The Same Mistake Twice

by Albert Tucher

  “You know how I met my boyfriend?” said Diana. She paused for breath. “Kurt, the one you wanted? It’s a cute story. We had a fight in junior high. I don’t mean an argument. I mean a punching fight. You should have tried that. Maybe he’d have gone for you instead of me.”

  The wall phone was right there where she needed it. Diana dialed nine-one-one and watched the girl as she waited for the cops to arrive.

  Detective Rostow still didn’t like her. She talked to Tillotson instead.

  “In your line of work,” he said, “you ought to be more careful about opening the door.”

  “I’m learning. Assuming I survive the experience.”

  She watched two uniformed officers leading the girl through the front door in handcuffs.

  “Would you please tell me her name? I can’t come up with it to save my life.”

  “You didn’t know her?” said Tillotson.

  “I don’t think anybody did.”

  “It’s Anne-Marie Kuhlbacher.”

  “Still doesn’t ring a bell. Why did you go to her house?”

  “Just to touch all the bases. We didn’t have a clue it was her.”

  “Just like I told her, only I thought I was blowing smoke.”

  “Blow enough smoke,” he said, “and sometimes it turns real. Happens all the time in my line of work.”

  “Mine, too, I guess.”

  Chapter Nine

  Diana had given the Dick Levitt episode little thought in the past ten years. Sometimes she wondered about her ability to put things ruthlessly out of her mind. It was a professional asset, but did it mean she was missing some pieces? Her personal life, or lack of it, seemed to offer more evidence.

  For instance, what other woman would be satisfied with watching Tillotson make himself at home in her kitchen? Or with not knowing his first name?

  Answering those questions would have to wait. Her current problem was Dexter Grogan. She turned pages until she came to the sophomores, but the photo that went with his name was too small to tell her anything.

  Diana found herself groping for the computer mouse. She laughed, because these thumbnails didn’t expand with a click.

  She started looking through the book for other football players. It could be hard to find the right younger boy. A junior she might know, but he might not have known Dexter very well.

  The juniors looked back at her without connecting. Had she really moved among these people for three of her four years of high school? Anne-Marie Kuhlbacher had apparently missed school on the day yearbook photos were taken.

  But then, among the freshmen, she found a Paul Riemenschneider on the junior varsity football team. She had an Otto Riemenschneider among her clients. The name wasn’t exactly Smith. Two local men might be related.

  Diana sat for a moment and looked at her phone on the wall. Calling a client was a bad idea. Using her home phone instead of traveling to a pay phone was worse. But if her plan worked, Otto would find out her real name anyway.

  She was about to risk losing a client, but it would be worth the cost if she could protect the rest of her business.

  Otto lived in Morristown, to the south of Driscoll. His wife had divorced him years earlier, and as of the previous week he hadn’t replaced her.

  Get on with it, Diana thought.

  She got up and thought she was headed for the phone, but instead her feet took her back to the bookcase, where she reached for the yearbook from her junior year. In the kitchen she performed the dust-blowing ritual and set the book down next to the other volume. She opened the book and started paging through it.

  Her destination was Kurt’s senior picture, but she also found him in candid shots throughout the book. His prominence didn’t surprise her. Some boys always got more than their share of attention, maybe because professional photographers had gone to high school like anyone else and knew how to spot the alpha males.

  Now Kurt’s classmates could spend the next fifty years taking the book down from the top shelf at reunion time, or pulling it out of a box that they should be packing for a move to Florida, and tell everyone with a little too much enjoyment, “There’s Kurt Krol. Quarterback of the football team. Everybody thought he was going places. And I don’t mean prison, which is where he ended up.”

  And where he still was, seven years after nearly killing a bank guard in a robbery

  Diana knew which memory was about to replay itself. It wasn’t her favorite, but it wouldn’t ask permission.

  Chapter Ten

  The graduation party at Kurt’s house was comforting in its way. It was the same party that the same people had thrown all through high school. The girls danced with each other while wishing their boyfriends would dance more. The boys talked sports and danced when the nagging got too much for them.

  Parties always happened at Kurt’s house, because his mother would arrange to be out on a date. That way she wouldn’t have to confront the beer that they drank indoors and the marijuana that they smoked in the yard to avoid smelling up the house.

  For days Diana had groped for some way to congratulate Kurt on his graduation. All she could come up with was the same way she had rewarded him for everything for a full year now.

  She intercepted him as he made his way from one conversation in the kitchen to another in the living room. She grabbed him by the necktie that he still wore at half-mast and pulled him into his bedroom. Everyone saw, and cheered.

  That’s okay, she thought. He’s entitled to feel good tonight.

  She smiled at him and held his eyes with hers as she sank slowly to her knees. She had no need to look at his belt as she unbuckled it, or at his pants as she unbuttoned them and tugged them and his boxer shorts down to his knees. His erect penis had already parted his shirttails. Diana had compared him to pictures in skin magazines, and she knew that he was well endowed.

  She kissed his penis from below, so she could continue to look into his eyes. Then she took just the tip in her mouth and teased it with her tongue.

  As she had expected, he came immediately in her mouth. That was part of her plan. She swallowed and continued to stimulate him with her lips and tongue, until he was erect again.

  She pushed him gently backwards until he sat down on his bed. Then she started to strip for him. Under her modest skirt and blouse, instead of the usual utilitarian bra and pantyhose, were matching black panties, bra, garter-belt, and stockings. The men’s magazines she had seen always showed women who never took their stockings and high heels off, so that’s how she ended her dance.

  Kurt just sat there.

  Diana felt a tiny flare of annoyance, but she stifled it. She climbed onto the bed, crawled behind Kurt, and stretched out on her back. She put her hands on his shoulders and whispered, “Come on.”

  He stood up and dropped his pants to the floor. He kicked them away and then took his tie and his shirt off. He climbed onto her and entered her efficiently. With his eyes averted to her shoulder he pumped away and quickly came again. He rolled off her body and lay next to her on his back.

  As she had done many times with him, Diana masturbated. She enjoyed the extra lubrication of his semen in her. Her orgasm began to build.

  “Do you have to do that?”

  The voice was his. A stranger’s couldn’t have astonished her more, because he had never said anything similar before.

  She froze.

  “I like to do it,” she said. “I like to do it when you’re with me.”

  “How do you think it makes me feel?”

  “I don’t know. Good, maybe. Like we’re together and enjoying it.”

  “I don’t like feeling like I’m not enough for you,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you’re not enough for me?”

  “If you have to do that, I’m not enough.”

  “I like to come, too. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Girls don’t like sex that much. They give it to somebody they love.”r />
  “That went out with the dinosaurs. Where have you been?”

  “All the girls say it.”

  “You’ve been taking surveys?”

  “And you’re not supposed to be the one to make it happen,” he said. “I am. I’m the man here. Everybody’s out there laughing at me.”

  “Us. There’s two of us here, remember? If they’re laughing, which I doubt, it’s at us. I think they envy us, but if you think they’re laughing, maybe we shouldn’t do it anymore. I won’t have to go back to the doctor for more pills, and look my grandmother in the eye, and ask her to tell the doctor she wants me to have them. That never bothered you, did it?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Kurt. “You’ll give it up. I don’t think you can live without it. I think I should recruit some guys to help me.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’ll bet you’d do it with anybody. Dress up in your whore clothes and do it with anybody.”

  “Well, since you bring it up, that’s exactly what I plan to do. I’m going into business. I could get every teacher in the school to pay me for it, and they’d thank me for the chance. As soon as I graduate, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “That’s funny,” he said. “That’s real funny.”

  “Nothing funny about it. That’s what I’m going to do. I like it, and I’m good at it. Why shouldn’t I make something out of that? I was wondering how to tell you about it. I was wondering whether you’d stay around, but I can stop wondering now, can’t I?”

  “A whore,” he said. “A fucking whore. Just like my mother. I sure can pick ’em. Is it just me, or is it all of you?”

  Diana pulled her panties over her shoes and stockings. She was careful not to tear the fabric on her stiletto heels. She hooked her bra back on, stepped into her skirt, and buttoned her blouse.

  She walked to the bedroom door, looked back, and said, “If you want it after this, come up with the cash.”

  She left the room, and the house.

  Diana’s apartment over the only barbershop left in Driscoll came with a parking space in the small lot. It was early in the winter. She had recently placed her grandmother in a nursing home and sold the house she had lived since the age of five, which left a dull ache in her chest.

  Snow had fallen, followed by a thaw and then a hard freeze. The ice covering the blacktop made Diana totter toward her car like a very old woman. As she bent over to work her car key into the frozen lock, she heard the thin shell of ice over a puddle crack under someone’s foot. Instinct told her to turn, duck, and raise her left arm.

  The other person brought a wooden club down in an overhand strike. The edge of Diana’s forearm blocked the blow. Her arm caught the club down low, just above the assailant’s grip, but the pain still made her scream. Diana brought her right fist around to punch the attacker’s midsection. The attacker slipped on the ice and fell hard.

  Now Diana could see that she had knocked Kurt’s mother off her feet. Mrs. Krol held her left arm and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that came anyway.

  “Bitch,” said the woman. “You broke my elbow.”

  “Yeah, well, I think you broke mine.”

  “Good.”

  “Not the smartest thing to say right now,” said Diana. “What’s this about?”

  “Whore. My son’s going to prison because of you.”

  “Because of me? What are you talking about?”

  Instead of answering, the other woman moaned with pain.

  Diana thought. She didn’t need cops or neighbors taking an interest in her and her attacker. She also doubted that Mrs. Krol was much of a threat to her now. Just to be sure, Diana kicked the club under her car. She moved behind the other woman and tried to lift her with her good right arm. It was hopeless without the woman’s cooperation.

  “Try to stand up. I’ll lift.”

  “Whore.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  With uncertain footing and only two good arms between them, they had a hard time getting Mrs. Krol on her feet, but they managed it. Diana led the woman to the side entrance to her apartment and helped her up the stairs.

  In the kitchen they struggled to take their coats off. Diana tossed them over one chair. She took two dishtowels and improvised icepacks for herself and her guest.

  Diana rolled up her own sleeve first. She seemed to have only a bruise, which improved her mood a little. She helped Mrs. Krol with her sleeve and looked at the woman’s elbow. She was tempted to handle the arm roughly, but she dismissed the childish urge.

  “I’m no doctor,” said Diana. “It could be broken. I just don’t know. Is it definite about Kurt?”

  “Not yet,” said Mrs. Krol. “But his lawyer is trying to talk him into pleading guilty. Says he should blame it all on youth and inexperience. He should ask the court for mercy. It’s still going to be a long sentence, no matter what.”

  Diana had her doubts about Kurt’s naïveté. The way she understood it, he had been running with the white supremacists for several years.

  “How is it my fault that he’s in trouble?”

  “You broke his heart.”

  “That happens. People break up. I’m not taking the blame for what happened. He was a lot more interested in this other nonsense than he was in me.”

  “People break up over a lot of things,” said Mrs. Krol, “but not over what you do. Who else would have to put up with that? He was never himself after the way you treated him.”

  “Oh? Then when was he himself?”

  “Whore.”

  “Okay, that’s three, and I’m tired of it. I was trying not to say this, but the hell with it. I think there’s more than one whore in this discussion.”

  “How dare you,” said Mrs. Krol. “I have friends. Respectable gentlemen friends. They give me presents sometimes, but I don’t just let them pay me.”

  “Is that smart or stupid? Anyway, you made up for it, having them around the house all the time. From what I understand, you hustle one out just in time for the next to arrive. Whatever else I do, I don’t work at home. I don’t rub anybody’s face in it.”

  Mrs. Krol deflated.

  “I can’t believe he would talk about me like that,” she whispered. “I could never get him to understand. His father was never going to come back, and we had to do what we could with what we had.”

  “Then why can’t you understand me?” said Diana. “I’m working with what I have.”

  “Kurt would have taken care of you.”

  “When was he going to start? Waiting for him to finish four years of college was one thing. But once they get on the jail treadmill, they might get off it again, but you’d better not wait around for it to happen.”

  “But that only happened because of you!”

  Diana began to feel that she had gone too far. She looked at the other woman and saw little difference between them—twenty years of dubious experience and a heavier load of self-deception.

  “He never talked about you much,” said Diana.

  Great, she thought, that will make her feel better.

  But she forged on, trying to undo the damage.

  “This is just what I think. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. He’d kill me if he thought I had gotten a poor opinion of you from him.”

  Mrs. Krol gave her floundering the attention it deserved. She tossed her icepack onto the kitchen table. Melt water spread over the tabletop. Mrs. Krol stood up and tried to put her coat on without using her left arm. She finally had to let Diana drape the coat over her left shoulder, although she obviously hated to accept help.

  She opened her mouth to speak.

  “Don’t say whore,” said Diana. “And if you come after me again, I won’t let it go.”

  Mrs. Krol went silently to the door, opened it, and started down the stairs.

  “Have somebody look at your elbow,” said Diana.

  Chapter Eleven

  If Kurt ever got out of prison, maybe he and Anne-M
arie could make a life together. Or not. There wouldn’t be a lot of communication going on in a partnership like that.

  On the other hand, according to what some clients told Diana about their wives, lack of communication was the only thing that kept the marriage going.

  She got up from the kitchen table again. This time nothing would stop her from going to the phone. Now that she had her self-flagellating mood really working, she might as well lose a client. She marched herself across the room to the phone, picked it up, and punched in numbers.

  “Otto, it’s Diana.”

  His silence said a lot along the lines of, “I pay you to come when I want you and disappear when I don’t. Why are you behaving like a wife?”

  She talked to fill the void.

  “I need a favor. There was a guy I went to high school with, name of Paul Riemenschneider. I’m guessing he’s a relative?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Can I ask you to trust me on this? We’ve known each other a long time, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did I ever do anything sleazy?”

  She hoped he knew about other hookers. There were always a few who made things difficult for everyone else in the business. Some grabbed the money and ran. Others showed up too drunk or stoned or distraught to perform, while still others got dim-witted ideas about blackmail. It didn’t take much to look good in comparison.

  “No. Okay, he’s my cousin.”

  “I need to ask him about a guy he might know.”

  “Is this guy giving you problems?”

  “Yeah.” In a way, it was true.

  “In that case…”

  “Are you close enough to give him a call, you know, smooth the way for me?”

  “Yeah, we get along.”

  “Thanks, Otto. I’m going to owe you big time.”

  “I can see a problem, though. I mean, however this goes down, I’m going to know your real name.”

  “The Diana is real, anyway.”

  “No kidding. I never knew a…anyone who used her real name.”