Unforced Error

by Michael Bowen

  “Good for him.”

  “It’s even more impressive when you hear the whole story. We’ll catch the freeway north in downtown Kansas City, but I’m taking you there on Broadway instead of the Southwest Trafficway because there’s something I want you see when we cut west on Pershing Road in a second.”

  “The scenic route is welcome,” Rep said as Peter made the promised turn. “Parts of Kansas City are as beautiful as any urban landscape I’ve seen anywhere. That’s Union Station, isn’t it? Where Pretty Boy Floyd bought it?”

  “Union Station Massacre, right. But what I wanted to show you is across the street.”

  “That thing that looks like a skinny concrete silo?” Rep asked.

  “Exactly. That’s the Liberty Memorial. It was built to honor the soldiers from Kansas City who fought in World War I.”

  “Okay,” Rep said.

  “During the ’sixties there was a movement to ‘rededicate’ the Liberty Memorial in what politically correct types today would call a more inclusive way,” Peter continued. “I still get questions in Ready Reference about it. Lots of controversy and hard feelings.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Anyway, Mr. Lawrence is getting naming rights for the library extension because of his contribution. But instead of naming it after himself or a relative or his company, he’s calling it the Liberty Memorial Wing.”

  “Words wound and words heal,” Rep said, nodding as Peter’s message clicked. “Instead of spending his money to get his own name chiseled in granite, he’s picking words that will close an old community scar.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said. “You’ve gotta love someone like that.”

  They stopped only once the rest of the way, at a freeway exit convenience store for a last indulgence in contemporary junk food that would be forbidden at the encampment. Though he would have vastly preferred to stay out of sight in the car, Rep pulled himself gamely out and followed Peter past a Yamaha motorcycle with a skull-and-crossbones license plate into the mini-mart. They chose their Twinkies and Carmel Corn and got into line at the cash register.

  The guy in front of them looked like he was about twenty-two. He was only a little taller than Rep, which made him a full head shorter than Peter. Elaborate tattoos decorated wiry biceps exposed by the sleeves of a dingy white tee-shirt. A woman beside him flicked impatiently through a copy of People.

  “Tin of Roosters,” the guy said to the cashier, “and a pack of slut-butts for blondie here.”

  The cashier slid a can of chewing tobacco and a pack of Marlboro Lights across the counter. The guy paid for them, then swerved toward the Slurpee machine. This caused him to brush against Peter, who had assumed the guy was headed for the door and had stepped in the opposite direction.

  “Watch your boots there, General Custer, or you’ll be late for your last stand,” the guy said.

  Peter backed away, raising his hands palms out and murmuring an apology.

  “Whoa, get a load of you,” the guy said then. “What a get-up. Halloween early this year or what?”

  “Civil War re-enactment,” Peter said mildly.

  “That what they’re calling faggots’ conventions these days?” The guy glanced at his girlfriend for approval of this mot, then took a belligerent step forward. Peter retreated. “You a faggot, general?”

  Having grown up short and underweight, Rep believed firmly in avoiding confrontation. He’d learned the hard way, though, that sometimes soft words and placatory gestures make things worse instead of better. He dropped his junk food on the floor, took three steps over to the coffee machine, and poured scalding coffee into the largest cup he could find.

  “Tell you what,” he said then, strolling back toward Peter and making sure the guy could see the steam rising from the coffee. “When I run into my buddy’s wife tonight I’ll ask her about his sexual orientation. Leave me your phone number and I’ll let you know what the answer is.”

  “What’re you, a smartass?” the guy asked. He took a step toward Rep.

  “Yes I am,” Rep said, staying where he was. “And not only that, but I’m clumsy. I spill my coffee when I get nervous.”

  “That’s it,” the cashier said. “I’m the one who has to clean up the mess. Pay up and clear out.”

  This brought a threatening glare from the guy. The cashier reached ostentatiously below the counter and came up with—a phone. He punched a quick-dial button and raised it to his ear.

  “Come on, Lewis,” the woman said. “I’ve been waiting two hours for a smoke.”

  The guy threw the Marlboro Lights at her.

  “You think you can smoke when I get that chopper goin’, you’re one crazy bitch,” the guy said. “But I’ll never hear the end of it unless I let you try, so haul your ass out there and let’s go.”

  They jostled through the door together. The cashier put the phone down. Peter put his junk food on the counter. Rep looked at Peter and the cashier.

  “Lewis?” he asked.

  Chapter 6

  “Tuscan Nights, by Chelsea Tuttle,” Melissa read from the lushly drawn cover of a paperback book that still had a hot-off-the-press, fresh-glue smell.

  “Her latest.” Linda handed Melissa a water-beaded glass of iced tea.

  “Requiring Heculean editorial effort on your part, I’m guessing.”

  “Chelsea manuscripts are indeed the Augean Stables of romance writing,” Linda acknowledged. “Her heroines are all twenty-three, but somewhere around chapter four they’ll remember Spiro Agnew resigning or Patty Hearst getting arrested. Eyes of midnight blue on page six turn up slate gray on page one-seventeen. The darlings speak faultless French, Italian, and Spanish, but have trouble with the English subjunctive. They never smoke, but if one of them has to light an improvised brushwood torch whose tongue-like flames will reflect evocatively from the gently rolling waters of the Arno, she’ll inexplicably have a Ronson ready to go in her purse.”

  “And Maxwell Perkins thought Thomas Wolfe was a lot of work,” Melissa said. “Does Jackrabbit Press know what a prize you are?”

  “So they say. If Tommy Quinlan’s blarney were euros I’d fly to Paris every month. He says getting ‘that stuff about Titian and Giotto and the orange roofs of Tuscany’ right separates first-rate genre fiction from soft-core porn. He calls me the difference between top-shelf romances and spinster-smut.”

  “Maybe he’s just seductively stroking you, but I think he has a point,” Melissa said as a quicksilver frown marred Linda’s face for an instant. “Getting genre fiction right does matter, because it actually gets read. People committing high literature these days would have bigger audiences if they cared as much about their readers as you and Chelsea Tuttle have to.”

  “I’m harboring a dangerous subversive under my own roof,” Linda giggled. “I haven’t heard such literary treason since you told the AP English class at St. Theresa’s Academy that if The Ambassadors weren’t a classic it’d be hard to tell it was any good.”

  “I had to do that kind of thing at STA. Once I figured out that I didn’t particularly care for cigarettes or Coors, the conventional rebellions weren’t available to me.”

  Melissa took a long, reflective sip from her iced tea. She was picking up tinny notes here and there that gave Linda’s banter an artificial ring, like the trying-too-hard public politeness of a couple who’ve had a furious row just before leaving home. Linda, from a family of Christmas-and-Easter Protestants, had bonded instantly at STA with Melissa, whose lapsed-Catholic parents bothered with religious observance only when Grammy Seton had to be mollified. Soulmates in nonconformity from early adolescence, they had known each other too well for too long to hide feelings successfully.

  Melissa decided to seek conversational ground that wouldn’t risk using “seductively stroking” and “Quinlan” in the same sentence. She gestured toward a stack of typescript near the stairs.

  “That can’t be Chelsea’s next. Is it the m
ystery you’ve been working on?”

  “No. It’s a muskets-and-magnolias epic—Civil War romance by an author calling himself Luther Battle, which I desperately hope is a nom de plume. I can’t get past chapter six of my flaky little mystery, or even come up with a name for my primly plucky heroine. The only ones I’ve thought of sound like something Sara Paretsky would use if she lost a bet to Danielle Steele.”

  “Give me a thumbnail sketch of this nameless protagonist.”

  “Austen specialist at a toney prep school who solves genteel crimes in the crested blazer set by pulling insights from Jane Austen’s sensibility. Dead Poets’ Society meets The Preppy Murders in drag.”

  “That has possibilities. You’re saying literature has a point beyond aesthetic self-indulgence. Which also happens to be what Austen was saying. You’re hearkening back to themes from Wharton and Hemingway: courage, weakness, love, sin, atonement, redemption. You’re as subversive as I am.”

  “Maybe the deconstructionists will be issuing a fatwa on both of us,” Linda said with an odd wistfulness. She turned her head, but not fast enough to hide an almost shattered expression that Melissa knew had nothing to do with resonant memories of For Whom the Bell Tolls. So much for safe conversational ground.

  Time to bite the bullet, Dr. Pennyworth, Melissa told herself sternly. The instant she opened her mouth to ask Linda flat out what was wrong, however, the doorbell rang. Scurrying to answer it, Linda admitted a tall, well-tanned woman lugging a large, bright red tool box with Snap-on stamped on it.

  “Hi,” the newcomer said. “I’m Jessie Davidovich from Jacks (and Jills!) of All Trades.” She used the fingers of her free hand to suggest the parentheses. “I’m one of the Jills. I’m here about the stairpost thingy.”

  “Right,” Linda said, showing the carpenter to the scene of the damage.

  “Threads stripped and the bolt’s sheared,” Davidovich commented. “Wow. Oh wow, in fact. That guy on This Old House would be over his head on this one. Good thing you’ve got me instead. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Great,” Linda said. “We can go up and change now, I guess.” She started up the stairs and Melissa obediently followed.

  “Jacks (and Jills!) et cetera is a neat little offbeat name for an odd-jobs service, isn’t it?” Linda asked hastily over her shoulder—as if, Melissa thought, Linda felt she could hide her angst more effectively in chatter than in silence. “I found it advertised on the bulletin board at Community Christian Church, which is probably why it sounds a little left coast. It was posted between a meeting announcement for the Ad Hoc Women’s Committee on Getting Past St. Paul and a report from the Ministry on Inclusive Liturgical Diction.”

  “How did you miss chairing that last one?” Melissa managed to ask at the top of the stairs as Linda caught her breath.

  “Chelsea’s bad enough. I’m not going to edit the Bible.”

  They made their way into the bedroom. Melissa closed the bedroom door behind them, then watched Linda pull two ankle-length, brown calico dresses from her closet. During the latter process Melissa stood serenely still, put her hands behind her back, and prepared the best I’m-waiting expression she could muster for when Linda turned around.

  “What?” Linda asked as she saw Melissa’s demeanor.

  “This is ’Lissa, carisime,” Melissa said gently. “The girl who puked with you after we shared our first joint and finished four years at STA with exactly the same number of demerits as you had. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  With that, the stone wall that had been shielding Linda’s emotional turmoil collapsed on itself, like the façade of an expertly imploded building.

  “Well, basically,” she said, dropping the dresses fecklessly on the bed and sketching a what’s-the-use shrug with her shoulders, “I’m a total shit.”

  “Right, and I’m the next pope,” Melissa said. “Linda, I’m having a serious cognitive dissonance problem here. You edit books for love of the craft. You tutor at-risk students for free. You volunteer to teach English as a Second Language classes. You tape-record books for the blind. You’re donating blood in two days. You walk or ride a bike on any trip under three miles to help save the planet. Clarence Darrow at the height of his powers couldn’t convince a jury that you’re a bad person. As Peter said, you’re a very together lady.”

  “You’re so sweet,” Linda whimpered as she sagged onto the bed and broke into soft sobs, “but you just don’t know. Peter is the sweetest guy on the face of the earth, and I cheated on him with a dirtball.”

  HELLO, Melissa thought. I don’t think ‘There, there’ is going to get it, somehow. The first thing I do is listen.

  She listened for eight minutes, perching on the end of the bed as Linda poured out a pitiless self-indictment. While listening, she waited impatiently for some gem of wisdom or consoling insight to emerge from her stores of academic learning. She had, after all, spent her adult life studying Literature with a capital L, and it seemed to her that if Literature with a capital L had any point it ought to be some help here. Somewhere in between The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Corrections she should have picked up something she could use now, when her best friend needed her.

  “And to top it off,” Linda said, as Melissa ransacked Piers Plowman and Chaucer without result, “I think I might be pregnant. It hasn’t been long enough to miss a period, but this morning my tummy felt really different. That’s why I’m so strung out today. Peter and I have been trying so long, and if it turns out I’m carrying the baby of that scum-under-a-rock editor I’m going to be ready to kill someone.”

  Spenser? Marlowe? Donne? Shakespeare? No help.

  “Have you told Peter?”

  “No. I can’t decide whether I should.”

  Marvel? Not likely. Jonson? Butler? Hardly.

  “Do you think it would help if you talked with a trained counselor?”

  “I saw Reverend Siebern at Community Christian, actually. When I went over there to get the Jacks (and Jills!) number I thought, duh, paging Dr. Freud. I mean, I’m here, right? So we talked. He showed me the Power Point slides from his last sermon—There is an abundance of sin but are there any sinners? You decide.”

  “Power Point slides?” Melissa asked, as Steele, Congreve, Addison, Pope, and Dr. Johnson all struck out.

  “He’s a great believer in the homiletic use of visual aids. He asked if I still loved Peter and if there was any chance of the fling recurring. That’s what he called it, a fling. I said yes and no and he said good and good. No s-t-d risk because we’d used a prophylactic. I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘condom’ to a clergyman. Again, good. Then he said we all fall short and no one’s perfect, but guilt is a psychologically inefficient emotion so the important thing is to validate our feelings and move on. And that took care of that. The way he saw it, problem solved.”

  “I see,” said Melissa, who was experiencing some psychologically inefficient emotions of her own. “Except apparently it wasn’t solved.”

  “No. I tried to explain it to him. I told him that since I’d cheated on Peter I just didn’t feel myself anymore.”

  “But he didn’t get it?”

  “Clueless. He got this very understanding look on his face and said, ‘You mean you’re inhibited about masturbation?’ ”

  “Oh dear.” Bronte, Austen, Dickens, Shaw, Woolf and Eliot: Nada. “Well, that won’t do.”

  “’Lissa, I so want to feel like Linda Damon again. To be myself again. The old Linda Damon, who hadn’t polluted her husband’s bed.”

  Hemingway? Oh, sure. Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Malamud, Albee? Not really. Updike or Mailer? Yeah, right.

  “Let’s start by not beating yourself up any more. Penance may be in order, but self-flagellation is a bit too retro even for old-school types like us.”

  “Penance means telling Peter, right?”

  “You’re projecting. I’m not sure what I mean, but that definitely isn’t it.”


  “But that’s really the bottom line, isn’t it?” Linda insisted. “That’s the choice. Telling Peter would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I can’t even stand to think about how much it would hurt him. But if it would make me feel clean again…I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do.”

  And at that moment, at the last possible instant, Literature finally came through.

  “Travis McGee,” Melissa said.

  “Huh? I mean, John D. MacDonald, quasi private eye in mysteries with color-coded titles, right. But still, huh?”

  “Travis McGee wasn’t really a private eye, he was a moralist. He said that when you’re in a genuine moral quandary, sincerely conflicted about what to do, the right choice is almost always the one you don’t want to make.”

  “So I should swallow hard and tell Peter.”

  “Just the opposite, it seems to me,” Melissa said.

  “You’re going to have to explain that,” Linda said, jumping up so briskly that Melissa wasn’t sure whether she was looking at perky or manic. “But I’m going to help you dress and fix your hair while you do, because we have to get a move on.”

  “The worst thing I ever did was fake out my grandmother, Grammy Seton,” Melissa said as she began undressing. “I didn’t actually lie to her, but I deliberately misled her. Semester break of my freshman year in college she wanted me to swear I was still a virgin, as she insisted I had done my senior year in high school. I solemnly swore that nothing had changed since my senior year in high school. She’d apparently confused me with some less frisky young Seton, so she was happy.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “Not for long. Pretty soon I stopped feeling like a clever undergraduate and started feeling like a gutless jerk who’d exploited a sweet old lady’s naivetë. So I faced the same question you’re looking at right now: tell her and get it off my conscience, or not?”