Then the clapping started. It was slow and sarcastic, from the darkness of the public parking lot. The woman who’d been at the corner table during Tom’s first week at the Backroom walked towards us. “How lovely,” she said.
“Hello, Debbie,” Tom said.
“That was beautiful, Tom.” She moved past us and through the back door. As she opened it, framed in the light from inside, I thought again how good-looking she was.
I was so used to Tom’s perfectly timed sets that, the next night, I knew instantly something was wrong. At nine thirty-five he was still playing. At ten, too. He played all night, sometimes the same songs two or three times. He didn’t mention his poetry book. He hardly talked at all.
Debbie was sitting in her usual seat. She looked at her watch as often as Tom usually checked his.
“When does he take a break?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t he violating his contract if he doesn’t?” That was unlikely. Usually Tom played so little that he owed the place a few extra tunes.
“I want to talk to the manager,” she said.
When I reported this to Kevin he shook his head. “I’m busy,” he said.
Around eleven Debbie slipped out. When I left after midnight, she was across the street, watching the front door, partially obscured by a lamppost.
I bought a copy of Tom’s book and he signed it for me; the first signed book I ever owned. “Someday you’ll know,” he wrote. It wasn’t warm and friendly, but it also wasn’t one of those phony inscriptions you get from authors you’ve met for ten seconds at a bookstore signing. I still have that book, and often I open it at random and read a poem or two. I’ve done that so much that the binding has come loose.
I had been watching a group of girls who had come in together and had been nursing beers slowly and laughing. They’d been in the Backroom before and once one of them had smiled at me. She looked like she appreciated poetry and I wanted to see if the seductive power Tom talked about was true. I picked what seemed the ideal poem, drained my beer, and went to their table. “Hi there,” I said.
The girls seemed surprised that I’d approached them. I still think there was a sense of eager anticipation in the air. But, with all of them looking at me, I was struck dumb. So I started reading.
“In silence/From my seat behind the microphone/I watch you/As you watch/For your friend to return/And if he does not/If there is indeed a God/Is there hope/That those eyes would watch for me?”
I gave the one who’d smiled at me a wistful look, figuring she’d take the cue. Instead, they all laughed and started clapping. Other people turned to see what was going on. Then the girl I was interested in held out her hand. I was thrilled. Tom’s poem had worked. I reached out towards her but, instead of grasping my fingers, she pressed twenty-five cents into my palm.
One night in mid September I was out back thinking about school. I’d just started fourth year and I was having trouble seeing the point of it. My second novel was coming along fine. I was pounding out ten pages a day on my Underwood portable. Once I got feedback from Tom, who’d need school?
A car pulled up just over the fence from me in the public lot. Framed in the headlights, I felt exposed and trapped, like a POW caught slipping under the wire. When the high beams switched on, I held my hand up to shield my eyes. “Jesus.” I moved out of the light, to the driver’s window.
It was a ’68 Parisienne convertible, with its long hood, massive V-8, and a trunk you could use to move a living-room suite. Debbie was at the wheel.
“What are you doing?” I asked, blinking.
“Looking for Tom,” she said.
“He’s not here. Not this week. Not next.”
I don’t think she heard me. She sat staring into the pool of light.
One Saturday, Tom asked me to drive him home. He’d been storing two boxes of books in a Backroom closet and he wanted to take them. “I may want to take off again for a while,” he explained.
“Back out west?”
“Maybe Newfoundland. Maybe the Yukon. I’ve never been and it’s great country for poets.”
Tom lived on the second floor of one of the old mansions along Jarvis Street. Once the homes of the local gentry, these stately buildings had been converted to restaurants or rooming houses. I parked out front. While Tom took his guitar, his harmonica case, a set of bongos, and a small amplifier out of the backseat, I opened the trunk and picked up the books.
Considering how slim the individual volumes were, two boxes of them added up. I perched the boxes on the rear bumper, bracing them with my leg, while I reached up to shut the trunk. Then I hefted the boxes again and turned toward Tom’s house. He was at the front door and had set his guitar and the amplifier down. He was talking to Debbie, who stood to the side of the door, out of the porch light.
“I’ve missed you, Tom,” she said.
“Then you need to work on your aim,” he said, with no humor. He spread his arms, still holding the bongos and the harmonicas. “I’m a big target.”
“Don’t make fun, Tom. Haven’t you done enough already?”
“Look, Debbie,” he said, “whatever you think I did, it was a long time ago. Let’s just get on with who we are and where we’re going.” His voice was soft, the way you talk to a child or someone who’s suicidal.
“You say that, Tom, but you don’t move on. What are those?” She pointed at the boxes I was holding, which were growing steadily heavier.
“Tom’s book,” I said, not realizing it was a rhetorical question.
“You see, Tom, you carry me with you.” I was tempted to point out that I was the one doing the carrying, but let it pass. “You know you want me. That’s why you took so much of me.”
“Look, Debbie,” Tom said, “I’m a poet. I take stuff that happens in my life and use it. It’s nothing personal. I’ve done it with my parents, friends, other lovers.”
“So raping other people’s emotions is okay, as long as you do it often enough? No, Tom. You want me. You need me. Try as hard as you like, you can’t give me up.” She took a step forward. In the light now, I noticed her freckles. “Why else did you come home from Vancouver?”
Tom took a step back and shook his head. “Look, Debbie,” he said again, but added nothing to it.
She took another step forward and this time he stood his ground. “You came back for me.”
“No, Debbie. I didn’t come back for you. I don’t want you. Leave me alone. Please.”
She looked shocked and then angry. It was interesting but I really wanted them to stop talking so I could go inside and put the boxes down. My arms were shaking from the pressure.
“You don’t mean that, Tom,” Debbie said. “Because if you do it means that you betrayed me. You stole from me.” She pointed at the boxes I held. “You stole these from me.” She swung her arm down on top of the boxes with surprising force. I tried to hold on, but my grip had already been slipping and the boxes fell to the ground, bursting open.
I almost thanked Debbie for taking the load off me. Then she picked up one of the books and slapped it sharply across Tom’s face. She walked away, taking the copy with her.
I gathered up the books and Tom took his gear. “She’s had a rough time,” he said. “I feel sorry for her.”
In his apartment, I put the boxes on the table by the window. There was a hole in the glass, covered with clear packing tape, not yet tinged by sunlight. The hole was round, with cracks bleeding out from it — the kind of hole I remembered from childhood, when a ball would go astray.