In the first place, my birth was an accident. My father is a lawyer whose name heads a five-pronged Denver partnership on 17th Street. He makes half a million in a good year and can’t remember when his last bad year was. There’s no way I’ll inherit any of that—my old man and I haven’t spoken to each other in fifteen years, and we weren’t close even before that. Larry Janeway isn’t a man people get close to. He is, however, dignified. He’s famous in court for his dignity and composure. Once, as the song went, that composure sorta slipped, and a dalliance with a truly gorgeous woman thirty-seven years ago produced… me. Here I sit, brokenhearted. I look at my parents and on one hand I see chilly arrogance and deceit; on the other, frivolous insanity. All the Libertys were crazy, and Jeannie, my mother, was probably certifiable. It was Jeannie, I think, who caused me to distrust beautiful women. I’ll take brains, heart, and wit over beauty every time out. What’s amazing is how well I survived their best efforts to tear me apart, how, in spite of them, I turned out so well adjusted and sane. So completely goddamned normal.
“Well, sort of goddamned normal,” she said without a smile.
“Oh yeah? How goddamned normal do you think you are?”
“Pretty goddamned normal.”
Suddenly she laughed, a schoolgirl giggle that lit her up and made her young again. “Now there’s my intelligent conversation of the week,” she said, and we both laughed. I wondered if that was the break I was looking for, but it didn’t seem to be. She would listen, interested, to anything I wanted to tell her, but still she wouldn’t ask. I’ve never been brilliant at monologue, but I did my best. I told her about life at North High, about growing up in a pool of sharks. “If there’s a thug in me, I guess that’s where it comes from.” Where the poet came from, if there was such a thing, was anybody’s guess.
“It’s getting late,” she said.
Was that strike three? Her tone gave away nothing.
A bold frontal attack, then, seemed to be the last weapon in the old Janeway arsenal.
“Look, give me a break. Why don’t you open that door, just a little, and see what’s on the other side?”
“I know what’s on the other side. I haven’t exactly led a monastic life.”
“C’mon, let’s cut to the chase, Rita. Dinner Friday night and a tour of Denver’s hottest hot spots.”
“Nope. Not my cup of tea, Mr. Janeway.”
“Then I’ll rent a tux and we’ll go to the Normandy. I don’t care.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, take the full thirty seconds and think it over.”
She shook her head.
“I know a great restaurant that serves nothing but broccoli. I’ll take you there for breakfast. Broccoli pancakes, the best in town. We’ll take a ride on the Platte River bus. Race stick-boats down the stream. Walk down Seventeenth Street and stick our tongues out at my old man’s law office. Forget about books and crime and everything else for a few hours. Come on, what do you say?”
“No,” she said firmly.
“I knew you’d see it my way.”
She gave me the long cool stare. “You’re pushing, Mr. Janeway. I don’t want to be blunt.”
“Go ahead, be blunt. I’ve got a thick skin, I can take it. I’m not gonna fall on my sword. Since we’re being blunt, let me ask you something. Are you worried that I’ll eat my fish with the salad fork? Or do you big-time book dealers have a rule about not playing with the little guys.”
“Don’t be nasty, sir.”
“I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“Then stop trying. It’s very simple. 1 don’t want to get involved.”
“And you think knowing me will involve you in something?”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
“How, for God’s sake?”
“How do you think? How do men and women always get involved?”
I sat back and looked from afar. “Well, now, that’s quite a thing to say.”
“A good deal more than I wanted to say.”
“So what’s wrong with that? It’s what makes the world go ‘round. If it happens, it happens.”
“It’s not going to happen, Mr. Janeway, I promise you that.”
She had been sitting rigidly in her chair: now she relaxed; sat back and let her breath out slowly. “I didn’t want to let you come up here at all. You know that.”
“Don’t give me that. You called me back, remember?”
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“You know, all right, you just don’t want to say it.”
