Cold Rain

Chapter 2

When I was still a young man an old dog in the academy, dead now, told me the secret to life.

No one, he said, forgets caviar. Rise early, work hard, speak no evil, use tax shelters: everyone’s got an angle.

But caviar made an impression on me. Maybe it’s because professors are so long on dignity and so damn short on cash, but serving caviar at parties is worth at least a dozen publications on one’s curriculum vitae.

That fall I was eligible for promotion. The last hurdle of an academic’s career: full professor. I was eight years in the business. Young for the honour, to be sure, but I had been quietly ambitious for a while and had lately come to be well-positioned to get the faculty’s nod.

Not that the vote was a sure thing. Not for anyone, really. Especially not for one of the younger associates. As a matter of policy, my department rather enjoyed turning people down. The last seven who asked, to be precise. I had tenure of course and was settled comfortably into the broad sea of middle management, which at a university is the rank of associate professor.

There were a couple of magazine hits I could drop into a conversation when it was necessary to impress the occasional visiting dignitary in the arts and now a novel. Born in the cold of winter and praised by friends coast-to-coast, Jinx wasn’t climbing the charts, but it was exactly what I needed for the vote of my peers.

Assuming they didn’t forget me.

Molly and I set the party for the first weekend before classes began that fall. I kept the list diverse enough that it didn’t look like a departmental meeting of the Olympians, but I made sure everyone with the power of a vote got a written and personal invitation. No talk, either, of my promotion. I hadn’t even applied for it, had carefully avoided even the most casual discussion of my prospects. That would come later, a few weeks before the actual application, several months after the party. This was just a get-together, black tie optional, to let people know I was glad to be back after a year and two summers of blessed solitude.

The final guest list ran to about eighty people. We started with a nice mix of gypsy scholars and old-line academic aristocrats from across campus, then salted with a smattering of university bureaucrats and our latest batch of teaching assistants, including Buddy Elder. We threw the west pasture open for parking, and set up a keg of beer outside. There were more refined choices within, including copious offerings of champagne and caviar.

After the thing was under way and politics took a backseat to just enjoying myself, I was standing in a circle of young men in the main hall at the bottom of our grand stairway. I was regaling them with one of the anecdotes that had not made the final cut of Jinx, when I noticed every eye shift toward the stairs. That could mean only one thing, and being a male, I had to turn and look too. Coming down the polished walnut stair-case was the most beautiful woman at the party, my wife Molly. She was not an especially tall woman, but she seemed so because of the confident way she carried herself. Her long hair was the colour of dark honey. Her skin was ruddy from long hours of working in the sun.

Her shoulders were high and beautifully developed. As she came off the last step, Molly’s blue eyes found me, and she cocked her finger playfully with a come-hither beckoning. I made my excuses affably, my story unfinished, and followed her toward our kitchen, marvelling at how her waist pinched down like a bowtie.

‘I need a hand in the pantry, David,’ Molly announced in a stage whisper. It was an old game we liked to play at other people’s parties, but I was up for it at our own.

We entered a large well-stocked pantry, and Molly shut the door behind us at once. Kissing me seriously, she put my hand under the hem of her black sequined gown, apparently just where she needed it. ‘You think anyone would notice if we just disappeared for half-an-hour?’

‘Molly,’ I said biting her lip playfully, ‘everyone notices when a beautiful woman disappears.’

She stroked me mischievously, knowing I would be trapped in the pantry until I calmed down. ‘Dean Lintz said he’s heard you’re a wonderful teacher, David.’

I moved her hand away but could not resist kissing her neck. ‘That’s shop talk for a lack of scholarship.’

‘Morgan read your book.’

Morgan was the vice president for academic affairs.

He had a habit of never quite looking my way even if we were the only two people in a room. ‘Unbelievable,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he could read.’

‘Everyone likes the house.’ Molly slipped her fingers under my cummerbund.

‘The house is beautiful. You’re a genius with wood.’

I kissed her again and, soft touch that I am, let her have her way with me. ‘I especially like the pantry.’

When she had me completely excited, she pulled away and began adjusting her dress. ‘I think we should put a daybed in here though… for parties.’

‘A daybed would be good,’ I said, struggling vainly to get things put back in order.

‘Randy Winston told me when I got tired of you he’d love to show me what I’m missing.’

I laughed. ‘What does he think you’re missing?’

‘You want me to ask him?’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘Get another case of champagne, David. We have to take something out.’

‘Afraid people will think we’re in love?’

‘David, we’ve been married for twelve years. If we’re in here fooling around after all that time, the natural assumption is we’ve been having problems.’

‘At the moment I’ve got a terrible problem.’

She smiled at her handiwork. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘Tonight we’re going to finish what we started. For now this ought to do it.’ I picked up one of the boxes of champagne and held it before me.

On tiptoes, Molly looked over. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me something awful.’

‘Did I ever tell you about the drunken carpenter who leaned a little too far over his table saw?’

‘Awful enough,’ I winced. ‘You know I hate table saws!’

Molly laughed and opened the door, telling me in a voice loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear, ‘That should do it for a while.’

I lugged the champagne to a barrel of ice water on our back porch and with the help of one of our servers began slipping new bottles underneath the cold ones.

As I was finishing up, Walt Beery came through the back door. Walt wore a smoking jacket and cummerbund as I had anticipated. To my astonishment he was sober.

‘Molly,’ he said, giving her a hug, then holding both her hands, ‘You look great! If this bum ever forgets how lucky he is-’

‘You’ll be the first, Walt,’ Molly answered, smiling and running her fingers over the ruffles of his shirt.

To me and not nearly as playful about it, she added, ‘…but definitely not the last.’

She went on, leaving us alone. ‘That’s my wife,’ I told Walt. ‘Pull your tongue in.’

He turned to me with all the sentiment of a great drunk, ‘You are a lucky bastard. You know that?’

‘I know it,’ I answered.

‘Do you?’ A bit too much passion in this.

‘I know it,’ I said cautiously.

Walt’s eyes tightened now, and something went slack in him. ‘You heard about Barbara and me, I guess?’

‘Heard what?’

‘She kicked me out, David.’

I groaned, struggling for some kind of appropriate answer. Walt’s fantasy of freedom had come at last, and I could see it terrified him.

‘I’m too old to start over,’ he muttered.

‘You need a drink.’ I said. ‘A few beers and things will look better. The TAs are going to show up pretty soon and put a little life in this funeral!’

‘I’m off the booze.’

‘How long?’

‘Three days,’ he said. ‘Three long days.’ His eyes watered suddenly, so that I had to turn to avoid seeing his tears. ‘I had the shakes so bad this morning I almost…well, you know how it is.’

I didn’t, but I nodded. ‘Are you doing this on your own?’ I asked.

‘I can beat it. I have to. I promised myself a week.

I make it a week and I go talk to Barbara. Tell her what I’m doing. See if we can get a fresh start.’

‘Sounds like it might work.’

‘A week doesn’t sound like much, does it?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s like crawling on broken glass. That’s the first day. It gets worse after that.’

‘It gets better eventually,’ I said. ‘It gets good, if you want to know the truth.’

‘When?’

I thought about one more lie since I was passing them out so glibly, but I didn’t have the heart. I simply excused myself.

Academic parties have a pace one can only begin to understand after a dozen or so of them. Early there is always a bit of formality. Rank still matters.

Masks still fit snugly. Then come the first bits of laughter, nothing too raucous, of course, more like Jane Austen humour. At this point, the old guard wades in with stories from the Grand Old Days, well-worn lamentations for those of us who were not around when scholarship mattered! Then the associates and assistants take over. A careful crew, these. Paranoia as lifestyle, but with enough booze even the bureaucrats dance. A frosted look, a piece of crass laughter, a slipped confession. The physicist talking lit, the historian discussing the theory of point spreads. Circles and cliques breaking apart, new friendships tested, and finally the inevitable quarrel.

At our party it was the literary merit of the Brownings. Only an English prof could have seen this one coming. Only Walt Beery had the breadth of knowledge to break it apart before someone took a swing.

Five minutes later both profs were screaming at Walt.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Late at any such party there is usually a spouse scurrying around alone, too embarrassed to ask about the missing partner. For years I had observed such rituals without ever understanding that the abandoned spouse knows everyone is watching. I had always imagined such displays could only take place under the illusion of not being noticed. It had never dawned on me that such people simply couldn’t control themselves.

When Molly and Buddy Elder started talking I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the look in her eyes, and I definitely didn’t like the lazy way he looked at her. When they disappeared, I lost all sense of proportion and with it the last shred of decorum. Even while I scurried around, I had a new appreciation for such dramas, especially the attendant humiliation that comes with it. I knew people were watching me. I knew at least some of them could tell me exactly where my wife had gone and with whom, but I had to walk around like I had misplaced my glass. People pretended not to notice me. I kept a smile pasted to my face. Where did I put that glass anyway? I tried not to imagine the nudges they were giving one another the minute I was into the next room. It wasn’t possible. I knew what they were saying. David’s turn.

I found Molly at the barn after about ten minutes of running the gauntlet. She was standing a few feet from Buddy Elder in a pale light before one of the horse stalls. From outside the barn it wasn’t possible to see them, but once I stepped in, I could stand in a shadow and watch everything. At first it was just talk, then I saw him stepping toward her. I thought he was about to touch her, a finger to her chin maybe, possibly a kiss. Would she let him? I didn’t know, and I didn’t get to find out because he didn’t do what I expected.

He put both hands against the stall and looked in through the bars at Jezebel, my stepdaughter’s seven-year-old quarter horse mare. A flutter of jealousy and rage shot into my chest feeling like a two-penny nail driven down with a single blow. I thought about waiting them out to see what they were going to do next. It even dawned on me that I should leave, though I dismissed the idea as absurd. I ended up walking all the way into the barn like a man long familiar with a disappearing wife.

‘She’s not for sale,’ I said, and pointed at Lucy’s mare.

Buddy gave me a lazy smile that I found a bit arrogant under the circumstances. ‘And I was just getting ready to make an offer.’

Molly gave me a look I didn’t like, then pushed past me, brushing my shoulder as she went. ‘I’d better get back,’ she announced quietly. Then to Buddy, ‘If you want to come out for a ride sometime, just let me know. I’d love to show you the farm.’

‘I might,’ he said, smiling. ‘If you’re sure it wouldn’t be a problem.’ He glanced in my direction – the problem.

Molly gave me a cool appraisal. ‘No problem at all.’

No problem she couldn’t handle, she meant.

‘You mind me asking you a personal question, Dave?’ Buddy asked, when we were alone.

I minded, but I was also curious. ‘What’s that?’

‘How did you get this place on a teacher’s salary?’

I laughed. ‘I thought you were going to ask me if I’m a jealous man.’

Buddy and I had walked out of the barn. He leaned against the grey boards of our old barn, so he was looking up the hill in the direction of our house, the direction Molly had taken. ‘I think I know the answer to that.’

‘My father was a car salesman,’ I said, stooping down and picking up some pebbles. ‘The guy they warn you about. Tubs could sell space heaters in hell.

Probably is, come to think of it. The old bastard could pitch any car he had to, but he’d only ride home in a Ford. Any Ford. A matter of principle, though what exactly the principle was, I never quite understood.

Anyway, back in the late seventies Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy. The price of the stock was around three dollars and dropping by the hour.

Naturally, everyone at the car lot had an opinion. Tubs said he was looking for a comeback. He said the government wouldn’t let Chrysler sink. Now you have to understand, he was standing around a bunch of car salespeople who knew his prejudices and back in those days nobody but Lee Iacocca liked a Chrysler, so when he said that, they all laughed. I owe this farm to their laughter, Buddy.’ I tossed a few pebbles toward our kennel, emptied out for the occasion of the party, and let Buddy wait for my explanation.

‘You see, Tubs could be wrong about a thing. Get him off the car lot, he was as wrong about things as the next man, but one thing Tubs could not abide was another salesperson laughing at him. The minute they did he walked into his office and called his broker and bought five thousand shares. In those days that was about exactly what a new luxury Chrysler would cost, and that’s what he said when he came back out, “I just bought my first Chrysler, gentlemen, but thank the good Lord I don’t ever have to drive it!’’

‘This wasn’t entirely out of character, you understand. My old man was a plunger, a gambler. Give him a horse, a deck of cards, the right kind of auto-mobile, and Tubs could drop serious money if the inspiration hit him. And over the years, the inspiration hit him fairly regularly. The truth is Tubs lost a lot more than he won. Usually when he made the right decision he would go too light or bail out too early.

Good times never ran a full course at our house, let me tell you. The man could screw up the Second Coming, but his one great move after buying Chrysler’s stock was to die.’ Buddy blinked in surprise and I knew I had him.

‘The first few times the stock split even a smart trader would have considered locking in his gains, but my mother didn’t know about such things. In fact, she was actually a little nervous about Chrysler sending her the dividend checks. She knew Tubs couldn’t stand Chrysler, so the only thing she could figure was they were sending money to the wrong Albo.

‘My brothers had no idea any of this was going on.

Me? I was just a kid. Thirty years ago I barely knew the difference between a Ford and a Chrysler. She splurged a little on clothes and jewellery, bought a new car now and then, took a trip every year. Got a new house. We figured the old bastard had a ton of life insurance because Mom sure wasn’t telling anyone where the money came from. This went on for years, and then one day she asked my oldest brother what was going to happen to Chrysler now that it had been sold to Mercedes. My brother wanted to know why she was worried about something like that.’

I handed Buddy a smile that told him we were at the end of the story. ‘She told him how many shares she had of it, and the next day we had a family meeting.’

‘You got the farm with your share of the stock?’

‘The farm, this quarter horse, that paint gelding, the restoration on the house, Molly’s new Ford truck, my stepdaughter’s Toyota Highlander, her choice of colleges…the mother lode, Buddy.’

Buddy handed me back a grudging smile. ‘Son of a bitch.’

I gave my lottery-winner shrug. ‘We were lucky.’

‘You should have put that in Jinx!’

‘You read Jinx, did you?’

‘I read it this summer. To tell you the truth, the minute I finished it, I wanted to go out and sell cars.

Did your dad have names for every one of his closes, like Jinx?’

A close is the last step of the sale. It’s cash on the table, a signature on the line. Feast or famine for the salesperson. Tubs had pet names for every close he used: Forbidden Fruit, Love or Money, Take my Advice (because no one ever does), The Bible Close, The Colombo Close. Tubs had a hundred of them. As many as he had faces.

‘He did,’ I told Buddy. ‘At least that’s what they tell me. He died before I ever got to work with him.’

‘He carry a Bible in his hip pocket like Jinx?’

‘Son of a bitch wouldn’t walk on the lot without it! He might not use it for a week or two, but then he’d meet the right folks and at just the opportune moment Tubs would pull it out like a gun and tell his customers, ‘Everyone else carries a price book, but I carry this so I won’t be tempted to lie!’

Buddy grinned at me sceptically. ‘People didn’t see through that?’

Buddy Elder had read my book, but he had missed its essence. ‘Tubs meant it. That’s why it worked. Ever hear of a car salesman that wouldn’t tell a lie? That was Tubs. The George Washington of the Wastelands.

He could take all your money but he would never tell a lie while he was doing it. That was Tubs: the honest thief – a hell of a lousy epitaph, if you think about it.’

Buddy grew thoughtful. ‘I didn’t get that from the book.’

‘That’s good, because I didn’t put it in.’

‘Maybe you should have. If that’s the truth.’

‘I wrote another book about that. It’s up in a box in my closet.’

Buddy grinned, getting the point. ‘The one that’s true?’

‘Truth,’ I answered, ‘is a highly overrated virtue.’

Buddy Elder smiled at me as if he had found a kindred soul. ‘You think?’

‘We better get back to the party,’ I said. ‘And Buddy, if you’re thinking about coming out for a ride sometime… think again. It could be a real problem between you and me.’

‘I knew that, Dave.’

I gave him a wink and patted him on the shoulder.

‘Just so we understand one another.’

‘Did you make an ass out of yourself?’

Molly and I were standing in the pasture watching Dean Lintz wipe out a stretch of white board fence as he crashed through a shallow ditch. The party was still going, but it was winding down now. Only a few more drunken administrators to kick out and we were home free.

‘Nothing too serious,’ I answered. ‘Did Buddy make a pass?’

She had a private smile. ‘Not that you’d notice.’

‘I was afraid of that.’

‘Where did they find him, anyway?’

I shook my head. ‘I have no idea.’

‘You ought to write whoever sent him and ask for a dozen more. He’s… genuine.’

‘What did you two talk about… so intently?’

‘Horses… Lucy… restoring old houses. He’s run some rooftops. Did you know that?’

‘Barb Beery kicked Walt out,’ I answered. I was tired of the subject of Buddy Elder, irritated at Molly’s unrepentant affection for him.

Molly’s face twitched. ‘I heard. Quite a few times, actually.’

‘You hear why?’

‘Fooling around. Last straw. A stripper or something. Very… Walt , if you know what I mean?’

‘He tells me he quit drinking three days ago. Wants to go talk to her after a week and show her he can change.’

‘He can change brands, but that’s about all.’

I shook my head, marshalling a defence for my hapless friend. ‘He seemed pretty dedicated to the idea.’

‘David, a half hour ago I saw him out in the pasture with Randy Winston drinking vodka straight out of the bottle.’

‘That’s pathetic.’

‘I’d say it’s desperate. Pathetic is tiptoeing to the barn and spying on your wife.’