Practice to Deceive

by David Housewright

  Dragons was on the third floor of an ancient building without elevators that once belonged to a now-bankrupt dance company. I ran up the steps. An hour later I limped down. I had thrown a front snap kick at my instructor. He deflected the blow with his left forearm, stepped forward, grabbed my right shoulder with his left hand, brought his right leg behind my left leg, swept up, and flung me to the mat. Then, to emphasize his point, he shot a right fist inside my upper thigh, just to the left of my groin. It was your basic Inner Rear Sweeping Throw/Groin Attack, and why the hell wasn’t I looking for it, he wanted to know. I couldn’t believe I was paying for this.

  The bearded man and his baby were gone when I hobbled back to Sixth and Hennepin, but the popcorn vendor was still there, so I popped for a seventy-five-cent bag, heavy on the salt. Yes, I know salt is bad for you. So is worrying about it. I finished the popcorn by the time I reached my office, tossing the crumpled bag into the wastebasket from fifteen feet. It danced on the rim and dropped in. Two.

  Well, that had killed a couple of hours.

  I decided to reorganize my filing system. When I got to the Cs, I had a brainstorm. Well, a squall, anyway. I used the cell phone to dial a 1-900 sex number. The breathlessness of the voice that answered made me fear for the woman’s health—I figured she was having an asthma attack. I gave her Levering’s credit card number and told her to just start talking.

  “What do you want to talk about?” she said in a way that made me think of only one thing.

  “Surprise me,” I told her.

  She did.

  But by the time I finished with the Fs, I had become bored listening to her. I hung up, leaving Levering with a thirty-six minute phone bill at—what? Four ninety-nine a minute?

  I called Cynthia, wanting to ask her to lunch, but Desirée informed me that Ms. Grey was unavailable. She wasn’t nearly as pleasant as the last time we’d spoken.

  I went downstairs, bought a submarine sandwich from the convenience store, returned to my office, and choked down half. I put a CD on the music machine, a reissue of the Bill Evans album You Must Believe In Spring. He does a nice cover of “Suicide Is Painless,” the old Johnny Mandel song that was the theme for M*A*S*H. Only I didn’t hear it all. I fell asleep.

  IT WAS FOUR P.M. when I awoke. The sky was dark and ominous, and from the way the people on the street leaned forward, holding tenaciously to their hats, I guessed a stiff wind was blowing.

  I dialed Cynthia’s number again. While her phone rang, I took her photograph off my desk and held it with both hands, using my shoulder to rest the receiver against my ear. I wanted to see her face and hear her voice at the same time.

  After I got past Desirée, I asked Cynthia if she wanted to meet for dinner, but she had a meeting. She could come to my house afterward, I suggested. But she said she wanted to sleep in her own bed tonight. Alone. She had said the same thing the night before.

  “How long are you going to stay angry at me?” I asked.

  “How long are you going to stalk Levering Field?”

  “Shouldn’t be much longer. I think he’s ready to break.… Hello? Hello?”

  I WENT TO a restaurant on First Avenue that’s owned by a local TV sportscaster. Good food, lots of TV monitors. SportsCenter was on ESPN. The boys were interviewing Minnesota’s Tom Kelly. T. K. was saying he liked what he saw in spring training, and he expects the Twins to be competitive this year if the starting pitching holds up. But then, he always says that.

  I sat at the bar, ordered a Leinenkugel’s Red after I was informed the restaurant didn’t carry Summit Ale. The lager was served in a twenty-two ounce glass. After consuming ten ounces, I decided to order dinner. They told me the special was good—orange roughy grilled in a lemon-dill sauce. They were right. I was just finishing it up when she walked in.

  It was hard to miss her. For one thing, she was wearing a lustrous white cotton corset dress, loosely laced in front, that was held up by remarkably thin spaghetti straps. For another, she wore no coat, despite the fact that the temperature had dropped to nothing, the wind was howling, and snow was blowing. In fact, snow was melting off her white pumps and dripped from her ankle-length hem as she stood near the hostess station, searching the room for a familiar face.

  She began to slowly move through the restaurant, paying particular attention to the faces of the men who sat alone. I watched her with great interest—something about the laces tied in a lazy bow between her breasts. You knew she was a Cosmopolitan girl, what with all the cleavage she gave away.

  I was distracted by the bartender who bused my plate and encouraged me to order another Leinie’s. When I looked up, she was gone. Nuts. Oh, well. I sipped the beer and returned my attention to the TV. ESPN2 was broadcasting a hockey game featuring the much-hated Chicago Blackhawks—at least I hate them. I used to follow the Minnesota North Stars pretty closely until they were moved to Dallas by an owner embarrassed over allegations that he sexually harassed his secretaries. Now my favorite team is who ever is playing the Blackhawks. Tonight it was the Boston Bruins. The Bruins were on a power play but having a hard time setting up in the Chicago zone.

  And then she was at my side.

  “Is this seat taken?” she asked.

  At first I didn’t hear her. That damn Wurlitzer the Blackhawks fans crank up every time their team scores a goal was ringing through the restaurant. The Blackhawks had scored short handed, the bastards.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  She motioned to the empty stool next to mine. “Is this seat taken?” she repeated.

  “No,” I said, gesturing for her to take it. She did, but not very far. If anything, she moved it closer to me.

  “Some weather we’re having,” she said, smiling coyly.

  “It’s not so bad if you’re dressed for it,” I suggested.

  She put her hands over the cups of the corset and squeezed her breasts together. They bounced when she released them, a not altogether unpleasant sight. I watched them carefully. Since meeting Sara, I take nothing for granted.

  “I was betting the weather would hold for at least one more day,” she said. “I lost.”

  “Sure.”

  “Bailey’s on the rocks,” she told the bartender when he came around. Then she asked me, “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Divorced?”

  “No.”

  “Gay?”

  “Nope.”

  “A good-looking guy like you, who’s your age, who’s not married or divorced, you might think he was gay. No offense.”

  “None taken.” The gay reference didn’t bother me at all. But I was curious. “How old do you think I am?”

  She shrugged, drained her glass and ordered another Bailey’s. “I like older men,” she said.

  I took no comfort in that. “Older than what?” I asked.

  “Older than me.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough.”

  “I bet.”

  “Let’s go someplace,” she suggested, downing her second Bailey’s.

  “With or without my VISA card?”

  She turned on me like I had just called her a whore, which, I suppose, I had. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t answer, and she ordered a third Bailey’s. She was drinking them like they were chocolate milk.

  “I’m not a pro,” she told me and I believed her. But she was definitely something. I’ve always thought of myself as a Harrison Ford-Mel Gibson kind of guy, only good looking. But in my entire life, not once has a beautiful woman tried to pick me up in a bar. Or anywhere else for that matter. So why was I lucky tonight? The ring on her right hand gave me part of an answer. It carried the emblem of Macalester College.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Why?”

  I offered my hand. “I’m Holland Taylor.”

  She hesitated, took my hand, hesitated some more, then said, “Melanie.”

  I nodded. “That’s a pretty ri
ng you’re wearing. May I see it?”

  “This?” she asked, holding her class ring out for me to get a good look at it.

  “Could you take it off?”

  Again she hesitated, then slipped it off her finger. I held it up to the light. Her name was engraved inside—and it wasn’t Melanie.

  “Pretty,” I repeated, returning the ring.

  “Let’s go someplace where we can … talk,” she said.

  “We’re talking now.”

  “You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think I’d like to know you better first. Tell me what you do for a living.”

  The woman was clearly frustrated. She wanted me to leave the restaurant with her, and the reason had nothing to do with the laces of her corset. But she went along with my request, feeding me a cockamamy story about answering phones and taking appointments for a doctor. She couldn’t answer telephones for five minutes—her personality began and ended with her cleavage. At first her voice was clear, controlled, but after her fourth Bailey’s it began to slur and words like “fuck” and “shit” began creeping into her sentences. A lot of people, the more they drink in public, the lewder, cheaper, and dumber they become.

  Finally, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me hard. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  “Let’s,” I agreed, anxious to meet whoever was outside, holding her coat. Cotton dress and pumps in Minnesota! In March! Who was she kidding?

  I paid the tab, including her drinks, and ushered her to the door. We stood just inside while I zipped my jacket to my throat. Snow was blowing hard and I wished I had brought my gloves.

  “Where to, Piper?” I asked.

  “My car is in the alley across the street. Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say my name was Piper.”

  “Sure you did. Piper Lindquist.”

  “I did?”

  I pushed her out the door. We stopped to let a snowplow pass before crossing the street. There was a car parked deep in the alley. It was running. Two men were in it. When we dashed across the street they got out, crossed their arms, and waited next to the car. They were big.

  “It’s him,” Piper said as we entered the alley.

  Both men were young. College-age kids. They looked like they played the defensive line, but that didn’t bother me. Macalester hadn’t won a football game since Reagan was president—assuming, of course, that they were smart enough to get into Macalester, a fairly prestigious school, after all.

  I walked up to the man standing next to the driver’s door. He dropped his arms as I approached.

  “Hi,” I said brightly. “Are you a friend of Piper’s?”

  Before he could reply, before he could move, I kicked him in the groin real hard. He went down, his mouth twisted with agony, a soundless scream deep in his throat, like a child crying without oxygen. He caught his breath and the pain spilled out, then he lost it and was quiet again until his lungs filled with air. All in all, I found his performance quite satisfying, his hands between his knees, his knees drawn up tightly against his stomach, rolling side to side in the snow.

  His partner hesitated for about five seconds, then came around the car in a hurry. He threw a punch at my face, but he started too soon. I ducked under it and his momentum carried him toward me. He collided with a ridge hand I threw at his solar plexus. He was already falling, his feet slipping badly on the snow, when I stepped behind him, locked a claw hand over his throat, and flipped him on his back.

  I could have finished him, could have finished them both, probably should have, but what the hell. They weren’t pros. They were just a couple of kids looking to score a few quick bucks.

  “Motherfucker!” shouted the youngster I had tossed to the ground.

  “Hey, watch your language,” I told him. He tried to get up. I advised him not to do that.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I hit him with your basic forefist—but I slipped, and it went high. A sharp, piercing pain raced through my fingers, wrist, elbow and shoulder blade before dissipating through my upper right quadrant. You’d think someone with my experience would be more careful than to hit the hardest part of someone—the braincase—with his hand. That’s what hammers are for.

  “Dammit!” I cried, shaking the pain from my fingers. Now I was mad. “Go on, get up you dumb sonuvabitch! G’ahead. Christ!”

  The football player didn’t move.

  I turned on Piper. She was weeping quietly, clouds of breath coming from her mouth with each sob as she shivered in her cotton dress, snow melting on her bare shoulders.

  “So, does Levering hold paper on you, too?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Who hired you?”

  “Nobodyyyyyyy!” she wailed, her voice bouncing off the alley’s stone walls.

  “Crystalin?” I shouted at her.

  She shook her head.

  “Yeah, right.”

  I turned back to the kids laying in the snow. They looked like they would recover.

  “Fellas,” I said. “You don’t want to do this for a living. The money is lousy, there’s no health plan, no retirement fund, you have to work nights—and besides, you’re not very good at it. Think about it.”

  “Fuck you, asshole,” said the youngster who had hurt my hand with his head.

  I went into a guard position, careful of my footing, and snapped a front kick to his forehead. I tried hard to maintain my balance on my back foot but slipped and fell on my ass anyway. No one laughed, but I was embarrassed just the same. I got up, brushed the snow off and said, “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  OGILVY, MY GRAY-AND-WHITE mini lop-eared rabbit, nibbled popcorn from the bowl on my left. I soaked my throbbing hand in another bowl filled with water and ice on my right, occasionally flexing the fingers. The knuckles were swollen but not broken. I sat on the floor between the bowls, my back against the sofa, watching the second game of the TNT NBA doubleheader. The Celtics were playing the Lakers. It was a good game, the Lakers leading by a field goal at the half. But it was a far cry from the days when Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish were matched against Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. I dozed off. The ringing telephone brought me back. It was nine-thirty, and I wanted it to be Cynthia. I answered in the kitchen.

  “Hello,” I said hopefully.

  The threat wasn’t particularly imaginative, just your basic I’m-going-to-kill-you-you’re-dead-there’s-nowhere-you-can-hide crap; nothing I haven’t heard before. I listened closely, trying to place the voice, but couldn’t. Definitely not Cynthia. I hung up without comment. My caller ID flashed: PAY PHONE and UNAVAILABLE where the number should have been—to cut down on the drug trade, Ma Bell has fixed it so that you can call out but not in to most pay telephones.

  LA jumped on Boston early in the third quarter, taking an eighteen-point lead. The fourth quarter was merely a formality, a matter of final statistics. I emptied the ice water in the sink and tossed what was left of the popcorn. I lay on the sofa; Ogilvy lay on my chest. I fell asleep.

  Again I woke to the sound of the telephone. TNT was broadcasting an old John Wayne movie. The Duke was inexplicably dressed like some kind of Mongol warrior with bad facial hair. Who the hell are you supposed to be? I wondered. Genghis Khan? Well, yes, as it turned out, he was. Go figure.

  I answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m gonna kill you, motherfucker.”

  EIGHT

  MINNESOTANS LOVE SNOW. We love to work in it and play in it; we build two week festivals around its coming and going. We particularly delight in blizzards. Not the little stuff, snowfalls of three inches or less. Nuisance snow, we call that, useful only to groom ski trails and conceal exhaust-stained drifts along the freeways. But the big stuff, six inches or more, always brings a smile. And heavy, wet snow—heart attack snow—man, we love it. We love the threat of it, the exces
s of it, the endless work of it. It feeds our collective ego the way doing penance nurtures Catholics, reaffirming our long-held sense of superiority over souls who live in more temperate climes. It amuses us that two inches of snow in Washington, D.C., can shut down the government. Five inches can put New York, the city that never sleeps, into deep hibernation. But ten inches in the Twin Cities isn’t even a decent excuse for coming late to work.

  The weather guy said nine inches of snow had fallen overnight at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. In my driveway it measured closer to a foot. Schools didn’t close. The government didn’t take a holiday. The mail still got through. Which is why we tend to smile knowingly whenever critics ridicule our state for its climate. Unlike them, we can take it.

  I cleared my driveway with an ancient snowblower my father-in-law bought for me at an estate sale. My driveway is long, two hundred feet from the street to my garage set well behind my house, with another one hundred fifty feet curving like a horseshoe around a towering willow in front of the house. The job took over an hour, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

  My house is a two-story colonial built three hundred yards from a large boulder fixed with a metal plate denoting the forty-fifth parallel. That means I live midway between the equator and the North Pole.

  It was constructed in 1926 by a well-to-do businessman who had wanted to escape the rat race that was St. Paul. In those days, Roseville was all farm country. Now it’s one of the Twin Cities’s oldest suburbs, with scores of look-alike split levels and ranch houses, all with attached garages.

  Laura and I had found the house while looking for something else. It had hardwood floors, beamed ceilings, arched doorways, stucco walls inside and out, a fireplace in the living room, two corner china cabinets in the dining room, French doors leading to a three-season porch, a wood-paneled family room, three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, a completely modern kitchen, detached two-car garage, a huge dual-level yard with a wooden swing hanging from an apple tree, and an owner who was desperate to move to Southern California where a house like this can fetch a half million dollars easy, maybe more. We couldn’t afford it, even at Minnesota prices, even with two incomes, even with the interest rates being low. To our astonishment the owner cut twenty percent off his asking price.