by James King
In his car, he turned on the Bones Markham CD he had planned to play for Peggy on their way to the concert. He was about to make a right turn at the stop sign at the end of her road when a car making a left went way out of its lane and nearly hit the front of Nick’s car. Nick slammed on the horn. The other driver didn’t even turn his head as he gave Nick the finger.
He was sure that his headlights had made it impossible for his own face to be seen, much less recognized. But Nick definitely saw and recognized the other driver.
A car that had pulled up behind his tooted gently.
“Fuck you!” Nick yelled. He had to wait for a line of cars coming from the left to pass before he could execute—to less friendly honking now—a U-turn back onto Peggy’s road.
Can’t be him, he said as he drove back toward the house. I’m being paranoid.
But there was a car in her driveway and a shaft of life emanating from the front door as he drove by. Careful to maintain a non-stalking speed, he saw Peggy, dressed in a sleek black cocktail dress, stepping aside to let Peter Jackson enter.
He used a driveway a few houses down from Peggy’s to turn around. He made his way home slowly, focusing carefully on the posted speed limits. He maintained a safe distance from the car in front of him. He kept the radio off. He declined the option of turning right on red, with caution, unless there was a car behind him. Whenever he moved his foot from the gas pedal to the brake, or vice versa, the tickets in his pocket cut into his thigh.
He hesitated at the front door. Inside, the house was ready in the event that the outcome of the my-place-or-yours decision was his. Nick had spent most of the day scouring the downstairs bathroom and especially the master bath, paying particular attention to the toilets and the floor around them. He made sure the kitchen was spotless, the refrigerator free of old cheese or other malodorous items. A bottle of chardonnay sat expectantly on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator door. He had vacuumed the bedroom rug and dusted the dressers and bedside tables, apologizing to Marilyn as he put the pictures of the two of them inside drawers, out of sight. Now, as he let himself into the house, he felt the need to formulate another apology, as if she were sitting on the steps just inside the front door, waiting for his explanation.
When he and Marilyn had bought the house, he’d wired it so that the music he selected from his system in the den could be heard throughout. In this way, he and Marilyn were able to “christen” the house by making love in each room, accompanied by John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Nowadays, Nick always left the radio on whenever he left—not to fool a potential burglar, but because he hated the silence of returning to an empty house.
He craved that silence now. Slamming the door behind him, he went to the den and turned the music off. As he did so he saw, on one of the shelves, a picture of Marilyn. The picture had been taken at the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan. It had always been one of his favorites. She was sitting on the beach at sunset, hugging her knees, smiling at him like a promise.
He grabbed the picture, lifted it high over his head, and, after a half-second hesitation and with a downward swoop of his arm, threw the picture on the floor in front of him. It landed face up, the glass cracked but not shattered. A jagged line ran across Marilyn’s knees; the sun behind her now the center of a glassy spider’s web.
CHAPTER TWELVE
April improvised to her footsteps as she made her way home.
I’m finally out, finally free.
Summer’s here. Just you and me.
We’ll make the most of the time we’ve got.
I’m gonna love you, babe. Gonna love you a lot.
April frowned. Well, that sucked. But she’d just finished her last day of school and she’d have plenty of time to concentrate on her songs, her singing, and finding a band that wasn’t too lame. She saw herself performing in one of those outdoor concerts by the lake. Keith Spinelli would hear this incredible music and wander over to see who it was and would be amazed to see her, April Shea, up there onstage, front and center. She might point to him, a special crumb, as she acknowledged the wild roar of the crowd.
She couldn’t wait for the long days ahead. She and Heather would do some serious tanning—forget what her mother said about skin cancer. Why couldn’t her mother, the only dark cloud on the summer horizon, be more like Heather’s? Why couldn’t she be more like anyone else’s mother?
She considered the options that would keep her away from home as much as possible. She couldn’t hang out with Heather all the time or her IQ would drop a few hundred points. Kelly Honaker lived nearby, but she was such a preppy, two-faced slut that April might catch an STD from just being with her. The inseparable Chandra Zahm and Allyson Cagley were nice, but they had been best friends since kindergarten and had their own strange language that kind of freaked April out. She concentrated on the rhythm of her footsteps to crowd out the thought that when it came down to it, she didn’t really have a best friend besides Heather.
She stopped when she saw the car parked halfway up the driveway to her house. She didn’t recognize it, not being a car nut like her grandfather, who liked to go on and on about his precious Impala. The thought of him brought a pang, since she hadn’t been allowed to see him after the accident, but she forgot all about her grandfather when she got closer to the car and saw that it was a Mercedes. Who did her mother know that drove such an expensive car?
Of course! She ran toward the house. He’d made it big. And he came back, just as he said he would.
April slammed the door behind her.
“Dad?!”
She smelled the perfume her mother used to wear when she and her father would go out. As a kid, she always associated that scent with babysitters and desperate grabs at her departing parents, and over the years she’d occasionally slipped into her mother’s room to open and breathe in the fragrance from the small square bottle—always three-quarters full—that rested on the top of the dresser.
But almost as soon as she smelled the perfume, she saw that the man sitting with his back toward her, facing her mother on the couch opposite, was not her father.
It was Hank Johnson.
Her mom seemed nervous. “Hi, Sweetie,” she said, stepping forward and then back. “You remember Mr. Johnson.”
April took it all in as she approached them: her mom’s nicest dress, the string of pearls, and—now that she was close enough to smell it—Hank’s pukey cologne.
“Hi, April,” he said, standing. “Been a while, hasn’t it.”
April nodded slightly as she shook the hand he extended and got an unsolicited lesson in the basics of a hearty handshake: eye contact, ear-to-ear shit-eating grin, and a bone-crunching grip.
“Mr. Johnson and I have to meet with a potential buyer, and then we have a business dinner, April,” her mother said. “I put your dinner in the fridge. All you have to do is pop it in the microwave and—”
“The Mercedes,” April said. What she had wanted to say was, You drive a Lexus. So the car outside isn’t yours.
“You like it?” Hank asked. “Drove it off the lot not more than an hour ago.” He looked at his watch, and then at her mother. “We’ve got some time, Marcy. Why don’t the three of us go for a ride?”
April looked at the strand of pearls again, then turned and walked toward the stairs.
“April?” her mother called out.
As she took each step, slowly and deliberately, April heard her mother mumble something to Hank Johnson. Hank Freakin’ Johnson’s reply was quite clear. “Not to worry,” he said. “I was one myself.”
She lay on her bed and waited. A moment later, the room filled with her mother’s perfume. April closed her eyes. She heard the door being closed softly.
“I cannot believe what you just did,” April heard. She hadn’t opened her own eyes yet, but she could already feel the heat from her mother’s. “Just where do you get off being so incredibly rude like that?”
“You cannot keep going out with that creep.
” April felt the words come down from the poster on the ceiling and through her mouth.
“Sit up and look at me. And keep your voice down. He’ll hear you.”
“I hope so.”
“What is going on with you?”
April waited. She was determined to wait, to not say a word. Let her mother draw her own conclusions. Let her stand there forever if she wants. April would not speak. “Do you have to wear those pearls?” she asked.
“What about these pearls? What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. I’m sure Dad would love to know you still wear them.”
Now her mother paused for more than a moment.
“Let me explain something, young lady. First, your father didn’t buy me these pearls. He preferred to spend his money on other things. Other people. These pearls were my mother’s. Second, I am not going out with this man. We have a business dinner. I’ve told you: Hank—Mr. Johnson—is a very successful realtor. He’s been in the business a long time. He’s given me all sorts of advice. He’s been a huge help to me. And this is how you act?”
April tried to keep her face blank. Indifferent. Repulsed.
“I’m trying to keep things together, April. This is the first job I’ve had where I don’t have to bow and scrape or clean up after someone. I have to make this work. We’ve got expenses. You’re going to college in a couple years and someone’s going to have to pay for that.”
“I’ll ask Dad.”
“Ha!”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
Her mother held her breath. Her features softened. “I don’t hate him. Not anymore. But we’ll talk about that later. In the meantime, as I told you, I’m going to a meeting and then to a business dinner with Mr. Johnson. He’s doing me a favor. Just remember, in case you’re tempted not to like him, that in a way he’s doing both of us a favor.”
“And what favor are you doing him?” April asked.
She hadn’t expected the slap, so it didn’t hurt at first. But after she heard her mother walk back downstairs and talk with Mr. Johnson and the front door close and the house grow silent, her cheek started to burn.
She held back her tears. After a few minutes, she booted up her computer and opened her PITS list. At the top of the list, above her mother’s name, she typed in her father’s. She pressed hard on the keys: P-A-T-R-I-C- K S-H-E-A. She stared at her father’s name. Then she selected it and deleted it. Then she did an undo. Then another cut. Another undo. A final delete. She closed her computer and lay back on her bed.
Her mother made everything suck so much.
She had to get away. As soon as freakin’ possible.
Roxie’s expression seemed to have changed. She was no longer into her music. She was looking directly at April. It was clear Roxie didn’t like what she saw: a wimp who let her mother get away with slapping her for no good reason. A loser whose own mother would rather spend time with a salesman, for chrissake.
And who had Roxie been? Only someone—a woman—with the guts to take her life into her own hands, to pack her bags and head to North Beach in San Francisco and not let anything or anybody stand in her way.
April turned on her stomach. What could she do? She didn’t have money to take a plane or bus or train to San Francisco. And it would be—the rest of June, July, August, and most of September—four freakin’ months before she could even get a learning permit.
Fine, Roxie called down from the ceiling. Enjoy your summer with Marcy and Hank.
April slapped her hand against the bed next to her head. She’d rather be with anyone else, live anywhere else.
She sat up as if Roxie herself had reached down, grabbed April by the shirt, pulled her upright, and started singing at the top of her lungs:
What you thinkin’ ’bout, Mr. Ear Hair
Sittin’ all alone in your newspaper chair?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mike Warrington watched his boss. Wayne tried to be subtle, but Mike had known him too long and too well not to see how his eyes surreptitiously followed the waitress after she delivered a Jack on the rocks to Mike and the check to Wayne. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than both their daughters.
“Times have changed, old friend,” Mike said.
“Who are you calling old?” Wayne asked, smiling. He took his wallet from his inside jacket pocket as he inspected the check.
“Wasn’t all that long ago that you’d be testing lines. Like, ‘How long have you worked here? Got a boyfriend? What time do you get off work?’ ”
Wayne offered up a rueful chuckle.
“Last time I tried one of those, I had hair.”
Mike forced a small laugh. He recognized Wayne’s line for what it was: an engineered, self-deprecating nugget intended to say to others, You’re talking with someone comfortable in his own skin, a man who doesn’t feel the need to impress, a leader who understands the power of poking fun at himself. It was quips like those—used frequently with customers, strategically with superiors, and occasionally with colleagues and subordinates—that helped Wayne get to where he was: senior vice president, sales, North America. Mike was one of ten of his direct reports and dozens of indirect reports. But it was not a line, Mike felt, that Wayne should have used with him. Mike heard it as, I may think about that stuff, but I don’t talk about it like a frat boy. I’ve grown up. You might want to give that a try.
Mike had not wanted to get into sales. In fact, he had been determined to avoid any calling or occupation that smacked of following in the old man’s footsteps. He had managed to get high numbers in the draft lottery and so didn’t have to even consider joining the service. His father encouraged Mike to get into sales—Sky’s the limit when you’re on commission—and so he promptly took the first non-sales job he was offered, which was with a large regional bank. Soon afterward, however, eyes bleary from columns of numbers and head filled with incomprehensible jargon about equity and float and discrete compounding, he found himself thinking the military might have been a better choice. Then he began scouring the classifieds.
He and Wayne started as sales reps on the same day. For the first months—almost a year—they teamed up to to makes cold calls to small to midsize machine shops scattered throughout Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Wayne had more than just hair back then. He had drive. He was the one who pushed them, at the end of the day, to call on one more metalworker. He was the one who shamed Mike—Do you want the business or don’t you?—into entertaining boorish prospects each night at steak joints and pasta palaces. Whatever it takes, Wayne would say. A customer wanted to get hammered? Wayne would pick out the lounge, get stinking with him, and still be ready for an eight o’clock meeting the next morning. A customer liked strip clubs? Wayne made sure he had plenty of singles for G-strings. And on those rare occasions when they weren’t entertaining customers, Wayne put his schmoozing skills to work, usually successfully, on receptionists, waitresses, store clerks—even, once, a tollbooth attendant.
As Wayne had just pointed out, it was all a very long time ago. Still, that year had been a valuable one for Mike. As Wayne moved up, he helped Mike move up. He always returned Mike’s calls—at first, out of loyalty to that year in the trenches; later, Mike came to believe, mainly because Wayne knew how much dirt Mike had on him. Mike didn’t mind the shift. In fact, he encouraged it. Through friendly reminders of past exploits, Mike made sure Wayne remembered there was always the possibility that Mike might someday—at a corporate affair, perhaps, or an event that included wives—mention (accidentally, of course) one of Wayne’s early-career indiscretions.
And so Mike was curious to know what tone and approach Wayne would take when he finished totaling up the bill and signing the check and finally raised the subject that led to this increasingly rare get-together of old sales hounds. Wayne was taking a long time to add things up.
“Less hair, maybe,” Mike said, trying to make his voice smile. He put his glass of whiskey to his lips. “But
you still have all the other requisite equipment, don’t you? We’re not that old yet, are we?”
The waitress appeared. Wayne handed her the signed receipt and thanked her. This time when she moved away from the table, Wayne’s eyes focused on Mike.
“We’ve heard from Stephanie Kraus,” he said.
The whiskey burned in Mike’s throat more sharply than usual. A typical Wayne move: get to the point when the other person least expects it—something he’d coached Mike on when Mike had started managing others. The first reaction, Wayne always said, tells you everything you need to know.
But Mike had been prepared. He swallowed smoothly and placed the glass down in front of him slowly. “Oh?”
“More accurately, our lawyers have heard from her lawyers.”
Mike nodded. It was important to remain calm. Or, at least, appear calm. He hadn’t expected that. He thought Stephanie might complain to Wayne, maybe even file a complaint with HR. He didn’t think she’d go straight to lawyers. And after only a few days. Even so, Mike had all his bases covered. He’d kept her on for a few months after taking away the Transcon account. He had raised everyone’s quota, not just hers. And he had stopped going to Cranston.
You don’t really think you’re going to get away with this, do you?
She could prove nothing.
Still, he wished he’d ordered a double.
“What’s on their minds?” he asked. He liked the tone and evenness of his voice. Cool. Unconcerned. No big deal.
“About two million,” Wayne said.
Mike snorted, perhaps a little too loudly. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “She was deadweight, Wayne. Nice-looking deadweight, easy-on-the-eyes deadweight, deadweight with great tits, but still deadweight.”
Wayne shook his head. “I know it’s just you and me talking here. We go way back. I’m no prude, as you know. But you might not want to describe her that way if you have to give a deposition.”
“Won’t come to that,” Mike said, feeling his way toward his stride, suddenly the legal savant. “She only had one account that was bringing in any sort of revenue. One, Wayne. And it wasn’t even enough to keep a rep assigned to it. So I turned it over to telesales.”