The Winners Circle (5 page)

In school, Jerry and Chelsea didn’t speak. They formed islands of uncertainty and hurt. The fall season took hold, and the hardwoods of Chesterfield turned golden brown in the fading light. After class, Jerry used the shortcut through the woods, while Chelsea ran ahead of the others in her yellow dress with the pink flowers. She never talked to anyone. With all that equipment, Jerry wasn’t sure if she could utter a word.

It was late October, and plump orange caterpillars clung to the branches and fading foliage. Dried leaves rustled beneath their feet, and the stream rambled over the stones and fallen logs, the dialogue of the forest. Jerry stuck to the path, heading for the large cement drainage pipe that fed the stream. He heard the boys up ahead. Their voices bounced off the water and echoed through the tunnel.

Chelsea stood on the path, staring at the ground. Her knapsack lay in the yellow grass beside her feet.

Peter Kruk and his two pals formed a barricade.

“
What’s wrong with your face, freak?” Kruk displayed the tight veneer of a kid who’d been whipped too many times by his old man. His jaw jutted forward, and his hands constantly balled into fists. He even wrote with his fingers clenched around a pencil, ready to poke someone that got too close.

Chelsea tried to pass, but Kruk threw his elbow to block her.

“
Freak.” Kruk laughed, joined by his simpering cronies.

She reached down for her knapsack.

Kruk stamped on the shoulder strap to keep it down. “Where you goin’?”

Jerry ducked into the flagging stalks of dried rushes, waiting for the kids to break up. He was curious too. He wanted a peek at the girl. She excelled at keeping out of people’s faces.

She covered her mouth with her hand. Her hair was fastened into a ponytail that curled upon the nape of her neck.

“
Can’t you speak?” Kruk spit on Chelsea’s legs. He was a spitter too, destined for life as a man whom people sidestepped.

Kruk pushed her again, fishing for a reaction to toss in her face. “Speak!”

Jerry heard Chelsea crying. She sobbed, so quietly it hardly rose above the din of the stream. Water swished through the cement tunnel and over a fallen tree. One of the boys plunked stones to the bottom, but Chelsea’s whimper wove through it all, penetrating Jerry’s ears.

Kruk saw Jerry approaching. “It’s the goon.”

The insult fell short of wounding Jerry. Kruk said it so many times a day that it was almost funny. Jerry stomped forward. He was taller than the other boys, but he never imagined that he’d silence Kruk until just then.

“
The goon and the freak,” Kruk barked. “It’s an early Halloween party.”

Jerry scooped up a stone from the path. The smooth rock tucked into his palm, as if cut to fit. He cocked his arm, taking dead aim on Kruk and his filthy little mouth.

“
What you gonna’ do?” Kruk puckered to spit.

Jerry saw the moment unfold. Few times in his life, he gained such clarity. His arms and legs moved as if by rote. Chelsea watched from the bank of the stream. He stepped up and thrust his arm forward, stone and all, and slammed his fist on target, knocking Kruk’s smart-ass expression out of the exchange.

The punk fell back on his ass—the part of his anatomy that governed most of his thinking. He stared up from the grass, pawing at his face. A trail of saliva leaked from the corner of his mouth. “You, you.”

Jerry wasn’t the goon anymore. He knew that before Kruk’s nose started bleeding, even before Kruk squeezed out dirty tears. Kruk covered his nose and ran, joining his buddies halfway up the trail. Later on, Kruk’s father hardly believed that Jerry had fractured the boy’s nose, but the kids got the message. Don’t mess with Jerry Nearing or anyone who knows him.

Chelsea retrieved her knapsack from the grass and slung it over her shoulder. Jerry watched her turn toward him. She seemed well past crying, collecting herself in a way he would grow accustomed. Her eyes were ice blue, like the color of the sky before it snowed. Her lustrous skin swept away, disappearing into the yellow fur along her hairline. The metal that twisted around her teeth didn’t belong to this face. It was no big deal.

“
It’s okay,” she murmured.

Jerry didn’t reply. He must have been shaking. He looked past her and down the trail at Kruk’s retreat. He felt both scared and proud of the power he’d gained with a single blow.

She nudged his elbow. “We better get home.”

They walked for a while in silence. Their feet padded the trail like two young animals. Occasionally their arms touched and pulled back. She mumbled phrases between her wires, and Jerry nodded. She didn’t say much beyond ‘thank you,’ but some contracts are born without even speaking. His job was to shelter Chelsea, and she loved him for it. He was suddenly useful again.

“
Open your mouth, please,” Dr. Weinberg said.

Jerry watched Chelsea recline on an adjustable chair. They sat in a bright office with budding plants and sculptures with motorized waterfalls. It duplicated the waiting room outside and the offices next door. He felt lost inside a mini-mall for plastic surgery.

“
Tilt your head, please.” Dr. Saul Weinberg had a patchy gray beard and a body best suited for a lab coat. He passed a lighted magnifying glass over Chelsea’s face and furrowed his brow. Haskell Cogdon had recommended Weinberg. Cogdon was making a lot of suggestions, sticking his little fingers into every plan Jerry and Chelsea made.

“
Can you do anything?” Jerry leaned forward in his seat across the room. Chelsea wanted a different look. He wanted to restore the farmhouse and purchase a new set of pots and pans. She desired the perfect mouth—a chance to erase her flaw once and for all. A month ago, this wasn’t an option, but now they were saddled with options, and Cogdon explored each one, lining their countertops with brochures and prospectuses that supposedly unlocked the secrets of wealth and empire. Chelsea’s face seemed the best place to start conquering the world.

“
Can you take the …” Jerry began.

“
Give me a minute please,” Weinberg said.

Chelsea flinched as the light hit her eyes.

Weinberg folded back her upper lip with his thumbs. “They did a nice job with the teeth. How long ago was this?”

“
She was eight during the last operation,” Jerry said.

Weinberg ignored Jerry.

“
Haskell Cogdon recommended you,” Jerry said.

Weinberg returned to his drawing pad. He swept a graphite stick over the paper, scratched his beard, and scribbled some more.

“
He claimed you were the best,” Jerry said.

Weinberg acknowledged the remark with only a subtle flick of the chin, but when he held up the sketchpad, Chelsea’s reaction startled him.

She leapt forward in her seat and embraced the pad in her fists. “Is this me?”

“
We can pull down the upper lip and plump the corners,” Weinberg said dryly.

Jerry was also shocked by the change. Chelsea had been rendered ordinary by the adjustments on paper. Some men might say beautiful, but she was already the most beautiful woman Jerry knew, inside and out.

“
We’ll plump the lower to match,” Weinberg continued. “You’ll be pleased with the result.”

Chelsea stared down at the pad, as if gazing into a magic mirror. Jerry wished he knew what she was thinking.

“
It’s desirable to show some teeth,” Weinberg said.

“
A little teeth?”

“
I call it a Venetian crest. I have photo catalogues for you to browse.”

A phone started ringing in the office. After a while, Chelsea and Weinberg were staring at Jerry.

“
What?” Jerry said.

“
It’s you.” Chelsea dropped the pad in her lap. “It’s the cell phone.”

Jerry dug into his jacket pocket. He wasn’t comfortable with the device yet. Whenever a phone rang in the past, it typically wasn’t for him, even when he used to pray for the job service to call with a prospect. Now he received phone calls day and night. Each call seemed like nonsense, but the nuances of his day suddenly held value to others.

“
The green button picks up,” Chelsea said.

“
Got it.” Jerry put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“
Jerry, my friend.” Haskell Cogdon was his upbeat self, ready to ratchet up their lives another notch. He was their attorney, financial advisor, and estate planner rolled into one. Jerry didn’t know if they needed that. He only knew Chelsea liked having Haskell around.

“
It’s Haskell,” Jerry called across the room.

“
What does he want?” Chelsea said.

“
What do you want?” Jerry repeated into the palm-sized device. He felt as if he was talking into a calculator and any minute someone might smirk and hand him the actual phone.

“
I have something to show you. I’m coming over.” The sound of Haskell’s Mercedes hummed in the background. Jerry recognized the ping of the German diesel engine. At the GM plant, if someone drove a foreign car, they had to park in the furthest spot from the entrance.

“
I’m not home.”

“
I know where you are. I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”

“
Hello?” Jerry shook the phone and returned it to his ear. “Hello?”

“
What did he want?” Chelsea twisted in the chair. She wore capri pants, which exposed a band of skin around her ankles.

“
He just hung up.”

“
That’s it?”

“
He said he’d be here in ten minutes. He has to show me something, then he hung up.”

“
And?”

“
He just hung up.”

“
You don’t have to say good-bye on cell phones.” Chelsea glanced at Weinberg for affirmation. “You just make your point and move on.”

Weinberg shrugged. The sleeves of his white coat bunched near his collar.

“
What should I do about Haskell?” Jerry asked, confused by the new jargon in his life. It wasn’t just the cell phone lingo. He struggled with the terms for their tax shelters and retirement plans, and that literature from Cogdon, which piled in front of their toaster oven, might as well have been pages ripped from a medical journal. A man best suited for machines and power tools felt lame once he acquired the means to employ contractors and lawyers. He suddenly knew very little.

“
Go with him?” Chelsea said.

Weinberg nodded, clearly desiring Jerry’s absence.

Chelsea turned to the doctor. “We have things to discuss.”

“
Aren’t we about finished?” Jerry asked, but she had that look in her eye, determined, set on a course he’d discover later.

“
Go with Haskell. I’ll call the car service.”

Jerry sunk in the soft leather seat of Haskell Cogdon’s Mercedes. They cruised over the pitted back roads of Mercer County without incident. Blackbirds swarmed overhead. Yanni oozed from the stereo, surrounding the cabin in redundant mellow noise. The car seemed ready to burst into a commercial for itself.

“
Did you sign the papers?” Haskell guided the steering wheel with manicured hands. His sunglasses were deep brown, reflecting the sun and the silver shards of hair within his sideburns.

“
Which papers?” Jerry sipped a club soda in a crystal glass. A custom mini-bar lay open between the seats.

“
If you assign me with power of attorney, I can administer your accounts with better ease.”

“
So you say.”

“
One phone call, and I’ll do what you ask.”

“
Can’t you do that now?”

“
You may miss important opportunities.”

“
How’s that?”

“
You might be on vacation, and I can’t reach you.”

Jerry pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “I thought that’s what this was for.”

“
We’ll discuss it again later.” Haskell hit the turn signal.

They veered off the main road and into the hills outside Princeton. The pavement disappeared into a narrow path with overgrown tire ruts. A minute earlier, they drove past palatial estates, and the next, they forged deep into a wooded hillside that Jerry never knew existed.

He listened to the sticks and branches snap along the sides of the Mercedes. “You’re going to ruin the clear coat finish on this baby.”

“
The lease is up next month. I’m thinking about a Jag.”

“
Jag?”

“
The sports coup with the convertible roof.”

“
Chelsea wants one of those.”

“
I know.”

Jerry fidgeted in the seat. He slumped inside smaller cars. He needed more legroom. “Where are we?”

“
You’ll see.” Haskell fixed his permanent smile straight up the path.

They stopped in a clearing dotted with tree stumps. Meadow grass sprouted around the decaying cuts, and early moths flew about the cattails, glittering in the sun.

“
Follow me.” Haskell left the car. He wore cowboy boots with his double-breasted suit. A scarf poked from his pocket.