Straight Cut (2 page)

I carried my little black cloud of ennui into the house with me. Nothing had changed since my parents had moved deeper into the country a few years before. The three ground floor rooms and the enclosed porch remained exactly the same in every detail, except that I had wired an answering machine to the wall phone in the kitchen. Next to that on the butcher block counter was a fifth of George Dickel, either half empty or half full, depending on your state of mind. I had begun to associate these two articles together for some reason, perhaps because I had got very little use out of either for the past several months. There was a call on the answering machine when I came in from burying the dog, but I didn’t listen to it, nor did I fix a drink.

The kitchen clock let me know it was dinner time or thereabouts, so I went into a brief cooking flurry. I chopped up an eggplant, a bell pepper, a yellow squash, tomatoes, onion and garlic, and threw all of these things into a skillet with olive oil. While it simmered I made myself a glass of ice water and turned on the TV to catch a segment of the evening mayhem, which was much the same as usual. After the local news and the national news the dish was done. I spooned some onto a plate and tasted it. It was good, but I couldn’t eat it. I put the food into a plastic pot for the refrigerator and washed the plate and the skillet. It was still very early.

Some sitcom had come onto the tube. I turned it off and went on the porch, where I sat down in an armchair and switched on a light. From the reflection in the small window behind the stovepipe I could ascertain that I still resembled myself when last seen. The second volume of
Either Or
was lying on top of the bookcase near the chair and I picked it up and opened it to the place I’d stopped last. Kierkegaard on “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage.” I read this: “But the more freedom, the more complete the abandonment of devotion, and only he can be lavish of himself who fully possesses himself.”

I liked that. But what followed seemed incomprehensibly convoluted. I sat there for five or fifteen minutes watching the letters crawl around on the page, and finally closed my eyes. It occurred to me that if I drank the rest of the bourbon I’d probably be able to cry, but I didn’t get up for it. I hadn’t taken a drink since Lauren had left — well, two or three days later maybe — and though it was much like locking the barn once the horse had been stolen, I was still determined not to take one.

So I decided to get up and listen to the message, click, beep, hiss: “This is Kevin calling for Tracy. Give a call back as soon as you can.” He mentioned a New York number. There was a little pause. “It’s work,” he said, and there was another click and beep on the tape, signifying that he’d hung up. I shut off the machine and stood there with my finger on the button, thinking how eerie it was that he’d picked the perfect moment to call. Ordinarily I would have ignored it, or maybe I would have changed my number. But as it was …

I sat down on the stool beside the counter and dialed the phone. Kevin picked up on the third ring. At the sound of his voice the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, completely of their own accord. It had been a long time since we’d talked.

“Hello. Hello? Is anybody there?”

“It’s Tracy,” I said finally, telling myself there was no risk in that much anyway. “Returning your call.”

“Well,”
he said. “How’ve you been? Long time, no hear from, you know.” Amazingly genial, he was, just like nothing had ever happened.

“About the same as usual,” I said. “What about you?”

“You still like the country life?” he said.

“It goes along,” I said. “It pretty much takes care of itself.”

“You don’t feel a little rusty? You’re not stagnating way down there?”

“Not particularly,” I said, though given the color of my evening this was perhaps not precisely true. “Why the sudden concern, Kevin?” I was getting back in the swing of it, fencing with Kevin on the phone. It seemed to do something for my adrenal reserves. In fact I’d always liked him quite a bit, even when I hated him.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought you might like to travel.”

“It’s possible,” I said, wondering why I’d said it. I didn’t want to get involved with Kevin again, ever. Did I?

“Where to?”

“Rome,” he said.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” I said, “and finish up at the end.”

“Well, it’s an edit,” he said, “a fine cut. You still cut film, don’t you?”

“I still cut film.” I reached out, picked up the bottle of bourbon by the neck, and set it down closer to me.

“It’s an Italian job,” Kevin said. “I’m supposed to give them an editor. They shot over here and they have to cut over there. It’s the usual currency regulation bit. So. What’s your schedule like?”

“I’d have to check,” I said, which was a bald-faced lie. I didn’t have anything booked for the next year. “What are you offering?”

Kevin mentioned money, lots of it. About double what I would have accepted.

“Nice price,” I said. “Expenses?”

“Of course expenses. You’ll take it?”

“What’s wrong with this picture?” I said. “Let me think. I get over there, cut their film, they pay me in lire and I’m supposed to carry it out of the country in my shoe.”

“No, no,” Kevin said. “Nothing like that. You’ll get yours at this end.”

“Half in advance,” I said.

“No problem. But I need an answer right now, really. I’d like you to be there at the end of the week.”

I considered. That was two or three days. It could be done. But why was I even thinking about it? It was a lot of money, of course. I didn’t need it right away, perhaps, but I could use it, what with property taxes and all. Still, so far, I was only entertaining the idea voluptuously in my mind.

“How about a certified check for the first half?” I said, and waited to see what he’d say to that. Ask me if I trust you, bastard, and the phone will blow up in your hand. He didn’t.

“If that’s what you want,” he said. “You’ll do it, then.”

“It’s such a great deal for me,” I said. “What are the fringe liabilities?” I was wondering about that, what it would turn out to be. Any mysterious packages to deliver to guys with no last names, Kevin? But I didn’t say that out loud.

“I saw Lauren,” Kevin said. “Oh, when was it, sometime last week I think.” This was such an adroit change of direction that I forgot my last question till after I’d hung up the phone.

“That’s nice,” I said. I didn’t even know she was in New York, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I unscrewed the cap from the bourbon, smelled it, put the cap back on. Of course I didn’t care if they were seeing each other. “You see her again, tell her I said hello.”

“I’ll do that,” Kevin said. “So, you want the job?”

“I’ll have to check my book,” I said. “Can I call you back?”

“Out,” Kevin said. “I have to leave soon, you just caught me.” I tried to picture him. Was he standing, sitting? Alone? If someone was with him, was it someone I knew? Paranoia. Though Kevin had his special way of proving your worst fears right.

“Tomorrow, then.”

“You should be in New York tomorrow if you want the job,” he said. “I’ll be home by eight, why don’t you drop by? Else it’s no go.” I think we both tried to hang up on each other at that point, and I suppose you might say we both succeeded.

Did I want a drink or did I want a drink? I reached out my hand and then thought, don’t go belting it out of the bottle, that’s not the way. Get a glass and some ice at least. Then I decided I’d do it fancy, go out in the field and pick some mint for my drink.

There wasn’t enough moon to make much light, and I went stumbling over clumps of uncut grass until my eyes adjusted to the dark. The ground here on the flat was spongy from the rain, and it was pleasantly cool. The mint grew wild in a ditch somewhere about halfway across the field, which I found by tripping into it, soaking myself to the knees.

I picked a handful of broad leaves and a couple of tops for decoration. The fine sweet smell rose from the stalks as I broke them, and it covered both of my hands. I tore a leaf and chewed it on my way back toward the house. It was a quiet night. No drunk teenage drivers for me to pick out of my fence, not yet anyway.

I thought I might not want a drink anymore once I’d had my healthy little walk, but I was wrong, I did. In fact I wanted two big drinks, but not more, and I didn’t have any more. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day, what with all the traveling I’d have to do.

A
S IT WORKED OUT
I slept on the couch that night and woke up with first light, a bit stiff here and there because the nights were still cool. I went out and sat on the bricks below the porch and stretched for a few minutes and then went farther into the yard. There had been a heavy dew, and the grass was cool and wet under my bare feet. I stood in the yard and did twenty front kicks and twenty side kicks and fifty twist punches, wincing a little whenever my left elbow popped. It was getting warmer, and I worked up a light sweat. When I was done with the workout I sat down to stretch and breathe. It pleased me that I didn’t seem to have any hangover from the drinks the night before.

There were birds singing invisibly in the trees and a couple of volunteer chickens, banties, came wandering across the yard in front of me, picking at the weeds and dandelions. I had not yet cut the grass this spring, so it was overgrown; also the weeds were taking over. At the lower end of the yard I could see what looked like the beginnings of thistles. These were matters I couldn’t seem to bring myself to address. Living here alone, I had wanted to touch nothing, change nothing, as if my mind were repeating endlessly the phrase
don’t change, don’t change,
while my
self,
whatever that might be, remained in some quiet state of suspended animation. Yet the land was changing anyway, if only by decomposing, on its way, perhaps, toward becoming some new thing. I’d been idle for six months and it was time for me to make some sort of move. Kevin had been right or close when he guessed at that, though I didn’t much care to admit it. But it wasn’t just Kevin, it was Darwin’s rule: you change or die.

There was a tenant house at the far end of the place with a man in it I let live there rent free in exchange for counting the sheep now and then when I was out of town, and things like that. I went into the house and called him and found out he would drive me to the airport. Then I had a shower and packed, light, a few clothes in one shoulder bag and a couple of books and the
American Cinematographer Manual.
By noon I was standing around in the Nashville airport, a good hour early; my flight was at one-fifteen. I thought of spending the time in the bar, but instead I opted for pacing in front of the big wall of windows in the main waiting room, watching planes drop down out of the mild haze to land and smoking too many cigarettes. There wasn’t so much as a thought on my mind.

I’d brought a couple of Kierkegaards along in case I felt like getting serious and improving my mind and morals on the plane, and I also picked up a mystery while I was hanging around the airport, in case I got really bored. However, I didn’t read on the plane. For half an hour I looked out the window. The plane leveled off in a sunny spot and there was a big fluffy cloud bank below it. Childishly I imagined how much fun it would be to get out and walk around on the clouds, with some sort of helium snowshoes perhaps. It looked perfectly possible, from inside the plane.

When that fantasy paled, I got down to the real business of the trip, rationalization. The mere fact that I was going to New York, I kept telling myself, didn’t necessarily mean that I would take Kevin’s offer and go on to Rome or wherever else he might have in mind. Nobody was making me do that, and there were so many beautiful arguments against it. If I didn’t take the job, I’d be out a plane ticket at the very worst. There were plenty of other trees I could shake in the city, and in fact it was high time that I shook a few. So maybe I wouldn’t even call Kevin. Let him wonder whatever happened to me. Or I could just see him socially, so to speak. Or I could call him for a drink or dinner and talk about the job and try to fox out what was funny about it and then decide. Or, or, or …

I was still running around in this squirrel cage when the big gray poisonous cloud that usually covers New York materialized just off the right wing. My heart sank. Why would I want to go to such a place as this? I asked myself, by no means for the first time. The plane dropped through the smog cover and began to bank over the Hudson. Looking down the wing, I could see the buildings of Manhattan, as tidy and neatly defined as an architect’s model. I could cover up neighborhoods I’d once lived in with the tip of my finger. Then the plane leveled out and flew over the island to La Guardia.

I could have taken a cab, but I didn’t. I waited on the sidewalk for the Q-33, paid my ninety cents exact change, and rode jouncing and rattling in the bus to Jackson Heights, the terminal stop. There I bought a couple of tokens and went down the stairs to the F train. People hummed by me like bullets on the stairs and the platform. I wasn’t readjusted yet to the New York forty-mile-an-hour forced-marching pace. On the train I sat with my bag in my lap, watching people covertly out of the corner of my eye.

At 14th Street in Manhattan I got off the train. There was a Puerto Rican junkie bebopping around at the head of the stairs, with a couple of fresh-looking cuts on his face and forearms. As I passed him, he said to himself or the world at large: “Jesucristo, I fucking bleeding to death and I don’t even know I’m bleeding ...”

Perfect. I was back in New York. Sixth Avenue: a heavy smell of roasting meat on the air from the souvlaki stands. On the east side of the avenue a sizable crowd milled through the open junk markets that lined 14th Street. It was six-thirty, two hours before I had planned to call Kevin, if I called him. I wanted him to wait and wonder for at least thirty minutes. I hadn’t had a drink on the plane and I thought I would reward myself by having one now — the old familiar doublethink coming back again. I decided to go to Grogan’s and see if Terry was still there.