by Dan Deweese
I was comfortable relying on Catherine at the bank, but this attention to my family life made me wary. We’d worked together for ten years, of course, so Catherine knew a bit about my life outside of work. But I wasn’t a sharer of personal information, and had even done my best to keep private the fact that I was dating Trish. This proved impossible, since Trish banked at the branch, and changed her behavior toward me there after the first time we slept together. Being called “honey” was difficult enough for me, but being called that in front of Catherine was mortifying. So my instinct was to hide private struggles and uncertainties from Catherine. But when had her presence ever been anything but an advantage, really? And here she was. So I went ahead, cautiously. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I sat down to lunch with her, but then she disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said she was going to the bathroom, but then she sent a message to my phone saying she couldn’t talk now. Or didn’t want to, I guess. And she didn’t come back.” Intending to produce my phone so that Catherine could see the message, I discovered it wasn’t in my pocket—I had taken it out to reread the message while driving, and must have left it on the passenger seat. I looked toward my car from where we stood. A hot breeze moved over the vast lawn, the blades of grass rippling in the sun. The shaded sidewalk felt like a protected port, and I was reluctant to move from it.
“Was she okay?” Catherine asked.
“I don’t know. We only talked a few minutes.”
“She must have been upset about something, if she left like that.”
“Maybe,” I said, “I should call Grant, but I left my phone in the car. You wouldn’t happen to have his number, would you?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, knitting her eyebrows as if taxed by a great mental effort. I’d been joking, but her response seemed suspicious. She pressed some buttons on her phone and squinted at it. “I guess I do,” she said, handing it to me. There on the little screen was Grant’s name and number.
“What a stroke of luck,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, nodding in placid agreement. She maintained such impressive discipline in her responses that at times, her stoicism approached the theatrical.
“Just how many numbers do you have in this phone?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Grant speak often enough that you keep his number in your phone?”
“He calls you at the branch, just like Sandra,” she said. “You should be thanking me, not cross-examining.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Is that the truck?”
At the opposite end of the Quad, a white delivery truck was trundling slowly around the corner, headed our way.
“Probably,” I said. “But I don’t think Grant calls me at the branch that often, and he’s not a member of my family. Why would you have his phone number? Do you have a crush on him?”
“You’re being a jerk. I have his number for the same reason I have Sandra’s.”
I pressed the dial button on her phone and listened as Grant’s line rang. “You’re blushing,” I said.
“I am not,” she said.
Grant didn’t answer. I turned the phone off without leaving a message, and handed it back to her.
“Here I am trying to help you, and you’re abusing me,” she said, “trying to embarrass me because I keep the numbers of people who call the branch.”
“What a monster I am.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can hardly make it through the days.”
“I guess you won’t have to much longer.”
There it was again: her exasperated little sigh. I was just so tiresome, it seemed.
The white truck rolled to a stop nearby, and a college-aged kid in torn jeans and a blue company T-shirt jumped out, trotted toward us, and asked if we were expecting chairs. When I told him we were, he headed to the rear of the truck and, amid a tumult of metal-on-metal percussions, he unfastened latches, rolled the back door up, and leaped in. After further rattling of iron and shuffling of plastic, three white folding chairs came flying out the back of the truck. They crashed to clattering rest on the grass, and then more chairs flew out, and more, each group describing a graceful airborne arc before its members hit the lawn, seats and backrests issuing sharp plastic reports on impact. The deluge continued for some minutes until, seeing consecutive trios of green chairs heaved onto the grass, I stepped toward the truck.
“Excuse me,” I called out. “But I think our chairs are all supposed to be white.”
The boy poked his head out of the back of the truck, breathing heavily. “I know. But I’m out, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I gave you every white chair that’s in here, but I counted, and it only came to a hundred thirty. You’re supposed to have a hundred fifty. I have two other weddings to deliver to, but all the chairs left in here are green, so I’m giving you those.”
“But they’re meant for the other weddings, aren’t they? Won’t you just end up short down the line?”
He rubbed his buzz-cut thoughtfully. “Maybe they won’t ask to count?”
I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t. “Have you ever heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul’?” I asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “Not really. I’m just taking it as it goes. I didn’t load the truck.”
I looked to Catherine. She shrugged. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll take the green chairs.”
“Great,” he said.
And five minutes later, Steffen was driving away while Catherine and I looked over one hundred and fifty chairs, twenty of which were green. And we had possibly damaged someone else’s day.
I felt the setting up of the chairs was a task to be performed with expedience, but the sight of them flung across the lawn was daunting—it looked as if a violent storm had just swept through, and when Catherine asked how I wanted them arranged, I hesitated. Seventy-five should obviously be on one side of the concrete path that would serve as the aisle, I said, and seventy-five on the other, but my first inclination was that ten rows was a good number, which meant seven and a half chairs per row, and I was not in a position to begin sawing chairs in half. Five chairs was too few for a row, unless we wanted the feeling of a wedding on an airplane, I said, and of course it might be nice if the rows fanned out a bit, just got a bit longer as they got farther from the front, though that would change the math entirely. I had crunched only a few of those numbers when a flash of insight cleared my entire mental slate. “We should completely ignore the existence of the aisle,” I said, excited. I expected this breakthrough would lead to new computations and numbers, but for some reason, I had no further thoughts.
“Are you all right?” Catherine asked, peering into my eyes. “Your face has gone white.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Maybe a little warm, but fine.”
“I think you should sit down,” she said.
“Water is all I need, really. We have a lot to do.”
“Let’s rest while we think it over.”
She pulled two chairs into a shaded area of the path, and we sat down. I was sweating profusely, I realized, so I loosened my tie and undid the top button of my shirt.
“I can’t believe you’re wearing that suit in this heat,” Catherine said.
“It’s not too bad,” I said.
The breeze had disappeared, and the lawn suffered in stillness beneath the heat of the summer sun. It was pleasant in the shade, though, and it was only as I began to feel better that I realized I’d been feeling badly. My pulse stopped throbbing in my temples. I felt less of an urge to speak so quickly and loudly.
“Okay,” Catherine said. “Yes, it’s true I’ve had Grant’s telephone number for a number of years now.”
“I was just teasing,” I said.
“No, you were right,” she said, fixing her green eyes upon me as if seeking forgiveness. I had never seen her in that kind of ang
uish before. “Grant is obviously a good-looking guy. And I answer the phone pretty often, and he’s very charming on the phone. And when he comes by to have lunch with you during the holidays each year, he brings me some little thing. This pin, for instance.”
She turned to me, and as I had earlier in the morning, I examined her lapel. The little golden bouquet sparkled brightly, even in the shade. “You don’t have to say another thing, Catherine.”
“But I want you to know that I’m happy for you,” she said. “For you and for Sandra and most of all for Miranda. It would bother me if there were any misunderstandings.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry about it.”
She studied our scrabble of chairs as if it were their state, and not whatever it was she was trying to communicate to me, that had brought out these emotions in her. Without thinking, I took her hand in mine. It was warm, her hand, and though we focused on the chairs, she gently returned the pressure of my grasp.
“Well,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you.”
The line of shade wavered in the breeze. A bird dropped from a nearby tree and flew like a dart across the Quad. When it disappeared behind a nearby building, Catherine pulled her hand from mine to check her watch. “It’s past noon,” she said.
“That’s less than six hours until the ceremony,” I said. “I suppose we should get going.”
So we stood and moved together toward the scattered chairs. And I was fairly certain that in the ten years I had worked with Catherine, taking her hand just then was the first time I had ever touched her.
IT WAS OVER A Sunday morning pancake breakfast that Sandra told me she had taken a pregnancy test and the result was positive. I had been sifting through the paper, looking at ads for stereos and television sets, but upon hearing her announcement, I pushed them away, nearly upsetting a glass of orange juice. “By positive, you mean pregnant,” I said.
“I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but yes,” she said.
I felt empty. Or maybe the opposite, really—as if my body had disappeared while my mind remained in place, blinking. I’m not sure why I attempted to be witty just then, but the next thing I said was “And it’s mine?”
To her credit, Sandra smiled. “It’s hard to say,” she said, trying to play along. Then she burst into tears.
I took her hands in mine and told her that everything would be okay, it wasn’t the end of the world, we would be fine—all the things one says—and when she regained her composure, I asked her what she wanted to do. “What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean what’s our next step?”
“We have a baby,” she said. “Or I have a baby.”
“We have a baby,” I said. “And we should get married.”
“You haven’t asked.”
“I will.”
“Is this it? Are you asking?”
“Give me a few days,” I said. “I want to do it right.”
“I think we’re too late for that,” she said.
It was only a few weeks later that, walking to lunch, I noticed a trail of smoke threading its way through the margin of a barely opened window in a sedan parked down the street. Tracing the smoke to its source, I discovered none other than Detective Buckle in the driver’s seat, pensively smoking a cigarette. He nodded toward me as he rolled his window down with a wince, as if the effort were somehow painful.
“Are you working?” I asked.
“Someone told me they always return to the scene of the crime,” he said. “When your Mooncalf fellow does, I’ll be waiting.”
“Have you been sitting here every day?”
“No. I pick my moments. I thought I might see you around here, though. Still in touch with your friend?”
“My friend?”
“The Gina girl.”
“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t on painkillers this time, but I still felt a step behind him. “We went out a few times, with our current people. Double dates, I guess.”
“Double dates,” he repeated slowly, as if it were the first time he’d heard the term. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m not clear on how this relates.”
He laughed. “It probably doesn’t. I’m prying. But you’ve definitely gotten a haircut, and that’s a nice suit, too. Is it new?”
“Kind of,” I said. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. He was the consummate shrugger, Buckle. I never heard him raise his voice, and never saw him angry. Just a slight tilt of the head and roll of the shoulders seemed to keep the whole world at bay for him—it was like Atlas in reverse. “Have you been following me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not that kind of cop,” he said. “And if I were, you wouldn’t be the kind of guy I’d be following. There’s a price tag still inside the jacket there.”
My jacket had fallen open as I leaned forward to speak to him, and a tag peeked just above the top of the inside pocket. I pushed it back down and looked around: two boys tried to elbow each other from the skateboards they rode side by side down the sidewalk; an old woman gazed at balls of yarn piled in a shop window. “Did you ever get any leads?” I asked him. “On the guy who robbed me?”
“No,” he said, flicking his cigarette against the rearview mirror. “As far as we know, he’s still out there.”
“So should I assume that until you find him, you’ll keep coming back to ask me questions about how much my ties cost or who I eat dinner with?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to make you paranoid,” he said in a tone of melodramatic sympathy. “In the beginning, I thought this one would be simple. The guy drew a lot of attention to himself, and we had a dozen eyewitnesses. But it’s clear now that the case isn’t going to be wrapped up as quickly as I hoped.”
“He gave you the slip,” I said.
“He’s lying low for now,” Buckle said. “But he’ll have to come up for air at some point. I can’t know when that’s going to happen, but it could happen today, or it could happen tomorrow—”
“Or soon,” I interrupted, “and for the rest of your life.”
He winced again. “I don’t know what that means. All I’m saying is the case is still open, but I won’t be coming around to give you updates.”
“I won’t be seeing you on the street like this?”
“We’ll always have Paris.”
“So you did get that reference,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “And I can see I’ve hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry you’re angry. I was joking. You’re not under surveillance. But also, it’s not unusual for robberies to be inside jobs. It’s pretty routine for an investigating officer to want to get a sense of how the victim is responding.”
“Well, you’ll be glad to know I won’t be buying any more new suits for a while. My girlfriend is pregnant, so the budget is going to get tight.”
He seemed genuinely surprised by that. I was pleased to have caught him off guard. “Congratulations,” he said.
“You’ve got kids of your own?”
“Two. In their teens now.”
“That must be a busy time.”
He shook his head. “Their mother and I split up a long time ago. She’s somewhere in California with them now. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen them.”
The revelation was awkward enough to render me mute, save for a ridiculously knowing nod—as if I, too, knew that pain. He shook my hand through the open window, and pulled a fresh cigarette from his shirt pocket. “I should be going,” he said. I stepped back as he started his car, and he gave me a thumbs-up out the window as he drove off.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I caught myself grinning. I was sitting alone in the little upstairs break room, at a plastic table covered in discarded newspaper sections and People magazines, and had just had an argument with a customer over his desire to cash a large check. His account had been overdrawn, and when I told him he would have to cover the insufficient funds in
the account before I could give him cash, he had of course launched into a frenzy of outrage, including the usual suggestions that the area’s banks were an organization of thieves colluding to persecute him, that it was obvious all of us were in bed with the government, the system was corrupt, and so on. The customer had carried his argument from me to Gene, our stout, Polish branch manager. Gene was professionally and personally conflict-averse, a disposition he enacted through forced, unchanging attempts at coming off as an avuncular boss who was just as much a victim of the insanity of bank policies as we were, and the customer had carried on with him for an additional fifteen minutes before leaving, still outraged. When the telephone behind the teller stations rang a few minutes later, I stepped back to answer it and discovered I was speaking to none other than Gene, who with a nervous chuckle told me that we—by which he meant me—should avoid ever telling a customer that something wasn’t possible. Though we could easily have made eye contact while speaking, Gene resolutely studied a notepad on his desk, as if I were truly in some other location, and I had to turn away to prevent myself from being distracted by watching him as he told me that what he liked to do was discuss the options a customer had for addressing a situation. He and I both knew the amount of time it took a check to clear wasn’t within our control, that I had spoken truthfully to a customer, and that the customer had vented his frustration on me. Now I was the one who needed to change my behavior? I told Gene I’d do my best in the future to discuss options with customers, he thanked me, and we hung up.
But it was afterward, as I sat in the break room thinking about how little I wanted to go back out for the last two hours of my shift, that I realized I was pleased. Beneath my hair, I could still feel the scar where Mooncalf had hit me. I should have been angry at him, should have wanted some kind of revenge, but instead I discovered that I was happy he was still out there. He was lying low, and my sense of relief at this was so exhilarating, in fact, that I remember almost laughing aloud when I recognized there was no way to deny it: a part of me had been rooting for Mooncalf all along.