Beth Ruby looked at me curiously, then around the room. Beth was nobody’s fool. Her eyes settled on Molly. ‘Two hundred,’ she said.
I told her I didn’t have two hundred bucks, but if I had it I’d give it to her. Could she just give me a break? Beth shrugged indifferently and smiled. ‘I could, but I’m not going to. Believe me, you and your dick will thank me later.’
I gave up the dream. I tossed my book on the table and started talking to Beth about her total lack of sensitivity, her failure to understand that someone could fall in love at first sight. Beth and I had sparred a few rounds in the office and quite a few more over beer.
We both figured eventually something was going to happen between us, but we were both too stubborn to make the first move. As a result, we actually had a fairly decent friendship, as that kind of friendship goes.
While I was explaining to Beth that she had ruined my life out of simple greed Molly slipped into our booth. I had not seen her crossing the room, and nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw her across from me. Molly’s smile was so pretty that for a moment all I could do was blink.
‘Is he a total asshole or just the run-of-the-mill kind?’
Molly asked Beth without taking her eyes from my face. I liked her voice. It was strong and confident. I liked the way she was looking at me, too.
‘Total and complete, I’m afraid,’ Beth answered almost sadly.
I started to defend myself, but Molly wasn’t buying the verdict, not entirely anyway. ‘Kind of cute though.’
‘And doesn’t he know it?’
Molly shook her head, still not taking her eyes from me. ‘I hate that in a guy.’
‘Dumb and pretty.’
Molly laughed. ‘Beats dumb and ugly, I guess.’
Molly had practically the same build as now, though she was leaner by a few pounds. That came of being twenty-one and working twelve-to-fifteen-hour days running rooftops. She had short straight blonde hair with neat square bangs. A blush of freckles ran over the ridge of her nose.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked, taking the book up from the table and examining it for some evidence about my character. ‘ Black Spring. What kind of book is that?’
‘I don’t have a clue,’ I said.
‘Amen,’ Beth echoed.
On any other occasion I might have rewarded Beth’s nastiness with a scowl, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Molly.
‘Why not? You were reading it?’
‘I was trying to read it. The truth is I was distracted.’
Beth rolled her eyes and grumbled something about pathetic pickup lines. ‘You two together or something?’
Molly asked.
Beth said yes. I said no.
‘We teach together,’ I said, hoping that explained it.
This, as it happened, was terrible. Being a graduate student was okay, but teaching was a suspect activity in Molly’s view. ‘If you’re going to have your nose up in the air, then at least you ought to have some cash in your pocket.’
‘Better than no money and no class,’ Beth answered testily.
‘Not by much,’ Molly snapped. I liked it that she wasn’t backing down from a pseudo-intellectual.
When she asked me what I taught I said auto mechanics. Beth said I was lying. ‘He teaches English, badly.’
Molly looked at each of us trying to decide who was lying. Then she grabbed my hand and flipped it over. ‘Auto mechanics! I bet you can’t even change a tire!’
‘In theory, I can,’ I said, ‘but usually I just change cars. It’s a hell of a lot easier.’
‘He’s a used car salesman when he’s not in school.’
‘A professional liar!’ Molly laughed at this information, but she didn’t seem especially concerned.
‘I never lie,’ I told her.
Beth scoffed at this. I was famous in the department for my tall tales and constant run of nonsense, but Molly didn’t care. She was trying to read me.
‘You any good at selling things?’
‘I’ve been at it for five summers,’ I said. ‘Every month I’ve worked for the past four, I’ve been the second- best salesman on the lot.’
‘Second-best? Who’s the best? That’s a guy I want to meet.’
‘No you don’t. He’s an evil son of a bitch with the moral fibre of the cockroach.’
‘A liar like you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, but he can use the truth like a stiletto.’
She let me touch the palm of her hand. The skin was rough, but I couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. ‘I don’t care if something’s true or not, as long as it’s plumb.’
Beth Ruby said things were getting too thick, and Molly told her no one was stopping her from leaving.
After that it was just the two of us.
Molly tells me she liked me the first time she saw me. Of course she was three hours into a smash-up and there was no competition in the bar, but I think it was more than just chance. I think she liked the fact that I worked for a living, even if it was only dirty-white-collar work. For my part, the feeling was mutual.
Unlike almost every person I met in those days, Molly knew exactly what she wanted in life and was already pursuing it. She had just had her offer on an old Victorian house accepted, and she was planning on fixing it up and selling it for a profit by spring. And what was she going to do with the profit? I asked.
‘Buy two more. I like the work,’ she said, ‘but I’ll like it a lot better once I’m my own boss.’
I did not know Molly had a daughter or that she had been on her own since she was fifteen. It wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing but that moment mattered.
Molly was different from anyone I had ever known.
She was sexy, smart, straightforward, funny, unencumbered with pretensions, and totally self-reliant.
We left the bar for ‘a demo drive’ in my pickup around ten o’clock that evening and didn’t even get out of the parking lot. In the middle of what was starting to look like the inevitable, the rope I used to disengage the clutch on the truck Tubs had sold me got in Molly’s face. She sat up, swinging at the thing and laughing, more curious than irritated. What was a piece of rope doing hanging down from the roof of my cab? Her breasts were glorious and naked, swinging over my lips. The smell of her sex was intoxicating, and I probably should have pitched a story. Anything would have worked, but the truth would take some time. The truth involved some advice a car salesman had given me that I was naturally too proud to heed.
The night was dark. The rain had stopped. My windows were steamed up. Why did I have to tell her about Tubs?
I think to this day I was at a crossroads and didn’t realize it. As it happened, I decided to tell her about my old man, The Bandit of the Wastelands. And that was it. That was the thing we had in common. Molly had an old man just like him! Only hers peeled noses for conceited rich people. We were kindred souls, spir-itual orphans, alone and angry at the world. The rest did not matter. We were a perfect fit.
We never got back to what we thought we wanted that night. We ended up at her house and talked until dawn. The truth is we never stopped talking until Buddy Elder entered our lives. And I never again felt like I was wandering around just killing time until I figured out what I wanted.
‘For the sake of half-a-hand-job between us,’ I said to Walt that evening, ‘we’ve lost our marriages.’
Ever the philologist, Walt answered me: ‘Full hand, David, half-the-job.’
‘Why would he do that? What does Buddy get by ruining our marriages?’
Walt didn’t believe we were innocent victims. I suppose he needed his guilt, but I kept thinking there had to be some way of figuring out what Buddy really wanted. It couldn’t be just spite! Not with the elaborate set-up he had used to nail me.
I tried different theories on. I played the amateur psychologist, muttering Freudian platitudes, but nothing
