saw flat.
Eventually she tore off into the land of open houses, showings, new on the market, with a ruthless glee, lit up like a rocket — she loved it, being back in the grown-up world. She was like twenty-one again — regrettably in all ways. When I figured out something was doing, a year or two along, I was more or less immobilized. I was no longer drinking, so I'd sit at home with painful fantasies, thinking about the guys relocating from Kansas City who got something special off Nora's own Welcome Wagon. She was pointing out the features of her inner sanctum and I, the former sot who'd done more wandering than a minstrel, was at home conducting a perverse and private romance with Mary Fivefingers. Isn't that the worst part of sex, that we
In her roaming, Nora was joined by her manager, a gal named Jill Horwich with whom she was always having a drink or sneaking off to a convention. Jill was like a good number of the Real Estate Ladies, divorced, the main support of a passel of kids, and I figured she liked screwing around because it was low-stress, some tomcat in a bar better than a fellow making himself a fixture in the kitchen, one more mouth to feed. Nora somehow seemed impressed by Jill's way of life.
But it was hardly news that Nora was adventurous. Soon after I met her, on date number two, it was Nora
Goggins who gave me my first blow job. I still count the moment when she peeled back my zipper and greeted John Peter eye to eye, taking hold with the confidence of some nightclub vocalist grabbing the mike, as among the most exciting instants of my life. It was not a boy's thrill I'm talking about either. I knew I'd found a rare one, somebody braver than I was, a trait that I found irresistible, especially in a Catholic girl. I figured this was someone to follow through the jungle, who'd show no fear of the wild creatures and had the inner strength to clear a path of her own. Instead, it meant that she was a person of strong opinions who would feel thwarted by our life. She picked on me, told me regularly how I failed her emotionally, and apparently conceived of secret yearnings that I could never satisfy.
The noise I made coming in tonight brought the Loathsome Child in person bouncing off the staircase, rubbing his eyes, shirtless but wearing his jeans, looking as if he had been foraged on by some roaming beast. He is a scrofulous creature, frankly, my size but still not well developed, with a few errant hairs that crop up along his breastbone amid the acne. His peculiar haircut, which looks like a golf green cut onto an overgrown hillside, was disheveled. We ended up together at the kitchen table, both of us making a meal on Cheerios.
'Tough night?'
He made a vaguely affirmative sound. His hand was across his face and he rested his arm on the cereal box as if it was the only thing keeping him from collapse. He had put a shirt on by now, some chic rayon chemise I'm sure I paid for. The red stripe on it, I decided, was not design but ketchup.
'What time did you get home?'
'One.'
He meant afternoon, not morning. I checked the clock: 7:48 p.m. Lyle was just rising. He pretty much lives backward. He and his pals consider it uncool to get started anytime this side of midnight. Nora, of course, attributes Lyle's libertine existence to the poor example his drunken father set when he was growing up.
'You should try reading St Augustine. He has much cautionary advice about a life of excess.'
'Oh, shut up, Dad.'
Maybe if there were just a trace of humor in this I wouldn't have been so hot to smack him. As it was, I had to contain myself with the thought that if I hit him he would tell his mother, who'd tell her lawyer, who'd tell the judge. If I believed they'd take the kid away I'd have knocked him cold, but it would only end in more restraining orders and restrictions on me.
According to that splendid education I received out at the U, it was Rousseau who began in Western culture the worship of the child, innocent and perfect in nature. Anyone who has raised a human from scratch knows this is a lie. Children are savages — egocentric little brutes who by the age of three master every form of human misconduct, including violence, fraud, and bribery, in order to get what they want. The one who lived in my house never improved. Last fall it turned out that the community college, for which I'd dutifully given him a tuition check at the beginning of each quarter, did not have the bastard registered. A month ago I took him out to dinner and caught him trying to pocket the waitress's tip.
About three times a week I threaten to throw him out, but his mother has told him the divorce decree provides that I will support him until he's twenty-one — Brushy and I had assumed that meant paying for college — and Nora, who thinks the boy needs understanding, especially since she doesn't have to provide much, would doubtless find this an occasion for yet another principled disagreement and probably seek an order requiring Lyle and me to get some counseling — another five hundred bucks a month. Thus, the thought often stabs me with the ugly starkness of a rusty knife: I am afraid of him now too.
Believe me, I am not as cheerful as I sound.
Rising for another bowl of cereal, my son asked where I had been.
'I was dealing with uncomfortable aspects of my past,' I told him.
'Like Mom, you mean?' He thought he was funny.
'I ran into a cop I used to know. Over at U Inn.'
'Really?' Lyle thinks it's neat that I was a policeman, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity for role reversal. 'You aren't in trouble are you, Dad?'
'If I ever need to be bailed out, chum, I know where I can find an expert.' I gave him a meaningful look, which sent Lyle at once across the kitchen.
It had killed Pigeyes to let me go. He and Dewey had talked it over for about fifteen minutes and apparently decided that they had better check out my story about Bert. Gino gave me back the credit card and told me to hold on to it because I'd hear from him soon. It didn't sound like he'd be bringing a bouquet.
Slurping up my dinner now, I wished I hadn't been so hasty with Bert's name. The problem, slowly dawning on me, was that when Pigeyes and Dewey open Bert's refrigerator, the next stop would be G amp; G. They'd want to know everything about Kamin. At that point — probably within the next week — it would be hard to keep the missing money out of our answers. And once this was a police matter, everybody would be posturing. Even if Krzysinski kept his cool now when Jake gave him the lowdown, there'd be no hush-hush after the cops arrived, no diplomatic solutions. It'd be sayonara, G amp; G. I needed to get going.
Still, the news that there is a living breathing human named Kam Roberts has left me feeling like an astronomer who just discovered that there's a second planet in our orbit, also called Earth. If he wasn't Bert — and Bert wasn't twenty-seven, black, or losing his hair when I last saw him twelve days ago — then why is Kam Roberts using Bert's name upside down and getting his mail at Bert's house?
I'd been carrying the note that Lena had copied off Infomode in my shirt pocket. I studied it for a second and in total desperation even showed it to Lyle. I told him it seemed like Bert had written it.
'That dude? One who took us to a couple Trappers games? Got to be sports with him, man.'
'Thank you, Sherlock. What sport in particular? Safecracking?'
Lyle was blank. I might as well have asked him about Buddhism. The kid had left a pack of cigarettes on the table and I took one as a garnish.
'Hey.' He pointed. 'Buy your own.'
'I'm saving you,' I said. 'I'm conserving your health and future.'
The kid didn't think I was funny. He never did. If I start counting the endeavors in this life at which I have failed, I'll burn out the batteries on this thing. But somehow Lyle and I stand on our own plateau. When I was an active drunkard, there were moments while I was crocked that my love for this child would come over me with breathtaking intensity. It was always the same image, this chubby two-year-old running to beat all hell, his laughter free as a waterfall and sweeter than music, and I loved him so dearly, with such heartsore tenderness, that I'd sit over my highball glass shameless at my tears. These were the most intimate moments I had with my kid, this kind of imaginary contact while he was fast asleep and I was in some barroom half a dozen miles from home. Practically speaking, I did him little good. Near as I can figure, that makes me the same as three-quarters of the dads I know who just sort of phone it in as fathers. But somewhere along the line Lyle recognized my vulnerability, that when it
