8 The Man Who Loved Women to Death

by David Handler

  “It happens to all of us, Cassandra.”

  “I need a Pulitzer, Hoagy.”

  “I need a new prostate gland. That doesn’t mean I’m going to get one.”

  “Work with me, Hoagy. I need you. Say something.”

  “Okay, okay. Cassandra?”

  “Yeah, cookie?” she said hopefully.

  “Good-bye, Cassandra.”

  The Spooners, Ezra and Heidi, lived around the corner from a country club in a very large Tudor that was crowded onto a very small lot. It was a brand-new Tudor. In fact, it was a Tudor-in-progress. Piles of lumber, cement blocks and roofing tiles were still stacked there in the driveway. A blue tarp protected the part of the roof that wasn’t finished yet. The grounds were as barren as a moonscape. No shrubs. No lawn. Just bare, frozen dirt crisscrossed with bulldozer treads. There were lights on in the house. And there was a “For Sale” sign at the curb.

  Out back there was a garage with an office. Ezra had said I would find him there. I saw the blue glow of a TV downstairs in the house as I made my way back there. Upstairs, I could hear the thud-thud-thud of rap music.

  It was a paneled office, with French doors overlooking the nongarden. I could see him in there, working away at one of those colossal Power Macs, his thick, wire-framed glasses perched on the end of his stubby nose. He had a peaceful, almost dreamy look on his face. Until I tapped at the door. Then he completely panicked.

  “One second, hon!” he cried out, eyes wild with fear. “Just give me one second!” Hurriedly, he cleared the screen of whatever was on it, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Then he shut the thing down and took a deep breath and opened the door, an uneasy smile on his round face.

  “Hey, Ez,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s you, Hoagy.” Ezra Spooner was decidedly tubbier than he was when I saw him last. One might even call him portly. He was also completely bald now, aside from some thin, see-through brown tufts that clung here and there around his head. Actually, Ezra’s head looked a lot more like a scrotum than anyone’s head ought to. He was wearing one of those fleecy polythermal pullovers that are popular with skiers, mountain climbers and middle-aged tax attorneys, a pair of baggy corduroys and Mephisto walking shoes. “I just saw your picture on the news. Some guy in the city who’s wiping out single women and sending you all the gory details. Unreal.”

  “That’s certainly one word for it. Am I interrupting something?”

  “No, no. Not at all.” He glanced over my shoulder at the house, lowered his voice. “I was just chatting with this divorced labor lawyer out in Eugene, Oregon. We talk every night. Heidi, uh, doesn’t know about her.”

  I tugged at my left ear. “Say, is this one of those Internet things?”

  “I’ve met a lot of interesting women on-line,” he exclaimed, waving his arms in the air for emphasis, fingers aflutter. Ezra was forever doing that. Ezra had always reminded me of a little boy pretending to be a snowflake.

  “Safe sex, huh?”

  “Not so safe. You’d be surprised how degenerate some of these women are.”

  “I would not.”

  “You on-line yet, Hoagy?”

  “I am not.”

  “You got to get on-line, man.”

  “I do not.”

  Ezra shook his head at me, grinning. “Same old Hoagy.”

  “It’s true. I’m ageless, the Dick Clark of modern lit.”

  “Come on in. It’s fucking freezing out there.”

  I went on in. A little Jack Russell was curled up by the heater. It immediately came over and tried to get familiar with Lulu. She showed it her teeth. She doesn’t like twerps sniffing her privates. Ezra shooed the Jack Russell outside. Lulu took its place by the heater with a sour grunt. This was her telling me she’d much rather be in her nice warm bed than schlepping all the way out to some frozen burb.

  Ezra had himself a full-fledged home office back there. A laser printer. A fax machine. A second computer. All sorts of phone lines and power cords and junction boxes. There were shelves crammed with discs, cartons crammed with papers. For decor he had his high school athletic trophies arrayed on top of a filing cabinet. He did not have the photograph of the three college track stars displayed anywhere.

  There were two ergonomically correct desk chairs. I sat in one of them, my eyes taking in all of the equipment. “Ever use a plain old typewriter anymore, Ez?”

  “Why would I want to do that? They’re obsolete.”

  He sat back down in front of his computer, peering at me. His eyes behind those thick lenses had changed. They were frightened eyes, hopeless eyes. I could remember very clearly the last time I’d seen eyes like Ezra’s—in Tuttle Cash’s office. Tuttle had them, too. Did I have them as well? Maybe I did. Maybe I was just so used to looking at myself in the mirror every day that I didn’t notice it.

  Ezra fidgeted, reached for a paper clip, toyed with it. He seemed nervous and preoccupied. “Can I offer you a beer, Hoagy?”

  “You can.”

  There was a small refrigerator under the worktable. He poked around inside of it. “Sure, sure, a beer … I’m in the Beer of the Month Club now, you know. Just got me a Full Sail Nut Brown in. Most amusing little bottle of ale.” He popped two of them open and handed me one. “To days gone by,” he said jovially. Though his joviality seemed forced. The eyes weren’t playing along.

  “To Augie,” I said, feeling vaguely like we’d gone all the way back to the Fabulous Fifties, parked out here in Dad’s rec room with his sports trophies and his New Age ham radio. Hell, all we needed was Chester A. Riley and his pal Jim Gillis and we’d have us some real laffs.

  He rested his beer on his tummy. “I guess this is pretty much everything you hate, isn’t it, Hoagy?”

  “Looks like a very nice place, Ez.”

  “It’s a dump,” he said glumly. “Damned contractor won’t come back and finish my roof, won’t deliver my topsoil. Who the hell’s going to buy a house that’s got half a roof and no lawn? Get this—he claims I have to pay him more money to truck in the topsoil that used to be here until he took it away. First I paid him to haul it away. Now I got to pay him to haul it back. It was my topsoil!” He took a gulp of his beer. “Know who used to live right behind us?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Frank Gifford. He lives in Greenwich now, the rich bastard.”

  “Yeah, but look at it this way—he has to wake up next to Kathie Lee every morning.” I sipped my beer. “Why are you selling?”

  He cleared his throat, reddening. “We’re, uh, relocating out west. Kind of a sudden development. Heidi’s flying on ahead to get us settled. I’ll be driving cross-country with the kids and the dog.” He mustered a sheepish grin. “I guess that sounds pretty horrible to you.”

  “You forget, Ezra. I change diapers now.”

  “Hey, that’s right. Merilee’s celebrated love child. Sure, I read all about that. Christ, who didn’t. Got a picture?”

  “Do I honestly look like the kind of boring father who carries around baby pictures?”

  He just stared at me.

  “Well, if you’re going to insist.” I took out my wallet and handed it over.

  “Nice-looking baby, Hoagy,” he said, inspecting her picture carefully. “Say, isn’t her head kind of large?”

  “It is not,” I snapped, snatching it back from him.

  “First thing I thought of when I saw you on the news tonight was that it must be another one of your publicity stunts. Like the baby was. You’ve always been one for the limelight, haven’t you?”

  “That’s not something I plan, Ez.” I had not realized until this moment just how thoroughly Ezra Spooner disapproved of me. “It just happens.”

  “Sure, sure. It happens. Stuff happens.” He looked around at his office. “I know about that.”

  “I’m an innocent bystander. I don’t know why the answer man chose me. Unless, that is, he knows me.”

  Ezra frowned at me. “Knows you? What do y
ou mean, knows you?”

  “Ez, there are certain references in the chapters I’ve received. References that lead me to believe that the answer man may be Tuttle.”

  “Tuttle?” Ezra didn’t seem at all upset by this news. He seemed tickled. “No way!”

  “Have you had any contact with him lately?”

  “Who, me? Naw. We were never really that close. And then after he … well, no. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Tuttle says you despise him. I seem to be rather blank as to why.”

  Ezra opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out two hand-rolled joints. Lulu perked right up—her mind, such as it is, on what Very had said he’d found in Bridget Healey’s apartment. I told her to cool it.

  “Want to get stoned?” Ezra asked me with a sly grin.

  “Not right now, thanks.”

  “You didn’t used to say no.”

  “I didn’t used to be high on life. Since when do you ?”

  “This kid at the office got me back into it last summer,” he answered wistfully. “Real cute kid. What a bod.” He left the joints there on the desk and sat back, put his feet up. “It’s true, I do hate Tuttle. Have ever since that night we celebrated your first book. Your best, in my opinion. Your second one missed the mark, not that it didn’t have a few good scenes.”

  I nodded politely. People don’t hesitate to casually slam an author’s work to his face. This is not something they would do to their internist or their plumber, but for some reason they have no problem doing it to us. Is that because they don’t realize how vulnerable we are? Or is it because they do?

  He was looking at me. “Tuttle never told you what happened?”

  “Tuttle never told me what happened.”

  “I guess because it was no big deal to him. That’ll give you an idea just what kind of bastard he—” He broke off, took a drink of his beer. “I met up with you guys at Elaine’s. I was with D-Dana.”

  “Dana?”

  “Gorgeous girl. A nice girl. Always had a smile on her face. I met her at the office. She went to Barnard, came from a good family. I was serious about her. Until that bastard, h-he …”

  “He stole her?”

  Ezra sneered at me unpleasantly. “Stole her? Oh, no. Nothing that classy.” He ran a soft, white hand over his face. “Christ, that was what, seventeen years ago? I can still remember every detail.… Ten minutes after we get there she gets up and goes to the ladies’ room. Doesn’t come back. Tuttle goes to the men’s room. Doesn’t come back. After, I don’t know, half an hour I’m wondering what the hell’s going on. So I go back there looking for them. Found him giving it to her in the ladies’ room, his pants down around his ankles. Her tits were hanging out, lipstick smeared all over her face. I was going to marry her! And h-he just took her, Hoagy. Because he felt like it. Because he was Tuttle-fucking-Cash, the great big fucking football hero.” He drained his beer, slamming the empty bottle down on the desk. “She chased after him for weeks after that. He wouldn’t even call her back. She was just last week’s quickie to him. One of a dozen. Dana …” He trailed off, lost in his memories of her. Until, abruptly, he shook them off. “Want another beer?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “He’s no hero, Hoagy. Want to know what my definition of a hero is?”

  “Yes, I would, Ez.”

  “A hero is someone who takes responsibility for himself and his family. A hero is somebody who pays his bills on time. A hero is somebody who tells the truth in business. A hero is somebody who doesn’t screw other people. I’m starting to feel like I was brought up in a different world, Hoagy. I don’t understand what’s happening to people anymore. I can’t believe how they have no scruples. How they think you’re some kind of weakling if you do. I guess that’s why I’m looking for a job now instead of sitting in a corner office billing people three hundred dollars an hour. They canned me last summer, you know.”

  “Price Waterhouse?”

  “Oh, no, no. I haven’t been with them for years. I was with Fine, Weinberger, one of the big law firms. Only, they said I wasn’t lean and mean enough anymore. I got the news the day after we poured the foundation here. So now here I am,” he reflected miserably, “trying to get out from under this place, trying to hook on somewhere. I have two kids who hate me. A wife who thinks I’m the loser of the century. I thought maybe if we could get a fresh start out west …”

  From the house there came the sound of a door slamming, followed by footsteps on the hard dirt. Ezra quickly shoved the joints back in the desk. Then he held a finger to his lips. For one oddly nostalgic moment, I felt like we were two little boys hiding in their tree fort from the big, bad mommy.

  The big, bad mommy was a drab, wrung-out dishrag of a woman with limp brown hair, a strand of it stuck to her forehead with Scotch tape. Heidi Spooner was thin but it was a wilted, unhealthy-looking thin. Her color was the color of bread dough left out on the counter too long. The expression on her face was sour. And she moved heavily, ploddingly, like a much bigger, much older woman. She wore a baggy gray sweatshirt, baggy gray sweatpants and a pair of fuzzy green slippers, the kind of fuzzy green slippers that are popular among chain-smoking grandmothers in Far Rockaway, Queens.

  She stopped in the open doorway. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company.” There was a dreary, forlorn quality to Heidi’s voice. She sounded like she was out on the sidewalk in the cold, begging for spare change. Or maybe it was just the way her nose was running. She dabbed at it with a wadded tissue that she then proceeded to tuck, used and moist, into the wristband of her sweatshirt.

  I found myself staring at it, knowing that I would remember that tissue for a long, long time. Just as I would remember how cheerless the air got when she walked in. It was the air of two people who don’t love each other anymore and don’t know what to do about it.

  Ezra grinned up at her uneasily. “You, uh, you remember Hoagy, don’t you, hon?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Not that she seemed too pleased to see me. Lulu she wouldn’t even look at. “Jason thinks he’s driving down to Daytona Beach for New Year’s with his friend Jade instead of staying here and packing up his room.”

  Ezra considered this with a judicious frown. “Which one is Jade again?”

  “The rabbi’s daughter.”

  “The rabbi has a daughter named Jade?”

  “Her real name is Tovah, but she hates it.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s sixteen years old and he’s not going.”

  “So?”

  “So talk to him, would you?”

  “What, now?” he said sharply.

  “What, now,” she answered sharply.

  He got up, muttering to himself. “Be right back, Hoagy.”

  Heidi started to go inside, too, but decided that would be too overtly rude. So she lingered there, sniffling. I offered her my linen handkerchief. She declined it. I didn’t know Heidi well. I had met her only once. But about her I had no doubt—I knew she didn’t approve of me.

  “We saw Merilee in that musical last year, Gilligan,” she said blandly. “We went in for our anniversary. I didn’t much care for it.”

  I nodded. Another critic. “Get into the city many evenings, Heidi?”

  “No, I hardly ever do.”

  “How about Ez? Does he?”

  “Well, yeah. Naturally.” She looked at me oddly. “I thought … I figured he’s been hanging around with you.”

  “With me?”

  Her eyes searched my face carefully. “What, you mean he’s not?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said defeatedly. “That’s just great. I don’t know where he is half the time anymore. He just gets in his car and he goes. Or he sits out here by himself, brooding. He’s very upset about what the firm did to him. He’s not like you, you know. He played by the rules.”

  “And I didn’t?”

  “You know what I mean.”

&nbs
p; “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “He’s not talented. He’s had to work within the system for everything he’s gotten. He’s a decent, hardworking family man from a good school. He did everything he was supposed to do and he got crapped on. He’s on his ass, Hoagy. We’re on our ass, and that’s just not supposed to happen to people like us.”

  “Exactly who is it supposed to happen to?”

  “We just built this place and now we have to pick up stakes and move.”

  “There’s no other jobs in this area?”

  “I don’t even know if he looked. All he keeps saying is he wants to start over out west—Eugene, Oregon, of all places. What the hell’s so special about Oregon?”

  That one I left alone. Didn’t want to touch it.

  Ezra returned now, looking grim and unhappy.

  “Did you take care of it?” she asked him.

  “I told him he’s not going,” he answered irritably. “If that’s taking care of it, then I took care of it, okay?”

  “Well, you don’t have to bite my head off, okay?”

  “Well, I’m busy, okay?”

  “Well, okay.” She went scuffing out, slamming the door hard behind her.

  Ezra stood there staring at the door in tight silence. “Did I ask you if you wanted another beer?”

  “You did, and I didn’t.”

  He nodded and sat back down in his chair.

  “Whatever happened to Dana, Ez?”

  “I have no idea, Hoagy. She couldn’t face looking at me every day at the office so she quit. Moved to Chicago. That was years ago. I never heard from her again.” He pulled one of those joints out of the desk and lit it. He drew on it deeply, holding the smoke in a moment before he slowly let it out. “Tuttle didn’t remarry, did he? After the business with Tansy, I mean.”

  “Malachi told me he was seeing a stripper until recently.”

  Lulu got up and scratched at the door for me to let her out. I did. Marijuana smoke makes her gaack. Plus, for some strange reason she’s very susceptible to a contact high. Trust me, you don’t want to be around Lulu when she’s stoned.

  Ezra studied the joint in his hand. “And you really think Tuttle’s the answer man?”

  “Unless you are.”