by Lewis Shiner
At 1:30 am they walked to Cole’s apartment. The streets were still mobbed, the tourists staggering drunk, the hookers physically aggressive, an undertone of vomit beginning to color the predominant odors of booze and cigarettes and cheap perfume.
“How can you live in a place like this?” Alex asked.
“I find it very calming,” Cole said, trying not to shout and damage his voice after a long night of singing. “All the chaos is on the outside. Tell me about Callie.”
Other than the expense, the divorce was straightforward. Custody was the problem. Because of the bust, any tales of drug abuse that Callie told would carry weight. And if a private detective started poking around and noticed his car rentals, all hell could ensue. A substantial amount of money was required for Alex to get the occasional weekend with Gwyn, most of which came, to Alex’s great discomfort, from his father.
They’d arrived at Cole’s apartment. He unlocked the door to the sight of Jezzie on the unfolded bed watching tv, her flimsy cotton bathrobe wide open. “Oh,” she said, making a slow and half-hearted effort to cover herself. “Sorry. I got overheated in the shower.”
“Alex, meet Jezzie,” Cole said.
By the time Tina got home, Cole had put together some red beans and rice, and the four of them sat around the table for supper. If the number of times that Jezzie’s robe slipped was any indication, she was quite taken with Alex, and there was no way that Alex, being straight, male, and human, was going to resist, so when Cole had an opportunity, he took Alex aside and told him there were condoms in the drawer of the table by the couch and strongly suggested he use them. “No issues that we know about, but she is at a lot of risk, entiendes?”
“Jesus, she’s beautiful.”
“She’s also got a sometime biker boyfriend and she’s not exactly emotionally stable. But yeah.”
Cole woke out of a deep sleep to pounding on the front door. It was 4:49 am. “Jezzie!” a drunken voice bellowed. “Jezzie, I know you’re in there!”
“Jake,” Cole said. Jake was six-two, 300 pounds, and had shown himself on previous occasions to be largely impervious to pain.
“I’ll handle it,” Tina said. She put on a robe and went into the living room. Cole slipped on his boxers and followed.
“Jake,” Tina said in a firm, quiet voice to the door. “If you don’t quiet down, the neighbors will call the cops. If you get arrested again, they’ll send you to Angola. You don’t want that.”
“Then let me in!”
Jezzie sat up in bed, naked. “Jake?” she whispered.
Cole perched on the edge of the thin mattress. “Shhh. Give him a minute, he’ll go away.”
Alex, on the other side of the foldout, was sitting up now too, his eyes wide in the darkness.
“I should go to him,” Jezzie said.
“He’s drunk,” Cole said. “Give him a while to sober up.”
“Jezzie!” Jake yelled.
“He loves me,” Jezzie said, trying to climb out of bed, managing to bump her breasts into Cole’s arm and thigh repeatedly. “I should be with him.”
Cole gently held her down by the shoulders. “Wait till tonight. Let him cool down a little.”
Jake began to cry. “Jezzie…”
“Aww,” Jezzie said.
“Go home, Jake,” Tina said, and a minute later Cole heard stumbling footsteps on the stairs.
Now Jezzie was crying. “Hey,” Alex said, reaching to comfort her, “it’s okay.”
Tina and Cole exchanged a look and retreated to the bedroom.
“They’re like little kids,” Cole said. “Jake and Jezzie and all your other lost souls. Little kids with adult hormones.”
“When anything goes,” Tina said, “where’s your incentive to grow up?”
Cole sighed. Between fear of Jake and the skin contact with Jezzie, he was full of hormones of his own.
“What’s wrong, sugar? Can’t get back to sleep?” Her hand moved down his chest to his belly. “Aha. I believe I found the problem.”
*
Politics was something Steve Cole had always considered a spectator sport. He voted and he kept up with the news, but when they called up and wanted money for campaigns, even when it was Nixon going up against Kennedy in ’60 or up against Humphrey in ’68, he always left that to the people with loose cash lying around.
Reagan was different. Reagan made him feel something he hadn’t felt since the 1950s, made him feel like the normal people were back in charge, that America was going to be okay again.
From the end of the sixties all through the seventies, he could see now, he’d been afraid and it had made him angry. It had seemed like a bunch of spoiled kids were going to pull down the whole temple and take everybody else with them, just like Samson in the Bible, wreck everything that Western Civilization had built up over the centuries.
He remembered seeing the news about that Woodstock festival, all those kids half-naked and covered in mud, and thinking, is this what the future holds? We didn’t have to be bombed back to the Stone Age by the Russians, our own kids did it without firing a shot. Then Betty blurted out, “Jeff was there,” obviously regretting it the minute the words were out.
“Figures,” Steve said, and that was that, except that it opened all the old wounds again, Betty silently blaming him for running the kid off, Steve silently pissed off that Betty had her clandestine contact with him that he was not allowed a part of.
Then Reagan had come along and proved that the temple was not, in fact, in ruins. He won the war in Granada, and for the first time in history, a country that had gone over to Communism came back to freedom. He’d shown that the so-called Energy Crisis was just hysteria. He’d taken the handcuffs off the oil business and was on the verge of getting the economy back on its feet. It was funny how the kid had dressed up like a cowboy when he was little, and those hippies had worn cowboy outfits too, and yet it turned out to be Reagan who was the real cowboy hero, cleaning up the town like he used to do on tv.
Steve had retired when he turned 65 in June. There had been speeches and a plaque and gag gifts like a green eyeshade and nice gifts like a fifth of Canadian Club, and when it was all over he’d ended up at home all day sitting in front of the tv, without the heart to even go out to the wood shop. Betty had the idea for him to get involved with the Reagan re-election campaign and now here it was, 7:30 on a warm September Wednesday evening, and instead of thinking about going to bed, he was sitting down at the desk in the office Betty had finally let him make out of the kid’s old bedroom. He got the list out of the drawer and dialed the first number that hadn’t been checked off.
“Ben?” he said, when a man’s voice answered. “This is Steve Cole down the street. Can you spare me a couple of minutes?”
The best part of it was when he made real contact, and it happened at least once every night, talking about people’s hopes and fears.
If he had one wish, it was that things with Betty could be the way they were before his heart attack. They were of an age where even if the kid hadn’t run away, even if he’d finished college and gotten a decent job, he would have his own family by now and they wouldn’t see him that much anyway. Instead it was like the kid had died, and they were both carrying around that load of guilt and blame. Deep down, at the very foundation of the marriage, it had never gone away.
“Well, Ben,” he said, “I’d like to talk to you about how it’s morning again in America.”
*
Joe stayed up to watch all the returns, long after Peggy had gone to bed, long after Reagan had made his victory speech from Los Angeles, long after it was obvious that Joe had not only lost his seat in the state House, but lost it by a considerable margin. The polls had been going against him after a particularly nasty campaign by his opponent, who implied he’d tried to desert in Vietnam, claimed he had an illegitimate black child with a welfare mother in Jackson, and worst of all for Mississippi voters, called him a communist.
He had lunch
the next day with Judge Winter at Johnnie’s Drive In, where they sat in the Elvis booth. Though Joe tried to stick to small talk at first, the election wouldn’t let him alone.
“They were gunning for you, no question,” Winter said. “They spent a ridiculous amount of money for a state election.”
“Can I come back from this?”
“Well, Lincoln lost his first election, as I’m sure you remember. Losing a second election is harder. It tends to read as more of a vote of no confidence. It would take a hell of a lot of money to overcome, and money is not exactly piled up for the taking these days. But we can try, and I’d be behind you a hundred percent.”
“It was hard, the smear campaign, the lies. Especially on Peggy. I didn’t tell you—she’s pregnant again.”
“Congratulations. And no, that part would not get any better.”
“What I’m hearing from you is that you think I should quit.”
“No, it’s me hearing you say you’re ready to quit, and I don’t blame you.”
“Is this how democracy works? Is this truly the best way we can find to govern ourselves?”
“The problem is that the kind of man who can stand up to these tactics and give as good as he gets is probably the kind of man you wouldn’t want in public office anyway. You’re a damn good lawyer, you got a happy marriage, what in hell do you need this aggravation for?”
Joe flushed with embarrassment and could hardly get the words out. “I want… I want to make a better world.”
“That’s like saying you became an auto mechanic because you want to drive a limousine. You want a better world, take up preaching. Or stick to lawyering.”
They finished their dough burgers and drank off the last of their iced tea. Suddenly Winter leaned forward. “If it’s any consolation, they were afraid of you. That’s why they put everything they had up against you. They thought you might be headed for a national career and they decided it would be cheaper to step on you now than when you were running for Senate. Or Governor.”
Joe’s throat felt like that last bite of hamburger hadn’t gone down all the way. He nodded and swallowed hard. “I’ll try to remember that,” he said.
*
As far as Madelyn could tell, Paul had failed to consider the potential consequences of her finishing her dissertation. Not without reason, she had to admit, given how she had lost her way on her first attempt. Still, as autumn turned to winter and the typewritten pages began to accumulate, and as Dr. Rosenberg enthused about the first completed chapters, she understood that she would be on the job market in less than a year, interview at mla next Christmas, defend in the spring of ’86, and start her first teaching job that August. Now that it was happening, it was happening too fast.
She hated to bring up a potentially explosive subject at the dinner table, but it was the only time they saw each other when they were both awake. She waited until the dishes were stacked in the sink and the coffee was poured and Ava had taken Ethan in to watch their nightly Disney video.
“What’s this about?” Paul asked. “I’ve got a lot of work tonight.”
He had a lot of work every night. “You do understand that the odds of my getting a teaching job anywhere that is even vaguely in commuting distance are effectively zero?”
“You can’t just teach a class here and there at gw? That wouldn’t satisfy you?”
“That’s not the way it works. You’re either faculty or you’re not. Surely you know that. And nobody hires their own graduates.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that in two years I might be on the other side of the country.”
“And that’s more important to you than our marriage?”
Yes, she thought. What she said was, “We need to think about a way to make it work.”
“What about the kids?”
The conversation had become an iceberg, nine-tenths submerged, and Madelyn did not point out that Paul only saw the kids for an hour a day anyway. “I would want them with me, of course.”
“No way. Not acceptable. I love our kids.”
That much, Madelyn had to admit, was true. And if he had any preference for Ethan, fruit of his own loins, he didn’t let Ava or Madelyn know.
“Well,” Madelyn said, “I guess time will tell.”
1990
Dave was picking up a few things at Zabar’s when he saw her by the cheese cooler. He wasn’t sure it was her at first—this woman was a little on the zaftig side and her hair was short, dark brown, and lightly threaded with gray—but when she turned her head enough for him to get a three-quarter view there was no doubt about it, and he dropped his shopping basket and headed for the door.
He’d been back in New York for five years. Given the kind of city it was, and the circles they ran in, he was only surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
He’d been making a good living in San Francisco, working with Van Morrison, Huey Lewis, Greg Kihn, Boz Scaggs, plenty of others too. Even Jake was back in the limelight with a retro-sounding kid named Chris Isaak. Still he couldn’t escape the fact that the city had passed its prime in the mid-seventies. The only thing keeping him there was inertia. He’d decided to spend a couple of weeks in Manhattan to see how it felt, and the minute he landed at La Guardia he started to kick himself for waiting so long to come home.
Outside Zabar’s it was January, verkakte weather, sleet and rain and no taxis. He unfurled his big golf umbrella and started up Broadway toward 81st, thinking about his feet and nothing else, how cold and wet they were going to be by the time he got to his apartment on West End.
“Dave!” He recognized Sallie’s voice behind him, squelching his last hope of getting away unseen. He stopped, took a breath, and turned around.
She hesitated five feet from him, the freezing rain matting her hair and splashing her big, red-framed glasses. Apparently she had not thought far enough ahead to have a conversational opening ready.
“For God’s sake,” Dave said. “It’s a big umbrella, at least get out of the rain.”
She stood next to him, close enough to touch, yet not touching. A number of sarcastic remarks came to mind, but the truth was that after all these years it felt like luck to stand this close to her again. He was in no hurry for it to end. She didn’t have to know that he was such a schmuck that he was still in love with her. He completely lost track of time standing there, waiting for her to say what she had to say, until it became so clearly absurd that they both started laughing at the same time.
“Come on,” Sallie said, taking his arm with both hands, “let me buy you a coffee. It’s the least I can do.”
“The very least,” Dave said, and they both laughed again, as if that was all there was to it, as if it could be that easy.
The waitress at Zabar’s Café brought her some napkins to dry her hair. When she was done she leaned back in her chair and stared at him. “You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to imagine this.”
He couldn’t stop himself. “So you could tell me how I kept you from being yourself all those years?”
He’d never seen anyone turn so red. “Oh, Dave, I am so, so sorry. That interview… I have to take the blame, and I do. But I was also set up. The pr flacks at the label coached me and coached me on what I was supposed to say, and they kept telling me how huge the record was going to be. I went through with the interview, and the next day I told my manager to call Billboard and have them kill it, that it was all bullshit, and he promised me he would. Only he didn’t, because he thought he knew better, just like Bones talked me into arrangements I didn’t want because he knew better, and the record came out and it was even more huge than anyone imagined, and so I believed maybe they were right, and they did all know better. But in my heart I knew the whole thing was fake, this big statement of liberation where men were still calling the shots. I felt like I was this stunt double impersonating Sallie Rachel Krupheimer for the next two years and five hundred and twenty-seven shows, and meanwhi
le the follow-up stiffed because we’d put all the good songs on the first record, and the well had gone dry. And I’d burned all my bridges.” She stopped and pulled a face. “And there was no water to put out the fires on the bridges because of that well being dry and all.”
“But it wasn’t fake,” Dave said. “Those were your words and your songs, and the timing was perfect. People saw past the perm and the bullshit and responded to the music, which was exactly what they needed to hear right then. And I say this as somebody who could not get away from that goddamn record no matter how hard I tried. Coming out of cars I passed on the street, in grocery stores, on boom boxes. Imagine how I felt, seeing that record in the collection of every woman who ever invited me back to her place.”
“Oh my God, that’s funny. I mean it’s sad, but it’s funny-sad.” She put a hand on his forearm and seemed to forget to take it away. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve had a pretty crummy fifteen years myself. You’re still making records, still on everybody’s A list. I’m a nostalgia act, when I work at all. The Krupheimer record is still making royalties, thank God, and three or four times a year I do these corporate gigs where everybody is in khakis and polo shirts with logos on them and the contract specifies which songs I have to play, and I’m 42 now and I won’t get to make another record, even if I had the songs, because my boobs have started to go south.”
“Except that it’s moot,” Dave said, “what with the bridges and the well and the fire department.”
“That goddamn fire department. Where are they when you need them?”
He was looking into her eyes and she was looking back, through his glasses and hers, and it was like feedback. He could hear the hum. Already it had gone on too long, and they both knew it. He looked at his coffee and she noticed her hand and took it away and put it in her lap. Then they both spoke up at the same time, him saying, “Where are you—” and her saying, “How long have you—”
They both stopped. She was smiling that I’ve-got-a-secret smile that made him so crazy with desire that he wanted to wreck the joint. “You first,” she said.