The Walkaway

by Scott Phillips

  Upstairs, as she undressed and got ready for bed, Loretta turned on the television news. She half-watched a report about local elementary school students sending money to support a little boy in Peru, then went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She was rinsing and spitting, insulated from the sound of the television by the running water, when the newscaster read a brief message about Gunther, a photo of his grizzled face floating behind the anchor desk. Over the water she faintly heard the phone ring, but she ignored it, assuming it was Eric, and after ten rings it stopped.

  Eleven miles away Sally sat holding the receiver and wondering what to do next. She debated calling the number the newscaster had given for anyone with information on Gunther’s whereabouts, but Loretta was the one with that. She told herself he’d be fine until morning, and she believed it. Senile or no, he was about the toughest bastard she’d ever met.

  She hadn’t thought about him in a while, which was funny, because lately she’d been thinking about Wayne. The thoughts came unbidden, often in the context of something Loretta did or said, or one of the grandkids now that they were more or less grown. Especially the boy, Tate. He didn’t have much of Wayne’s personality in him; he wasn’t a liar, a thief, or a cheat as far as she knew, and he didn’t have the obsessive need to win at any cost that Wayne had. In his moments of triumph, though, he’d get a cocky, off-center grin that was pure Wayne, just like when she’d first known him in high school; at that age there didn’t seem to be anything screwy about Wayne either, at least not to her. President of the student council, captain of the track team and the debate squad, crack door-to-door salesman in the summertime, he looked to her like the biggest go-getter in town, the kind of kid people thought of as a future president of the United States or, even better, U.S. Steel.

  They were married in 1940 after he got his business degree, and a year later he was assistant office manager in the sales division of Collins Aircraft, the youngest manager in the whole company. After Pearl Harbor he volunteered for the army over the company’s objections, and nothing was quite the same after that. He came home after the war a master sergeant and spent a year working at Collins, treating Sally like the only mistake he’d ever made and trying to think up better, faster ways to make money. She was two months pregnant with Loretta when he stunned her by quitting the job at Collins and reenlisting. Opportunities in the peacetime army were good for a man like him, he said, and he didn’t want her traveling in her delicate condition; he’d send for her once the baby was born. He never did, and though he dutifully sent half his pay home every month—at first, anyway—it was years before she saw him again.

  A couple of weeks earlier she’d found a picture of him in his uniform, a hand-tinted 8-by-10 taken when he got home in ’46. She’d studied the portrait for a long time, trying to find some trace of the real man somewhere in the face of the friendly, smiling soldier.

  She hoped he was burning in hell. What she’d done, she’d done for Loretta, and for the sake of having a little fun, a pretty scarce commodity for a woman with a small child and no husband around and a full-time defense plant job, and she wasn’t sorry for any of it. Not for one goddamn minute of it.

  Gunther found himself standing next to the lake in the painting. It was all wrong, too much of a lake and not enough of a big rocky hole in the ground, and that mountain behind it should have been just a gently sloping rise, but he knew more or less where he was. It was dusk, the start of a warm summer evening, and he made his way around the shore and up a path through a clearing to the cabin: two bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a living room. A dim yellow light shone in one of the bedroom windows, and before he looked inside he knew what he’d see: Sally Ogden with her feet in the air.

  And there she was, thirty years old again and making that loud, throaty sound of hers, a skinny little freckle-faced guy propping himself up on top of her with his skivvies around his ankles and Sally’s red fingernails on his hips, eyes rolled back in his head as he pumped away. Sally looked like she always did, like she was enjoying the hell out of herself.

  Gunther wasn’t jealous. He just wanted to ask her a question, and he could wait until they were done. He admired her as he waited, her long black hair undone and splashing all over the pillow, her lovely soft belly, those legs that looked like they could have pinched the scrawny fellow on top of her in half if she wanted. Abruptly she turned to Gunther and looked straight at him as she cried out with unfeigned and unashamed joy.

  He opened his eyes. His second erection in as many days was fading, and the front of his shorts were wet. There was a thin white line of light visible under the window shade and the digital clock on the desk read 6:17, as good a time to get up as any.

  It seemed crazy now that he’d ever forgotten who Sally Ogden was, and it made him wonder if Dot hadn’t been right to put him into the home. He put his clothes on, wishing he’d thought to bring a change or two with him, and was dismayed to realize he couldn’t retrieve the question he wanted to ask Sally in his dream. From his shirt pocket he pulled a business card with Loretta Gandy’s picture on it in black-and-white above a business address and phone number, and her home address and phone scribbled on the back. It might embarrass her if he showed up at her place of work in his current state; better to go to her house and wait.

  He walked out of the room and across the parking lot, leaving his door open. The ground was still a little wet from yesterday’s rain, but the sky was clear and blue with rosy tinges at the horizon, and the morning air was already warm and humid. As he passed the Stars and Stripes heading toward downtown he spotted the hooker from the night before, still on duty. She gave him a friendly three-fingered salute. “Hey there, Grandpa. You get a good night’s sleep?”

  “Uh-huh. Your shift about over?”

  “Yeah. I shoulda gone home a while ago. Guess I just wasn’t sleepy.”

  “I bet you hardly ever are,” Gunther said.

  “Hah. You got that right. Plus it was so nice out after that rain.”

  “See you later.”

  “Okay. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said, and as Gunther moved on he pondered what that could possibly include.

  Dot had been awake since before dawn listening to the radio, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes. The news didn’t mention Gunther, which annoyed her, since the announcer droned on and on about some incomprehensible finance bill in the Senate or the Congress and how the president was expected to do this or that about it, and who gave a shit anyway? The DJ didn’t even know what it meant, she could hear in his voice that he was just reading it off a page. Next he gave the farm prices and last night’s baseball scores, and then he mentioned that the temperature at the airport was seventy, with today’s high expected at around a hundred and five and humid as a greenhouse. If you’re going outside today, he said, now’s the time to do it. She looked out the window and thought it looked nice out on the back porch, the morning light still soft and diffused and even a slight breeze stirring the branches. A little dewy, maybe, but she could put a towel down on one of the old metal chairs. She’d leave the door open so she could hear the phone.

  Outside it was gorgeous. She sat at the little table, drinking from her mug and finding herself comforted a little. The mere absence of the sound of the country station was unexpectedly pleasant, and she realized that the DJ’s deliberately upbeat twang had been jangling her nerves.

  She watched a robin pulling a worm up out of the ground and thought of Sidney, aged five or so, watching the same thing one morning and wanting to rescue the worm, running at the bird with his arms flailing and crying furiously, fists clenched, when the bird flew away with the worm in its beak.

  He’d been a serious and solitary little boy, and he wasn’t much different as a man. His last girlfriend was gone now and Sidney hadn’t wanted to talk about why. Gunther had seen it coming, though, even with his memory gone south on him; she’s an educated person, he’d said, she wants someone she can introduce at her college r
eunion and say here’s my husband the dentist, or professor, or lawyer, not here’s my husband the nudie show tycoon.

  The robin finished extracting the worm, then flitted into a tree in the yard behind hers where its nest must have been, and as she watched it go the phone rang. She was inside so fast she had it before the third ring. “Mrs. Fahnstiel? Dr. Mercer. Just checking in.” His voice was cheerful and soothing.

  She looked at the clock. It was seven-fifteen in the morning, too early for any but an emergency call as far as she was concerned. “Mister Mercer. Where the hell were you brought up that you call people for no reason before eight in the morning?” That she’d been up since four forty-five was irrelevant; it was a question of manners.

  Despite yesterday’s skirmish he’d clearly been expecting a friendlier greeting. “I’m sorry—”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut the mustard. Call me when you get my husband back.”

  She slammed the receiver down, then filled her mug and went back outside. It was a little warmer already, the sky a little bluer, and she wondered what Gunther was doing right then. The worst thing was the deep, gnawing suspicion she had that she knew where he was headed, and the impossibility of telling anyone about it, even Sidney. Especially Sidney.

  Eric was roused from a deep but unsatisfying sleep by a hand on his shoulder and an angry voice an inch from his ear.

  “Get up. Goddamn it. Come on, I have to get to work. Now get up or I’ll call your wife.”

  It was the woman from the night before, wearing a slip and nothing underneath, and he reached his hand up between her thighs, warm blood beginning to lengthen his sticky organ. She slapped her hand around his wrist.

  “Don’t. I’m late as it is.”

  “You got time for a quick one.”

  “Not even as quick as last night. Come on, out of bed. Get your clothes on.”

  Pretending he hadn’t caught the insult he lay back on the pillow, hands behind his head, and beamed at her as she ran around the room putting on her clothes.

  “Listen, asshole, this is how fucking late I am. I am not taking a shower. I have never, in eight years at this job, gone to work without taking a shower.”

  She had on her underwear and was buttoning her blouse at this point, and he grabbed her by the wrist as she passed by on the way to her dresser and tried to pull her back down onto the bed. She yanked the hand away effortlessly and with the other gave him a very solid slap across the cheek.

  “It’s seven-thirty. I have a shitload of stuff to do today and a bitch of a hangover.”

  He looked her up and down in wonderment as she adjusted her skirt, the left side of his face still hot from the impact of her open palm. She didn’t look hung over, looked in fact far better than anybody had any business looking at this hour of the morning with or without a hangover.

  “Where’re my clothes?” he asked, beginning to sense defeat. He saw his jockeys lying in the corner of the room.

  “They’re in a path from the front door to here.”

  “Look. Why don’t you take a sick day, we’ll knock around and have a few laughs?”

  She glared at him like a drill sergeant. “If you ever want to fuck me again, Eric Gandy, you will put your clothes on right now and march out the front door with me. Understand?”

  He put on his shorts and started down the stairs. On the upstairs landing were his socks and on the bottom two steps lay his shirt, twisted into a spiral as if by a whirlwind. He had a vague recollection of whipping it around over his head like a lasso the night before, and he unfurled it to find it wrinkled like an immense golden raisin. His pants were nowhere in sight, but he saw his shoes next to the door.

  “Where’re my pants?” he asked as he pulled the shirt on.

  “You took them off at the top of the stairs and threw them down into the living room somewhere,” she said, standing in the bedroom door looking like she was heading for a job interview; makeup immaculate, clothes pressed and perfectly coordinated, hair tussled in a way that looked not only deliberate but carefully worked at. “Over by the fireplace, maybe,” she said, adjusting an earring.

  He found the pants between an expensive, low-slung coffee table and the hearth. He put them on, then grabbed his shoes and they walked out into the morning. Stopping on her front step for a second he tied his shoelaces, then followed her to a black BMW vaguely familiar from the night before. When he stepped around to the passenger door she looked at him like he was crazy.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I thought you could drop me off at my car. At Ruby’s.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m late, and that’s the wrong direction.”

  “I thought you worked downtown.”

  “You thought wrong.” She got in and backed out, rolling down her window as she waited for a space in the morning traffic. “Talk to you soon,” she called out, suddenly and surprisingly cheery.

  He started down the sidewalk, heading east toward downtown. From his shirt pocket he pulled a five-dollar bill along with a scrap of paper. It was a deposit slip for Belinda Naismith, her phone number circled in red ballpoint.

  Lester Howells yawned like a giant redheaded baboon, his eyes clenched shut and his head thrown backward, his teeth bared and his tongue rolled back, one hand clutching his desk as his spine arched, the other thrusting into the air above him, opening and closing. “Sorry, Ed. Pulling a lot of those late nights this summer, still got to be up at five irregardless.”

  “Been up since five myself. Went over to Maple Grove and saw Daisy before I came down here.”

  “Pretty there in the morning, isn’t it? I go early mornings sometimes and visit my folks.”

  “Yeah. My nephew and his wife come by every other week, I guess. There were flowers, anyway.”

  As they talked Ed examined a Xeroxed list of all the places Gunther had been spotted, looking for a clue to his thought processes and finding none. Maybe he’d just wanted a haircut and a cup of coffee.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Wish you didn’t have to be.” Howells draped one calf across the top of Ed’s old desk. “Why couldn’t that son of a bitch have wandered off in the spring or the fall so I could spare someone full time?”

  Ed waved him off. “I know how it is in this kind of heat.”

  “You going out to Lake Vista today? You might look in on old Rory Blaine if you do.”

  “I thought he was in that place out on Twenty-first.”

  “Nah, they moved him. He more than likely won’t know who you are, but it’s nice when he gets a visitor.”

  “I’ll give him a holler.” Not much chance of Rory forgetting me, he thought.

  “Probably Gunther’ll just turn up at Dot’s wanting dinner like nothing’s up at all.”

  “That’d be just like him,” Ed said. He stood up. “I’m sure I’ll talk to you before I leave town.”

  “Hope so. Give my best to old Dot when you see her.”

  He took the elevator downstairs. City offices were just about to open and the lobby was filling up with city workers and citizens, most of the latter looking aggrieved. He stepped into the press room and found it full of strangers, one of whom, a young woman wearing a hat decorated with flowers, looked up at him. “You looking for parking fines? Third floor, right across from the elevators.” He nodded, thanked the woman, and left.

  Sidney had been up since five-thirty; by the time Janice got there at eight he’d already been on the phone for more than an hour and a half, talking to the police, to the nursing home, to Ginger Fox, and to Gunther’s other daughter Trudy in Florida, Ginger having been too distraught to do the job herself.

  “Hey, Sidney,” Janice said. “Heard about your stepdad on TV last night. Find him yet?”

  “If they’d found him, I wouldn’t be getting here before you.”

  “My great uncle Rudy wandered off one time, walked from his house to a bus station five miles away, said he wanted to go to New York City. We couldn’
t ever figure out why, he’d never been farther than fifty miles away from the house where he was born.”

  She picked up the flyer. He hadn’t run it off yet, but he’d attached another photo of Gunther to it.

  “What’d you do, Sidney, go out to a kindergarten and get the kids to letter this?”

  “It doesn’t have to be pretty, just readable.”

  “It’s neither one of those, believe me. Let me do it on the computer. I’ll make it nice and eye-catching, and we’ll get them printed up in color over at Printco.”

  “It’s fine the way it is.”

  “I’m not going to argue about it, Sidney. This is for your stepfather’s sake, let’s do it right and don’t get all prideful on me.”

  “Fine, do it your way, I don’t care.” He rose to let her take her seat. “I want to print up about five hundred. I’ll go start putting them up soon as they’re done.”

  “Why don’t you get Larry and Bill to do it?” They were the college kids who went around to the supermarkets, schools, churches, shopping centers, and anyplace else with a public bulletin board, putting up posters and flyers for the car shows, flea markets, and oldies concerts the company produced for twenty-five cents per flyer posted.

  “They’re only half done putting up the flyers for the car show.”

  “They can do both at the same time. Duh.”

  The phone rang and Sidney headed for his office. “I’m only here if it’s about the old man.”

  He sat and opened his morning paper, and within twenty seconds the intercom buzzed. “Sidney, that’s Dennis on line one. There’s some kind of problem with the new lighting at the Sweet Cage.”

  “Tell him I have other things on my mind right now.”

  “That’s what I told him you’d say.”

  “You were right.” The new lighting system in the Sweet Cage had been, up until yesterday around noon, his most time-consuming problem. He missed the sleazeball atmosphere of the clubs before he cleaned them up; ten years ago the idea of a professional theatrical lighting system for a strip joint would have seemed ridiculous.