“And Hardin, too,” the second man said. “And a coupla other rich boys.”
“Think of that,” the waitress said, after hearing the story. She put a quarter inch space between her thumb and forefinger and held them up. “He came this close to bein’ governor. Can you imagine that? This close.”
I waggled two rumpled dollar bills at her and dropped them next to my plate. She smiled. Sixty cents of that was a tip.
So the word was out, I thought. A scandal that would temporarily distract the public mind from the missile crisis. The end was near, at least for the four men back at Ross Murdoch’s place.
I didn’t know how one 110 pound woman could make all that noise. As soon as I opened the back door to my apartment and pushed inside, I found out.
One woman couldn’t make all that noise. But two women can.
Ever since fourth grade, two girls have dominated my life. Sort of the way Betty and Veronica have always dominated Archie’s life. The problem with that comparison being that Archie is a comic book character frozen in time. Which, come to think of it—having Betty and Veronica in their nubile prime forever—is not exactly a bad fate.
My life isn’t frozen in time. The other day in the mirror I noticed a gray hair. Though I haven’t put on any weight since college, my face isn’t as sharply defined as it once was. And hanging around gas stations and talking about drag races and street rods isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
And the surprises life springs on me get more and more baffling.
Sure, I’d seen my Betty and Veronica together all our lives. We were in the same classes, we went on the same class outings, we attended the same junior and senior proms. And they’d always been friendly if never exactly friends.
But I’d never seen them together, if you know what I mean. Never as grown women. Hell, Mary had two kids. And certainly never sitting together at the little dining table in the middle of my apartment, all three cats and a bottle of bourbon and two glasses on the table.
“She’s pretty drunk,” Mary said, giggling. She had that red hair ribbon in her dark hair. I could remember it as far back as senior year in high school. It brought out the sweet erotic clarity of her elegant face. She wore a buff blue blouse and jeans and white Keds tonight.
“Oh, no,” the beautiful Pamela Forrest said. “She’s the drunk one.”
“I thought we were drinking scotch,” I said.
Mary smiled. “That was gone by the time I got here. I brought this bottle. It’s Johnny Walker. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s great. But—”
Easy to see that Mary was feeling nothing more than a little buzz. Pamela was the sloshed one.
Mary said, “I called to see if you were home. Pamela answered and we started talking and she asked me to come over and keep her company. My mom’s watching the kids for a couple of hours. Wes’s with his girlfriend.”
Pamela, who could barely sit up straight, said, “He’s such a jerk.” Then she managed to angle her head up to me and with one eye squinting said: “We’ve been havin’ a mighty good talk about ole McCain.” Then her head made what seemed like a complete circle and she fixed me with that single blue eye again and said, “We decided that you’re a very nice guy but sort of a dickhead, too.”
Mary whooped a laugh. “Pamela!”
“Well, that’s what we said, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what you said.”
Pamela hiccoughed. “Oh, right. That’s what’s J said.” She tried to fling an arm in my direction but she didn’t make it very far. Then she just stared at her arm as if she’d never seen it before. Then—I wasn’t sure whom she was addressing here, maybe her arm — “Guy chases me ever since fourth grade and then I show up at his office one day and you know what he tells me?”
Mary looked embarrassed and sorry for her. “You know, maybe you should lie down for a little bit. Not long. It doesn’t have to be long. Just a little bit.”
Pamela was not dissuaded. “You know what he tells me? A) That he doesn’t love me any more and—” Paused. Had lost her place. “C) That he wasn’t even sure he wanted to sleep with me.” She leaned forward and tried to pet one of the cats. “What’s her name?”
“Tasha.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is.”
“I’m going to get a cat,” Pamela said. “I’m going to buy a sports car and get me a cat.”
Then she turned vaguely in Mary’s direction and said, “Any man ever turn you down before? I mean when you offered him yourself? Just offered yourself, no strings attached? And he turned you down?”
“Our friend McCain here used to turn me down all the time.”
“See,” she said, her head trying to make a complete circle again, “I told you he was a dickhead.”
I swooped her up. Yep. As sure as Rhett swept up what’s-her-name, I swept her up into my arms. There wasn’t any grand staircase, of course, so I just carried her across the room to the double bed in the far corner and set her down on it gently.
“Hey,” she said resentfully. “Hey, hey.” The booze had apparently shortened her vocabulary.
I got her tennis shoes off and then her socks and then her jeans and then her blouse. “Hey,” she said again.
“Sleep, Pamela.”
“I came up here to have a romantic evening and look what I get.”
“Sleep.”
“Sit down here and hold my hand. My dad always used to do that when I was little.” I’ll spare you the dialect. She was slurring the words to the point of incoherence.
“Night, Pamela.”
“Mary’s so sweet.”
“Mary’s very sweet. And so are you.”
“Oh, don’t bullshit me, McCain. I’ve never been sweet a day in my life. I’m just what Stu said I was, a selfish bitch. Or self-centered. One or the other. Self-centered or selfish.” Then her head flopped dramatically to the right.
By the time I was draping her jeans and blouse over the back of a chair, she was snoring.
I went back to the table and sat down and poured myself a shallow drink. I sipped it.
“I’m scared,” Mary said.
“Yeah. I sensed that.”
“She had this whole dream-life all planned out. She’d be with Stu and everything would be great. But the way she and Stu got together, everybody in town sees her as a homewrecker and a whore. And when she actually got to know Stu, she didn’t like him at all, let alone love him.” She picked up a package of Viceroys and lighted one.
“You don’t smoke.”
“Sometimes I do. When I get—agitated.”
“And now you’re agitated?”
She nodded. Looked sad. “Worried about my two kids. They need a dad.”
“Wes just isn’t the type to cheat.”
She smiled. “You have to watch out for those moralizing types. He’s always so critical of everybody else. But he’s got it all rationalized. Said he thought I’d be more comfortable with his class of people. Said it wasn’t my fault. Said he couldn’t help it, falling in love with this woman. You know, the stuff you always say when you’re trying not to hurt somebody’s feelings.”
“He really said you weren’t comfortable with his class of people?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Black River Falls, Iowa. These people with their ‘class’ ideas make me crazy. There’s only one class of people in this town. Yokels. Hayseeds. Shitkickers. And I’m one of them and I don’t have a problem with being one of them. Like being a yokel.”
“I’m a yokel, too.” She glanced at Pamela in bed. “Boy, if you could only see down the road. I mean, isn’t it strange that the three of us would end up here together like this? I mean, if you would’ve predicted this, I would’ve said you were nuts. Pamela all passed out and not worried about her dignity or how she looks; and me with two kids and a husband who’s leaving me; and you—”