“It’s just dinner.”
“I have a basket of cheese fingers coming.”
She was very slender for a consumer of deep-fried cheese. Her immaculately made-up face was quite round, though, more noticeably so for being surrounded by a frothy blond semicircle of hair. He felt an urge to reach over and lightly caress its brittle, shellacked surface; aware that this would not advance his cause, he resisted and pressed on. “That’s not dinner, that’s just to keep people from getting shitfaced too quick.”
“Be that as it may,” she said evenly, “they’re coming.”
The need to urinate, which had been building in him for a good ten minutes, was suddenly too powerful to ignore, and he straightened up, gesturing at the men’s room.
“I’m gonna hit the john, and when I come back I want to hear all about that story you did about the kids at that school, with the little kid in Africa they adopted with their allowance money.”
“South America.”
“That’s it.” He was already maneuvering through the crowd toward the men’s room, and by the time he got there what had seemed merely an urgent need had revealed itself to be an emergency situation. There was no one at either stall, and he unzipped with the speed and grace of a virtuoso and let loose his stream onto the minty urinal cake. On the back of the basin someone had pasted a 55MPH—PISS ON IT!! sticker, gray and tattered from long and steady use as a urinary bull’s-eye, and tiny flakes in its center shivered in the current.
The comics pages were tacked up on a pair of cork bulletin boards at eye level above the urinals, and Eric reread the current episode of “Mary Worth” for the fourth time that evening. She was mediating between an estranged couple, the husband domineering and cruel, the wife addicted to pills because of it. “Mind your own business, you nosy old bitch,” he drawled into the ether, and the sound of a flush came from the sitdown stall, followed by the click of its latch unlocking. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a woman of about thirty-five push her way out of the stall. She stared brazenly at his prick, its flow momentarily interrupted, flaccid in his right hand.
“Line in the ladies’ room. I didn’t feel like waiting.” He didn’t know her name, but she worked at an accounting firm with his friend Gary Halloran, and he remembered flirting with her at a Christmas party at Gary’s house a couple of years earlier. She’d had on a short white V-necked knit dress that night; tonight she was wearing a burgundy dress of more or less the same design but cut from a lighter-weight material and affording a still better view of her breasts.
He put his organ back in its place and zipped up, more or less finished anyway. “Who likes to wait?” was all he could manage as she pushed the men’s room door open.
“Let me know if you need a designated driver later,” she called to him as the door floated shut.
When he got back to the table Lucy was gone, her change untouched on a small black plastic tray. The almost-full drink and full basket of cheese fingers on the table suggested a hurried exit, which most nights would have pissed him off; tonight, though, he had a better option to pursue.
She was standing by the bar, openly watching him, and he decided that once he subtracted the undeniably arousing factor of his having seen Lucy on television, this woman did more for him than she did. She gestured to him, whatever her name was, jerking her head in the direction of the door. Eric nodded and signaled for the waitress, who brought him his tab. He paid it, then followed the woman to the front door, flush with victory. He hadn’t even had to buy her a drink.
4
GUNTHER FAHNSTIEL
June 14, 1952
I was in Jack’s Riverside Tavern for a beer after I got off duty. My knees hurt from eight hours sitting at the wheel of a prowl car and I didn’t want to listen, but Jack kept talking anyway.
“I’m gonna buy the whole goddamn building, Gunther,” he said. “Take that empty space next door, knock down this part of the wall here, and put in some pool tables.”
“Gonna have to move the bar, then,” I told him. It ran along the wall he wanted to remove.
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ll knock out a passage on this side, and I’ll put a pass-through back here, so the bartender can see into the pool-room.” He was wearing a seersucker suit. He was skinny and five-six, but he had a low, growly voice that helped him handle drunks and high-school kids trying to talk their way into a beer.
“You ask the bank about this yet?” Jack had a daughter in college, and I knew he didn’t make that much off this place. He made a little book on the side, but that still didn’t amount to a great deal.
“I got me a real friendly banker down at Third National. He owes me a thousand dollars, personally, and I’m graciously allowing him to pay it off in bits and pieces, no interest, just because I’m a nice guy. So when I went to him for a loan he was anxious as hell to give it to me.”
“A grand? Didn’t know you were taking in that size bet.”
“I gave him credit for a few months. Twenty dollars here, fifty dollars there.”
“I never heard of you giving anybody credit, even for a beer.”
“Giving credit for beer’s illegal, you know that. I gave him credit because he works at the bank, and I already had this idea in the back of my head. He was real surprised when I showed him my black book, boy. He hadn’t been adding it up, thought it was maybe two hundred, two-fifty. ’Cause he was winning a little every once in a while, and he started to feel like a winner.”
“Who is this banker, anyway? Anybody I know?”
“Dave Atley.”
“Maybe I ought to go see him about a car loan for Ginger.” My daughter was about to turn sixteen.
“He don’t owe you anything. Don’t fuck up my sweet deal here, Gunther.”
“Yeah.” I finished my beer and he poured me another one. He was smart to expand, because as it was he could barely serve a dozen customers at a time. It was the tail end of a dog-ass hot afternoon, and he had the door wide open with the screen door closed to keep the flies out and a couple of big Vornado fans blowing at full speed. There was no cross draft, though. The windows were painted over and nailed shut, and it was hot as hell.
“Might be a little cooler if you pried up the nails from the windows and opened one of ’em up.”
“That’s what the beer’s for, to cool you off.”
Behind me the screen door opened and pulled itself shut with a hissing sound. “Howdy, Jack. Gunther.”
It was Ed Dieterle in his suit and tie. He’d made detective sergeant three months before, and he thought I was pissed off at him since I was still in uniform. I wasn’t, though. I wasn’t going to make sergeant without some big changes I wasn’t planning to make any time soon.
Jack poured him a beer and set it down on the bar. “Fifteen cents.”
“Put it on my tab,” Ed said.
“You know I don’t keep no goddamn tabs, Ed. It’s against the law in the state of Kansas to sell beer on credit.”
“It’s illegal to make book, too,” Ed said with a wink, and he put a quarter on the table. “Been looking for you, Gunther.”
“I didn’t come in here for a lecture.”
“Didn’t come in here to give you one. Sally ever hear from that ex of hers?” Ed asked me.
“Wayne? They’re still married.”
“You hear anything about him coming home?”
I shook my head and took a swig of my beer.
“Because I was down at the hospital this morning and a couple of deputies, Fallon and what’s his name, the big dumb-looking one, they brought this soldier into the emergency ward, he got the shit kicked out of him over at the Hitching Post out on Forty-ninth. I only met him once, but I’d swear up and down it was Sally Ogden’s husband.”
“He’s in Japan far as I know.”
Ed shrugged. “Just thought you ought to know, in case he’s back looking for trouble.”
“Sally says he’s never coming back here.”
�
�Well, next time you see her, ask. Because it looks like this guy started a big fucking brawl.”
“What about?”
“Fallon said nobody was talking. He had some horseshit story about getting jumped in the parking lot, but he still had his cash on him. Nobody saw anything, one of the whores just found him when she stepped outside for some fresh air.”
It wasn’t Sally’s husband. “Thanks, Ed.”
He nodded. “Taxi picked him up and took him away. Might be worth checking the dispatch. He gave his name as Master Sergeant Thomas McCowan, U.S. Army. Claimed to be on furlough and Fallon said his papers looked okay.”
I nodded.
“Something else I got to tell you about. I was talking to Hawkins the other day, he was telling me he got a call last month from some guy, got beat up while he was staying at a cabin with a couple of gals. Thought the guy who shoved him around might have been a cop.”
I nodded. “He got rough with Lynn and she blew the whistle. I backhanded him one and let him know the weekend was over.”
“You know how much trouble you’re going to be in if one of those guys files a complaint and points to you?”
“He didn’t, did he?”
“He backed down when he realized he’d have to file it in his own name. His wife thought he was duck hunting. But someday there might be a guy who’s single, or stupid, or just doesn’t give a shit.”
“He hit Lynn. While he was fucking her.”
“You don’t understand, Gunther. Whether you were right or wrong doesn’t matter. The point is what were you doing there in the first place?” Ed was getting loud, and I wasn’t going to say any more.
“How’s about you boys find something nice to talk about,” Jack said, and we got quiet.
“How’s old Daisy doing?” I finally asked.
“Fine,” Ed said, and he looked away. I didn’t want him to do me any favors, and he couldn’t stop trying.
“How’s Jeff?”
“Fine.”
“How old’s he, now?”
“Three.”
I shut up and drank my beer. Pretty soon a guy came in and placed a bet with Jack on a fight, and all four of us started arguing about it, and pretty soon me and Ed were pals again. The thing was still between us, though, and I didn’t plan to quit anytime soon.
Afterward I drove over to my mother’s house to do some fixing up. Since I couldn’t do it most weekends I came by evenings after work. Her eyesight was going and she had a bad hip, and living alone was getting to be too much for her. My brother and his wife invited her once to move into their house, but she had the sense to say no. I didn’t want to think about what was going to happen when things got really bad.
“Ginger tells me you’re buying her a car,” she said. I was nailing a new gutter to the edge of her roof.
“Used.”
“I never heard of a sixteen-year-old with her own car.”
“She’s going to have to drive her sister around, and then when Trudy’s sixteen they can share it.”
“You are spoiling those girls rotten. Do you know they have a television set in their house now?”
I knew. That was part of why I was buying the car. My mother would never own either one; she didn’t know how to drive, and the television was Lucifer’s playhouse.
She slunk back into the house to listen to the “Gospel Hour” and sulk. She wasn’t being mean. She just wanted the best for me and the girls, but she was a country girl and the modern world scared the hell out of her. Lately she was interested in flying saucers, since one of her radio preachers had said they were visitations from heaven, sent down by God to warn the wicked. The older she got the more she liked to listen to the fire-and-brimstone type of sermon on the radio and the less she worried about whether one of us drove her to Sunday mass or not. She wasn’t born a Catholic, just converted when she married my father, and I wondered if it ever really took.
She wasn’t my real mother either, though I thought of her that way. I was eight years old when she came to our house, two years after my first mother died of the flu. I hadn’t prayed a lick since that happened so I didn’t much care whether our new mama was Catholic or not, but it was strange thirty-two years later to watch her listening to these programs, nodding her head and saying “uh-huh” and “praise Jesus” like a Holy Roller.
I finished the gutter and passed through the living room on my way out. It was almost dark outside but she had all the lights off.
“Want a lamp on?”
“I don’t need any. Thank you.” The radio dial next to her was about the only light in the room.
“I’ll be back tomorrow to fix the bathroom sink.”
“Why can’t you come Saturday?”
“Got a security guard job lined up. All weekend.”
“You ought to be spending weekends with the girls. If you can’t live with them you at least ought to be seeing them once a week.”
“I know, Mama.”
“I don’t care how much you’re making, the girls are more important, even if the money’s for them. They’d rather see their daddy than have a new jalopy.”
“I know.”
I left then and drove home. She was right about the girls, but the money wasn’t the only reason I worked every other weekend.
5
Dot and Gunther hadn’t stayed in a motel since buying the RV ten years earlier. He’d always loved motels though, ever since the first time he’d stayed in one. It was 1932, his first honeymoon, and he and his new bride were on their way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Although they could have made Hot Springs by dusk, at three in the afternoon they’d stopped at a motor court. It was brand new and smelled of cedar, and ever since then that smell had always taken him back to that night. Gunther was twenty, his bride nineteen, and he was under the impression that it was her first sexual experience beyond a little heavy petting in the backseat of the used Ford he’d bought upon becoming engaged. The marriage hadn’t lasted six months—the range of her experiences was actually rather vast, and after they returned from Hot Springs she resumed collecting them with a variety of partners—but the sweet memory of that night in the motor court had persisted fifty-seven years, even with so many others seemingly irretrievable.
This room wasn’t bad, considering what it must have been like a couple of years back. It was clean, the bedspread cheap but new. The bathroom fixtures looked new, too, and there was a painting on the wall of a mountain lake. It wasn’t very skillfully painted, globs of bright color slapped on in what looked like a hurry, but he found his gaze repeatedly drawn to it, as if a fresh glance might reveal something he’d missed before.
For dinner he’d eaten most of a pepperoni pizza the man at the desk had helped him order, and he sat now on the bed watching the Shopping Channel with the sound off.
He was getting sleepy, and he crawled under the covers gratefully; he’d been afraid it would be one of those nights where he just sat up until dawn, barely able to close his eyes. As he lay there, feeling himself drift closer to sleep, he tried to picture Sally Ogden. He had a vague idea that she resembled her daughter, and he knew her face was there in his head somewhere, but he couldn’t call it forth. If he could, he might remember who she was.
At that moment Sally Ogden was on the phone with Loretta, who had been trying to get through to her for several hours while Sally chatted with her sister-in-law back in Cottonwood.
“I got my hair cut today,” she said. “Really short in back, a little more body in front.”
“Oh.” Sally didn’t like short hair on women, which seemed to her a waste of a natural feminine resource. She was certain most men felt the same way, but knew better than to say it.
“I thought Eric might even notice, but of course he’s not home.”
Sally was in a relatively good mood, and didn’t want to spoil it with a discussion of her son-in-law, so she pretended not to hear. “Look nice?”
“Three hours ago I thought it did. Now I think I
just look like a fat lady with short hair.”
“Now quit that.” Sally hated to hear her talk that way, particularly since she outweighed her daughter by seventy pounds or more. She’d been considered quite attractive at Loretta’s age and size; of course, today you couldn’t turn on the television or open a magazine without seeing some young woman, skinny as a little boy, no tits or ass or curves of any kind, supposedly representing the feminine ideal. Seeing Loretta fall for such a pile of crap made her want to puke.
“Oh, hey. I almost forgot why I called you. Guess who I saw today? Gunther! What was his last name again?”
“Oh. Fahnstiel.”
“You don’t sound too excited.”
“I am. How’d he look?”
“Pretty good. He seemed a little confused, you know? I ended up giving him a ride to the barber shop.”
“That’s nice.” She could hear the enthusiasm in Loretta’s voice, but she couldn’t fake it in her own. She’d stopped wondering about Gunther a long time before.
“Did you guys have some kind of falling out or something?”
“No, sweetie, we didn’t, but, you know, time passes. Gunther’s a good man.”
“He seemed real interested in you.”
“That’s nice. Is he still married?”
“I didn’t ask. He was on foot when I ran into him.”
“That’s probably a good thing. He’s got to be pushing eighty, and he wasn’t the greatest driver forty years ago.”
“Wasn’t he the one who drove us when we moved to Cottonwood?”
“Listen, Loretta. I don’t want to talk about Gunther anymore, okay? I’m glad to hear he’s still kicking, but I don’t want to talk about those days.”
“Okay,” Loretta said, her tone just a shade higher than a whisper.
“Oh, shit, don’t get your feelings hurt. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Why don’t you come over and spend the night? Give Eric something to wonder about when he comes home.”
“Except Eric might not come home and probably wouldn’t notice I was gone if he did. I think I’ll just get in bed and watch the first part of Johnny Carson.”
The Walkaway Page 5