Bill Warrington's Last Chance

by James King

  Mike Warrington could not get used to the disinfectant. He had stayed in plenty of hotels over the years; he knew the smell, had always been able to ignore it before, but not

  Maybe his sensitivity to it was heightened by the thought that he might be in this cramped, two-room unit for more than the night or two he had promised Clare and Ty he’d be gone. Why, after all, had he selected a hotel that billed itself as the “extended-stay luxury option” if he didn’t think that things would not be getting back to normal soon? The olfactory evidence of the much-touted daily maid service seemed to trap him, the unpleasant, almost smoky scent not only giving lie to the hotel’s “home on the road” marketing slogan, but also mocking him.

  The smell was strongest in the bedroom, perhaps because of the adjoining bathroom. He was having enough trouble sleeping without having to deal with that. After the first night, he had called down to the front desk to request a different suite. The monotone at the other end of the line informed Mike that the only available units were the “Executive Studio Suites,” which meant that the bed was in the same room as the couch, vinyl easy chair, television, “work-ready” desk, microwave oven, minibar, and clothes bureau. Too cramped for Mike’s tastes. Besides, what if he brought someone back to the room—that young headhunter he had met a few days earlier, for instance? He knew this was a ridiculous thought, given his current situation. But why not? You never knew what might happen. And if something like that did happen, could anyone blame him? What could Colleen say, after all? She was the reason he was in this dump.

  The front-desk clerk, in a surprising burst of above-and-beyond service, told Mike that a two-room suite would be available in ten days or so. Mike thanked him, asked him to tell the maids not to use so much Clorox, and hung up. Damned if he’d be here in a week. In a week he’d be back home, comfortably inside the 3,800-square-foot house whose mortgage payments had nearly killed him when he bought the place twenty years ago, mainly to please Colleen. She’d wanted a big house, and he’d busted his butt to give it to her. Well, all right, she wanted a big family more than a big house, but you couldn’t stuff a big family into a shack, right? And, yes, she had expressed some concern about being able to afford the monthly payments and by “big family” she had meant more than one—three or four, tops—since she had been an only child, but Mike knew she loved that house and he loved it and he was young and ambitious and all you had to do to motivate Mike Warrington was to tell him he couldn’t do something or might not be able to handle it. And so he traveled all week, from before dawn on Monday through late Friday night. He started beating his quotas, his commissions started increasing, and soon meeting the monthly mortgage nut got easier. As he developed his customer base, the bigger sales started coming in, huge orders from customers who admired his work ethic and who knew he’d always push their orders through at the plant. He and Colleen put an addition on the house. They found themselves paying luxury taxes on their cars. And a few years ago, after receiving the largest bonus he’d ever gotten or, as it turned out, would ever get, he paid the remaining mortgage off in one fell swoop. His accountant had advised him not to, with his locked-in interest rate so low. Mike knew the accountant was right, but screw it, he wanted to pay it all off anyway.

  Mike loosened his tie, removed the fifth of Jack Daniels from the brown paper bag, and poured a couple fingers—then a little more—into one of the little plastic cups provided by the hotel. He sat in the faux easy chair, knowing what Colleen would have thought at the sight of the dark brown fabric: God knows what germs are harbored in there. He channel surfed and considered all the people he wanted to tell off. He wanted to do it to their faces, just for the sweet pleasure of saying it out loud. He’d start with the headhunter. Good smile, firm handshake, nice rack, wrong attitude.

  Another older one, he knew she was thinking as she showed how she could shake hands with the best of ’em. No way anyone’s gonna hire this fifty-whatever.

  “Have you considered the possibility of the service sector?”

  Have you considered the possibility of blowing me?

  Wayne would be next. Can’t help you out, buddy, he’d said, moments before he became Mike’s new ex-boss. She’s really pushing this lawsuit. Wayne had delivered this news on the telephone while Mike was having a drink at a crowded bar at O’Hare. He said Transcon couldn’t afford to take a hit like that, then apologized for delivering this kind of decision over the phone, and then asked if Mike had anything to prove she was lying, because, well, that was his only shot, given their zero-tolerance policy about this sort of thing.

  Yeah, I got something for you, Wayne, you backstabbing motherfucker. Bend over.

  And Stephanie. Oh, Stephanie! How Mike wished she were in front of him at that very moment. What he’d say! What he’d do!

  What, exactly, would he do? Stand up? Hit her? Or would he do something on par with what he had done when Colleen had confronted him—teary but calm, invoking the sake of the children—after Stephanie’s visit.

  He’d listened. He’d nodded. He was gone within the hour.

  He decided to leave his bag packed, keeping it on the aluminum luggage rack next to the dresser unit. He’d picked clothes out of the suitcase both mornings, closing it afterward as if he were going to check out that day. He smiled, thinking of how he would return home, call Ty into the bedroom to watch him unpack.

  Didn’t I tell you I’d be back, he’d say to his son. Didn’t I tell you there was no need to look so sad, so disappointed?

  Mike refilled his plastic cup. Jack Daniels.

  “Why Jack Daniels?” he said out loud. His voice bounced off the wall and back at him, slurred from the impact. Jameson from now on. Or Jim Beam—drink American, at least.

  Mike sat back in the chair, sipped at his drink, and stared at the television.

  His father had started with Jack Daniels after a few months of drinking six-packs each night. Somewhere along the line, the beer wasn’t doing it for the old man. It took a while for Mike to notice the transition, because after his mother died and his father started drinking, Mike had perfected ways to stay out of the house and away from the stony silence that seemed to have descended along with the lid of his mother’s coffin. It was his senior year in high school. After football or basketball practice he would grab something to eat with a buddy, and then head over to Angela Monroe’s house to “study.”

  Study sessions. The Monroes had a partially finished basement, perfect for Mike and Angela’s course of study. Mrs. Monroe would leave the basement door open as she went about her business. Mike could tell that she didn’t like him. But how do you forbid your daughter to see a classmate whose mother had died? And how do you, as a seventeen-year-old, refuse to hang out with a girl who came to your mother’s wake and told you—even though you hardly knew her, hardly even noticed her since she never went to any of the games or dances—that she’d always be there for you.

  He learned later that her mother and father had divorced. Rumor was that the father had pretty much walked out. Something about a secretary. Finances were tight, so Angela worked after school. He discovered this one night after practice when he stopped at a drugstore and there she was, behind the counter. He thanked her for coming to his mother’s wake. She said she understood what it was like to lose a parent.

  Mike nodded, but he thought to himself that she had no idea what it was like to lose a parent. Sure, her father had walked out on them. But he was alive. His mother was dead. Big difference. He was about to point this out to her when she said that if he ever wanted to, you know, talk about it, she’d be willing to listen.

  He got hard, then and there. He imagined a sympathetic session. He’d pour out his heart. She’d nod sympathetically. She’d hold his hand between hers, empathizing. He’d drop his head; she’d offer her shoulder. Mike would say he wanted to hold her, just hold her, but it was uncomfortable to do so sitting down. They’d move to the couch.

  The study session would begin.

/>   Just mentioning something about his mother’s death alone was enough to get them making out the first couple of nights. Then one night he said, enigmatically, that his family was “screwed up,” which proved good enough for an under-the-shirt feel. For weeks, it didn’t get much further than that. But then one night he discovered the formula that would serve him so well throughout his college years and beyond.

  “I’ve been a complete asshole,” he said to Angela one night, removing his hand from her warmth as if he were suddenly ashamed.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Here you’ve been so good to me, listening to me moan and groan. And I haven’t listened to you. Things haven’t exactly been easy for you, have they? Tell me. I want to know.”

  Angela didn’t say much. But what she did do, after a long kiss, was stand and walk to the bottom of the stairs. After making sure her mother wasn’t nearby, she returned to Mike. She stood above him. She put her finger to her mouth to signal that they needed to be quiet.

  It was fast. It was furtive. Afterward, she cried.

  Mike, sitting in the hotel, laughed out loud. He supposed he should thank his mother for dying and his father for drinking: These little developments had helped him get laid. The dying- and-drinking story served him well throughout college, but not once he’d graduated and gone out into the real-world bars and bedrooms of Chicago to start his life. By then he’d polished other tactics, and the women had their own needs and agendas. Mike had come to accept that most women wanted it just as bad as he did. And so his approach—straightforward but nonthreatening, expeditious but not rushed—worked more times than not.

  Another surprise—usually not unpleasant—was that the women seemed as willing to move on as he was. One of them—Shelly? Sherry?—seemed so nonchalant about “breaking up” that he’d had to ask why.

  “You’re like Oakland,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” he asked, thinking of the Oakland Raiders or the Oakland A’s. Which sports hero had he reminded her of?

  “Gertrude Stein,” she said. He stared at her blankly. “Look it up,” she said.

  He didn’t bother. But some years later, on an airplane, he came across a profile of Oakland in the in-flight magazine. The lead for the article was the Stein quote: “The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.”

  But during those first few years in Chicago, long before he ran across the quote, Mike had plenty of reasons to think that whatever women wanted there, or anywhere, he had it.

  Until he met Colleen.

  He first saw her at a trade show of Chicago-area businesses. She was one of several people staffing the advertising agency booth next to his company’s. During move-in and set up, he watched as she made sure the signs were in the right place, that the brochures were displayed properly, that the company’s logo and tagline would be the first thing people would see when they turned down that aisle. She was obviously in charge, bustling about with authority. But judging from the way the others—a couple of guys and another woman—reacted to her requests, she wasn’t bossy. The men obeyed immediately, meekly. Mike knew that they hoped she’d notice them, praise them, and eventually reward them in the way that all men want to be rewarded by a long-legged beauty like Colleen. He saw them watching her when she wasn’t looking: bending over to pick up a box, talking with the other woman, unconsciously reaching inside the top of her blouse to adjust a strap.

  Later, years later, after they had been dating for a while and throughout their marriage, Colleen insisted that he had approached her. But Mike always said that it was she who had made the first move. Her male colleagues were at lunch or on a break. Mike was setting up a display of drill bits when he heard someone behind him. He turned to see Colleen. She smiled shyly and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. He hoped it would fall loose again.

  “Can you tell me where the men’s room is?”

  Mike raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “I just need to know if people ask,” she said, reddening. Mike thanked God for thinking of the blush response.

  Colleen’s recollection was that Mike had offered, several times, to buy her a cup of coffee—even after she informed him that she was not a coffee drinker. That he then tried to get her to join him for lunch or for a drink after dinner.

  “It was so obvious,” Colleen would say. “The girl with me said you were like a puppy dog, furiously wagging your, uh, tail for attention.”

  However it happened, Mike and Colleen had their first date at a convention center snack bar. He asked her to a Bulls game, which she accepted, and then he’d had to tap every contact he knew—not all that many at the time—to get tickets. How could you not fall in love with someone who loved sports and who seemed to attract the attention of everyone—male and female—in the arena?

  Mike stopped seeing other women. For perhaps the first time, he wanted to be with a woman for reasons other than simply getting her into bed. He loved the way Colleen smiled when he picked her up for a date, her quiet laughter, her perfume. He loved being seen with her. Of course he tried, repeatedly, to sleep with her. But when she let him get only so far and no farther, he didn’t even think of moving on to someone else, someone less challenging. He would be patient. His patience, he was sure, would pay off. One night he’d find the right words, the right touch, the right moment.

  The moment came a month or so into their relationship. At that particular moment, sex was the last thing on his mind.

  They were in Colleen’s apartment. Mike was on the couch, watching the news on TV while Colleen got ready for their date. One of the reporters was doing a review of Reversal of Fortune, the story of Claus von Bülow and his alleged attempt to murder his wife. In the movie clip they showed, the camera closed in on Jeremy Irons’s face as he measured out the insulin. Suddenly, Mike was back in Woodlake, passing by his parents’ bedroom when, through the partially closed door, he saw his father at his mother’s dresser, counting out the pills he was about to give her. He watched as his father stared at the pills, as if he weren’t sure about something. And then he saw his father shake out a few more pills into a separate pile. He pushed those into the original pile, and stared at them. Mike must have made a move, or perhaps even gasped, because suddenly his father looked up and saw Mike looking in.

  It wasn’t his memory of his father’s resemblance to the actor’s expression that set Mike off. Because the door was nearly closed, all he could see of his mother was the pyramid her feet formed over the covers. She was obviously on her back, waiting for her husband, trusting her husband, to give her the pain pills. But even that wasn’t what caused Mike to break down on Colleen’s couch. It was his memory of quickly moving on past the bedroom and on to whatever insignificant thing he was doing, without a word to either his father or mother.

  Colleen, hair brush in hand, came out of the bedroom to see what was wrong. Mike told her everything.

  Colleen comforted him.

  The next morning, Mike left her apartment before she woke up. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her after he’d made such a fool of himself, breaking down like that. He didn’t call her that day. Or the next. But on the third day, he needed to see her, be in her presence. When he reached her on the phone, she hung up on him.

  It took several days of trying, but she finally agreed to meet him for lunch. He apologized. He tried to explain that what he’d shared with her was something he’d barely acknowledged to himself. And he was ashamed of how he reacted.

  “Spare me the macho crap,” Colleen said.

  Mike was astounded at her coldness. Was this the same woman who had cried with him, who had undressed him slowly, tenderly, kissing him as she unbuttoned, unzipped, whispering that everything was going to be all right?

  Mike remembered several endless days after that. He sent flowers. He left long, apologetic messages on her answering machine. He begged for another chance. Somewhere along the line, she agreed t
o start seeing him again. But the sex had been a mistake, she told him. Not again . . . until they got married.

  It was so old-fashioned, so incredibly out-of-date, so uptight that Mike decided that this was definitely the woman for him.

  And now, he’d once again experienced her ability to suddenly shut him off—even after all these years. Mike sipped his whiskey and the image of her face—her expression as she turned after closing the door when Stephanie left—replaced whatever was playing on the television.

  So many close calls over the years! Who was the first? Of course he remembered. You don’t forget the first time you cheat on your wife. It was Ty’s kindergarten teacher. The name escapes. Then there was Barb Thomas, one of Colleen’s friends on the Welcome Wagon committee. After her, one of the front-desk clerks at the Indianapolis Marriott, where he used to stay when he handled the GM account. At the same time, usually the same road trip, there was Rita, the glass-ceiling-shattering purchasing manager at American Aeronautics in Louisville. Mike thought for sure that she would call Colleen once he’d decided it was time to move on; no man got the best of her. A transfer to the West Coast saved him.

  The closest call had been Cary Walcott, the adult supervisor of the youth group at the First United Church of Christ. Whenever Mike attended church, which was not all that often, he noticed that Cary was involved in some aspect of the service—leading the hymns, reading from the Bible, making announcements at the end of the service. She had a nice figure and a demure demeanor, but Mike always suspected that beneath the churchy exterior was a delightfully inventive sinner. So when Cary contacted him to take out an ad in the church bulletin, he volunteered to deliver the check to her personally. She came to believe that their adulterous tryst, because it had taken place in the office in the basement, the church basement, was blessed by God. She talked a lot about God. How God disapproved—and yet how God must approve, since He’d made her fall in love with Mike. How God wanted them to end the deceit. How God wanted them to get married. But then God sent a lump to Cary’s right breast. Mike stopped hearing from her when her husband started taking her to Minneapolis for treatment.