Nothing Ventured

by Roderick Price

  Vern had come into the bar that night on crutches, his leg in a cast. He had “twisted his knee funny” falling over a log out in the woods, and torn cartilage. Having had surgery earlier in the week, this was he and Pat’s first outing since he had gotten out of the hospital. Vern was depressed because he was going to be laid up, out of work for eight weeks while his knee healed up. He was going to get almost ninety dollars a week in worker’s compensation, but after just two days, Vern was getting cabin fever laying around the house, drinking beer and listening to Guy Lombardo music. Vern had struck up a conversation with the young Larry, and before Larry knew it, he had made a deal with Vern, where Vern would accompany him on his leasing activities. It turned out that Vern knew every single one of the landowners in the whole area—how many kids they had, where they worked, how much land they owned. Vern had either maintained phone lines on their property, installed or fixed their phone, or tried to sell them some insurance along the way. In planning for the new pipeline, NPC financial and planning experts had figured that it would take Larry at least four months to secure leases from the two-thirds majority of landowners they needed to push the deal through. As it turned out, Larry and Vern had gotten every single landowner to sign up in just over four weeks. Larry had gotten a big enough bonus out of the deal to buy a used red Mercedes 450SL. For years, NPC used Larry and this experience, as an example of how to make things happen in the oil business. Vern was rewarded with a more than acceptable hourly wage for his “consulting services.” He was happy most of the time to be exploring the countryside with Larry, hobbling into a local café, restaurant or bar for a steak and fries or fish and chips lunch. He would routinely chastise young Larry, the “southern gentleman,” as Vern called him, for remaining unerringly cordial and polite, and leaving a hefty tip, no matter how bad the food or service.

  This morning, after clearing the car windows of ice, Larry tossed the ice scraper in through the still open back car door and slid onto the cold seat of the rental car. A lot had changed for Larry over the last twenty years. Then, he had been a young buck, innocent, above-board, looking to be recognized for his efforts, and seeking to work his way to the top. These days, he found himself a hardened man. Long ago, he had realized that since nobody was going to look out for him, he was going to have to look out for himself. Settling into his mid-forties, twice divorced, he had made some money along the way, and for the most part had spent it. Working on a contract basis, he still had one club membership, but he was renting an apartment in west Houston and driving an old car. His parents were gone. No family. While most people thought Larry was still doing pretty well, in reality he had his life savings, consisting of eighteen thousand dollars in a checking account. His Walker Resources business account still had a revolving line of credit, but all of these checks he was writing would have to be repaid one way or another. Once in a while, Hilton, or one of his other old buddies, would throw a job his way. Larry was scraping by. Larry was alone. Maybe this was going to be the big one for him.

  CHAPTER 29

  It was a big day for Liz. Her younger daughter had gotten serious about swimming, and Liz needed to get her to early morning practice and get back by the time her older daughter finished breakfast. Liz lumbered out of the driveway and made the trip to drop her off. One third of all the Chevrolet Suburbans sold in the United States are sold in Texas. Generally, they are not being driven around by tall, lanky, dusty cowboys out by Big Spring. And they are not being driven around by big, husky, refinery workers down along the Ship Channel in Pasadena. They are family vehicles often driven by women just like Liz who are living in Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and Austin. Off Liz went with her trusty cell phone by her side. Thankfully, they were only ten minutes from school, but that was still twenty minutes round trip before most people in the neighborhood were even up. A quick stop by Starbucks on the way back to the house. Then she’d drop the older one off at the start of school. She always tried to do maajor grocery shopping on Wednesdays, and she was playing racquetball after lunch. The younger daughter had lost a little screw on a pair of glasses, so Liz also had to stop by an eyewear place and get that fixed. Every day it was something that took twice as long as it was supposed to.

  Finally, tonight she was “going out,” as she told the kids, which meant she either had a date or was meeting one of her girlfriends from the club for dinner and maybe going to a movie or something. Tonight, it was a date—her fourth with a guy named Kerry. It was a little bit weird, but she continued to insist on driving to a neutral location to meet, usually the Houstonian, and then go out from there. She didn’t need Kerry coming by the house to pick her up. Not only was it easier on the kids, she told herself, but it gave the neighbors a lot less to talk about.

  It had been different with Martin gone. She felt it the most right after she got the kids to bed. Most of the days he had left early in the morning and so he wasn’t around much at breakfast. He’d usually be home in time for dinner, but it was such a busy time with the kids coming and going, that they really didn’t have much time to talk. It was really only at the end of the day, when they got everybody settled down for the night, that the two of them would sit around the kitchen table and talk, and it was those times that she missed now. He had called several times since the split, mostly just to ask how she was doing. It had all stayed strictly business. She would give him a complete rundown on the girls, tell him a number of things she had spent money on, and then they would cordially end the call.

  She was exhausted by the time she got done playing racquetball. Stephanie had been divorced for two years and practically lived at the club. She was in great shape and probably played racquetball five days a week. Liz was lucky to play five days a month. Both drenched, and now starving, they retreated to the juice bar to talk and get something to eat.

  “So, how are things going with Kerry?” Stephanie was always either asking who Liz was going out with or telling Liz about her own latest boyfriend.

  “He’s fine, it’s going fine.”

  “So how many times have you been out now?” She was putting a huge handful of alfalfa sprouts on her salad.

  “Actually, we met for coffee twice. Dinner once. Dinner again tonight.”

  “Oh, four times. Just for the record, have you been out with anyone else yet four times?”

  “Sure, lots of them, but that was twenty years ago,” and then they both laughed like schoolgirls. In some ways, Liz didn’t like Stephanie—or anyone else—talking about her private life, but at times it was really fun. A few times they had spent hours talking over all the men they knew, mostly talking about all of the stupid stuff the guys had said or done. They also spent a fair amount of time talking about how much money they thought some of them had. A couple of the guys Liz had met had also dated Stephanie. At first, it seemed weird that they both had dated the same guy, but by now Liz had gotten used to it. Most of the time Stephanie had gathered a lot more intelligence on the guy than she had, and they would cross check their stories. When one of the guys got talking about his ranch out in Brenham, Stephanie had learned it was his uncle’s ranch. One of the other guys took a pretty nice trip every month or so, but he worked for a wealthy guy who liked to have sales meetings in resort locations and charge it all off to company expense. One of the only nice guys Liz had been out with, was real quiet and lived in a nice, but pretty meager bottom-half apartment in a big house in Montrose. Stephanie had showed her an old newspaper article one time with a story about this guy inventing and founding a computer disk drive company and being bought out for a couple hundred million. She had even gotten on the net to see how many shares of stock he still had in the company. He was modest and living way below the radar. Yes, he was loaded, but Stephanie had found him so boring, she sure wasn’t going to marry into that. In fact, on one of their “dates,” he had taken her to dinner and then to Astrohall Convention Center and walked through a computer exposition. Liz had laughed until tears ran down her c
heeks when Stephanie had told that story—definitely not what Stephanie was looking for. Besides, with that much money, the guy’s lawyer would demand a pre-nup anyway, so a divorce later wouldn’t do anybody very much good.

  “How’s the sex been?” asked Stephanie.

  Momentarily, Liz was taken aback. “Actually, I haven’t had that much of it, but it has been good.”

  “Yeah, most of these guys are older and they know they’ve got to work for it. Or they act like they’ve got something to prove.” Stephanie was smiling.

  “It’s a welcome change, I’ll say that. Martin always said he was too tired,” said Liz.

  “That’s such bullshit. I wouldn’t have guessed that with Martin.” Stephanie paused. “So, what do you think of Kerry, could he be the right guy?” continued Stephanie.

  “I don’t think anybody could be the guy right now,” said Liz.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’ve got the girls to think about. It’s not like Martin is out of my life. it’s only been a month since I asked him to move out.”

  “Jeez, when you say that, I still can’t believe you had the guts to tell him to move out.”

  “It wasn’t guts. I didn’t want to do it. We had to do it. We were hardly even talking anymore; we didn’t agree on anything.”

  “What were you fighting about?”

  “We weren’t fighting; we just didn’t agree on anything. He hardly talked at all.”

  “Like what? What didn’t you agree on?” Stephanie and Liz had been over parts of this a number of times. Stephanie should have been a marriage counselor or a therapist. Her own personal life was screwed up, like most marriage counselors, but somehow that just made her more of an expert on how not to screw up somebody else’s life.

  “Well, we didn’t agree on the house,” said Liz flatly.

  “What about the house?”

  “I thought we needed a big addition and some remodeling, and he liked it just the way it was. He said it was homey, and if we started ripping it up, it was never going to be the same house again.”

  “So, did he tell you that you couldn’t remodel the house?”

  “No, he just said he didn’t want to.”

  “What kind of addition do you want?”

  “Big master bedroom and bath, and closets—lots of closets. We also talked about putting a big family room out behind the garage.”

  “So why didn’t you do it?”

  “Martin didn’t want to. He just said he was okay with the house the way it was.”

  “Gee, I can see that’s grounds for divorce,” said Stephanie, now grinning again. “He didn’t support you in your desire to add on a master bedroom and bath.”

  “Actually, when I think about it, that’s not the main reason we are separated. It’s not the addition; that’s just one thing. It’s the thing about just being okay with the way things are. He was like that on everything. If the kids were doing okay in school, if the neighbors didn’t invite us to a party, he didn’t seem to care. It was like he had just lost heart. He wanted more with his job, but he seemed resigned to accept the way it was. I’m still young. I want more for our family and our kids—and myself, okay—and Martin was just giving up and saying, “Okay, this is it.” Goodness knows he’s a hard worker. He just lost his sense of adventure.”

  “He’s still pretty cute. I saw him grocery shopping at Randall’s over on Woodway on Tuesday, and he had on jeans and a flannel shirt. Looked like the Marlboro Man to me. It looked like he was eating real healthy too, lots of fresh fruit and veggies in his cart. Maybe when your divorce goes through, you’ll let me have a crack at him.”

  “You are the worst! Can’t believe you checked out his grocery cart!” Liz laughed. “You stay away from him. He’s always liked brunettes, especially brunettes with nice butts.”

  Liz was reflective, “You know, I’m still attracted to him. But you know what, he even lost interest in me. He’d always say he was too tired, or maybe we should wait until tomorrow night. Then he’d want to move really close to me in bed and hold me and he’d be sound asleep in about one minute.”

  “Some of the guys I’ve been with should stick to cuddling anyway. I’m starting to like this guy more all the time.”

  “It was great before we got kids. We made love all the time. Over the past year, a lot of nights, Martin would doze off in his chair and I’d take the dog for a while last year after I out for a run in the neighborhood just to work off some steam. I mean, a lot of the time it was nine o’clock and Martin’s lying, there sawing logs.”

  “Liz, I think your problem is you’ve got too much energy. Read a book, that’s what I used to do.”

  “Hey, I’m a woman, too. Not to sound trite, but I’ve got needs too, okay? If I’ve got to force the guy to make love to me every night, it doesn’t do a lot for my sense of self-worth, either, know what I mean? I mean, what’s the matter with me? I think I still look pretty damn good for having kids. I’d sleep with me.” Now Liz was smiling too.

  “I’d sleep with you, too,” said Stephanie. And then they both laughed hysterically, getting looks from everyone.

  “Look,” said Liz, “this isn’t about me getting enough sex. But take Todd, for example. Remember last year, the club was running the “buy six sessions, get six free” special on personal trainers? I was getting stale working out, so I wanted to do something a little different, and I signed up.”

  “Yes, I remember. I thought you signed up because Todd was going to be your personal trainer.”

  “I swear, not at all. In fact, when I signed up, Todd wasn’t even working here. You couldn’t pick your trainer anyway. The club assigned you one. Otherwise, everybody would’ve wanted to pick from only the three best ones, and the whole reason they did the promotion was to get work for the less popular trainers; you know, get them acquainted with some new customers.”

  “For now, I will believe you. Anyway, go on.”

  “So, I get a call from a guy—says he’s Todd—he’s just graduated from SMU with a degree in exercise physiology and he’s going to be my trainer, so we set up an appointment for my first session. I get to the club a half-hour early and I’m warming up and stretching and this guy comes over by me on the mats and starts stretching himself. He’s amazingly limber and he’s in awesome shape.”

  “And of course, it’s Todd.”

  “At first, I thought it could be him, but this guy was older, he certainly wasn’t just out of college. But after we both stretched, neither of us talking, we ended up standing over by the sports desk where we’d agreed to meet and of course, it did turn out to be Todd.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The two of us got to know each other pretty well. I mean, you’re together a couple of times a week for an hour or more and you’re sweating and working together and talking.”

  “You had sex with Todd.”

  “No! I didn’t, even though I know half of the people that work up there thought we did.”

  “Okay, again, so what’s the point?”

  “Well, after about the tenth session, we knew each other pretty well. I had already told Todd I wasn’t going to be taking any more personal training sessions because it was just too expensive, and I didn’t really need a personal trainer, year-round anyway. And he started telling me how great I looked. He went back to that first morning when he had seen me warming up on the mats. He described in detail the thoughts that were going through his head, what he’d like to do with me, how he wanted to make love to me, what he thought would make me feel good. At the time, I was, first of all, embarrassed, and then I was so turned on I couldn’t hardly do anything the rest of the day. I almost got in a wreck over on Post Oak, because I was daydreaming about what he would do to me if we were together.”

  “Oh, this is good.” Stephanie was leaning forward now, speaking in soft tones. “So, what did he say he wanted to do to you?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, like I’m going to tell you that. I’ll tell you one thing though—he said he’d love to spend a whole day with me just making love. At first, I was embarrassed even thinking about it, but you know, after I thought about it for a while, it made me mad. I can’t get my husband to even do it with me, and here’s this hot-looking, young guy that wants to sneak off with me for the whole day. I’m sorry, but that’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. We spent most of the last two so-called personal training sessions talking dirty to each other. I didn’t care, for me the fantasy was worth it. In fact, after he was done telling me the stuff he wanted to do to me, I started telling him the stuff I was going to do to him.”