New Title 1 (30 page)

He keeps sliding around. He is not, in fact, an especially good driver and usually does the wrong thing in crisis situations. Such as slamming on the brakes when he's starting into a slide on an icy street. If he's not careful, he'll end up one of those cars buried in a snow drift.

He should go home. This is uppermost in his mind: should-go-home. He's been spending far too much time lately with Tiffany. But the way he goes home from her place, he always comes very near the neighborhood where he and Glen grew up. He usually resists the urge to drive past the old places, but tonight-God, of all nights, the roads being what they are-tonight, inexplicably, he can't resist.

Snow shrouds everything, lends beauty even where there is none, gives the rusting cars parked along the street an antique rather than junky look. The snow does the same for all the houses. During daylight hours, these places are scars of smashed windows and tilting front porches and falling down garages and neon APT. FOR RENT signs on weather-rotted front porch columns. But the snow softens all this for the eye, rounds all the edges, hides the cancer that daily devours wood and siding and paint and shingle and concrete. The snow even absorbs all the sounds that would normally be heard in this neighborhood-kids crying, couples arguing, mean hungry watchdogs barking-so that a curiously dignified silence befalls the streets and alleys.

Then he sees it. Little square box on the corner of 1st Street and 8th Avenue. Fuzzy neon glow of beer signs somewhat diminished in the snow. When you grew up in this neighborhood, this was the place you always dreamed of. The tavern where the really cool guys hung out. They had neat cars and neater women and they knew how to fight and how to play pool and Briney, the guy who owns the place, even gave them their beers on credit.

Even though Bill always wanted out of this neighborhood, Briney's tap was still a big deal for him. It was the place he bought his first legal beer. Drove back from Iowa City the night of his twenty-first birthday and went right to Briney's; and Briney, which he did for anybody who was celebrating a twenty-first birthday, Briney gave him a free pitcher of beer. You were somebody when Briney gave you that free pitcher of beer-somebody in the neighborhood anyway-and for all his success, Bill thinks back to his boyhood now, not with his usual resentment and distaste…but with true pleasure. Memory is a con-artist, of course, but for this moment he allows himself to be conned…he is twenty-one and on the hardscrabble streets again and inside Briney's everybody whispers about him. That kid's gonna make it; smarter'n a god damned whip; too bad his brother Glen didn't get any brains. Poor little guy's dumb as a post. Bill was one of the real stars of Briney's for a year or so back then, and he enjoyed it, he really did…

The cars in the lot all wear snow-skins. Their drunken drivers will have to spend several butt-freezing minutes scraping off their windshields. And then they'll wiggle and waggle home, having to be careful, you slide into a parked car or something with liquor on your breath and a cop makes you take one of those breath test deals…in this state you can kiss your license goodbye for two, three years, especially if you have some kind of prior…

Briney's: clack of pool balls, cries of country western jukebox, revolving Bud clocks in the gloom above the bar, smells of cigarettes, beer, whiskey, disinfectant, urine. He remembers a night when two guys got into it over pool and one kept banging the head of the other against the edge of the pool table until half the people in here thought he might be dead. What he notices most is the lack of young women: in the old days, so long ago now, it seems, and he's not yet forty, in the old days going to Briney's was as big a thing for the girls as it was the boys, and this meant the sexiest most stuck-up girls in the neighborhood, too. But not any more. The women are older now, sliding into middle-age, their bodies fighting the g-forces of the grave that make them so unrecognizable. In the old days, the girls in Briney's had the faces of poetry; now they have the faces of bad, flat prose.

Briney himself is behind the bar, washing glasses. He watches Bill walk from the front door to the bar. A few other people start watching, too.

"Hey, Briney, how's it going?" Bill says. He's a little nervous, which he resents. It should be Briney who is nervous about seeing him. It's Bill who drives the BMW, it's Bill who belongs to the country club, it's Bill who went boating last summer with the mayor. But there's an obstinacy to the people in Briney's. A guy like Chucky O'Day, he starts making these tire gizmos in his home workshop, and pretty soon he's got his own business, the bank begging to loan him money, a nice house out where the yuppies are building on the far west side…Chucky O'Day tools in here in his new Firebird convertible, and he's still one of the boys. The clothes maybe more expensive, he may not get in parking lot puking contests the way he did back then, but he's still Chucky, and they're always glad to see him, happy for his success. Bill, it's another matter. Bill, he was always a little stand-offish, anyway. Bill, he isn't one of them now-if he ever was.

Briney says, "If you're looking for your brother, he ain't been in yet."

"I just thought I might have a drink."

"Slummin' tonight, huh?"

A couple of guys along the bar, with long ears, they pick up on Briney's sarcasm and snicker like second-graders. For Bill, life will always be like the second grade playground, where he learned that he didn't fit. Too cool for the nerds; too nerdy for the cool ones. He doesn't fit here and, truth be told, he doesn't fit with Sharon's friends at the country club, either.

"You know I like this place, Briney," Bill says, the sickening note of pleading still in his voice. How many of these people have ever even sat in a BMW, let alone owned one?

"Yeah, that's why you and your country club pals always come around."

More snickers from the guys at the bar. "Blue Christmas" by Elvis comes on the jukebox.

"You have Black & White Scotch? How about a shot and a glass of beer."

Shot-and-a-beer. The bona fides in a place like this.

Briney goes to get his shot. Bill starts to look around. A few grudging Christmas decorations here and there in the gloom. He can hear Briney: why put all that bullshit up when you have to take it right back down again?

Then he sees her and at first he doesn't think it's her, it's so dark in here. Then he knows it's her and then he knows that Glen's going to be in here tonight for sure.

Briney sets his drink down and says, "You seen her, huh? Susan Cramer. Sittin' over there."

"Yeah."

"She got in here a little before you did." He smirks. "Anybody woulda told me Susan Cramer ever woulda been sittin' in my place, I woulda laughed. Susan Cramer. She was always hangin' around the nuns. Surprised she didn't end up a nun herself."

And it's true, back when they were at Catholic school, and everybody was doing drugs and sleeping with each other and getting into various kinds of trouble. Back then, little Susan Cramer, who stood maybe five-two and didn't weigh more than ninety pounds, and who was very pretty in a quiet, melancholy way, Susan Cramer was one of the few kids who didn't join in. Mass every day, good grades, always helping the nuns deliver food baskets to the poor and things like that, and then home to her parents who were much older and sick. Never went out much. But had this humongous crush on Glen ever since they were in grade school. She was one of the few people who believed in him, one of the few people who tried to turn him away from this thing he had about stealing things. Bill hasn't heard-or thought of her-in years.

"Maybe I'll go over and say hi."

Briney smirks again. "Yeah, and be sure and tell her about your BMW and that big-ass mansion of yours."

The long ears are out again, the men along the bar snickering. Bill should be the one in charge here. It's a terrible thing to admit to-and Americans especially hate admitting to it-but there really is a social pecking order. Successful guy like Bill comes in, the other men should be intimidated by him. But that sure isn't the way it's working out.

"It isn't a mansion," Bill says. Why does he always sound so desperate? He's that way around his partners at the law firm; a little bit sweaty all the time.

Briney says, "It'll do till the real thing comes along."

And gets another laugh.

3

He remembers that she always looked spooked, scared, like somebody was about to hit her or something. That's how she looks when she sees him walking toward the booth she's sitting in.

"Hi. Remember me?" he says.

She nods.

"All right if I sit down?"

She nods again. She isn't exactly pretty but there's a wounded quality to the eyes and mouth that give her a vulnerability that some men-including himself-find erotic in a strange way. A child-woman, he supposes, that's her appeal. She never knew how to dress and she still doesn't, a rumpled brown sweater and blue eye shadow and blonde hair. She still doesn't weigh any more than she did in high school. Ninety pounds max.

He sits his beer-and-a-shot down and then follows it, sitting in the booth across from her.

"I shouldn't be drinking this," she says, and tilts her head to her beer.

He smiles. "I won't call the police. I promise."

She doesn't smile. "We have a lot of alcoholism in my family."

"Oh."

"My Dad and both his brothers."

"I'm sorry."

"So I get scared. Every time I have a beer, I mean."

"You have many beers?"

"This is my first in maybe a year."

He doesn't want to laugh and hurt her feelings. She's so sincere and ardent about everything. Has to be careful around her. She seems so skittish. 'Well, if all you drink is a beer a year, I don't think you have much to worry about."

"I hope not."

"You know who I was thinking about the other day?"

"Who?"

"Sister Mary Philomena. Remember her?"

"Yes."

"I was remembering how she took a swing at Charlie O'Donnell one day and hit the wall instead. And broke her hand?" He laughs. "God, Charlie never got tired of telling that story."

"I liked her."

"I sort of did, too. But it was funny. Her breaking her hand and all."

"I suppose. But she was the one who helped me get into the convent."

"Wow, I didn't know that. You were in the convent?"

She nods. "Three years."

"And you, what, dropped out?"

"Uh-huh. I decided I didn't have a true vocation."

"Well, good think you didn't go all the way and take your vows and stuff, then."

"It was because I was writing Glen all the time. You know, your brother."

"Oh."

"That's why Mother Superior told me. Why I should drop out. Because of the letters."

"How did she know about the letters?"

"You have to tell them who you're writing."

"I see."

"She said that I was in love with him and that I should take it as a sign."

She'd followed Glen around since they were back in second grade. You saw Glen, Susan Cramer was never far behind.

"That I was in love with him, and that I didn't have a true vocation." Then, "But by the time I actually got back to town here, my Dad was real sick-he had throat cancer-and my Mom wasn't able to take care of him by herself, so I never really got to see Glen all that much. And then I started seeing this guy who lived next door. You remember Denny Walsh?"

"Sort of."

"Big comic book collector. That's a strange thing, you know, to say about somebody, I mean, when that's the first thing that comes to mind and all. But that was his life. He collected comic books. He's got this good job out at Rockwell but what he's really crazy about are his comic books. Anyway, I knew my Dad wanted to see me get married before he died, so when Denny asked me-I said yes." Then, "We got divorced a couple of months after my Dad died. The whole thing didn't last more than ten months. Denny caught me calling Glen one night and then I told him, I mean I should've been honest with him to begin with, told him that I was in love with Glen and that I probably would be in love with him the rest of my life. I know that sounds corny but that's the truth. And then he said what my Dad always said, that Glen was just a thief. And right after that, Glen got caught in that house, and they sent him to prison. You know how many letters I wrote him in prison?"

"How many?"

"I kept count. 162. 162 letters. One every three days. Can you imagine that? And I saw him twice a month on top of it."

"So now you're finally going to get together, you and Glen?"

"That's what I'm praying for. I pray for it every morning and every night. His last letter from prison, he wrote me that he loved me. He never said that before." She smiles and it is a sad and nervous smile. "I carry the letter right in my purse. Right with me all the time. You want to see it?"

"No, thanks. That's between you and Glen."

Something changes in her face, then. "There's just one thing I'd really like you to do for Glen."

"What's that?"

"Ask your wife to be nice to him when he comes to see his little nieces. He knows she hates him."

"She doesn't hate him," Bill says.

"Well, you know what I mean. A wealthy woman like that, she doesn't exactly like having an ex-convict for a brother-in-law." Then, "He loves you, Bill."

"I know. And I love him. Don't think I don't."

"That's why he went to prison for you."

For a moment, his heart stops. Literally. Terror seizes him. He can't believe what he's just heard. Assimilating, that's what he's doing. He's assimilating what she told him. Then-rage. Slams his fist hard on the table. "That's a goddamned lie!"

And even above the voices, even above the jukebox, even above the slamming of pool balls and the explosive flush of the toilet, even above all these things, they can hear his voice. And now they're looking at him, most of them, looking at him and wondering what he's so angry about. Who could be so angry with pathetic little Susan Cramer, she was a goddamned nun for c'rissake.