old man had won the lottery or someone had been prescient and taken out long-term health care for him or—Nick closed the menu—the old man was dead.
Nick was composing the eulogy in his head—or, rather, the awestruck congratulations people would offer him after he delivered it—when Marcy finally arrived.
“Nothing like November in friggin’ Ohio,” she said as she threw her purse in ahead of her and slid into the booth. While shucking off her coat and apparently not even thinking of apologizing for being late, she said, “First things first. How is Peggy Gallagher in the sack?”
Nick signaled for another coffee.
“Come on, don’t be like that
. You love talking about that stuff. Remember your big night with Cindy Oxford, your first trip to second base? You described it like a tour guide. No detail too insignificant: the challenge of the buttons, the complexity of the back clasp—”
“We were kids, for god’s sake,” Nick said, looking around. “I used to think a fart in church was funny, too.”
“Tell me you still don’t.”
Marcy was desperate to get a smile. Nick knew it.
“What, exactly, can I do for you, Marcy?”
The sentence was out of his mouth before he realized the impact it would have on Marcy. He had said those words once before, just before lending her money for the third or maybe it was the fourth time after she’d been fired from a job because she hadn’t yet figured out—as if he would ever be able to—how to juggle day care and after-school care with a full-time job. The two seconds it had taken to ask the question, using those words, changed their relationship irrevocably. You have no idea, she’d sobbed. And just who the fuck are you, anyway? Marcy never again asked him for money, and Nick had not since been able to answer her question to his own satisfaction.
“When’s the last time I asked you to do anything for me, pencil dick?” she asked now.
Nick nodded. “That was patronizing,” he said. “Sorry.”
Marcy turned to stare out the window. The sun caught her eye, and he saw that she was welling up. She fought it with a butt-and-sleeves adjustment and a push of some stray strands of hair to behind her ear. Maybe it was because he didn’t see her that often now, but Nick thought that she was starting to look older.
“But pencil dick is Mike’s line,” he said.
Marcy laughed. “Definitely,” she said.
And it was—most definitely had been—Mike’s line once upon a time, when it seemed that Mike was always talking about penises. Nick wondered if that was the case with all brothers. Their beds had been separated by a tiny nightstand with a lampshade that Nick remembered glowed in the dark a few seconds after the lamp was turned off. Mike and Nick would lie in their beds and listen to the muffled conversations of their parents in the kitchen directly beneath their room. Their voices, low and high, created a kind of lullaby, accompanied by the clinking of the spoon as their father stirred sugar into his instant coffee. Mike liked to provide a running commentary.