Bread to the Wise--Book I of The Libertine

  At our third beers—the end of my supply—I had the urge to strip off my madras shirt and Levi’s and climb in with her. She sensed this and said, “I’m turning into a prune, hand me my towel, would you?”

  And I knew it was time to get out of there.

  four

  Parts of Jake’s oral commentary on Bobwhite Court is difficult to quote without the urge to rebut. He is gone and I am here, and that fact alone offers me the opportunity to rebut with the way I live. So I quote him here and then show what was happening as I remember it.

  He, in turn, quotes Thoreau, whom I have resisted reading all my life, but I know this quote well enough and it’s worth reciting again:

  “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

  More of Jake-On-Tape:

  Lives of quiet desperation: how very true of all of us. I am writing a novel which feels doomed although I’m compelled to write it. Amanda is supporting this jaded venture while, I fear, slowly gathering the courage to break the connection between us. I’m stultifying, her stiff back and frown lines murmur to me. She worked hard to attain the simple suburban life, which, by my lights, is itself stultifying. But easy to adopt: acculturating children, partying with friends, organizing or attending charity events, nurturing professional connections, learning the latest technologies of her profession, salting away money for the kids’ college and “the golden years.”

  Robert I’ve already vilified, although he has become my handsome sailor. (No, I’m not gay, I don’t want sex with the lad. He is, in addition to being a sympathetic figure for his undeserved but crashing fall from grace, an esthetic pleasure, robust and sparkling in much the way Mary Clare is.) He was on his way to becoming a thoroughgoing bum—until he scared himself into exchanging his Beemer for an antique truck and hoodwinking Meany into giving him a job, one suited better to someone with fewer grey cells.

  Meany is the pumpkin eater in this farce, putting his protégé (if you will) in a rooftop pumpkin shell, the better to keep her . . . for himself. He ought to have welcomed the sudden collision of handsome sailor with fair maiden, but no. He is like the grizzly at the disarmament conference of forest creatures: “Give up your antlers and claws and teeth, my friends, and I will give you a great big hug.”

  And finally Mary Clare. It had been a long time in coming, an adventure with a handsome man without a bed the inevitable next stop. It could have happened when they had the collision but didn’t. She’d lost grace, the energy of the soul. It was swallowed by the monotony and mental decay of hiding out in a castle behind a moat.

  She’d lost all personal power. She’d lived a long time on reflected power, the latest Meany’s, and then, one Saturday in June, the hottest June Sixth in La Morinda history, she had an opportunity. Her Great Accountant in the Sky saw to it that a tiny imperfection in a pipe joint, aided by the corrosiveness of the summertime water supplied by the Delta Water Company, began leaking into the apartment below at eight in the morning.

  Which was not just her good luck. It spared the once outgoing Robert Gattling the pain of deciding to make the first move. He didn’t have to decide whether to follow his heart or his judgment.

  *****

  Whew.

  On that hot June Saturday I was definitely listening to my heart. I was so jazzed by our non-sexual but still electric conversation over beer and bathwater, I would have offered to take on Meany as her champion. Fisticuffs, sabers, dueling pistols—whatever.

  On her way out the door, damp towel and unread Camus, she invited me up to her place for dinner: chicken and corn grilled on her deck but eaten in her air-conditioned dining ell, accompanied by a dry Provençal rosé and followed by an artichoke salad.

  Naturally I accepted. What could I bring? Yourself, she said.

  “This is really some place.”

  “Isn’t it? And I don’t own any of it.”

  “Better yet—all this stuff and you’re still free as a bird.”

  “On the contrary, I have to stay right here to protect it.”

  “Don’t you trust Meany?”

  (The Big Man’s name is spoken; no thunderclap.)

  “I trust him to use all of this to keep me right here.”

  “Boy,” I said, “that would get to me after a while. In fact, if it were me, I’d be out of here the first minute I figured that out.”

  She said, “Fundamental difference number one. Wasn’t him it would be something else tying me down. I need to feel grounded. I need it as much as the comfort.” It seemed a rehearsed statement, as if she’d been afraid someone was going to ask her when it was time to quite her dependency on Meany.

  “Where’s that motto: ‘Enough?’”

  “Meany’s as much a slave as I am—maybe you are too.”

  That observation prompted me to tell her what my trainer told me about using the ring: you pin a guy in a corner, you’re in the corner too. You have to make sure your opponent hasn’t got time to figure that out. He turns you, you’re the one who’s trapped.

  “What did your trainer say if you’re the one getting hit?”

  “He said, ‘Get out of there at any cost. Put everything you’ve got into one big punch and move laterally.’”

  No surprise, the penthouse had a great view. I shivered involuntarily when I realized she could look down on me, like when I was swimming with Janice Lippert. In fact, until ten o’clock that evening there were people hanging out at the pool, taking advantage of the warm night air: that funny visual effect in disturbed water, legs wavy black against floodlit aqua.

  When I left that night she showed me the back stairs and I tripped down them lightly, as in my boxing days, descending from the gym. I’d not known about the stairs before, but of course they had to be there, in case of fire. She had to push me along to make me go.

  “I want us to be friends,” I said.

  She said, “Of course we’ll be; why wouldn’t we?” Gracing me with a social smile that, as I lingered, turned into a more genuine one.

  Back in my own place that evening I remember her smile and her hand as I took it on parting. I thought, in spite of her superior sophistication, she was asking to be loved. And I was ready to love her.

  I didn’t need a nightcap. I didn’t need any lights. I brushed my teeth in the dark, by feel, not wanting to break the spell, felt for my bed and at its side dropped my clothes in a heap, imagining her on the opposite side doing the same, and I pulled a single sheet over me, smiling, sighing, and said, “Good-night, Maria Chava.”

  I kidded myself to sleep mulling Lupe’s rule about never being involved with two men at once. Would Mary Clare apply that to me and Meany? If she did, I’d naturally win.

  five

  God bless Jake for all the encouragement, but, truth told, I wasn’t any more prepared for Mary Clare saying ‘Take me, I’m yours’ than she was to say it. It was still in the realm of fantasy until . . .

  I went into the office that Monday, as usual, checking for any special instructions, and Meryl said, “He wants to see you, you know.”

  “Right now?” I asked, wondering how I would possibly know.

  She said, “Of course not.” I waited for the date and time but she just smiled at me.

  Meryl Destrier is the only woman in my adult life who, fully clothed, made me watch where my eyes went. I usually put my hands behind my back when I was in her presence; they wanted to form spheres that defined the curves of Meryl’s body.

  “When?” I asked, after it became clear she wanted me to.

  “Why, Wednesday at ten.”

  My first reaction was, how did Meany know so quickly that his sweetie and I had exchanged visits on Sunday? My second reaction was that I’d committed a boo-boo with Meryl at the Christmas party that Meany threw for all the many employees of his far-flung enterprises, a fair crowd. It was my first Meany Christmas party, and I sipped a rather potent punch and watched carefully to see if I could divine any socia
l code operating. I didn’t discover any, so I danced with Meryl that evening, a signal experience, as the woman, as imposing as she was, danced like a featherweight covers the ring. Her husband was—maybe still is—a cook on a supertanker, and was at sea the day of the party, so Meryl, like me, was solo that evening. She offered me a ride from the office and I accepted, yet she insisted I drive both directions. Out in the parking lot as the party waned, Meryl and I, aided by Meany’s potent punch, had briefly forgotten ourselves in the front seat of her Buick. I must say, Meryl was as nimble with her lips as with her tootsies. And she was dressed in a frock that did not carefully shelter her adequacy, on the contrary.

  The intimacy lasted but a moment, when she slid away from me across the bench seat with the admonition, “Mr. Gattling, I’m a married woman,” as if, somehow, I’d taken advantage of her. I sighed and twisted the key in the ignition, saying, with a grin, “Well I’m glad I forgot myself.”

  I think that last was the boo-boo. She pushed her hair about after she buckled her seatbelt across her lap, then applied lipstick as we drove off.

  Ever since, it had been as if she knew my Achilles heel, as if an opponent in the ring knew that I dropped my right hand each time I threw a left jab.

  “You know what this is about, Meryl?” I asked of the Wednesday meeting.

  She shrugged and made Betty Boop eyes. “I’d dress, if I were you,” she said to my back as I walked out.

  Thoughts marched through my noggin as I started my rounds. Meany wasn’t stupid. I had no illusions about carrying on with Mary Clare behind his back—besides, I wouldn’t have liked myself if I did. He and I were opposites, I told myself. He did what he set out to do, I had good ideas but of late have failed to follow through. I’d prospered at the university until the uprising that took me into the breach, and then I’d marked time, expecting to pick up the beat as soon as the cacophony died down. That hiatus flowed into the debacle on the desert, then extended on and on. I watched the white elephant’s bones bleach in the inland valley sun, letting my resources dwindle, not seizing the moment and plunging on a Bobwhite Court complex.

  *****

  I told Jake about the summons. I told him about Meryl playing with me like a well-fed cat plays with an inexperienced mouse. I told him she had fluttered her eyelashes at me and passed a hand absently over one breast, as a woman sometimes will pass a hand across the seat of her pants to smooth an imagined wrinkle. Our glances met like small swords between duelists. “Hard as I tried, Jake, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her chest. She always has one button too many opened for a person her size.”

  “Did you ever cross Meryl?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure. Either I went too far or not far enough.”

  “You and Meryl?”

  “That’s as much as I’ll tell you. Meany’s Christmas party last year. Figgy pudding.”

  “You amaze me, Robert.”

  “I amaze myself sometimes.”

  The recollection of the Christmas party reinforced my fear that Meany had already learned the secrets of my heart. When Meany, greeting partiers at the door, saw me there in my full university uniform he said, “What do you really do, Gattling, and why the hell are you masquerading as a janitor?”

  I told Jake my days on Bobwhite Court were numbered. Love versus job, I vowed to let Meany have the job, I intended to press my suit with Mary Clare. “Whatever got her hooked up with him, it must have been horrendous. She needed money for her mother’s operation, her brother was going to jail if Meany didn’t bail him out.”

  “Goddamn it, Robert, there you go with your fantasies again. Why don’t you just ask her? And what has that got to do with your days being numbered, anyway?”

  “Would you let a janitor steal your girl?”

  *****

  Meany didn’t fire me, he just wanted to arrange it so that it wasn’t a janitor stealing his girl.

  When I showed up Wednesday I wore my other remaining sports coat and tie combination. He was in a suit made for a large Chicago gangster. I tried to smile and read his eyes at the same time, and flopped at both. I couldn’t hate the man. I never hated a fighter I opposed, I never got angry in the ring—except a couple of times, and then I had good reason, like a thumb in the eye. I pictured Meany as the guy who refereed the oil field bare knuckle bouts, who had different shotguns for geese, ducks and upland birds. He had a hunting lodge somewhere in Northern Idaho or maybe at the foot of the Tetons in Wyoming, and had mounted on the walls of it proof he was no private preserve hunter.

  So I was prepared to do the honorable thing if he hadn’t figured out Clare and me, I was going to terminate our contract. Imagine my surprise, then, when the first words out of his mouth when we met were, “You got a shred of ambition, Gattling?”

  “Come again?”

  He said, “Makes no sense to me, young man like you pushing a broom. And don’t give me that cock and bull about burn-out. I don’t buy it.”

  “Have I acted burned-out?” I asked, genuinely puzzled where this was going. “I thought I’d been square with you, Mr. Meany.”

  “Aside from misrepresenting yourself at the beginning. You haven’t screwed up and you haven’t crapped out, it’s only your background you misrepresented. You’re still here, and it’s time to decide whether to renew your contract.”

  Here it was. This is where I got it in the neck. I sucked in my breath and held it.

  He said, “I don’t want to renew it, cause I’ve got another job for you, you’re interested.”

  Damn. The ground shifted under me. Now the dilemma was whether to take this new job and dishonor a man who obviously trusted me, or refuse the job and suffer Meany’s contempt. Short of spilling the beans about Mary Clare, nothing would make the man understand why I didn’t want a better job.

  “It pays twice what you’re making, give or take some tax breaks, and you wouldn’t have to swab out toilets.”

  “I’m not too proud to swab out toilets.”

  Meany dismissed my humility with a backhand wave. “I need a new man to manage the physical plant at the mall. You want the job?”

  The Mall was Diablo Square, the first and only real shopping mall in central county. As general partner in a limited partnership, he had developed the mall and managed it with his left pinky while doing all the other things he did.

  “What happened to the man who was in that job?” I asked.

  “Took something that belonged to me. I cannot abide a thief.”

  “You fired him on the spot, I bet.”

  “Damned right.”

  My heart was pumping as fast as it had when I heard Mary Clare’s voice over the phone the previous Saturday. As Meany kept talking I could feel the sweat trickling down my sides from my armpits. He was saying, I did a good job at the mall, there were other jobs waiting for me.

  Why does he like me? I asked myself. Aloud I said, “Can I sleep on it, Mr. Meany?”

  He gave me until the following Monday. He was taking the family to Lake Tahoe and would stay out of touch.

  On my rounds that night I kicked myself for not saying ‘no’ on the spot. But since I didn’t, I needed to come up with a rationale that Meany would understand and that I could act on. Something better than the uncle who left me a million dollars. Maybe Mary Clare could coach me.

  What if Mary Clare said, “Take the job.” What would that mean?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh.

  Whatever Will I Do

  one

  Jake’s take on my Meany dilemma:

  Meany’s offering Robert a new job called for application of sound moral principles, genius, and a minim of luck. But genius and luck failed Robert. This would-be simple hermit had opened Fibber McGee’s closet and everything was falling down on his head. People were calling up markers from the past, not giving him a chance to sort things into neat sequences. Chaos reigned.

  *****

  Jake had already dug an
elbow into my ribs about my sexual ethics, which is a reason to defend myself, as the affairs of convenience were about to be settled out of court, so to speak, though, really, I had fully intended to end them at the first opportunity.

  The first object to fall out of Fibber McGee’s closet and bounce off my head was a message on my answering machine from a Berkeley nymphet named Marta. I had met Marta in a dive called the Steppenwolf, shortly after separating from Lana. She was at a table surrounded by six adoring guys of varying ages. She sat sipping sour wine and goblets of adulation, smoking a little Danish cigar, a Valkurie sailing under false colors. I soon learned that she was actually what was called, at the time, a frigid woman.

  How did I learn? Because I lured her away from the adulating sextet and substituted my own brand of adulation. As things progressed, she exhibited an unnatural lack of libido. I thought, as men will, that my enthusiasm for her flesh would cure her of that, and it was not hard to sell her on the idea. I became just what the doctor ordered.

  —Except I didn’t. I was wrong, very wrong, and she was, too, but she only tried all the harder, to the point that I moved to Walnut Creek as much to get away from her as to flee all the hurts that lingered in Berkeley.

  I listened to her rambling message when I came back from my Meany meeting; it boiled down to her wanting to discuss certain changes in our relationship.

  What relationship? The last time we slept together she’d cried with frustration. She had tracked me down in Walnut Creek, claiming she now knew a method that was sure-fire, the very Tao of orgasmic sex. I wouldn’t have minded learning this method from her, except for a hunch that Marta had learned it from another man, which raised some questions.

  I did submit to her blandishments. Sharing a post-coital cigarette, I said, “Maybe you’re trying too hard. Maybe we should just be friends.” This is where the tears started. She accused me of abandoning her. I consoled, she fled back to Berkeley.

  When I returned her call, I realized I’d have an easier time explaining to her why I needed to end our so-called relationship than telling Meany why I couldn’t take his job. Even though this was a distraction, and I’d like to have told her goodbye over the telephone, I thought I owed her a face-to-face meeting. So I asked her to come to La Morinda Monday evening, and meet me on my coffee break.