“Thank you,” Jack said.
“We’ll be keeping an eye out. To make sure there’s no funny stuff.”
Jack shrugged. “It’s a little late for that.”
The couple fumbled with their paddles and chopped their way out to the center of the lake. Although they were some distance away, their voices carried across the water. The woman said, “Was he making a joke?”
The man said, “Don’t let them see you looking at them, Barbara.”
Chloe said, “Fine. Real class act. I have to go to the bathroom.” She wasn’t crying, but she looked blotchy and unwell. “This kind of stress isn’t good for the baby.”
“Please don’t tell me that you’re going to start using this baby to get you off the hook.” But he picked up a paddle. “Just one more thing.”
“Spence. It’s Spence. Let’s go now. Let’s go do whatever comes next.”
“Is that what you call him in bed? Spence? You guys are like the very zenith of romance.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
The couple in the other canoe had gone on ahead of them and were standing on the dock, waiting. Their arms were folded and they glowered with righteousness. Jack guided the canoe up to the boat slip. The man bent down to help Chloe out. “Oh thank you,” she said, her voice brave and quavering. The dumpling woman put an arm around Chloe and led her away, giving Jack a final look of curdled disgust.
Jack stepped out onto the dock, handed over the paddles, helped the attendant tie up the canoe. The other man was still standing on the dock. Jack brushed past him. “Hey,” the man said.
Jack turned and waited. “I’ve been married twenty-seven years, and I’ve never raised a hand in anger to my wife.”
“That’s great. She ever fuck her boss?”
“What kind of way is that to talk.” The man shook his head. His face under the canvas hat was red and wattled, like a furious rooster’s.
He couldn’t keep getting into fights with people who had nothing to do with his life. He walked away, toward the lodge. “Hey, I’m talking to you, mister,” the man called after him. The sound dwindled behind him, anger going nowhere.
Chloe was probably in their room with the chain lock on. Crying strategically to the dumpling woman. On the phone to Spence. Jack skirted the lounge, wandered through the lobby, ducked downstairs to the fitness center. Two matrons chatted as they walked the treadmills. They gave him a look. Clearly he didn’t belong here, or anywhere else.
He had his wallet on him, and the only set of car keys. He was tempted to get in the car and drive off and leave Chloe to find her own way home—with her new Oak Park friends, maybe—but he didn’t want to give her any more ammunition against him. Already he had a sense of how everything might come to be his fault.
It was after five. When he went back to the lounge, it was filling up again with golfers and early diners. Susie was already at work, efficiently serving and clearing, trading jokes and tips. Jack saw her register his presence from across the room, smile at the old couple drinking whiskey sours, then turn her back to give him a view of her bending low over the table.
He sat down at the bar to wait for her. “You again,” she said, balancing her tray and cocking her head to one side. Her brilliant red hair was fluffed up like feathers.
“Busy night?”
“Average. It’s like a feedlot, except the cattle are happy.”
“I need a favor,” he said, and held her eye long enough for her to realize he was being serious. “I need a ride out of here.”
She considered this. “Just you?”
“That’s right.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere I can get a rental car.”
“Hang on.” She whisked away to pick up her drink orders. A television was on above the bar and Jack watched vapidly as somebody somewhere played golf. After a few minutes she came back. “If you can wait a couple hours, I’ll drive you to Green Bay.”
“Thanks. You’re sure you have time? You won’t get in trouble?”
“I’d say you’re the one with the trouble around here.”
He had a drink, and then another. The televised golf gave way to televised baseball. He paid his tab and walked outside, to the lake’s edge. His back and arms were beginning to ache from the canoeing. In the locker room in the basement, he showered and cleaned himself up as best he could. He went up to the front desk, asked for an envelope, detached the car keys, and asked the clerk to make sure the lady in 202 got these in the morning, she was sleeping now and he didn’t want to disturb her. Then he went back to the lounge to wait for Susie.
“Half a sec,” she told him. “Meet me out by the parking lot.” Jack nodded and went to stand at the edge of the front portico. It was too dark to see the lake, but he could hear its quiet voice, the sifting water.
He walked around the back of the lodge and tried to make out which window might be Chloe’s. He couldn’t tell. It wasn’t one of the important things anyway.
He returned to the front entrance and a few minutes later Susie came out. She’d changed into jeans and a sleeveless black shirt and high-heeled sandals that made clopping sounds on the wooden steps. She lifted her chin to look up at him. “Ready?”
“I appreciate this. And I hope you’ll let me at least pay you for gas.” His wallet was still fat with twenty-dollar bills, the big withdrawal for vacation fun.
Susie fished in her handbag for cigarettes, lit one, and started off down the rows of cars. “If that makes you feel better about things.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned money, he was insulting her. The true dismalness of his situation was beginning to come home to him. He reached out and touched her arm to stay her. “I just don’t want to take advantage.”
“You’re not. I know what taken advantage feels like. Yes I do.”
“I don’t think I can stand to have anybody else mad at me right now.”
“Hey, do I look mad? How often do I get to go off with a handsome stranger? Relax.” She turned her head to the side to breathe out smoke. The security light overhead turned her hair living pink. “I’m the part you don’t have to worry about.”
“You’re a nice girl.”
“Girl,” she said, shrugging, but she smiled and allowed him to take a step toward her, slide his arm around her bare shoulders, draw her up for a kiss. He tasted smoke and face powder and whatever perfume-smelling perfume she’d just applied. He was touched that she’d done that, primped for him.
Headlights swept over them, a car pulling in. They blinked but didn’t move apart. The car parked a few yards away. The man and woman from the canoe got out and took their time looking Jack over. They were dressed up for dinner. Jack had an impression of seersucker, white jackets, handbags.
“You take the cake, buddy,” the man said. “You are a genuine work of art.”
The wife said, “I rebuke you. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
She and her husband walked away. Susie stepped out of Jack’s flaccid embrace. “Do you know them?”
“Sort of.”
“This anything you want to talk about?”
“Not really.”
“Boy, you do need to get out of here.” She stepped on her cigarette and led him to the far end of the parking lot. Her car was a new-model undersized sedan. Susie unlocked his door. “Go ahead and put that seat all the way back. Still not much legroom.”
“I’ll manage.” Jack shoehorned himself in. Susie started the car, flipped the radio on. Country station.
“Unless you don’t want any tunes.”
“No, it’s fine.” The lodge slid across the rearview mirror and was gone. The car’s headlights turned the dark road ghostly. The radio was on low, a friendly, twangy voice. He was driving away from Chloe and that bubble of blood growing inside her that might or might not be his child, a child that already felt lost to him. He turned to Susie. “You have any kids?”
“Two. My girl’s fifteen, my boy
’s eleven.”
As he was wondering if he should ask about the children’s father, or fathers, she said, “It’s just us three. Their dad’s not around. And we’re glad he’s not. How about you?”
“What?”
“You have kids?”
“No.”
“Well if you ever do, try not to be a total dick to them.”
The road spun away beneath them. The small car, its darkness and motion and tiny electric dashboard voices, seemed like a place for telling secrets. But they were too far down in him. Instead he asked, “How far to Green Bay?”
“About an hour to the airport. That’s where the rentals are. Relax, enjoy the ride.”
“I’m sorry I’m not better company. More entertaining.”
“So far, honey, you’ve been good clean fun.”
He must have slept. His head rolled back. When he opened his eyes, he saw highway, traffic. “We’re almost there,” Susie told him. “I let you sleep, you looked like you needed it.”
“I guess.” For the first moment he hadn’t remembered where he was or why, and then once he did he tried to trace his way back to the one moment or event that had brought him here, but it was like a river with no true source. His head hurt, his eyes were having trouble sorting out the revolving lights and shadows the car’s speed produced. Chloe was an hour away now. Child in a pink womb room.
There was a sign for the airport. Susie slowed to take the exit. She said, “Are you a spiritual person?”
“Spiritual?”
“I don’t mean church. More like forces in the universe more powerful than we are. Do you believe in those?”
“Yeah. Gravity.” His mouth was dry. He wondered if he was becoming ill.
“No, silly.” She reached over and slapped at his knee. It stung. “Things like coincidence, fate. We don’t know each other at all. But here we are, having this moment.”
“We are that.”
“And it’s not even sex. Just this connection. Even if we never see each other again. That’s what I mean. Spiritual. We have a spiritual connection now.”
“I’m glad I got to know you a little.”
“You wouldn’t guess I’m that kind of person, but I believe in past lives, tarot, ESP, all that stuff. Go on, tell me you think it’s all a bunch of hooey.”
He thought it was all a bunch of hooey. “No, it’s interesting.”
The airport’s fences and runway lights and tower came into view. “I’ve got this feeling about you, Mister Troubled Mind. Intuition. I’m very intuitive. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Nothing’s ever gonna be quite the same for you from now on.” She pulled up to the curb. “Because now you’re not the same.”
They kissed again over the gearshift, and then Jack got out and watched her taillights drop down a chute made of darkness.
All the rental-car counters were closed. The airport itself looked closed. At the baggage carousel, a single plaid suitcase circled on the belt. It hadn’t occurred to him to call ahead, or that small airports went to sleep after ten. There was a traveler’s aid office, locked, and in front of it a padded bench that offered the closest thing to comfort. Jack stretched out on it, hoping he’d be overlooked or left alone. He closed his eyes and entered a blue, floating space that had snatches of sleep in it. From time to time he sat up, thinking that no time had passed, and it would be black night and fluorescent glare and metal shadows forever.
At five A.M. a teenaged boy in a white shirt and tie unlocked the counter at Budget. Jack handed over his license and credit card and came away with car keys. He drove south on the interstate to Manitowoc and then Milwaukee, watching the sky lighten and the lake dip in and out of view. By the time he reached the northern suburbs, it was fully light. He turned on the news radio for its hopped-up energy of talk and ads and sports, and so he came to his own street, his own block, and walked in his front door on what was to all appearances a normal Saturday morning.
He lay down in bed and cried for perhaps the second time in his adult life. He slept until close to noon, showered, ate, then hurried to get his packing done. Although he knew it was unlikely that Chloe would start for home immediately—she might have them dragging the lake, she might even stay for the final night of their reservation—he very much wanted to get away before she returned.
In the end he didn’t take much, just enough to let her know that he was gone. Clothes, some books, the computer. No one was around as he made trips back and forth to the rental car. Once everything was loaded he closed the front door and stepped out into the street. There was a smell of hot sun, and the rising vapors of exhaust. He had no idea where he was going. He looked up at that portion of skyline available to him, its rooftops and cross-hatched wires and billboards and receding hazy vistas and thought how easy it would be to drive off into the shouldering, anonymous traffic and disappear forever.
Eleven
From Chloe’s journal
I was sitting by myself at a party when the Drink came up to me. “I know you,” he said. “You’re a friend of what’s-his-name.”
“No I’m not.”
“Sure you are, cupcake. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?That guy who hangs with those other guys? I’m tight with all of them. I get around.”
I didn’t say anything. I thought he was a jerk. I waited for him to get the hint and go away. But the Drink leaned in close to peer into my face. “It won’t work.”
“What?”
“The princess act. Wearing kind of thin.”
I should have gotten up and left right then. Anybody else would have. But I just had to hear more bad news.
“May I sit down?” he asked, sitting down. “I think this should be a private conversation. Let’s not spread it around. But you’re kind of a sad case, Betty Lou.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Course it’s not. I’m funnin’ with you. Nobody else does that, do they? They all think you’re too stuck up.”
“I’m not stuck up. I’m not any kind of princess either.”
The Drink shook his head. “Now now. Better you don’t interrupt. I have so got you figured, girlie. What a scared little chickenshit you really are. How every time you go somewhere, your chicken heart thinks everybody’s watching you and waiting for you to screw up. Which they are, by the way. Everybody loves to see a hotshot, a snob, somebody who thinks they’re better than the average dirtbag, get taken down a peg or two. It makes them feel better about themselves. Levels the playing field. Democracy in action.”
“I don’t understand why they’re so mean.”
“Because they never get past your gorgeous puss. Not”—he gave me another stare down—“that I haven’t seen better. And honestly, I’m not sure how well you’re gonna hold up over time. It’s all in the cheek-bones.”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“Relax, girlie. I’m your friend.”
“I don’t have any friends.” I hadn’t meant to say that. It just came out.
“Boo hoo.”
“I’m alone. I’m always alone.”
“Not anymore you aren’t,” said the Drink. He took my hand. “I’m your friend who’s got your number.”
The Drink and I started hanging out. He could be pretty good company. He had a wicked sense of humor. He knew how to push people’s buttons. Knew their weak spots. Good, mean fun. When you went out with the Drink, you could float above the surface of things, up where everything seemed amusing. And if we ever got a little carried away (damage inflicted on self or others), the Drink told me, Hey, what did it matter. Life was a big, honking joke, a game with crooked rules, and nothing was important enough to take seriously, least of all me.
Then one day I told the Drink I thought we were spending too much time together. People were starting to talk. We needed to cool it, give each other some space. He sulked. He could sulk like a champ. “What, all of a sudden you don’t need me around? I get the bu
m’s rush?”
“We just have to be more discreet.”
“You think you’re too good for me. Honey I’m here to tell you, you ain’t.”
“That’s not it.”
“Sure it is. You think you can flimflam the flimflam man? Little self-improvement campaign going on here? Wasted effort. Who else is going to put up with your weak shit except me?”
“We’ve had some good times,” I said. Which was more of my weak shit, and he knew it.
“Those good times are over,” he said, walking away. “But we ain’t over.”
Oh dearie me. What a sad story. Is there any such thing as sympathy for a drunk? Anything I could tell you? The skin-crawling sickness of the morning after, the hole you’ve dug for yourself just a little deeper. And since you’re never going to be able to climb out of it anyway, you might as well do some interior decorating. Hang a few curtains. Stock the fridge. This is where you live and who you are. Everything else is a lie.
And after a hard day of lying, of pretending you’re the person everyone thinks you are (Chloe the Wonder Daughter, or the Solid-Gold Bitch, or the Wife Who Won’t Behave), isn’t it a relief to come home and put your feet up? To sink back into the bottom of the hole, its familiar contours and seepage and smells, and close your eyes?
In the darkness the Drink says, “Whatever happens, no one’s ever going to love you like I do.”
And I don’t even have to speak the words to say them: “I know.”
Twelve
On Wednesday afternoon Chloe left her office building a little after five-thirty and walked briskly down LaSalle to Wabash. She crossed the street and stood on the northeast corner to wait for a northbound bus. It was another day of heat funk, ozone action, glare burning on every glass and metal surface. That year it would stay hot long after people were tired of it, into a parched October. Grass in the parks crisped like shredded wheat. ComEd kept cranking juice to air conditioners and praying the grids stayed up. The lake was a blue mirage of coolness.
City Boy Page 25