As Luck Would Have It (18 page)

If you are now thinking that I was disappointed or somehow offended by this turn of events, then by all means, please think again.  The reality that there was to be no structural reorganization could be viewed as nothing short of a huge victory.  I was now free to return to the level of work that I had grown accustomed to, knowing full well that things were unlikely to change, or even be contemplate
d for a very long time, if ever.

If you are thinking that I should have felt guilty because Tim looked bad due to my less than impressive proposal, then you should rethink that one as well.  My short circuiting Tim was done in complete self defense, and I hereby disclaim responsibility for any embarrassment he may have suffered or any reprimands he may have received.  He, as the Regional Vice President, not me as the lowly Account Manager should be in the better position to judge the relative value of a proposal, to appraise its potential effectiveness and gauge the response he is likely to receive following its presentation.  If our jobs had been reversed, something no less inexplicable
then
what actually transpired, I'd have read the proposal and promptly tossed it in the trash, that is after chastising him for its creation in the first place.

I put my feet up on the desk and relaxed for the first time in
weeks, taking in all that had happened in the previous days; first with Tim and my now defunct reengineering plan, then with the sadness that surrounded Mrs. Klein's sudden passing.  In the end it would all be good, I reasoned.  The job would likely breeze by, possibly right up until I finally decided to retire.  And as for Edna, she had lived a long and meaningful life, had provided comfort and support to Joseph and the rest of the family, and as I had recently learned, gone beyond anything I had known about to help a fourteen
-
year
-
old orphan
boy
get by in a sometimes ugly world.  Joseph had said she felt like she had given up on me, but I didn't see it that way at all.  If she had done much less,
that would have been plenty for me. 

You shouldn't get the idea that our friendship was perfect or that we never had fights; we did on a number of occasions and a few big ones come to mind, though I refuse to dwell on them.  We had a lot of differences, some of which should be quite apparent to you by now and which I don't really need to describe in detail; you being an intelligent reader and able to make these observations and form judgments on your own.  I only ask that you remain objective and don't take sides, that is don't necessarily assume that I was the cause of the disagreements or that Joseph was always right, even if he usually was.
  You’ve seen that rather than argue over something probably meaningless in the first place,
I normally preferred to just walk away.

Neither of us could just walk away from the other one for some reason; it was as if our personalities and our feelings were too intertwined, not easily untangled or separated.  The paradox of all of this, and the point I am trying to make is this; the nature of our friendship itself left us no choice in that we could not treat or regard one another as we would anyone else.  Arguing with him was like arguing with yourself, and we all do that.  Why can't you dump that moron you are dating, Joseph?  Why can't you be more understanding, Clifford?

The thing we argued most about was relationships, usually his and the men he dated.   It was quite simple, and when reduced to its lowest common denominator it came down to the basic fact that I found most of them to be repellant.  Of course, m
y
pointing this out to Joseph did nothing to make them any less repulsive, or him any less defensive.  He accused me of being unfair and judgmental.  Unfair, no; judgmental, definitely.  Who better than me to keep a watchful eye on these assholes and try to keep them far enough away that they couldn't hurt him?  But he's an adult, right; why can’t you let him make up his own mind?  Because infatuation and desire are obscuring his objectivity; that’s why.  You can't control everything he does or fix every mistake he makes.  I can tell him what I think, can't I?  And he can tell you to go
screw
yourself.

That's exactly what he said to me when I asked him why he was still with that shithead John, the one he dated
after the San Francisco exile. 
I don't want to talk about John right now
, OK?
  Maybe he didn't want to talk about John just then, but I was in the mood for it and was just warming up.  He's
nasty
Joseph,
d
id I ever tell you I saw him in the bathroom one time blowing his nose in his t-shirt?  Oh boy, maybe I shouldn't have
said that,
he was sleeping with the guy after
.  Shut up and have another Scotch, Clifford.

He was mad as hell at me, but we made up an hour later.  That's the way it always went with us; if we hurt each other, they were superficial wounds, easily clean
s
ed and
healed
.  The pain inflicted was not deep and I apologized for what
I’d
said.  I want something better for you; a wonderful guy or whatever, but something extraordinary.  You are too good for him; you know I'm right.  Yes, Clifford you are always right.  This time I definitely was; not a week later there was a clip in the local section of the newspaper that I caught, but never showed Joseph.  He had already heard about it anyway, but I made sure to stuff the paper in the trash before he came over.  John had been arrested for shoplifting and when they searched him, they found a couple of grams worth of cocaine to add to the charges.  One less useless guy for us to argue about.

There were to be more to follow until Joseph finally settled in with his life partner, who would in fact turn out to be someone rather extraordinary.  But in the meantime, I had decided that I would at least try to be a bit more diplomatic when it came to the guys he found attractive and that I found insufferable.  How many times could I expect him to hear the words he's not good enough, before he threw a beer bottle in the direction of my head,
even
worse, refused to accept my pathetic apologies.  In truth, I doubted there really was anyone good enough for him, deserving enough either, but of course he had to keep trying and I had to keep a watch out, even if it meant perfecting the art of shutting up at the appropriate times.

The waiter finally
arrived
with the Cape Cod and the Scotch on the rocks I had ordered forever ago.  Just as I began to savor the whisky's smooth bite, I looked up and saw him walking through the door and in our general direction before he stopp
ed
dead in his tracks.  Joseph's face lit up like it was New Years at midnight when their eyes met.  Finally, the guy managed to unhinge himself from the tile floor and make it to the bar where he ordered a beer.  Oh my God, did you see him, Clifford?  Here we go again was what I was thinking, but keeping in mind what I said in the previous paragraph and how obviously captivated they both seemed, I refrained from saying anything negative.  Yeah, I saw him, who gives a shit?

They exchanged glances for several minutes, during which time Joseph put on an Oscar worthy performance in trying to look cool but not too disinterested.  I had reminded him in the past that in situations such as these, the look of de
speration was never a fashionable one
,
and it seemed that the advice might be paying off because the guy apparently had worked up enough nerve to come over and extend his hand to both of us and introduce himself.  I found a chair no one seemed to be in need of and offered to have him join us; did he like Scotch by any chance, they had a decent selection here.  He said yes, he did enjoy it now and then, but it was clear to me that it wasn't
fine whisky
he was interested in at the moment, but rather my best friend
,
who by now, judging by the look on his face, must have been either thanking someone for answering his prayers, or wondering when he would wake up from this dream and find himself in bed alone with a hard on, instead of in our favorite pub with a rather good looking guy and a hard on.

They started dating immediately
,
which normally would have caused me to work up a laundry list of reasons why he should spare himself the pain and degradation of another failed relationship and just break up then and there.  Very soon thereafter, it became quite obvious to me and everyone else that not only weren't they going to break up, but upon attempting to create such a list, with paper and pen handy, every item that I might have thought up to add would have to be subsequently scratched off, or erased if written in pencil, or deleted if done on a word processor, because objectively speaking, no matter how harsh or critical I was determined to be, I could come up with no good reasons for them not to be together.

I was quite happy with myself for having vetted Joseph's new boyfriend so carefully, because I didn't want him to feel hurt again, or to suffer the humiliation of having to fess up to dating a thief or a drug addict yet one more time.  I was willing to make any number of sacrifices for Joseph's happiness, and for the first time, I didn't have to pretend to like one of his boyfriends.  And Joseph seemed so happy; really, what else could I ask for?  Don't you think you're spending too much time together
,
I mean it's only been a
month;
shouldn't you be taking things slower?  That's what I might have said before, but I didn't this time.  I'm really glad you met him Joseph; he's a great guy, now would you quit babbling and
help look for
the damn corkscrew?  I took out four wine glasses from the china cabinet, but filled just two of them.  We clinked our glasses and toasted to our good luck;
Michelle and
Joseph's boyfriend would be over in a little while and we were going out to celebrate their one month anniversary.

*****

As I have previously related, things at the Needham household had appeared to be settling down a bit, but all that was about to change with my birthday approaching and the anniversary of the accident regrettably
tagging
along with it.  Already upset by my decision to share Thanksgiving dinner with the Kleins, Aunt Doreen's level of agitation and displeasure seemed to be increasing exponentially as the days passed into December.  My birthday fell on a Monday that year, and Mr. Casslemond had asked if I wanted to spend Sunday with the family; that they had made special plans for the occasion.  I was conflicted by having to make such a decision; on the one hand Doreen would be livid if I accepted the invitation, on the other, I had no desire to suffer with her commemorating the event, demoralizing as that would likely be.  Still, her opinions had a trace of legitimacy that gnawed at me when I would let them; should I be celebrating with the Casslemonds on
this particular day?  How difficult would it be for me if I were to stare at Mr. Casslemond and see the man trapped in the truck staring right back at me, silhouetted as I was by the flames consuming what had been my life?

I kept putting off making the decision until I finally decided to call Christian to see if he knew what the plans for Sunday were.  Better than anyone, he would understand the difficult choice I needed to make, an
d
if there was any lack of objectivity on his part given the familial allegiance
s
involved, it would be more than compensated for by my respect for him as a friend and for his reasoned opinions.  He wasn't supposed to say anything, but his grandfather had managed four blue line seats to the Blackhawk's matinee game against the Red Wings; Joseph would be invited to come along as well, then Charles and Christian's brother Carter would meet us downtown after the game for dinner at Giordano's, which Christian claimed had the best Chicago style pizza in the entire world, even the entire universe if in fact there was pizza on other planets, which wasn't all that hard
for me
to imagine.  Yes, Christian, you weren't supposed to say anything, but now that you spilled your guts with the incredible news, the clarity of the decision I was being asked to make was brought into considerably better focus; that is to say either go to the hockey game with my two best friends, then gorge myself on thick crust pizza, or go wherever it was that Aunt Doreen and Uncle Jack decided on and endure her constant criticisms and their frequent
bickering.  I asked Christian to find out what time I needed to be ready for them to pick me up on Sunday, and then ran upstairs to my room to dig out the Red Wings jersey my parents bought for me when we visited with my cousins in Dearborn two summers earlier.

I think it would be fair to say that by this point, defiance was becoming less of a problem for me.  Though arguably not my most attractive quality,
m
y psychological endowment was not consistent with that of an angry youth; I was not good at being irate or incensed.  Detachment and disobedience were much preferred as far as I was concerned; arguing nearly always unproductive and pointless.  It seemed so much easier to just walk away and take pleasure in the knowledge that you left the other person standing there seething, with nobody but themselves to take it out on.

As we have seen, this defense mechanism, if we want to conveniently call it
that,
was not a strategy that Aunt Doreen utilized in any way, shape or form.  No, her way was that of a prize fighter whose tactic was to exhaust her opponent.  And with her arsenal of verbal weapons, she moved efficiently about the ring scoring points with numerous jabs, until she finally decided to go for the knockout punch. 
When I told her my plans for Sunday with the Casslemonds and Joseph, she turned red with anger, and then demanded an explanation of how I could be so insensitive and why on earth would I want to spend that day in particular with those people.  OK, if she wanted an explanation, here goes.  Who in their right mind would agree to spend their birthday with Doreen and her fat cousin Mildred, unless first, a gun was pointed to their head, and second, they were virtually certain that it was fully loaded?  Of course, you know based on what I just told you that I did not say anything like that at all.  Mr. Casslemond had been nice enough to offer us tickets to the hockey game, was the only explanation needed as far as I was concerned.