I picked at the ice waiting for her, she came in sleek and fit. I had never seen her like that, that smooth and attractive. The circular glasses giving the final touch to a quintessential woman aware of the impres-sion she was making, and I too aware of what I had to tell her. The problem with being able to seduce with the eyes is that they can’t be ordered to refrain from transmitting other expressions. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you want?” Her worry grew, there was no putting it off.
“Dewars on the rocks, what happened?”
“Let’s get a booth.” As I carried the drinks over to be placed on the small table I was aware that I was act-ing. I had to put on the right face, the fear of telling her covered all signs of my current ecstasy. “I had a call last week from I girl I had slept with while I was in Spain.” The face remained direct. I think she began to suspect where it was going. I knew I had to offer whatever she needed, but I didn’t want to suffer with her. I prayed she would leave upset, wanting to be alone, to see her pathetic would have been unbearable. “I had known her from before, she told me that she was HIV positive.”
“Oh my god!” I wanted to reach out to her but I couldn’t, I wanted to be far away. “Oh my god! Have you been tested?”
“I just got the results yesterday, positive. I didn’t want to tell you till I knew my results. I can go with you tomorrow to get tested. I made an appointment for you in case you wanted to go. I’m sorry.” She was blank and angry, for the moment angry at me, which was fine.
“I can’t believe you did this to me. I have a fami-ly, my god!”
“Kerry, we’ve always used condoms. I’m sure your fine.”
“I better be, I need to go, give me the address of the clinic, what time is the appointment?”
“I made it for eight, you can call and change it, do you want me to meet you there.”
“No, I’ll go alone, how long does it take to get the results back?”
“Three days.”
I can’t stay here any longer, I call you.”
CHAPTER 18
The water from the sprinkler streaked my wind-shield as I descended on my approach to the gatekeeper. The look of a retired cop transplanted to a paradise for the useless and dying. “Daniel Lynch.”
“One moment.” The guard opened the gate to al-low me play golf with my father. To my right the stare of the speed police in a golf cart, old couples walking briskly, a Wednesday at 3:00PM. Time was stretching and twisting, people far and near may have been look-ing for me, calling me, but I didn’t really know where or when they were. I was going to play golf in a re-tirement community with the ‘soon to be dead’ who moved at a different speed.
The condo instantly reminded me of Harry, was Harry a version of my dad? Would they get along? “Your sister is buying a new house, Westport, I’ll see if I can get up to see them.” He moved a little like him, the small compact frame, the way he raised the coffee mug. “Have a sandwich, how’s the golf game?”
“Pretty weak. I need to start going to the shooting range. Dad, when did you start playing golf?”
“I was maybe your age, maybe a little older, all the guys were starting to play at work. I had always been a good athlete, good baseball player, you know, I picked it up pretty quickly.” They all picked it up pretty quick-ly, and at the right age. Get them to work, to pay off mortgages, to play a game, a game that was so im-portant they would eventually sell their homes, give up their towns, families, states and future inheritances to their children and go to Florida to find the light, to be-come one with the creator of the round white ball and the perfect swing. Buy your piece of paradise, your condo next to the green basilica of your waning years.
“You play every day?”
“Just about, keeps me going.” The appliances had no heart, white on white, I house without real cooking, without a woman. Only the antiseptic cynicism of a hard man growing old alone. Thank god she didn’t ever have to know; she couldn’t have been fooled like I was going to fool him. I sometimes caught him looking at me, and I knew he was debating what the hell I was, I spic, one of his, or some kind of weird cocktail. Mom for him was something out of a Tyrone Power movie and a guided tour to Europe, it used to bother me but I finally just agreed with whatever he had to say about her life and country.
The curtain opened on the sliding glass door, it clicked shut ten steps away from the golf cart. I strapped in the bag and changed my shoes, the idea of exercise began to make my alcoholic body nauseous as we bumped and hummed our way to the first green. He was driving with a look of a man going to the super-market to by a gallon of milk, the dutiful son by his side.
Alone at the first tee, at least there was no one to watch me shank my first drive. He swung the driver back and forth as if it were an ax, the choppy, graceless strokes of man who had learned late compared to my swing, which was pure aesthetics to which the balls did not respond. He herked and jerked, round went the wood followed by the solid sound of the ball sailing straight away, his self satisfied smirk as he plucked up his tee.
“So dad, how is Ron making so much money, buy-ing a house in Westport and all?”
“He’s in investment banking, doing real well, you should have done something like that, you’d be making lots of money, why did you study biology?”
“One of those high school biology teachers who turned me on talking about body secretions.”
“Not surprising.” He thought biology was some-thing for women to study. “How you doing in that company of yours?”
“OK.” He looked at me waiting for a longer an-swer.
“You kids are always changing jobs. I worked for two companies after leaving college, and I felt guilty leaving the first one.”
“Times change.” He approached the ball with his wedge hanging off his arm, 30 feet from the green. I was across the fairway between two trees in very tall grass, the hunched back, the thick white hair, almost clumpy, the blue pants. It wasn’t my father, he was an-yone’s father, there was nothing about him to make him mine. The jerky swing and up went the ball, the profile was unrecognizable, the stare toward the green cold and impersonal. I eyed him as he walked to the ball, not looking back, then an abrupt turn toward me, as if he knew. He returned from the warp, he was Daniel Lynch again, no longer the universal old man in blue pants.
Reading greens and playing chess have always had the same effects on me, mental meltdown. There are only so many moves or breaks I can combine until I just move or putt on instinct. I was trying to remember what would happen if I went right when I decided to just go right, and put more ass into it that I thought it would need, high low around and hung on the lip, couldn’t have made a better 18 foot put with a super-computer. “So what do you think of this character we’ve got in the White House?” This wasn’t a ques-tion, it was his introduction for his own personal Rush Limbaugh show.
“I love him dad, he feels my pain.”
“Feel your pain, you could use some pain, playing golf at three with a hangover, but honestly, he’s a whoremaster, a liar and a draft dodger, and the wife, my god, Lady MacBeth.”
“Don’t get literary on me, dad, I like her, if it weren’t for the ankles, but Bubba likes the cocktail lounge look better, Paula Jones, good God! I mean Je-sus, he’s the president, he could go for a little classier type broad.”
“Your just like your mother, I think your both reds when you get down to it.”
“Like I said dad, he feels my pain.” His five iron bounced back and forth in a strange pre-shot ritual. If he only knew, Kerry called to tell me she was negative, then evasively ended the conversation.
The seven iron picked the ball up sending it ac-celerating through space, topping off and falling 170 yards away ten feet from the whole. “You should have made me play everyday, that’s pure beauty.”
“Make you do anything everyday. I think it’s a miracle you go to work everyday, if
you do, that siesta blood.”
“Yeah, I could use more of the case of Busch and bag of Doritos variety.” It went in bad, but he swal-lowed it. I realized he wasn’t 40 anymore, couldn’t put me on my ass even though he really wanted to. The silence stumbled down the fairway, as a kid you never know if parents are thinking about what you’ve just told them or their taxes, but as an adult we do.
“Case of Busch and bag of Doritos variety, huh.” The worst possible scenario, the pissed off Irish-American defending his pride and honor. “Let me tell you kid…” The Lynch version of the Murphy defense. “that case of Busch and bag of Doritos blood is the blood that gets most the bridges built, the mail deliv-ered, the planes flown and the enemy killed, when all your European friends get their pants in a wad we Busch & Dorito guys are the ones that have to go get asses shot off so they can continue clowning around.”
“This bag of Doritos is for you, dad.”
“You little prick, if I were ten years younger I would kick your ass down this fairway.”
“Relax. I’m only getting your worked up, a little too much ass on that putt.” His six foot put rolled eight feet past the whole. “Last hole, winner pays for dinner, I’ll pay the tie.”
“Your on.” Three hundred and fifty yard par 4. He wanted to beat my head in with the driver, and I wanted to win the hole. Dog leg left. I was pissed and feeling strong, the sweat had washed my body and I wanted to cut the dog leg, leave myself with a chip shot for the green. I exaggerated my stance to let him know what I was doing, he leaned against his driver, poker-faced, anxious for a shank. I sat over the ball, about to pull back, when I noticed I wasn’t breathing, off the ball, a deep breath, an effortless swing. The ball left with a crack, slowly rising toward the large pine at the point of the dog leg, rising and rising, only nicking the top leaves and landing out of site. “That was a prime rib dinner, right, a descent bottle of wine.”
“Wine my ass, Busch, a case of Busch.”
*
The salads were lofty with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits. I had long given up trying to hide my bad habits from my father, and I ordered the second bottle of wine before the steak arrived. “Have you won the lottery, what’s with the lighter and watch?”
“Some good business deals.”
“Commissions?”
“Not exactly, stuff on the side.”
“Be careful, if they catch you you’ll be out on your ass, the Clinton generation.” He shook his head.
“Well, it’s something I wanted to talk to you about, these deals I’ve been doing with people in Spain have been working out real well lately, they’ve offered me a permanent position and I’ve decided to take it.”
“Doing what?”
“Selling their paprika here.”
“So you’ve been selling their Paprika instead of your companies.” I wanted it to come out differently, to sound more like I was doing well, but the tone had been set and my fairy tale came out ugly.
“More or less, but only a few deals, do you know how many accounts I don’t get full commissions on for all kinds of bullshit, fuck them, do you think they give a shit about me.” He didn’t want to start fighting again and neither did I.
“Your probably right, as long as it doesn’t go on to long.” He had enough shanty Irish blood to be genet-ically antiestablishment, even though he might not have realized it.
“A few months, then I’m gone, thing is I’ll have to live their, because I’ll be covering more than America.”
“Going to sell the condo?”
“Yeah, I’ve got some equity in it. I hope I’ll get some money out of it.” But it was better for him to get some bad news one night that to have to watch it hap-pen, he’d probably think I was a gay junky. He liked having me around even if we did get on each other’s nerves. It was better than being alone, his more or less planned out last years were having a wrench throw in them. I could see the disappointment, but he sucked it up. “I’d like to stay but they’re offering me a lot of money.”
“Why don’t you rent the condo?”
“I could, but it could be a hassle, being so far away. I think I’ll put the money in the market so when I come back I’ll have a good down payment.”
“You always did like it over there, didn’t you?” I sipped my drink looking for comforting words. “Have you got a girl over there or something?”
“Kind of, I could never live there permanently, it would drive me crazy, but two or three years and than I’ll come back, hopefully with a lot of money, I’ll make sure and come home for Christmas. I got a pair of tick-ets to the Fish game on Sunday. You wanna go.”
“Sounds good kiddo.”
CHAPTER 19
I had been waiting too long and time had ruined what little was left of my ethics, which were no longer ethics as far as I was concerned. Over a million pounds of mustard in eight months, a half a penny could make the difference, a difference that reminded me of Ste-phen Green. An over-quote, a timely call from Stephen, he had mentioned eight percent of the gross. The calculator moved quickly out of the bag, the red numbers dancing to the excited rhythm of greed. What did I owe the people who employed me? Quite a bit: a lifestyle, credit cards, a car, drinking every night and very little work. They would eventually catch up to me but up till now they had treated me splendidly. I tried to build myself a dilemma, but it had no staying power. It was their language which left me cold, regardless of the dinners, the cars or the fat paychecks. I was tremen-dously far from them, separated by a sea of aseptic words and unclear expressions. The betrayal was too easy.
He had let me know the number he was looking for and I had got it from pricing. By the time they realized that they had lost the customer I would be gone. B&W pictures of round Midwestern executives stared at me from between articles on slaughtering pigs. The recep-tionist dressed in cheap poor fitting clothes, the hair puffy and blonde. No sentimentality, no regrets, my last trip to the slaughterhouse, kind people doing a creepy job.
“Tough game against Auburn.”
“You can’t give the ball away like that and expect to win, so John what have you got for me.” He was anxious to close things up, too anxious.
“I’ve got the pricing for you.” By not letting him know in advance the numbers were bad he would be-come more angry, the easier for Stephen to move in. I should have called him before, I was always thinking of things too late. “$.36 delivered.” It went over awk-ward and heavy, the whole for Stephen was big, I just hoped he could get off his ass and fill the gap.
“That won’t do. I told you I needed $.34. I’m sorry John, I’m going to have to look around.”
“I did the best I could. I couldn’t get them any lower.” He was more loyal to the company than I was. From the first Seven-Eleven I gave Stephen a call, con-firmed the 8% of the gross and gave him the numbers. He would say he had spoken to me about it, come in with the right offer and samples. The best kind of mon-ey, the corrupt and easy sort. The layers of morality, the rules; they shed painlessly. My new finite, limited and immoral life gave me a freedom that seemed limit-less, as if I was flying above the world and the multitudes who were tied to a set of rules. You might say that I was never strong on the scruples, but they were there and they served some unknown purpose; but now they were nonexistent, as irrelevant as an old girl-friend who had gotten fat and lived in a trailer park.
The dark clouds on the horizon took the glare out of the sunny day, a book on time, a warped billiard ta-ble was how he explained it. Young teenagers played in the pool below my perverse eyes, the time of physics blended with the time of young girls. I wanted to think they were on a church trip to the nearby Busch Gar-dens. The Holiday Inn towels brushing the beads of water off the young flesh, my mind returned to the warped world of relative time, a comforting interpreta-tion. The moon a silver ball sliding endlessly around the warped space of a toilet bowl toward the earth. It was t
ime for a swim, to share the water with the young creatures and their sinister monitors, bearded, over-weight, and secretly guarding pornographic fantasies of themselves with their young students. When I would have once hoped that there was more to the relation-ship, now the direct and lured interaction, as the earth to the moon, seemed healthy and fresh. Much more so than the stilted didactic one, and more timeless, or at least time warping.
The water reached my neck, tickling me below my ears, my eyes moved self consciously as if I were Willard in ‘Apocalypse Now’. They weren’t looking at me as they played excitedly in their temporary sur-roundings, between adulthood and childhood, the girl realizing her body, then forgetting it. Large drops made ripples in the water, they landed far from each other, heavy and deliberate. To my room, to be connected to the real world of messages and work only to rejoice in my freedom from it. The rain protecting me from their thoughts and dry words.
Stephen was efficiently brilliant, no messages, a three o’clock checkout without a destination. I thought east as I got lost in a mall parking lot. There was someone to see and a nice hotel on the beach. ‘Blue’, the perfect moment for a French film, and my favorite color. I left the day behind the glass door and entered the waiting room to the fantasy world where I pur-chased popcorn and M&M’s, a retired couple and man alone my company.
It stayed with me through the steak and potato and launched me on a strange voyage across the state, leav-ing me to thoughts of rainy days playing football in the mud and of beautiful women whom I only knew for the duration of a long glance. The radio announced a 4:20 AM launch of the shuttle, a worthy destination for a day that kept growing.
The lobby of my usual hotel on Jacksonville beach was alive with swarms of Japanese tourists at 10:30 at night. I almost turned and left before receiving the an-swer to the obvious question, but I asked anyway. The clicking of the keyboard gave me hope, the expression-less face looked up. “How will you being paying for the room?”