I was talking to these people. "Wyoming," I said, "I left Wyoming. I went to Billings. Then I left there too. I met my wife in Missoula. In a resort. I did maintenance. Grounds. I vacuumed the pool. She was a masseuse. She was lithe. One day she left for Arizona with a guy who came in all the time. A regular. They went to Tempe. He programmed computers. He liked the desert. For a month I searched for them. When I found them the guy pulled a gun on me. I'm not kidding, a gun. When she saw that kind of craziness she left with me. We got out of there. Then, later, she went somewhere else."
"You came to Seattle," Lee said. He was the Korean. His eyes were kindly.
"Not at first," I said. "First I went to Alaska. I took the ferry up. The Inside Passage. I was there four days. I couldn't afford to hang around waiting. Somebody told me Boeing was hiring. I headed back. They weren't. I was at a low point. I entered a salmon derby. I figure what the hell. There's not much I know but fishing's one thing. I caught one fish. A squawfish. It looked like a whale had disgorged it. But anyway one of the guys I fished with worked construction. He told me his crew needed a flagman. I became a flagman."
"That's what your job is," Robert asked, "signalling traffic?"
"I'm not saying it's much. I'm not pretending that. It's only temporary. They call me when they need me. Under the table. Non-union. But until something else comes along I've got to make do. What I'd like to find is landscape work. I like the idea of working outdoors."
"Like you did, where was it, Yellowstone?" Joni asked.
"There," I said, "and other places."
I excused myself then and stood up. I told them to think about dessert. I make my way through the darkened restaurant stumbling like a drunk. Things--elbows, chairs, waiters, coats--kept appearing in my way. I found an empty hallway and leaned against the pay phone. I smoked. I thought about what my chances were with these people. I considered the impression I was making. The strongest thing against me was my age. I was thirty-three. But I could pass for less, maybe five, six years less. Robert and Joni were going full time to the community college. They looked like students. Lee was here from Korea because his sister needed a guardian. So I was told. Being oriental, he looked both old and young and his eyes were calm like a sailor who has seen the world. I counted him for an ally. Robert I figured was the problem. I imagined that he would hold my age and various experiences against me, because in comparison Joni might find him dull. I was just drunk enough to consider that a possibility.
The danger in what I was doing was making up a past far too glamorous for me to live up to. I had to impress them, but only enough to get the room.
The room I needed badly. They were renting it for very very cheap. The deposit was reasonable. I had been living in my van but it was getting too cold. Winter was coming on. I'd stand outside on the days I worked waving flags, sometimes in the rain, jogging in place for warmth. Then I'd get wasted and crawl into the van and sleep. There was almost no housing in that city that I could afford. There was a crisis. I knew no one to stay with in the meantime. I was alone.
Seeing the room advertised in the college paper was the first real break I'd had in a long time. When I returned to the table, Robert said, "Could you give us a few more minutes? We're deciding who we want."
"There's been a lot of applicants," Joni said, "We want to make the right choice. You're the last person we're interviewing."
"We want to settle this tonight," Lee said.
"I understand," I said.
I hunted my way to the bar, sat on a stool, and ordered bourbon and soda. It was weak. I had another. I told the bartender to ring my tab on the dinner bill. I figured that if the decision went against me, if they decided on someone else, I'd let them help me out on the check, even though it was I who invited them in the first place. I wasn't going to thirty bucks to be polite.
The drinks settled me. I felt calm, composed. The story I had presented them about my past amused me. I liked all the drifting in it. And it wasn't too far fetched that I wouldn't be able to recall details of it later on, should they ask. And they would have to be the ones to bring it up; I didn't intend to speak about the past very much even when I got to know them, if I did. Especially the real past. The one that I had lived. For it was just a series of dumb and trivial losses, the bleakness and boredom of which I couldn't face honestly. Like, for example, the guy my wife ran off with was a good friend of mine who knew our marriage was on the rocks. I almost think he believed he was doing us a favor. Maybe he was. When I finally showed up in Tempe, he was all ready to give her back. Whatever I wished. She wasn't coming through. Instead of pulling a gun, he asked me if I wanted to play tennis.
The rest of it's more or less along those same lines.
Down at the service counter I noticed a small group--the bartender, a couple of regulars, the barmaid--had clustered around some guy with a deep, scratchy voice. He was telling a story. I couldn't see him so I moved closer.
"I don't know," he was saying, "you live thirty-four years with someone and then bang! one days she's gone. Vanished like smoke. Of course it's the way she want that makes it so hard to take. I came home from work and found her lying half-propped on the couch. The TV was on. Her eyes were open. There was blood all over the goddamned place. Everywhere--on the walls, on the curtains, on the carpet. Blood like you wouldn't believe. I don't talk about this but once in a while. I don't like reliving it."
"When did this happen?" somebody asked.
"Two years ago November."
The barmaid asked, "What did you feel like at first? I remember when my setter was run over I went into shock for weeks. I was spaced."
"I guess I went into shock," the man said. "I assume I did so. They gave me a sedative. But I'll tell you, I remember everything that happened like it was yesterday. I kept thinking over and over that it should have been me lying there. That I should been the one to get it instead of her. She should have been spared. The enemies I have who would do such a thing I've made who would do such a thing I've made on my own. She was never involved. I don't want to sound noble here, I don't want to play heroic, but that's the way I felt at the time. Still do."
"Did they catch the killer?" the bartender asked.
"They did not," the man said. "There's lots of killings."
The barmaid whistled sadly and shook her head and took away a tray of drinks. I could see the speaker. I felt a lurch of recognition. It took me a while to positively identify him. What finally clued me in was his wildly tousled hair, and the maroon turtleneck he was wearing.
The very first few weeks I'd been in Seattle I'd worked for Manpower and they'd send me to a warehouse to help with the inventory. The tedium was deadly and during the course of the day my supervisor and I used to look across the street to an ugly, drab apartment complex. We always watched the corner unit on the first floor because the drapes were never shut.
In this unit lived the man now speaking in the bar. He had been there as long as my supervisor--over three years. We had his routine down. He got up when we started, retrieved that paper from the porch, went somewhere for half an hour, and then, and for all day, sat in front of the TV. A Mexican-looking maid came and cleaned some afternoons. He ate fast foods and Winchell's donuts. From this schedule he never deviated. And always he was dressed in the same maroon turtleneck he now had on in the bar.
It was plain enough that his account of coming home and finding his wife murdered on the sofa could not possibly be true. For one thing, my supervisor would have noticed all the cops. For another, there would have been stories, publicity. The incident would have been living legend in the warehouse where I worked.
The man was still talking. He was now discussing the loneliness and grief of being an aged widower. I no longer listened. I was deciding whether to humiliate him with the truth. One more drink in me might have aroused viciousness. I could feel cruelness floating up within me. I considered that exposing him would be a service to the people who had had to hear his story. It was a helluva thing to be talking about murder like that.
But then I pictured him in front of that TV year in and year out. Season after season. I didn't know why he had chosen to die in this particular way. Maybe he had his reasons. Maybe one day long ago his wife had gotten blown away and now, after so long, he had gotten the facts all mixed up. All day alone, sitting by himself, in sorry circumstances, thinking up a story to tell people later that night in a bar--he was bound to confuse himself. Even if the source of his suffering was imaginary, he was still suffering.
I also thought about what I had been telling Lee, Joni, and Robert about my own past. Who was I to be catching a guy like that out? I, who was without a steady job, whose skills were limited, whose wife had run away with my friend--what could I say? The only thing separating me from the old man was that I could fabricate my stories a little better. My tales had coherency. Only God knew the whole truth.
I left the old man in peace, to quaff down the drinks being sent his way as fast as he could manage. He appeared to be smiling a little. People were consoling him.
At the table Lee stood up and nodded to me. "You're the one," he said. "You're in."
I shook hands all the way around. I felt that happy. I think the fact that I was so obviously excited to be getting a crummy basement room must have relieved Robert a little; nobody could envy my desperation. Maybe, like I had with the old man, he felt slightly compassionate. Maybe he was just drunk. Whatever it was, they all chipped in to pay the bill.
Through a softly falling rain we then walked to where the van was parked. We passed a
house with the front door slightly ajar. Somebody was playing a piano soft and
dreamy-like. The music seemed to drift through the misty air and hover around us like a
magic cloud. Out of nowhere the evening had become enchanted. I walked ahead a little and
started humming. I was a new man. I had a room.
Andrew McCormick is a Seattle playwright and fictionist. He says he prefers drinking to writing, but adds, "Mom doesn't like drunks."
For a copy of the issue that this story appeared in please use the on-line order form or email sott_backissue@unclemarkie.com
and ask for Volume 1, Number 1.
The cost is $20.00, plus $2.00 shipping and handling for each order.
| Return to top of story | Return to SOTT Home Page |
| Move onto other stories in this issue | Move onto other stories in this volume |
©1981-1998 Studio 403. All rights reserved.
For reproduction or retransmission rights, please email sott_rights@unclemarkie.com.