Independence Day (55 page)

“It
will
make sense,” I say. “You don’t have to fight to get everything right, that’s all. Sometimes you can relax.” I notice two more yellow window squares go dark in the big inn across the way.
Who-who
, goes the owl.
Who-who. Who-who
. He’s got Keester in his sights, standing stupidly with his yellow Frisbee, waiting for us to get interested in throwing it, as we always do.

“If you’re a tightrope walker in the circus, what’s your best trick?” Paul looks up at me, smiling cruelly.

“I don’t know. Doing it blindfolded. Doing it naked.”

“Falling,” Paul says authoritatively.

“That’s not a trick,” I say. “It’s a fuck-up.”

“Yeah, but he can’t stand the straight and narrow another minute, because it’s so boring. And nobody ever knows if he falls or jumps. It’s great.”

“Who told you about that?” Keester, finally disappointed by us, turns and trots off through the trees, becoming a paler and paler hole in the dark, then is gone.

“Clarissa. She’s worse than I am. She just doesn’t show it. She doesn’t act out anything, because she’s sneaky.”

“Who says?” I am absolutely certain this isn’t true, certain she’s just as she seems, flipping the bird behind her parents’ backs like any normal girl.

“Dr. Lew D. Zyres sez,” Paul says, and suddenly bounds up, with me still clinging to his chairback. “My session’s over tonight, Doctah.” He starts off toward the front screen, his big shoes noisily clunkety-clunking on the porch boards. He is again trailing a sour smell. Possibly it is the smell of stress-related problems. “We need some fireworks,” he says.

“I’ve got bottle rockets and sparklers in the car. And this wasn’t a session. We don’t have sessions. This was you and your father having a serious talk.”

“People are always shocked at me when I say”—the screen swings open and Paul tromps in out of sight—“ciao.”

“I love you,” I say to my son, slipping away, but who should hear these words again if only to be able to recall much later on: “Somebody said that to me, and nothing since then has really seemed quite as bad as it might have.”

10

“You know, Jerry, the truth is I just began to realize I didn’t care what happened to me, you know? Worry and worry about making your life come out right, you know? Regret everything you say or do, everything seems to sabotage you, then you try to quit sabotaging yourself. But then
that’s
a mistake. Finally you just have to figure a lot’s out of your control, right?”

“Right! Thanks! Bob from Sarnia! Next caller. You’re on
Blues Talk
. You’re on the air, Oshawa!”

“Hi, Jerry, it’s Stan….”

Out my window a tall, blond, bronze-skinned, no-shirt, chisel-chest hombre of about my own age is working a big chamois cloth over a red vintage Mustang with what looks to be red-and-white Wisconsin plates. For some reason he’s wearing green lederhosen, and it is his loud and blarey radio that has shaken me awake. Crackling morning light and leafy shadow spread across the gravel and the lawns of neighborhood houses behind the inn. It’s Sunday. The lederhosen guy’s here for the “Classic Car Parade,” which rolls tomorrow, and doesn’t want the dust and grime to get ahead of him. His pretty plump-as-a-knödel wife is perched on the fender of
my
car, sunning her short brown legs and smiling. They’ve hung their bright red floor mats off my bumper to dry.

Another American—Joe Markham, for instance—might snarl out at them: “Getyerfuckinmatsoffyaasshole.” But that would spoil a morning, wake the world too early (including my son). Bob from Sarnia has already put it well enough.

By eight I’ve shaved and showered, using the clammy, tiny-windowed, beaverboard cubicle, already hot and malodorous from the previous user (I spied the woman with the neck brace slipping in, slipping out).

Paul is twisted into his covers when I rouse him with our oldest reveille: “Time’s a wastin’ … miles to go … I’m hungry as a bear … hop in the shower.” We’ve checked out when we checked in and now have only to eat and beat it.

Then I’m down the stairs, hearing church bells already, as well as the muffled sumptuary noises of belly-buster breakfasts being eaten in the dining room by a group of total strangers who have only the Baseball Hall of Fame in common.

I’m eager to call Ted Houlihan (I forgot to try again last night), and get him ready for a miracle: the Markhams have crumbled; my strategy’s borne fruit; his balls are as good as gone. Though the choking-man diagram, here again above the phone as I listen to ring after ring, reminds me unerringly of what realty’s all about: we—the Markhams, the bad apples at Buy and Large, Ted, me, the bank, the building inspectors—we’re all hankering to get our hands around somebody’s neck and strangle the shit out of him for some little half-chewed piece of indigestible gristle we identify as our “nut,” the nitty gritty, the carrot that makes the goat trot. Better, of course, to take a higher road, operate on the principle of service and see if things don’t turn out better….

“Hello?”

“Hey, good news, Ted!” I shout straight into the receiver. The breakfast club in the next room falls hushed at my voice—as if I’d gone hysterical.

“Good news here too,” Ted says.

“Let’s hear yours first.” I am instantly wary.

“I sold the house,” Ted says. “Some new outfit down in New Egypt. Bohemia, or something, Realty. They got it off the MLS. The woman brought a Korean family over last night around eight. And I had an offer in hand by ten.” When I was gabbing with Paul about whether or not he’s truly hopeless. “I called you around nine and left a message. But I really couldn’t say no. They put the money in their trust account night deposit.”

“How much?” I say grimly. I experience a small, tight chill and my stomach goes corked.

“What’s that?”

“How much did the Koreans pay?”

“Full boat!” Ted says exuberantly. “Sure. One fifty-five. I jewed the girl a point too. She hadn’t done anything to earn it. You’d done more by a long shot. Your office gets half, of course.”

“My clients just don’t have anyplace to live now, Ted.” My voice has lowered to a razor-thin whisper. I would be happy to choke Ted with my hands. “We had an exclusive listing with you, we talked about that yesterday, and at the least you were going to get in touch with me so I could put a competitive offer in, which is what I’ve got authorized.” Or nearly. “One fifty-five. Full boat, you said.”

“Well.” Ted pauses in a funk. “I guess if you want to come back at one-sixty, I could tell the Koreans I forgot. Your office would have to work it out with Bohemia. Evelyn something’s the girl’s name. She’s a little go-getter.”

“What I think is, Ted, we’re going to have to probably sue you for breach of contract.” I say this calmly, but I’m not calm. “Have to tie your house up for a couple of years while the market drops, and let you convalesce at home.” All baloney, of course. We’ve never sued the first client. It’s business suicide. Instead, you simply bag your 3%, of which I get half, exactly $2,325, maybe make a worthless complaint to the state realty board, and forget about it.

“Well, you have to do what you have to do, I guess,” Ted says. I’m sure he’s standing once again at the rumpus room window in a sleeveless sweater and chinos, mooning out at his pergola, his luau torches and the bamboo curtain he’s just breached in a big way. I wonder if the Koreans even bothered to walk out back last night. Although a big lighted prison might’ve made them feel safer. They aren’t fools.

“Ted, I don’t know what to say.” The noisy eaters in the next room have started back tink-tink-tinking their flatware, mouths full of pancakes, blabbing about how the berm-improvements work between here and Rochester’ll “impact” on driving times to the Falls. Suddenly my chill is over and I’m hot as a sauna bath.

“You might just feel happy for me, Frank, instead of suing me. I’ll probably be dead in a year. So it’s good I sold my house. I can go live with my son now.”

“I really just wanted to sell it for you, Ted.” I am made lightheaded at the unexpected arousal of death. “I’ve
got
it sold, in fact,” I say faintly.

“You’ll find them another house, Frank. I didn’t think they much liked it here.”

I push my fingertips hard onto the stack of year-old
Annie Get Your Gun
tickets. Someone, I see, has slid the copy of
Achieve Super Marital Sex
underneath the stack, with old Mr. Pleasure Unit’s happy face peeking upward. “They liked it a lot,” I say, thinking about Betty Hutton in a cowboy hat. “They were cautious, but they’re sure now. I hope your Koreans are that reliable.”

“Twenty thousand clams. No contingencies,” Ted says. “And they know there’s other parties interested, so they’ll follow up. These people don’t throw money away, Frank. They own a sod farm down around Fort Dix, and they want to move up in the world.” He would like to burble on about his good fortune now that he’s started, but doesn’t out of politeness to me.

“I’m just really disappointed, Ted. That’s all I can say.” Though I’m inventorying my mind for an acceptable fallback, sweat beginning to prickle out of my forehead. I’m to blame for this, for getting diverted from standard practices (though I don’t know that I have any practice I could class as standard).

“Who you voting for this fall?” Ted says. “You guys all pull for business, I guess, don’t you?” I’m wondering if some computer wizard at Bohemia has hacked into our office circuitry. Or possibly Julie Loukinen, who’s new, is double-dipping on our potentials list. I try to remember if I’ve ever seen her with a scruffy Eastern European-looking boyfriend. Though most likely Ted just listed his house as “exclusive” with everybody who came to the door. (And who can be surprised in a free country? It’s laissez-faire: serve your granny to the neighbors for brunch.) “You know neither Dukakis or Bush wants to put out a budget. They don’t want to deliver any unhappy news in case it might offend somebody. I’d much rather they told me they were about to fuck me so I wouldn’t tense up.” Randy new lingo for Ted, the successful house seller. “You want me to take that sign down, by the way?”

“We’ll send somebody out,” I say glumly.

Then suddenly my line to Penns Neck goes loud with fierce papery static so that I can barely hear Ted jibbering on, half gassed, about fin de siècle qualms and something or other, I don’t know what.

“I can’t hear you now, Ted,” I say into the old gunk-smelling receiver, frowning at the stick-figure man signaling me he’s choking, his own hands at his throat, a look of rounded dismay on his balloon face. Then the static stops and I can hear Ted starting in about Bush and Dukakis not being able to tell a good joke if their asses depended on it. I hear him laugh at the whole idea. “So long, Ted,” I say, sure he can’t hear me.

“I read where Bush accepted Christ as his personal savior. Now there’s a joke …,” Ted’s saying extra loud.

I set the receiver gently in its cradle, understanding this bit of life—his and mine—is now over with. I’m almost grateful.

M
y sworn duty is of course to call the Markhams in a timely manner and break the news, which I try to do, though they’re not in their room at the Raritan Ramada. (No doubt they’re going through the brunch buffet a second time, cocky for making the right decision—too late.) No one comes on the line after twenty-five rings. I call back to leave a message, but a recording puts me on hold, then leaves me out in murky “hold” purgatory, where an FM station is playing “Jungle Flute.” I count to sixty, my hands getting clammy, then decide to call back later since nothing’s at stake anymore.

There are other calls I should make. A hectoring, early-bird “business” call to the McLeods, with an innuendo of unspecified pending actions regarding matters of rent irrespective of personal financial pinches; a call to Julie Loukinen just to let her know “somebody” has let Ted swim through the net. A call to Sally to reaffirm all feelings and say whatever comes into my head, no matter how puzzling. None of these, though, do I feel quite up to. Each seems too complicated on a hot morning, none likely to be rewarding.

But just as I turn to go shake Paul loose from his dreams again, I feel a sudden, flushed, almost breathless urge to call Cathy Flaherty in Gotham. Plenty of times I’ve considered just how welcome (and gratifying) it would be were she just to appear on my doorstep with a bottle of Dom Perignon, demanding an instant barometer reading on me, take my temperature, get the lowdown on how I’ve
really
been since we last made contact, having naturally enough thought about me no fewer than a million times, with multiple what-ifs embedded everywhere, finally deciding to hunt me down via the Michigan Alumni Association and show up unannounced but “hopefully” not unwelcome. (In my first-draft of the script, we only talk.)

As I was thinking in my room at Sally’s two days ago, few things are as pleasing as being asked to do basically nothing but having all good things come to you as if by right. It’s exactly what poor Joe Markham wanted to happen with his Boise “friend,” except she was too smart for him.

As it happens, I still have Cathy’s number committed to memory from the last time I heard her voice, after Ann announced four years ago that she and Charley were tying the knot and taking the kids, and I was tossed for several loop-the-loops, landing me in the realty business. (Back then I only heard Cathy’s recorded message and couldn’t think of one of my own to leave other than to shout “Help, help, help, help!” and hang up, which I decided against.)