Reprieve

by James Han Mattson

  “Guys like us?” Leonard said, feeling warm.

  “Let me ask you something,” John said.

  “Sure,” Leonard said, smiling.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “My parents?” he said. “Sure. Mom’s dead, Dad’s retired, but in a past life, Dad was a foreman, and my mom helped out at her church. Mostly, though, she just raised me and my brother.”

  “And look at you now,” John said, leaning back.

  “What’s that?” Leonard said, looking down at his glass.

  “Look at you now,” John repeated.

  “I mean, I’m not successful like you or anything, but I’m okay.”

  “Okay?” John said. “You run one of the most well-known hotels in this town! All their profits? That’s your doing. Without you, they’d sink. Why do you think I chose to partner with the Claymont?” He paused, licked his lips. “Reputation, Leonard. It matters. And your place has a stellar one.”

  “I guess,” Leonard said. “If you put it that way, we do okay.”

  “You’re too modest. You think I got where I am by being modest? You do more than okay. You outshine. Remember that.”

  Leonard said nothing. It was strange, having such a successful man talk about his success, as if Leonard’s managerial skills had ever gotten him anything but talkings-to from Corporate. You need to motivate your staff better, they said. You need to be innovative with your advertising, they said. The breakfast is free, but food cost is real; you need to keep tabs on this, they said.

  “What I’m saying, Leonard,” John said, “is that your parents did a good job. They split duties very simply: a breadwinner and a child-rearer.”

  “Is this political?” Leonard said, looking back at C-SPAN. Hillary Clinton was talking about the death of her father, blinking hard. “Like the split duties? Does that have to do with politics? I’ll be honest. I don’t pay much attention. I should, though. I know.”

  John shook his head. “There’s a natural order to everything,” he said. “And that woman, up there in her pink blouse, well, it seems to be her mission to dismantle that order, you know?”

  “Hillary Clinton?” Leonard said. “But she’s just the First Lady.”

  “Exactly,” John said. He breathed out. “Just is the key word there. But look, I could go on. I don’t mean to. All I’m saying is that you turned out pretty good. You’ve got your parents to thank for that.”

  Leonard shrugged. “They were okay,” he said, sipping. “Just normal. Average.”

  John smiled. “You kidding? You and your family, that solid unit, your foreman dad, your churchgoing mother, you’re what makes everything great, you know that? You’re what makes this country run.”

  “Well, if you insist,” Leonard said, grinning, lifting his glass.

  Before this meeting, Leonard had coached himself in front of the mirror, had stared at himself while practicing his lines. “I have fifteen years’ experience in the hotel industry,” he told his reflection. “I know I can turn a major profit if given a chance. It’s a dream of mine to have my own chain of hotels. If you helped me out, believe me, I wouldn’t let you down.” At the “dream of mine” part, his left cheek twitched. He practiced again. Another twitch. He performed in front of Mary, asked if she noticed the twitch.

  “It always happens when I say ‘dream.’ Maybe I should say a different word?”

  “Why would it twitch because of a word?” she said.

  “It’s always been my goal to own a—”

  “Nope. It twitched again.”

  “Dammit.”

  “This is clearly a sign,” Mary said.

  “I could say ‘ambition.’ I’ll try that out.”

  At Pete’s, however, he found it difficult to insert himself this way into the conversation. He’d never really asked for favors from anyone, and while John seemed amenable to nearly everything Leonard said (especially, it seemed, to the most mundane things), he feared that bringing their friendship to this other level, this professional level, might sour John, might make him less likely to sit and chat. Surely tons of people asked him for things: he couldn’t be bothered with yet another leech, right? Leonard needed to be different, gain John’s trust before suggesting any sort of business partnership.

  Time passed, however, and Leonard’s apprehension didn’t dissipate. In fact, as the weather cooled, then froze, then thawed, he forgot completely about his initial intent, the combination of alcohol and ardor and validation materializing into something strong and pleasant and pulsing and utterly, remarkably sufficient. Instead of working on his business proposal, he began watching the news, reading articles about the Clintons, finding faults, pointing fingers, and soon, as spring pollen speckled the air and closed his sinuses, he found himself aligning with his new friend, who seethingly described the first couple as “the Great American Disgrace.”

  “She’s power-hungry,” John told Leonard one evening. “And she mocks women who aren’t. She’s so full of hate for people like me, people like you, the average dude just trying to make a living. We need to watch out,” he said. “If we don’t, she’ll weasel her way into the presidency.”

  “I agree,” Leonard said.

  John continued on, telling Leonard all the crooked things he’d heard about her, about her misuse of travel funds, her shady land deals, her insistence on having a stake in lawmaking, how she’d strong-armed her husband into putting her on a task force for health care, how even as a simple woman figurehead, a woman whom nobody had voted for, she’d slithered her way into White House politics.

  “But I could go on,” John said. He had a habit of saying this every time he talked about the First Lady. “And in the end, it doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s you, and people like you, who matter.” He leaned back, smiled. From above, Three Dog Night belted “Mama Told Me (Not to Come).” “Great song,” he said, rapping his thumb and forefinger against the wood. “Simpler times, right?”

  At home, Leonard found himself insecure and confused. Talking to Mary directly after talking to John was muddy and disorienting. One the one hand, he loved her. He adored her. He smiled every time she smiled. He lived for her happiness. On the other hand, however, she often embodied the things that John (and now he) purported to loathe. When he spoke to her about politics, which was seldom, she sided with the Clintons, especially Hillary, saying that she was proud to have a strong woman in office, wasn’t he?

  “But don’t you think she’s going a little too far?” Leonard said.

  “Too far?” Mary said. “What does that even mean?”

  About a year and a half into their relationship, she brought up the idea of starting her own business. Once her mother wasn’t an issue, she said, she could take out a loan, rent out that empty space on Eleventh Avenue, turn it into a health-food store.

  “I might not even need a loan,” she said. “Since I’m an only child, I’m pretty sure I’m getting everything.”

  Leonard’s head instantly went hot. He assumed that she’d suggested this because his enterprise seemed forever locked up in endless whiskey meetings with John Forrester. He assumed that she was taking the reins, so to speak, was trying to show him up.

  “What about kids?” he said. “Who’ll take care of them?”

  They were once again in the kitchen. She was once again cooking. This seemed to be the context for all of their interactions. At first he’d liked it—her food, while healthy and full of ingredients he couldn’t pronounce, was, for the most part, delicious, and since dating her, he’d happily witnessed his waist size decrease. But now, watching her stir, shake, cut, sprinkle, he saw this cooking for what it was: an exercise in control. He didn’t like vegetarian food. He’d never liked vegetarian food. But look, there she was, dictating not only what they ate, but how they ate. And now she was going to start her own business? Was he even relevant anymore?

  “Kids?” she said, side-eyeing him as she tasted her broth. “What’s that all about?”

&nbs
p; “Simple question,” he said.

  “Leonard, we don’t have kids.”

  “And that means we’ll never have kids?” he said. “Is that your decree?”

  She turned around, glared. “What’s gotten into you?”

  He didn’t respond, just stared back at her.

  “We haven’t had this conversation,” she said, turning back to the stove. “You can’t just assume without having the conversation.”

  “Okay,” Leonard said. “Let’s say we have the conversation. Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that we decide to have a kid. Don’t you agree that it’s best that the child’s mother is there for him?”

  “Him?” she said. “Really?”

  “Well, don’t you?”

  “In this scenario, I’m raising this kid,” she said, her voice even. “In this scenario, I’m the one changing the diapers, feeding, putting to bed, bathing, all that. In this scenario, you have a career, is that it?”

  “That’s not an unusual scenario.”

  “And in this scenario, you have your own hotel, or chain of hotels?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “But that’s the thing!” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. “You’ve had months now to get on with this thing. Months to ask John Forrester for whatever you were going to ask him for.”

  “I’m cultivating a relationship,” he said.

  “Bullshit. You’re going out drinking. That’s it.” She pursed her lips, shook her head.

  “I just asked a simple question,” he said.

  “You’re asking who’d take care of an imaginary child because I deigned to suggest that I’d develop a new career. That’s what happened here. It wasn’t a simple question.” She paused. “This is John Forrester getting to you,” she said.

  “He has nothing to do with this.”

  “Please. Everyone knows he’s a raging sexist.”

  “They do, huh?” Leonard said, smirking. “Everyone.”

  “People talk. When there’s someone like that in town, people talk.”

  “I see,” Leonard said.

  “The way he staffs his haunt. The way he only deals with male vendors. It’s not a secret. I just never thought you’d give in to that shit. But now?”

  “You’re way off track.”

  “Well,” she said, stirring brusquely. “Maybe you should lay off those meetings for a while, huh?”

  “Oh really,” he said.

  “Yeah. I told you. That man’s poison.”

  “So you’re telling me, right now, what I should do with my life. You’re telling me who I should have as friends.”

  She sighed. “Jesus,” she said.

  “You know,” he said, “I’m really not that hungry. I think I’m gonna go out.”

  “Are you serious?” She turned toward him, folded her arms across her chest. “I told you about this dinner, like, weeks ago. I told you I was gonna try—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You told me. You never asked me. But whatever. I don’t have an appetite. I’m going out.”

  “Fine,” she said, opening a cupboard, closing it. “Fine.”

  “Don’t wait up,” he said. He took his beer, walked to the front door, and slammed it behind him.

  From then on, their relationship ruptured, bled, flattened. Week after week after week Leonard came home stinking of Pete’s, and on these evenings, he slept on the couch, too wound up to face Mary’s distance. He hated her detachment—her silent, downturned face, the way she turned every time he entered the room—and he’d almost, on a few occasions, caved and apologized, vowing he wouldn’t see John again if that’s what she wanted. Every time he came close, however, he caught her perusing a stack of bank papers, or a book on entrepreneurship, or a health-food pamphlet, and he’d fill with a rage so intense that he’d need to leave the room.

  Finally, one day in June, two years into their relationship, she told him that she was moving in with her mother. She had a spare bedroom, she said. It’d be easier that way. Take care of yourself, okay Leonard? she said. Maybe we can be friends one day.

  Leonard didn’t respond.

  When she left, when she was physically gone from his apartment, he found he couldn’t bear the cloudy, suffocating absence that filled every room. He’d never experienced such an abrupt halving before, and it demanded so much from him mentally, emotionally, and physically (memories everywhere, future-imaginings everywhere) that for a few days after the breakup, he slept in his office at the Claymont.

  At Pete’s, Leonard confided in John. He said, “She’s gone.”

  John said, “Man, I’m sorry. That’s tough. Next round’s on me. Let’s get you nice and hammered.”

  They drank while Leonard talked about Mary—her pretentiousness, her control issues, her indecisiveness—and John intermittently broke in, offered generic words or support, told Leonard about the only woman he’d ever loved, a woman who’d started the Quigley House with him, a beautiful blue-eyed siren named Charity.

  “You could probably say that the Quigley House is around because of her,” he said, grinning. “She encouraged me from the beginning. She supported me. But then the support just stopped. I said I wanted to do full-contact, and she became indignant and self-righteous. So that was that.” He shot his entire whiskey in one gulp, shivered, exhaled. His eyes, glassy and warm, settled on Leonard’s and Leonard felt momentarily safe. “Sometimes,” John said, “women don’t understand the expansiveness of men’s ambition, you understand? They’re limited in their own, so don’t understand that men know no bounds. It can cause massive destruction, this ambition, but it’s ultimately what propels society forward. A good woman knows this. A good woman steps back, lets us do our work.” He smiled.

  “So now,” Leonard said, “you don’t date. Not at all?”

  “Oh. I have outlets. Or rather: had. Not so much anymore. Busy, busy, busy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leonard,” John said, leaning forward. “Have you ever been abroad?”

  “Like overseas? No.”

  “There are other worlds,” John said. “Places that understand men. Places that understand the unique needs of American men.”

  “What places?”

  “I used to go to Thailand twice a year. It’s magic. You can have whatever you want whenever you want.”

  “Thailand?”

  “It’s a place to reenergize,” John said. “Lose yourself. It’s wonderful.”

  “Are you talking about the sex-tourism stuff?”

  “Oh, it’s more than that, Leonard,” John said, looking at the table. “It’s the people. It’s the respect. It’s the food. It’s the culture. It’s the foreignness. It’s all intoxicating.”

  “You’re not afraid of AIDS?”

  “Don’t be naïve,” John said, frowning.

  “And you don’t go anymore?”

  “No, unfortunately. Like I said: busy.” He paused. “But Leonard, you should go. You should definitely . . . do you want to? I have contacts. I can get you deals. I’d be happy to arrange it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Leonard. Let me do something for you. Let me arrange this trip for you. You have some vacation days built up, I’m sure. And everything there is so cheap. So what do you say? I’ll give you some general information—where to go, what to see—and I guarantee when you get back you’ll feel like a new guy. You’ll feel amazing.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Let me give you my travel agent’s number, okay? You just tell him you know me, and he’ll set you all up, find you the best flights. It’ll be good. I promise, you’ll have a terrific time.”

  “Well,” Leonard said.

  “I’ll give you something for the plane ride, two pills and you’re zonked. Seriously. This’ll be good.”

  “Well.”

  “I’m going to call my agent tomorrow, tell him to be expecting a ring from you. I’ll set things up, call you at work with the details.�
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  “Can I think about it for a bit?”

  “Sure,” John said. “You have till tomorrow.”

  Leonard stewed. At the Claymont the next day, he thought about the one vacation he’d taken with Mary, a week in San Francisco. She’d never been there, she’d told him—could he believe that? A travel writer who’d never been to the Golden Gate Bridge. It seemed preposterous. So they’d gone, and it’d been January—damp, windy, cloudy—and the boutique hotel that’d promised “ultimate relaxation and pampering” had experienced electrical issues, making their room oscillate between hot and cold. Still, their laughter during this week was generous and easy, and at night, despite the damp, they clung to each other—clawing, scratching, thrusting—until they both fell swiftly asleep.

  On one of their last evenings in the Bay Area, they dressed up (which, for Leonard, meant wearing a shirt with buttons and pants that weren’t jeans), took a cab to Sausalito, and had dinner by the ocean at a restaurant called Eventide. At the table, candlelight caressed Mary’s face, chiming her eyes, relaxing her cheeks, and as he looked at her, a spongy pressure built in his chest, a velvety-soft constriction that crept up toward his neck and rested at the bottom of his throat. It wasn’t that she looked beautiful—she did, but she often did, lighting only amplified it—but there, in that moment, she looked utterly taken, utterly swept, utterly his. Every time she looked at him, her face slackened: her eyes retreated to half-sleepiness, her forehead smoothed, her cheeks, flush with wine, glowed, anticipatory. She was in love, he could tell. And as the sky dimmed, the gray-white waves changing from violent outbursts to mere background noise, as they chewed their seafood, drank their wine, smiled coyly at each other, he thought how strange it was that true happiness could arise from the dreariest of circumstances, that a simple look, a tiny flicker of the eyes, a momentary vision of love, could erase any overly complex environment, could simplify a setting so completely that the world itself could dissolve into one remarkably enormous hoax, flattening and funneling around a singular entity: this person who genuinely, authentically wanted to be a part of your life.

  After dinner, though it was cold and drizzly and dark, they walked outside by the ocean. At times, they held hands, but mostly they just walked side by side, listening to the smashing of water against land. At a bench, they sat, Leonard wrapping his coat around Mary’s shoulders. To their right, yellow lights of houses rose against a steep cliff. Mary looked out at them, then out at the black water. She hugged Leonard’s coat to her shoulders.