Tomcat in Love (31 page)
Authors: Tim O'Brien
“Bravo!” said Fleurette. “The guy never listens. Not ever.”
“Deaf as a stone,” said Masha, whose foot had once again found my lap. “Typical male too. Look at him—a pig in heaven.”
“Cock of the roost,” said Fleurette.
“You said it!” Sissy spat.
I was aghast at this, and rightly so. I glared at my plate. Gallantry alone kept me silent.
“See, the thing is,” Sissy was explaining, “I’m still an unfinished woman, if you catch my drift. Sex and all that, it’s pretty hard to picture.” Her lower lip quivered. “The act, I mean.”
“Act?” said Fleurette.
“
It.
”
“You’re kidding? You haven’t …?”
“Not yet. I guess I’m looking for the right guy.”
Fleurette patted her hand. “Well, hey, aren’t we all, honey?”
“You too?” said Sissy.
“For sure—Prince Charming.”
Masha offered an assenting click of the tongue. “But listen: what about sex school? They didn’t make you practice or anything?”
“
Sec
school,” Sissy said.
“Right.”
A blush came to Sissy’s face. “Secretarial—like steno and stuff!
Dictation
!”
Masha nodded. “That one I’m good at.”
At this juncture a number of provoking questions popped to mind. What in God’s name, for instance, was I doing here? How did two hookers and a hissing virgin fit into the larger scheme of things?
In frustration I slapped the flat of my hand against the table.
“This is not the Marine Corps,” I barked, “so call off the recruitment drive. Let the girl follow her dreams.”
Masha batted her eyelashes. “She asked, we answered. No harm done.”
“Sure, that’s right!” Sissy sputtered. “Anyhow, you’ve got your stupid
hand
in my crotch.”
“Inadvertent,” I said.
“Then let go.”
“Certainly. My mistake.”
“Like pretty
soon
!”
“Yes, yes,” I said briskly, “but the point is that human love can be neither bought nor sold. Take my word, I was once married to a
woman with a cash register bolted to her nightstand. I forked over thousands—tens of thousands—and I’m here to tell you that the return on investment was damned meager.”
Sissy gripped my thumb and twisted hard. “Big deal,” she said hotly. “Maybe you’re better off divorced. I mean, jeez, with paws like yours.”
The girl gave my thumb another twist, then blushed and arranged a youthful breast against my arm.
*
“Anyhow,” she said, “there’s lots of other fishes in the sea.”
“The sea?”
“You bet!”
She nearly yanked off my thumb.
“Be that as it may,” I told her, “the upshot is that I kept feeding Lorna Sue’s kitty, kept trying to prove how much I loved her. Except it was never enough. When she finally walked out on me—for a tycoon, no less—she made me write out a check for twelve thousand dollars. To finance the transition. Had it down to the dime.”
Masha whistled. “Twelve thousand!”
My little parable had failed to clarify things. Even Sissy, whose breast I was now buttressing, seemed dazzled by the numbers.
I looked her straight in the eye.
“Do not be fooled,” I said. “One cannot put a value on love; one can’t hold fire sales.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sissy muttered. “But twelve
thousand
?”
Hopeless, I realized.
With a resigned shrug I called for the bill and remitted to Ramada the sum of $398.87, excluding tip. The irony of this transaction did not escape me. According to my records, I had thus far purchased, since the advent of puberty, some 2,200 full-course meals while in active pursuit of the softer sex, plus well over 17,000
beverages, all of which amounted to a financial grand total that by rights should have entitled me to the mating privileges of a stud bull.
Yet what had ever come of this erotic soup kitchen?
Seventeen honors theses.
A failed marriage.
A career in ruins.
The lesson, if there was one, eluded me. I sighed; we adjourned.
*
Obviously, I could not permit my public humiliation to go unanswered, and as a matter of pride I would be striking back hard at all three of my sadistic tormentors. (No mere pat on the bottom. Massive reprisal—a bolt from the heavens.) Indeed, a vague plan for vengeance had already begun to form, one that would call upon my experience with military ordnance. The precise
hows
and
whens
and
wheres
were not yet clear to me, but take my word that the final chapters of this testament will prove explosive in the extreme.
*
I was reminded of the medieval encyclopedist Vincent de Beauvais, who describes the female of our species as “the confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest, a hindrance to devotion.” This catalogue, while gently worded and by no means complete, struck me as a point of departure for further investigation in Methodologies of Misogyny.
*
Although I had “harassed” no one, sexually or otherwise, President Pillsbury could hardly be counted upon to judge the case fairly. It was to the Doughboy’s idiotic wife, remember, that I had once directed the innovative phrase “dumb cooze.” (Here again was evidence of the devastating power of language.)
*
You read correctly. Approach/avoidance. Yes/no. It is not only a woman’s right to change her mind; it is also her right to own and operate two minds simultaneously, a duality that most often cancels itself out in pristine nullity.
C
ould I descend any lower, incur greater shame, debase myself with any more artistry or élan?
Certainly.
It was Masha, I am quite positive, who suggested a midnight road trip, Fleurette who seconded the motion, sweet Sissy who provided the means of transport. The hour had grown late—well past my curfew—and to the best of my recollection we departed the Twin Cities just after two in the morning. Fleurette did the driving, Masha navigated, a very drowsy Sissy and I occupied the cramped backseat of her 1986 Chevrolet Nova. Our destination was Owago, one hundred eighty miles to the southwest, where I felt confident we would be welcomed with hugs and a hearty breakfast in the home of Mrs. Robert Kooshof. (This estimate, sadly enough, was to prove erroneous.)
The long, dreamlike journey has now largely vanished from
memory, snatched away like the fence posts and telephone poles that flashed by in the dark, and I recall very little beyond the odd sensation of barreling down a deserted highway in the company of three virtual strangers. At one point, curiously enough, I awoke from a short nap to find myself shaking with sorrow. The radio, the heater, the tires against the road—these variables had combined to create an atmosphere of almost inconceivable sadness. In part, I am sure, my mood was connected to the traumas of the day, but as I watched the dark, vacant prairie pass by, I was also struck by the appalling knowledge that I was returning home an emotional cripple. (Melodramatic, perhaps, but do not forget your own wee-hour pilgrimages into history. Fiji. Hilton.)
Riding along, eyes swollen with fatigue, I caught random glimpses of my own childhood: Lorna Sue playing with her dollhouse, Herbie straddling a green plywood airplane, a turtle called Toby. But none of it cohered. Who
was
I back then? (Have I yet mentioned that my father died of heart failure in 1957?
*
That my mother passed away during my freshman year in college? That loss and abandonment were always my most faithful companions?)
Bad memories, one could say. In the humming dark, Sissy’s head firm against my shoulder, I thumbed through my internal dictionary:
Engine. Cat. Cross. Eighteen. Tycoon. Tampa. Cornfield. Pontiac. Angel. Church. Fire
.
*
Later, a few miles outside Owago, I was struck by an almost tactile sense of foreboding. Like the first soft slip of an avalanche, like that puff of smoke from the doomed
Challenger
, events seemed to be approaching the point of cataclysm.
Terrible things were about to happen.
An hour before dawn, Mrs. Robert Kooshof opened her door to our weary party. Breakfast was not forthcoming. Almost immediately, in the midst of what can only be called chaos, I bade a hurried farewell to my trio of traveling companions. To Fleurette and Masha, who required professional recompense, I presented a pair of generous checks. (An expensive proposition, to be sure, yet the combined total still amounted to far less than Lorna Sue’s old hourly rate.) Young Sissy, too, rather brashly requested payment, but to her I offered only a swat on the rump and the advice that she stick with her secretarial strong suit.
Instantly, I regretted the phrase.
“Strong suit!” Sissy sprayed.
The girl gave me a warm parting hug, as did Fleurette and Masha, and with the car’s engine running, we exchanged addresses and phone numbers. (I had little choice, obviously, but to hand over falsified data. My erotic calendar was full, and for once in my life, to my own wistful amazement, enough was finally too much.)
Next came the problem of attending to Mrs. Robert Kooshof.
Bruised feelings, et cetera.
I trudged back into the house, paid a quick visit to the liquor cabinet, then sought out my sulking fiancée, whom I found locked away in her traditional refuge behind the bathroom door.
Agitated in the extreme.
“
Three
of them!” she snarled, as if the number itself were troublesome.
I flopped down, closed my eyes, put my lips to the crack beneath the door. I need not offer a verbatim account of the ensuing
conversation. Drearily predictable. The standard pejoratives: “inconsiderate,” “shallow,” “debauched,” “irresponsible,” “fickle,” “juvenile,” “untrustworthy,” “hopeless,” “unstable,” and “fucking crazy.”
*
I was stung, yes. Exhausted too.
Merely to bob and weave proved difficult. The three young ladies, I explained, were but partners in transit. Nothing indecorous had occurred. Wearily, I outlined the horrors that had been visited upon me over the past twenty-four hours—my classroom abasement, Toni’s unfounded accusations, my resignation from the services of the university.
I wept a little.
I dozed off.
In late afternoon I sat up, rubbed my eyes, tapped on the bathroom door. “Say, listen,” I said cheerfully. “I’m famished. What would you say to a short stack of pancakes?”
Mrs. Robert Kooshof snorted.
“Pancakes?” she said viciously. “You’re nuts. What’s in it for me?”
I sighed.
“Well,” I said, and expelled the bitter breath of defeat. “An engagement ring?”
The bathroom door swung open.
I have discovered through trial and error that there are numerous routes to a woman’s heart—high roads, low roads, and roads in between—but that sooner or later, at the end of each well-beaten path, one inevitably encounters the blinding red lights of a tollbooth.
The ring cost me $1,645.76, tax included.
The tollbooth, in this case, took the form of a cash register at the rear of Hanson’s Fine Jewelry in downtown Owago; the tolltaker was embodied—ripely, wondrously—in the person of a young salesgirl by the name of Oriel.
Strapped for cash, newly unemployed, I found myself scribbling out a promissory note to Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who in turn handed our juicy jeweler a platinum credit card to formalize the purchase. Inexplicably, both of them seemed to consider me a cheapskate. No matter that I was now committed to a seventy-two-month repayment plan. No matter that I had become co-owner, as the famous slogan suggests, of a very considerable piece of the rock.
“It’s your
engagement
,” said our meddling salesgirl. “You shouldn’t be such a miser.”
“To the contrary,” I replied, “I was merely remarking that glass has a long and very honorable history.”
“Skinflint,” the saucy tart muttered. (Fresh out of Owago Community College. Business major. Eyes like an anaconda.) “See, here’s the deal,” she said, “you have to look at it as an investment. Diamonds are forever. Just like you two lovebirds—forever and ever and ever and ever and ever!”
The luscious little busybody beamed a smile in my direction: a teasing, salacious, you-could-have-had-me-but-now-you’re-doomed-for-life grin.
“Forever,” she repeated, and then winked to rub it in. “We’re talking about
infinity
. Like when you get married, right? It just goes on and on and on. And that’s exactly what diamonds do. They never, never stop. I mean, like, not
ever
!”
I nodded briskly, requested a business card, and made a mental note to revisit the shop one day soon. With a dentist’s drill, perhaps. The cheeky scamp had much to learn about the meaning of forever.
Mrs. Kooshof’s mood had brightened as we sat down for breakfast in the cramped, bustling quarters of Owago’s sparkling new
Burger King. Immediately, in a touching little ceremony, she stripped off her tarnished wedding ring and replaced it with our heart-stoppingly expensive acquisition. The woman’s face had gone phosphorescent. To my alarm, in fact, the surface of her skin seemed to emit the garish, explosive fireworks of a digital scoreboard.