I laughed and repressed a yawn. It was late -- eleven-twenty p.m. An unusual hour for me to be finishing dinner but not to be engaged in conversation over coffee. Not having an Allison of my own to hurry home to, or anyone other than a cat, I often watched the clock slip past midnight or one a.m. in the company of friends.
Manko pushed aside the dinner dishes and poured more coffee.
"I'll be awake all night," I protested mildly.
He laughed this aside and asked if I wanted more pie.
When I declined he raised his coffee cup. "My Allison. Let's drink to her."
We touched the rims of the cups with a ringing clink.
I said, "Hey, Mr. M, you were going to tell me all 'bout the trouble. You know, with her father."
He scoffed. "That son of a bitch? You know what happened."
"Not the whole thing."
"Don'tcha?" He dramatically reared his head back and gave a wail of mock horror. "Manko's falling down on the job." He leaned forward, the smile gone, and gripped my arm hard. "It's not a pretty story, Frankie boy. It's not outta Family Ties or Roseanne. Can you stomach it?"
I leaned forward too, just as dramatically, and growled. "Try me."
Manko laughed and settled into his chair. As he lifted his cup the table rocked. It had done so throughout dinner but he only now seemed to notice it. He took a moment to fold and slip a piece of newspaper under the short leg to steady it. He was meticulous in this task. I watched his concentration, his strong hands. Manko was someone who actually enjoyed working out -- lifting weights, in his case -- and I was astonished at his musculature. He was about five-six, and, though it's hard for men -- for me at least -- to appraise male looks, I'd call him handsome.
The only aspect of his appearance I thought off-kilter was his haircut. When his stint with the Marines was over he kept the unstylish crew cut. From this, I deduced his experience in the service was a high point in his life -- he'd worked factory and mediocre sales jobs since -- and the shorn hair was a reminder of a better, if not an easier, time.
Of course, that was my pop-magazine-therapy take on the situation. Maybe he just liked short hair.
He now finished with the table and eased his strong, compact legs out in front of him. Manko the storyteller was on duty. This was another clue to the nature of Manko's spirit: Though I don't think he'd ever been on a stage in his life he was a born actor.
"So. You know Hillborne? The town?"
I said I didn't.
"Southern part of Ohio. Piss-water river town. Champion used to have a mill there. Still a couple factories making, I don't know, radiators and things. And a big printing plant, does work for Cleveland and Chicago. Kroeger Brothers. When I was in Seattle I learned printing. Miehle offsets. The four-and five-color jobs, you know. Big as a house. I learned 'em cold. Could print a whole saddle-stitched magazine myself, inserts included, yessir, perfect register and not one goddamn staple in the centerfolds boobs... Yessir, Manko's a hell of a printer. So there I was, thumbing 'cross country. I ended up in Hillborne and got a job at Kroeger's. I had to start as a feeder, which was crap, but it paid thirteen an hour and I figured I could work my way up.
"One day I had an accident. Frankie boy, you ever seen coated stock whipping through a press? Zip, zip, zip. Like a razor. Sliced my arm. Here." He pointed out the scar, a wicked-looking one. "Bad enough they took me to the hospital. Gave me a tetanus shot and stitched me up. No big deal. No whining from Manko. Then the doctor left and a nurse's aide came in to tell me how to wash it and gave me some bandages." His voice dwindled.
"It was Allison?"
"Yessir." He paused and gazed out the window at the overcast sky. "You believe in fate?"
"In a way I do."
"Does that mean yes or no?" He frowned. Manko always spoke plainly and expected the same from others.
"Yes, with qualifiers."
Love tamed his irascibility and he grinned, chiding good-naturedly, "Well, you better. Because there is such a thing. Allison and me, we were fated to be together. See, if I hadn't been running that sixty-pound stock, if I hadn't slipped just when I did, if she hadn't been working an extra shift to cover for a sick friend, if, if, if... See what I'm saying? Am I right?"
He sat back in the creaky chair. "Oh, Frankie, she was fantastic. I mean, here I am, this, like, four-inch slash in my arm, twenty stitches, I could've bled to death, and all I'm thinking is she's the most beautiful woman I ever saw."
"I've seen her picture." But that didn't stop him from continuing to describe her. The words alone gave him pleasure.
"Her hair's blonde. Gold blonde. Natural, not out of a bottle. And curly but not teased, like some high-hair slut. And her face, it's heart-shaped. Her body... Well, she has a nice figure. Let's leave it at that." His glance at me contained a warning. I was about to assure him that I had no impure thoughts about Allison Morgan when he continued. He said, "Twenty-one years old." Echoing my exact thought he added sheepishly, "Kind of an age difference, huh?"
Manko was thirty-seven -- three years younger than I -- but I learned this after I'd met him and had guessed he was in his late twenties. It was impossible for me to revise that assessment upward.
"I asked her out. There. On the spot. In the emergency room, you can believe it. She was probably thinking, How d'I get rid of this bozo? But she was interested, yessir. A man can tell. Words and looks, they're two different things, and I was getting the capital M message. She said she had this rule she never dated patients. So I go, 'How 'bout if you married somebody and he cuts his hand in an accident and goes to the emergency room and there you are? Then you'd be married to a patient.' She laughed and said, no, that was somehow backwards. Then this emergency call came in, some car wreck, and she had to go off.
"The next day I came back with a dozen roses. She pretended she didn't remember me and acted like I was a florist delivery boy. 'Oh, what room are those for?'
"I said, 'They're for you... if you have room in your heart for me.' Okay, okay, it was a bullshit line." The rugged ex-Marine fiddled awkwardly with his coffee cup. "But, hey, if it works, it works."
I couldn't argue with him there.
"The first date was magic. We had dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. A French place. It cost me two days' pay. It was embarrassing 'cause I wore my leather jacket and you were suppose to have a suit coat. One of those places. They made me wear one they had in the coat room and it didn't fit too good. But Allison didn't care. We laughed about it. She was all dressed up in a white dress, with a red, white and blue scarf around her neck. Oh, God, she was beautiful. We spent, I don't know, three, four hours easy there. She was pretty shy. Didn't say much. Mostly she stared like she was kind of hypnotized. Me, I talked and talked, and sometimes she'd look at me all funny and then laugh. And I'd realize I wasn't making any sense 'cause I was looking at her and not paying any attention to what I was saying. We drank a whole bottle of wine. Cost fifty bucks."
Manko had always seemed both impressed by and contemptuous of money. Myself, I've never come close to being rich so wealth simply perplexes me.
"It was the best," he said dreamily, replaying the memory.
"Ambrosia," I offered.
He laughed as he sometimes did -- in a way that was both amused and mocking -- and continued his story. "I told her all about the Philippines, where I was stationed for a while, and about hitching around the country. She was interested in everything I'd done. Even -- well, I should say especially -- some of the stuff I wasn't too proud of. Grifting, perping cars. You know, when I was a kid, going at it. Stuff we all did."
I held back a smile. Speak for yourself, Manko.
"Then all of a sudden, the sky lit up outside. Fireworks! Talk about signs from God. You know what it was? It was the Fourth of July! I'd forgotten about it 'cause all I'd been thinking about was going out with her. That's why she was wearing the red, white and blue. We watched the fireworks from the window."
His eyes gleamed. "I took
her home and we stood on the steps of her parents' house -- she was still living with them. We talked for a while more then she said she had to get to bed. You catch that? Like she could've said, 'I have to be going.' Or just 'Good night.' But she worked the word bed into it. I know, you're in love, you look for messages like that. Only in this case, it wasn't Manko's imagination working overtime, no sir."
Outside, a light rain had started falling and the wind had come up. I rose and shut the window.
"The next day I kept getting distracted at work. I'd think about her face, her voice. No woman's ever affected me like that. On break I called her and asked her out for the next weekend. She said sure and said she was glad to hear from me. That set up my day. Hell, it set up my week. After work I went to the library and looked some things up. I found out about her last name. Morgan -- if you spell it a little different -- it means 'morning' in German. And I dug up some articles about the family. Like, they're rich. Filthy. The house in Hillborne wasn't their only place. There was one in Aspen, too, and one in Vermont. Oh, and an apartment in New York."
"A pied-a-terre."
His brief laugh again. The smile faded. "And then there was her father. Thomas Morgan." He peered into his coffee cup like a fortune-teller looking at tea leaves. "He's one of those guys a hundred years ago you'd call him a tycoon."
"What would you call him now?"
Manko laughed grimly, as if I'd made a clever but cruel joke. He lifted his cup toward me -- a toast, it seemed -- then continued. "He inherited this company that makes gaskets and nozzles and stuff. He's about fifty-five and is he tough. A big guy, but not fat. A droopy black mustache, and his eyes look you over like he couldn't care less about you but at the same time he's sizing you up, like every fault, every dirty thought you ever had, he knows it.
"We caught sight of each other when I dropped Allison off, and I knew, I just somehow knew that we were going to go head to head some day. I didn't really think about it then but deep inside, the thought was there."
"What about her mother?"
"Allison's mom? She's a socialite. She flits around, Allison told me. Man, what a great word. Flit. I can picture the old broad going to bridge games and tea parties. Allison's their only child." His face suddenly grew dark. "That, I figured out later, explains a lot."
"What?" I asked.
"Why her father got on my case in a big way. I'll get to that. Don't rush the Manko Man, Frankie."
I smiled in deference.
"Our second date went even better than the first. We saw some movie, I forget what, then I drove her home..." His voice trailed off. Then he said, "I asked her out for a few days after that but she couldn't make it. Ditto the next day and the next too. I was pissed at first. Then I got paranoid. Was she trying to, you know, dump me?
"But then she explained it. She was working two shifts whenever she could. I thought, This's pretty funny. I mean, her father's loaded. But, see, there was a reason. She's just like me. Independent. She dropped out of college to work in the hospital. She was saving her own money to travel. She didn't want to owe the old man anything. That's why she loved listening to me talk, telling her 'bout leaving Kansas when I was seventeen and thumbing around the country and overseas, getting into scrapes. Allison had it in her to do the same thing. Man, that was great. I love having a woman with a mind of her own."
"Do you, now?" I asked, but Manko was immune to irony.
"In the back of my mind I was thinking about all the places I'd like to go with her. I'd send her clippings from travel magazines. National Geographics. On our first date she'd told me that she loved poetry so I wrote her poems about traveling. It's funny. I never wrote anything before in my life -- a few letters maybe, some shit in school -- but those poems, man, they just poured out of me. A hundred of 'em.
"Well, next thing I knew, bang, we were in love. See, that's the thing about... transcendent love. It happens right away or it doesn't happen at all. Two weeks, and we were totally in love. I was ready to propose... Ah, I see that look on your face, Frankie boy. Didn't know the Manko man had it in him? What can I say? He's the marryin' kind after all.
"I went to the credit union and borrowed five hundred bucks and bought this diamond ring. Then I asked her out to dinner on Friday. I was going to give the ring to the waitress and tell her to put it on a plate and bring it to the table when we asked for dessert. Cute, huh?
"So, Friday, I was working the p.m. shift, three to eleven, for the bonus, but I ducked out early, at five, and showed up at her house at six-twenty. There were cars all over the place. Allison came outside, looking all nervous. My stomach twisted. Something funny was going on. She told me her mother was having a party and there was a problem. Two maids had got sick or something. Allison had to stay and help her mother. I thought that was weird. Both of them getting sick at the same time? She said she'd see me in a day or two."
I saw the exact moment that the thought came into his mind; his eyes went dead as rocks.
"But there was more to it than that," Manko whispered. "A hell of a lot more."
"Allisons father, you mean?"
But he didn't explain what he meant just then and returned to his story of the aborted proposal. He muttered, "That was one of the worst nights of my life. Here, I'd ditched work, I was in shock because of the ring, and I couldn't even get five minutes alone with her. Man, it was torture. I drove around all night. Woke up at dawn, in my car, down by the railroad tracks. And when I got home there was no message from her. Jesus, was I depressed.
"That morning I called her at the hospital. She was sorry about the party. I asked her out that night. She said she really shouldn't, she was so tired -- the party'd gone to two in the morning. But how 'bout tomorrow?"
A gleam returned to Manko's eyes. I thought his expression reflected a pleasant memory about their date.
But I was wrong.
His voice was bitter. "Oh, what a lesson we learned. It's a mistake to underestimate your enemy, Frankie. You listen to Manko. Never do it. That's what they taught us in the Corps. Semper Fi. But Allison and me, we got blindsided.
"That next night I came over to pick her up. I was going to take her to this river bluff, like a lover's lane, you know, to propose. I had my speech down cold. I'd rehearsed all night. I pulled up to the house but she just stood on the porch and waved for me to come up to her. Oh, she was beautiful as ever. I just wanted to hold her. Put my arms around her and hold her forever.
"But she was real distant. She stepped away from me and kept glancing into the house. Her face was pale and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. I didn't like it that way. I'd told her I liked it when she wore it down. So when I saw the ponytail it was like a signal of some kind. An SOS.
"'What is it?' I asked her. She started to cry and said she couldn't see me anymore. 'What?' I whispered. God, I couldn't believe it. You know what it felt like? On Parris Island, basic training, you know? They fire live rounds over your head on the obstacle course. One time I got hit by a ricochet. I had a flak vest on but the slug was a full metal jacket and it knocked me clean on my ass. That's what it was like.
"I asked her why. She just said she thought it was best and wouldn't go into any details. But then I started to catch on. She kept looking around and I realized that there was somebody just inside the door, listening. She was scared to death -- that's what it was. She begged me please not to call her or come by and I figured out she wasn't talking to me so much as saying it for whoever was spying on us. I played along. I said okay, if that's what she wanted, blah, blah, blah... Then I pulled her close and told her not to worry. I'd look out for her. I whispered it, like a secret message.
"I went home. I waited as long as I could then called, hoping that I'd get her alone. I had to talk to her. I had to hear her voice, like I needed air or water. But nobody picked up the phone. They had an answering machine but I didn't leave a message. I didn't get any sleep that weekend -- not a single hour. I had a lot to think about. See, I knew wha
t'd happened. I knew exactly.
"Monday morning I got to her hospital at six and waited just outside the entrance. I caught up with her just before she went inside. She was still scared, looking around like somebody was following her, just like on the porch.
"I asked her point-blank, 'It's your father, isn't it?' She didn't say anything for a minute then nodded and said that, yeah, he'd forbidden her to see me. Doesn't that sound funny? Old fashioned? 'Forbidden.' 'He wants you to marry some preppy, is that it? Somebody from his club?' She said she didn't know about that, only that he'd told her not to see me anymore. The son of a bitch!"
Manko sipped his coffee and pointed a blunt finger at me. "See, Frankie, love means zip to somebody like Thomas Morgan. Business, society, image, money -- that's what counts to bastards like that. Man, I was so goddamn desperate... It was too much. I threw my arms around her and said, 'Let's get away. Now.'
"'Please,' she said, 'you have to leave.'"
"Then I saw what she'd been looking out for. Her father'd sent one of his security men to spy on her. He saw us and came running. If he touched her I was going to break his neck, I swear I would've. But Allison grabbed my arm and begged me to run. 'He has a gun,' she said.
"'I don't care,' I told her." Manko lifted an eyebrow. "Not exactly true, Frankie boy, I gotta say. I was scared shitless. But Allison said she didn't want me to get hurt. And if I left, the guy wouldn't hurt her. That made sense but I wasn't going just yet. I turned back and held her hard. 'Do you love me? Tell me! I have to know. Say it!'
"And she did. She whispered, 'I love you.' I could hardly hear it but it was enough for me. I knew everything would be fine. Whatever else, we had each other.
"I got back into the routine of life. Working, playing softball on the plant team. But all the time I kept writing her poetry, sending her articles and letters, you know. I'd put fake return addresses on the envelopes so her father wouldn't guess it was me writing. I even hid letters in Publishers Clearing House envelopes addressed to her! How's that for thinking?
"Once in a while I'd see her in person. I found her in a drugstore by herself and snuck up to her. I bought her a cup of coffee. She said how happy she was to see me but also was nervous as hell and I could see why. The goons were outside. We talked for about two minutes is all then one of 'em saw us and I had to vanish. I kicked my way out the back door. After that I began to notice these dark cars driving past my apartment or following me down the street. They said 'MCP' on the side. Morgan Chemical Products. They were keeping an eye on me.