Read 50 Online

Authors: Avery Corman

50 (2 page)

BOOK: 50
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“That’s an outright invitation for a bidding war,” Lahey said. “We might as well pack up and leave.”

“Pat, I don’t see any specific mention of my future in the article, or yours.”

“New people come in, they don’t want the old people.”

“What does Doug think?” Brian Wilkes asked, joining them. Wilkes was a reminder to Doug to keep up his exercising. About Doug’s height and slim, Wilkes brought his slim waist and his bicycle to the office every day.

“Doug is still absorbing it. Wait until he realizes there are maybe three jobs in the world where he has the autonomy he has here and two of them are taken and he’s in the third.”

“Pat has us making up resumes,” Wilkes said.

“Pat was with the
Trib
when it closed and the
Minor
when it closed. It’s his doomsday background.”

“This is good news to you?” Lahey responded. “The newspaper you work for is rumored to be up for sale.”

“What can I do? I can’t buy it,” Doug said.

“Doug is right. We should worry about it when we have something to worry about. It’s a rumor.”

“Meantime, I’m still working. I’ve got a piece to get out,” Doug said.

“Me too, Pat,” Wilkes said, and walked out of the room.

Lahey picked up the article and handed it to Doug, obliging him to look at it again.

“Now that our young man is out of earshot, can we talk?”

“You don’t necessarily lose your job in a sale, Pat.”

“Ah, ‘necessarily’ finds its way into the conversation.”

“Europeans?” Doug said, scanning the piece.

“Right. What do they know about American sports? They’ll turn us into
Soccer News.

“Please, Pat. I am over my quota on stress for this entire decade.”

Among Doug’s phone calls during the day was one from Tony Rosselli, whom he had known since high school. Rosselli was a broker for commercial real estate, with dreams of being a sports promoter. Years before, he had the idea for a sports complex to be located in New Jersey near enough to New York City to draw on the New York population while tapping the New Jersey suburban areas. He failed in his attempt to finance the idea because he was not established as an entrepreneur, and shortly after, plans were announced for the successful Meadowlands Sports Complex. Another miss was his attempt to bring a minor-league baseball team to New York City, the team to play in one of the outer boroughs, an idea Doug thought had merit and had written about, but again Rosselli was not financially powerful enough to see it through. Rosselli asked Doug if they could have a beer, and they met at the Blarney on East Forty-fifth Street, a long narrow place with two television sets on either end of the bar, a working-class hangout where a few journalists also gathered. In the rear was a room with ten booths. Others were known at the Four Seasons; Doug could always get a booth at the Blarney for a hamburger and a beer.

“I’ve got something special, Doug. I’m letting you in on it, exclusive, given the nature of our long-standing relationship.”

“What are you promoting, Tony?”

“Not promoting. This you don’t talk about like it needs promoting. This is a major event.”

Rosselli looked around theatrically to see if any of the construction workers in the place were eavesdropping.

“Don’t worry, Tony. Nobody here is in your field.”

Rosselli was always in motion. A small, wiry man, he constantly tapped his feet, fiddled his fingers. He was given to wearing shiny suits and silk shirts open at the collar, and he continually adjusted the fit. His eyes never stopped darting in all directions as if life’s parimutuel windows were going to slam shut before he could get his bet in.

“It’s sensational, Doug. I have a deal for a wolf girl.”

“Come again?”

“A wolf girl. Brought up in the wilds of Colombia by she-wolves. Twelve years old. She runs like a wolf.”

“On all fours?”

“As fast. The fastest girl runner in the history of track. The fastest miler ever.”

“She’s a miler? The wolves—they have a measured mile?”

“I’m going to sell the rights to TV. A race against the clock. Maybe she’ll break three minutes.”

“Have you tried anybody else? Ringling Brothers?”

“You got to see for yourself. Come to the track outside Yankee Stadium. Saturday morning, ten
A.M.
It’s incredible, I’m telling you. From the wilds of Colombia.”

Three readable columns per week were not easy to produce, and in the hope that the alleged wolf girl would make good copy Doug decided to take his stopwatch to the quarter-mile track in the Bronx.

Rosselli was there when Doug arrived. He was dressed in a shiny brown suit, a white silk shirt, and brown loafers. The wolf girl had not yet made her appearance. A slumping old Buick cruised by on the street, and when it stopped, two Hispanic men emerged leading a slightly built teenage girl. Rosselli went over to them, money seemed to be exchanged, and they nudged the girl toward Rosselli, the men remaining near the entrance to the area. He walked with her to the running track where Doug was standing. The wolf girl was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt and on her head was a wolf’s skin that looked like it came from a costume shop.

“What is that, for her gestalt?” Doug asked.

“You understand English?” Rosselli said to her.

She grunted or growled, or something in between.

“You run the mile?” Rosselli ran in place to communicate. She gave no sign of understanding. Doug attempted to clarify, making a sweeping gesture toward the track indicating the number of laps she would have to run.


Cuatro,
” Doug said. “I don’t know what that is in wolf.”

The girl nodded that she understood. She took a starting position. Doug set the stopwatch, gave her a tap on the arm and said, “Go!” She burst into a furious sprint at a record-breaking pace and Rosselli was yelling “Yahoo!” When she reached the far side of the track, suddenly she ran off the track in the direction of the two men, who began edging to the car. “Hey!” Rosselli called out. “What’s going on?” They were all running now, the two men and the wolf girl, Rosselli chasing after them shouting, “Hey, come back! Gimme back my three hundred bucks!” Rosselli was running and sliding in his loafers, chasing and groaning, the girl opening a gap between them. Doug remembered a so-called wolf boy once. He amused himself thinking this was a product of feminism, the first wolf girl scam. He was going to leave Rosselli’s name out of it or Rosselli would never be taken seriously again, but Doug knew this had to be a column. Rosselli was still in pursuit as though his money were flying away from him on little wings. He had fallen far behind, and finally he gave up the chase, the wolf girl, meanwhile, losing her wolf’s head, running out of the park and out of legend.

Doug answered the intercom to his apartment. His children were downstairs, Andy, 15, Karen, 12, with Harry, part cocker spaniel, part beagle, the joint-custody dog. Doug opened the door and kissed Karen, who kissed him back. Andy lowered his head, allowing his father’s lips to graze his hair. Andy no longer liked to be touched, no more hugs, no more holding hands with Doug while crossing the street, no more sitting in his father’s lap. The boy held himself at a distance, encapsulated by his approaching manhood. Harry entered, giving Doug a token little wag of his tail. This dog, Doug was convinced, didn’t know who the hell it belonged to.

The children looked like brother and sister. Doug doubted they looked like him, both having inherited Susan’s soft features and striking dark eyes and hair. Andy was a sturdy boy with broad shoulders, Karen a petite, thin child. Ironically, given their physiques, Andy had little interest in athletics, while Karen was an excellent gymnast. Karen was also a young artist, and she was carrying some newly purchased art supplies. They brought their belongings into their rooms, suitcases and bookbags, and efficiently unpacked, having been on the road in this gypsy version of family life for two years. Doug had ordered pizza and they sat at the table as he received reports of the last two weeks.

“We had a project in school and we all took turns making believe we worked in city government,” Karen said. “I was on the city council.”

“Sounds like a good project.”

“My first act was to get Halloween declared an official holiday. Schools closed.”

“I like that,” Doug said. “It’s the best kids’ holiday.”

“The job I’d want in city government is taxi commissioner,” Andy said.

“I think there are more important jobs than that,” Doug responded.

“Uh-oh. He’s worried. I might be serious.”

“I’d like to be taxi commissioner, too,” Karen said, teasing him.

“We’re going to turn out fine, Dad,” Andy said.

“All right. You got me. I was being too parental.”

“And taxi commissioner isn’t all that bad,” Andy continued. “You can affect people’s lives. How long they have to stand in the rain. How much leg room they have.”

“I’d like to own the cabs. You could always get a cab that way,” Karen said.

“Anything you want to be,” he said, taking their teasing.

Karen’s paintings, largely watercolors, were placed about the apartment, her work space an area in the kitchen. The children’s rooms were adorned with various posters and flyers for social causes, Karen’s interests tending toward animals, the saving of, the cessation of experiments upon, which she filtered through her child’s innocence: “The dogs feel the pain.” Andy, older, took the longer view, the saving of the planet, nuclear proliferation, environmental abuses. They were on mailing lists, sent small contributions, and promoted Doug’s participation. He was the only New York sportswriter he knew who belonged to the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.

In the morning they were having breakfast together and Karen said suddenly, “Dad, if you got married again, that would make your new wife our stepmother, wouldn’t it?”

The question appeared to be of interest to Andy, too, who turned to Doug.

“Yes. My wife would be a kind of mother and, technically, she’d be your stepmother.”

“A girl in my class—her father got remarried and she calls her father’s new wife her stepmother. But I used to think you only say ‘stepmother’ or ‘stepfather’ when somebody dies.”

“No, if somebody remarries also.”

“And the father and the mother of the new wife, do they become ‘stepgrandparents’?” she asked.

“I suppose you can call them that.”

They were both thinking about this information.

“There’s something very important you have to know about all this,” Doug said. “Your grandparents will always be your grandparents. And your Mom and I, we may be with other people, but we’re your Mom and Dad forever.” He touched Karen’s face and reached out for Andy, who allowed him to grasp his hand. “I’m your Dad forever.”

Had he been told when he started as a cub reporter for fifty-five dollars a week that one day he would be a nationally known sportswriter earning over fifty thousand dollars a year he would have found it as unbelievable as the idea that fifty thousand a year was nearly the minimum in New York, for maintaining an apartment, expenditures for meals, clothing for work, social life, and the expenses of bringing up two children. The terms of the divorce had Doug and Susan dividing the costs of the children’s needs
except
for school tuition. “Divorce agreements are the art of the payable,” Doug’s lawyer said at the time, and Susan could not afford to pay any more. So Doug paid their tuition, and he was looking at a letter announcing a tuition increase of six hundred dollars for each child. It cost him fifteen thousand a year to send them to private school, net, after tax dollars. Doug and Susan had tried the public school system in the early years with Andy, and he lasted until the third grade in a West Side elementary school. The class sizes kept increasing, the school became more run-down, special programs were eliminated. They enrolled him at the Bradley School on Riverside Drive, which Karen now also attended. Private school was no longer as elitist as in Doug’s days in school, it had become the norm for children of families middle class and above. His brother, Marty, a dry-cleaning-store owner, sent his children to Bradley. It was the norm, but savagely expensive. He had made a mistake having the tuition bills come directly to him, he decided. He should have had them routed through Susan so she could see them. She probably doesn’t even know how much the tuition is.

Doug lay awake at 1:12
A.M.
You used to know the time vaguely if you hadn’t fallen asleep yet from anxieties and knew if you didn’t fall asleep soon you’d be tired all the next day. These digital clocks tell you to the minute how late it is, and if I don’t fall asleep in the next three minutes I will be, as Wilkes would write, SPLAT tomorrow. Is Susan sleeping? Is she in bed with someone? How good was she in bed, he wondered, liberated from marital sex, liberated from him? What did she like now? Did she go down on everybody? He was caught by that image, Susan taking men in her mouth, and he shuddered. This is perverse fantasy, she’s long gone, let it go. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to stop himself. He went into the bathroom and on the rationale that the release of tension would help him sleep, he masturbated to Susan going down on him and then on top of him, her hands pulling his hair, so fevered and hot she was gasping.

They saw each other a few weeks later, and he was momentarily ill at ease, as if somehow she knew what he had done. They were at the school for parent-teacher conferences. Susan was wearing high heels, which made her about two inches shorter than Doug, and a stylish print dress with a design of geese in flight. Geese? She is the least outdoorsy person I know. Susan’s idea of a brisk walk is to go through Bloomingdale’s when the air-conditioning is on. No, that’s unnecessary. It’s a nice dress, you look good. Wearing your hair a little longer lately, but with the bangs you always had. You can’t get away with that in your 40s unless you have a pretty face, and you do, still. Jesus, you’re 42, Susan. You look younger. You look almost the way you did twenty years ago when we met. Clearly, he was having difficulty concentrating on the teachers’ school reports, which were routine, the children were doing fine. Twenty years. That’s before joint custody and modern divorces like this one where the parents show a smiling face and attend parent-teacher conferences just like any other couple.

BOOK: 50
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