The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  I think they were hoping I’d ask for a deal too. But while it might get me up a couple more notches toward the Bigs, it would take the edge off. I know from experience I’d have to earn everything.

  When we parted they said they’d call me at home next week about winter ball, and about an assignment for the spring. I think they’re going to keep me for at least a year, and that’s all I ask. Just a chance to prove myself.

  “I asked her to marry me, anyway,” Brody says out of the blue. We’re a few hours from home.

  “Who?” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Who do you think? I asked her to come back to Bellingham with me. I’ve got a good solid future. I thought she would. I really did.”

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I had no idea you cared that much.”

  “I know,” said Brody.

  Whoever isn’t driving has to constantly adjust the radio. Stations fade away, become staticky, and have to be replaced by new ones. I’m always pleased when I hit on a new, strong wavelength. But they don’t last; it’s something about us travelling over the edge of the earth, while radio waves shoot straight ahead.

  Me and Brody driving north. Silent. On totally different wavelengths.

  Do Not Abandon Me

  I don’t really know what my husband, Richard, does for a living. I do know that because of his occupation he is one of the loneliest men on earth. The reason I don’t know is not for lack of interest, but lack of understanding. Richard, never Ricky, Rick, or Dick, is employed by Harvard as a sort of one-man think tank. He spends his days in a quiet office in front of a clean desk thinking about mathematics. He has made some breakthroughs in the echelons of higher calculus that only two other men in the world are capable of interpreting, of telling him whether he is right or wrong. One is in Japan, the other in one of those countries, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, where magical thinking is part of the national psyche, a country where it is unreasonably hot and humid and the political situation is terminally volatile.

  I know it sounds cruel, but Richard is such a bore. I am so sick of him. He is totally predictable. I know I am being unfair to Richard because, ten years ago predictable was what I wanted. I was 22, had just come out of a two-year, knock-down, drag-out relationship with a 6’8” tackle for the New England Patriots. Sex so intense I often felt I’d explode, or at the least cause myself irreversible bodily harm if we continued for one more minute. The bad times were equally intense, to summarize all our difficulties, Karl had no concept of the word fidelity. Women flung themselves at him as if he were a rock star. I traveled with him one fall, road trips to Dallas, and Los Angeles. He received FedEx packages and letters at the front desk, hand-delivered letters slipped under his door. Panties, bras, photos, gifts, some purchased, some handmade, each accompanied by primitive, pitiful letters full of misspellings and pornographic suggestions. I’ll always remember one from a girl who in her arcade, three-for-a-dollar photo looked about eighteen, she had a long pimply face and lank black hair. The accompanying note read in part: “I like to due a good blowjob so there’s no chance I should get pregnate.”

  I met Richard at a book signing. There is a monster bookstore in Worcester and a girlfriend convinced me to accompany her there one Sunday afternoon where a young author, whose name I had never heard, and can’t recall, was signing his book, which had something to do with philosophy and the cultural revolution. I read, but I enjoy love stories and mysteries, and like to be scared by Stephen King. While we were waiting in line to get her book signed, Richard walked by. My girlfriend’s brother had roomed with Richard at Harvard, where Richard had attended from freshman to PhD, and then gone into their esoteric think tank. He looked like a sad puppy. I wanted to cuddle him and pet him and wipe those laces of black hair off his forehead. We went for coffee after the signing, and Richard was shy and looked into his coffee whenever he spoke. My girlfriend was the one he should have been interested in, she had a degree in psychology from Smith and was about to set up her own practise; she was as close to an intellectual equal as Richard might find. She was trying to impress him, but it apparently didn’t work, for the next week Richard phoned her brother and asked him to call his sister and get my last name and phone number.

  After my tumultuous relationship with Karl, Richard was peace, tranquillity, stability. Richard would never have groupies.

  We dated for several months. Movies, dinners, concerts, lectures. I had to seduce him. Undoing my bra while he was tentatively touching my breasts, after about our seventh date, gave him a clue that I was ready. I compared this to Karl, who moments after we met, clutching me in an elevator on the way to the parking garage, asked me if I enjoyed a number of activities, all connected with oral sex. I was too stunned not to reply. I panted that I did. “Just laying it on the line,” said Karl. “There are actually chicks who think they can impress me by holding out.”

  When we did make love, Richard was surprisingly passionate. I hadn’t expected much from this slight, sink-chested man with his uneasy smile and small, pale hands. Eventually, Richard asked me to marry him. I said yes. I longed for stability. But not boredom.

  Let me give you an example. This is what Richard considers a significant activity for the two of us. I’m sure he’s read somewhere in a magazine that married couples should do things together in order to keep their marriage fresh. He enrolled us in a course on Navigational Codes and Signals.

  “We don’t own a boat,” I protested.

  “That’s not the point,” Richard said. “This is something new to us. I’ll bet none of our friends have done this.”

  “And with good reason,” I said, but under my breath.

  We do occasionally go out for a Sunday afternoon on a friend’s boat, but if they have any navigational flags I’ve never noticed them, and I certainly don’t recall anyone ever flashing them signals. After the first class, held in a musty room in some kind of privately funded community center not far from Harvard Square, I said to Richard, “These flags aren’t even applicable anymore. They’re obsolete.”

  We had to put a one-hundred-dollar deposit on each text, a book published in the 1930s, and long out of print. The elderly instructor loaned us each a copy that was held together by glue, tape and fingerprints. “These flags were used by commercial vessels. That kind of communication has been almost completely replaced by radio, radar, sonar, computers. And who is this guy teaching the course? He looks like he’s old enough to have sailed on the Pequod.” The signals themselves were mainly commands. T: Keep clear of me. U: You are running into danger. Y: I am dragging my anchor. I joked that many of the commands could apply to personal relationships as well as seagoing vessels. Richard stared at me as though I had spoken in a foreign language. His sense of humor is minimal to say the least.

  We attended every Thursday for six weeks. We wrote a final exam, received a little certificate stating that we were qualified in the Communication Aspects of Practical Navigation.

  “I’ll put this on my resume,” I said. I laughed. Richard smiled slowly. I have no resume. My degree certificate reads Artus Generalis or something foolish; I took a few literature courses, some theater, art history, basic psychology. I’m qualified to work as a part-time clerk in an art gallery, which I do when I’m totally bored.

  West travels. On a moment’s notice he flies off to Cairo, Budapest, Peking, Madagascar, Zanzibar. He told me a story about being associated with clove smugglers in Zanzibar who risk death to sneak sacks of contraband cloves into Kenya, from where they eventually make their way to the gourmet chefs of Europe, who use them to create exotic sauces.

  “My business,” says West, “is dangerous antiques and artifacts.”

  His life is full of intrigue. Albania has only recently become accessible. Last month, he smuggled a dozen silver goblets from the 1300s out of Albania, each encased in a garishly painted plaster statue of a saintly looking monk. I helped him unpack them from their bed of cedar shavings and shredded newspapers.


  “Part of my business is to circumvent bureaucracy,” says West, a smile crinkling the lines at the corner of each eye. “Countries make unacceptable rules concerning cultural artifacts. It is my job to stretch, bend, or even break the rules. I can bribe my way through customs anywhere except the United States, Canada and sometimes Great Britain. One has to be patient, in some countries it takes a long time to reach a bribable official.”

  West has golden hair, the body of a very good tennis player which, at 42, has widened until his step has slowed enough that he only plays doubles of a Sunday morning, and only for fun. He has a golden aura of danger about him. I have to admit, I have a fascination with dangerous men.

  “I want us to travel together,” West said over the phone yesterday, as we were finalizing this date. West has been married once, has a child to whom he is very good. “My ex,” he says, “lost her spirit of adventure.”

  “Perhaps we could introduce her to Richard,” I say. We giggle like children.

  I met West at an antiques show. “I don’t usually do this,” he said, after I’d stopped to admire a jade dragon, seamless, seeming to glow with an inner light. “But sometimes rich people go slumming, and they assume that I’m selling at below my regular prices because everything else in the show is so tacky. I usually work by appointment only.”

  I inquired about the dragon. “Because you’re such a beautiful woman I could let you have it for $80,000.”

  “I’m afraid only tacky is within my price range,” I said. West was wearing khakis with many pockets; he looked like a scientist in a Tarzan movie, the one who warns the expedition leader, “The natives are restless, I don’t think it’s safe to travel any further up this river.”

  “I’ll give you my phone number,” West said cheerfully. “Call me, I’m sure I have any number of artifacts within your price range.” He handed me a business card centered with a W in sweeping calligraphy. His hand held mine for a few seconds as the card, and jolt of sexual energy, passed between us.

  I called him the next day. I went to his shop on antiques row, where customers are admitted only after ringing a bell, stating their purpose, and sometimes showing ID. “I deal in coins, precious gems,” said West. “Browsers aren’t welcome here. There are many extremely devious men in my profession.”

  We went for lunch, three hours with good wine, and food I don’t even remember. I spent my time staring into West’s aquamarine eyes and longing to touch him. As we slid from the booth in the now empty restaurant West faced me, put his right arm around me, lifted me right off the floor and kissed me. I never wanted him to stop.

  Whatever guilt I had drifted away as his tongue filled my mouth and I grabbed the golden curls that extended over his collar and returned the kiss as passionately as I knew how.

  Still, I put off consummating the affair.

  “I have to be certain,” I told West, “about our feelings, about my lack of feelings for Richard. I think it would be sinful to just have an affair. That would be tacky.”

  We’ve had lunch almost every afternoon for three weeks. I’ve lied to Richard about working at the gallery. I’ve actually told the owner I won’t be in for the next few weeks, maybe never again. We’ve done everything but have actual intercourse. I have only to say the word and West will get us a hotel room for an afternoon, because I can’t figure a way to stay out overnight.

  One afternoon in his office, after kissing passionately for a long time, West sat me in the huge leather swivel chair behind his desk, knelt in front of me, slipped my panties down and loved me with his tongue until I shrieked and thought I might faint from ecstasy. We traded places and I found myself, still trembling from my own climax, letting myself go completely. I was so anxious to fill my throat with him, to please him, that for a moment I knew what those football groupies (Karl referred to them disdainfully as cum garglers) must have experienced, the chance to give the gift of passion, with a hope, no matter how slight, that it would be received meaningfully, that something like love might follow.

  In the evenings, whenever Richard retires to his study to read his texts and treatises on mathematics, I phone West, who lives some fifty miles out of Boston. The calls will appear on our phone bill. I don’t know how I will explain them. I don’t care.

  I think of Richard in his study perusing documents in a language only three people in the world understand. Richard once considered a hobby. “I think I’d like to get a little lathe and put it in the garage,” he said. “I thought I could make wooden coat hangers.”

  I think opulent might best describe the hotel room where I will shortly give myself completely to West. There are fresh flowers, champagne, a fruit basket, a wooden bowl of those delicious, foil-wrapped chocolates that are mysteriously placed on your pillow in the late evening. I eat one without even realizing what I am doing. Its taste is so intense I eat another.

  I have been in this hotel room once before, this elegant, impersonal space, or at least an identical room on this or a nearby floor. The room was engaged by Harvard, and from it we were able to see the finish line of the Boston marathon. The Japanese genius was visiting Boston, and Harvard had booked the room months in advance because the Japanese mathematical prodigy, a Mr. Nakagawa, postulated that there was a possible mathematical formula that would explain the muscular coordination of trained athletes, something to do with the way they pumped their arms when running.

  It was an eerie feeling watching the progress of the race on television where, every so often they would cut to the finish line, which we could see below our window. In fact, once they showed the hotel and if they’d held the shot another few seconds we could have picked out our window. The view was remarkable in that we could read the numbers of the runners, chests heaving, as they crossed the line, and we could see the journalists shoving microphones into the faces of the sweating athletes. I felt disoriented, like a kitten in a room filled with somber monkeys in business suits, their arms folded in privacy across their collective chests.

  At 10:00 A.M. a FedEx courier arrived at my door with a large, colorful envelope. It contained one of those coded plastic cards for opening a hotel room door. There was a hotel business card with the room number scrawled on the back along with the word Noon, and West’s large calligraphed W, his signature, the same W that appears on his shirts, in gold on a ruby pinky ring, his key chain.

  The ringing phone jars me back to the present. Oh, no. West is going to be late. Worse yet, West can’t make it. Some European count is desperate to purchase a Ming vase.

  “Madame, it is the Concierge. Madame is requested to glance out the window of her suite.”

  “What on earth for?”

  The Concierge has a heavy French accent. All American concierges have heavy European accents. He’s probably lived all his life in Worcester. I wonder if European concierges have heavy American accents?

  “I can only repeat the message supplied to me, Madame. I am informed that if you glance out the window of your suite you will see something interesting.”

  I hang up.

  It can be only one of two things. West is doing something wonderful and extravagant, a banner on one of the nearby buildings that says I LOVE YOU, ESME. A huge floral arrangement: I picture a horseshoe-shape, ten feet high, like those at the Kentucky Derby, or a gangster’s funeral, sculpted of white carnations, with my face centring the interior, my cheeks and lips red roses, my eyes blue hydrangeas.

  On the other hand, what if Richard has followed me? I can’t imagine him doing that. He’s never missed a day at his job in the ten years I’ve known him. I’ve been so happy the past few weeks, since I’ve been spending time with West, perhaps Richard has noticed. Has he shown any signs of suspicion? Nothing comes to mind. He left for work at his usual time; he always leaves the house at 7:30 A.M.

  I make my way across the room to the window, slowly, as if I am walking in something congealed, each step an effort.

  Oh, it is worse than I thought. It is Richard. He
is standing across the street, about where the runners crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon, staring toward me through his thick glasses. He looks so helpless. His colorless slacks are rumpled, he wears a brown windbreaker, a slight breeze blows unruly laces of black hair down across his forehead. His right shoulder droops so unhappily. He is holding a flag. It is on a tiny flag pole. Where in the world would he find such a little flag pole? It is one of the flags from our text book. I can picture Richard in his study, thinking about, instead of mathematical formulas too complicated for even extraordinary mortals, something he can do to rekindle my interest in him, to make me love him again.

  The flag he holds displays the letters CXL. I have to admit I only did a halfhearted job of learning the signals, and after we passed the test, Richard with 100%, me with 55%, a bare pass, I let many of them drift way like notes of music disappearing forever. This is information I will never use again, I thought. Let’s see: A=I am undergoing a speed trial. K=You should stop your vessel instantly. What do these combinations mean? CXL sounds like the acronym for a football league.

  Oh, my. Oh, my. It comes to me. And I place my hands, palms flat to the glass, arms extended above my head as if there is a burglar with a revolver standing behind me. Tears well up, overflow. I snuffle. Richard looks so intense, so vulnerable, so lonely.

  CXL is a command: Do not abandon me. DO NOT ABANDON ME! It is the perfect flag. Richard sees me, raises the flag a little higher with his right hand, waves diffidently with his left.

  West’s knock sounds at the door. Cheerful, full of energy. My heart flutters. I remain at the window. West knocks and knocks.

  Marco in Paradise

  Marco Ferlinghetti spends his life getting picked out of police lineups. The police collar Marco nearly every day. He is not hard to find for he is never more than two blocks from the corner of Hastings and Main in Vancouver at any time in his life. Marco stands sullen in the middle of the lineup, eyelids drooping, while behind two-way glass victims and witnesses scrutinize. On one especially productive day Marco was positively identified as a flasher, a hit-and-run driver, a burglar, and a peeping Tom.