Eve's Men

by Newton Thornburg

  “I know the feeling,” Charley said. “But Brian did tell me he’d give my money back. And he wants to discuss turning himself in.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I want to.” Charley took her in his arms, and she hugged him back, hard. “It’ll be all right,” he told her. “We love each other, and nothing’s going to change that.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Eve had been in Seattle five other times: twice with her parents, once with her ex-husband, and twice with Brian, the last time staying overnight with him on an old friend’s yacht moored in Lake Union, which lay virtually at the city’s center, probably no more than a mile from where Eve was now, standing at a window in her and and Charley’s tenth-floor suite in the Olympic Four Seasons Hotel. It was after four in the morning, and she had been awake for over an hour, having no dearth of things to worry about, things she was trying hard to put out of her mind.

  Instead she concentrated on the street below, which looked scrubbed and fresh, like everything else in the city, especially the Olympic. She had stayed at the hotel once before, on the trip with her ex-husband, so she was not surprised at how tastefully elegant the old place was. That time, however—old Bernie not being quite as free with his money as Charley was—they had stayed in a simple, average-size room with a double bed, no sitting room or whirlpool bath or banks of windows running along two walls, no thirty feet of wool carpet separating her from the king-size bed where her new lover softly snored.

  Turning, she looked over at him now, barely able to make him out in the night light, just his tousled head showing above the covers. And again she entertained the thought that their love affair would be a short-lived thing, entertained it like a long, sharp icicle impaling her skull. For she had fallen so hard for him that she actually hated his wife, just for living. And hated his life back in Illinois, and of course now hated Brian too—all the things that she knew would inevitably pull her and Charley apart.

  With Brian, though, the problem was that she also still loved him, or at least still felt bound by the habit of loving him, of living and sleeping with him. Because of this ambivalence, she had no idea how she was going to handle things when they were all three together again. What was she to do, stand midway between them or cling to Charley and stick her tongue out at Brian? At least she knew she wouldn’t do the reverse of that, not in this lifetime.

  She was still amazed at the difference Charley had made in her life, not just the fact of being in love with him, but being actually, consciously, happy. Until now—until Charley—she hadn’t realized how easy life could be, how much more fun, if you weren’t in a constant state of anxiety, always wondering what your lover was brooding about, wondering just when he would blow. Even though Charley and Brian were alike in many ways, for instance having the same warm, easy smile, the same good looks and hard bodies, they were at bottom totally different. When Charley made love to her, there was no button pressing, no feeling of being manipulated. Rather, he was simply so straightforward passionate, so ardent, that the buttons seemed to press of their own accord, and all at the same time, with the result that her only problem was in trying to make the experience last as long as she could, a “problem” she had never had before, not with any man.

  Mainly, though, it was the other things, the daily little things, out of bed, that had won her heart. Charley was unfailingly considerate and made no attempt to hide how he felt about her, least of all in the way he looked at her. Yet there was never anything cloying in his attentions, probably because of his wry sense of humor, his ability to laugh at himself—and at both of them—in ways that never hurt or denigrated. Above all, she loved how comfortable he was, both in his skin and in his world. And it was a contagious comfort, making her feel more relaxed and confident than she had in years.

  Still, the icicle remained where it was, stuck in her head. This was not the real world, she kept telling herself. Not her world anyway. It was a vacation. It was a honeymoon. And honeymoons always ended.

  Late the next morning Charley and Eve were sitting over lattes in the bright sunshine of a sidewalk cafe in Pioneer Square Park. The scene they looked out on was almost as charmingly picturesque as it was depressing, for though the park was a lovely little place, it was crowded at the moment with some markedly unlovely people. Except for them and the cars driving past, it could have been a scene from a century earlier: the worn brick walkways and the old park benches and cluster-globe streetlights, as well as an ornate iron-and-glass pergola, a streetcar stop of long ago. There was also a kiosk and a totem pole and a curious little fountain-cum-statue of the Indian chief for whom the city was named, all lying in the shade of handsome trees. So it didn’t surprise Charley that street people had taken over the park, run aways and drunks and petty hoodlums, one of whom was amusing himself and his buddies by dribbling spittle onto the face of an old man sleeping on a bench.

  Noon came and went, without any sign of Brian or the girl Terry. And since workers on their lunch break were lining up for tables, Charley and Eve decided to leave. For over an hour they walked the downtown streets, most of the time holding hands, with Charley pulling Eve along, frustrating her apparent need to stop and study every shop window they passed. Charley, on the other hand, was more interested in the throng of passersby, who soon convinced him that Seattle was the true home and natural habitat of the yuppie. Not that there weren’t more of them in larger cities, but here their preponderance was overwhelming: a virtual army of well-dressed young people of both sexes, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked from their morning workouts and ready to take on the world, or if not that, then at least a good, low-calorie, high-priced lunch at some chic little eatery, places with names like the Burger and Spirits Emporium and the Great American Food and Beverage Company. Even the oldsters on the street seemed to share in the general attitude of bustling self-satisfaction, everyone evidently considering it something of an accomplishment to be living in Seattle instead of elsewhere.

  It was an attitude Charley had no problem understanding. Just flying into the city, gliding in past postcard-perfect Mount Rainier and circling back over the downtown, with snow-capped mountain ranges in either direction and Puget Sound at the city’s front door and huge Lake Washington at the back, he could understand a certain smugness on the part of those who lived amid such natural splendor. At the same time, he certainly didn’t envy them the pace of their lives or the racket they had to endure.

  By the time Charley and Eve reached the hotel, they were in need of food and drink. So after a quick visit to their suite, they returned to the lobby and went into the Garden Court, as it was called, a room of such size and elegance that most of the patrons spoke as if they were in church. Beyond a bank of greenery, including some sizeable trees, there was a row of two-story Palladian windows revealing across the street a sparkling white skyscraper that was beveled in at the bottom, as if Paul Bunyan had taken a couple of whacks at it before deciding to let the thing stand—precariously.

  Though Charley was wearing a sportcoat, he gathered from the waiter’s subtly patronizing look that he was too casually dressed for the room. But he went ahead and ordered anyway: a daiquiri for the lady and an Asolut martini for himself.

  “If you only want to drink,” the waiter suggested, “there is the Georgian Terrace. You’ll find it—”

  “No, we’ll imbibe here,” Charley told him. “And later, we may even eat.”

  Eve smiled as the young man left. “That’s not like you, Charley—being short with a waiter.”

  “Well, he was short with me. About five nine, I’d say.”

  Eve graciously ignored his joke. “He looks a little like Brad Pitt.”

  “Brad’s snooty little brother.”

  “Maybe you should kick him when he comes back.”

  “Or bite him maybe. I could practice on you.” He picked up her hand as though to bite it, but kissed it instead. “Now, don’t think this means I’m going to kiss his hand.”

  �
��You’re sexist,” she said.

  “That’s for sure.”

  After their drinks were served, Eve gave Charley a woeful look. “What happens if we keep going to the park and Brian doesn’t show?”

  “Then we stop going there.”

  “We could go out looking for him.”

  “In a city this size? How would we go about that?”

  “Well, I told you about our last trip here, staying with one of his old friends on the guy’s boat in Lake Union.”

  “Only you don’t remember the man’s name or the name of the boat.”

  “No, but we could go looking in that general area.”

  “It wasn’t the Seagal, huh?” Charley had already told her about his run-in with Chester, sending him on what he’d thought was a wild goose chase, looking for Brian on a Seattle boat called the Seagull. And he’d told her about the fax Donna had sent him later, the picture of Brian and a friend back in the seventies, standing at the stern railing of a yacht named Seagal.

  “I just don’t remember,” Eve said now. “As I told you, we only stayed the one night, then went on to Sun Valley and stayed a few days with some other friends of his.”

  “Well, if Chester Einhorn didn’t turn around and go home, maybe we’ll run into him. We could join forces, looking for the Seagal.”

  “That would be fun.”

  “Wouldn’t it, though? Little Chester with his great big guns.”

  Eve smiled. “When I think of you tossing him down a mountain—well, I just wish I’d been there.”

  Charley blew on his fingers. “Yeah, when it comes to handling little-bitty guys, I’m a tiger.”

  Eve wasn’t buying. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you could hold your own against just about anybody.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Charley gave her a salacious look. “In that case, would you like to come upstairs and feel my muscle?”

  Smiling, she took a sip of her daiquiri. “After one more of these and some food—yes, that might be arranged.”

  At six that evening Charley and Eve again waited for Brian on the edge of the tiny Pioneer Square Park, but again he did not appear. Afterwards, they had dinner at a very noisy but excellent steak house, and then they went walking in Pioneer Square, which turned out to be an entire area of the city and not just the tiny park they had been watching, an area where century-old buildings and streets and parks had been carefully preserved and restored. And they were not alone. It seemed as if half the city’s work force had chosen to stay downtown and wander with them along the tree-lined streets, past the old brick and stone buildings with their many cafes and bars and shops. For a change, though, yuppies appeared to be in the minority, outnumbered by neighborhood bohemians and street people: lost kids, hookers, winos, and aspiring hoodlums, a veritable Rainbow Coalition of teenage males standing around in small groups, flying their gang colors and staring at every passing couple as if they were potential crime victims, which in some cases they probably were, Charley reflected uneasily.

  Holding hands, he and Eve wandered into a block-square park with numerous trees and benches and a wide brick walkway leading past some kind of iron shelter or bandstand into a handsome minisquare with kiosks and sidewalk cafes and a view, in the distance, of the city’s domed stadium. Taking one of the tables, they ordered after-dinner drinks and sat there for a time watching the passing parade of strollers in the fading light. Brian was not among them, however, and Charley had the feeling that he and Eve could have sat there through the fall and winter and they still would not have seen him.

  That didn’t bother Charley in the least, however, not with Eve sitting with him in the twilight, wreathed in cigarette smoke, her eyes looking vaguely troubled, even as she smiled at him.

  “I kind of like this town,” she said. “Maybe when all this is settled and done, I’ll move here. Open up a boutique.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Why? Do you know someone who might join me in such an endeavor?”

  “It’s not exactly my line.”

  “How about a construction company, then?”

  “That sounds better. You could be my secretary, and I could sexually harass you.”

  “I don’t know. I think I like the boutique idea better. I could be the boss and harass you.”

  “What would you sell?”

  “Maybe naughty underwear, like Frederick’s of Hollywood.”

  “You’d do better with raincoats. Remember, it’s supposed to rain here three-fourths of the time.”

  “Just a rumor. Look at that sky. Not a cloud.”

  “Mark Twain said the worst winter he ever experienced was one summer in Seattle.”

  Eve shrugged. “Well, it’s a great climate for sleeping anyway.”

  Beyond her, back in the park, there was some sort of altercation taking place next to a modernist steel sculpture, the kind Kevin Greenwalt would paid good money for.

  “It’s getting dark,” Charley said. “Maybe we’d better be starting back.”

  The next day, after another futile watch for Brian at the little park, Charley and Eve walked down the steep hill to the waterfront, which was thronged with tourists shuffling along a broad walkway that bordered the city’s old wooden piers, most of which had been remodeled into restaurants and shopping malls, with hot dog and gimcrack stands out in front. At other piers cruise ships were docked and sightseeing boats were loading. There were also ferry docks and concrete parks and a couple of trolley cars clanging along a rail track on the other side of the waterfront street.

  Charley and Eve chose a restaurant with a broad outdoor deck lined with umbrella tables, all occupied at the moment. Undeterred, Charley made his way into the bar and, giving a ten-dollar bill to a waiter, told the man that he and his wife were on a very tight schedule. And a few minutes later they had a table, blessedly at the far end of the deck, which gave them not only a measure of privacy but also an uncluttered view of the Sound and the ships coming and going: the systole and diastole of the Japanese economy. The deck, like the entire area, was patrolled by seagulls so huge that Charley wondered if he might not have to fight them for his food when it came.

  Once again the day was Californian, clear and bright and dry, lacking only a certain petrochemical tang to the air. Charley and Eve both kept their sunglasses on, mindful that they probably had been on television more than they knew. Eve was wearing a light summer dress, and she had left her hair long and loose, with the result that Charley could barely keep his mind on what she was saying as the sun and sea breeze set her spectacularly afire.

  “I guess we’d better face it that this has been a wild goose chase. Maybe he was here when he phoned us, but he sure doesn’t seem to be now. So where does that leave us?”

  “Sitting above Puget Sound. Listen, if one of these gulls tries to carry me off, you grab on, okay? Maybe he won’t be able to lift us both.”

  Eve laughed, but not very happily. “I guess you’re not going to let Brian get you down.”

  “Don’t believe it—he already has. And in that regard, there’s a certain little chat you and I have to have, but keep putting off. This morning, though, I promised myself: today we talk.”

  “About what? Turning ourselves in? Or I guess I should say, turning myself in.”

  The waiter brought their food, iced teas and caesar salads, which for the moment they ignored.

  “That’s about it,” Charley said. “We just can’t wait for Brian any longer. If we could bring him in with us, we could justify our being here together and why you’ve remained at large—because we wanted to convince him to stop his vendetta and turn himself in. But since we can’t do that—can’t even find him—then we have to go in on our own before he does, or before he’s caught. Because once they have him in custody, we’ve got no leverage. They’ll charge you as an accessory, and probably me too now, being up here with you instead of home in Flossmoor, where I promised the Denver agent
s I was headed.”

  The prospect of turning herself in obviously terrified Eve. For a time she said nothing, just sat there staring down at her salad, as if she hoped to find an answer there.

  “I’ll be with you,” Charley said. “We’ll go in together.”

  She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know, Charley. It just scares the living hell out of me, you know? Just the idea of being arrested. Fingerprinted and all that. Probably even locked up. I’m not sure I can cut it.”

  “The sooner we do it, the less time you’ll face.”

  “But how do you know that?”

  “Generally, that’s the way it goes. But you’re right—I don’t know for sure. So it would be a good idea to call your father’s law office. Even if they’re all tax lawyers, they can recommend a good criminal lawyer up here. He’ll know what you should do.”

  She looked at him as though for mercy. “I just have to think about it a while, you know? I need to lie down for an hour or so and just think about it. Okay?”

  “Of course. Eventually, though, I’ll either have to go in alone or fly home and not tell them I was ever here.”

  “That way you’d be totally out of it, right?” she said. “Then that’s what you should do, Charley.”

  “Probably. The only trouble is, I can’t do it. I can’t just leave you hanging out here. I can’t leave, even temporarily, until I know you’re square with the law.”

  Eve fell silent again. Then, very casually, she said, “Charley, when all this is over and done and I open my little dirty underwear boutique, will you come and visit me?”

  “Of course. Twice a year anyway.”

  “Lucky me.”

  He realized then, too late, that she had just rolled a grenade across the table. He had missed it because of her sunglasses, because he hadn’t seen her eyes.

  Scrambling to recover, he said, “Eve, I was only joking. I love you. And if I have my way, we won’t ever be apart. I won’t have to visit you.”