by Charles Bock
And still there was the nagging matter of putting fannies in the seats. Husbands who had long flirted with Lorraine at cocktails under the guise of social levity were more than happy to hear from her. Men she had condescended to, politely ignored, or otherwise considered out of her league, for the most part they took her calls as well. Lorraine listened patiently as Gail Deevers told her about her son's heroic return from overseas, and then the orders for his second deployment. She called friends whose lunch appointments she hadn't been strong enough to keep, this time offering to take them for a bite. Local politicians received visits, as did the rivals who Lorraine knew coveted their city council seats. She cajoled and schmoozed. When it became necessary, she even hounded Lincoln. Lorraine did not particularly care if he felt she had taken this over and turned it into another one of her crusades. She did not give a crap about all the time it took to get appointments with the different resorts up and down the Strip, did not believe him when he said the wheels were in motion, people were talking to people, he was just waiting on them to get back to him. Lorraine recognized there was truth in what he was saying, but time's lash was cracking down, taking big chunks out of her psyche, and no matter how much Lincoln explained that you had to know the way things worked, Lorraine could not just let everything take its course. Instead she placed calls to the few choreographers who were still around from back in the day, as well as girlfriends that, during the past year, she had fallen out of touch with.
The scene: Lorraine rising neatly from a waiting room chair, smoothing out her little gray business skirt, approaching on her three-inch heels; Lorraine smiling wide, maintaining eye contact—be it with the oversize gray and wheezing executive vice president in the cheap suit, the slick-haired associate with the pockmarked skin and nicotine fingers, or the friend of a friend whose laser-white teeth gleamed even brighter than his pinky ring. They never resembled anything close to what she expected power brokers to look like, yet Lorraine effusively thanked one man after another, saying I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedule to meet with me on short notice. She was equally businesslike in acknowledging each apology for having kept her waiting so long, brushing aside the delays as if forty-five minutes were nothing more than an overheard sneeze. Chuckling at anything resembling a joke, throwing tasteful compliments around as if they were pennies, Lorraine made the requisite amount of small talk and headed into each man's office, all the while waiting for that telltale sigh, Okay, her signal to get down to business. More than half the meetings took place around one p.m., because the guy she was meeting with had a full schedule. Instead of leading her back into an office, he'd want to know if they could do this over lunch. On a crowded elevator she'd receive her signal—So, Miss, ah, Mrs. Ewing, what can I do you for? And then, while trailing the huffing fat man—who himself was negotiating his way through slot players—Lorraine would start talking. Yes, she thought it was unusual for power brokers to act this way, but Lorraine did not ask questions. Rather, she put up with their idiosyncrasies, even the buffets, those god-awful things, Lorraine following her erstwhile dining partner while he flashed his VIP employee card to the hostess and bypassed the line of waiting tourists, Lorraine sliding her tray down the long metal rows as if she were back in a grade-school cafeteria, doing her best not to gag when steam rose from the mounds of glazed food.
Her dining partners filled out keno slips for a dollar, Just to have some action going. They kept an eye out for the ticket girl. They called Lorraine and the ticket girl and the waitress darling. Still, Lorraine didn't lose her cool. Not when she got asked to stop her presentation so they could take phone calls. Not when they kept jabbering and she could feel her own phone in her purse, vibrating with the announcement of what could only be the return call of someone she'd been trying to reach for a week. Lorraine stayed controlled and picked at her salad and waited patiently. At the proper moment, with a grace that seemed offhanded, she resumed her pitch, picking up with exactly what needed to be known about her son.
These men had gold watchbands thick as bicycle chains. They had hairpieces that looked like roadkill, tie clips with boyhood vulgarities engraved into them, manners that would make inbreds blush. However, it also must be said that these men were shrewd enough to notice the undercurrents of discomfort that rippled from Lorraine when a guiding hand was placed on the small of her back. Her dining companions inevitably would look across the table and see the damage the year had done to her. Without question she remained in the higher echelon of females. She wore expensive lines of makeup that accentuated every drop of the beauty that for so long she had taken for granted. Nevertheless, the signs were there, appearing at select moments—as she was listening to reasons it was tough for that particular resort to commit revenue for the banquet, for example: or, right when the executive was shoveling another spoon of macaroni and cheese into his mouth, and kept talking, exposing a mouth of yellow goop. The days of slights would take their mounting toll, and it would become impossible for Lorraine to contemplate a next step, and if her dining companion happened to look up from his trough, he would see sockets hollow and deep in her face, cheeks no longer carrying a downy blush of life: he would see slight creases carved into the corners of her mouth, her face hard and rigid, its skin stretching tightly like a thin spray of paint. He would see Lorraine's determination flagging, her beauty fading. Composure that was an imitation of composure. Revealed in her eyes, a pain that would not end.
With less than three weeks before the event, Lorraine received a call from one of the city's beloved figures, an elderly man reputed to have been a minor member of the Rat Pack. His impish grin commonly popped up on television whenever a news magazine needed a quote about the Vegas of old. One of Lincoln's contacts had put Lorraine in touch with the guy, and though Lincoln had been dubious—I don't know how much pull that old man has anymore, I mean, does he even have a job?—nonetheless, Lorraine met with him, twice, both times at one of the oldest casinos on the Strip, a resort that was perpetually switching owners and being renovated. In a wood-paneled steak house overlooking the breadth of the Strip, Lorraine, each time, was taken to the same table—a corner in the back, next to a massive window where you could look down at the neon marquees. There, the old man was entrenched, his table a bevy of activity: waiters and medium-level hotel employees delivering hushed messages, his bookie dropping off handfuls of betting slips. Throughout the meal, diners left other tables to stop by and glad-hand. The old man thanked them and made sure to introduce Lorraine, saying that she was having a banquet for what was it—right, kids that run away. He told the visitors they should call her and get involved. He chewed on his dentures and followed Lorraine's talking points, at key moments putting his hand on her wrist and letting it sit there, as if to say I am with you. His wrist had a jewel-encrusted Rolex around it. His fingers were thick with chunky gold. Long after her presentation, the old man kept Lorraine at the table, entertaining her with ribald stories—about walking into his office one day to find Dean Martin taking Lola Falana frombehind; about Sinatra ordering him to steal Sammy Davis Jr.'s glass eye and the subsequent hijinks. Lorraine laughed hard enough that she became embarrassed. During their second meeting, the old man repeated each story, verbatim, and Lorraine giggled anyway. They sat and talked well beyond the lunch hour and deep into the afternoon, until the restaurant was empty of customers and the waiters were eating their own meals, and each time Lorraine had left the steak house feeling a bit sorry for the sweet lonely man. At the same time, memos from the department of self-interest said this was a good development, if he was going to add his clout, the banquet could really take off.
For a week she did not hear from him, and her calls consistently ended up routed to an answering machine, where she had to wait through a backlog of beeps. Lorraine didn't hold it against him, as she didn't exactly have time for his dissembling, anyway. Charity fund-raisers weren't like baseball games or movie theaters, you didn't have walk-up cr
owds lining up at a ticket booth. According to the latest figures, it was going to take a minor miracle to get the room beyond 60 percent capacity. Lorraine hustled to come up with ways to sell seats at discount prices, even as she worked to reel in corporate clients, while at the same time feuding with the Banquet Bitch over appetizers. The head chef was after her to turn in a final menu and a definite number for the dinners. There also were brush fires with the florist, with a pair of rival politicians, even the valet parking union, which Lorraine did not even understand because why should parking a car for the banquet be different from parking any other car? Lorraine had to get fitted for her gown. She had to come up with matching shoes. There were complimentary goodie bags to assemble for the celebrities, and she hadn't thought about how to get whatever was supposed to go in them, wasn't even sure what she'd promised the booking agency anymore. Her plate was overflowing and the old guy was about last in the line of her priorities, and so when the call came in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, it took Lorraine a few moments to realize whose squeaky voice was asking her to stop by his office. It took a few more seconds to make the connection between his office and the restaurant table, and when Lorraine did this, she felt a spasm of hope. “Give me a half hour,” she told the old man.
Busboys, adults every one of them, were gathered around a pair of tables near the kitchen's double doors, busily rolling silverware inside cloth napkins. The waitstaff lounged on bar stools, taking notes while the head chef explained the night's specials. Propped in his usual booth, the old man looked small and pudgy behind a large clothed table, like a rumpled puppet. He did not get up when Lorraine greeted him with kisses on each cheek, and his smell was not fresh, but that's how it was when you got old, Lorraine figured. Placing her purse on the table, she said how much she'd missed him, she was thrilled to see him again, and what do you know, she really meant it. She reached for the water pitcher that was always on the table, and grabbed it before she saw it was empty, and she laughed casually, a bit embarrassed, but happily so.
The old man's face was not unkind. Neither was it friendly. He thought he had something for her. Lorraine answered okay. She could see the small pattern of liver spots atop his temple, a sight she had grown accustomed to during their previous meetings.
He then inquired as to what Lorraine would do in exchange for his support.
“A table cost what?” he said. “Five grand? That's a lot of dough for a gal with mileage on her tires.”
The skin beneath his eyes had weathered to a soft purple. His shirt had thin tan epaulets, loopy strips of fabric, and as Lorraine stared at him, she could not help but notice that the far right epaulet had come loose, was hanging in the air like a twig. The old man remarked about the specific carnal acts that would make this worth his while, and Lorraine rose from her chair. She wished him well. Her legs were jelly beneath her as she turned, and she'd taken three steps when there was a sound. Looking over her shoulder was a mistake, but she could not help herself, and saw that he, too, had risen from his cushioned spot, he was moving out from behind the table. And he was not wearing pants. The makings of an erection might have been visible, denting the dingy fabric of boxer shorts. Lorraine didn't stay long enough for confirmation.
This hadn't been the first time someone in an official capacity had hit on her. Certainly not. Since she'd started taking meetings—“taking meetings,” geez, even that had a filthy edge—Lorraine had learned to control herself when her dining companion lowered his gaze toward her chest. There had been leers that bordered on vulgar. Double entendres delivered with all the suavity and confidence of a junior high school student asking out a girl for the first time. A good part of the rest of Lorraine's afternoon was occupied by such recollections. And though she had tons of work to do, she did not—as she'd promised she would—head back to the offices of the Nevada Child Search. Instead she drove. Randomly, just to get her bearings, adrenaline surging through her, a meaty, almost lusty want tingeing her mouth. Any idea that came into her head was plausible: she might head to Newell's old comic book shop and purchase all his favorites and then go out to the desert and set fire to them. Just as likely she would race the sunset and outrun memories and lose herself in a seedy roadside bar with a grizzled man who had his own past to forget. All sorts of sexual energy had been channeled into her causes and her missions; all sorts of desires and needs had been sublimated, transformed into aggressiveness. She dialed Lincoln in spasms, five- or ten-minute intervals, hitting the END key before completing any of the calls. On the fourth try, Lorraine hung in there, punching all of the necessary pulse tones. Two rings later, she learned that Lincoln Ewing was in a meeting or away from his desk right now, but if she left her number and a brief message, he would call back as soon as he could. Lorraine transferred into the turn lane leading into the Kubla Khan's parking lot, and was looking at the hotel spread out before her. The thought of being inside a casino gave her vertigo. Moreover, as much as she needed a friendly ear right then, as much as she and Lincoln had been each other's bedrocks over the years, the thought of needing comfort from Lincoln now was deeply upsetting to Lorraine. About the last thing she wanted was for him to know he had been right.
It wasn't just Lincoln, though. And it wasn't being hit on, necessarily. It wasn't even that she had trusted the old guy and been betrayed. These were jags of a much deeper iceberg, Lorraine could admit that much. From proposal to meetings to fund-raising, she had taken the banquet by the force of her personality, and through every step had demanded things be done her way. When all evidence suggested the contrary, she'd held on to the belief that her connections had gotten her meetings with executives of true influence. While stuck watching half-wits fixate on dollar keno, she'd convinced herself those mongoloids actually had some juice, could indeed do something for her. Lorraine had come up with trapdoors that waylaid all the facts that she was too smart to completely ignore, she'd used a prod and a chair to hold her worst suspicions at bay, even going so far as to believe that a sad and lonely old man who sat in a restaurant all day with nowhere else to go, he was going to turn things around for her—although that wasn't completely fair, maybe the old man could have helped, if he'd wanted to help, if he'd really been worth a damn.
That she'd been so transparent. So susceptible. Trotting her need around, naked, displayed in a cage for moron after moron, letting them ogle it, letting them prod it with sticks. Lorraine's shame was pink and withering. How she must have looked! How willfully blind she had been! No way around what she had done. No excuses. This was not one of those situations where you looked back at the person you had been years ago and the stupid things you'd done and felt embarrassed, but also were able to tell yourself that the thing had happened a long time ago. This was recent enough that Lorraine felt it was possible to reach back into those lunches and jostle herself to alertness, and this feeling was not the least bit helpful. Because there wasn't any good reason she should not have known better. There had been only her need.
She drove, north and west, heading into the dying sun, long thin diagonals of yellow and white spilling across the left side of the windshield. Large empty circles of light seemed to jump out at her, and in spite of the tinted windshield, it was difficult to see. But not being able to see traffic fully, not being able to discern a road signal, these things really didn't distract Lorraine. The silence that occurs when you are alone with your thoughts was not so bad for her, either. Time was progressing as emptily as it always had, but now, oddly enough, she no longer felt its meaty anxiousness. After swimming upstream for so long, fighting against the strong tide and harsh current, Lorraine now felt as if she finally understood the error of her direction, and she proceeded to lay herself upon the water, to float.
When she arrived home, her voice mail system was jammed. The banquet planner asking if Lorraine could give her a call when she got in. Molly from Nevada Child Search wondering if Lorraine was going to be in this afternoon. The case officer thanking her for the tickets (
he'd received them today). A ramble from her mom, which Lorraine forwarded through.
And then Lincoln: “Hey. It's me. Caller ID says you've been calling. Okay.”
The house was crisp and chilly that day, the cleaning lady must have forgotten to turn the air conditioner to a low setting before she took off for the bus. A thought about the guaranteed spike in the utilities bill was fleeting, unimportant. Lorraine headed upstairs, without much in her mind. Goose pimples had broken out along her upper arms and shoulders.
Once you got to the second floor, a banister ran behind the stairwell. When they'd been house hunting, Lorraine had learned the logic behind this contraption: you did not want someone—say a child—to be running around upstairs, slip, and then fall down the stairs. The banister not only prevented this, but also created a small upstairs corridor. Lorraine had developed the habit of hooking tightly around the rail and heading left, into the master bedroom. Presently, however, she broke to her right, the first time in quite a while she'd taken this direction.
She hadn't intentionally stopped visiting her son's room, no more than she'd meant for Lincoln to stop sleeping in their bed, for the boy to disappear, or for any part of this snowballing hell that was their lives to get rolling the way it had. As with so many things, there had been reasons for it and then there had been the happenstance of how it all panned out. Part of it was logistical. By holing herself up in the master bedroom, Lorraine had, in effect, ceded the rest of upstairs to her husband. It just didn't feel right to venture inside the guest room, where her husband was sleeping in exile. Same for the hall bathroom, where he showered and shaved. It was improper. Disrespectful in some way. But to get to the boy's room you had to pass the guest room, then make a right turn before the door to the guest bathroom. In short, Newell's bedroom was deep inside Lincoln's domain. In the months following her son's disappearance, this hadn't stopped Lorraine; indeed, she'd sought out the pain of that empty room—approaching the door that Lincoln left closed, consistently feeling a flash of belief as she turned the handle, suddenly sure that her son would be safely inside, sprawled on the floor, having his action figures perform wrestling holds on one another. But the pain had become too much, and the turf war had taken its own toll, and eventually the door had stayed closed, the room drifting that much deeper into enemy territory.