Bingo (15 page)

“No, I don’t. I didn’t take the bet, remember? You were eating a hot fudge sundae when you wanted to make it.”

“Oh.” She sounded so disappointed.

“Hey, want to meet me at Mojo’s for a hot fudge sundae?”

“Whoopee.” She hung up the phone. She’d put on her lipstick. Throw on her coat. Within five minutes she’d be around the corner at Mojo’s.

“Michelle, hold the fort. I’m meeting my mother. Be at Mojo’s if you want me.”

“I don’t want you,” she half snarled.

“No, but we might need you.” Roger beamed.

“Come on, Pewter.” She jumped into my arms. “You too, Lolly.”

I left the
Clarion
for Mojo’s with my little family. I even remembered to bring Mother the Orioles’ schedule we’d printed
up on heavy paper. Mom turned onto Frederick Road from the opposite direction. Lolly surged forward to greet her and Goodyear. I did too. My spirits were lifting.

I was happy that Mother got her date and I was happy to see her. When the rest of the world faded to black-and-white, Julia remained in Technicolor.

R
ay Leonard won the middleweight fight. Charles swooned in his column.

Michelle showed up for work in black Reeboks and jeans. Wisely, I said nothing.

Mother called three times asking me what to wear for her date tomorrow. On the third try she hung up the phone saying,” Why am I asking you? You don’t know anything about clothes, anyway.” As I was scrambling for copy to match Portia’s photographs, I agreed with her. Why were rich women in New York and Los Angeles spending a fortune to look like migrant workers? Obviously, I was ignorant about fashion. From the evidence I wanted to keep it that way.

John Hoffman read the wire stories on the Iran-Contra affair. Conservative though he was, he did not believe in public officials’ violating the law. If you can’t obey the law, then resign your post and work from the outside to change it. I knew his editorial would be a zinger because he was pounding on his IBM like a concert pianist.

Roger leafed through magazines for tidbits. The
Clarion
would stick pieces of information and funny stories in the odd spaces. Our layout, old-fashioned but quite beautiful, would mark these off with a graceful device, a thin black line with a slender ellipse in the middle of it.

“We ought to run an article on breast-feeding.” Roger held up the article so I could see the photos.

“No,” I replied.

“Why not?” Michelle wanted to know.

“Because breast-feeding is greatly overrated unless you’re over twenty-one.” I couldn’t resist.

Roger whooped.

Michelle blushed crimson.

John stopped flailing away at his typewriter and smiled at me. “At least we have that in common.”

I laughed. John, like so many men, probably entertained lesbian fantasies. He shivered with delight on those occasions when I’d say something outrageous. I myself didn’t think it was a big deal, but then I’ve never thought sex was anything worth getting exercised about. Live and let live.

My phone rang or I would have thought of something else to torment him. “Hello.”

“What’s so funny?” It was Aunt Wheeze and she could hear the laughter in the background.

“Nothing much. What can I do for you?”

“I ran into my sister. You know, the one who’s suffering her second childhood or senility—take your pick. You’d think she was the only person in the world to have a date, and, Nickie, it’s not like she’s going out with him by herself. She’s going to the movies with Ed Tutweiler Walters and various BonBons. Well, he only asked her so she wouldn’t feel left out. After all, he knows how close I am to my sister and he could see how she was feeling. He’s a very sensitive man. He knows all the lyrics to love songs and not just Cole Porter but country-and-western. He also studies religions. Like I said, he’s very sensitive. I suggested we go together—the more the merrier, you know, that’s my motto—and that sister of mine flew all over me like a wet hen. You have to do something with her and—”

I interrupted. “Aunt Wheezie, I’m at work and I’ve got a deadline. Why don’t I stop by about six and you can tell me everything?”

“I’m on the flower committee at church and we have a meeting then. Let me tell you why I called.”

At last.

She launched another verbal missile. “I’m sick and tired of Juts with her outlandish costumes and the hair. A woman her age should look dignified. I tell her but she goes out and buys more flaming-red lipstick. It goes up the cracks in her lip. Makes her look like an old bag. You don’t see me wearing that color, do you?”

“Can you come to the point?”

“Rude! You’re rude, crude, and unaffected.”

“I’ve got a deadline.”

“I’m driving over to the big shopping mall in Emmitsburg and if I don’t find what I want I’m going up to York.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You can’t tell me what to do or how to do it. My 1952 Chrysler runs better than any car in this town. And I’m only on the second one for parts. The third one sits in my garage brand-new and I start it every day like Pearlie told me. I can go anywhere. I can go to California in my car.”

“I thought you were afraid of earthquakes.”

“I am. The entire state of California will fall into the Pacific Ocean.”

“Don’t worry about it. The fish will reject it. There will always be a California.”

This stopped her for a moment. She recharged her batteries.” Well, I am going to the Emmitsburg Mall and I only called because I like someone to know where I am at all times. Just in case.”

“You called me because you want me to take you to the mall.”

“Would you?” Her voice dripped with honey.

“Yes.” I was resigned. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want her to die on the way to the mall. Think of the innocent people she’d kill along the way.

“I can be ready in an hour.”

“You can wait until Saturday. I have to work.”

“Oh, I forgot about that. What time?”

“Pick you up at ten.”

“Let’s take my car. It rides better than that Jeep. Besides which I don’t want to look like a field hand. Ladies don’t drive Jeeps.”

“We’ll see, Aunt Louise. Bye now.” I hung up. At least she respected my work.

“The last thing to die on your aunt Louise will be her mouth.” John’s shoulders started to heave up and down. He laughed hardest at his own cracks.

“This is a rare day of agreement for us, John.”

A pink glow on the Confederate statue turned to red, then mauve and finally purple. Sunset produces such a sadness in me. Deep down I wonder if I’ll live to see the sun come up again. I have never taken life for granted. Today, as the staff left, one by one, bundling up, for the temperature was falling again, I watched them cross the Square or walk around the corner. The changing light seemed to change them too. Their features became softer and as they walked away they reminded me of a tintype, of people frozen in time.

Daylight savings would be here in another week and then sunset would be pushed further and further back until June 21, a Midsummer’s Night, my favorite day of the year.

By nine I was in Jackson’s office. Pewter ran up and down his library shelves but she wasn’t destructive. Lolly worried her rawhide chew and Jackson worried me.

“You’ve got to think the way they think.”

“Jackson, I can’t think like a banker. I can’t sink that low.”

“Very funny. I prepared your forms and financial statement. We’ve done the best we can do.”

“What do you mean, exactly, when you say think like Foster Adams?”

“Don’t personalize it.”

“Okay, okay.”

“When a banker examines a loan application, he or she has a
checklist of items. They want the financial statements of the Clarion. They’ve got those so they can project income. They know that the circulation can be improved. But what they really think about is a worst-case scenario. What can they grab to support the debt if—”

“The
Clarion
’s been around since before the Revolutionary War. She’s never going under.”

“That’s not their viewpoint.” “Well, what the hell do they want to know?”

“First and foremost, how will they be repaid. Can the collateral cover the debt if there’s a fire sale.”

“A fire sale! I don’t like this, you know.” “You need to know what you’re up against.”

“Diz Rife. I think he’ll outmaneuver the Thurston Group in the twinkling of an eye.”

“We’ll get to Diz later. Let’s put ourselves in Foster Adams’s shoes. He wants to support your application.”

“He does?” I was happy.

“Yes, but he has to take it to Baltimore. He might need more collateral than you’ve got. He’s got to sell you and the
Clarion
to people who don’t even see small towns anymore. They fly, or drive on the Beltway.”

“Figures are figures whether they know us or whether they don’t.”

“Right. That’s why I’m providing you with this rundown. A bank will lend seventy-five to eighty percent of the current appraised value of property. You’re in good shape there because the
Clarion
is prime real estate in a prime spot and your farm’s good too. Where you run into difficulty is on the printing press. Usually a bank will lend fifty percent of book value on used equipment depending on the condition—”

I interrupted, which I rarely do. But I was excited. “Arnie Dow keeps that machine running. He loves that baby. It might as well be new.”

“I don’t doubt it, but Chesapeake and Potomac isn’t going to see it that way. That equipment is both so specialized and so old that the bank won’t lend you anything on it. Zero.”

“Zero?” I was aghast.

He nodded his curly head. “I don’t know if everything else we’ve got will cover it.”

“Jack, are you serious? They’ll not value the press at all? It’s a beauty, that press. I mean, we do papers the old way, the real way, with lead and grease and—”

“I know, but from their viewpoint there is a limited resale market. It’s worthless to them.”

“Goddammit, what do they know about newspapers?”

“They know the industry’s computerized now and that the
Clarion
could reduce its workforce by one third, easily one third, if it would go to cold type.”

“I don’t believe in putting people out of work just so you can have new machines.”

He kicked off his shoes. “I don’t either. I’m starting to agree with you about full employment versus constant technological replacement of people. I guess it’s the spinning-jenny argument all over again.” He sighed. “But there has to be a middle ground.”

“Societally, yes. Where the
Clarion
is concerned, no. I’d die before I’d fire Arnie and the guys in the back room. So there’s an easier way to print a paper. Is it more fun? Does it serve the community any better? What we’ve got is plenty good enough and as time goes by people can visit us the way they visit Williamsburg.”

“No doubt they will.” He took off my shoes and rubbed my feet. He sat on the sofa while I lay across him. “Have you any stocks or bonds or anything else of value you may have overlooked?”

“Pewter and Lolly.”

“Worth their weight in rubies.” He rubbed between my toes and on the ball of my foot. “Feel good?”

“Very relaxing.”

“There’s one other thing that the bank will examine. That’s
the integrity of the borrower. You’re blue chip there, honey.” He moved from my feet up my leg.

“What is there about massage that’s so wonderful?”

“Depends on who’s tickling your fancy.” He kneaded my calves. “Hard from riding. Are you going out Saturday?”

“If I get back from Emmitsburg in time, I think I’ll take a long, languid ride.”

“Hey, while you’re over there pick me up some polo shirts, the stone-washed kind.”

I pulled my leg away. “Buy them yourself. I’m not your wife.”

He laughed. “You could have been.”

“Surely you jest.” I put my leg back into his hands.

“No, I don’t. I bounced between you and Gene like a pinball.”

“This is historical revisionism on a par with Stalin erasing Trotsky’s name from the history books. You liked me, Jackson. You always liked me, but when Regina fully flowered, shall we say, you went wild. You wanted to hump your parts raw.”

“It wasn’t like that at all.”

“You were crazy about her. Well, who wouldn’t be? Raging lust, that’s how I remember you way back when.”

“You make me sound pretty superficial.”

“Weren’t you? I was. Isn’t that what being young is all about?”

He smiled and kept rubbing. “You weren’t as superficial as you make out and neither was I. You have to learn to forgive yourself for being ignorant. We were all terribly smart when we were in our twenties but we were ignorant.”

I knew what he meant. “Maybe so. But I look back on the young me and I am embarrassed, if not mortified, sometimes.”

“You make me feel young right now.” He began rubbing my thigh.

“Bull. A man thinks he’s only as old as the woman he’s sleeping with, and I’m not but three years younger than you.”

“Nick, do I ever get through to you? You keep me at arm’s
length. You do make me feel young. Why do you have to push me away when I say something like that? I have feelings. I’m not a block of wood, and contrary to what you and your women friends think, I’m in touch with my emotions and I’m willing to bet there are other men who are too.”