New Title 1 (29 page)

Bach, Richard.
Biplane
. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Braly, Malcolm.
False Starts
. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1971.

Dunlop, Richard.
Doctors of the American Frontier
. New York: Doubleday, 1965.

Dwelle, Jessie Merrill.
Iowa, Beautiful Land: A History of Iowa
. Mason City: Klipto Loose Leaf Co., 1954.

Earley, Pete.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison
. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.

Jakle, John A., Robert W. Bastian, and Douglas K. Meyer.
Common Houses in America's Small Towns: The Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi Valley
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Jones, Edward R.
Hacksaw
. New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1988.

Kessler, Ronald.
Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Spy Agency
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Kessler, Ronald.
FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Quillen, Jim.
Alcatraz from Inside: The Hard Years: 1942-1952
. San Francisco: Golden Gate National Park Association, 1991.

Schwieder, Dorothy, Thomas Morain and Lynn Nielson.
Iowa: Past to Present: The People and the Prairie
. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989.

Silverstein, Alvin and Virginia B.
Rats and Mice
. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1974.

A good face is important, sure, as are good breasts, nice ankles and wrists, and a tight bottom. Not to mention good breath and not wearing anything flashy or trashy. But you also have to be able to talk to them. A lot of guys forget that. Because, frankly, a lot of guys just aren't as sensitive as Bill Avery. You have to be able to talk to them and they have to be able to talk to you. Especially when your life takes a terrible turn all of a sudden. If you can't talk to the girl you're seeing on the side, you may as well just pay for it and get yourself a hooker…

Today, Bill needs to talk. God, how Bill needs to talk.

The place for the conversation is Tiffany's bed in her apartment in the Windward Hills apartment complex. To Bill, who lives in a very nice new Tudor out in a very pricey new development, this place is sort of pathetic-toilets that won't flush the first time; water stains on the dining room walls; and not a single new car in the parking lot. But he's magnanimous about it. Tiffany is a small-town girl from Oskaloosa who came to Cedar Rapids and went to business school and then went to work for the law firm where Bill is about to become a full partner. He can identify with Tiffany because he came from the west side and went to all the wrong schools and instead of a degree from Yale or Princeton, which the senior partners always discuss proudly, he ended up at the U of Iowa. Nothing wrong with that, of course. A fine school. But still.

So they are in bed-this is after work and he's supposedly working late, that's the word he gave his wife anyway-and it's snowing in the dusk and in the apartment above them somebody is playing Nat "King" Cole Christmas songs and Bill Avery feels very, very sad. So sad, in fact, that he wasn't all that good in the sack tonight.

For which he apologizes for the tenth time.

"Oh, gosh, Bill, I don't expect a stud service."

"But I came and you didn't."

"Well, I remember a night when I came and you didn't."

"You do?"

"Yes. One night when you were drunk."

"Oh."

"So let's just say we're even."

"Really?"

"Sure," she says. "But you really want to talk about your brother, don't you?"

"My brother?"

"Sure. Are you surprised I remembered he was getting out?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he is. The Governor wanted to let a bunch of model prisoners out right before the year 2000. Good public relations and all that bullshit."

"You heard from him then?"

"No. But I can feel him here. You know that feeling? How you can feel somebody in the same town?"

"Oh, sure." She kisses him. She has warm, silken flesh. She is sweet in every sense.

"Who's really pissed is my wife."

"Well, gee, he served his time. And it was just a robbery. Nothing violent, I mean. He served his time and she should give him another chance."

"That's the bad part of marrying into a good family, I suppose."

"What is?"

"Oh, you have to be so concerned what everybody thinks. Sharon's afraid everybody at the firm and all her friends at the country club will find out that I have a younger brother who just got out of prison. That I have a younger brother who's been stealing stuff all his life."

"Oh, this wasn't the first time he stole stuff?"

"No, just the first time he went to prison."

"Oh."

"Kind of a career criminal, then, huh?" she says.

"No, not a career criminal. He just-takes stuff. I mean, it's not like armed robbery or anything." He thinks back. "When we were in grade school, he took twenty dollars from the desk drawer of this teacher. And when we were in high school, he stole a hundred dollars from this cash box at a school dance. And then a year later, he took a couple of real expensive watches from gym lockers at school." He sighed. "Then he took that necklace at Mrs. Parker's. And that's the one that put him in jail."

She holds him. Tightly. "God, you've had to go through so much with him. I mean, both your folks dying when you were only seventeen and you having to raise him and all. I just hope he appreciates it enough to stay out of trouble this time."

He nods. "God, so do I."

"I had a cousin who went to prison once."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh. He worked in a bank and embezzled. Over in Rock Island. It was funny."

"What was?"

"Oh, he was this real straight-arrow when he was in Iowa but as soon as he started living on the other side of the Mississippi-he changed; changed completely. That's when he embezzled, when he moved, I mean."

He smiles. "He just moved across the Mississippi and he changed?"

"I know it sounds weird but that's just what happened. Honest."

"You're nuts, you know that?"

She kisses him again. "Comes from not being very well educated." And laughs. She's much smarter than she seems to realize; and it always makes him feel bad for her, how she's always putting herself down all the time. She and Glen have the education thing in common. At least she went through high school and business college. Glen never even got through high school.

Suddenly, he feels claustrophobic. They're tangled up in covers, their body heat is searing him. He needs cool air. He needs to be alone. He disentangles himself and walks over to the window and looks down at the parking lot. All the clerks pulling in now, their cars heavy with snow on their roofs and trunks and hoods, big lumbering white bears in the cold Midwestern snow-blown darkness. That's who lives here, clerks. Shopping center folks. When Bill was growing up on the west side-God, was it really thirty years ago now?-wearing a tie to work was a big deal. You wore a tie to work you were somebody special. Today, you wear a tie to work it doesn't mean anything. Just ask of the clerks.

The lot is filling up. People are slipping cardboard windshield screens under the wipers. The swirling snow is getting heavy in the burning amber glow of the parking lot lights. All the clerks are hurrying to get inside. He isn't being very nice, thinking of them as clerks.

"You thinking about Glen?"

"Yeah."

"You nervous about seeing him?'

"Yeah."

"He loves you. Remember when you let me read those letters of his from prison that time? He really looks up to you."

"Yeah, he does, I guess."

"Talking about how your Dad would be so proud of you and all. God, I was really crying when I read that, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Maybe Sharon would like him if she gave him a chance." That always surprises him, the way Tiffany talks about Sharon as if she's a good friend they have in common.

"Not Sharon." That's the funny thing. He would have been much better off marrying somebody like Tiffany. Farm girl. No pretensions. Sweet. But what did marrying a Tiffany prove? Anybody could go out and marry himself a Tiffany. But marrying a Sharon…marrying a Sharon meant getting accepted into the best law firm in the city; marrying a Sharon meant inheriting a substantial amount of money and property when her father died; marrying a Sharon meant that most people at the club feared you a little. And he likes that. He doesn't exploit it-well not often, anyway-but he likes it, a west side boy like himself watching these major players pay him a bit of fearful deference. You don't get those kinds of benefits when you marry a Tiffany, no matter how sweet-natured she is.

He looks at his watch. "Well, I'd better be going."

"Oh, God."

"What?"

"Just the thought of you going." She holds her thin white arms out to him, entreating, the way one of his own little daughters would. He finds the gesture profoundly fetching, and oddly moving. She really wants him. Sharon and he are long shut of wanting each other; long shut.

They spend their last minutes just holding each other in the perfume-smell of her, the tenderness of her, that odd fetching little laugh of hers. At moments like these, he can disappear inside her, just vanish utterly, no will or ego or memory of his own, and tonight he needs badly to vanish.

2

It is an alien planet he finds waiting for him. The snow is coming down harder than ever. In the streets giant yellow creatures with wild burning amber eyes scrape the snow. Growling trucks drop sifting sand. Here and there cars are stuck, obstinate little animals trying to fight their way out of the grip of huge snow drifts they skidded into. There is beauty, too, of course, the moth-like way the large damp snowflakes flutter around the streetlights; the occasional pair of lovers, walking hand in hand in beatific harmony down the dark and snowy streets, their long scarves trailing behind them with perfect grace.