City Boy (32 page)

“You’re not. I know what taken advantage feels like. Yes I do.”

“I don’t think I can stand to have anybody else mad at me right now.”

“Hey, do I look mad? How often do I get to go off with a handsome stranger? Relax.” She turned her head to the side to breathe out smoke. The security light overhead turned her hair living pink. “I’m the part you don’t have to worry about.”

“You’re a nice girl.”

“Girl,” she said, shrugging, but she smiled and allowed him to take a step toward her, slide his arm around her bare shoulders, draw her up for a kiss. He tasted smoke and face powder and whatever perfume-smelling perfume she’d just applied. He was touched that she’d done that, primped for him.

Headlights swept over them, a car pulling in. They blinked but didn’t move apart. The car parked a few yards away. The man and woman from the canoe got out and took their time looking Jack over. They were dressed up for dinner. Jack had an impression of seersucker, white jackets, handbags.

“You take the cake, buddy,” the man said. “You are a genuine work of art.”

The wife said, “I rebuke you. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

She and her husband walked away. Susie stepped out of Jack’s flaccid embrace. “Do you know them?”

“Sort of.”

“This anything you want to talk about?”

“Not really.”

“Boy, you do need to get out of here.” She stepped on her cigarette and led him to the far end of the parking lot. Her car was a new-model undersized sedan. Susie unlocked his door. “Go ahead and put that seat all the way back. Still not much legroom.”

“I’ll manage.” Jack shoehorned himself in. Susie started the car, flipped the radio on. Country station.

“Unless you don’t want any tunes.”

“No, it’s fine.” The lodge slid across the rearview mirror and was
gone. The car’s headlights turned the dark road ghostly. The radio was on low, a friendly, twangy voice. He was driving away from Chloe and that bubble of blood growing inside her that might or might not be his child, a child that already felt lost to him. He turned to Susie. “You have any kids?”

“Two. My girl’s fifteen, my boy’s eleven.”

As he was wondering if he should ask about the children’s father, or fathers, she said, “It’s just us three. Their dad’s not around. And we’re glad he’s not. How about you?”

“What?”

“You have kids?”

“No.”

“Well if you ever do, try not to be a total dick to them.”

The road spun away beneath them. The small car, its darkness and motion and tiny electric dashboard voices, seemed like a place for telling secrets. But they were too far down in him. Instead he asked, “How far to Green Bay?”

“About an hour to the airport. That’s where the rentals are. Relax, enjoy the ride.”

“I’m sorry I’m not better company. More entertaining.”

“So far, honey, you’ve been good clean fun.”

He must have slept. His head rolled back. When he opened his eyes, he saw highway, traffic. “We’re almost there,” Susie told him. “I let you sleep, you looked like you needed it.”

“I guess.” For the first moment he hadn’t remembered where he was or why, and then once he did he tried to trace his way back to the one moment or event that had brought him here, but it was like a river with no true source. His head hurt, his eyes were having trouble sorting out the revolving lights and shadows the car’s speed produced. Chloe was an hour away now. Child in a pink womb room.

There was a sign for the airport. Susie slowed to take the exit. She said, “Are you a spiritual person?”

“Spiritual?”

“I don’t mean church. More like forces in the universe more powerful than we are. Do you believe in those?”

“Yeah. Gravity.” His mouth was dry. He wondered if he was becoming ill.

“No, silly.” She reached over and slapped at his knee. It stung. “Things like coincidence, fate. We don’t know each other at all. But here we are, having this
moment
.”

“We are that.”

“And it’s not even sex. Just this connection. Even if we never see each other again. That’s what I mean. Spiritual. We have a spiritual connection now.”

“I’m glad I got to know you a little.”

“You wouldn’t guess I’m that kind of person, but I believe in past lives, tarot, ESP, all that stuff. Go on, tell me you think it’s all a bunch of hooey.”

He thought it was all a bunch of hooey. “No, it’s interesting.”

The airport’s fences and runway lights and tower came into view. “I’ve got this feeling about you, Mister Troubled Mind. Intuition. I’m very intuitive. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Nothing’s ever gonna be quite the same for you from now on.” She pulled up to the curb. “Because now you’re not the same.”

They kissed again over the gearshift, and then Jack got out and watched her taillights drop down a chute made of darkness.

All the rental-car counters were closed. The airport itself looked closed. At the baggage carousel, a single plaid suitcase circled on the belt. It hadn’t occurred to him to call ahead, or that small airports went to sleep after ten. There was a traveler’s aid office, locked, and in front of it a padded bench that offered the closest thing to comfort. Jack stretched out on it, hoping he’d be overlooked or left alone. He closed his eyes and entered a blue, floating space that had snatches of sleep in it. From time to time he sat up, thinking that no time had passed, and it would be black night and fluorescent glare and metal shadows forever.

At five
A.M.
a teenaged boy in a white shirt and tie unlocked the counter at Budget. Jack handed over his license and credit card and came away with car keys. He drove south on the interstate to Manitowoc and then Milwaukee, watching the sky lighten and the lake dip
in and out of view. By the time he reached the northern suburbs, it was fully light. He turned on the news radio for its hopped-up energy of talk and ads and sports, and so he came to his own street, his own block, and walked in his front door on what was to all appearances a normal Saturday morning.

He lay down in bed and cried for perhaps the second time in his adult life. He slept until close to noon, showered, ate, then hurried to get his packing done. Although he knew it was unlikely that Chloe would start for home immediately—she might have them dragging the lake, she might even stay for the final night of their reservation—he very much wanted to get away before she returned.

In the end he didn’t take much, just enough to let her know that he was gone. Clothes, some books, the computer. No one was around as he made trips back and forth to the rental car. Once everything was loaded he closed the front door and stepped out into the street. There was a smell of hot sun, and the rising vapors of exhaust. He had no idea where he was going. He looked up at that portion of skyline available to him, its rooftops and cross-hatched wires and billboards and receding hazy vistas and thought how easy it would be to drive off into the shouldering, anonymous traffic and disappear forever.

From Chloe’s journal

I
was sitting by myself at a party when the Drink came up to me. “I know you,” he said. “You’re a friend of what’s-his-name.”

“No I’m not.”

“Sure you are, cupcake. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?That guy who hangs with those other guys? I’m tight with all of them. I get around.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought he was a jerk. I waited for him to get the hint and go away. But the Drink leaned in close to peer into my face. “It won’t work.”

“What?”

“The princess act. Wearing kind of thin.”

I should have gotten up and left right then. Anybody else would have. But I just had to hear more bad news.

“May I sit down?” he asked, sitting down. “I think this should be a private conversation. Let’s not spread it around. But you’re kind of a sad case, Betty Lou.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Course it’s not. I’m funnin’ with you. Nobody else does that, do they? They all think you’re too stuck up.”

“I’m not stuck up. I’m not any kind of princess either.”

The Drink shook his head. “Now now. Better you don’t interrupt. I have so got you figured, girlie. What a scared little chickenshit you really are. How every time you go somewhere, your chicken heart thinks everybody’s watching you and waiting for you to screw up. Which they are, by the way. Everybody loves to see a hotshot, a snob, somebody who thinks they’re better than the average dirtbag, get taken down a peg or two. It makes them feel better about themselves. Levels the playing field. Democracy in action.”

“I don’t understand why they’re so mean.”

“Because they never get past your gorgeous puss. Not”—he gave me another stare down—“that I haven’t seen better. And honestly, I’m not sure how well you’re gonna hold up over time. It’s all in the cheek-bones.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“Relax, girlie. I’m your friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.” I hadn’t meant to say that. It just came out.

“Boo hoo.”

“I’m alone. I’m always alone.”

“Not anymore you aren’t,” said the Drink. He took my hand. “I’m your friend who’s got your number.”

The Drink and I started hanging out. He could be pretty good company. He had a wicked sense of humor. He knew how to push people’s buttons. Knew their weak spots. Good, mean fun. When you went out with the Drink, you could float above the surface of things, up where everything seemed amusing. And if we ever got a little carried away (damage inflicted on self or others), the Drink told me, Hey, what did it matter. Life was a big, honking joke, a game with crooked rules, and nothing was important enough to take seriously, least of all me.

Then one day I told the Drink I thought we were spending too much time together. People were starting to talk. We needed to cool it, give each other some space. He sulked. He could sulk like a champ. “What, all of a sudden you don’t need me around? I get the bum’s rush?”

“We just have to be more discreet.”

“You think you’re too good for me. Honey I’m here to tell you, you ain’t.”

“That’s not it.”

“Sure it is. You think you can flimflam the flimflam man? Little self-improvement campaign going on here? Wasted effort. Who else is going to put up with your weak shit except me?”

“We’ve had some good times,” I said. Which was more of my weak shit, and he knew it.

“Those good times are over,” he said, walking away. “But we ain’t over.”

Oh dearie me. What a sad story. Is there any such thing as sympathy for a drunk? Anything I could tell you? The skin-crawling sickness of the morning after, the hole you’ve dug for yourself just a little deeper. And since you’re never going to be able to climb out of it anyway, you might as well do some interior decorating. Hang a few curtains. Stock the fridge. This is where you live and who you are. Everything else is a lie.

And after a hard day of lying, of pretending you’re the person everyone thinks you are (Chloe the Wonder Daughter, or the Solid-Gold Bitch, or the Wife Who Won’t Behave), isn’t it a relief to come home and put your feet up? To sink back into the bottom of the hole, its familiar contours and seepage and smells, and close your eyes?

In the darkness the Drink says, “Whatever happens, no one’s ever going to love you like I do.”

And I don’t even have to speak the words to say them: “I know.”

O
n Wednesday afternoon Chloe left her office building a little after five-thirty and walked briskly down LaSalle to Wabash. She crossed the street and stood on the northeast corner to wait for a northbound bus. It was another day of heat funk, ozone action, glare burning on every glass and metal surface. That year it would stay hot long after people were tired of it, into a parched October. Grass in the parks crisped like shredded wheat. ComEd kept cranking juice to air conditioners and praying the grids stayed up. The lake was a blue mirage of coolness.

Chloe wore her lightest summer suit, the gray. She carried a black briefcase and a slim black handbag. She was part of the purposeful going-home crowd, everyone weary and irritated and trying not to show it. The bus arrived in its own wind of exhaust and grit. Chloe got on and walked halfway down the aisle, balancing, swaying slightly, until she found a seat. The bus left the downtown precincts and bumped its way north to Clark. Chloe got off at her stop and walked the three blocks to the apartment, and by now there was a lagging, dragging quality to her walk, as if the weight or the heat of the day had finally worn her down.

At dusk her bedroom light went on. The rest of the apartment stayed dark. Upstairs, Brezak’s shrouded windows began to glow. Just before the streetlights came on, a flock of dingy city birds, starlings, rose up chattering from someone’s backyard, like pepper thrown into the sky.

A little after ten the bedroom light went out.

Jack started the car and pulled away from his spot at the curb. It was the same rental car he’d acquired in Green Bay. No one here would recognize it. Chloe wouldn’t recognize it. He had spent the last three days following her as she came and went. He’d missed her return from Wisconsin. On one of his drive-bys their car wasn’t present; the next time it was. That disappointed him. He’d wanted to know the exact minute she walked in to find him gone.

On Monday morning (and Tuesday and Wednesday mornings), Jack waited at the Dunkin Donuts across from the bus stop for Chloe to appear, walking alone, the first sight of her face and small shoulders. At evening rush hour he circled the city block that contained her building, desperate to be there when she came out, gunning the engine, swearing death to anyone in his way. He cruised ahead of her bus, cut through alleys to position himself to spy on her. He identified those parking spaces which, come nighttime, afforded the best view of the apartment windows. If he was lucky enough to find one, he parked and shut off the engine and settled in, sometimes for hours. There were times when he thought that people passing, people who lived facing the street, were taking notice of him, and then he started the car and drove off. He traced different patterns through the side streets, always bringing him within view of the apartment. It was amazing how quickly you could get good at this sort of thing. Yo ho! He was a pro. A pirate of the intersections.