Keep the Change (13 page)

“I can’t wait to hear about what you’ve done for Miss X,” said Ivan from behind the menu. Joe was baffled: he thought Miss X was dead in the water.

Right after the drinks arrived, the young lady came to her table, the next one over, by herself. “I’ve been stood up,” she said and grinned. She pulled the corners of her mouth down in a sad-face. Joe shook his head sympathetically and insincerely. Then her embarrassment looked real, the sort of vulnerability one galloped into like a hussar.

While they drank and waited for the waiter to take their dinner order, Ivan brought Joe up to date on the manufacturing problems he had hurdled since they last met. Some of them were quite considerable, having to do with separate manufacturers using different quality-control procedures for
each of the components, so that holy terrors existed at the assembly end. With Ivan, personnel matters tended to be “love feasts” while manufacturing matters were “blood baths.” Ivan had been through this before on simpler things and with purely industrial products involving robotics in the garment industry, which had made him unpopular but had made him money while putting others out of work. But this time it was different. This time it was a blood bath disguised as a love feast. To offset its effect, he said, “What made you want to go back to Montana?”

“Nothing else seems to be home.”

“Is that important?”

“It is to me.”

“At this point, right?”

“I think it’s generally important,” said Joe.

“Aw, bullshit,” said Ivan. “ ‘Home’ is a concept whose importance rises when people are down in the mouth. Healthy minds don’t give a big rat’s ass whose country they’re even in. How’s my friend Astrid?”

“She hasn’t seen fit to join me as yet.”

Ivan and Astrid frequently spoke on the telephone and even wrote letters. They would have made an ideal elderly couple. Joe sometimes wondered whether it was only sarcastic brutes like Astrid and Ivan who could rise to uncomplicated fondness.

The soup came, saffron chicken. Joe dipped his spoon in it. Ivan looked quite crumpled in his fashions of the hour. By sitting in his slumped position he caused the shoulders of his jacket to stand straight out beneath his ears. Industrial leadership from this man seemed out of the question. The well-bred diners all around them paused to look twice at Ivan, though as he himself would be quick to point out he could easily buy and sell any one of them. Their vague curiosity was
felt by Joe as a pressure. He had seen Ivan burst into a chorus of “I’ll-buy-you’s” before and it wasn’t pretty.

Joe had ordered a piece of scrod and a dinner salad. Ivan had ordered a steak, after inquiring which one was the biggest. Their meals came and this seemed to cheer him. In fact, after a brief moment’s thought, Ivan seemed to be emotionally restored. Ivan was a hearty, life-loving man, and it wasn’t long before he was greedily passing hunks of steak into his mouth. He had to raise and lower his eyebrows with every mouthful to show how good it tasted. A shadow crossed his features while he thought about death, or so Joe assumed.

“The key to me,” Ivan said, “is solitude. I have no family. If I had children, all would be different. I’ve always known that. Alas, my personal miniseries is somewhat different. I continue my wolfish roaming in the capitalist forest. Indeed, right now, I’m having a big love feast with the Chinese. They’re our kind of guys. No malarkey about work being their only natural resource, as per the Japanese. In their plant management practices, they do not live in romantic illusions about inventory control. I greatly prefer them to Japs. Japs are racists. Japs like to set you up in business so they can later steal whatever business you capture. But now the Japs are growing hubristic. Their society is changing. Their kids are narcissistic pukes like ours are. They think they can kick back and take it easy but they don’t have the resource cushion that permits Americans to take dope, watch TV, and get out of shape. As soon as they lose a couple of steps of that big speed, their former allies are going to call in their marks. Meanwhile, the Chinks are in the passing lane with their balanced attitude, their cultural depth, their emerging talents, the scum of communism just beginning to be rinsed from their eyes”—the sedate dining room was quite concentrated on Ivan now—“and
they’re looking across the Sea of Japan at their ancestral enemies and crying out, ‘
ALL RIGHT YOU FUCKIN
’
SLANTS, STAND BACK FROM YOUR TELEVISION SETS
!
WE CHINKS ARE GOING TO WHIP YOUR FUCKIN
’
ASSES
!’ ” People stopped eating.

Ivan put a huge piece of steak in his mouth and all at once turned blue. Joe gazed at him a long time before noticing the color change, so great was his relief at the pause in his speech. The girl at the next table stared at Ivan.

“Is he all right?” she asked. “He’s blue.”

At that point, Ivan struggled to his feet and holding his throat, began making a sound like a seagull. Joe understood then that a piece of steak had lodged in his throat. Ivan started to stagger through the tables of diners before Joe could catch up to him. Joe knew the Heimlich maneuver and got behind Ivan, taking him around the waist below the rib cage and giving him as powerful a squeeze as his considerable strength would allow. Joe saw he had been successful even from this vantage point by the way the old Yalies jumped back from their tables. The thick bolus of beef, trailed by a yellow wing of vomit, flew across a couple of tables, and that was that. A dozen diners who had been seated were now standing, holding their napkins.

“Good as new!” crowed Ivan, returning to their table. But Joe could tell that he was deeply embarrassed. Suddenly, his thick frame in the latest fashions seemed less bold than sad. Ivan peered around from under his brows and saw that they were all still discussing him. He finally sat silent, smoldering, looking straight out at the diners now.

“That can kill you, y’know. Maybe those goddamn blue-blooded geeks don’t know that. Maybe coupon clipping has kept them from learning that,” he said in a piercing voice. Turning to Joe, he said, “Let’s get a drink and the check.”
The waiter danced over at the first signal. He was able to make a minor modification of the bill and leave it immediately. Joe signed it and slipped it under his water glass.

“Ivan, the reason I came to town was to tell you, face to face, that I’m not going to do the project. I’m not going to work with you anymore.”

“I know, Joe.”

“Oh.”

“You told me a long time ago,” said Ivan, “that you were getting out of real art so that you could come to feel as replaceable as the next guy.”

“Yeah …?”

“Well, you were right.” Ivan got to his feet. “You’re replaceable. All the luck in the world to you, Joe.” Ivan was probably the closest thing to a real friend Joe had ever had. These words stung. Ivan stood up and went straight out, shedding his discomfort with every step. Joe rested his head in his hands, staring at a few square inches of tablecloth. When he lifted his head, he felt dizzy for just a moment. But when his eyes cleared, there was the girl at the next table.

“Join me for a drink?” she said. He looked at her clearly. She was beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” said Joe, “but I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

She looked at him and smiled. She said, “What a relief!”

Joe and Ellen sat in the park, across from the drinking fountains, under a great blue Norway spruce.

“What’s the problem?” Joe asked, brow furrowed in concern like some state-funded psychologist on autopilot. Ellen scrutinized him dubiously for a moment.

“I don’t honestly know,” she said. “But we’ve darn sure hit a fork in the road. Billy’s had a tremendous amount of problems. After you left, he went in the Marines. He just seems to want to ranch, period, out in the hills doing his thing. And me, I’m about as quick to show sympathy over this Vietnam business as anybody. But it’s not real cheerful, the way he goes about it. And like I say, he was in the Marine Corps and it seems to have started there. Being called maggots and stuff when they’re just kids.”

“Was he in some kind of combat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you still see him regularly?”

“We confine it strictly to matters concerning Clara. I don’t encourage him. I finally put one of those little observation
holes in my door, like an apartment. I had to put it in there because of Billy. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. My mother is seventy years old. She drives all the way in from the ranch to see me. I find myself looking at her through the little eyehole while she stands there with something she baked for me in her arms.”

“What about when you want to see Clara?”

“Are you asking why she doesn’t stay here with me in the apartment?”

“No, not at all,” said Joe. He could see she was getting angry.

“Don’t you think it’s a little small? Don’t you think I work hard enough?”

“No, I—”

“Have you ever heard of latchkey kids?”

“Yes, and that’s not at all what I was talking about,” Joe said. “I just thought this was a place I could see her. The ranch, with Billy and everything, isn’t ideal.”

“You’re just going to have to be patient,” Ellen said, then after a moment added, “I’ve still got an hour.”

They dropped Ellen’s books in the return slot at the library and went on with their stroll. Joe felt a strange tension in his stomach, the kind of thing that is communicated. They walked perhaps a block and the lack of a plan was creating enormous pressure.

“Let’s go to my place,” said Ellen quietly. It nearly paralyzed Joe. Her house was about three blocks away. Since he couldn’t quite speak, he tried subtly changing his course. He could see the shiny auburn top of Ellen’s head, the tan, freckled bands on the tops of her cheekbones. His agony lasted only the half a block of progress it took to confirm that that indeed was where they were headed.

A nerve-shattering cocker spaniel jolted toward them on four stiff legs attempting to turn itself inside out with a paroxysm of barking. They tried to ignore it, but the dog stole up from behind to bite. Joe turned around and kicked at it as the owner in a V-necked white T-shirt came out in the yard. “You want a cop?” yelled the owner. “Kick the dog and I get you a cop.” The dog yelped back to the owner as though injured. Joe kept moving, though he felt his posture had rather collapsed. “Go on,” bellowed the owner, “make my day!” But the next block took them into a quieter place where clothes billowed on a line and radios played merrily on windowsills.

The house Ellen lived in could be seen over neighboring rooftops a full block away. As they approached, it seemed to rise and enlarge.

“Come on up, it’s unlocked,” said Ellen. As she went up ahead of him, he was relieved to detect a lascivious thought at the angular motions of her hips under the cotton dress. What if I didn’t have a lascivious thought? he wondered. What if I only thought of that character I met in Miami who burst into an Irish brogue at the moment of penetration? What a relief I’m not thinking of her! The “character” he was thinking about had been fascinated by her own Irish heritage and, during lovemaking, had cried, “Joe me lad, give it yer all!” He had never really gotten over it.

All he could think of was the character with the Irish brogue. He clutched the handrail as Ellen disappeared into her doorway. Good Christ. If I blow this one, I’ll hang myself. I must turn into a wolf this minute or I’m lost; crude groping is the only thing that can get me beyond this impasse.

“Joe, what’s holding you up?”

“Something in my shoe …” He sat on the stairs with his shoe in both hands, shaking it madly. “Just slip out of your
little things and I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said in a gruff voice.

Ellen reappeared on the landing. “You what?” Joe was close to the limits of his endurance. He felt the flood building.

He rolled stomach-down onto the steps and let the laughter burst through him. He felt desperate as it ripped across his mind like a fire. He felt Ellen sit beside him.

“You know something?” she said in an admiring tone. “That’s really funny, it really is. Are you all right?” Calmness began to pass over him, slowly, then it took hold. They agreed. It was funny. He was covered with sweat. He staggered to his feet, coming back to the world from an enormous distance. He could take her hand with simplicity. They could agree on going into her place.

“Here I fuck her brains out!” came the thought and he was on his stomach again.

“Joe, the neighbors are going to think you’ve flipped.” He kept laughing. I’d just like to get me a little, was his final thought, recited in the decade-old voice of Slater as she stepped over his convulsed body and went back to work.

He didn’t really want to think about the source of these hysterics. He knew down inside it was Astrid. She was using that santería on him from afar, that Cuban voodoo. She had left her prints in his mind and they weren’t to be removed that easily. He did feel foolish. He felt that way for a week. He didn’t try to see anyone. He didn’t want to overdo his certainty about the cause of all this inadequacy. Then Ellen came on Saturday and took him touring. They went west for a couple of hours, with the sun behind them, in her car. She pretty much took the situation in hand; she got the room and they made love very happily. She didn’t come across to him as
starved or needy but a strong appetite was very evident. He was more used to the intricacies of staging and circumstance.

They were driving home in a distinct aftermath. Joe turned onto the main highway, bearing his palm down on the wheel and giving it a stylish whirl.

“Is this a good time to talk about Clara?” Joe asked.

“No, it is not.”

The weather vacillated between blowing rain and infrequent openings of the sky to a higher world. Along the lower Madison, the hills angled toward the southeast were reared up into the oncoming weather and the wet clouds hung over the lower mesas and plateaus near the channels of the river. A cement truck labored along the frontage road.

Then the sun came out and in a short time there was not a cloud in the sky. But the road was still soaking wet and the car filled with the smell of rain and summer.