July, July

by Tim O'Brien

  "Every stinking node," Jan Huebner said.

  "Seriously, I'm out of here," said Ellie Abbott. She reached down for her purse. "I hate to say it, but in a few minutes I have to—"

  "Ellie," Paulette said.

  "I can't."

  "We're your friends, sweetheart. Practice makes perfect. Let it go."

  Ellie blinked as if someone had switched on a floodlight. For a few seconds she seemed disoriented, blinded by the inner glare. "All right," she said, and placed her purse on the table, squaring it with both hands. "One game, that's all. And I go last."

  "Last is fine," said Paulette. "Last comes soon enough."

  "It's settled," Spook said, and pulled out her cell phone. "Dorothy goes first. This I'm dying to hear."

  Spook dialed three times, but Dorothy's phone was busy, so Marla Dempsey volunteered. She was aware of David at the pool table behind her. In a minute or two she would get up to join him. "You all know this anyway," Marla said, "or at least the basics, but I guess it's something else, something healthy, for me to get the actual words out—from my own mouth, I mean—just to say it," and then she talked about Christmas Day, 1979, and how vile it had been, how sinful, to choose that morning of all mornings to walk out on her husband, a good man, a beautiful and loving and devoted man, by name of course David Todd. But back then, she said, it seemed the only thing to do, even the right thing, because to fake a merry Christmas, to ooh and aah at new toasters and Santa-wrapped sweaters, well, that seemed infinitely more evil—deception piled on all the other horror—but now, with the perspective of sanity, she had come to realize otherwise, because it wouldn't have killed her to wait a week or two—she was being deceptive anyway, lying through her teeth—and because in truth another man, a somewhat younger man, was at that instant waiting down the street on a black and red Harley, a fact she'd failed to mention, and because for David there would never again be another Christmas, a real Christmas, a Christmas that truly meant Christmas and did not mean, for example, Goodbye, and did not mean I love you, David, but I'm not in love, and I don't think I ever can be.

  A malnourished young man, really a boy, in baggy jams and with a silver-studded nose, approached the table to request that the jukebox be rescued from "all that soupy sixties bullshit."

  "Go kill yourself," Amy said.

  Marla rose and went to the ladies' room. No one looked at David Todd, who had just blown a tap-in, and no one but Jan Huebner said anything.

  Jan said, "Isn't this fun?"

  Paulette Haslo got off Billy's lap. He seemed nervous and distracted—Dorothy, no doubt—and with counterfeit gaiety, Paulette moved to the far side of the table and sat beside Ellie Abbott. No harm done, she decided. Nice memories. Besides, the little romance had lasted longer than most, a solid twenty minutes, and she regretted not a word, not a single covert touch. And if it ever came down to it, if for instance she were to start crying, she could always plead the reunion crazies.

  "My turn," she said.

  "Okay, but lie through your teeth," said Jan Huebner. "Otherwise we don't drink. Am I right or am I totally right?"

  "Let the girl talk," said Amy.

  "A whopper. Please."

  Amy looked at Paulette and said, "Go ahead, hon, I'm listening," and then for the next several minutes Paulette talked about a late-night burglary and a lovable old man named Rudy Ketch.

  Billy McMann wished Paulette had stayed put. He liked her in his lap, liked her in general, but it was also true that guilt had become a problem. What bothered him was Spook Spinelli, to whom he owed an apology, and who at the moment was behaving oddly: too manic, too giggly. Marv's belt was still wrapped around her neck. She kept yanking at it, pretending to hang herself, rolling her eyes back. Maybe it was his imagination, Billy thought, or two days on the bottle, but more likely he'd triggered it with his own stupidity, using her the way everyone else used her and the way she so often used herself. At some point, Billy concluded, he would have to say something. And he would also have to take Paulette aside and confess to her about last night. At least be honest. Let her know what happened and that he wished it hadn't, or, more accurately, that he wished it had happened instead with her.

  He watched Spook get up and saunter over to a group of young college kids, all male, and lean over their table to suggest, it sounded like, "a good gangbang."

  Marv Bertel noticed, too.

  He put down his pool cue, took Spook by the arm, led her over to Ellie Abbott.

  "Something's wrong," he told Ellie. "I don't know. Just watch her." Marv paused, then shook his head. "And see if you can get my belt back."

  When Paulette finished, Amy Robinson and Jan Huebner rose to the defense. The break-in, it was stupid, obviously, but far from evil. Farther still from monstrous. "This Janice woman, she dropped a dime?" Amy said, the lawyer in her. "Cops got involved?"

  "Naturally," said Paulette.

  "Arrested?"

  "Yes."

  "Booked? Arraigned?"

  "Whole deal."

  Amy nodded. "But it never came to trial?"

  "No need," said Paulette. "Old lady got her pound of flesh, plus some. Talk of the town, talk of the presbyters. Not good for employment prospects."

  "Dropped the charges?"

  "Sure. Damage done."

  "Well," Amy said. Her voice trailed off. She looked to Ellie Abbott for help, but Ellie had her hands full with Spook Spinelli, whose thick makeup had gone moist and cakey, whose lips were twitching.

  "Fun, fun, fun!" Jan Huebner said.

  Marla Dempsey had joined David at the pool table, where under the liquid growl of the Saturday-night crowd David had just said to her, "No sweat. What's a Harley between fondest friends?"

  "Please," she said.

  "Fond, fonder, fondest. All forgiven."

  "Doesn't sound that way," said Marla. "Not that I deserve it."

  David affected a breezy flounce with his shoulders. What he felt, though, was the inexpressible emptiness of what was soon to come. "Nifty thing about pardons," he told her, "is you don't earn them. They come gratis. Casus belli not required. Here, take a shot. Six ball. Lightly."

  "I'm not a sports fan, David."

  "Correct," he said. "What's a bunt?"

  "Sorry?"

  "Stupid question. Are you by chance a banquet skipper?"

  Marla eyed him with displeasure. "Right there, David. There's casus belli. Always telling fortunes."

  "My fault, then."

  "I didn't say that. But sometimes—maybe this isn't fair either—sometimes it seems you decided everything in advance. Made up your mind, made it happen."

  "Imagined a Harley, did I?"

  "Good question," Marla said.

  She began to turn away, stopped, then turned back as David knew she had to and absolutely would.

  "Do we duck out or not? Yes or no?"

  David nodded. He loved her too much. "Tell you what, we'll hit the banquet, say our goodbyes, then go find some nice schmaltzy spot to talk our brains out. Forgive, forget. That what you had in mind?"

  "More or less," said Marla.

  He nodded again. It was no joy, but he knew. "And then?" he said. "Happily ever after?"

  "David."

  "Didn't think so."

  "So smug. You make up my answers."

  "Remarry me?"

  "Stop it."

  "Surprise," David said. "Fortuneteller."

  Along the Song Tra Ky, thirty-one years away, Johnny Ever cackled and said, "Hot damn!"

  Truth was wearing thin, but Amy Robinson gamely described a filthy Texaco station, an even filthier washroom, and how near the end of her honeymoon she'd locked herself in and wiped off the toilet seat and sat down and decided to get unmarried. "Luckiest time of my life," she said, "and I end up alone. Weird thing, because I used to be so damned spunky. Smart as a whip, right? Freckles, bobbed nose? Cute? I mean, really cute?"

  Spook Spinelli talked about two husbands and a lover named Baldy Devlin.


  Jan Huebner talked about the trials of Snow White.

  David Todd started to talk about a shallow, fast-moving river, a transistor radio tuned to the universe, but then he looked at Marla and decided to stop.

  Ellie Abbott had disappeared.

  It was just after seven o'clock, and a few blocks away the class of '69 was sitting down to its farewell banquet.

  In the bar, though, faces turned toward Marv Bertel, who had yet to play a round of Truth.

  "Who's hungry?" he said.

  Then he said, "Give me a break."

  Then he said, "What?"

  A long moment passed before Marv sighed and said, "All right, I'll give it a shot. But it's embarrassing."

  19. TOO SKINNY

  IN MARCH OF 1988, Marv Bertel settled into the first rigorous diet of his life, nothing fancy, mostly water and willpower. By early August of that year, he had shed forty-one pounds of lifelong flab. "Boy, I'm so incredibly, incredibly proud of you," his wife said, which in Marv's moth-eaten memory was the one and only time she had offered him praise of any sort. Two and a half months later, in mid-October, Marv reached his target of two hundred and twenty pounds, the least he'd weighed since twelfth grade. That same morning, after a breakfast of salad greens and sparkling water, he celebrated by filing for divorce.

  On the first day of November, Marv moved into a furnished apartment just down the road from his mop and broom factory on the western outskirts of Denver. He purchased a new wardrobe, signed up at a tanning salon, installed an Exercycle in front of his TV, and, in an exploratory sort of way, began spending his evenings in a number of chic bars around town. Women took notice. Marv took heart. He was forty-one years old and ludicrously well off, even factoring in the pending divorce. To manufacture a high-end industrial mop cost just under a dollar and a half, the perfect broom substantially less. Dirt was forever, demand was steady. It was true that Marv had never found the business challenging, or even mildly interesting, but for a man who had spent a lifetime caught up in the sluggishness of gross obesity, there was always the entrepreneurial virtue of sitting at a big rosewood desk for hour upon profitable hour, more or less motionless, more or less dead.

  Now, though, Marv Bertel daydreamed. Infinite new futures appeared.

  In bed at night, flexing his abdominal muscles to the uneven beat of his heart, he imagined himself on the cover of Forbes: capped teeth, an expensive haircut, maybe decked out in one of those fancy double-breasted suits that not so long ago had made him look like a giant Easter ham. No more blubber jokes. Just cheers and hugs and dietary inquiries.

  Such thoughts inspired him.

  Impetuously, consulting only his own fantasies, Marv set a daunting new goal for himself, a hundred and ninety-nine pounds. He achieved it in just under three weeks.

  A breeze, he decided. No reason to stop.

  He cut out his late-afternoon martini, doubled his time on the Exercycle.

  In the bathroom mirror, slowly at first, then rapidly, Marv's ribs began to surface like the skeleton of a sunken galleon, ancient-looking, a little frightening. He dropped a full shoe size. Even his new wardrobe fit loosely. Equally dramatic, but at times more alarming, was the transformation in Marv Bertel's personality. From boyhood on, he'd been a reserved, soft-spoken individual, tentative, shy, a loner, but now he found himself passing along scraps of TV dialogue to his gorgeous young executive assistant, or telling jokes in elevators, or exchanging life stories with the women he chatted up in local bars.

  Often on these occasions Marv invented anecdotes befitting his slim new body: a robust detail here, a charming fib there.

  At various times, in various night spots, he became a third-base coach for the White Sox, a plastic surgeon, a priest, a former priest, a scuba instructor, an ex-convict, a contortionist for Cirque du Soleil. To one young lady, an effervescent redhead of twenty-four, he claimed to be a retired rodeo cowboy The following evening, in the same establishment but to a transfixed brunette, he omitted the word "retired," which worked wonders, and which he helped along with a little limp as he made his way to the men's room.

  Remarkable, Marv observed, what hogwash women will swallow from the physically fit.

  Almost anything.

  He did not mention his mop and broom business. He avoided the inconvenient detail that his divorce wasn't final.

  All this left him with an aftertaste of fraudulence, but still, given Marv's unhappy history, the tall tales appealed to his sense of humor, and even more to his sense of revenge. For as long as he could remember, he'd been teased and ridiculed and ignored, always the chubby sidekick, always the comic relief, and it gave him intense pleasure to behold the respect, even the awe, that spilled out like paint in the fetching eyes of women half his age. He feigned boredom. He went out of his way never to make advances. Even with the prettiest young lady, Marv was polite to the point of indifference. And this, too, had the feel of revenge: payback to those legions of blind-eyed, fat-biased women from his past.

  Marv felt no guilt at all. And no remorse. On the contrary, there was nothing more satisfying than to hoist up his eyebrows as some buxom porker dipped into a bowl of guacamole or mixed nuts. Sometimes, depending on his mood, he would deliver an earnest discourse about the elements of responsible nutrition. More often, he would issue a disgusted sigh, excuse himself, and wander off to another table.

  On the morning of December 4, 1988, Marv Bertel's bathroom scale registered just a hair under a hundred and ninety. He wept in the shower. He wept again as he toweled off. For the first time in more than three decades, Marv felt firmly human, a blessed buoyancy of body and soul.

  That afternoon, on impulse, Marv hosted a boisterous office party, loud music and early bonuses, after which he invited his sleek and very lovely executive assistant to join him for dinner at one of Denver's upscale restaurants. She accepted, as the trim new Marv knew she would, and at seven o'clock they were led to a coveted corner table. The menu was northern Italian, tempting in the extreme. So, too, was Marv's executive assistant, a dazzling twenty-six-year-old by the name of Sandra DiLeona.

  Wisely, Marv seated himself out of harm's way, across the table from Sandra. He did, however, order his first martini in nearly two weeks, minus the olives, and within ten minutes called for another. It was the alcohol, without question, that soon inspired him to modify the seating plan. Marv moved to Sandra's immediate right, loosened his tie, and leaned toward the young woman with mischief in mind. In a low, already slurred voice, he confided that there was a matter he wished to discuss with her. "A personal item," he said. "It's ticklish."

  Sandra's eyes narrowed. She was a business-school graduate, chilly by disposition, nothing if not canny. "Personal?" she said. "What would that be?"

  Marv had no idea. He was playing this by ear, adjusting to the harmonics of the moment.

  "Ticklish," he repeated. He flexed his biceps, sucked in his stomach. "The fact is, I'm not sure where to start. A confession, I suppose. You've worked for me—what?—almost a year?"

  "Ten months," said Sandra.

  "Right, ten months," Marv said. "And you know me strictly as a boss. A mentor." He hesitated. "I've made a favorable impression, I hope?"

  "Just fine," she said.

  "And you're happy?"

  "Happy?"

  "With me. Your job."

  "Well, I guess," Sandra said. "It's not like I dream about mops at night."

  Marv gave her an appreciative smile. "But you're satisfied with the salary, working conditions, all that? It's your overall welfare I'm concerned about."

  Sandra's wily brown eyes conveyed a mix of puzzlement and suspicion. She was a tall, masterfully assembled blonde. Five-ten, Marv estimated. Not an ounce over a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Cover-girl complexion. Pouty lips. A few months back, in his fat days, he'd paid almost no attention to the girl. No point: she'd seemed beyond reach, as icy and unobtainable as Neptune. Now things were different. Bravely, with the inflated confidence t
hat accompanies a shrunken belly, Marv took her hand and said, "Anyway, a confession. Here goes. I'm not just a mop man, I've also tried my hand at ... I'm really not sure how to say this."

  In truth, he was equally unsure about what to say. He thought fast, reviewing options, but in the end he did not think nearly fast enough. For the remainder of Marv's life, he would regret his next utterance. It came to him exactly as all the other barroom lies had come, out of the old fatness, the new thinness, those deferred dreams and a job he hated and a stale marriage and a lifetime of mockery and humiliation and a craving for something better. Even as he spoke, Marv realized it was a mistake. He tried to stop. He put a hand to his throat, squeezed his eyes shut. Don't, he thought. His tongue kept moving. Four syllables. Three words—"I'm an author"—that would cost him dearly: panic attacks, sleepless nights, heart trouble, endless shame, endless rationalizations, another miserable marriage. Vaguely, at least, he apprehended all this. Not the details, just the general appalling drift. And yet still he could not stop. In the years ahead, Marv would reflect upon this instant with the same self-loathing and self-pity that a lung cancer victim must feel at the memory of his first cigarette.

  "Author?" said Sandra. "An amateur, you mean?"

  "Well, no."

  "Like a hobby? Dabbling?"

  A door swung open.

  Right then, for a miraculous split second, Marv had a last opportunity to rescue himself. He could've nodded and said, "Sure, a hobby," or he could've smiled and said nothing. He could've been enigmatic. He could've feigned modesty. To the end of his days he would be haunted by these options. But the disbelief on Sandra's face—the contemptuous slur of the word "dabbling"—made him stiffen and take his hand from his throat.

  "No," he said coldly. "A real writer. Fiction."

  Sandra studied him. What was happening behind her crafty eyes Marv could only estimate. A number of minute calculations, obviously. Various prospects and possibilities tempered by a healthy dose of MBA skepticism.