Bitch Slap

by Michael Craft

  “But the bigger story, at least from the perspective of our local readers, is twofold. First, the founding of the institute is news in itself, and the various disciplines taught there are largely unknown in Dumont, requiring incisive explanation. Second, and more tantalizing, is the question of whether the whole operation is on the level. So it’s not your typical features story, Glee.” I paused, adding, “Of course, you can assign it to someone else if you like.”

  She smirked. “Are you kidding? I smell a story.” She had used the same expression years earlier, on a cold winter morning when we had first met, describing a hunch she couldn’t shake regarding a sordid detail of my family’s past. To my dismay, her hunch later proved to be accurate. I soon learned that when Glee’s reporting of fashion and food occasionally strayed into the realm of hard news, our readers always benefited from superior journalism. Looking up from her notes, she now asked, “Have a contact for me?”

  Rising, I stepped into my inner office for a moment, grabbing the notebook from my desk. “Right here,” I said, returning to sit at the table with her. “Tamra is the person to interview first.” I gave Glee the number that Esmond had given me.

  She copied the number, then slipped her pen and notebook into her purse and snapped it shut. Chipper as ever, she rose and moved to the door, telling me, “I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

  Broaching my intended topic, I said, “I’m sure you can handle it, Miss Buttles.”

  She froze in the doorway, then stepped back into my office. “Oh.” She sat again, facing me. “You, uh, … you caught that, huh?”

  Airily, I wondered aloud, “Who would name a child Glee Savage? It seems so contradictory. It seems like a name that someone might have made up.”

  She crossed her legs and leaned forward on her knees, countering, “Who would name a child Glee Buttles? I’ll tell you who—Mr. and Mrs. Russel Buttles. God, isn’t it awful?”

  I thought it judicious not to answer.

  She saved me the trouble. “As a little girl, I couldn’t stand that name. You can well imagine the jokes. At least, growing up in the fifties, I had the comfort of knowing that a Prince Charming would one day rescue me with some other name. Smith, Jones, Johnson—it didn’t matter which prince, so long as he wasn’t Prince Buttles.” She sighed. There was humor in her voice, but it had a bittersweet overtone as she continued, “Things didn’t go quite as planned. Coming of age in the sixties and graduating from college in the early seventies, I was still Miss Buttles, or Ms. Buttles, which was none better. So when I got my first job out of school, right here at the Register, the paper’s founder, Barret Logan, asked me, ‘And what byline will you be using?’ His tone implied that it was not only permissible to change my name, but desirable. Well, that was all the prodding I needed. And to this day, I have happily been known as Glee Savage.”

  “You tiger, you.” I growled.

  “That played into it, I admit. Back then, reporting was still dominated by men, so I felt it would be to my advantage to juice up my byline. And you know what, Mark? This is odd, but I think I actually became more aggressive, as if I were living up to the name.”

  I paused before noting, “You were decidedly aggressive this afternoon.”

  “Who, me? That wasn’t Glee Savage; that was Miss Buttles.”

  “I see. And you didn’t slap Gillian Reece; that was Gill Dermody whose face got in the way of your hand.”

  “Very good, Mark. You catch on fast.” She reached to pat my fingers. “No wonder everyone thinks you’re so clever—not that I ever disputed the point.”

  “I’m clever enough to understand that your breezy manner is more than idle pleasantry; it’s an evasive maneuver.” I looked her in the eye. “Right?”

  She fidgeted with the lip of her purse. “Evasiveness is a subtle skill I fear I’ve always lacked. I tend to be direct.”

  “An admirable quality in any writer.”

  “Thank you.”

  I smiled. “Then ’fess up, Glee. What’s this tumultuous background between you and Gillian?” I wasn’t being nosy. As an investigative reporter, I was trained to dig instinctively, so I could justify my prying on professional grounds.

  With a sigh of defeat, she said, “I suppose I’ll never file that story if I don’t clear this up with you, so I might as well get it over with. Would you prefer the short version or the whole grisly story?”

  “Why, Glee, you already know—any story worth telling is just long enough.”

  “True. And the most difficult sentence is always the first.”

  With a pensive nod, I suggested, “Perhaps I could give you some help with the opening line. At the risk of being presumptuous, I have an inkling this relates to the elusive Prince Charming.”

  Her eyes bugged. “You knew. You already knew.”

  “Nope. But hey, you just made reference to the dashing hero who would rescue you from your maiden name; then you said, ‘Things didn’t go quite as planned.’ I already knew that you and Gillian had known each other in college and didn’t get along. Considering the raw emotions that were bared this afternoon, I doubt if the run-in was precipitated by two sorority sisters tussling over a tennis bracelet. So I put two and two together and sniffed man trouble.” Glibly, I concluded, “Elementary.”

  “Cripes,” she said under her breath, “you are clever.”

  I grinned. Though I appeared to be gloating, my true intention was to put her at ease with a difficult topic. And it worked.

  “It was all so long ago,” she said, shaking her head softly, “it hardly seems worth the fuss, not now. But back then, I could’ve killed that woman. We weren’t sorority sisters, Mark—you got that detail wrong—but we lived in the same dorm. I was a senior at Madison, and Gill was a freshman, so we knew each other for only a year. But wow, that was more than enough.”

  Since I still had my notebook in hand, I was tempted to jot a few details while Glee spoke, but I resisted.

  She continued, “Yes, all the trouble goes back to a man—well, a grown kid, really, at that age. We’d been seeing each other for two years, and he was a year younger than I was, so when I reached my senior year, we had to face the question of my graduation—what then? I decided to stay on for a year of grad school, basically to put me ‘on hold’ while Hugh finished his degree. That was his name—Hugh Ryburn. We weren’t exactly engaged, but we knew we had a future together.

  “Then along came a spider, and her name was Gill Dermody. She was a business major, not very common for a woman back then, so even as a freshman, she stood out. She happened to be in the floor lounge one evening when Hugh and I were watching TV, and … well, you can figure out the rest. She flat-out stole him. Worse yet, she made no secret of her intention to do it, and after she’d done it, she missed no opportunity to crow about it. She even resorted to trickery—the oldest trick in the book—claiming to be pregnant by Hugh that spring.

  “He was torn, but wanted to do the ‘honorable’ thing. When I graduated, I forgot about grad school and left Madison. Shortly after, Gill discovered she’d had a ‘false alarm’ (surprise, surprise), but since I was out of the picture, Hugh married her anyway. A few years later, I heard that Gill had chewed him up and spit him out. He’d meant everything to me, but to Gill, he was merely a conquest.

  “Meanwhile, I got on with my career here and found it more rewarding, or at least more predictable, than romance. I tried to forget about Gill Dermody—the conniving Mrs. Hugh Ryburn—and I never knew that she’d become the Gillian Reece who was setting up shop here in Dumont. She, of course, had never even heard of Glee Savage, so our meeting this afternoon came as a shock to both of us.

  “Maybe I should be grateful to her. If she’d never come along, I might have become Glee Ryburn, but I probably wouldn’t have landed in Dumont, and there would never have been a Glee Savage.”

  Setting down my notebook, I stood, offering open arms. “I’m more than happy with the Glee we’ve got.”

  She
rose, readily accepting my hug. “Thanks, Mark,” she said with a sniff. Then she stiffened. “It’s just the way that damned woman went about it.”

  “I agree. It was unconscionable.”

  Glee patted my chest. “I haven’t spoken of this in years.”

  “So you decided to unload yourself to a reporter?”

  She backed up a step, crossing her arms. “You forced it out of me.”

  “Coaxed, certainly. Cajoled, maybe. But forced? Never.”

  “You’re splitting hairs, mister.” She grinned, picking up her purse. “And I still have a story to write.”

  I tapped my watch. “Then get cracking.”

  She blew me a little kiss, a sincere gesture conveying true fondness, then left my office and headed to her desk.

  Retrieving my notebook from the table, I carried it back to my inner office and set it open on my desk. The blank pages conveyed none of the soul-baring I’d just heard, but one of Glee’s statements still rang in my ears.

  “Back then,” Glee had said, beginning her story, “I could have killed that woman.”

  No doubt about it—my view of Gillian Reece was growing darker by the minute.

  Chapter Eight

  That evening, Neil cooked dinner for the two of us at home. I helped with the preparations, but basically kept out of the way, contributing with the lion’s share of the cleanup afterward. We found this arrangement mutually agreeable, and the routine was a comfortable reminder of the simple joys of being home alone together. With Thad away at school pursuing a degree in theater and our housekeeper following her own quest to establish a career in music, Neil and I had feared that the occasional open evening with nothing booked—not even a dinner reservation downtown at First Avenue Grill—might leave us feeling adrift and abandoned. We were pleasantly surprised, though, to discover that the return to our original state, “just us,” was neither depressing nor boring. On the contrary, we had rediscovered those very aspects of each other that had attracted us in the first place. Our “empty nest” now felt more like a “love nest” than it had for several years.

  Though we had dined alone tonight, the intimacy of our evening would not last. Our houseguest, Todd Draper, was due to arrive later, driving from Chicago. He had phoned along the way, reporting his progress, and we estimated his arrival at nine-thirty. While Neil gabbed with him on the phone, confirming directions for the remainder of the trip, I recalled my conversation that morning with Roxanne, who had caught my attention with her description of Todd as a “dish.”

  Waiting for the hour when he would land on our doorstep, I tried not to dwell on imagining what he would look like. I also tried to avoid wondering how I would react to having him bedded in the guest room, just down the hall from Neil and me, upstairs on Prairie Street. Instead, I built a fire.

  “It’s not that cold,” said Neil, entering the den from the front hall, carrying a tray of liqueur bottles. He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the fireplace, where I hunkered at the hearth, fussing with kindling and matches.

  I turned from my task to tell him, “It’s mid-October already, and we haven’t had a fire yet. Today was getting nippy. Anyway, it’s all about atmosphere.”

  “Ahhh, atmosphere,” he acknowledged, grinning as he poured a finger or two of cognac for each of us. Then he frowned and sniffed. “Try opening the flue—or you’ll get way more atmosphere than you bargained for.”

  “Good idea.” It was our first fire of the season, so my technique was rusty. So was the flue, which creaked like a crypt as I screwed it open.

  While I finished with the fire, Neil settled on the studded-leather love seat that anchored a cozy group of furniture at that end of the room. Cracking open a book, he slipped off his shoes and pulled up his feet, curling into the corner of the sofa like a cat.

  Flicking some grime from my fingers, I asked, “Do you mind if I do a bit of desk work?”

  “Hm?” He looked up from his reading, already engrossed. “Oh, sure, Mark. No problem.” And his nose was again buried in the book. The glow of the fire turned his mop of hair impossibly golden.

  Taking both snifters from the tray, I handed one to Neil and skoaled him gently as if bidding adieu. It was a sketchy farewell, as I wasn’t going far. Sipping from the glass, I stepped to the opposite side of the room, which was dominated by the enormous partners desk that had belonged to my uncle Edwin—and hadn’t been moved since.

  When Edwin Quatrain had built this house some fifty years earlier, employing the talents of a Taliesin architect from Spring Green, he reserved a special space for himself on the first floor, just off the front door. His den was a masculine but artful lair that occupied a prime corner of the house, with windows facing both the street and an expansive side yard. The desk, as well as the mantel and indeed all of the home’s ornamental detailing, had been designed by Wright’s protege in the hallmark Prairie style that melded Art Nouveau, mission, modernist, and Oriental influences.

  Other rooms Neil had taken a free hand in decorating, but Uncle Edwin’s den, now my own home office, didn’t offer much leeway. The fireplace, bookcases, paneling, doorway surrounds, and massive desk were all fixed architectural statements—and charming ones at that. Neil simply added the grouping of leather furniture, in a traditional chesterfield style, creating a conversation area near the fire. He also hung the tall windows with white, sheer end panels, claiming the room needed softening, but grumbling that they weren’t quite right. And that was that. Other than the modern telephone and sleek new computer, the room must have looked much the same when Uncle Edwin had first settled into it.

  Placing my snifter on the leather blotter, I sat in my clubby desk chair, also leather, and opened a file of papers I had brought home from the office. Checking my watch—it was eight-thirty—I noted that I could get in an hour’s work before our guest’s expected arrival. I took a sip of cognac, holding the liquor in my mouth for a long moment as it assaulted my tongue before sliding down my throat. Neil, I noticed, had set his glass on the coffee table without drinking from it. Lifting the top batch of papers from my folder, I saw that it was the draft of a series of local election profiles being readied by the Register staff, so I removed the paper clip, sorted through the profiles, and began to read.

  Not until I heard the squeak of brakes, the purr of an engine, did I look up.

  “He’s here,” said Neil, setting down his glass, which was now empty. Tossing his book on the sofa, he got up, stepped into his shoes, went out to the hall, and opened the front door.

  I quickly jogged my pile of papers together and closed the folder as if hiding a mess—company was coming. Rising from the desk, I crossed to the coffee table and set both of our glasses on the tray. The fire was low, but still glowing, so I added another log or two to the embers.

  “Hey, Todd!” I heard Neil call from the porch. His feet squeaked the few stairs leading down to the sidewalk. “Sure, that’s fine, just leave it in the driveway.” A car door slammed. The trunk popped open.

  Crossing to the front windows behind my desk, I tucked aside the sheers and peeked into the darkness, feeling ridiculous, like some withered busybody crone. Neil stood at the rear of the car, helping our visitor unload things from the trunk, which was lit. I could clearly see their hands moving, but I couldn’t get a look at our guest’s face, hidden by the raised deck. The car was a full-size Mercedes, I noted—apparently this guy was good.

  When the trunk closed with a thud, I stepped aside, fearful of being caught peeping. Standing at my desk, I tidied a few pencils and pens that stood in a cup, then untangled a knot in the phone cord.

  “Traffic bad?” asked Neil, leading our visitor up the front stairs.

  “Nah. Once I got past Milwaukee, it was open road.”

  They paced across the porch. Stepping through the doorway and into the front hall, Neil said, “Whew! You don’t exactly travel light, do you?” The metal feet of several heavy bags clacked as they hit the floor.


  “Sorry. Must be my Boy Scout training. ‘Be prepared.’”

  “Right!” They both laughed.

  Emerging from the den and joining them in the front hall, I asked Neil brightly, “Who’s your friend?” I already knew, of course, but since Neil was so adept at social niceties, I preferred to let him handle the introductions.

  He dispatched these duties with ease: “Mark, this is Todd Draper, the best curtain designer in the business. Todd, this is Mark Manning, my better half.”

  “Well,” I hedged, reaching to shake Todd’s hand, “let’s just say I’m Neil’s ‘other half.’”

  Todd laughed again. “It’s a pleasure, Mark. I’ve long wanted to meet you.”

  “Then tonight’s your lucky night, I guess.” My lame attempts at humor generally made me squirm, and this hackneyed retort was no exception.

  But Todd grinned graciously, telling me, “I guess it is.” He had shaken my hand with warm enthusiasm, hanging on a moment longer, and only now let go.

  “Todd,” said Neil, “I assume you need to freshen up. Then we can all sit down and have a drink. Mark lit a fire.”

  “Sounds perfect. Have any Scotch?”

  “Name your brand.”

  He did. Then Neil walked him down the hall to a bathroom before slipping into the dining room to raid the liquor cabinet.

  Watching them move away from me, I noted that both men were about the same height and build. Like Neil, Todd was in good shape, no stranger to the gym. He was probably in his early forties, a few years older than Neil, a few years younger than I. For his drive that cool night, he’d worn a lightweight V-necked sweater, charcoal gray, over a white T-shirt. He also wore a pair of heavy, starched khakis, deeply wrinkled at the knees and the lap from his four hours in the car. I had always taken special pleasure at the sight of a man in khakis, and Todd, I noted, wore them exceptionally well.

  Coincidentally, Neil and I were similarly attired that night, having dressed down after returning from our offices.

  Returning to the den, I poked the fire, shifted a log, and got the flames going. Then I poured some more cognac for Neil and me. As I set down the bottle, Neil entered from the hall with a bottle of single-malt Scotch and a small ice bucket.