by Richard Ford
“Helloooo dere,” Reiner said.
“Who left your cage open, Reiner?”
“Come on down here and have a drink, Starling, and I’ll tell you all about it. I’ve seen the world since I saw you. Italy, France, the islands. You know what an Italian girl puts behind her ears to make herself more attractive?”
“I don’t want to know,” Starling said.
“That’s not what Lois says.” Reiner laughed a horse laugh.
“I’m busy. Some other time, maybe.”
“Sure you are,” Reiner said. “Listen, Eddie, get off your face and come down here. Pll tell you how we can both retire in six months. Honest to God. This is not real estate.”
“I already retired,” Starling said. “Didn’t Lois tell you?”
“Yeah, she told me a lot of things,” Reiner said.
He could hear Lois say, “Please don’t be a nerd, Eddie. Who needs nerds?” Some people laughed again.
“I shouldn’t even be talking about this on the phone. It’s that hot.” Reiner’s voice fell to a whisper. He was covering the mouthpiece of the receiver, Starling thought. “These are Italian rugs, Starling. I swear to God. From the neck of the sheep, the neck only. You only get tips on things like this in law enforcement.”
“I told you. I’m retired. I retired early,” Starling said.
“Eddie, am I going to have to come out there and arrest you?”
“Try it,” Starling said. “I’ll beat the shit out of you, then laugh about it.”
He heard Reiner put the phone down and say something he couldn’t make out. Then he heard Reiner shout, “Stay on your face then, cluck!”
Lois came on the line again. “Baby, why don’t you come down here?” A blender started in the background, and a big cheer went up. “We’re all adults. Have a Tanqueray on Louie. He’s on all-expenses. There might be something to this. Louie’s always got ideas.”
“Reiner’s just got ideas about you. Not me.” He heard Reiner say to Lois to tell him—Starling—to forget it. “Tell Reiner to piss up a rope.”
“Try to be nice,” Lois said. “Louie’s being nice. Eddie—”
Starling hung up.
When he worked, Starling had sold business properties—commercial lots and office buildings. He had studied that in college, and when he got out he was offered a good job. People would always need a place to go to work, was his thinking. He liked the professional environment, the atmosphere of money being made, and for a while he had done very well. He and Lois had rented a nice, sunny apartment in an older part of town by a park. They bought furniture and didn’t save money. While Starling worked, Lois kept house, took care of plants and fish and attended a night class for her degree in history. They had no children, and didn’t expect any. They liked the size of the town and the stores, knew shopkeepers’ names and where the streets led. It was a life they could like, and better than they both could’ve guessed would come their way.
Then interest rates had gone sky-high, and suddenly no one wanted commercial property. Everything was rent. Starling rented space in malls and in professional buildings and in empty shops downtown where older businesses had moved out and leather stores, health-food and copy shops moved in. It was a holding action, Starling thought, until people wanted to spend again.
Then he had lost his job. One morning, his boss at the agency asked him back to his private office along with a fat woman named Beverley who’d been there longer than Starling had. His boss told them he was closing down and wanted to tell them first because they’d been there the longest, and he wanted them to have a chance for the other jobs. Starling remembered feeling dazed when he heard the bad news, but he remembered thanking the boss, wishing him good luck, then comforting Beverley, who went to pieces in the outer office. He had gone home and told Lois, and they had gone out to dinner at a Greek restaurant that night, and gotten good and drunk.
As it turned out, though, there weren’t any other jobs to get. He visited the other agencies and talked to salesmen he knew, but all of his friends were terrified of being laid off themselves and wouldn’t say much. After a month, he heard that his boss hadn’t closed the agency down, but had simply hired two new people to take his and Beverley’s places. When he called to ask about it the boss apologized, then claimed to have an important call on another line.
In six weeks Starling had still not found a job, and when the money ran out and they couldn’t pay the rent, he and Lois sublet the apartment to two nurses who worked at a hospital, and got out. Lois found an ad in the Pennysaver that said, “No Rent for Responsible Couple—House Sit Opportunity.” And they moved in that day.
The house was a ranchette in a tract of small, insignificant houses on fenced-in postage-stamp lots down on the plain of the Sacramento River, out from town. The owner was an Air Force sergeant who had been stationed in Japan, and the house was decorated with Oriental tastes: wind chimes and fat, naked women stitched over silk, a red enamel couch in the living room, rice-paper lanterns on the patio. There was an old pony in the back, from when the owner had been married with kids, and a couple of wrecked cars in the carport. All the people who lived on the street, Starling noticed, were younger than the two of them. More than a few were in the Air Force and fought loud, regular arguments, and came and went at all hours. There was always a door slamming after midnight, then a car starting up and racing away into the night. Starling had never thought he’d find himself living in such a place.
He stacked the dishes, put the grounds in the newspaper and emptied all the wastebaskets into a plastic bag. He intended to take the garbage for a ride. Everybody in the subdivision either drove their garbage to a dump several miles away or toured the convenience stores and shopping malls until they found a dumpster no one was watching. Once a black woman had run out of a convenience store and cursed at him for ditching his garbage in her dumpster, and since then he’d waited till dark. This afternoon, though, he needed to get out of the house, as though with the heat and talking to Reiner there wasn’t enough air inside to breathe.
He had the garbage set out the back door when the phone rang again. Sometimes car dealers called during lunch, wanting to talk to the Air Force sergeant, and Starling had learned not to answer until after one, when car salesmen all left for lunch. This time it might be Lois again, wanting him to come by the bar to see Reiner, and he didn’t want to answer. Only he didn’t want Lois going off somewhere, and he didn’t want Reiner coming over. Reiner would think the house with the pony was a comedy act.
Starling picked up the phone. “All right, what is it?”
An unfamiliar voice said, “Dad? Is that you?”
“No dads here, Reiner,” Starling said.
“Dad,” the voice said again, “it’s Jeff.”
A woman’s voice came on the line. “I have a collect call to anyone from a Jeff. Will you pay for the call?”
“Wrong number,” Starling said. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t Reiner still.
“Dad,” the voice said. It was a teenager’s voice, a worried voice. “We’re in awful trouble here, Dad. They’ve got Margie in jail.”
“No, I can’t help,” Starling said. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“This party says you’ve got the wrong number, Jeff,” the operator said.
“I know my own father’s voice, don’t I? Dad, for God’s sake. This is serious. We’re in trouble.”
“I don’t know any Jeffs,” Starling said. “It’s just the wrong number.”
Starling could hear whoever was on the line hit something against the phone very hard, then say, “Shit! This isn’t happening, I can’t believe this is happening.” The voice said something to someone else who was wherever he was. Possibly a policeman.
“It’s the wrong number,” the operator said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Me too,” Starling said. “I’m sorry.”
“Would you like to try another number now, Jeff?” the operator asked.
&nb
sp; “Dad, please accept. Please, my God. Please.”
“Excuse the ring, sir,” the operator said, and the line was disconnected.
Starling put down the phone and stared out the window. The three boys who had blown up the tin can were walking past, eyeing his house. They were going for more fireworks. The torn can lay in the street, and the woman across the way was watching them from her picture window, pointing them out to a man in an undershirt who didn’t look like the man who worked on his car at night. He wondered if the woman was married or divorced. If she had children, where were they? He wondered who it was who had called—the sergeant’s kids were all too young. He wondered what kind of trouble Jeff was in, and where was he? He should’ve accepted the charges, said a word of consolation, or given some advice since the kid had seemed at wit’s end. He’d been in trouble in his life. He was in trouble now, in fact, but he hadn’t been any help.
He drove toward town and cruised the lot at the King’s Hat Drive-Inn, took a look in at the Super-Duper, then drove behind a truck stop. The garbage was with him in the hot front seat and already smelled bad despite the plastic. It was at the Super-Duper that the black woman had yelled at him and threatened to turn his garbage over to the police. Starling stopped back at the Super-Duper, parked at the side of the lot by the dumpster and went inside, leaving the garbage in the driver’s seat. A different black woman was inside. He bought some breakfast cereal, a bag of frozen macaroni and a bottle of hot sauce, then went back out to the car. Another car had driven in and parked beside his, and the driver, a woman, was sitting in view of the dumpster, waiting for someone who had gone inside. The woman might be another Super-Duper employee, Starling thought, or possibly the wife of someone in the back he hadn’t noticed.
He got in his car and drove straight out to a campground beside the Sacramento River, less than a mile from the house. He had come here and picnicked once with Lois, though the campground was empty now, all the loops and tables deserted. He pulled up beside a big green campground dumpster and heaved his garbage in without getting out of the car. Beyond the dumpster, through some eucalyptus trees, he could see the big brown river sliding swiftly by, pieces of yellow foam swirling in and out of the dark eddies. It was a treacherous river, he thought, full of perils. Each year someone drowned, and there were currents running deep beneath the surface. No one in his right mind would think of swimming in it, no matter how hot it got.
As he drove out he passed two motorcycles with Oregon plates, parked at the far end of the campground, and two hippies with long hair sitting on a rock, smoking. The hippies watched him when he drove by and didn’t bother hiding their dope. Two young women were coming out of the bushes nearby, wearing bathing suits, and one of the hippies gave Starling the black power salute and grinned. Starling drove back out to the highway.
The hippies reminded him of San Francisco. His mother, Irma, had lived there with her last husband, Rex, who’d had money. When he was in community college Starling had lived there with them for six months, before moving with his first wife across the bay to Alameda near the airport. They had been hippies of a certain kind themselves then and had smoked dope occasionally. Jan, his first wife, had had an abortion in a student apartment right on the campus. Abortions were not easy to get then, and they’d had to call Honolulu to get a name out in Castroville. They had been married six months, and Starling’s mother had had to lend them money she’d gotten from Rex.
When the abortionist came, he brought a little metal box with him, like a fishing-tackle box. They sat in the living room of the student apartment and talked about this and that, and drank beer. The man was named Dr. Carson. He told them he was being prosecuted at that very moment and was losing his license for doing this very thing—performing abortions—but that people needed help. He had three children of his own, he said, and Starling wondered if he ever performed abortions on his own wife. Dr. Carson said it would cost $400, and he could do it the next night, but needed all cash. Before he left he opened his metal box. There was nothing in it but fishing gear: a Pflueger reel, some monofilament line, several red-and-white Jitterbug lures. They had all three laughed. You couldn’t be too cautious, Dr. Carson said. They all liked each other and acted like they could be friends in happier days.
The next night Dr. Carson came with a metal box that looked exactly the same as the one before, green with a silver handle. He went into the bedroom with Jan and closed the door while Starling sat in the living room, watched TV and drank beer. It was Christmastime and Andy Williams was on, singing carols with a man in a bear suit. After a while a loud whirring noise, like an expensive blender, came out of the bedroom. It continued for a while, then stopped, then started. Starling became nervous. Dr. Carson, he knew, was mixing up his little baby, and Jan was feeling excruciating pain but wasn’t making noise. Starling felt sick then with fear and guilt and helplessness. And with love. It was the first time he knew he knew what real love was, his love for his wife and for all the things he valued in his life but could so easily lose.
Later, Dr. Carson came out and said everything would be fine. He smiled and shook Starling’s hand and called him Ted, which was the phony name Starling had given him. Starling paid him the money in hundreds, and when Dr. Carson drove off, Starling stood out on the tiny balcony and waved. The doctor blinked his headlights, and in the distance Starling could see a small private plane settling down to the airport in the dark, its red taillight blinking like a wishing star.
Starling wondered where the hell Jan was now, or Dr. Carson, fifteen years later. Jan had gotten peritonitis and almost died after that, and when she got well she wasn’t interested in being married to Eddie Starling anymore. She seemed very disappointed. Three months later she had gone to Japan, where she’d had a pen pal since high school, someone named Haruki. For a while she wrote Starling letters, then stopped. Maybe, he thought, she had moved back down to L.A. with her mother. He wished his own mother was alive still, and he could call her up. He was thirty-nine years old, though, and he knew it wouldn’t help.
Starling drove along the river for a few miles until the wide vegetable and cantaloupe fields opened out, and the horizon extended a long way in the heat to a hazy wind line of Lombardy poplars. High, slat-sided trucks sat stationed against the white skyline, and men were picking in the near fields and beyond in long, dense crews. Mexicans, Starling thought, transients who worked for nothing. It was a depressing thought. There was nothing they could do to help themselves, but it was still depressing, and Starling pulled across the road and turned back toward town.
He drove out toward the airport, along the strip where it was mostly franchises and consignment lots and little shopping plazas, some of which he had once found the tenants for. All along the way, people had put up fireworks stands for the Fourth of July, red-white-and-blue banners fluttering on the hot breeze. Some of these people undoubtedly lived out where he and Lois lived now, in the same subdivision. That would mean something, he thought, if one day you found yourself looking out at the world going past from inside a fireworks stand. Things would’ve gotten far out of hand when that time came, there was no arguing it.
He thought about driving past the apartment to see if the nurses who sublet it were keeping up the little yard. The nurses, Jeri and Madeline, were two big dykes with men’s haircuts and baggy clothes. They were friendly types, and in the real estate business dykes were considered A-Is—good tenants. They paid their rent, kept quiet, maintained property in good order, and held a firm stake in the status quo. They were like a married couple, was the business reasoning. Thinking about Jeri and Madeline, he drove past the light where their turn was, then just decided to keep driving.
There was nothing to do now, Starling thought, but drive out to the bar. The afternoon shift meant no one came in until Lois was almost ready to leave, and sometimes they could have the bar to themselves. Reiner would be gone by now and it would be cool inside, and he and Lois could have a quiet drink together, toast
better cards on the next deal. They had had good times doing nothing but sitting talking.
Lois was leaning over the jukebox across from the bar when Starling came in. Mel, the owner, took afternoons off, and the place was empty. A darkgreen bar light shone over everything, and the room was cool.
He was glad to see Lois. She had on tight black slacks and a frilly white top and looked jaunty. Lois was a jaunty woman to begin with, and he was happy he’d come.
He had met Lois in a bar called the AmVets down in Rio Vista. It was before she and Louie Reiner became a twosome, and when he saw her in a bar now it always made him think of things then. That had been a high time, and when they talked about it Lois liked to say, “Some people are just meant to experience the highest moments of their lives in bars.”
Starling sat on a bar stool.
“I hope you came down here to dance with your wife,” Lois said, still leaning over the jukebox. She punched a selection and turned around, smiling. “I figured you’d waltz in here pretty soon.” Lois came by and patted him on the cheek. “I went ahead and punched in all your favorites.”
“Let’s have a drink first,” Starling said. “I’ve got an edge that needs a drink.”
“Drink first, dance second,” Lois said and went behind the bar and got down the bottle of Tanqueray.
“Mel wouldn’t mind,” Starling said.
“Mary-had-a-little-lamb,” Lois said while she poured a glassful. She looked up at Starling and smiled. “It’s five o’clock someplace on the planet. Here’s to old Mel.”
“And some better luck,” Starling said, taking a big first drink of gin and letting it trickle down his throat as slowly as he could.
Lois had been drinking already, he was sure, with Reiner. That wasn’t the best he could have hoped for, but it could be worse. She and Reiner could be shacked up in a motel, or on their way to Reno or the Bahamas. Reiner was gone, and that was a blessing, and he wasn’t going to let Reiner cast a shadow on things.
