And then he got a little more intimate.
Male-to-male. “And she’s not the prude Kylie is. I mean, this is a terrible thing to say but Kylie isn’t so hot in the sack.”
I hit him. Right in the mouth. And he hit me. Right in the mouth. I wasn’t tough but then neither was he. What he was was tall. So I kept pounding him in the stomach and in the ribs. And he kept pounding me on the top and the sides of the head.
The cats all scattered, howling. We knocked a floor lamp over, then a table lamp.
And that’s when Kylie came out, sweet in her mussed hair and wrinkled clothes, her little-girl fist grinding sleep out of her eyes. “Is this a dream?”
“It sure isn’t a dream,” Chad said.
“Some friends you’ve got. He hit me.”
She surveyed the living and kitchen areas.
“God, you guys broke stuff. That’s what woke me up.” Then, “You okay, McCain?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I see.” Chad pouted. “You ask about him but you don’t ask about me. I just happen to be your husband.”
And a writer, too, Chad. Don’t forget you’re a deeply tormented writer.
This time when Tess went to the door, it was the inside one. I expected I knew who it was.
I opened it and there she stood, the best-looking landlady in the universe. Tall, graceful, gray subtly streaking her long, dark hair, mid-fifties. Mrs. Goldman. One beautiful babe. “Are you all right, Sam? I heard all this commotion and-” She looked behind me to where Kylie and Chad stood. “Oh, hello.
I’m Kate Goldman.”
Chad said, “He attacked me.”
Mrs. Goldman smiled. “You’re an awful lot bigger than he is.”
“And for what it’s worth, McCain,” Chad said, “I’m not so sure I believe you about you and Kylie.” Then, to Kylie: “Will you get your damned shoes on so we can get out of here?” Then, to me: “And if I find out you weren’t telling me the truth, McCain, you’re going to be damned sorry, believe me.”
Kylie went on her groggy, uncertain way.
Got her tennis shoes on untied and came back to the living room. “I’m sorry, McCain.” Then she gave me a peck on the cheek.
“You kiss him right in front of me?” Chad said. He looked at Mrs. Goldman. “Did you see that? Right in front of her own husband, she kisses him!”
“Yes,” Mrs. Goldman said. “I was shocked.”
He frowned. He had quite a frown. “I should’ve known you’d be just like him.”
“Chad’s folks bought him a new car,”
Kylie said brightly. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and puke all over it.”
As they left, Tess bit him on the ankle again. He tried to kick her but she was too quick for him.
The air was unsettled, like a battleground in the aftermath.
“Gosh, I sure hope to see a lot more of him, McCain.”
“You no doubt will. He’s going to be famous.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a writer. Just ask him.”
“That poor girl. I see her at temple every once in a while in Iowa City. But I’ve never really gotten to know her. How could she have married a jerk like that?”
Kate Goldman’s husband, who was by all accounts a very nice guy, died several years ago. Mrs. Goldman now dated men from the synagogue in Iowa City. I was personally pulling for this history teacher at City High.
One night on the porch downstairs he’d told me about his time in Italy during the war and then we ended up talking about paperback writers. His two favorites were David Goodis and Day Keene. I was hoping he’d run for president some day.
“Gosh,” Mrs. Goldman said, “I really like your new friend here, Sam.” She fanned herself with a slender hand. She wore a crisp pink blouse and black walking shorts and black flats. If Lauren Bacall had any luck, she’d end up looking just like Kate Goldman when she got older. “This place is a mess.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”
I got the broom and dustpan and we got busy.
Afterward, I poured us each a beer and we sat around and talked about Dick Nixon coming to town and how Jack Kennedy was holding up, and then we talked local news, her wanting to know all about my visit to Muldaur’s church. “Boy, I sure wouldn’t handle any of those snakes.”
A summer storm started right after Mrs.
Goldman left, August heat lightning stalking the sky like huge electric spiders. It got hotter and even more humid for a time and then it got much cooler suddenly. I lay on my bed with a beer and a cigarette reading a collection of Irwin Shaw short stories. The rain came around ten o’clock, a Biblical rain. In the valley where the city park was the sewers would flood and some of the park benches and picnic tables would float a few yards away, and at the next city council meeting somebody would stand up and suggest that we chain the benches and the tables to nearby trees so this catastrophe would never be visited upon us again.
Whenever the call came-in that state that is neither sleep nor waking-I was standing at the altar and a guy in a funny religious hat and a lot of funny religious capes and vestments was reading from one of Kenny Thibodeau’s racy novels-I think the title was Lesbo Lawyers-and saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wives.” And there I stood with the beautiful Pamela Forrest and the fetching Mary Travers and-“Hullo.”
“McCain?”
“I think so.”
“Very funny.”
“What time is it?”
“Four thirty-seven. You should be up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have any idea why I’m calling?”
“Do I win a prize if I guess right?”
“I’m calling because I figured that you hadn’t heard the news yet.”
“What news?”
And then she told me and I abruptly came awake.
“I want you to get over there before
Cliffie mucks everything up.”
“I’m on my way, Judge.”
“When you get done over there, call me.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I keep a police radio on very low next to my bed. If anything important happens, the dispatcher begins to screech. That wakes me up.”
There was something very lonely about that but then the lady’d had four-or was it five?-husbands so I guessed she was lonely by choice.
I jerked on some clothes and ran downstairs to my ragtop.
Part II
Nine
The way I got all this-mostly from an auxiliary cop named Coggins who had a thermos full of wonderful- smelling coffee-was that around midnight Iris Courtney started worrying about her husband. She told Cliffie
