“License?” the policeman asked.
• • •
At six o’clock that evening, Frederick was pacing the floor of his office. It finally culminated with him slamming the palm of his hand down on the desk. He was careful not to use his fist since, after all, he made a living with his hands. The slap was substantial enough, however, to topple the picture of him and Chandra taken at Woodstock soon after they met. It was this image of her, her hair in braids, her peasant blouse puffed at the shoulders, her braless breasts outlined beneath, that sent him out into the evening shadows and back to the corner of Harrison Street where he had seen the red Toyota go streaking by. Maybe, just maybe, it was an intersection that she passed often in her new life, her new part of town. If he did see her car, he wouldn’t speed. He had learned his lesson earlier in the day. But he would flash his lights erratically. He would send out beacons of longing and would hope that he would not cause any great ships to come ashore. He had committed enough traffic violations for one day.
It was almost eight o’clock when he finally gave up. He drove home slowly, taking his time, driving out of his way to find the spots that had meant something to them as a couple: the Portland Museum, Longfellow’s house, DeMilo’s floating bar. Off in the distance he could see the fuzzy lights of Peak’s Island. How many times had they gone to dinner there, taking the twenty-minute ferry ride in order to dine at Will’s Restaurant? Once, Frederick had even become locked in the bathroom at Will’s, the doorknob refusing to turn. And he had waited fifteen minutes, a smile on his face as he listened to Chandra on the other side of the door giving instructions to the owner in the art of jimmying. These were the thoughts coming to him as he drove back down the cul-de-sac on Ellsboro Street, to the Victorian house with its screened-in porch, to the king-size bed that he had once shared with a woman who used to love him, and who still wore peasant blouses.
• • •
Frederick was thinking of watching a movie on television when the phone rang, a few minutes before nine. His first thought was that it was Chandra. He had heard nothing at all from her since she’d hung up on him. Twice he’d come home to find a note taped to the door, saying that she’d stopped by to collect a few things. But the call was from Herb, his voice tinny but excited, calling no doubt from the bowels of the China Boat.
“Let’s go to dinner,” Herb offered. “My treat.” Frederick quickly understood the alternative: sitting in his living room and staring blankly at the television set. Even a stray cat turning up in search of a hobo’s meal would have been welcoming.
“Sounds good,” Frederick said. He tried not to think of how he had always turned down Herbert’s offers to dinner before Chandra left him. The past was past. In just one week Frederick Stone had grown. He was a new man. A better human being. He could be ready in minutes, a quick shower and shave. He would wear the tan sports coat, his most comfortable.
“Ready when you are,” Herbert said. Frederick smiled. Herbert was probably on the pay phone at the China Boat. He reminded himself not to be critical of his brother during dinner, not even when Herb ordered his mandarin duck.
“It’ll take you fifteen minutes to drive over here,” Frederick said. “I’ll be ready by then.” He was about to hang up.
“I’m here now,” Herb said. Frederick heard what sounded like tires crunching the crushed rock in his driveway. “I’m just turning into your drive.” Frederick flicked back the kitchen curtain and stared out at the headlights in his yard. He saw the silhouette of a hand flutter, his brother, Herbert, waving hello to him.
“You’re what?”
“I’m in your driveway,” Herb said. “You know, veni, vidi, vici. That’s Roman for grab your coat.”
“Herb,” Frederick said. He told himself again not to be critical. “How many times have I asked you to phone before you drop in?”
“I did phone,” Herbert reminded him.
“Yes, but you’re sitting in my yard.”
“I can’t believe you don’t have one of these cellular contraptions,” Herbert said. “A man like you should look to the future.”
“Herbert,” Frederick said. The phone still pressed to his ear, he felt a warmth spreading across his face and neck. He had recently read that modern gadgets such as cellular phones were clogging the microwave frequency band where scientists were trying to listen for sounds of life from other worlds. “It’s getting to the point where we won’t be able to hear a message from other planets because of people like you, with your garage door openers and your damn cellular phones.”
“Watson, come here, I want you,” Herbert whispered.
“People like you are clogging up our window on the universe with so much microwave babble that we’re going to sound like a bee buzzing its ass off, out there in space. What intelligent life form wants to visit a buzzing little insect?”
“I’m visiting you,” said Herbert.
Frederick was about to release the curtain and grab his jacket when he saw a round orange spark now glowing inside Herbert’s car. Herbert was smoking again, and soon Frederick would have to breathe in the entrails of that smoky air.
“Herbert?”
“Yes, Freddy?”
“Are you sitting in my yard smoking?”
“No.”
“What’s that orange glow I see?”
“I brought my pet goldfish with me,” Herbert said, and Frederick could hear him laugh.
“One of these days I’m going to say I told you so,” Frederick said.
“Well, I’ll be dead and won’t be able to hear you,” said Herbert. “And besides, what’s wrong with lighting up in your yard? Am I gonna kill the shrubs with secondhand smoke?”
“There you are, a veterinarian, smoking two packs a day,” Frederick said. “As a professional, you should know better.” He peered out into the darkening yard to see if Herbert was perhaps gesturing, although Frederick had already received his quota of middle fingers that day.
“I don’t treat many dogs with a nicotine habit, Freddy. Lighten up.” Frederick saw the orange ball blaze brightly. Herbert was taking a big puff. “Now, are you going to stay on the telephone all night, or are you coming to dinner? No wonder you drove Chandra out of the house.”
• • •
Within minutes of being seated at a table near the window, Herbert began to fidget. He patted his breast pocket as though in search of a pack of cigarettes.
“I hope you don’t intend to smoke,” Frederick said. He glanced around at his fellow diners, all cramped into the small area of the restaurant designated as Smoking Permitted. With restored beams looming above their heads—the building had been renovated to resemble the belly of a ship—the clientele looked like galley slaves, their forks rising to their mouths, falling, rising. Heave-ho!
“Back in a jiffy,” Herbert said, and stood up. “I just spotted someone I know.”
“Who?” Frederick asked.
“Client,” Herbert answered. “Three-year-old cocker spaniel. Fractured tibia.” He was gone. Frederick watched his departure with mild interest. The restaurant was packed with hungry diners, and the bar area bulging with the drunken aftermath of happy hour. A waitress dressed as a geisha appeared at the table.
“Aren’t geishas supposed to be Japanese?” Frederick asked, and sincerely.
“Give me a break,” the geisha said. “I been on my feet all day.” She thumped a glass of water and a menu onto the table before him. He ordered himself a Johnny Walker Black and Herbert the house scotch. Since Herbert’s taste buds had been eroded from years of smoking, Frederick assumed he wouldn’t know the difference. As he sipped from his glass of water, he saw Herbert’s head bobbing in conversation with two young women who were perched on bar stools. Herbert’s interest in women so young was a thing to be pitied, but the only pity Frederick could dredge up just then was for himself. He had spotted a
pair of young lovers two tables away and it reminded him of the first time he and Chandra went to dinner. It was at a small café in Boston and they had listened to a folk trio until closing, until the crowd had dispersed, until all the chairs were legs up on the tabletops, and then only the help was left to sweep up. It was a rainy October evening and Chandra had taken the bus down from Portland to visit him. “It must be fate,” Frederick had said when they first met, in August at Woodstock, when she told him that she, too, was from Portland, Maine. It had seemed as though the cosmos had thrown them together for that one crazy night. “I come home from BU every weekend,” Frederick had lied, because he wanted badly to see her again. And he feared that might not happen, even though they had exchanged numbers and addresses at Woodstock. But he had called, and she had called back, and they had known over the telephone—not a cellular phone, damn it, but a real one—that they would be together for all time, that they would, as “Desiderata” instructed them, go placidly amidst the noise and haste. They knew this, as words winged back and forth between them like birds of love, as she wrote soul-wrenching letters and he plagiarized good poetry. They were, indeed, children of the universe, and they had a right to be here. Soon, he was meeting her at the bus station in Boston, in the middle of an autumn cloudburst, and she had appeared in the doorway of the bus like some vision, some mirage that thirsty men long for, some metaphor for a beautiful love poem—if only Frederick could write his own. They had gone to see Midnight Cowboy, even though it was months old, and she had cried in the end when Dustin Hoffman died. Later, they shared a bottle of Chianti, and she had called it a basket of wine. And he had taken her hand, kissed her fingertips, and whispered, “A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou,” and she had looked at him with large, believing eyes and said, “Oh, I love that. It’s by Omar Khayyám.” Another second and Frederick would have claimed authorship. But that first movie, that first dinner, that first special encounter after so many weeks of separation, was a flick in time that Frederick Stone would never forget. When the owner of the café had come to their table and politely asked if they might leave so that the staff could lock up, the two of them had linked arms and walked back to Frederick’s apartment, huddled against a steady rain that was coming in from the sea. Frederick knew then that he would always remember two things about that night. It was the last time he ever plagiarized the Rubáiyát. And it was the first time he ever made love to Chandra.
Hebert Stone was back at the table, a smile on his face and the young women from the bar at his side. Frederick stood, but his knees were wobbly, so strong was the memory of that first night with Chandra, her smooth, white legs wrapped about him, her wild hair flowing like rivers in every direction.
“I’d like for you to meet our dates for the evening,” Herbert said. “This is Sarah. And this, this, is Valerie.” He pushed a tall brunette closer to Frederick. She put out a hand bedecked in rings. Frederick shook the hand. He even helped Valerie find a place on the table for her purse, which seemed to be shaped like a lunch pail. Then he turned to Herbert.
“Could we speak privately, please?” he asked. “Out in the foyer?” Herbert shook his head.
“The girls need a drink,” he said. He held up his arm and signaled to a geisha.
“I want a piña colada,” said Sarah. Frederick wondered if Sarah needed to stop and read the height requirements at underpasses and other such restricted places. He had never seen hair stand quite so tall on a human head.
“I want a Dirty Mother,” said Valerie. Four tiny gold beads shone brightly from her nose, two in each nostril.
“My brother is a criminal lawyer,” Herbert said. “He’s good friends with F. Lee Bailey.”
“Wow,” Valerie said. “Didn’t he shoot Kennedy?”
“Do you handle serial killers and if so, like, who was the worst?” Sarah asked, her eyes round with curiosity.
“Hey, what’s got twelve legs and still can’t walk?” This came from Valerie.
“Oh, I heard that one,” Sarah said. “Jeffrey Dahmer’s refrigerator.” The girls giggled while Herbert laughed nervously.
“In the foyer, please,” Frederick said.
“Freddy bets the horses,” Herbert told the girls. “He needs to place a call to his bookie. Just tell the waitress what you want, okay?” They nodded in sync.
In the foyer of the China Boat, Frederick was livid. He paced back and forth in front of the high blood pressure machine. It was a good thing he was without coins. Who knew what towering peaks his pressure would reveal just then. He stopped pacing and glared at Herbert.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Look, I’m sorry about that criminal lawyer line,” Herbert said. “But I couldn’t tell them you’re an accountant. I mean, think about it, Freddy.”
“I thought you invited me to dinner,” Frederick said. Even when they were boys, Herbert had a talent for making him lose his cool. And Herbert chose that moment to light up a Marlboro.
“So what’s wrong with some company?” Herbert asked, and exhaled a string of smoke. Frederick fanned the air. “It’ll be fun for us to double-date. We never did in high school.”
“Double-date?” Frederick fought to keep his calm while an elderly couple collected their jackets and went out through the front doors. “For Christ’s sake, Herb, who do you think we are? Wally Cleaver and Eddie Haskell?” He had never imagined, not even in his darkest moments of puberty, that he’d end up necking in the backseat of Herbert’s big Chrysler at a time when he should be considering the best retirement plan.
“Are you forgetting that your wife left you?” Herbert asked. “It’s time to get a grip.”
“Chandra’s only been gone for a week,” Frederick said.
“That’s long enough for most men,” said Herbert. “You’re in denial. Believe me, we all go through it.” Frederick remembered Joyce’s diagnosis of his illness: denial. He suddenly envied Bobo his urinary tract infection.
“Get rid of them,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” asked Herbert. “Those are two quality young women. College girls, I might add. They could be with men half our age, but they’ve chosen to be with us.” He thumped his hand against the wall. The maître d’ peered out anxiously.
“That’s because men half our age can’t afford to buy them piña coladas and what was that last one? Oh yes, a Dirty Mother. Get rid of them, Herb!”
“Mr. Stone?” the maître d’ was now standing in the foyer door, his concern having grown. Herbert waved him back into the restaurant with a reassuring gesture
“You do realize,” he asked Frederick, “that Valerie once turned down a dinner invite from Jack Nicholson when he was in Portland filming some movie? And I’ll tell you something else, Freddy.” Herbert wagged a finger. “That girl’s got a test tomorrow and yet she’s down here right now with us, instead of home studying. But do you show any appreciation? You’re lucky just to get a date with Valerie, buddy. And you can ask anybody at the bar.”
“Listen to me,” Frederick said. “To men our age, a date is that which is written on a calendar to remind us of an annual checkup with our proctologist.”
“Should I have said that you were a neurosurgeon?” Herbert asked. “Is that what’s bugging you?” Frederick stared at the Van Gogh tie his brother was wearing, an elongated version of Starry Night.
“Get rid of them.”
“Let’s you and me have a quick drink,” Herbert said. He put a fatherly hand on Frederick’s shoulder. “Discuss this like men.”
“Men in their midforties,” Frederick said. But he allowed Herbert to lead him back into the China Boat and steer him toward the end of the bar. Herbert signaled to the bartender for two scotches. Frederick stared off toward the table in the Smoking Permitted section, to where the young lovers were now eating. The name of the little café
in Boston flashed into his mind, the Fiddler’s Cave. And he could hear Chandra’s sweet voice, a basket of wine. And he remembered the hot, wet grasp of her legs around his body, the warm tremble in his thighs. They had had salads for dinner, huge things laden with artichoke hearts, and the trio had sung “Angel of the Morning.” And then it was all gone, and he was back in the China Boat with the other galley slaves, heaving-ho, heaving-ho. He felt the scotch warming his stomach and realized that he could do with another one.
“We go around once, brother,” Herbert said. He waved at the girls, who seemed to be ordering more drinks from the geisha waitress, and doing quite nicely without them. “You need to get in touch with your male ego. And those two young women are the best place to start.” Now Frederick remembered Chandra standing by the window of his old apartment on Baker Street, after they’d first made love, the bedsheet wrapped about her body, the rain coming at her from the other side of the pane. And he had wondered then if he could ever hold on to something so free, so ephemeral, so like the rain as this illusive girl.
“Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands,” he whispered. He was reeling from the gossamer memories of a woman he had met twenty-three years ago, a girl so vibrant and so alive that he could actually smell life on her breath, in her hair, her clothing, a college girl the same age as Valerie. He had gone, in one week, from a basket of wine to a Dirty Mother. Tears formed in Frederick’s eyes.
“I’m gonna buy you that book by Robert Bly,” said Herbert. “Iron John. It tells us guys how to release the wild man from his prison, the natural man still lurking inside all us castrated bastards.” He tapped with a finger at the invisible bars on Frederick’s chest.
Frederick knew Robert Bly as a decent poet. He had even plagiarized him in one of his love letters to Chandra, something about driving around in the snow, trying to mail her a letter. His usual method was to avoid the Pulitzer Prize winners and pay more attention to the obscure poets, such as the poets laureate. That in itself had been an education.
A Marriage Made at Woodstock Page 9
