Bob at the Plaza (21 page)

“You just say when, Tess, and I’ll be there,” I chimed in with enthusiasm. “I’d just love to be able to work with you and the team on a full-time basis. It would be great!” Visions of health care insurance and paid vacation time danced through my head.

“I’ll email you the details tomorrow. I want to move on this quickly, while everyone is basking in the glow. I definitely want to get you out here no later than next week. I’ll be in touch,” Tess said, hanging up the phone with that definitive note in her voice.

Although too early by far to celebrate a job offer, I felt optimistic about this positive turn of events and continued dressing in a rare upbeat mood. For an evening, I pushed that mysterious water drip to the back of my mind and decided to focus on the positive. Maybe everything would work out, after all, and this miserably difficult period of my life would be just a memory in a few months. I’d have money, I’d have a coterie of business friends—well, except petulant young Charli—and I’d belong somewhere and my life would make sense, with a clear, defined path forward. What a change of pace that would be!

Stan showed up a couple of minutes early for our trip into Avondale. I hadn’t seen the suit he wore since Mary’s funeral and I realized, again, that for a seventy-ish-year-old man, he didn’t look too shabby. During the drive, I brought him up to date on the Chapman situation. He shook his head and I heard him mutter under his breath, “Damn Ray.” Stan’s irritation gave off a decades-old vibe. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Ray had tried to get Mary’s attention in their high school days, or worse yet, had tried to horn in before Mary and Stan set up housekeeping. 

Winter-scrubbed air filtered into the car, still holding an undercurrent of chill but also carrying the fresh green scent of a new season. We worked our way through Avondale’s version of a traffic jam—two horse-drawn buggies and a pickup truck with a flat crowding the side of the road—and joined other neighbors on the sidewalk to the Community Center.

My potential-job-offer good cheer lasted until I entered the room. In the large hall where we’d be singing our final concert of the season, every metal seat had been unloaded from the storage closets. Many of those seats now held family and friends. I’d achieved the enjoyable status of recognizing neighbors and gave a few waves. Then I noticed Penny Mae.

Although seated in the first row, butt planted firmly in the chair to prevent anyone else from stealing it, Penny Mae still managed to work the room and her contact list without ever getting up. Of course she looked lovely. Her low-cut dark-blue dress (how on earth had she ever found out that blue was David’s favorite color?) hugged every curve and a ridiculously high-heeled shoe dangled off her toes at the end of her crossed legs. Definitely a woman on the prowl. If I hadn’t been so frustrated by the situation I’d managed to set in motion, I could almost summon a wisp of pity for David. The poor guy didn’t have a clue. Talk about dogged, relentless pursuit. Penny Mae had the schlub in her sights and she wasn’t about to let go.

Penny Mae beckoned when she saw me. “We’re almost there, Roz,” she whispered jubilantly. “The buyer’s real estate agent hinted they’re seriously considering coming up to your minimum―sounds like they really want your place.” She monitored the people sitting nearby to make sure they couldn’t hear us, then murmured, “Call me tomorrow morning and I’ll let you know where we stand. It’s looking good!” She reached over and pumped my hand in a hearty, business-like handshake.

I escaped into the back room and joined my choral companions. We women touched up our lipstick and hair, while most of the men buffed their shoes on the back of their slacks. Stacey stepped to the front of the room. Using her pitch pipe she warmed us up in quiet chords for a few minutes, then closed her hand to silence everyone so she could give us her customary pre-concert pep talk.

“What a year it’s been, hasn’t it, folks? So much fun, and I have to thank you for all of the hard work and enthusiasm you put into making Carnegie Hall and all of our seasonal concerts such a success,” Stacey said. “Tonight I want you to celebrate our triumphs by sharing your musical joy with the neighbors and friends who always support us. Have a great time out there, and sopranos, remember to watch out for that tricky entrance in ‘Jazz Memories.’ Like the song says, I’ll see you in September. Have a great summer, everyone, and let’s have some fun tonight!”

The program opened with our, by this time, very well-rehearsed Shakespeare songs. Even though the melody of ‘It was a lover, and his lass,’ plucked at my heart strings because it made me think about David, Stacey kept us moving along in tempo. Then I got my star moment.

At our first rehearsal after our Carnegie Hall debut, Stacey had announced that I would be reciting the lines for the St. Crispin’s Day speech from
Henry V
at our final Community Chorus concert. I think it was her way of making up for the rotten time I’d had with Prout and Trevor in Manhattan. (Either that, or it kept me from singing too much. Hmm . . .) Her consolation prize worked, except that I couldn’t get thoughts of battles and their aftermaths out of my head. And not just Shakespeare’s blood and gore battles, either. Metaphorical battles, like my constant striving to repair the damage done in my life by a magnificently indifferent, utterly ruthless Economy. The white whale to my Ahab. The bull to my matador. The totem pole in my survival waltz.

Stacey permitted me to hold Shakespeare’s speech so I could read it, but I’d practiced so often that his words not only rolled off my tongue without prompting, but they’d sunken into my brain and colored my life. I’d walked around with Elizabethan phrases echoing in my head for weeks.
‘We few, we happy few,’
‘
We band of brothers,’
and ‘
Gentlemen in England, now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here.’
Henry’s laudatory, enthusiastic speech about how the soldiers who survive the upcoming battle will be celebrated for the rest of their lives. How they’ll get free drinks in the pub every night as onlookers beg them to recount the glory of the victory. How the valor of the soldier bestrides the terror of death.

The words surrounded me, weaving into my days of real estate skirmishes and feints of thoughtfulness in planning meetings. I loved Henry’s martial words about the glory accruing to those who would survive, and the envy cowards would feel toward them in future years for their heroic achievement.

But I wondered . . . Would the same celebrations be held for the people who survived their war with the Great Recession? Would the victors be forever changed, forever sobered to realize how close we live to the brink of poverty and homelessness? Would they commemorate their triumph by creating a legacy of wisdom and thrift that would guide their heirs through battles in future years?

Or would survivors settle on accumulating one simple tool to use in all their future battles―money. Get money, get lots of money, and you’ll be safe. Get that good job, get that reasonably priced house, pile those dollars into savings and investments and no one, nothing can touch you.

Or instead of money, would the tool for survival be simpler and yet, much more complicated? Make a home. Be part of a family and a people that will support you when life gets horrific. Join a community that will help you build a bulwark of sandbags against terrifying floods and disasters.

Years in the business world, a career nomad, had nudged me toward the one-size-fits-all financial solution. I’d written about neighbors helping neighbors in my business projects for years, but living on Crooked Lake gave me my first taste of belonging to a community. Even if I’d had many, many dollars, those dollars could not have solved my rising water problem as effectively as a group of helpful neighbors.

What lessons, what celebrations, what legacy would my battle with the Great Recession leave me?

The path to financial plenty opened up in front of me and beckoned, luring me to my customary tried and true solution. I’d make a great salary at Knobox, with benefits to match. I almost had a somewhat-reasonable offer on the house, and I’d never be alone since I had my endlessly witty and brilliantly amusing companion always in the vicinity. I could escape this small town of confusing, messy relationships, paycheck to paycheck anxiety, helpful neighbors, unpublished novels, and heart-melting sunrises and return to the brisk well-known world of corporations, rules, overwork, and professional distances.

But here’s one lesson I’ve learned―reluctantly―over the past few weeks. As much as I love Bob, and I really do love him, there’s something a little slippery about someone who’s always funny. Humor acts like a coat of armor around the comedian’s heart, deflecting your curiosity and earnest attempts to get to know them. True, the badinage, the word play, can dazzle. But I’ve come to realize that dazzle might not be enough. No matter how engaging, verbal zingers don’t fill the lonely nights or the aching nooks and crannies the way I thought they would.

A promising future lay before me. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. Lots of money, a great job, an endlessly amusing ghostly companion, a fresh start in a new location. No loose ends―everything tied up with a bow. Answers to all of my problems, except now I nursed a newborn, niggling doubt that maybe some of them might be the wrong answers.

Nuts.

Look for the final installment in this Bob trilogy,
Bob and the Polka-Dot Highway.

Author’s Afterword

Oh, those wacky habitués of The Algonquin Round Table!

According to Harpo Marx’s charming autobiography,
Harpo Speaks!
(which I highly recommend), for a few years during the 1920s several members of the Round Table went bonkers for croquet, a game up to then played by seniors and children. They played it combining the strategies of pool, the rambunctious energy of polo, and the focus of golf, with ferocious games lasting hours, days, and even entire weekends.

The obsession originated at Alexander Woollcott’s summer retreat on Neshobe Island, in Vermont, where Harpo made a shot much like the one I’ve relocated to the fields of Central Park. According to Harpo’s autobiography, Woollcott reacted just as I’ve described him here.  For, in fact, selected members of the Round Table did obtain a permit to play the game in Central Park, although I’ve never heard that they played in the dead of night by headlights. But who knows?

Also from
R. Murphy
and
Soul Mate Publishing
:

BOB AT THE LAKE

 What would happen if Roz, a crabby woman of a certain age, moved to the wintry shores of a New York lake—and got a ghost? And not just any ghost, mind you. Bob’s a ghost from 1920’s Manhattan, full of quips and over fond of his martinis, who swans around in a silk smoking jacket and makes Roz’s life very . . . well, let’s just say ‘complicated.’

Especially after Roz meets David, the good-looking grape grower who lives up the hill. Join Roz, David—and Bob—as they navigate blizzards, cookie mazes, holiday shopping sprees, and the occasional power outage. (You know, all of those delightful challenges of a good, old-fashioned Northern winter . . .)

Available now on Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/pwbkerd