Shares

by A. W. Gray

  7

  Frank White thought that Harold Willett looked as if he’d swallowed a hot pepper. “What’s so important that you’re calling me on Sunday?” Willett said.

  “It’s your instructions,” Frank said, “that anytime I’ve got problems I’m supposed to call you. You’re my district manager. If there’s somebody else I should…”

  “No. No, you did right, okay?” Willett had a wide mouth and sloping forehead, and was an import from the home office up in Minneapolis with the slightly nasal, fuck-you accent to prove it. He stood with his wrists against his waist, his palms reversed, facing out to the sides. “What, the freezers again?” He peered through the glass at rows of ice cream in two-gallon drums.

  “No, I fixed that,” Frank said, pointing. “It’s…well, I need off for a while this afternoon.”

  Willett slowly raised his gaze from the row of ice-cream containers, until he seemed to be looking at Frank’s Adam’s apple. “It has to be today? April’s our first really peak month.”

  Frank looked beyond the D.M. at a lobbyful of tourists, a couple of guys and their wives reading the display sign, considering the prices for one- and two-scoop cones, double- and triple-dip sundaes. On a stool down the way, a teenaged girl munched on a rocky-road sugar cone. “I know,” Frank said. “And I’ve got to apologize for that. But something’s come up.”

  Willett cleared his throat. “I promised my kid.”

  “If you can find somebody else to spell me.” Frank said.

  “Who? Who the hell at this time on Sunday?”

  Frank lowered his chin. “Nobody, probably. Hey, I get four personal days a year. Two years on the job and I haven’t taken any.”

  Willett raised a hand, palm out. “I can’t argue with that. But you ought to give notice.”

  “This just came up a while ago. Maybe just three or four hours. Can you live with that?”

  Willett narrowed his eyes. “Your parole officer called this week.”

  “She did? I sure hope you gave her a good report.”

  “I told her that your performance has been outstanding,” Willett said. “So far.”

  “Well, I give you my word,” Frank said, “that it’ll continue to be. But, just today, I’ve got this business.”

  “What business is that?”

  Frank leaned on the counter, looking down, then back up. “It’s personal. How about if next week I do a double shift, with no overtime?”

  Willett sighed, exasperated, a man planning a nice Sunday afternoon and having this convict guy screw up his day for him. He came around the counter and testily grabbed an apron. “You’ve got four hours, Mr. White,” he said. “See that you don’t abuse the privilege, okay?”

  “Hey, great,” Frank said, removing his paper cook’s hat. “You know, Harold, it’s working for guys like you that makes up for the lack of benefits around here.”

  Frank exited the mammoth hotel lobby and went out into seventy degrees, birds twitting in the hedges, a few puddles left over from last night’s thunderstorm. He climbed into his Cherokee’s backseat and, after looking right and left, wiggled out of his white pants and into a pair of Levi’s. Then he removed his black bow tie, took off and carefully folded his white, short-sleeved dress shirt. The shirt had the “Sidewalk Humor” logo—the company name lettered on an ice cream cone—over one pocket, and “Frank” scripted in red thread over the other pocket. Frank twisted and shrugged into a pale green Tommy Hilfiger knit, and left the tails hanging out. He then eased in between the bucket seats, settled behind the wheel, and drove slowly out of the Loew’s Anatole parking lot. Once clear of the hotel grounds, he shot the ramp and blended in with the Sunday drivers headed south on Stemmons Freeway.

  Fifteen minutes later Frank parked nose-on to the curb in front of the Toledo Lounge, a sawdust joint in Fast Dallas on Samuell Boulevard. Across the street was Tenison Park, with fifty-foot elms and sycamores, azaleas coming into bloom, and Bermuda dotted here and there with Johnson grass and ragweed. Jukebox music drifted through the barroom’s open entry, an old-timer, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” Gladys Knight belting out the lyrics. Frank locked up the Cherokee and went inside.

  He paused for a moment and waited for his pupils to dilate; first the revolving Schlitz sign above the bar came into view, then the bar itself, dim shapes of men and women hunched over long-neck bottles and schooners of draft. There was a musty odor of stale tobacco and stale beer, blended in a cauldron of stale air. The Schlitz sign displayed a digital clock on one side, then revolved to show a grinning guy, a healthy girl, and a waterfall. The clock showed 1:52; Frank was a few minutes early. He approached the bar, edged in between a man in a suit and an elderly woman in slacks, and ordered two Miller Lites. The bartender, a black-haired woman with a gum-chewing, seen-it-all look about her, popped the tops and set the cans up alongside frosted glasses. Frank paid for the beers and carried cans and glasses to a back booth where he could watch the door. The Gladys Knight number ended, followed by “Love Potion Number Nine.”

  She came in at straight-up two wearing mid-thigh spandex shorts, hooked a thumb through the mesh in her see-through top, removed her L.A. Eyeworks, and peered into the dimness from just inside the door. She stood for a full thirty seconds in a backdrop of sunlight, then hesitantly stepped toward the bar. Frank raised a beer can over his head. She caught the gesture, showed a blink of recognition, came back, and sat across from him. She picked up the untouched Miller Lite and read the label on the can. “You remembered,” she said.

  “Who could forget? Hiding all those six-packs around the compound in the hedges, under the porch outside the chow hall.” Frank turned sideways in the booth, leaned against the wall and watched her. In prison she used to braid her hair, one long queue down the back.

  “Most of it for the hacks to drink, when they could find them.” Beneath the mesh top she wore a spandex halter that matched her midnight blue shorts.

  “It was only fair, the hacks bought the beer to begin with. Which one was it you had smuggling it in?”

  She poured, beer gurgling, bubbles rising, foam building on top. “I don’t remember.”

  “Easy to forget. The faces come to me, but I can’t put a name with them.”

  She folded the earpieces and laid her sunglasses on the table. “I never forgot your name. You have any trouble finding this place?”

  “I used to patrol right down the street when I was a rookie.”

  She watched him, a slight tiredness around her eyes. “It would be easier to find you if you hadn’t changed your phone number, Frank.”

  “It’s against the rules,” he said. “Contacts with anybody you knew in there.”

  She scratched her forearm. “That’s a copout. Sure, there’s rules, but that’s just one they use to bust you if there’s something else they want you for but can’t make a case on.”

  “I’ve been real careful.” he said. “Trying to keep my nose to the grindstone.”

  She pursed her lips and gave two smacky kisses. “Poor baby. You must have a sore nose.”

  “You can knock it all you want to. But I’m serious, trying to get off Parole Commission paper and go on with life.”

  She reached testily for a shaker and salted her beer. “Why did you come today, then?”

  He shrugged. “You said to. I’ll be straight with you, Darla. I changed my home number because I wanted you to quit calling me. You were wasting your long-distance money. The only way you could have gotten the pay-phone number in the Anatole lobby was from Wilbur Dale, and I just figured out on the way over here that it was you that put him up to coming by and checking on me. When you called me at work today I was shocked that you were in town. Now I’m over the shock. The only reason I’m meeting you is to tell you to leave me alone.”

  She grimaced. “You tell your girlfriend you were coming?”

  He tilted h
is chin. “Wilbur told you about her, too, huh? I shouldn’t have given that guy the time of day.”

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “No, Darla. I didn’t tell her. Didn’t think it was important enough to tell her.”

  “Well, why not? If there’s nothing between you and me, she shouldn’t care.”

  “That’s not what she’d care about. She doesn’t know about my past, and I’m telling you now that if she suddenly finds out, you’re in trouble with me.”

  She reached beneath the table and touched his knee. “I certainly wouldn’t want to screw up your reputation, hon.”

  He firmly moved her hand away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “You used to think it was a good idea. I’ll bet you still do.”

  “Afraid you’re wrong. Hey, you still look good, Darla.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You bet your ass.”

  “You’ll never have trouble getting guys. It’s just, I’m spoke for.”

  She pouted. “You never really gave a damn about me. Did you?”

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to. There were a lot of other guys in there. We never had any understanding that I can remember.”

  “You sleep with somebody, there’s an understanding. You don’t have to say it in words.”

  “Yeah, but the other…”

  “All in exchange for something, Frank. You, I never asked for a thing.”

  “We were just under different circumstances,” Frank said. “In prison it’s one world. This is another. Besides, I thought I made it clear while we were still there. Your territory was too crowded for me. It’s why I cut us off when I did.”

  She swigged beer. “Jesus, Frank, you were one I’d never expect to turn into a boring asshole.”

  “Look around you. You can walk out that door and go anyplace you want. That’s not boring. Prison, that was boring.”

  She folded her arms. “You know what I mean. Look, if you didn’t want to make it, get your cock sucked or something, why didn’t you just tell me? I’m taking a few chances myself, being here. There are people I’m with who would hit the ceiling if they knew. If I’m going out on a limb, don’t you think you should be glad to see me?”

  “I think you know that answer,” Frank said, lifting his glass and drawing a circle in the frost with his thumb. “And whoever these people are you’re talking about, I don’t even want to know. I think you should take a long look before you get into something that’s going to send you back, but that’s your business.”

  “What, you want to reform me? Put me on the straight and narrow? That’s what dear old daddy used to say, before I got old enough for him to fondle my tits.”

  Frank watched her, slim nose, high cheekbones, the classic beauty look. She’d stand out in a crowd where Meg wouldn’t, but once you got to know them both it’d be Meg all the way, hands down. In a few years Darla would fit right in with the crowd up there at the bar, older women swilling their beer and dreaming of how it used to be. “The only reason I came,” Frank said, “is to tell you face to face to leave me alone.”

  She smirked at him.

  “I mean it, Darla.”

  “You think it’s really cute, trying to dump on me, don’t you?”

  “Jesus, I don’t think it’s anything. We don’t have any relationship to dump and never have. Obviously you know about Meg.”

  She widened her eves. “Meg who?”

  Frank exhaled through his nose. “Trying to tell you nicely’s a mistake. You just go away. I’ll do whatever I have to to keep you from knowing where I live. My home phone’s unlisted and you can’t get the number. If you call me on the lobby pay phone again, I’ll hang up in your face.”

  She screwed up her features. “Jesus, why does a hunk like you have to be such a prick?”

  “You can call me that. Meg has a lot to do with making me think things out. Wasn’t for her, believe me, I’d be sitting over there feeling you up right now.”

  She bunched up her lips and wrinkled her nose. “You’re wanting a nice little house, I guess. Kids and shit. Join the fucking PTA.”

  He studied his glass. “Maybe. Whatever I do, it beats going to prison. You should think about that. Sorry to disappoint you, Darla. If you’d known I wasn’t your kind of people anymore, you never would have asked me to meet you, right?”

  “I might’ve.” She swirled her glass around. “Yeah, I might’ve anyway, ‘cause I would have had to see it for myself to make me believe it. I’d want to give you a chance to be a real person, not some character out of Little House on the Prairie.”

  One corner of his mouth tugged to one side. “Me is me, what can I tell you?”

  She drained her glass. “Thanks for coming by, but I see we’re not getting anywhere. I’d hoped maybe we could take up where we, you know. But now…oh hell. Just, fuck you, Frank, okay?”

  He had a final sip, then stood up. “Believe it or not, I was hoping you’d say something like that. Soothes a guy’s conscience, you know?”

  8

  Mrs. Helen Dunn, prim and properly hateful, folded her hands on her desk and peered down her nose. “I’m going to ask you to relieve me this afternoon, to take a group on tour.”

  Meg Carpenter crossed her legs, smoothed her gray business skirt, and let one black pump dangle away from her heel. “I’d planned to do something, ma’am. Friday afternoons are supposed to be my free time.” She’d had problems with calling the headmistress Helen from the word go, particularly in view of the age difference, and had finally settled on ma’am. Mrs. Dunn had never come right out and said so, but the slight twitch in her eyelid told Meg that the headmistress would have preferred a more reverent title.

  Mrs. Dunn thumbed through her desk calendar. “Weren’t you off a day last week?” Steel-gray hair poked out over her forehead. She wore wire-framed bifocals.

  Meg pretended to think. “You mean, when I was running a temperature?” Brought on by tramping around the halls at all hours of the night guarding the little darlings, she thought. “I think that was a half day, ma’am.” Meg smiled sweetly.

  “Whatever,” the headmistress said. “I have a meeting and I can’t be both places at once. These tour groups lead to donations. Donations are our lifeblood, pure and simple. The only one with the knowledge necessary to do the tour is you.”

  “What knowledge is it that I…?”

  “Security.” Mrs. Dunn held up one wrinkled finger. “People in these financial brackets, that’s the main thing they’re interested in. That children will be safe here.” Visible through the window behind her, a silver Chevy minivan sat in the drive against a backdrop of tall fir trees. Beyond the school’s main entry were the shingled rooftops of the six-figure homes across the road, most of them two stories, some of them three.

  “Is that this tour group’s transportation?” Meg said.

  Mrs. Dunn turned in her chair to look outside. “It is.”

  “Wow, some wagon,” Meg said. A broad-shouldered young man in a chauffeur’s uniform stood outside the minivan, polishing the fender. Blond shoulder-length hair hung below his billed cap. Sort of a hunk for a hired hand, Meg thought.

  The headmistress’s forehead wrinkled. “I certainly hope you’ll be more formal than that.”

  Meg felt like biting her lip. “I can be, ma’am, of course. Is there something I should know about this bunch, before I show them around?”

  “Such as?”

  “Who they are. Social status, possibly. What it is that makes them preferred customers.”

  “Benefactors, Miss Carpenter. We don’t have customers at Riverbend School.” Mrs. Dunn touched the rosary on her desk, and for an instant Meg wondered if she’d upset the woman to the point of saying a few Hail Marys. On the western wall, beneath an antique hand-carved cuckoo clock, was an oil painting of the Savior o
n the cross between the two thieves. Mrs. Dunn squinted at a notepad. “It’s a group from the Dallas Theater Center. One is Victoria Lee, in fact. The Victoria Lee. The actress.”

  Meg frowned. “What actress?”

  The headmistress pursed her lips. “The actress.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Meg said, “but I must be out of touch. I’ve never heard of her.”

  Mrs. Dunn blinked. “I agree. You are out of touch.”

  “What’s she played in?”

  “She’s…oh, lots of things.”

  “Well, can you name just one of her roles? If I’m to meet the woman, I should comment on it.”

  Mrs. Dunn thumbed through her notepad, then let the pages flutter down. “Currently she’s in Autumn Midnight, at the Center.”

  “I’m sure she’s a good actress, ma’am. But Dallas Theater Center isn’t exactly Broadway. Parts in these local productions don’t pay diddly.”

  Mrs. Dunn’s eyelids slitted. “Howard Molly wouldn’t have referred her if she wasn’t someone important. You should mind your p’s and q’s with these people, young lady.”

  God, Meg thought, this woman redefines testy. She opened her mouth to say something, but quickly zippered her lips. She had it now. Howard Molly, mucky-muck of the Theater Center, was one of the local bigwigs, and a call from him would cause Mrs. Dunn’s glasses to fall off. Meg would bet a week’s pay that the headmistress had never heard of this Victoria Whoever before Howard Molly had called, and would bet two weeks’ pay that Mrs. Dunn was now pretending to have heard of the woman because she thought it was the thing to do. Whether she’s a legitimate actress or not, Meg thought, the setup with the chauffeured van requires some money. The hunk/chauffeur now leaned against the fender with his arms folded, surveying the landscape with a bored look on his face.

  Meg forced her lips to curve in a smile. “I’ll roll out the red carpet, ma’am,” she said.