Bingo (28 page)

“Sure does. Let’s go over to Falkenroth, Spangler, and Finster for a minute.”

She obediently followed. A new window had been installed immediately after the cannon episode. Looked like Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster had better relations with their insurance company than I did. Not a word yet on my Jeep or a penny either. The sign painter, Peepbean Huffstetler, carefully outlined the “R” in Spangler as we opened the front door.

“Hello, Peepbean.”

He grunted. That was hello.

The place seemed vacant, as it was lunch hour, but we heard a rustle in the back.

“Yo,” I called out.

George Spangler, in lime-green pants, answered. “Who is it?”

“Nickel and Michelle.”

He softly walked down the little hallway. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, ladies?”

“You were practicing your putting, weren’t you, George? The Willow Bend championship’s coming up in June.” I hoped that would disarm him a bit. It did.

“Well—”

“This is going to be your year, George.” I glided on to my next subject. “Do you know the closing date for the sale of the Bon Ton?”

“Friday.”

“Good for the town. Line up those putts, buddy.” I smiled and left, and as I went through the door it hit George what he’d done.

“Nickel—” He trotted after us. “Diz doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“Why? It’s good news.”

“He’s funny that way. Wait until the deed is recorded.”

“George, I’m a reporter. I won’t use your name, okay?”

His face registered relief and dismay simultaneously. “ ’Preciate that.”

I liked George but I didn’t respect him. He had inherited just enough money to make a bum out of him. His only effort was in obtaining his law degree from the University of Virginia back in 1971. If he drew up a will or a deed a month, that was sweat for him. It’s hard for me to believe a man without a vocation has balls. Since he rarely worked, he was a great source of gossip because his whole life was one long social exchange. You might say that George was the original party boy. The road map of broken veins on his face was proof of that.

As Michelle, Lolly, Pewter, and I cut across the Square the talons of fear gripped my gut. I didn’t want the
Clarion
to go to Diz. I didn’t want it to go to anybody but me.

“How are things with Roger?” I asked Michelle.

“He’s a nice guy.”

“That sounds noncommittal.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Don’t get testy. I’m being friendly, not nosy. I think the world of Roger and I’m even starting to like you too.”

She changed the subject. “Do you think your mother was behind that bumper sticker?”

“Yep. She must have paid someone to do it. Orrie is Louise’s best friend. Now that she’s back Mother will need me as an ally.”

“What’s going on with Ed Tutweiler Walters?”

“Michelle, I believe you might turn into a Runny yet. You’re evidencing an interest in gossip.”

“I prefer to think of it as news.” She picked up a stick and threw it for Lolly.

“As far as I know, Ed divides his time between them when he isn’t with the BonBons.”

“Wonder when he’s going back to Birmingham?”

“I don’t know. It must be fun to be retired—and have a little money, you know? Ed can come and go as he pleases. I can’t imagine that.”

“Me neither. I don’t think I want to stop working. My dad retired at sixty-five last year. He built and ran a window treatment plant.”

“What?”

“He made blinds, shades, window treatments.”

“Oh.”

“Ever since he retired he’s been sick, one complaint after another. Mother’s irritated because he’s underfoot, and much as he loves sailing, how much can he sail? I told him to start another business or to get involved with young people starting businesses. Be a consultant. I think the reason for Mom’s brief visit was less to see me than to get away from Dad.”

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Jackson Frost bearing down on me. Jackson paid his respects to Michelle and then said in a too casual voice, “You putting the paper to bed tonight?”

“I do every Tuesday.” I tried to be casual myself.

“Might see you later.” He bid us good day and left.

“He really is the best-looking man in Runnymede,” Michelle chirped.

“Yep.” I had a lump in my throat.

True to his word Jackson came over to the
Clarion
at nine-thirty. Lolly greeted him by rubbing her head against his legs. Pewter waited for Jack to come to her.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” I answered.

“I got used to seeing you Tuesday night.” I didn’t reply, so he continued. “I’m sorry, Nickel.”

“Me too.”

His white teeth gleamed in a half smile. “What was it you said to me once? ‘Monogomy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good.’ I don’t know whether I believe it or not.”

“I don’t know if I do either, but there isn’t an alternative, or if there is one I don’t know about it.”

He sat opposite me. “Whatever happened to the sixties?”

“We got married and had children, I guess.”

“You didn’t.” He stuck his finger in a cup on my desk filled with blue pencils and he rattled them around. “Sometimes I envy you and sometimes I think you missed the boat.”

“I think that too—sometimes.”

“Do you miss me?”

“Of course I miss you, but what good does it do to talk about it? I have to admit that I’m relieved.”

“I’m not,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Weren’t you ever worried about Regina finding out?”

“Not as much as you were.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand you.”

“I don’t want you to understand me—I want you to love me.” His beautiful blue eyes lit up.

“Please, let’s give the word
love
a rest.”

“Gene and I have been married for twenty-two years. Your relationship changes over those years. I think I’m blessed with a good marriage, but to tell you the God’s honest truth, if she went out and had herself a rip-roaring affair I wouldn’t be jealous.”

“No, you’d feel justified for what you’ve done.” I didn’t feel like being generous.

“Maybe, but you haven’t been married for decades. You don’t know how it feels. And furthermore, don’t tell me how I feel or what I feel. I know I wouldn’t be jealous. We’re so close, Gene and I, but that heady, lusty, can’t-live-without-you stuff is gone. I think she feels the same way about me. In a funny way, she and I have a friendship like the two of you have.”

I remembered that Regina had said something similar when we were slaving over the Blue and Gray Hunt Club newsletter but she also noted the differences. But then, no two friendships are identical. If they were, people would be interchangeable parts, with no individuality. Death would lose its sting. If someone is replaceable, you wouldn’t care if you lost her.

“I believe you as much as I can. And you’re right, I haven’t been married for twenty-two years. I don’t know what it feels like.”

“I want us to be friends. If we lose that, then I’ve lost a lot.” “We’ll always be friends. Until death us do part.” I smiled bigger than I should have.

“Maybe there is a Cupid with a bow and arrow,” he mused. “Last Christmas he let fly, and that was that.”

“People would be better off if we had a mating season like animals. At least our troubles would be confined.” “Was it trouble?”

“Yes and no. You know what I mean. If you were single I wouldn’t have a minute’s guilt.” I sighed. “One of the great things about living alone is that I have so much time to think. I often wonder what society would be like if we did have a mating season, or else, to take the opposite tack, if we dispensed with the sexual codes we have and let ’er rip.”

“Lot of fucking and killing.”

“We have enough already.”

“You’re the strangest soul, Nickie. One way or the other, you’ll move away from the emotional to ideas.”

“That’s me. I’m tired of hearing how repressed I am.”

“Did I say that?”

“No, you didn’t,” I grumbled, “but it’s been a hot topic of conversation of late and I don’t think I’m wildly repressed. We each have a distinctive way of approaching life and I’m a person who will try and use my head first. The heart follows the head for me, not the reverse. Dammit, that really is the way I am and I’m not going to change.”

This seemed to ring a bell or at least a distant wind chime.

“I’ll buy that.” Jackson leaned back in the chair. “You’re obviously dying to spring on me your latest theory which has to do with sex. Now, mind you, I’d rather be having sex with you than hearing about it but I’m in your company, so I’m happy.”

I wanted to hug him. Sometimes he could be so sweet he reminded me of Dad, but like every woman past the age of puberty I knew no adult male ever loved you the way your father did. After puberty it’s quid pro quo. I rubbed my hands together. “Humans can mate at any time. We’re always ready. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Okay, one way that cultures past and present try to settle this confusion is to harness sex. If we made love to anyone who caught our fancy, whenever we wanted, nothing would get done.”

“I agree to that, too, and wouldn’t it be glorious.” A grin illuminated his handsome features.

“Don’t be a pig. I’m serious.” He laughed and I continued. “Marriage was a good way to limit our sexual expression. Even if a culture allows one man to have many wives, or one woman to have many husbands, there’s been a restriction imposed that limits sexual energy and breeding. That way we have energy left over for agriculture, the arts, building, war—whatever. We can create true
communities because we’ve stabilized the sex drive. Different cultures stabilize that drive differently but they all stabilize it.”

“I’m still with you.”

“So, one of the first rules of any society has to be that married people are off limits to other people. It’s vital for a community to know and to advertise who is taken and who is available.”

“I don’t like this part of the theory quite as much.”

“I didn’t say I liked it either but that doesn’t make it any less true. The human race can’t afford to have everyone running after everyone else. Apart from the confusion that would create, it foments disease. Especially now. I mean, Jack, sex has never been private and it never will be. We perform the act in private but we must be public about the connection. Sex is how we pass down worldly goods. It’s how we create the primary unit of our society, the couple. Other societies have larger primary units but sex is still part of it.”

“I see what you mean, honey, but I will always believe what I do with my body is nobody’s business but my own.”

“But it is. Look at it from another angle.” I got up to make tea for myself and coffee for Jackson. “This rule applies to gay people as well as straight people. If a person is gay, then he or she is not a suitable mate for someone who is straight. We each need to find a suitable mate who will not only love us but protect us and help us become productive, useful members of our community. Think of the energy expended to find a suitable mate. Our entire culture is obsessed with the romantic phase of mating. No wonder we’re so backward. Well, anyway, I got off the track. When a gay person marries a straight person, there’s heartache. The community absolutely must know who is straight, who is gay, who is married, and who is single. Without that information we make painful mistakes and lose time.”

He sipped his coffee while I knocked back my tea and made another cup. “I never thought of it that way.”

“If you accept my theory, then coming out is not an issue of
individual liberty; it is a matter of community responsibility. Communities must have truth and trust. Not understanding that sexual information is crucial to our building communities is going to weaken the community as well as harm the individual. So it’s actually in everyone’s self-interest to make coming out easy for gay people. Gotta accept them for what they are because they are a permanent part of every society on earth and have been from B.C. to the present. Doesn’t it make sense to find a way to include them in our community and make them useful? The burden really is on straight people. Hell, if the price of honesty is getting your head bashed in or losing your job, who but the brave are going to tell the truth?”

He reached over and took the second cup of tea out of my hand. “Don’t drink another cup of tea, Nickie.”

“Why?”

“You’ll talk all night.”

I laughed. “Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I think your ideas are pretty interesting. If I lived with you I’d hear them every day. Christ, why can’t you, Regina, the kids, and me just push the boundaries of the family a little further? Sometimes I feel locked in and I hear the clock ticking.” He touched my hand. “I have little to complain about and yet I’m in love with two women at the same time. In our society there’s no more room for me than there is for a gay person.”

I’d never thought of that. I put my teacup back on the counter. I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t. His frustration was my frustration but I didn’t have an answer for either of us. There comes a time in one’s life when you no longer subscribe to relative pain. Homosexual or heterosexual, black or white, man or woman, we suffered, we cried, we bled. Did it matter how? What mattered was, could we give one another comfort and perhaps even laughter? Could we make this journey of life with some tolerance and grace? Could we grasp the simple, splendid truth that we are all part of one another? I was part of Jackson and he was part of me but I couldn’t have him.

Before he left I asked him to be on my fence crew.

He shook his head and then started laughing at me. “From social theory to horseshit.”

“Maybe social theory is horseshit.”

“Maybe everything is.” He had his hand on the huge doorknob. “Eventually all things are known and few matter.”

“Who said that?”

“Gore Vidal.”

“He did not, did he?” I questioned.

“If he didn’t, he should have.” Jackson blew me a kiss as he opened the door. “And yes, you weasel, I’ll be on your fence crew.”

His curly blond hair caught the light outside the door and then he disappeared into the Square. I loved him. I could no longer fool myself about how much I did love him. I gazed out at the statues and the cannon. Night caressed the Square with her black velvet glove. A surge of euphoria shot through my body. Sorrowing as I was at not being able to make a life with Jack, at no longer being able to sleep with him, the purity of that love made me human. It’s the only force that might possibly save our pitiful race.