City Boy

by Thompson, Jean

  He was embarrassed. When he could, he broke the kiss and leaned back and patted her hair. He was a big whiny baby with too many delicate scruples to even fuck properly. He said, “You’re sweet.”

  “No I’m not. But I’m a hell of a good sport.”

  “I couldn’t take a chance, doing it without something. You understand? Not another baby. Not now.”

  “Well that wouldn’t be one of my top-ten things either, Mr. Sperm.”

  They laughed a little at this. It felt amazingly like any normal couple, laughing in bed. Then Ivory said, “You aren’t really going to keep living here, are you?”

  “It didn’t seem like a good idea to hang around the house. Under the circumstances.”

  “No, I mean this place.” She waved a hand to indicate the yellowish-buff paint, the color of an ugly dog, the sagging plastic flophouse curtains. He kept waiting for her to notice the paper lantern, but she gave no sign. “This is like a complete dump. Not your kind of scene.”

  “Maybe it is now. Maybe I’m a down-in-the-dumps kind of guy.” He thought that might be the truth. He’d thought of himself as someone able, even entitled (by virtue of intelligence, upbringing, educa-tion), to pick and choose among various favored futures. There had been assumptions. He would work, marry, live here or there, explore the world’s pleasures, break only those laws that impeded his minor vices. He would never have to live in a room like this, do any of the things he’d done.

  Ivory was rustling around beneath the blanket, pulling on her clothes. “I have to get going. I told Rich I’d come by this afternoon.”

  Jack had managed not to be thinking about Brezak. He didn’t really feel jealous—how twisted would that be—but it was another embarrassment. “Sure. I’ll run you back over there.”

  “Go ahead. Say it.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a world-class dirtbag.”

  “Glad we got that settled.” He began casting about on the floor for his own clothes. He’d forgotten how graceless and awful it could be, struggling to get dressed in front of a woman before you knew each other well enough to feel easy about it. Or you might never know each other well enough.

  Ivory was making better progress. She was already dressed and sitting up and slicking her hair back. In spite of the heat, she wore her full complement of garments. An undershirt in a camouflage pattern. Jack hadn’t remarked on it before. He wondered if it was a fad or if she just wore it for ugliness’s sake. Over that, a black cotton shirt with long sleeves, and over that a denim vest. A long, olive-drab skirt that looked like something the army might issue, if soldiers wore skirts.

  He touched her shoulder. “Is your leg all right?”

  “Not a prob, Bob.”

  “I’m sorry about the stairs.”

  She bent over to tie her shoes and her words came out labored. “Just don’t—move to a—high-rise.”

  “I wanted to say, your leg isn’t a big deal to me. I’m not squeamish. You don’t have to keep hiding it.”

  She straightened, looked back at him over her raised shoulder so he saw only a portion of her face, a triangle of nose and narrowed eye. “It’s not a big deal to me either. It’s more like, you get into the habit of hiding things.”

  Oh, thank you.” Mrs. Jim Spencer smiled as Jack held the door of the Dominick’s open for her. He said, pleasantly, that she was welcome. He watched her choose a cart, set her handbag in the basket and extract from it a shopping list written on pale gray paper. Jack followed in her wake as she rolled toward the produce department. He’d forgotten just how large and gleaming and well supplied these suburban grocery palaces could be. Here were kumquats, baby lettuces, snow peas, peaches so ripe and fragrant each was packaged in its own nest of molded plastic and shredded excelsior.

  Jack felt conspicuous. A solitary, list-less man, wandering, at ten in the morning, among the chatelaines. At least he’d spruced himself up some. Ivory had been right. He’d looked like a molting vulture. So he’d gotten a haircut, shaved and combed, and dressed himself in clean and unremarkable clothes. It was that easy to impersonate a normal citizen. He might be taken for an idle, ne’er-do-well son, or if he was lucky, a self-employed entrepreneurial whiz kid.

  Mrs. Jim cruised the citrus, selected a grapefruit. She was nobody Jack would have picked out of a crowd. She had short, brown-going-gray hair cut with thick bangs, like a child’s. A forehead that puckered easily as she contemplated filet beans versus spinach. She looked as if she’d been fretting about things like vegetables for years. Short, snub nose, remnants of prettiness. A body like a snowman’s, one bundle of flesh set on top of another. An aggrieved and deceived wife, though she probably didn’t know it yet. Jack didn’t automatically feel sorry for her. She was a dope, just like he was.

  Jack detoured around her, turned left, and walked unhurriedly down the store’s main aisle. The deli offered marinated steaks, stuffed baked potatoes prestuffed and prebaked, artfully butterflied shrimp, slabs of red tuna garnished to a fare-thee-well. He stopped and pretended interest. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he was going to do about Mrs. Jim. He hadn’t counted on her. She was a bonus.

  He’d looked up Spence’s name on the Internet. It was part of his ravening need to know everything he could, which he recognized as a substitute for actually being able to do anything effective. Once he had the address mapped out, he didn’t even pretend he wasn’t going to go there.

  He chose a weekday. He didn’t want to encounter Spence, not on this trip. This was just reconnaissance, a side mission. He took his car to the car wash as part of his effort to look clean and bland. It was the third week he’d had the car. He kept calling Budget and extending the rental. He didn’t even ask how much it was going to cost him. He’d grown reckless about a lot of things and money was one of them. He cashed in another T-bill. He didn’t sign up for the substitute teaching pool. He had no idea how he was going to support himself, didn’t much think about it. It was part of his new, dangerous-to-self-and-others life.

  Spence’s suburb was the kind of place where people bought not just lots, but acreage. They kept horses in the backyard and all the things that went along with horses. They owned carriage houses, guest houses, pool houses. The place that Spence called home wasn’t even one of the larger piles of real estate, although it was impressive enough. A white-washed brick colonial, set well back from the curving street. The long driveway arced between stands of late-summer pink roses. Three-car garage. Chimneys, two of them. Fish pond with a small, spurting fountain. Jack wondered why any man who already possessed as much as Jim Spencer had to have Chloe also.

  Jack drove past the house once, then backtracked and allowed himself one more pass. He was mindful of private security forces and vigilant neighbors, and besides, there was really nothing to see here. Just as he reached the crest of the mild hill before the house, he spotted a green Dodge minivan pulling out of the Spencer driveway.

  Now here he was, shadowing Mrs. S., gleaning the possibly useful information that the Spencer household used margarine rather than butter. And that they relied heavily on frozen entrées. Bored, Jack left the store and went outside to wait in the parking lot. It had been a mistake to think that there was anything interesting or compelling about people like Spence. They thought they were living in some movie, a major-studio release with a thrilling sound track and moments of high drama and just that hint of corn. But they were ordinary. Behaving badly didn’t change that.

  Eventually Mrs. Jim emerged, pushing a cart full of plastic sacks. Jack wondered, without real curiosity, if the Spencers had what could be called a good marriage, aside from the occasional discreet infidelity. He wondered if Spence had done this sort of thing before. If Mr. and Mrs. Jim still took any comfort in each other. If Mrs. Jim suspected, felt the shadow of Chloe’s presence. He would have bet money she didn’t know anything outright. Otherwise she wouldn’t be so placidly crossing turkey bacon and Egg Beaters off her list and worrying about Mr. Jim’s ch
olesterol.

  The idea came to him as he watched her load up the minivan and depart. He watched its stately progress out of the parking lot and into traffic. He waited forty minutes. Time enough for her to reach home, unload, maybe stick the meat and dairy in the fridge and leave the rest for later, brew a cup of tea and sit down with her new Better Homes and Gardens. He went back inside the Dominick’s and from one of the pay phones in the entryway dialed the Spencers’ home number.

  She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Is this Mrs. James Spencer?”

  “Who’s calling?” Edge of sharpness, no doubt wondering if he was a telemarketer.

  “Mrs. Spencer, you don’t know me but my name is Jack Orlovich. My wife works at the bank with your husband.” Pause to let her consider this. “If I could have just a minute of your time? I should say, my wife’s just starting out at the bank, she just got her M.B.A. and she’s a trainee. And there’s a problem—a situation—that I’m not sure how to handle. I’ve tried calling Mr. Spencer at the office but I can’t ever seem to get through. Could I explain it to you? I really am sorry to bother you, but it’s kind of delicate …”

  His best shot at sounding awkward and sincere. And with just enough of a hook in it to make her alarmed or curious or both. He waited. Imagined her looking around, annoyed, at the heaps of provender she ought to be shelving. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Jack Orlovich. My wife is Chloe. Chloe Chase.” He dropped the name into the calm water of Mrs. Jim’s awareness. Something done that couldn’t be undone. “She’s crazy about her job. Just loves it. She thinks the world of Mr. Spencer. That’s all I ever hear, Spence this, Spence that. And I’m worried … I’m sorry, I just know she’d kill me for telling you this. We just found out we’re going to have a baby. Our first.”

  “Oh. Congratulations.” Flatly. “That’s very nice. What does—”

  “She’s afraid it’s going to hurt her career. You know. Discrimination. Mommy tracking. I tell her she shouldn’t worry, there are laws, but she just goes on and on.”

  Mrs. Jim made a sound of neutral assent. Jack wondered if it had been the best thing to say to her, Mommy tracking, if it could be worked around into some kind of reflected insult. Too late now. He plunged ahead. “What I was hoping—Oh boy, Chloe would have my hide if she knew I was talking to you. I mean, we haven’t even told our parents yet. If you could maybe ask your husband—without using any names, just hypothetically—if she has anything to worry about, career wise. I want to tell her she’s just being paranoid. I don’t want her to overwork herself because she feels she has to prove a point. She already puts in so many late nights at the office. And that trip in July, you know, the big deal where they all went to New York. I just don’t want her to do a lot more business travel like that. A whole week away from home. That can’t be good for the baby.”

  There was a space of black, electronic silence. Jack let it ripen for a few beats, then he said, “I could give you my phone number. Or maybe you’d prefer I call you back. Either way.”

  “Who are you?” Her voice had roughened.

  “Jack Orlovich. Funny name, huh? Kid isn’t going to thank me. I really would appreciate anything you could do. Any little talk you and Mr. Spencer might manage to have. I know, I’m probably worried for nothing. I’m just so psyched about this baby, I want everything to be perfect. You have kids, don’t you? Chloe said—”

  But she had hung up. Jack replaced the receiver and walked back to the parking lot. Once he was in the car he said aloud, “Bombs away.” He didn’t know what would come of the depth charge he’d just dumped into the Spencers’ lives. Maybe nothing. Maybe Mrs. Jim would swallow her distress, let it ride. She might not care what her husband was up to as long as he paid the outlandish mortgage, maybe, for similar reasons, she couldn’t afford to care.

  Jack steered himself cityward. The malls and cul-de-sacs receded, replaced by the pale tollway landscape. It was wickedness, what he’d done. No other word for it. Yup. But if Mrs. Jim took up the cause—if she confronted Spence, demanded to know, forced him to give up Chloe—then it would be worth serving his time in hell. Because then he would get Chloe back.

  He sped down the highway, turned the radio up loud to an oldies station, sang along to “Brown Sugar,” backing Mick up with some funky, low-down wails. It was a little scary, the things that put him in a good mood these days.

  Thirteen

  Pat Rubin’s office looked different in early morning light. Less a place for confession and trauma, more businesslike. Or maybe that was Pat herself, who was regarding Jack with a certain professional wariness. He’d talked his way into coming in before her regular appointments. Insisted he had to see her. Careful not to sound menacing or impolite, nobody you’d make go through a metal detector. Still. Pat said, “You’re sure about this. The other man.”

  “Oh yes. Not in dispute.”

  “And the pregnancy.”

  “Yeah. That’s bonus points.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “When she sat here and told you how hard she wanted to work on the marriage, it was going on right then. Hot and heavy.”

  “You know, I see people in crisis all the time. There seems to be an inexhaustible amount of pain in the world. It never gets less.”

  Jack said, “The crisis is over. This is the postmortem. The accident reconstruction.”

  Pat gave him a measuring look. She was wearing lavender today, another flowing caftan. Her hair was piled up and held in place by a silver and mother-of-pearl clip set front and center. It made her resemble something out of Star Trek, the queen of some alien TV planet. She said, “Perhaps you should tell me where you want to go from here. What you want to focus on.”

  “Getting my wife back.”

  “Have you talked with Chloe about a reconciliation?”

  Jack shook his head. “We haven’t done a lot of talking.”

  “That would be a good place to start.”

  “Fine. Tell me what to say.”

  Pat’s fingernails were painted silver today. They made her big fingers look like butter knives. Jack watched them tap against the desk’s surface. He liked feeling that he might be throwing her off stride, making her run through her repertoire of responses, cautious about him. The last time he was in this office he’d been such a girl. Pat said, “I think you should prepare for other possibilities.”

  “No.”

  “There isn’t any magic abracadabra here. It’s a process. And it may or may not turn out the way you want.”

  “All due respect to the counseling profession, but if you can’t give me something I can use, I’d say it’s a real crock-of-shit racket.”

  He was sure he’d gone too far. Pat would rise up in a billowing lavender cloud and throw him out. Not bodily. With some galactic-force ray. But she didn’t allow herself to show anger. She was, as everybody said, a pro. “All right. Here’s the deal. I can give you an assessment, based on my very limited contact with the two of you.”

  “Deal.”

  “Then I’m going to strongly suggest you visit a medical doctor, or a clinician who can prescribe medication. Antianxiety drugs. Not because I disapprove of your rudeness and belligerence, although I do. But because they won’t help you with Chloe.”

  Jack ducked his head to acknowledge that she might have a point. Even if he had no intention of getting a prescription, dosing himself into drooling calm. He said, “I wanted to keep coming back here. Working things out. She was the one who said no.”

  “That’s because of the drinking. She didn’t want to be called on it. I don’t doubt that she’s alcoholic. And just in case you’re interested, which you aren’t, there are any number of support groups and informational readings at your disposal.”

  “Thanks. I think I already know the basics.”

  “Maybe. Living with it doesn’t mean you completely understand it. There’s a basic dishonesty that’s a component of alcoholism. What
we call denial. Alcoholics aren’t con artists because they’re evil, devious people. It’s because they’re conning themselves. The disease affects behavior, memory, judgment. The whole package.”

  “So what are you saying, it’s a symptom of alcoholism to screw your boss?”

  “She’s sick. Unless she gets into recovery, there’s no happy ending.”

  “This is the best you can do? Drunks tell lies? Wow. Breaking news.”

  “The best I can do right now is try and talk you through—”

  “Every time she opened her mouth, it was to lie. So I should go back and ask her not to? That’s brilliant. I’m in awe.”

  “Jack.”

  “You ever think maybe this whole talk-therapy deal is oversold? I mean, here’s you and everybody like you, sitting in cushy offices and saying all the right things, and people walk out of here with a head full of all the right words and pick up where they left off, treating each other like beasts. I’m a writer. Did we get around to telling you that? It was one of the things Chloe used to berate me for when she was drunk, being a bad writer. Well maybe I am, or was, who cares. But it was something I thought mattered. Words. Now they’re just more crap on the crap heap.”

  Pat didn’t speak. The silence stretched. After a time Jack said, “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. I’m just at the end of some kind of rope here.”

  “Don’t give up on words yet, Jack. They can work for you.”

  “Yeah.” He felt a fool. He should be getting used to that by now, but he wasn’t.

  “Anything else you wanted to address?”

  “Yes. Here’s a question for you. Are you surprised? I mean, when we walked out of your office that time, did you say to yourself, ‘Wow, these kids are really fucked’?”

  Pat shook her head. Her face looked worn. Jack had a sense of what a truly crummy start her day was getting off to, thanks to him. She said, “No. But I thought you were more committed to the marriage than she was.”

  He wasn’t prepared to hear it, even though he knew it was true. It shocked him, how much he could be hurt in this new, fresh place. He managed, “Why? Because of the drinking?”