Janice came up to bed I gave her the silent treatment. It was impossible to talk with her about Francis without setting off a prolonged argument.
I later ventured downstairs (I have a difficult time sleeping under the best of circumstances, and having Francis Greer under my roof made me even more restless than usual) and found him sprawled on the couch watching a pay-for-view porn movie on my television.
“That’s going to show up on my records,” I said to him.
“Yeah, Richie, I’m sure those records are of a great deal of interest to many people,” Greer said. “Someone’s probably scrutinizing them as we speak.”
“You’ve been away, Francis,” I said. “Things have changed. That sort of information is widely and irresponsibly disseminated these days. The real issue here is that I don’t recall you asking my permission to dick around with my cable. You do understand that I’ll be billed for that?”
“Relax, Rich. I’ll go out first thing in the morning and sell some plasma so I can repay you your seven bucks. Would that make you happy?”
“What would make me very happy,” I said, “was if you would go out first thing in the morning and find someplace else to stay. You must have friends here. Janice has mentioned that you were corresponding with a number of women while you were in prison.”
“Those were old women, Richie. Christians.”
“I’m sure old Christian women have homes and spare bedrooms,” I said.
“Fuck you, Rich,” Greer said. “You’ve really been getting on my nerves.”
“I’d like nothing better than to get on your nerves, Francis,” I told him. “You’ve already brought more than enough trouble into my life. So fuck you, too, and goodnight. And I’m absolutely serious: I want you out of here first thing in the morning.”
The next morning Janice came up to tell me that Francis was gone. She was alarmed and wanted to know if I had any idea of where he might be. I told her, of course, that I had no clue, which was certainly the truth. I had no intention of recounting the conversation I’d had with Greer before I went up to bed. Janice was visibly upset and a short time later she left in a sulk for her part-time job at Target.
As I sat down to drink my morning coffee and read the newspaper it occurred to me that this was the day we were to see
At this point Francis Greer couldn’t have been further from my mind. There were any number of things in my home that I might have suspected Greer of stealing, but tickets to a Broadway show were not among them. I called Janice on her cell phone.
“Do you have the tickets to that Donny Osmond show?” I asked her.
“Oh shit, that’s tonight, isn’t it?” she said. “They’re on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”
“They’re not there. And what’s with this ‘oh shit’ business? I thought you wanted to see that fucking show.”
“I did,” Janice said. “But look, Richard, I just heard from Francis. He told me that you kicked him out of the house in the middle of the night. He’s very hurt.”
“Jesus, Janice, I did no such thing. Francis is a pathological liar.”
“Francis might be a lot of things, Richard, but one thing he’s not is a liar.”
“That just goes to show you how good of a liar he is,” I said. “If you honestly believe I kicked him out of the house in the middle of the night, you’re out of your mind. I simply asked him what his plans were.”
“Last night wasn’t the time for that, Richard. Francis hadn’t even been out of jail for twenty-four hours.”
“Prison, Janice,” I said. “Francis was in prison. There’s a difference there I think you should be aware of.”
“Oh fuck, Richard. I don’t have time for this.”
“Where the hell are those tickets?” I asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Janice said. “I just told you. They were on the bulletin board.”
“They’re not there. Are you sure you didn’t put them in your purse or something?”
“I’m positive. I never touched those tickets, and I don’t feel like going to the damn thing now, anyway. I told Francis I would meet up with him later.”
“Jesus, Janice,” I said. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She hung up the phone.
I spent the morning fuming, and tried with little success to get through the pile of freshmen composition papers on my desk. By late morning I was sitting in the living room with the blinds drawn, drinking beer and watching women’s beach volleyball. The phone rang at one point and when I answered I heard only silence on the other line, and then whoever was calling hung up on me. I checked the number on the caller-ID and saw that it was from a pay phone in Columbia Heights.
I showered, dressed, and drove out to the Heights. As I’ve said, I was just killing time. When my mother wasn’t home I cruised through Hilltop to see if by chance Greer was staying at Slim Chung’s, but got no answer when I knocked at the door of his trailer.
I was restless and ended up at this place on Central Avenue where I liked to play ping-pong. I’ve always found the back-and-forth, gnip-gnop nature of the game relaxing. It involved a concentrated engagement with a sort of reality that didn’t involve actually feeling anything. The place attracted a crowd of blank obsessives, and I seldom communicated with any of my partners beyond the rudiments of keeping score.
That afternoon I played several games with a pigeon-toed old priest I often saw there. The guy played a very aggressive game with a lot of topspin. I’ve never been much of a player, and the priest kicked my ass every game. When I arrived he had been slapping ferocious returns at one of the weird little ping-pong robots this place had installed in a corner.
After I left, I headed downtown and spent a couple hours drinking and watching a baseball game in Runyon’s. I honestly had no clear idea what I was up to, other than acting on a hunch I had no reason to trust. At a quarter to 7:00 I left the bar and walked down Hennepin Avenue, where I took up a surveillance position in a bus shelter across the street from the State Theater. Donny Osmond’s name was stretched across the marquee. I waited probably ten or fifteen minutes before people started showing up in front of the theater.
Almost surely, I thought, if in fact Greer had taken the tickets it had been merely to spite me, but I also felt there was a possibility—Greer being a notorious philanderer, and now fancying himself something of a man of culture—that he would actually use the damn things to impress some woman. It was a long shot, I realized, but I figured he would have noticed the stiff price on the tickets and he was nothing if not an opportunist.
About a half hour before the scheduled performance, I saw Greer coming down the sidewalk toward the theater. He had a new haircut and the rolling swagger of an ex-con. He was wearing a pressed pair of slacks, a dress shirt open at the neck, and a suit jacket that I recognized as one of my own. I watched as Greer approached a group of people milling around under the marquee. He had his back toward me, but several members of the group bent their heads toward him and a conversation ensued. One of the men talking with Greer turned and waved a woman over. The man and woman conferred briefly and then the man fished some cash from his pocket, counted out some bills, and handed them over to Greer, who in turn gave the woman my tickets. He completed this transaction with a wide smile and an absolutely phony attempt at a courtly bow.
After handing over the tickets, Greer headed north back down the sidewalk. I gave him a half-block head start before following, from the other side of the avenue, at what I felt was a safe distance. He was walking at a brisk clip, and the sidewalks along Block E were crowded. When I saw Greer turn down 6th Street I had to make a dash through traffic to avoid losing him. I pulled up short in the middle of the block on the Hennepin Avenue side and watched him cross at the light to the other side of the street. There was a moment when I turned the corner that I was walking almost parallel with him, but I was stopped in my tracks when I saw him raise his arm and let out a shout. I looked east and spied Janice coming up the sidewalk from the opposite direction. I ducked into the exit of a parking ramp and watched as they embraced. Christ, I thought, anybody else would take them for lovers. Janice even took Greer’s hand as they continued down the street and ducked into Murray’s, the steak place where Janice and I had celebrated our engagement.
At this point things got very dark and confused. I’ve never been a violent man, and I don’t even have much in
