Brown-Eyed Girl

by Virginia Swift

  “One day in the middle of the fall semester of 1964, Hobby-Orson was explaining to his ancient history class how the U.S. was going through its version of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and they had better all tell their parents to vote for Goldwater, and he evidently worked himself up to a myocardial infarction and expired before their very eyes. Bosworth saw Hobby-Orson’s obit in the Times, but instead of waiting for the job to be advertised or even rumored, Boz got on the phone right away, called the history department, and told them he was a postdoc in ancient history at Columbia, and he could be on a plane the next day if they wanted him to take over Hobby-Orson’s classes. I mean, the body was still warm. The department chair just said, yeah, okay, whatever. And Boz has been here ever since.”

  “That’s good. That’s very very good. And the man wants to question the way I was hired,” Sally said, shaking her head.

  “They say lawyers are ambulance-chasers,” Virginia commented. “First time I ever heard of anybody chasing a hearse.”

  Chapter 28

  Enjoy Beef Daily

  Bobby had definitely been earning his money lately. Not only had he handled the state police expertly at Elroy’s place, but it looked as if he’d also headed off the investigation with a few well-placed calls to friends in the governor’s office. He’d advised Elroy to order all the Unknown Soldiers to stick close to home for a while, and those who didn’t have homes should be dispatched back to whatever hidey-holes or locked wards they’d come from. The one exception was Dirtbag, whom Elroy had decided to keep around as his bodyguard. Bobby wasn’t exactly sure where Arthur Stopes and Danny Crease had gone, but after getting to know them, he wasn’t missing either one. And he had to admit, he wasn’t lamenting the presumed demise of Shane Parker, moron punk. If there had been some way to vaporize every one of the Unknown Soldiers without being held personally responsible, Bobby would cheerfully have used it.

  It wasn’t like he was sitting around looking for something to keep him busy. The lawsuit against the University was grinding on. He’d handed over most of the research and deposition work to the firm’s junior associates and paralegals, but he continued as lead attorney on the case.

  He kept hoping the University would lose its nerve as the legal expenses piled up, but so far they were hanging in there.

  Tax time was coming, and he spent a lot of time with Elroy’s accountants, going over changes in the tax laws to try to figure out how Elroy could not only keep all of his money, but maybe even get the government owing him more. After the last legislative session, the latter was a distinct and pleasing possibility. Maybe next year, Elroy would send him to Washington to lobby Congress and they could really clean up.

  Hell, maybe one of these years he’d run for Congress.

  He didn’t mind working long hours, and he even found endless meetings about tax codes pretty interesting. But there was one little thing that disturbed Bobby’s current sense of well-being.

  Elroy was having a little problem with the IRS.

  Sometime in mid-March, Foote had received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service, informing him that the government was planning to conduct an audit of his tax returns for the previous five years. Elroy’s reaction was as might have been expected—he was absolutely certain that the feds were plotting to destroy him, and he was ready to declare independence and roll out the troops. It took a lot of cajoling and bombast before Bobby had managed to convince him that when a guy had as much money as Elroy, in as many different businesses and countries, even the most vigilant government bean-counter couldn’t find all of it. It just meant that Bobby and the accountants would have to get Elroy’s records in order and add meetings with auditors to their schedules.

  Elroy had reluctantly given up the idea of revolution and agreed to let the lawyers and the accountants do what he still thought bullets did better. Bobby faced the prospect with mixed feelings. Not that he wanted his biggest client to get into a shooting war with the United States, but he wasn’t at all sure, in fact, that the government wasn’t out to entrap Elroy. It was possible that somebody, say, at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was keeping tabs on the quantity of firepower Elroy was amassing at what the media would probably call “a remote compound in the rugged Rocky Mountains.” Maybe the ATF had tipped off the IRS that they might want to look into Foote’s returns. If you were Elroy, that chain of events could certainly be considered a government conspiracy. If you were Bobby, you kept a close eye on things, billed Elroy promptly and cashed his checks quickly, and watched carefully so that you wouldn’t miss the moment at which turning state’s evidence might be the prudent thing to do.

  In the meantime, he was doing very well on the Brit front. He’d taken her to dinner at the Holiday Inn in Laramie and dancing at the Wrangler a couple of times. Last month he’d been down in Cheyenne and she’d driven over to meet him at the Hitching Post. He’d poured enough white zinfandel into her that she’d stayed over and shared his hotel room, although the details of what had transpired were a little murky, since he’d decided to drink the rotten pink stuff himself to keep her company. But having broken the sex barrier (he presumed), he was expecting to get lucky again tomorrow night. He had to go to Laramie to meet with Bosworth, and he’d called and asked her if she wanted to go out. She’d said he could buy her a steak if he wanted. He’d said he wanted. They agreed to meet at the Cavalryman at seven. He had booked a room at the Holiday on the assumption that she’d go back there with him after enough animal protein and alcohol.

  Her face and her body knocked him out. He certainly wasn’t spending time with her for the witty conversation. He had to do most of the talking when they were together, and half the time he wondered if she was paying any attention. Whenever he got desperate and asked her what she was up to lately, she said, “Not much. Filing. Shitwork.” That was okay with him. All in all, he preferred talking about his own life to hearing about the fascinating world of secretarial labor.

  Even when her attention wandered, however, her face fascinated him—the full, sulky lips, the enormous, bored blue eyes. She had a body like a supermodel, and he was damned if he knew how she managed it. Every time they’d been together, she’d packed down a pound of tenderloin and a baked potato loaded with sour cream and butter. Bobby was meticulous about watching what he ate. As far as he was concerned, fat and red meat were occupational hazards of living in Wyoming, and he ate steak only when he was trying to suck up to a client, or he’d been eating Elroy’s dehydrated meal packets for a week, or when it appeared that the best available alternatives on the menu came in the form of patties.

  Brit had laughed at him when he’d ordered the swordfish at the Hitching Post in Cheyenne, and when his dinner arrived looking like the ominous first scene in a ’50s horror movie, he had to admit that she had a point. He hoped that later in the evening he hadn’t given her further cause for laughter. If you really wanted to know, he didn’t even like steak all that much. Now and then, as a Wyoming native, he felt kind of unpatriotic about not being a red meat fan in a state that posted billboards at its borders that said, “Welcome to Wyoming. The Cowbelles Encourage You to Enjoy Beef Daily.” But tomorrow night, he was determined to eat and make love like a man. He’d been living on Power Bars and alfalfa sprouts for three days in anticipation of their carnivorous rendezvous.

  Bobby got to the Cavalryman at 6:45 and went to the bar to wait for Brit. He was looking forward to a large Johnnie Walker after a meeting with Bosworth that had seesawed between the tense and the tedious. Bosworth was always trying to get Bobby to meet with the entire FAF group, an idea Bobby found both ridiculous and risky. For one thing, he had no reason to think that listening to eighteen professors pontificate would tell him anything he needed to know about running a lawsuit. Having spent time with Bosworth, he couldn’t imagine anything worse than multiplying him by a factor of eighteen. For another, he had no desire to be put in the position of making spontaneous public statements about the case
. If, as he hoped, they would eventually drop the suit and get back to earning their pittances, nobody would ever remember that he’d been involved. If, on the other hand, he actually had to try the case, he wanted to do it as a nit-picking attorney and not as the champion of a pack of whining pedants.

  Bosworth had a new axe to grind this time. He wanted to know if Sally Alder’s “obscene” salary gave them grounds for an equity suit. Bobby knew that Alder’s Dunwoodie Chair paycheck, while off the charts for UW professors, was less than a quarter of what he had made for his previous year’s work on behalf of Elroy Foote’s money. Bobby told Bosworth that there was such a thing as market forces, and in Wyoming, arguing against the market would be like walking into the rotunda of the state capitol and burning an American flag.

  The waiter brought his scotch (they poured an honest drink in this place, he was pleased to see), along with the white zin he’d ordered for Brit. Bobby reflected on what an unattractive mound of phlegm he’d drawn for a client on this one. Christ, even Bosworth’s wrists were wrapped in flopping flab. He closed his eyes at the thought, and when he opened them, he welcomed the refreshing sight of Brit in a high-rise red leather miniskirt, black tights, and ankle boots that matched what there was of the skirt.

  He put his arm around her, pulled her in, kissed her shiny hair. She smelled like Obsession. She looked up at him with an expression on her face halfway between a small smile and a slight sneer, stood on her toes, and laid a kiss on him that had him thinking maybe he’d have the Cattleman’s Cut tonight.

  She waited until he was well into his second doubleJohnnie, their salads had come, and he was rubbing her thigh under the table before she said, in a voice that couldn’t care less, “So how was your day?”

  “Nothing too taxing,” Bobby replied, feeling flattered that she bothered to inquire. “Had a meeting with the guy from Faculty for Academic Freedom. They’re the ones suing your parents’ friend,” he explained, thinking that she’d been so indifferent when he’d broached the matter before that he needed to remind her about the lawsuit.

  “Yeah, I know who they are,” Brit said, secretly furious that he thought she was too dumb and out of it to remember. “I went to UW, right?”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” he said, distracted for the moment by the tactile revelation that she was wearing thighhigh stockings, not tights. “Did you ever have a history professor named Bosworth?”

  “Nope. I never took any history classes,” she answered truthfully. “I was a poli sci major. But I know who he is. Big beige lump of lard, teaches ancient history. He gave my sister a D last semester. My dad took away her Mobil credit card. Now she runs out of gas like once a week.”

  “Boy,” said Bobby, taking his hand off Brit’s leg long enough to pick up his fork and take a bite of his salad, using his other hand to pick up his glass and get back to his scotch. “Bosworth sure doesn’t run out of gas. I can’t wait until this whole thing is over and I can stop listening to him slime on for hours. But,” he added, brightening, “as long as I get paid to listen to him, I’m gonna keep on doing it. I’m a trained professional.”

  Brit looked up from the roll she was buttering, meeting his smug, laughing eyes through her lashes. Between the scotch and her stockings, she knew, he wasn’t fully in charge of his mouth. It occurred to her that the last place she’d seen that satisfied expression on his face was at the Hitching Post. That night, she’d agreed that she’d had too much to drink to drive back to Laramie. To tell the truth, she’d been loaded and horny enough to sleep with him for the hell of it. Approximately twenty minutes later, they’d been in his room. He’d drunkenly thrust off all his clothes, given her the same smile as she’d gone into the bathroom. Then he’d toppled onto the bed naked and was passed out snoring by the the time she opened the bathroom door. She’d spent most of the night curled up on the couch, watching MTV with the sound turned down low and weighing her options. Around five a.m., she’d stripped down to her underwear, crawled into the bed, given him a kiss and told him it had been unforgettable, but she had to get back on the road. He’d grunted and turned over, and she’d left.

  Whatever incipient attraction she’d felt toward him had curdled since that wine-soaked night, firing her anew with the resolve to get him good. “I still don’t understand what this lawsuit’s supposed to be about. I mean, like, who gives a damn?”

  “College professors specialize in getting completely livid about nothing at all. They all see life as a zero-sum game—if somebody else gets something, there’s less for them. That’s why they’re all liberals. They all think property is theft.” Bobby shook his head, forked up the last of his salad and and signaled for a refill on their drinks.

  “Well, you can kind of see their point. They make really shitty money. I used to work at Albertson’s, and you know what? Nobody shoplifts more groceries than college professors. I once saw an econ professor stick a package of frozen chicken breasts down his pants and walk out with it.”

  “Maybe he just got off on having frozen breasts in his pants.” Bobby giggled.

  “Hey,” Brit told him, “that guy was, like, a kleptomaniac. He never left the store without hooking at least a stick of beef jerky. You could pretty much count on the fact that after he’d been in the store, you’d have to restock tuna . He used to slip five or six cans at a time up his sleeves.”

  “Why didn’t you turn him in?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m too sure,” she scoffed. “I was making minimum wage. I didn’t care if people walked out of there with Thanksgiving turkeys in their pants.”

  The waiter arrived with their steaks—a filet mignon, medium rare, with a baked potato for Brit, and a large porterhouse, well done, with fries for Bobby. Nibbling at the spiced apple slice that garnished the plate, Brit said, “So I guess I can see Bosworth’s point a little, but what about your boss? Why does some big jillionaire give a damn about this?”

  “What you’ve gotta understand,” Bobby explained, lowering his voice, “is that Elroy Foote is a rich fanatic. He thinks people like Sally Alder are shock troops for the New World Order. Once they’ve established a beachhead at the University, they’ll be brainwashing the kids through the Internet or rigging the microwaves in their dorms to broadcast the Communist Manifesto every time some sophomore warms up a burrito. Besides, the legal expenses on this suit don’t even make a dent in one of Elroy’s dividend checks for the year. His money makes so much money, it’s incredible. Hey,” he waved a hand at a busboy, “can I get some ketchup?”

  The busboy looked disgusted at the thought of some fool ruining a fine piece of beef, but brought the ketchup. Bobby stuck his knife in the neck of the bottle to loosen up the contents and dumped red stuff all over his steak dinner.

  Brit watched him, with the sudden uneasy feeling of déjà vu. The bite of fork-tender filet mignon in her mouth seemed to take forever to chew. As an experienced waitress, she was an expert on the eating habits of American diners. All kinds of people wrecked their food by drowning it in ketchup, but most people opened the bottle and tried pounding the bottom before they resorted to the knife trick to get the ketchup out. She’d seen somebody go for the knife first only once in the past year. At Foster’s Country Corner. One of the asshole camo guys who’d come in and made such a scene, just before Thanksgiving. This one hadn’t said a word, had kept his hat and sunglasses on in an apparent effort not to be recognizable, had barely looked up from his food. He’d done the knife thing, poured ketchup on a porterhouse steak, eaten it silently, and then gone over to use the pay phone before the hassle over the bill. She now realized it had been Bobby Helwigsen.

  Her mouth was so dry, she had to take a big gulp of water. She would have loved to bolt right out of the Cavalryman, go straight to her parents’ house and tell her father she had an idea that Elroy Foote might be behind a militia group that included some of the rudest people she’d ever waited on. But she didn’t want Bobby to get suspicious, and besides, it wasn’t every day she got
a free dinner at the Cavalryman. “So Elroy Foote’s got lots left to spend on other ways of saving Wyoming from the commies?” she asked. Brit really hoped Bobby was looped enough not to notice that she’d asked more questions tonight than in their entire previous history.

  Bobby laughed, licked ketchup off his lips, and leaned over the table, his face close to hers. “Oh yeah, honey, he’s got a million ways to keep fine American girls like you safe from the boys in the black helicopters. But if I told you what they were, I’d have to kill you.”

  Chapter 29

  A Rough Night and a Draggy Day

  Bobby had of course been terribly disappointed when Brit told him she couldn’t come back to the Holiday Inn because she had to get up early for one of her temp jobs. She intended never to see him again, but she didn’t want him knowing it. When they got to their cars, she gave him a kiss that made her feel like a total whore and told him she’d call him sometime soon. The wind was blowing so hard that even Bobby, half-delirious with lust and Johnnie Walker, didn’t drag out the goodbye.

  Her parents were up, watching good-looking doctors stick tubes into people lying on gurneys on ER. She sat down on the couch, waiting until a commercial came on and her mother got up to go to the bathroom, and then turned to Dickie. “Daddy,” she said, “I have a confession.”

  Dickie braced himself. Pregnant? Joining a religious cult? Piercing something visible? Something invisible? “What is it, darlin’?” he asked sweetly.

  “You know how much I hate having you butt into my private life?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking a drag off a Marlboro.

  “And you know how you asked me a couple of weeks ago if I’d been seeing Bobby Helwigsen, that lawyer from Casper?”

  “Yeah,” he repeated.