Roadwork

by Bachman, Richard; King, Stephen

  “This has been a public service announcement from WLDM. The Music People remind you to leave gasoline storage to the people who are equipped to do it properly.”

  He turned off the radio, slowed down to fifty, and pulled back into the cruising lane. “Twelve sticks of dynamite,” he said. “Man, that’s amazing.”

  If he had looked into the rearview mirror, he would have seen that he was grinning.

  December 10, 1973

  He got to Handy Andy’s at just past eleven-thirty and the headwaiter gave him a table beside the stylized batwings that led to the lounge—not a good table, but one of the few empties left as the place filled up for lunch. Handy Andy’s specialized in steaks, chops, and something called the Andyburger, which looked a little like a chefs salad stuck between a huge sesame seed roll with a toothpick to hold the whole contraption together. Like all big city restaurants within executive walking distance, it went through indefinable cycles of inness and outness. Two months ago he could have come in here at noon and had his pick of tables—three months hence he might be able to do the same. To him, it had always been one of life’s minor mysteries, like the incidents in the books of Charles Fort, or the instinct that always brought the swallows back to Capistrano.

  He looked around quickly as he sat down, afraid he would see Vinnie Mason or Steve Ordner or some other laundry executive. But the place was stuffed with strangers. To his left, a young man was trying to persuade his girl that they could afford three days in Sun Valley this February. The rest of the room’s conversation was just soft babble—soothing.

  “A drink, sir?” The waiter was at his elbow.

  “Scotch-rocks, please,” he said.

  “Very good, sir,” the waiter said.

  He made the first one last until noon, killed two more by twelve-thirty, and then, just mulishly, he ordered a double. He was just draining it dry when he saw Mary walk in and pause in the door between the foyer and the dining room, looking for him. Heads turned to look at her and he thought: Mary, you ought to thank me—you’re beautiful. He raised his right hand and waved.

  She raised her hand in return greeting and came to his table. She was wearing a knee-length wool dress, soft patterned gray. Her hair was braided in a single thick cable that hung down to her shoulder blades, a way he could not recall having seen her wear it (and maybe worn that way for just that reason). It made her look youthful, and he had a sudden guilty flash of Olivia, working beneath him on the bed he and Mary had shared so often.

  “Hello, Bart,” she said.

  “Hi. You look awful pretty.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “No ... just an Andyburger. How long have you been here?”

  “Oh, not long.”

  The lunch crowd had thinned, and his waiter appeared almost at once. “Would you like to order now, sir?”

  “Yes. Two Andyburgers. Milk for the lady. Another double for myself.” He glanced at Mary, but her face showed nothing. That was bad. If she had spoken, he would have canceled the double. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, because he wasn’t sure he could walk straight. That would be a wonderful tidbit to carry back to the old folks at home. Carry me back to Ol’ Virginnie. He almost giggled.

  “Well, you’re not drunk, but you’re on your way,” she said, and unfolded her napkin on her lap.

  “That’s pretty good,” he said. “Did you rehearse it?”

  “Bart, let’s not fight.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  She toyed with her water glass; he picked at his coaster.

  “Well?” she said finally.

  “Well what?”

  “You seemed to have something in mind when you called. Now that you’re full of Dutch courage, what is it?”

  “Your cold is better,” he said idiotically, and tore a hole in his coaster without meaning to. He couldn’t tell her what was on the top of his mind: how she seemed to have changed, how she seemed suddenly sophisticated and dangerous, like a cruising secretary who has bartered for a later lunch hour and who would refuse any offer of a drink unless it came from a man inside a four-hundred-dollar suit. And who could tell just by glancing at the cut of the fabric.

  “Bart, what are we going to do?”

  “I’ll see a psychiatrist if you want me to,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “When?”

  “Pretty soon.”

  “You can make an appointment this afternoon if you want to.”

  “I don’t know any shr—any.”

  “There’s the Yellow Pages.”

  “That seems like a half-assed sort of way to pick a brainpeeker.”

  She only looked at him and he looked away, uncomfortable.

  “You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not working. Fifty dollars an hour seems sort of high for an unemployed fellow.”

  “What do you think I’m living on?” she asked sharply. “My folks’ charity. And as you’ll recall, they’re both retired.”

  “As I recall, your father’s got enough shares in SOI and Beechcraft to keep the three of you on easy street well into the next century.”

  “Bart, that’s not so.” She sounded startled and hurt.

  “Bullshit it’s not. They were in Jamaica last winter, Miami the year before that, at the Fountainbleau no less, and Honolulu the year before that. Nobody does that on a retired engineer’s salary. So don’t give me that poorbox routine, Mary—”

  “Stop it, Bart. The green’s showing.”

  “Not to mention a Cadillac Gran DeVille and a Bonneville station wagon. Not bad. Which one do they use when they go to pick up their food stamps?”

  “Stop it!” she hissed at him, her lips drawn back a bit from her small white teeth, her fingers gripping the edge of the table.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Lunch is coming.”

  The temperature between them cooled a little as the waiter set their Andyburgers and French fries before them, added minuscule dishes of green peas and baby onions, then retired. They ate without speaking for a while, both concentrating on not drooling down their chins or in their laps. I wonder how many marriages the Andyburger has saved? he wondered. Simply by its one providential attribute—when you’re eating one you have to shut up.

  She put hers down half-eaten, blotted her mouth with her napkin, and said, “They’re as good as I remember. Bart, do you have any sensible idea at all about what to do?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, stung. But he didn’t know what his idea was. If he’d gotten in another double, he might have.

  “Do you want a divorce?”

  “No,” he said. Something positive seemed to be called for.

  “Do you want me to come back?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Shall I tell you something, Bart? I’m worried about myself for the first time in twenty years. I’m fending for myself.” She started to take a bite of her Andyburger, then set it down again. “Did you know I almost didn’t marry you? Had that thought ever crossed your mind?”

  The surprise on his face seemed to satisfy her.

  “I didn’t think it had. I was pregnant, so of course I wanted to marry you. But part of me didn’t. Something kept whispering that it would be the worst mistake of my life. So I roasted myself over a slow fire for three days, throwing up every morning when I woke up, hating you for that, thinking this, that, and the other. Run away. Get an abortion. Have the baby and put it up for adoption. Have the baby and keep it. But I finally decided to do the sensible thing. The sensible thing.” She laughed. “And then lost the baby anyway.”

  “Yes, you did,” he muttered, wishing the conversation would turn from this. It was too much like opening a closet and stepping into puke.

  “But I was happy with you, Bart.”

  “Were you?” he asked automatically. He found he wanted to get away. This wasn’t
working. Not for him anyway.

  “Yes. But something happens to a woman in marriage that doesn’t happen to a man. Do you remember when you were a child how you never worried about your parents? You just expected them to be there and they were, same as the food and the heat and the clothes.”

  “I guess so. Sure.”

  “And I went and got my silly self pregnant. And for three days a whole new world opened up around me.” She was leaning forward, her eyes glowing and anxious, and he realized with dawning shock that this recitation was important to her, that it was more than getting together with her childless friends or deciding which pair of slacks to buy in Banberry’s or guessing which celebrities Merv would be chatting with at four-thirty. This was important to her, and had she really gone through twenty years of marriage with only this one important thought? Had she? She had almost said as much. Twenty years, my God. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach. He liked the image of her picking up the empty bottle and waving it at him gleefully from her side of the road so much better.

  “I saw myself as an independent person,” she was saying. “An independent person with no one to explain myself to or subordinate myself to. No one around to try and change me, because I knew I could be changed. I was always weak that way. But also no one to fall back on when I was sick or scared or maybe broke. So I did the sensible thing. Like my mother and her mother. Like my friends. I was tired of being a bridesmaid and trying to catch the bouquet. So I said yes, which was what you expected and things went on. There were no worries, and when the baby died and when Charlie died there was you. And you were always good to me. I know that, I appreciate that. But it was a sealed environment. I stopped thinking. I thought I was thinking, but I wasn’t. And now it hurts to think. It hurts.” She looked at him with bright resentment for a minute, and then it faded. “So I’m asking you to think for me, Bart. What do we do now?”

  “I’m going to get a job,” he lied.

  “A job.”

  “And see a psychiatrist. Mary, things are going to be fine. Honest. I was a little off the beam, but I’m going to get back on. I’m—”

  “Do you want me to come home?”

  “In a couple of weeks, sure. I just have to get things together a little and—”

  “Home? What am I talking about? They’re going to tear it down. What am I talking about, home? Jesus,” she groaned, “what a mess. Why did you have to drag me into such a shitty mess?”

  He couldn’t stand her this way. She wasn’t like Mary, not at all. “Maybe they won’t,” he said, taking her hand across the table. “Maybe they won’t tear it down, Mary, they might change their minds, if I go and talk to them, explain the situation, they might just—”

  She jerked her hand away. She was looking at him, horrified.

  “Bart,” she whispered.

  “What—” He broke off, uncertain. What had he been saying? What could he possibly have been saying to make her look so awful?

  “You know they’re going to tear it down. You knew it a long time ago. And we’re sitting here, going around and around—”

  “No, we’re not,” he said. “We’re not. Really. We’re not. We ... we ...” But what were they doing? He felt unreal.

  “Bart, I think I better go now.”

  “I’m going to get a job—”

  “I’ll talk to you.” She got up hastily, her thigh bumping the edge of the table, making the silver-ware gossip.

  “The psychiatrist, Mary, I promise—”

  “Mamma wanted me to go to the store—”

  “Then go on!” he shouted at her, and heads turned. “Get out of here, you bitch! You had the best of me and what have I got? A house the city’s going to rip down. Get out of my sight!”

  She fled. The room was horribly quiet for what seemed like eternity. Then the talk picked up again. He looked down at his dripping half-eaten hamburger, trembling, afraid he was going to vomit. When he knew he was not, he paid the check and left without looking around.

  December 12, 1973

  He made out a Christmas list the night before (drunk) and was now downtown filling an abridged version. The completed list had been staggering—over a hundred and twenty names, including every relative near and distant that he and Mary had between them, a great many friends and acquaintances, and at the bottom—God save the queen—Steve Ordner, his wife, and their for Chrissakes maid.

  He had pruned most of the names from the list, chuckling bemusedly over some of them, and now strolled slowly past windows filled with Christmas goodies, all to be given in the name of that long-ago Dutch thief who used to slide down people’s chimneys and steal everything they owned. One gloved hand patted a five-hundred-dollar roll of ten-dollar bills in his pocket.

  He was living on the insurance money, and the first thousand dollars of it had melted away with amazing speed. He estimated that he would be broke by the middle of March at this rate, possibly sooner, but found the thought didn’t bother him at all. The thought of where he might be or what he might be doing in March was as incomprehensible as calculus.

  He went into a jewelry store and bought a beaten-silver owl pin for Mary. The owl had coldly flashing diamond chips for eyes. It cost one hundred and fifty dollars, plus tax. The saleslady was effusive. She was sure his wife was going to love it. He smiled. There goes three appointments with Dr. Psycho, Freddy. What do you think about that?

  Freddy wasn’t talking.

  He went into a large department store and took an escalator up to the toy department, which was dominated by a huge electric train display—green plastic hills honey-combed with tunnels, plastic train stations, overpasses, underpasses, switching points, and a Lionel locomotive that bustled through all of it, puffing ribbons of synthetic smoke from its stack and hauling a long line of freight cars—B&O, SOO LINE, GREAT NORTHERN, GREAT WESTERN, WARNER BROTHERS (WARNER BROTHERS??), DIAMOND INTERNATIONAL, SOUTHERN PACIFIC. Young boys and their fathers were standing by the wooden picket fence that surrounded the display, and he felt a warm surge of love for them that was untainted by envy. He felt he could have gone to them, told them of his love for them, his thankfulness for them and the season. He would also have urged them to be careful.

  He wandered down an aisle of dolls, and picked one up for each of his three nieces: Chatty Cathy for Tina, Maisie the Acrobat for Cindy, and a Barbie for Sylvia, who was eleven now. In the next aisle he got a GI Joe for Bill, and after some deliberation, a chess set for Andy. Andy was twelve, an object of some worry in the family. Old Bea from Baltimore had confided in Mary that she kept finding stiff places on Andy’s sheets. Could it be possible? So early? Mary had told Bea that children were getting more precocious every year. Bea said she supposed it was all the milk they drank, and vitamins, but she did wish Andy liked team sports more. Or summer camp. Or horseback riding. Or anything.

  Never mind, Andy, he thought, tucking the chess set under his arm. You practice knight’s gambits and queen to rook-4 and beat off under the table if you want to.

  There was a huge Santa Claus throne at the front of the toy department. The throne was empty, and a sign was propped on an easel in front of it. The sign said:

  SANTA IS HAVING LUNCH AT OUR FAMOUS “MID-TOWN GRILL”

  Why Not Join Him?

  There was a young man in a denim jacket and jeans looking at the throne, his arms full of packages, and when the young man turned around, he saw it was Vinnie Mason.

  “Vinnie!” he said.

  Vinnie smiled and colored a little, as if he had been caught doing something a bit nasty: “Hello, Bart,” he said, and walked over. There was no embarrassment over shaking hands; their arms were too full of packages.

  “Christmas shopping a little?” he asked Vinnie.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “I brought Sharon and Bobbie—that’s my daughter Roberta—over to look on Saturday. Bobbie’s three now. We wanted to get her picture taken with Santa Claus. You know they do that on Saturdays. Just a buck. But she wouldn’t do it
. Cried her head off. Sharon was a little upset.”

  “Well, it’s a strange man with a big beard. The little ones get scared sometimes. Maybe she’ll go to him next year.”

  “Maybe.” Vinnie smiled briefly.

  He smiled back, thinking it was much easier with Vinnie now. He wanted to tell Vinnie not to hate his guts too much. He wanted to tell Vinnie he was sorry if he had fucked up Vinnie’s life. “So what are you doing these days, Vinnie?”

  Vinnie absolutely beamed. “You won’t believe this, it’s so good. I’m managing a movie theater. And by next summer I’ll be handling three more.”

  “Media Associates?” It was one of the corporation’s companies.

  “That’s right. We’re part of the Cinemate Releasing chain. They send in all the movies ... proven box-office stuff. But I’m handling the Westfall Cinema completely.”

  “They’re going to add on?”

  “Yeah, Cinema II and III by next summer. And the Beacon Drive-In, I’ll be handling that, too.”

  He hesitated. “Vinnie, you tell me if I’m stepping out of line, but if this Cinemate outfit picks the films and books them, then what exactly do you do?”

  “Well, handle the money, of course. And order stuff, that’s very important. Did you know that the candy stand alone can almost pay for one night’s film rental if it’s handled efficiently? Then there’s maintenance and—” He swelled visibly, “and hiring and firing. It’s going to keep me busy. Sharon likes it because she’s a big movie freak, especially Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood. I like it because all of a sudden I jumped from nine thousand to eleven thousand-five.”

  He looked at Vinnie dully for a moment, wondering if he should speak. This was Ordner’s prize, then. Good doggie. Here’s the bone.

  “Get out of it, Vinnie,” he said. “Get out of it just as quick as you can.”