by Lee Irby
“Of course I can make it. But I’m worried about you. You sure you can drive?”
“I’m sure I’m sure. I don’t know what got into me.” A nervous laugh that does nothing to assuage my unease, followed by an equally misleading stab at an explanation: “I guess I’m just a little nervous!”
“Nerves are one thing, panic attacks are something else.”
Then she starts chirping like a merry bird without a care in the world. “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, Eddie! I’ve had so much on my mind recently, and sometimes those kids of his can be aggravating. Once this weekend is all over, I’m sure life will settle back down.”
Meanwhile Leigh Rose takes a call on her cell and heads out of the man cave, leaving me alone on the sofa.
“Speaking of his kids, any word from Gibson?” I actually keep a straight face. It staggers me at times to consider just how amorally I can behave.
“Nope. She won’t answer her phone. I just don’t know what gets into people sometimes. I’m sure she’ll show up eventually. She usually does, with her tail between her legs.”
Look closely at my face—notice that my mouth ever so slightly curls into a knowing grin. What do I find amusing? My mother’s colorful language? Or the fact that she can’t imagine me ever hurting another human being? The thing is, I liked Gibson. But I liked them all, every last one, especially their bright smiles and eagerness for adventure of all kinds. Their willingness to open up to me. Their desire for my approval.
“Well, I’ll be home by one for lunch,” I say. “Call me if you need anything.”
“I will, honey. Bye! I love you!”
I’m tempted to go look for Leigh Rose, who’s wandered off somewhere to talk in private. Much of her world remains shrouded by fog banks of mystery, not the least of which is the immediate trust she’s placed in me. I’m essentially a stranger to her, yet she’s convinced herself that I’m the ordained answer to her prayers. I want to invite her to lunch as my date—I don’t want her out of my sight, in fact, because in just a few hours she’s already made me feel better about myself than anyone else has in many years.
As an indication of how seriously I’m taking my relationship with Leigh Rose, I start to text Lola, and I tap out these words: We really need to stop this. I’ve found somebody else and I just need to get my head together. I need space and time and distance. I hope you understand.
When Leigh Rose comes back, I triumphantly hit Send, rejoicing at the congratulatory beep as I slip the phone back into my pocket. If nothing else, this small act of “courage” shows how determined I’ve become to change my ways. Having made an utter mess of my life, I’m handed that rarest of finds, the second chance, and I won’t blow it. I hope.
“You should go,” she tells me in a stricken voice. “I don’t want you to, but Norris is coming over and we need to talk. I owe him that much.”
I swallow back the familiar bile and beg myself to remain impassive, a statue made of white marble. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“I didn’t mean to drag you into the middle of this. I saw you at the mall and I let myself go, for the first time in a long time.”
“My mother is making lunch and I was hoping you could join me.”
“I’m sorry. I really am, Eddie, but I need to deal with this. Everybody’s freaking out and I can’t handle another situation like last night where everybody’s hating on me.”
I pull myself up off the sofa and unsteadily step toward her. Twenty minutes ago we were going to have sex, and now she’s banishing me from her sight. “Maybe we can hook up later,” I offer without much conviction. “We can see a show or something.” Little did I know that I’d be seeing her again, and under much different circumstances.
“I have to get up at the crack of dawn and go get the kids from camp. And besides I won’t be good company. Not the mood I’m in.”
Suddenly I feel very stupid wearing my white shoes. As soon as I get to the car, I’ll switch back to my sneakers.
“Norris is on the way,” she continues, tears welling in her eyes that glint like flecks of mica. She obviously feels something for me, as otherwise she wouldn’t weep at my departure. But she’s hemming herself in, building her own fence, and leaving me to puzzle over her sudden change of heart.
“I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Eddie, don’t be mad at me, too. I can’t take that.”
“I’m not mad, I just thought…” But I don’t finish my sentence because I don’t know what I’m thinking. Or I can’t articulate the hazy outline of my hopes that have just been dashed, in the same way a shy student can’t respond to a simple question in class. The look of terror when I call on them! They’ll wear scant clothing that reveals all but can’t bring themselves to expose their innermost thoughts for fear of being ridiculed.
“Thought what?”
“Nothing.” Then, out of the blue, that vast sweeping expanse of repression, sallies forth a confession of sorts, whose appearance causes my heart to skip a beat. Because one confession can beget another, and another, until there’s a swarm of guilty locusts buzzing around…“I’m kinda seeing someone anyway. But she’s young. Too young.”
Leigh Rose’s face shines brightly as she sniffs back the tears and laughs at my stilted admission. “How young?”
“Twenty.”
“Eddie, wow. She’s a baby. Robbing the cradle, huh?”
“She seduced me, as a matter of fact.” True! Don’t even dispute it! Try resisting a young woman who doesn’t care about convention and is eager to explore new sexual dimensions. Weak, yes, so very weak…
“Is she a student?”
“On advice of counsel, I will neither confirm nor deny the allegation.”
Leigh Rose nearly swoons like a heroine in a Victorian novel overcome by the vapors of sexuality. “I wish I could be you, Eddie! And just do whatever I want and not care!”
“I think the pool boy is outside.”
“Stop it! He’s gross. And too skinny.”
“Call the company and tell them to send over a real man next time. With a big pole, you know, to clean the pool.”
“Great advice. I’ll have to do that.”
Perhaps it’s my imagination, but methinks the lady doth enjoy this ribald banter, as talk of Norris stopping by has ceased and we’re being playful again, light and feathery, just when it seemed that she was on the verge of saying good-bye to me for good. At least now I can leave with my head held high, knowing Norris bores her and that I can still keep ’em rolling in the aisles.
“I’d better get home to check on my mother,” I say, glad I can get in the last word. Leigh Rose isn’t pushing me out; I’m leaving. A distinction without a difference? I’ll take a small victory at this point.
“Is she okay?”
“Just some pre-wedding jitters.”
Her phone rings again. She checks the caller ID and groans with guttural displeasure. “It’s Norris.”
“Bye!” I wave, feeling no longer like John Wayne but more like Cary Grant, the debonair cracker of jokes, the urbane sophisticate in control of himself, a man comfortable in his own skin. I saunter out to my car with a skip in my step, my white shoes tapping against the walkway and my arms swinging like I’m off to see the wizard.
6
Now what? That’s what you’re asking yourself, with me behind the wheel of my Honda whistling a tune, happy, downright giddy, and seemingly far, far away from an attack or ambush—nor do I seem in the right mood for mayhem. But don’t let my cheerfulness fool you! I did not stick around to kill Norris Mumford—my story is more complex than that, and I am a more elegant storyteller.
You groan in disappointment, but let me fill you in on a little-known fact about me.
I had a literary agent at one point in my life.
A real one, a very accomplished gentleman, and something of a legend in the industry. He gave me some sage mystery/thriller advice, before he stopped taking or returning my calls, nam
ely that I should, whenever possible, use violence to propel the plot.
You seem unconvinced. Let me assert that I wasn’t always the person who stands before you today, bereft of spouse and real adult accomplishment. Perhaps we should go back in time—flashbacks show considerable literary skill, after all—to the period I like to call the Golden Age, around ten years ago, when I first started dating Bev, when I first started teaching at Ithaca, and when I had a book being shopped around to publishers in Gotham, all of whom passed on it, sadly, even though in turning it down, many—or some—a few—editors praised my snappy prose and realistic dialogue. Use violence to propel the plot. I vowed to! I swore up and down to this literary agent, whose office was in Greenwich Village, that I would turn my future books into veritable orgies of blood, awash in gore, the kinds of smart thrillers that top the bestseller lists, and my agent—how I loved uttering those two words!—eagerly awaited my next masterpiece, which I churned out with fiendish devotion in six months. I had a dead body on the first page, clues galore, an amazing conspiracy that had been kept quiet for hundreds of years, the exposure of which threatened world peace…
Bev hated it. Said I was wasting my talent to churn out garbage. But I didn’t care what my fiancée thought, only what my agent thought, my Greenwich Village New York City agent, who doubtlessly would convert this so-called “garbage” into gold—a movie with Tom Hanks, a Today Show appearance during which Matt Lauer would fawn over me, and a book tour that would be part liberal arts colloquium, part Replacements Let It Be tour. I imagined myself getting drunk à la Bukowski and tearing up a suburban Borders in a whiskey-fueled rant. I saw myself on the cover of Rolling Stone. But, as you probably have guessed by now, my agent also hated this book, and I never spoke to the man again. Or finished another book.
But his advice still haunts me. Whenever a writer gets stuck, as we seem to be now, always use violence to propel the plot. But I’m driving in my car down River Road, getting ready to retrace my footsteps over the Harry F. Byrd Segregationist Bridge, and violence seems to be nowhere in sight. I put on my left-turn blinker, still buoyant, proud of myself in fact, when I see a blond woman with her thumb out. A beautiful hitchhiker, but one whose flawless face and curvaceous body I instantly recognize.
It’s Gibson.
Gibson’s appearance on the side of the road might reassure you that I didn’t kill her, though I’ll point out that this vision could be just a feverish dream I’m having in the middle of a killing spree, which, if you’re keeping score, is up to three by now—or four, depending on whether you add Leigh Rose. If you were privy to my life in Ithaca, the total could exceed even that of the enraged Odysseus, who had all the maids of his house strung up to pay for their sins of screwing the suitors, which an astute reader would link to my motivation for killing Norris Mumford.
Ha-ha! I haven’t killed anyone and I don’t plan on it. But I must use violence to propel the plot. No, the truth is I refuse to play that game anymore. Look at what that agent did to me! Up to that point, I’d in no way betrayed the love of my life, Literature, and the person Bev fell in love with was an aspiring artist, one willing to suffer neglect for the higher calling of producing genius, and certainly not the groveling hack who was hell-bent on using violence to propel the plot, instead of following Kafka’s advice to write a book that is an ax which will shatter the frozen sea inside of us. That agent, in other words, ended up ruining my marriage.
I pull over to pick up Gibson, to take her straight home so that my mother can have the second wedding of her dreams. But get this! When Gibson hops into my car, she doesn’t recognize me. She treats me like I’m just an average Joe, a Good Samaritan offering a helping hand. Of course, she barely even looks over at me, and she sort of smells like reefer and is probably on drugs, which, when added to the fact that we don’t really know each other, explains her inability to place my face. My “I Have Issues” hat is also gone, since I’d left it back at Leigh Rose’s (no, I’m not reprising a Seinfeld episode).
“Thanks for stopping,” she says nervously, trying to act cool but appearing even younger than her tender eighteen years.
At first I almost erupt in anger. This is the young woman who conned me out of forty bucks and then ran off without even muttering an insincere thanks. She has caused my mother endless grief and her reckless ways still might spoil the weekend. If anyone deserved a dressing-down, it’s Gibson. Yet for some unknown reason, I decide to play along. At least for a few minutes, just to observe Gibson in her natural habitat, which admittedly takes on a voyeuristic overtone, and it’s safe to say that I enjoy watching (don’t I, Lola?). So the bubbling anger quickly gives way to a quivering intoxication that can come only from true anonymity, the delirium of Gyges whose ring makes him invisible and thus absolutely free.
“Where you headed?” I ask in a sappy, Colonel Sanders drawl.
“If you can get me close to Chesterfield Mall, that would be awesome.”
“Yeah, no problem. I was going by there anyway.”
“Cool.”
I keep thinking that the interior of the car, or my precious dimples, something will trigger her to remember me, and then I’ll have some fessing up to do. But Gibson doesn’t occupy the moral high ground here, and her actions to date cry out for closer scrutiny. As do mine. Looking back now, I was wrong to hide my identity from her. But once I took that first fateful step, I didn’t see how to backtrack, and so the deception just rolled on under its own momentum…
We fall silent. I’m frankly too scared to say much, feeling both guilty and remorseless at once. I keep my eyes fixed on the road ahead, with sweat rolling down my temples as though I’m sitting in a sauna despite the AC blowing full blast into my face. But I need to be doused with ice-cold water and maybe punched in the chin, because suddenly it feels like the first time with Lola all over again, yet another instance when I lapsed into silence instead of removing myself from danger. With Lola, all I needed to do was pretend I had a meeting and then get up and leave, not let her ramble on about this crazy ex of hers, which is normally a conversation that doesn’t venture too far afield in the confines of academia. In Lola’s case, however, she loved dissecting every element of her life and fancied herself a burgeoning poet, who needed the approval of a real writer (that would be yours truly)—and before I realized it, we’d jumped off the cliff together. The first photo she showed me was an “accident,” and she pretended to be sorry. But it was a test shot to gauge my reaction, and when I chuckled at her “mistake,” it allowed her to describe in more detail the kinds of sex she preferred and with whom, salacious tidbits I lapped up with the frenzied gusto of a famished hunting dog, even knowing that ultimately there would be no sexual arousal, just morbid curiosity, which only fueled Lola’s desire to send her experiences cascading down upon my addled head, text by hideous text.
But this situation is far different because Gibson is hiding from her family the truth of her travails, and I alone can glimpse into her secret life. So in a sense I am a rogue agent who’s working undercover on a dangerous case, and if my cover gets blown, I could pay the ultimate price.
“People are such assholes,” she sighs, leaning her head back against the seat. “It took forever to get a ride.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
Now I start to wonder if Gibson isn’t playing the same game, toying with me for saying something stupid, pinning me like a novice wrestler going up against the state champ. I snort an aw-shucks chuckle but don’t reply, and I’m thinking I should probably tap out before she breaks me in half. I can’t keep making the same stupid mistakes, treading down the same dead ends, all because I need to feed this beastly sense of irony. So the ring of Gyges comes off and I reveal myself as the masquerading fraud I am.
“Gibson, it’s me, Edwin.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Why didn’t you?”
W
ith the gloves now off, I see no reason to hold back and the words burst out in a staccato of wounded pride. “Why did you just bolt this morning? You blew off class and everyone was worried sick about you. You can’t pull that kind of stunt anymore. I don’t want my mother getting upset this weekend. Come on, that was bush league.”
She glares at me, and out of the corner of my eye I can see her pink lips twist into a derisive grin. “You don’t know me or my situation.”
“That’s true, but I think I deserved a little more respect than that. You hit me up for cash and I gave it to you, no strings attached.”
We’re nearing the exit for Stony Point and I put on my blinker, but she bolts upright and nearly grabs the steering wheel from me in a panic. “Are you going home?” she asks breathlessly.
“Yeah, for lunch.”
“No, I need to run an errand. You said you’d take me.”
“Whoa, I was messing around since you didn’t recognize me.”
“Seriously, I really need to stop by and see somebody.”
“And then what, you’ll run out the back door?”
“No! It’s this guy I’ve been seeing—please? I just need to give him something. It’ll just take a second.”
She’s totally lying to my face and we both know it, but I also get the impression that she’ll hop out of the car at the next stoplight, whereas if I accede to her demands, I’ll at least be able to return her home in time for the festivities. This dilemma really boils down to a Hobson’s choice of sorts, because she’s holding all the cards and so it’s her way or she vanishes again. Since it’s just dumb luck that I ever found her on the side of the road, I should consider her request a small price to pay.
“Fine,” I blurt out, pressing down on the accelerator to zoom past the exit, “but tell me this. Who’s the guy you want to see and why didn’t he come pick you up? What man makes his chick walk all over town with her thumb out, which is freaking dangerous?”