by Tim O'Brien
I was on my third toddy. Mrs. Kooshof’s voice seemed to come from the clouds. “For me,” she was saying, “it’s all or nothing. No in-between.”
An uncommon languor in her tone made me raise my eyebrows.
“Us,” she said. “You and me.” She recrossed her legs and gazed out at the merciless rain. “Don’t think I’m not serious. Soon as we get back—right away—I’m filing for divorce. Sell the house, that’s the first step. Then put Doc’s stuff in storage. Get things rolling.”
“Divorce?” said I.
“Naturally. We’re in love, aren’t we?”
“In love. Ah.”
A little muscle moved at Mrs. Kooshof’s jaw. She pulled down her sunglasses and looked at me with skeptical, challenging eyes. “I’ve made up my mind,” she said crisply. “I plan to fight for you, Thomas. For both of us. Whatever it takes.”
I nodded.
The innocuous word yes—like its antonym—apparently had the power of an earthquake. The morning seemed chillier now, the clouds more ominous.
“In love,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s us. But at the same time—”
“Don’t back off, Thomas.”
“Certainly not. Merely clarifying.” I hesitated and glanced up at her. “As one example, there’s this unfinished business with Lorna Sue. Herbie too. I believe I’ve been extremely clear about it, extremely forthright.”
“Obsession,” she said. “Let it go.”
“I fear life is not that simple.”
Mrs. Kooshof issued an unladylike clatter through her nostrils. “It is simple. I love you, Thomas. She doesn’t.”
“Now, that’s—”
“And this revenge nonsense,” she said in a rush. “It’s not healthy, it’s not normal. It can’t go anywhere good.”
There was thunder to the west, and for some time we sat watching the stormy sea. Our young waitress, I noted, had slipped on a parka vest and a pair of mittens.
“What I should do,” Mrs. Kooshof said quietly, “is pack my bags. Call it quits. Maybe then you’d come crawling.” She sighed again and reached down for her beach bag. “But it wouldn’t work, would it? You’d end up bedding down with the hot little slut over there.”
“Who?”
“The tramp. The one with the pocketful of tips.”
“Oh, that one,” said I.
Mrs. Kooshof pulled a towel from the beach bag, removed her terry-cloth jacket, stood up and straightened her shoulders. The pink swimsuit was cut low, highlighting two of her most admirable character traits.
She caught me in midstare.
“Take your time,” she said. “Thirty-six years old, but not all that bad. We could hoist them out, Thomas. Compare them with hers. Apples and oranges.”
“Many thanks,” I said graciously. “It won’t be necessary.”
“All right, then.” Her voice mellowed only slightly. “But you see what I’m getting at? I’m a warrior. I’ll fight.”
Odd thing, but then she kissed me. A gentle kiss, actually, and affectionate.
“Just so you know,” she said.
“I do. I know.”
She nodded. “Quick swim?”
I looked out at the turbulent waters. The thought occurred to me that I was already immersed quite deep enough; I shook my head in the negative.
“Your choice,” she said breezily, and handed me her purple sunglasses.
She turned, made her way down to the water, and waded in up to the knees. Her stride, I noted, was determined. I slipped on the sunglasses and watched through a filter of glowing violet as she waved at me, struck a competitive pose, spun around, dived under, and came up swimming hard. For a second I considered joining her. And why not? A gorgeous, loving woman. She had sticking power; she was a knockout in that pink swimsuit. For the first time, really, it struck me that I could simply give up the whole enterprise with Lorna Sue. Start fresh. Be alive.
It was risky, though—far too risky—and common sense soon won the day.
I beckoned the young waitress.
It is my experience that life will occasionally offer us the opportunity to make good on our most cherished dreams, to realize those glittering hopes and ambitions that are at the core of our ideal selves. To my amazed delight, one such opportunity presented itself as I sat scanning a local newspaper on that cold, dismal morning.
The item appeared on page two: Three more church fires. Confirmed arson. Investigation stalled.
Call it coincidence. Call it good fortune.
Herbie was at it again. Plainly, my letter to the authorities had gone unheeded, or had led nowhere. And thus, without a moment’s hesitation, I rose from my chair, made my way into the hotel lobby, and used a public telephone to dial 911. Within seconds I was in conversation with a representative of the Tampa police force.
I named names.
I listed dates and places.
Anonymously, to be sure, yet with the forcefulness of one who knows, I supplied information regarding a set of virtually identical incidents that had unfolded in the small prairie town of Owago, Minnesota. I mentioned the crucifixion episode, Herbie’s stay with the reforming Jesuits of Minneapolis. I gave the police everything, in short, but the smoking gun. Even so, to my displeasure, the officer on the other end of the line seemed more interested in my own name than in Herbie’s.
“Irrelevant,” I said testily. “I have just handed you a surefire conviction. Take advantage of it.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, “but if we could interview you—”
“Certainly not,” I snapped. “I am not a stool pigeon.”
There can be little on this earth more fundamentally satisfying than a piece of impeccably executed vengeance.
How easy it is, I thought, to meddle in another human life. I had learned the hard way that truth is immaterial, that accusation alone is more than sufficient. (Gossip becomes fact; speculation becomes certainty; arraignment becomes its own life sentence.) Consider how simple it would be, for instance, to charge your former husband with—who knows?—zoophilia, let us say. Not a wisp of hard evidence. A word here, a word there, and for the rest of his life your betraying ex-hubby would scurry past pet stores. Even in Fiji, where he now dwells with that poaching young redhead, he would feel his heart flutter at the sight of a cute cocker spaniel.
Mrs. Robert Kooshof and I had a delicious lunch via room service—fresh pears, seared Gulf grouper, Key lime pie. At my request, she dined in her swimsuit, which clung beautifully, and midway through dessert we discovered new and more compelling appetites. In short order, we closed the drapes, pulled back the bedspread, and commenced a lusty frolic that proved memorable in all respects. Mrs. Kooshof used her teeth and fingernails. I used mine.
Near the end we slipped to the floor. “I am a battler,” she whispered. “And I won’t quit.”
“Uncle,” said I.
An hour later Mrs. Kooshof departed for the hotel’s tanning salon, and right away, somewhat deviously, I seized the opportunity to place three brief phone calls.
I made dinner reservations for Herbie and Lorna Sue at our hotel.
Then a room reservation—in Herbie’s name, of course.
Then I dialed the tycoon’s office number and left a short, titillating message with his secretary.
My own cunning astonished me.
When Mrs. Kooshof returned, I enlisted her assistance in placing two final calls. She was reluctant at first, but I explained that it was in our mutual interest to speed things along. A female voice, I said, would add a spicy touch.
She moved in slow-motion to the telephone.
“I’m no idiot,” she said, her voice resigned and sad. “It’s in your interest. Period.”
Things went more smoothly than I had any right to expect.
Neither Lorna Sue nor Herbie answered, which was a piece of good luck, and in short order Mrs. Kooshof left nearly identical messages on their machines. (Weeks earlier, I had carefully scripted this phase of the ope
ration, the central idea of which was to lure Lorna Sue and Herbie into the hotel. Simplicity itself: a command.)
“Your brother needs you there,” said Mrs. Kooshof.
Then a moment later: “Your sister needs you there.”
No explanations.
Mrs. Kooshof disconnected, sat silent for a second, then rose up and went out to the balcony. She stood in the rain, with her back tome.
I let some time pass before I joined her.
“You did well,” I said.
She laughed without laughing. “Wonderful. But from now on, I stay out of it. Manipulating people—I’m not made that way.” Her voice was camouflaged by the rain, almost inaudible. “Anyway, it’s all a fantasy. You can’t trick somebody into loving you. It won’t work.”
“It’ll work.”
“Not in the long run.”
I shrugged and said, “This is the short run. The long run takes longer.”
Mrs. Kooshof studied me for a time. There were little wrinkles at her eyes, a bruised darkness just beneath the skin. She was not a young woman. Nor was I a young man. Briefly, as if gazing into a mirror, I saw my own decaying shadow, my coming corpse, and it occurred to me that both Mrs. Robert Kooshof and I were on the back slope of our bungled lives, skidding fast, two lost and lonely souls.
She looked away.
“Just tell me one thing,” she said softly. “What do you want out of it?”
“Hurt them,” I replied.
“You mean that?”
“I do. Yes. Make them burn.”
“But what’s the point? She doesn’t love you.”
Inexplicably, I felt something tear loose in my stomach. Maybe it was the rain. Or a fuse inside me. Or months of sorrow, or bewilderment, or the rage of rejection.
Whatever the cause, I could not help myself. I took her by the shoulders, hard, and pinned her against the balcony railing, pressed her backward, lifted her up, heard myself whining and growling—animal noises—and then came a sudden rupture in the physics of time, a great clock-stopped silence, yet even then I kept lifting and pushing and bending her backward over the railing.
Again, I have no idea what came over me, or why I took out my rage on Mrs. Kooshof, but I felt dangerous.
I was dangerous—a powerful, aching, dizzy feeling.
Then, dumbly, I smiled. I released her and stepped back.
Mrs. Kooshof edged sideways. She looked at me, then looked away, then looked back again. Her lips seemed to form a question—Why?—but I had no ready answer.* I smiled my senseless smile.
After a moment she slipped around me. She went inside and began stuffing her belongings into a suitcase.
I could think of nothing worth saying. I stood there in the rain, empty and stupid, the word balcony blinking on and off in my head.
In ten minutes Mrs. Kooshof went to the door with her suitcase.
“God knows what happened out there,” she said. “Something frightening. Something terrible.”
She closed her eyes. She opened them. She turned. She walked away. She did not trouble to close the door behind her.
Abandoned again, and it was hard to take much pleasure when Lorna Sue and Herbie wandered into the hotel lobby that evening. I had stationed myself up in the mezzanine, in a leather armchair, which provided a clear view of the registration desk and a small, glass-enclosed restaurant. Herbie arrived first, precisely on time; Lorna Sue appeared fifteen minutes later. They spoke briefly, looking puzzled, then strolled into the restaurant and took seats at a corner table. Oddly, I felt no great emotion. A brittle coldness. Mild curiosity. My thoughts kept jerking back to Mrs. Robert Kooshof, like a gear that would not engage.
Part of me, I suppose, was still out on that balcony. Another part of me was void. No resolution, no clarity, and in a peculiar way Lorna Sue now struck me as a virtual stranger. Still beautiful, yes, but it was like looking at a mannequin. Expensive jewelry. Thick black hair and brown eyes and summer skin. All I could feel, though, was a hollowed-out version of the old love. In the end, I thought, that’s what betrayal does. It sucks away the passion. The delight, too, and the hope, and the faith in your own future.
Hard to accept, but Lorna Sue had never been mine. Not wholly. And it was never love.
Again, the image of Mrs. Robert Kooshof took shape before me, so big and blond, so full of promise.
Interesting fact: I missed her.
After five minutes, when the tycoon sauntered in, I had come close to calling off the whole venture. My dreams of sabotage now had a sterile, antiseptic feel, and I had trouble summoning even the most listless curiosity as the tycoon approached Herbie and Lorna Sue. Not that I was disappointed. It all worked beautifully, in fact, and in any other frame of mind I would have chortled at the way my little trap snapped shut: first surprise, then confusion.
Hard to absorb it all.
Hard to care.
The tycoon made a slight jerking motion, as if tugged backward by invisible wires. A reddish flush slid across his face, followed by darkness. His jaw flexed. From the mezzanine, of course, I could not make out any words, but it was evident that he was having trouble wrapping his tongue around the English language. Like me, almost surely, the man had been plagued by unwholesome suspicions—Lorna Sue’s disappearances, her silences—and the hotel now added a touch of the illicit, an aura of sleaziness and secrecy. (There was also the message I had left with the tycoon’s secretary. A suggestion that he stop by the hotel. The word incest.)
He had come expecting the worst. He had found it.
Lorna Sue took him by the arm, settled him into a chair, spoke to him with sweaty animation. (Denials, of course. Declarations of innocence.) From experience, however, I knew how lame such excuses sounded, how empty language can be, how appearance is everything. I almost smiled. This was justice. Perhaps it was my own imagination, or wishful thinking, but for a moment I could almost read the poor bastard’s lips: Your own brother.
I sighed and called over a bellhop.
Swiftly, almost sadly, I issued a few curt instructions and handed over a twenty-dollar tip.
The bellhop saluted.
He made his way down to the registration desk, picked up a pair of keys, then entered the restaurant to inform Herbie and Lorna Sue that their room was ready.
* One clue may be embodied in the word balcony. Bad memories. Later in this narrative, if I am up to it, I will do my best to elaborate. For now, however, it is an act of courage merely to peck out the word balcony on this trusty old Royal.
Lost: that was the feeling. Or, more properly, a mix of many feelings.
It could be said, for instance, that I was lost without Mrs. Robert Kooshof. That I was at a loss. That I had lost her. That I had lost myself. It would be accurate, too, to say that I had been thrown for a loss, implying depression, distress, and exhaustion, or that I had lost a rare and magnificent opportunity for happiness, implying waste and forfeiture. Or that I was a lost soul. Or lost in space. Or lost in dreary, rainy Tampa—condemned, marooned, alone, helpless.
Twice that evening, with no luck, I called Mrs. Kooshof’s number in Owago. The ring of a telephone had never sounded so forlorn and far away.
Around nine o’clock, to occupy myself, I took a wet and very chilly stroll along the beach, under a leaky umbrella, then afterward, on a whim, stopped in for solace at the hotel bar. My pert young waitress from the cabana (whose name, I recalled, was Peg) happened to be on duty; I happened to sit at her table. And over the course of the evening, which turned out to be a long one, we happened to fall into a double-edged conversation. Chitchat, at first. The rain was cutting into the girl’s tips. Her musician boyfriend—a drummer—had recently hit the road, as it were, without a word. (At this, I nodded. “Pity,” I purred. “No boyfriend.”)
By midnight, the place was deserted except for Peg and the bartender and me. (The bartender’s name, I soon discovered, was Patty. Chestnut hair. Walnut eyes. Maple-red freckles trickling down into the lac
y black bucket of her cleavage.) My mood was dismal, yet Peg and Patty did their best to pep up the evening.* They danced for me. They treated me to tiny sausages on toothpicks. At one point, I remember, Peg inquired about my “lady friend,” who had also hit the road, to which I responded with a shudder and the word lost. Peg took my hand; Patty took both our hands. I felt like a Girl Scout. And then later, well after closing time, we huddled on the floor behind the bar, as at a campfire, eating sausages and exchanging stories about lostness, its forms and essences, its horrors.
“I lost my mother,” Patty said. “I mean, like, she died. That’s lost. But one time before that, I lost her in this department store. Looked all over the place, like eight floors or something, then finally I end up in the toy department. And I see this big stuffed panda bear. I mean, I’m eight years old, I lose my fucking mother, but this huge panda bear sits there smiling at me—a real goofy, happy smile—and I’m not lost anymore. I’m found. About a week later I got that stupid panda for Christmas. And then my mother dies. So at night I cuddle the panda bear, I pretend it’s my mother, I take it to school with me. I talk to it. I love it. But what happens? One day at school I lose the goddamn panda bear. Gone—just disappears. See?”
I did not. I nodded.
“Must’ve been a male panda bear,” Peg said. “I’ll bet the furry fucker walked on you.”
“Probably,” Patty said.
Peg sighed. “Guilt trip. Traded in your mother for some big-dick panda bear, then the creep walks out the door. Right?”
“Right,” Patty said.
“Who the heck can you trust?” Peg said.
“Not panda bears,” said Patty.
“Not men,” said Peg.
The time had come to nudge the conversation toward some sensible topic. I removed my necktie, my sports coat, my shoes. I rolled up my sleeves. “If you want lost,” I said, “I’ll give you lost. Try the mountains. Try Vietnam.”
