by John Dunning
The phone rang: the recorder kicked on. It was another dealer, in San Francisco, asking if she still had the first edition Phantom of the Opera. I knew she had it: I had seen it on my tour of the short wall.
“You’ve got your phone amplified all over the house?” I said.
She nodded. “That way I can weed out the pests. The answering machine puts a buffer between me and the world; the amplifier lets me know if it’s someone I want to talk to now. But I never get calls that can’t wait.”
“Not even George Butler the Third,” I said with false awe.
“George is a very large pain. I don’t know why I fool with him.”
“You know what I’d like to have?” I said suddenly. “Your Steinbeck, with the penis doodle.”
She laughed, the first time I’d seen her do that. “‘Tom Joad on the road.’ It’s one of my favorite books. Very expensive for that title.”
I felt my throat tighten. “How expensive?”
“If you’ve got to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Seriously, you don’t have to buy anything. I don’t charge admission up here.”
I took out my checkbook and tapped it lightly on the table.
Her eyes narrowed and got hard. “Fifteen hundred,” she said.
The knot in my throat swelled, but I began to write the check.
“Make it twelve,” she said. “I usually don’t give or ask for discounts, but I will this time. Make it payable to Greenpeace.”
I blinked at her. “Greenpeace?”
“Do you want me to spell it for you?”
“Greenpeace,” I said dumbly.
“Greenpeace gives me a reason to get up in the morning.”
I handed her the check. “Oh, I’ll bet you have at least a thousand very good reasons for getting up in the morning, Miss McKinley.”
She blushed when I said that. She really did. I felt a flush in my own cheeks. It had been a long time since I’d tried playing the gallant.
“So,” she said, going for more coffee, “you’ve just bought your first really nice book and paid retail for it. What are you going to do with it?”
“Gonna sell it.”
“Good for you. You think there’s any margin?”
“For something like this, there’s always margin.”
“You know, Mr. Janeway, I really do think you’re going to turn out to be a good bookman. You already know what sometimes takes people years to learn.”
“Which is… ?”
“When you buy something unique, and pay twice what it’s worth, it’s a great bargain. It took me a long time to learn that. Some people never learn it. George Butler never has. Now it’s the only way I operate.”
“That’s fine if your pockets are deep enough.”
“That does help. It’s hard making it from scratch in the book business.”
“Tell me about it.”
Please tell me about it, I thought. We were going nowhere fast, on an endless merry-go-round of polite tea talk. I needed a breakthrough, something to batter down the walls she had built around herself. I had a hunch that if I walked out of there without finding that key, she’d never let me come back. There was something at work between us, and it was good but it wasn’t all good. I couldn’t get a handle on any of it. I knew she was curious about me but she’d never ask: by refusing to talk about herself, she had given up that right. I could see that if there was any opening up to do, I’d be the one to do it. Slowly I turned the talk to my childhood. She listened intently and I was encouraged to go on. It became very personal. Suddenly I was telling her things I had never told anyone.
In the first place, my birth was an accident. My father is a lawyer whose name heads a five-pronged Denver partnership on Seventeenth Street. He makes half a million in a good year and can’t remember when his last bad year was. There’s no way I’ll inherit any of that—my old man and I haven’t spoken to each other in fifteen years, and we weren’t close even before that. Larry Janeway isn’t a man people get close to. He is, however, dignified. He’s famous in court for his dignity and composure. Once, as the song went, that composure sorta slipped, and a dalliance with a truly gorgeous woman thirty-seven years ago produced… me. Here I sit, brokenhearted. I look at my parents and on one hand I see chilly arrogance and deceit; on the other, frivolous insanity. All the Libertys were crazy, and Jeannie, my mother, was probably certifiable. It was Jeannie, I think, who caused me to distrust beautiful women. I’ll take brains, heart, and wit over beauty every time out. What’s amazing is how well I survived their best efforts to tear me apart, how, in spite of them, I turned out so well-adjusted and sane. So completely goddamned normal.
“Well, sort of goddamned normal,” she said without a smile.
“Oh yeah? How goddamned normal do you think you are?”
“Pretty goddamned normal.”
Suddenly she laughed, a schoolgirl giggle that lit her up and made her young again. “Now there’s my intelligent conversation of the week,” she said, and we both laughed. I wondered if that was the break I was looking for, but it didn’t seem to be. She would listen, interested, to anything I wanted to tell her, but still she wouldn’t ask. I’ve never been brilliant at monologue, but I did my best. I told her about life at North High, about growing up in a pool of sharks. “If there’s a thug in me, I guess that’s where it comes from.” Where the poet came from, if there was such a thing, was anybody’s guess.
“It’s getting late,” she said.
Was that strike three? Her tone gave away nothing.
A bold frontal attack, then, seemed to be the last weapon in the old Janeway arsenal.
“Look, give me a break. Why don’t you open that door, just a little, and see what’s on the other side?”
“I know what’s on the other side. I haven’t exactly led a monastic life.”
“C’mon, let’s cut to the chase, Rita. Dinner Friday night and a tour of Denver’s hottest hot spots.”
“Nope. Not my cup of tea, Mr. Janeway.”
“Then I’ll rent a tux and we’ll go to the Normandy. I don’t care.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, take the full thirty seconds and think it over.”
She shook her head.
“I know a great restaurant that serves nothing but broccoli. I’ll take you there for breakfast. Broccoli pancakes, the best in town. We’ll take a ride on the Platte River bus. Race stickboats down the stream. Walk down Seventeenth Street and stick our tongues out at my old man’s law office. Forget about books and crime and everything else for a few hours. Come on, what do you say?”
“No,” she said firmly.
“I knew you’d see it my way.”
She gave me the long cool stare. “You’re pushing, Mr. Janeway. I don’t want to be blunt.”
“Go ahead, be blunt. I’ve got a thick skin, I can take it. I’m not gonna fall on my sword. Since we’re being blunt, let me ask you something. Are you worried that I’ll eat my fish with the salad fork? Or do you big-time book dealers have a rule about not playing with the little guys.”
“Don’t be nasty, sir.”
“I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“Then stop trying. It’s very simple. I don’t want to get involved.”
“And you think knowing me will involve you in something?”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
“How, for God’s sake?”
“How do you think? How do men and women always get involved?”
I sat back and looked from afar. “Well, now, that’s quite a thing to say.”
“A good deal more than I wanted to say.”
“So what’s wrong with that? It’s what makes the world go ’round. If it happens, it happens.”
“It’s not going to happen, Mr. Janeway, I promise you that.”
She had been sitting rigidly in her chair: now she relaxed; sat back and let her breath out slowly. “I didn’t want to let you come up here at all. You know t
hat.”
“Don’t give me that. You called me back, remember?”
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“You know, all right, you just don’t want to say it.”
“Doesn’t need to be said. You’re here, aren’t you? Don’t be so damned analytical. You’re here, I must’ve wanted to see you again. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you into my life. I’m sorry if that’s too blunt, Mr. Janeway, but you can’t say you didn’t ask for it.”
Then a curious thing happened: her hands began to tremble. She groped for words, reached down into a stack of newspapers and came up with THE newspaper. “I never stop my papers when I go away. There’s a boy I hire who brings all my mail and newspapers in every day. I guess I should have them stopped but I don’t. I like to see what’s been happening while I’ve been gone. Look what I came across this morning.”
The story was a little different than the one I had seen. The headline said COP NAMED IN BRUTALITY CHARGE. They had moved my picture out to page 1 for the late edition. It lay on the table, staring up at me, glaring angrily at the angry old world.
“Is this my dessert?”
She just looked at me.
“Miss McKinley, I’m wasting a helluva lot of great one-liners on you. I’m starting to think you’ve got no sense of humor at all.”
She still said nothing. Her eyes burned into my face like tiny suns.
“You want maybe I should comment on this? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“My comment is this. Don’t believe everything you read.”
“That’s it?”
“Tell me what you want and I’ll do my best to give it to you. I mean, look, you read that this morning, right? Plenty of time for you to call to cancel. You didn’t do that, did you?”
Her eyes never left my face. She gave a shake of her head that was barely a movement.
“Even after I got here, you could’ve shuffled me in and out. But you didn’t do that, either. You gave me a good stiff drink and free run of the place, then you gave me dinner. What am I supposed to make of that?”
She said nothing, did nothing.
“I’m going home,” I said.
I stood and paused for just a moment, my hands clasping the back of my chair. We looked at each other. Her face was a solid wall. She said nothing. I went to the door and looked back. What a great exit, I thought: I’ll just fade away like some damnfool hero in a bad cowboy movie. In the yard I looked back. She had come to the doorway, a silhouette in the yellow light. I gave her a cheery wave. The hell with you, I thought. Then I thought, Don’t walk away, it’s too important; don’t do this. What you say and do this minute will set the course of your life from this day on, I thought.
I had opened the car door, propped my foot inside, and leaned over the window. When I spoke, my voice carried strong and clear over the mountaintop. “What’s in the newspaper is his side of it. Here’s my side, in case you’re interested. That guy is a killer. I’ve tried to pin him for more than two years. I guess I finally got sick of it. He raped a woman and beat her silly and was coming back for an encore. He found me there instead. As far as brutality is concerned, forget it—he’s plenty big enough to take care of himself. When he says I cuffed him and beat him, he’s lying. I took the cuffs off and it was a fair fight. That’s the end of it. I’m going home.”
I drove down the mountain feeling depressed. But under it was a strange feeling of elation, of joy, making a mix that’s almost impossible to describe. I didn’t know what was happening but it was big. Oh, was it big! Could I have lived thirty-six years and never once felt this? I stopped at the side of the road about five miles from her house and fought the urge to go back. I won that fight… one mark for good judgment.
I’d call her in the morning.
She’d call me.
Somehow we’d get past all the problems of her money and her expertise and my brutal nature.
One way or another, it wasn’t over. That was the one sure thing in an unsure world.
29
I got to the store about quarter past midnight. The street was deserted except for an ambulance far away: the overture of another long night on East Colfax. I tucked the Steinbeck under my arm and let myself in. The place had a stale, slightly sour smell at midnight. I locked the door and put the book on the counter, then sat on my stool looking at it. I opened it and looked at the doodle Steinbeck had drawn all those years ago, when fame and glory and money were his, when his talent was at its peak. “May 12, 1940: Tom Joad on the road.” A prize, yes, one might even say a small victory, but a hollow one. You can have it back, Miss Rita, you hear that? You can have the damn thing. All you’ve got to do is ask.
I cut a piece of plastic and wrapped the jacket anew. With a light pencil I wrote in the new price, $2,000, and looked in the glass case for the perfect centerpiece spot.
The phone rang.
It can’t be, I thought. I watched it ring three times, then I picked it up and said hello.
“I knew you’d be there,” she said.
“You’re getting pretty smart in your old age.”
“It’s what I’d’ve done not so long ago. When you buy your first big piece, you can’t wait to see how it looks in its new home. Even if it’s midnight.”
“For the record, it looks great.”
“You’re allowed an hour to gloat. After that, it’s unbecoming.”
There was a long pause, what I was starting to think of as a Ritalike white space. Then she said, “I called to tell you something but I don’t know how.”
“We could play twenty questions. Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Animal,” she said. Her voice sounded thick, lusty.
“I kind of thought it would be.”
Another pause. I didn’t know what to do but fill it with more comic relief.
“Does it walk on two legs, four, or slide on its belly like a reptile?”
“This is difficult,” she said. “I know you think I’ve been manipulating you, but I haven’t. I’m just not very consistent sometimes.”
“Hey, if I want consistency I’ll buy a robot. So you give off mixed signals. That’s all part of the human comedy.”
“You’re angry.”
“Just confused, Miss McKinley. First you tell me, in barely couched terms, to break a leg and go blind. Then you call and invite me up. You fix me a dinner but act like I’m the butcher of Auschwitz when I ask you for a date. You’d already read that newspaper, you knew full well that I stomp puppies to death for a hobby, but do I worry? Nah! I’m just glad I got to see your books.”
There was white space, of course: a ten-second pause. I thought of whistling “Time on My Hands,” but I didn’t do it.
“You are one strange bird, Janeway,” she said.
“I’m fascinating as hell, though, you’ve got to admit that.”
“Yes,” she said, and I felt that buildup in my throat again, and I hoped I’d be able to get through this conversation without croaking like Henry Aldrich.
“I have a dark secret,” she said. “If I tell you what it is, will you promise not to try to see me again?”
“I never bet on a blind. Only fools and bad poker players do that.”
“I guess I’ll tell you anyway. I don’t want you going away thinking I’ve been playing with you.”
“What difference does it make, if I’m going away?”
“I told you before, don’t be so goddamned analytical. Take a few things on faith.”
“You haven’t said anything yet.”
“It’s very simple. I hate violence, but all my life I’ve been attracted to violent men.”
“That’s very interesting,” I said, struggling past a pear-sized obstruction in my throat.
“So the reason I didn’t want you to come up here today is the same reason I finally did ask you up. The same reason I didn’t cancel when I read the paper. The same reason I would
n’t go out with you. Does that make any sense?”
“No, but keep going. I like the sound of it.”
“You wear your violence on your sleeve. It goes where you go. You carry it around like other men carry briefcases. It’s like a third person in the room. I can’t help being appalled by that.”
I listened to her breathe. My pear had grown into a grapefruit.
“And yet, I’m always a sucker for a man who can make me believe he’ll do anything, if the stakes are big enough.”
I gave a wicked laugh.
Gotcha, I thought.
“I don’t want to see you again,” she said. “I just wanted you to know why.”
“I’ve got a hunch we’ll see each other.”
“I’m engaged, Mr. Janeway. I’m getting married next month.”
“Then it’s a good thing I came along when I did.”
“Good-bye,” she said, and hung up.
God damn it, I thought.
Whoopie! I thought. Yaahoo!
Elation and despair were sisters after all.
I called her back: got the recording. When the beep came, I pictured her sitting in the kitchen listening to my voice. Insanity, the third sister, took over. I got real close and crooned into the phone. “Oh, Riiiiii-ta! This is the mystery voice calling! Guess my name and win a truckload of Judith Krantz first editions. Ooooh, I’m sorry, I’m not George Butler the Third! But that was a fine guess, and wait’ll you hear about the grand consolation prize we have in store for you! Two truckloads of Judith Krantz first editions! Your home will certainly be a bright one with all those colorful best-sellers lying around. Your friends will gaze in awe—” The tape beeped again, and a good thing, else I might’ve gone on till dawn. I replaced the phone in the cradle and stared at it for a long moment. Ring, you sonofabitch, I thought, but the bastard just sat there.
Convulsed with laughter, I was sure.
Too weak to call.
Savoring my wit in her solitude.
Damn her.
I worked it off. In a bookstore there’s always something to do. I had a small stack of low-end first editions that needed to be priced, so I did that. I watered Miss Pride’s plant again, and studied the AB. I read for an hour. Sometime after two o’clock I fell asleep in the big deep chair near the front counter.