After five minutes, I cut across the barely existent traffic and entered the bar, which didn’t seem to have been remodeled since 1944, either. The pizza smell was inviting, though, and I would have taken a booth and burrowed in with a small pie if I hadn’t noticed Tom sitting at the bar in his fleece-lined jacket. Most of the stools were open, so plopping down next to him and getting friendly might have been read wrong.
So I left a stool between us and ordered a beer and asked the bartender if I could eat at the bar and he said sure. I ordered a small pepperoni and, my beer not here yet, turned toward Tom and said, “I hope the pizza is as good as it smells.”
Slouched over the bar, Tom gave me a “huh” look-he already had his beer, and most of it was gone-and then forced a smile and said, “It is good.”
“You’re from here?”
He shook his head. I was getting a better look at him now but he was just another of these semi-longhaired college kids with mustaches and fetus faces. “I go to Northwestern,” he said. “Evanston?”
That explained the Illinois license plates.
I said, “I’m starting here, second semester. What’s your major?”
“I’m in pre-law.”
Tom wasn’t unfriendly but neither was he interested, so I cut if off there. I sipped my beer, Tom ordered a second one. We did not speak again until my pizza arrived. The bartender, God bless him, placed it on the bar next to me, in front of the empty stool that separated Tom and me.
“Hey,” I said to Tom. “This is more than I can handle. Help yourself to a few slices.”
Tom frowned at me, then smiled. “That’s nice, brother, but…I’m not that hungry.”
“Come on. Why let it go to waste? Consider it a late Christmas present.”
He thought about that, shrugged, and moved over a seat.
The pie was in fact excellent, a thin crust with a lot of tomato sauce and just the right amount of mozzarella and seemed to me just about the best pizza ever, although you should factor in that I’d been living on Slim Jims, beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes.
I kept the conversation casual. “You got folks in Iowa City?”
“No,” he said. He was finished with his second beer and I called the bartender over and ordered us both another. Tom thanked me and said, “My girlfriend lives here.”
“Really? Local gal?”
“No. Actually, she’s from Chicago, too. She’s a little older than me, but we’ve gone together since high school.”
“How much older?”
He shrugged. “Just a year. But she’s in grad school now. That’s why she’s at Iowa.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah-Writers’ Workshop? Really famous writers’ school. Lots of big deal literary lights teach here. Kurt Vonnegut. Richard Yates. Phillip Roth.”
I’d read Vonnegut.
I said, “Yeah, I know all about that. I’m going to be in the Workshop myself.”
His eyebrows went up. “No kidding. Nice going- tough to get in. My girlfriend has been winning writing awards since she was in grade school.”
“What’s her name?”
“Annette Girard.”
“Speaking of which…my name’s Jack.” I wiped pizza sauce off my hand and extended it to him and grinned. “Jack Harper.”
“Tom Keenan,” he said, and we shook.
“So,” I said, “why are you sitting with some doofus in a bar, eating pizza and drinking beer, if your girl’s in town?”
“She is, but…man, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“It’s the kind of question you can only ask some doofus…some other doofus…in a bar.” He laughed humorlessly. “Are all women untrustworthy little bitches?”
I shrugged. “Not all.”
“Really?”
“Well…none that aren’t come to mind.” I smiled. “But you’d figure there’d have to be some of ‘em out there who wouldn’t cheat on your ass.”
He grunted. “You been there, then?”
“Listen, let me tell you. I did a tour in Nam.”
His eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“Yeah. And when I came home, guess where I found my honeybun?”
“In bed with a guy?”
“In bed with a guy.”
We toasted beers.
“So what now, Tom? You gonna go talk sense to the little lady? Try to win her back?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Naw. She’s really… really not a bad girl, Jack. She’s smart and ambitious and talented and smart.” He was on his fourth beer. “But her parents, her father particularly, spoiled the shit out of her. So she’s used to getting her own way.”
“Is she cute?”
“Cute ain’t half of it! She looks like she walked out of a Penthouse centerspread.”
Particularly on your fourth beer, when you could get the soft focus just right.
“Then,” I said, “if I were you, I would forgive her lovely ass, no matter what she did to me.”
He laughed. Actually laughed. “Yeah. And some day I may get her back. But right now? This prick has filled her head with all kinds of garbage.”
“What prick? What kind of garbage?”
“Well, it’s this goddamn professor.” He sneered, shook his head. “Her fucking literary guru. Hell, he may wind up your teacher, Jack, in the Workshop!”
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Byron. Some initials in front of that, but I forget what the fuck they are.”
I was nodding. “Yeah, I know who you mean. He had a bestseller a while back, but he’s sure as hell no Vonnegut.”
“That’s for fuckin’ A sure. But she’s been working on this book, this novel…actually, she says it’s a non-fiction novel-you know, like In Cold Blood?”
“What’s it about?”
He shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know. Probably her father.”
“Why her father?”
He just waved that off. I was already getting more out of him than a doofus in a bar had any right.
“But this Byron asshole,” Tom said, “he’s an expert at this stuff. That bestseller of his, it was one of these non-fiction novel deals.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Anyway, she’s under his spell. But it’ll only be temporary. If I go off and live my life for a while, and fuck me a few honeys back in Evanston, maybe I can forget her for now, and then, down the road a ways, we can start back up again, with a clean slate.”
“The professor’s just a fling?”
“Yeah, but it’s Annette who’s gettin’ flung. This prof, he’s a well-known horndog. I asked around about him. He’s been at three colleges in six years, a dirty old man playing Mick Jagger to lit — rah-chure groupies.”
“Your girl’s just another in that long line?”
He nodded. “The bastard’ll discard her like the rest of the hundred fuck-bunnies he’s run through.”
“Would you take her back?”
“In a goddamn heartbeat.” He pushed a half-eaten slice away. “You think I’m a pussy, Jack?”
Kind of.
“No,” I said. “She’s just going through a phase. So then, what? You’ll head back to Evanston?”
“Yeah. Or anyway to Naperville. That’s where my folks live. That’s also the Chicago area. But I’ll crash in some motel, first. I can’t drive after all this beer.”
“Don’t blame you. Then you’ll head home tomorrow?”
“First thing.”
That was good to hear.
He seemed like a nice kid. Would have been a drag having to kill him.
FOUR
By four o’clock that afternoon, I had resumed my post in the split-level, and while my space heater and my radio and my dwindling supply of 7-Eleven delicacies were waiting patiently for me, the brunette’s white Corvette had finally departed.
This was good news, or anyway news, as it seemed to indicate Annette had not moved in over break with Professor Byron after all. That might have cleared a path for me to slip across the street, especially after sundown, and close the book on the supposedly famous writer, only another car was out front.