After the Workshop (29 page)

Next up was Sioban Mo, a Workshop student I recognized from George’s. Her hair was dyed brick red and chopped artfully in a post-punk ’do, and she wore skirts with thick leg warmers that had been popular in the 1980s. According to the introduction for her, she had published in
Poetry
,
Prairie Schooner
,
Tin House
, and about a half-dozen magazines that ended with the word
review
. I expected big things, maybe something along the lines of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” a poem with some muscle and bite, but when she read the first line of the first poem—“O, you of the iambic pentameter police”—I flagged the waitress.

“Another round,” I said. “Could you make the shots doubles?”

“I’ll get this one,” Larry said, and I offered my most serious nod of appreciation.

We drank steadily throughout the readings. During intermission, Larry said, “I need to talk to the head honcho. I don’t want to seem like a megalomaniac or anything, but holy shit, I could write better poems with a Bic stuck up my ass.”

Larry unsteadily launched himself out of the booth and stumbled toward the emcee. I looked around once more for S. S., but no luck. What I did spot, however, was a woman about to sit down across from Vince. Vince made eye contact with me, as if warning me not to come over.

I laughed. Of course I was going to go over. How could I pass up a chance to meet the woman who would consider marrying a fool like Vince Belecheck?

I weaved my way through the literati, knocking into people without meaning to and prompting more than one person to warn me to watch where the hell I was walking. Was I drunker than I thought?

“Vince!” I yelled, and several people turned in their booths to see who was screaming. “I’ve come to meet the future Mrs. Belecheck!” When I reached the booth, I pitched forward and gripped the edge of the table for balance, but then I saw that the woman with Vince was Alice—
my
Alice. I straightened up and said, “Oh. I’m sorry.” I bent to wipe off my knees, as though I had fallen, but I hadn’t. “I thought you were someone else,” I said to Alice.

Glaring at me, Vince said, “Alice? Jack. Jack, this here is Alice.” He cut his eyes up at me, another sharp warning not to mention these past few days, and added, “My
fiancée
.”

“Alice?” I said.

“Hi, Jack,” she said and looked down at her hands, which lay like two lifeless objects on the table.

Vince looked confused.

“I . . . ,” I began, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I forced a smile and said, “I
really
need to take a leak.” I rapped the table twice with my knuckles and headed for the restroom.

Standing inside a stall, I pissed long enough to read all the graffiti. When I was done, I pulled the Sharpie from my shirt pocket, uncapped it, and drew a dialog balloon starting at the tip of an enormous penis, as if the helmeted beast could talk. Inside the balloon, I wrote, “Has anyone seen my luggage?” It was the first time I’d ever written on a wall, and I was pleased with myself in the way that people who have had too much to drink are often pleased with themselves, but I couldn’t stop my
hands from shaking. I capped my pen and said, “Fuck.” I flushed the toilet and said, “
Fuck
.”

I stepped out of the stall, pulled the folded manuscript from my back pocket, and looked it over.
I was a media escort
, it began. I tossed the pages in the trashcan.

Alice was waiting for me outside the restroom. She was wearing her coat and knit cap, and for an instant, I experienced the bright light of optimism. Was she going to suggest that the two of us run away together?

“Jack,” she said and reached out, brushing a piece of lint off my shirt—the tell-tale sign that whatever had been between us was over. She was cleaning me up before sending me out into the world alone. “This old sweatshirt,” she said. “You haven’t thrown it away yet?”

I took a deep breath. I wanted to wish her well, but what came out was, “Vince Belecheck? Vince
fucking
Belecheck?”

She said, “I tried telling you. I did.”

“Just one question. Can you answer me one question?” When Alice didn’t say anything, I asked, “What’s so special about Vince? That’s all I want to know. What’s so goddamned special about Vince Belecheck?”

She took a deep breath and held it, as if anticipating a blow, but what she said was undeniable. “He finishes what he starts,” she said. “Look, I’m going to go now. I just explained to Vince about the two of us, and—”

“You mean you never told him about me?”

“It was so long ago,” she said.

“It wasn’t
that
long ago,” I said. “We were engaged.”

“We were young, Jack.”

“We were going to have a baby,” I said, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have gone there.

Alice sighed. “I really need to go now,” she said, and for once I didn’t wheedle or cajole. I simply let her go.

W
HEN I RETURNED to the main room, I found Larry sitting across from Vince.

“We lost our table,” Larry said. “One of us should have stayed behind.”

Vince, glaring into his drink, said, “Just sit the fuck down, Jack.”

I was about to obey Vince when I spotted M. Cat and Lauren Castle. M. Cat was wearing a ski cap with a giant white ball dangling from the top like an ornament, a terry-cloth bathrobe, and mukluks. He looked like a man who had wandered away from a psychiatric ward, whereas Lauren Castle, holding him by the wrist, could have been the off-duty nurse who’d found him. Upon spotting me, M. Cat smiled and waved with a bandaged hand, then pointed me out to Lauren, who sneered. After they snaked their way over to us, I perfunctorily took care of the introductions.

Larry moved over to Vince’s side. M. Cat and Lauren sat across from them. My options: sit on the side of a man I despised or sit on the side of a man who might disrobe. I plopped down next to Lauren and M. Cat.

Vince avoided looking at me. Instead, he trained a bead on M. Cat. “Yo, Hef,” he said. “There’s a dress code here.”

“Jot that down,” Lauren said to M. Cat.

M. Cat showed her his wounded mitts and said, “I can’t. I’ll just have to remember it.”

Before Lauren could berate M. Cat, Billy Wexler stepped back onto the platform to announce that intermission was over. The Naropa clan applauded and hooted. Billy, acting as though he’d just delivered Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech, stared defiantly out into the audience.

And then the readings continued, volleying back and forth between us and them, or rather, since I wasn’t a poet, between
them
and
them
. One Naropa poet finished by throwing the microphone stand down in such a way that it barely missed the head of an Iowa MFA student, a jug-eared fellow who sat with his back to the stage and was oblivious to the injuries he had narrowly avoided.

Close to midnight, Billy Wexler mounted the stage and said, “For our final reader of the night, I give to you a man from the community,” Billy said, “a man
not
affiliated with the
famous
Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a man who is an Iowa City
laborer
—Mr. Larry McFeeley.”

With Larry belonging to neither camp, the applause was tentative, so I whistled and yelled, “Go Big Lare!”

Larry climbed up onto the stage and stared blankly ahead. He blinked a few times, squinting from the light bearing down on him. “I’m not a professional poet,” he said. “I’m just a guy who loves words.”

The cheers of encouragement from the Naropa students made me feel a warmness toward them that, until then, had been lacking. The Iowa students whispered to each other; a few of them got up to order more drinks.

Larry shut his eyes, as if the words were written on the insides of his lids, and, after clearing his throat, recited a poem, the first line of which was, “From the roof’s still-icy peak, beside the steeple, his descent began.”

Everyone, including Vince Belecheck, sat up to pay closer attention. The poem, on the one hand, was about a roofer who’d fallen off a church while on the job. On the other hand, it was about the fall of man. It was beautiful and haunting with a kind of James Dickey or Philip Levine grace, which was to say, poetic but accessible.

When he finished, the audience stood and cheered. A one-word chant grew in volume, the audience demanding, “More! More! More!”

Larry, grinning sheepishly, raised his hand and, after shushing us with his palm, agreed to recite another. Even cold-blooded Lauren who sat beside me like a lizard on a rock shivered in admiration when Larry’s poem reached its zenith.

After reciting four poems, Larry returned to the table amid thunderous applause. Someone started chanting, “Lare-EE, Lare-EE,” and before long, every patron in the restaurant seemed to be chanting it, too, until Larry stood and took a bow.

A group of Naropa and Iowa students crowded our table to ask Larry questions. Larry would shrug and say, “I don’t know,” or he’d offer up the moment of the poem’s genesis. “It just came to me one morning,” he said, “when I was hauling buckets of tar up onto the Hy-Vee on Waterfront Drive.”

Vince, stuffed in the booth’s corner, eyed Larry’s fans with suspicion. “Hey, give me a little room,” he said to Larry a couple of times.

After his boosters retreated, Larry took a deep breath and said, “Whew. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Well,” Lauren said, “you can expect more of that once I land you a big-ass book deal.”

Larry wagged his head. “I don’t know if I want to publish them,” he said. “It’s just a pastime for me.”

“I wasn’t talking about your poems,” Lauren said. “Good God, nobody reads poetry. No, what I’m thinking for you is a memoir. The publishing world needs another
Iron John
.”

“Well . . .” Larry began, but before Larry could spit out what he was going to say, Vince slammed down his glass and piped up: “He just said he doesn’t want a book deal, lady. So give it a rest.”

Larry’s face tightened. He said, “You don’t want to talk to her like that.”

Vince, raising his eyebrows, said, “Hey, buddy. I was defending
you
. You told her you don’t want a book deal, but she keeps pushing it.”

“Your tone,” Larry said. “It’s unacceptable.”

Vince said, “Oh! I see what’s happening. You get a couple of fan-boys and suddenly you think you run the show? Is that it? You’re the shit now? Is that how you see things?”

All the joy drained from Larry’s eyes. He leaned toward Vince and said, “How much does your head weigh?”

“My what?”

“Your head. How much does it weigh?”

“Don’t go there, Larry,” I said, but it was too late: Larry took hold of Vince’s head, as if it were a cantaloupe, and, rising ever so slightly from the bench, started pressing. As Larry clenched his teeth and gritted, Vince’s eyes started to bulge. He tried reaching for Larry to make him stop, but Larry had the advantage of longer arms. Holding Vince’s head as far away as he could, he squeezed so hard his own face turned red.

I knew I should have tried stopping Larry, but I was mesmerized by the sight of what was happening: Any second now, a man’s head might explode. Finally, Billy Wexler and a few Naropa students rushed over and grabbed Larry, prying him off Vince.

“I’m okay,” Larry said. “I’m fine.” To Vince, he pointed and said, “
You
need to learn some manners.” Larry put on his coat and deftly
maneuvered through the patrons, weaving his way to the front door where he disappeared into the blur of snow.

For the rest of the night, Vince alternated between complaining about his head and complaining about Larry.

“That son of a bitch is gonna be sorry for this,” he said. He reached up, touched his head, and said, “Ow! Something doesn’t feel right.”

Lauren leaned into M. Cat and said, “So? What are we waiting for?”

M. Cat, still wearing his terry-cloth robe, stared glumly ahead. He looked like a reprimanded child who had been warned not to cry.

“I can’t do it,” M. Cat finally said.

“You
can
and you
will
,” Lauren said.

“I can’t,” M. Cat said. He sighed heavily. “I guess I’m not a writer, after all.”

“Who said you were a writer?” Lauren asked. “Let me make something clear. You’re
not
a writer. You’re an
idea
. You’re a
concept
.”

“It’s all right,” I told M. Cat. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Remember Polonius’s advice to Laertes? ‘To thine own self be true.’”

“Stay out of this,” said Lauren. “You’ve caused enough problems these past few days.”

“I’ll be back,” Vince said. “I need to pull those files we’ve been talking about.”

Lauren, M. Cat, and I exchanged looks.
Files?
Vince stood and wandered the restaurant like a somnambulist, as if unsure where he was or how he’d arrived there, and after a while he walked out the front door. He’d left his coat behind, and although he was wearing his usual insulated overalls, it was too cold outside without the extra protection.

I stood and picked up Vince’s coat.

“I better go look for the bastard,” I said, but neither Lauren nor M. Cat looked up at me. They were both sulking, and I was of absolutely no consequence to either of them.

I put Vince’s coat on over my coat, but before leaving the Mill, I veered off for the restroom one last time. I peeked into the stall. Someone had crossed out the words I’d written on the wall and replaced them with their own. The giant penis was now saying, “I’m a graduate of the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop.”

My manuscript still lay in the trashcan, beneath a couple of crumpled paper towels. I fished out the pages, tucked them into Vince’s pocket, and zipped the coat all the way up, bracing myself for the worst.

T
HE WEATHER WAS nastier than I had been expecting: the howling winds, the blasts of blinding snow, the ice creaking underneath my feet. The streetlights blinked yellow. The skin at the corners of my mouth felt as though it was cracking. My five o’clock shadow became stiff, lifeless bristles sticking out of my face’s numb flesh. I looked around for Vince but didn’t see him anywhere.