She was shaking her head, the brunette locks bouncing every which way. “I told you. I told you he was helping me with my book. It’s the most important thing in my life right now.”
“More important than me?”
“Yes! Right now, yes. I don’t have time to see you right now, and you know yourself things aren’t the same, anyway, not with the distance between us.”
He was waving his arms a little, not in a threatening way. Just desperate. “We could see each other probably twice a month, if you wanted to. If you weren’t so intent on this stupid project of yours…”
“That’s what you think of me, isn’t it?”
“What…?”
“I’m nothing to you but your ‘girl’-I’m not a serious writer doing serious work!”
I wondered if a serious writer would use the word “serious” twice in the same sentence. But what did I know about it?
Her arm went out straight from her side and she pointed toward the main drag that Country Vista bisected- the gesture of a parent ordering a child to its room.
“ Go, Tom! Go back to your frat brothers. Or go home to Mommy and Daddy, I don’t give a damn. Maybe you can work at the bank over break!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Annette, please-come with me. Spend the afternoon with me.
You’ll freeze out here. Your teeth are chattering. Come on, baby, give me a chance. Give us a chance.”
I wish I could tell you the radio was playing “Give Peace a Chance,” but I can’t. Actually, “Let It Be” was still going, though I’d turned it down very low, to hear this little soap opera.
She shook off his hands from her shoulders. “ Go! Tommy-go! Right now. And don’t bother us.”
“Us?”
“We are working, K.J. and me.”
“K.J.” The kid shook his head. “First name basis now, you and the prof.”
Actually, initials aren’t really a first name, but I got his point.
“Tommy…”
“Listen, babe, I asked around about him. I talked to people.”
“You don’t even go to Iowa. How would you know?”
“I have friends. I know people. He was at Columbia two years ago, and-”
She shoved him against his car. The sound was loud enough to really carry, a substantial whump.
“Get the fuck out of my life,” she said, teeth bared again, and she turned and strode toward the cottage.
Tom went right after her, and that was when, finally, the prof came out. He was in a beige sweater and tan chinos and sandals, but he charged right out into the winter weather and caught Tom by the arm and hauled him across the street and flung him against the car again. Byron, his dark yellow hair a straw-like tangle, had a wild- eyed look as he leaned in to Tom, whose back was to me,
pushed up against the GTO.
“You are leaving now,” Byron said, some oratory in the baritone. “Of your own volition. Otherwise, get back in your car and wait for the police to arrive, because that’s the call I’m making when I get back inside, if your vehicle is still here. Do I make myself clear?”
Tom scrambled into the car and got behind the wheel and drove off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Byron walked back and positioned himself, arms folded, about halfway up the walk and watched as his unwanted guest had to go through the humiliation of pulling into the no-name lane the split-levels were on, backing out, and turning around. Poor little bastard couldn’t even make a quick getaway.
But I could.
I headed to the back of the house where I could exit unseen and scrambled like hell to get my rental Ford out of the split-level-next-door’s garage. I was moving fast, damn near running, because if I didn’t shake it, Tom would be long gone.
And I needed to follow Tom. He was a new player in this game and, unlike the blonde yesterday, might turn back up in the middle of things and at a very inconvenient time. If the Broker’s trusty surveillance expert wasn’t going to give me all the dope I needed, and I don’t mean hash, I had to do the job myself.
By the time I came out of the lane and turned onto Country Vista, the professor was back in his cottage, but Tom was visible up ahead three blocks or so. I thought the kid might go tearing out of there, but instead he was crawling. We were almost to the main drag when he pulled over, and gave me a real start.
I had to go on by him and glimpsed him, hunkered over the wheel, crying.
Poor bastard.
I waited for an opening, then cut across the main drag into the parking lot of a medical clinic and waited there for the green GTO to appear at the mouth of Country Vista. Within minutes, it did, Tommy getting himself under control enough to drive, and I fell in behind him. His car had Illinois license plates; interesting. Also, a PEACE NOW bumper sticker, the O of NOW the familiar peace symbol; a second sticker said, REMEMBER KENT STATE.
They didn’t make frat boys like they used to.
Before long I had followed Tom into the Iowa City business district, a ghost town on this Sunday afternoon; parking places were usually at a premium, but neither Tom nor I had trouble finding one. This was Clinton Street and the buildings of the university sprawled to my right, as I sat in my rental, and a street of bookstores, boutiques and bars was at my left. I watched Tom angle across to the Airliner, a long-in-the-tooth brick-fronted establishment whose sign bragged about its 1944 origin. Customers were sitting in a big front window eating slices of pizza and drinking beer and looking across at the snowy campus as if something were going on.
After five minutes, I cut across the barely existent traffic and entered the bar, which didn’t seem to have been remodeled since 1944, either. The pizza smell was inviting, though, and I would have taken a booth and burrowed in with a small pie if I hadn’t noticed Tom sitting at the bar in his fleece-lined jacket. Most of the stools were open, so plopping down next to him and getting friendly might have been read wrong.
So I left a stool between us and ordered a beer and asked the bartender if I could eat at the bar and he said sure. I ordered a small pepperoni and, my beer not here yet, turned toward Tom and said, “I hope the pizza is as good as it smells.”
Slouched over the bar, Tom gave me a “huh” look-he already had his beer, and most of it was gone-and then forced a smile and said, “It is good.”
“You’re from here?”
He shook his head. I was getting a better look at him now but he was just another of these semi-longhaired college kids with mustaches and fetus faces. “I go to Northwestern,” he said. “Evanston?”
That explained the Illinois license plates.
I said, “I’m starting here, second semester. What’s your major?”
“I’m in pre-law.”
Tom wasn’t unfriendly but neither was he interested, so I cut if off there. I sipped my beer, Tom ordered a second one. We did not speak again until my pizza arrived. The bartender, God bless him, placed it on the bar next to me, in front of the empty stool that separated Tom and me.
“Hey,” I said to Tom. “This is more than I can handle. Help yourself to a few slices.”
Tom frowned at me, then smiled. “That’s nice, brother, but…I’m not that hungry.”
“Come on. Why let it go to waste? Consider it a late Christmas present.”
He thought about that, shrugged, and moved over a seat.
The pie was in fact excellent, a thin crust with a lot of tomato sauce and just the right amount of mozzarella and seemed to me just about the best pizza ever, although you should factor in that I’d been living on Slim Jims, beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes.
I kept the conversation casual. “You got folks in Iowa City?”
“No,” he said. He was finished with his second beer and I called the bartender over and ordered us both another. Tom thanked me and said, “My girlfriend lives here.”
“Really? Local gal?”
“No. Actually, she’s from Chicago, too. She’s a little older than me, but we’ve gone together since high school.”
