Dance Real Slow (3 page)

“He's not feeling so good,” says the boy as I pause before passing.

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Gave him too many crickets. He likes water bugs better.”

“He's loud, though, huh?”

The boy curls his lower lip and shrugs.

“Loud enough, I guess.”

Richard Blyth, Harper's older brother and the senior member of the firm, is sitting on a couch in our office's waiting room, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He has a magazine butterflied open across his lap and when I walk in he looks up and nods.

“Good morning, Gordon,” he says, taking a long swallow from his cup.

I smile and pass, plucking two yellow message slips from the rack beside our secretary Mary's desk.

“Wait, I'm just finishing another,” Mary says. She puts down her pen and waves the ink dry before surrendering the slip. “It's from Joyce Ives. She also called right after you left last night, said she was going to get you at home.”

“She didn't.”

“Good,” Mary says, folding her arms across her chest. “She sure can be bothersome.”

I tell Mary she is right and then head down the hallway, peeking into Harper's office. He is on the phone, but he motions me in, raising an index finger to let me know that he'll only be a minute. On the far wall, there is a framed painting of a girl lying alone in a large maize-colored field. Harper had a similar print hanging above his bed in law school, and whenever I went over to his room, I imagined that the picture must be what Kansas looked like—that it reminded Harper of home. But, actually, Kansas doesn't look much like the picture at all. At least not the parts of Kansas I've seen. Kansas is not nearly as flat, and it's a lot greener.

Harper hangs up the phone and then leans back into his chair, locking his fingers behind his head.

“I want you to do something for me,” he says. “I want you to take Joyce Ives's case.”

My lungs fill several times before I respond. “We talked about this. As a matter of fact, you're the one who told me that I'd be crazy if I
did
take it.”

“I know, I know. But do me this favor: call her—talk to her. Tell her you'll take it.”

“Harper, you know this case? She's insane. Her husband was cheating on her with a waitress at Gooland's,
so Joyce followed him there, on his lunch hour or something, and then drove her car through the fuckin' front of the restaurant. Not only is she
not
willing to pay for the damages she caused to Gooland's—which, I understand, is in the neighborhood of twelve thousand dollars—but she's suing to recoup her costs for the crushed car
and
for money she spent on hospital bills. From what I hear, she suffered a pinched nerve in her neck and lacerations to her face when a couple of cinder blocks shattered her windshield.”

Harper removes a cigar from a polished mahogany humidor on the corner of his desk. He pulls a black clipper from his top drawer and snips off the end of the cigar, brushing the thumbnail-sized nub onto the floor.

“This is not a good case,” he says, rolling the cigar against the center of his tongue, forming a saliva-filled trough. “I am certainly aware of that. But do this for me. I have my reasons.”

“Are you going to tell me what those reasons are?”

Harper holds the cigar gently between his teeth, moving the flame of an orb-shaped lighter toward the blunt tip.

“I will,” he answers, making the word “will” sound more like “with” as his tongue knocks against the soft butt of the cigar. “Just not yet.” His face disappears behind a funnel of smoke and I move toward the doorway, turning back before I leave.

“What's your brother doing in the waiting room?” I ask.

“He's reading. Buster Horry complained to him the other day about our assortment of magazines, said there
were too many for women. Richard said they were divided evenly, fifty-fifty. But it seems Buster categorizes any publication that doesn't solicit advertising for manure spreaders as being for women.”

An enormous piece of clear plastic is held by uneven sections of silver duct tape over the outside wall of Gooland's. It shields a hole roughly the size of a Dodge Dart. A small piece of the plastic is dog-eared above the upper left-hand corner, winking in the breeze. High, away from the damage, a wooden sign spells out Gooland's vertically, from top to bottom, in red block letters. At its base, in horizontal blue cursive, it says: Breakfast Served Anytime. Inside, a space heater rests beside the unwanted opening, its coil red-faced and throbbing. A long linoleum counter bisects the far end of the restaurant, behind seven swivel-top stools. Eight tables are pressed tight against the side walls—four on each side—and six more tables are arranged about center-floor. Squeezed into white polyester, a waitress leans against the cash register while leafing through the newspaper. Only a couple of the tables are occupied.

I sit at the counter and another waitress appears from the kitchen. She is wearing the same dress as the first waitress, but she has a thick cardigan sweater overtop.

“Coffee?” she asks.

I nod and place my briefcase on the stool at my right.

“Eggs are good today. The new grill's just broken in,” she says, placing a saucer and cup in front of me
and filling it with coffee. “For the first few days everything tasted sort of funny—metallic.”

She sets a folded napkin on the counter. “Let me get you some silver. We just did a set.”

My father ate breakfast most mornings of his adult life in a diner much like Gooland's. It was perched on a sleepy ridge overlooking Lake Erie, and on more than one occasion I heard him say to Sara, the restaurant's proprietor and chief cook, that the best thing that could happen to the old place was for it to crumble off the side of the earth and dissolve into the lake. After hearing this, oftentimes Sara would come out from behind the plasterboard wall that separated the kitchen from the eating area, and shove my father against the inside of his corner booth. She would settle down next to him, her apron hiked up above her dimpled brown knees, and explain why it wouldn't do to have her restaurant resting beneath the waves. She would always finish by saying, “ ‘Sides, Hap, if this place wasn't here, you'd have nowhere to go.”

The waitress comes back, wiping the silverware dry with a cloth napkin before laying it out. I stir cream into my coffee with the still-warm teaspoon and ask to see the manager.

“Is there something wrong? You ain't had nothing but coffee.”

“No, everything's fine. Business.”

Frankie Larch is tall with stooped shoulders and a narrow, crooked spine that cups slightly below his neck. He comes out from a small office behind the kitchen and takes the stool at my left, swinging his long legs away
from the counter and into the center of the restaurant. He is wearing a newly pressed blue button-down and khaki slacks that pull up an inch or so too short. He touches a lonely patch of stubble at the base of his chin, brushing it with his fingertips as if willing it to expand and cover the rest of his face.

“Gordon,” he says, nodding. “I knew you'd be out here sooner or later. She told me you'd probably be handling this for her.”

I shrug and turn to retrieve my briefcase.

“Hey, I understand it's only business. So I won't hold it against you. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think you're gonna do too well with this one.”

“You know, Frankie,” I start, removing a yellow legal pad. “I think a lot of people feel that way.”

Frankie inherited the restaurant from his mother, Ellen Gooland. He has been running it pretty steadily for nearly ten years without much trouble, until Joyce Ives. The two of us get up and move over to a side table, the waitress bringing me a fresh cup of coffee and Frankie a glass of Pepsi.

“Rob was seeing one of my waitresses—Carol,” Frankie says, looking over his shoulder. “She ain't here now. But Rob had been coming in real regular during her shifts, for about six months or so. I figured everyone knew—I mean, it's not like they acted hush-hush. Christ, I saw them holding hands a bunch of times. They even kissed each other goodbye—depending on who was around.”

“Did you ever say anything to Carol?” I ask.

“Naw. It's none of my business who she sees and
who she don't. As long as she shows up on time and does a good job.”

Frankie removes a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and offers me one, lighting both cigarettes with the same match. I inhale deeply and after several seconds begin to feel a rush.

“So, tell me about that afternoon.”

“Well, there ain't really all that much to tell. I was standing”—he pauses and turns, pointing toward a glass case beside the cash register that holds mostly chewing gum, candy bars, and cheap cigars—“there. I remember I was talking to Kyle Freeder about this new television set he got. And all of a sudden I hear this grinding noise—actually, it was more of a scraping. Like a snowplow on hard pavement. After that, the whole wall comes in with the front end of her Dodge.”

“And then what happened?”

“Before or after Rob pissed in his pants?” Frankie says, grinning. “No. Really, I'm not sure. I remember Joyce getting out, real calm-like. At that point I thought she might have had an accident, that something may have gone wrong with the car. But it was pretty quiet.” He lights another cigarette with the stub of his last. “You could hear some pieces of glass falling and things settling, but it was basically quiet. Joyce walked over to Rob, plain as pancakes, and said, ‘I saw you from outside.' She handed him the keys and said, ‘You can drive it home, when you come to get your things.' And that's it. She turned and left—Rob just standing there with the car keys hanging from his finger.”

I sigh, clipping my pen to the legal pad and returning them both to my briefcase.

“There were a good many people in here. We're real lucky no one was hurt.”

I thank Frankie for his time and slip a dollar underneath my coffee cup. Outside, the sky has started to clear and the air is warming—a final feverish cough before fall. Frankie follows me into the doorway, leaning down to switch off the space heater.

I fold my suit jacket over the passenger seat and sit still for a few moments, hand atop the stick shift, keys in my lap. Jiggling the stick, I practice sliding it down toward reverse.

Calvin is sitting on the front staircase of the Coopers' house, his head settled deep between his knees. Charlotte is behind him, husking corn and piling it neatly at her side. As I pull in, she stands and taps Calvin on the back of his head before moving down the stairs and onto the dirt and gravel driveway. She comes over to my side of the car and I roll open the window.

“Meg is sick,” she says, crouching, resting her elbows and forearms against the car door. “I don't think it's anything serious, but I decided to keep them apart. To be safe.”

“Thanks.”

Calvin creeps in behind Charlotte and then jumps up, growling, his hands forming claws at both sides of his face. A section of orange rind is pressed against his teeth, between his gums, and when he makes his growling noise it starts to slide loose, forcing him to take down one of the claws and adjust his soggy fangs.

“And what is this?” I ask, shutting off the engine.
“Charlotte, I leave my only son with you and he turns into a lion.”

Calvin straightens, spitting the orange cuticle into the dirt. “I'm
not
a lion, Dad. I'm a saber-tooth tiger.”

“Geez, Gordon. Don't you know a saber-tooth tiger when you see one?” says Charlotte.

“Hmmm. I guess not. I mean, it's been a while.”

Calvin retrieves the dirt-covered orange, but Charlotte takes it away before it hits his lips. He whines, reaching as Charlotte moves it to her chest.

“Unh. I want it.”

“This one is yucky, Cal. We'll get you another,” says Charlotte, folding the rind into her breast pocket.

“That's okay,” I say. “Maybe tomorrow—if Meg is better. Let's go, Cal.”

“This side,” he says, flexing his fingers toward the open window. I know what he means and hang my left arm out for him to grab. When he has a hold, I hoist him in through the window and across my lap to the passenger seat.

“Thanks, Charlotte. I'll call you in the morning.”

Charlotte stands with her arms crossed low, above her stomach. As we back out she waves, first big and then with only her fingers, for Calvin. Calvin sits up on his knees and waves, too, following Charlotte from the front windshield to the side and finally out the back.

“How do you feel, fella?”

Calvin turns and sits down, kicking his legs out from beneath. I lean in and pull his seat belt over-top, struggling one-handed with the buckle.

“Can you give me a hand here?”

He takes the chrome end from me and plunges it into the receptor, waiting for me to sit straight. When I do, he hits the button and flicks the belt free, banging it against the dashboard and then the door.

“Hey, that's not funny. Fix it.”

He yanks the seat belt back from behind his waist.

“Okay, now fasten it and leave it that way.”

He does.

“So, I asked you a question.”

“Huh?”

“How do you feel?”

“Meg's got a cold,” he answers, pointing the toes of his sneakers toward the radio.

“I know she does. That's part of the reason I'm asking you.”

“I feel fine.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you did come down with something—the way you went out this morning.”

“How?”

“Going after Moonie in just your pajamas. That's how you catch cold.”

“Did Meg go out in her 'jamas?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, she's got a cold.”