He looked around the tiny office as if he were a land baron inspecting his domain. Everything seemed slightly humorous to him. Not because it was funny, but because it failed his standards in some way. His dark eyes danced with smugness.
“It’s nice you’re going to help her with her little magazine project,” Chad Harris went on. Little magazine project irritated me. I could see that he was good in court. The best lawyers have that ability to undercut and deflate with subtle language. The good ones rarely go for bombast. Chad here could castrate you with adjectives.
Before I could respond, he tucked his thumbs in his vest and strolled around the room as if he were a tour guide in a museum. “She’s done a wonderful job, don’t you think?”
And she had.
She’d covered the walls of the one-room office with framed copies of her best ads. They lent color and style to the place. The inexpensive filing cabinets were new enough to shine and the round coffee table around which she’d placed three straight-backed chairs gave the room a sense of proportion. Only the glum wintry sky filling the cracked window spoiled her work.
“Great job,” I said. But I still hadn’t found my voice. All I could think of was them holding hands. Who had a better right than formerly married people? But that didn’t help, of course. My mind had outstripped the reality of Donna and me. There was nothing between us, certain sappy thoughts of mine to the contrary.
“This should generate a nice little income for her,” Chad was saying.
“Chad was nice enough to lease this office for me for six months,” Donna said.
“Boy, that’s wonderful,” I said. “Just fantastic.” Maybe I should have tried “absolutely and totally fabulous” or something while I was at it.
Chad glanced at his watch like a surgeon inspecting a liver. “Damn. Late for court.”
His hand struck out again.
We shook.
He shrugged into his camel’s-hair coat and surveyed the office again, and then did what I’d hoped he wouldn’t. Leaned into Donna and put a possessive arm around her waist and a more than perfunctory kiss on her cheek.
“Don’t forget about dinner,” he said. “That’s a for-sure, toots.”
Then he beamed at me magnanimously and I sensed, as I always sense around men like him, all the ways I have failed not only my gender but the fucking human race, and then he did me the inestimable favor of opening the door and leaving.
We stood in the kind of silence that only lovers can share. Part suppressed anger. Part hurt. Part confusion.
“Gosh,” she said.
“Gee,” I said. And pointed out all the things that had just been pointed out by the one and only Chad. “This looks great, fantastic.” There I went again — fabulously wonderful, et cetera.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“You got my call.”
“Got your call. Yes indeed.”
“Were you surprised?”
“To put it mildly.”
I knew she was talking about Ad World’s office space so once again I waved my arm in the direction of the ads hanging on the wall. “Fabulous,” I said.
Then she decided to give us both a break. “It was kind of uncomfortable, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t expect him to show up. He just kind of popped in and—”
“Hey, you don’t owe me an explanation.”
“Well, I do sort of, Dwyer. I mean, we’re in a weird situation here, wouldn’t you say? I mean, we’re not really lovers or anything, and neither of us really owes the other anything, but there is something going on between us, don’t you think?”
“Something. Yeah.”
“So here I am holding hands with my ex-husband when you walk in.”
“Yeah. I noticed that.”
“Your eyes kind of bugged out. Sort of like a cartoon character.”
“God, was I that obvious?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Shit.”
“It’s all right, Dwyer. I don’t handle things like that very well myself.”
I sat down and lit up a cigarette, confused and miserable. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about it.”
She lit up too. “Yeah.”
“So this is really a great office.”
“The last time you said it was fantastic. In fact, you’ve alternated between fantastic and fabulous. Great is sort of a step down.”
“Oh. Okay. This is a fantastic office.”
“Yeah. I really like it.”
“And it was damn nice of him to lease it for you.” I wanted to cut out Chad’s heart, of course, but there didn’t seem to be any graceful way of working that into the conversation just now.
“Fabulous of him, actually,” she said. Then she said, “And it was a complete surprise. He calls one week to see how I’m doing — I mean, we’re really good friends these days — and tells me to meet him at this address in half an hour — and voilà, Ad World has its first office.”
“He really seems like a fantastic guy.”
“You didn’t like him, did you?”
“I thought he was a jerk.”
“That’s what I thought you thought.”
“I mean, if we’re being honest.”
“I understand.”
“He kind of sneers.”
“I know.”
“And he puts people down.”
“I kinda figured you didn’t like being called ‘quite a character.’”
“Also I didn’t like him calling this your ‘little project.’”
“That’s how he was all the time we were married.”
I was a fucking lapdog, but I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted her to say something reassuring about us. “I can see why you broke up.”
“He’s dumping the court stenographer.”
“Oh.”
“He says he thinks he’s in love with me. He says he thinks he never really fell out of love with me. That the thing with the stenographer was just a middle-age itch.”
“Well,” I said.
“I thought I’d better tell you that.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
“You don’t look like you appreciate it.”
“Well, I can appreciate it without being absolutely fucking thrilled about it, can’t I?” The anger was starting to surface.
“I really like you a lot.”
Man, I could hear it coming. I wanted to beat her words to the door.
“Right now I’m just confused,” she said.
“Right.”
“I still want to work with you and — and maybe even see you, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“But right now...” She paused.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Shit,” she said.
“That seems to be as good a word as any,” I said.
I left.
21
Malley’s is the only bar I know with a crucifix in plain sight of the drinkers. Bob Malley, a paunchy, bearded guy I made my first communion with, keeps it near the cash register in case a fight breaks out. Over the years he’s gotten his nose and jaw and left arm broken. This, in his own bar. Now when he jumps between two brawlers he takes his crucifix with him, sort of like Darren McGavin fighting off vampires on “The Night Stalker.” The weird thing is, it works, mostly because Malley’s customers consist of innumerable mumbling Irish Catholics in various stages of psychosis. It’s like having a nun appear out of a booze fog and threaten to work you over with her steel-tipped ruler.
Malley also doubles as a highly opinionated shrink. I tell him my troubles mainly to hear him tell me what a messed-up jerkoff I am. I told him all about Donna and her husband. Malley just snorted at me pityingly and walked away. He was going to formulate a plan for me. I started drinking beer.
Barbara Mandrell came on the jukebox and then B. J. Thomas and then George Jones. None of them made me feel any better. Malley has this thing for country music now. We used to listen to Dion and the Belmonts.