Scratch Fever (8 page)

Then they went upstairs to the ballroom, where the Al Pierson Band was playing. An eight-piece group in powder-blue tuxes, the Pierson Band had a good, solid sound; Nolan was amazed how full so small a brass section could sound.

About eight months ago, it had occurred to Nolan that in a town full of country-rock discos and live rock ’n’ roll clubs, there was nothing for people of
his
generation—the sort of people who flocked to Iowa City for football and basketball weekends. He began providing Saturday night entertainment and soon added Friday, with groups like the Pierson Band. And it went over big—big enough to hire some top names; even the current Glenn Miller configuration had played at the Pier.

“How can you
stand
that shit?” Jon had demanded.

“What shit?”

“That . . . that
Muzak
!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.”

“It’s worse than fucking
disco
!’

“I considered a disco, but that fad seems pretty dead to me. Besides, I’m not after the college crowd.”

“Nolan, I got a piece of this place. What if I want to book a
rock
act in the ballroom?”

“No way in hell. You want the Ramones playing upstairs, while my businessmen and professors eat surf-and-turf downstairs? Sure.”

“Well that music sucks, and that’s all there is to it. I knew you were old, but I didn’t know you were Lawrence Welk.”

And the kid had stalked out.

It was probably the most hostile exchange they’d ever had. Soon Jon was gone, working out of Des Moines with his rock band.

He’d wanted to explain it to Jon. He’d wanted to explain that there were few things in this life that could bring a tear to his eyes, but one of them was Bob Eberley (or a good facsimile) singing “Tangerine.” No kid brought up on the Beatles could understand that.

He sat at a side table and had a few drinks and listened to the music and watched the couples dance. The floor was crowded, and most of the people were in their forties, fifties, sixties. Lots of blazers and blue hair. It made him feel old.

He looked at his watch: almost one.

He went to Wagner’s office and used the phone to call Sherry. She answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello,” her voice said.

“Hi, Sherry. Glad you didn’t have the damn answer phone on. I’m sorry I’m so late.”

“That’s okay.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Fine.”

“Bye, doll.”

“Bye, Logan.”

He hung up.

He went back and sat at a table. He ordered another drink. Pierson was playing a Donna Sommer song, and Wagner was out there shaking his bootie with some faded homecoming queen. Then the band began “Just the Way You Are,” and Wagner came over, sweating, smiling, and sat with Nolan.

“Still determined to kill yourself, Wag?”

“I guess,” Wagner grinned.

“Fuck!” Nolan said.

“What?”

He stood. “Logan she called me.”

“Huh?”

“She called me Logan.”

“What are you . . .”

“Someone’s there with her. The girl’s in trouble.”

Wagner was saying something, asking him something, but he didn’t stop to answer.

7

THE FIRST THING
Sherry thought about when she got back to the house was putting out the dog. She’d been gone all day—shopping at both North and South Park with Sara, then sharing a pizza and a movie with her new friend (Sara worked at Nolan’s, too, as a waitress). But she knew the dog wouldn’t have made a mess. It was completely housebroken. Any dog that dared live with Nolan would have to be housebroken.

She pulled her little Datsun into the drive, parked it off to the side, leaving the way clear to the garage for Nolan when he got back. It was a chilly night, and she felt it: she was wearing the London Fog raincoat Nolan had bought her (it had looked overcast when she left the house that morning) and had as yet to hit him up for a winter coat.

She smiled to herself. Hours of shopping, and all she’d bought was one thing (some designer jeans, the ones Debbie Harry pushed on TV). Being a kept woman of a guy as tight as Nolan did have its drawbacks. Oh, he always came around, eventually; but being a Depression kid, he seemed to have trouble spending the kind of money it took to live in an inflated economy. But she wasn’t complaining.

She went in the front door, opened the closet, and turned off the burglar alarm. The alarm was not connected to the local police station (Nolan was respectable these days, but not
that
respectable); it was just something that made enough noise to presumably scare burglars away and perhaps rouse some neighbors.

Actually, Nolan’s house was about as isolated as a home in the midst of a housing development could be. Of course, it was a small, exclusive development, of $150,000-and-up homes, of which Nolan’s was easily the nicest and most secluded. The rest of the development took up one short street, which turned circular at its dead end and led back out again. Nolan’s private drive was just to the right as you entered the street, and the sprawling, ranch-style home was surrounded by trees, the backyard dipping down to expose the lower story, which led out to a patio surrounded by more trees—two acres of them—with just enough yard showing to put a pool. Have to work on that, Sherry thought.

It was a four-bedroom house, two up, two down, with a spacious living room with a wall of picture windows looking out on the trees in back of the house. There were no paintings or other wall decorations to speak of, giving the place a blank look. There was one paneled wall, with fireplace, adjacent to the picture windows. The ceiling was slanted, open-beamed. It was a room of creams and soft browns, like the comfy brown modular couch that faced the TV and stereo area, the TV a 26-inch Sony, the stereo a component number on a rack, with records below—hers on one shelf (running to Barbra Streisand) and his on another (running to Harry James).

She hung up her raincoat and stretched. She was wearing a cream silk blouse and tailored brown wool slacks, very chic, but she’d been wearing them all day, and they were on the verge of rank. She’d kill for a shower.

But first, the dog.

It had not greeted her at the door. Had Nolan been there, and had she come in the door, the dog would have been yapping hysterically, jumping up on her, pushing at her thighs, then nipping her heels. Had she been a stranger, it would have attacked. But she’d come to know that the dog recognized her, by sound, smell, whatever, and when she came in without Nolan, the dog kept its place by the glass doors on the lower, basement floor.

That was because Nolan always entered that way. He never came in through the garage, even though he parked his car there and that would be the easiest way. He never came in through the front door. He always walked past the house down the stone steps into the backyard and unlocked the glass patio doors and came in that way. Because even at this “respectable” time of his life, Sherry had come to learn, Nolan retained an outlaw’s paranoia. And entering his home the least expected way (actually, coming down the chimney or through a window would be even less expected, but . . .) seemed par for Nolan’s course.

And there the dog was, curled near the glass doors on its circular rug, where it had been sleeping, looking up at her with bright eyes, tail wagging, a white-spotted black terrier about the size of a healthy rabbit.

She leaned down and petted it—got licked for her trouble—and unlocked the glass door and slid it open for the dog to go out. No need to chain it up: it wouldn’t go far from where Nolan lived. It wouldn’t go out of the yard, in fact.

The dog, like Clint Eastwood in an Italian western, had no name. Nolan referred to it only as “the dog” or “the mutt.” It still seemed odd to her that Nolan would have a pet at all. She seldom saw him give the animal affection or attention, but it was clear the dog lived for Nolan’s occasional pat.

It had taken her the best part of her entire first week back with him to worm the story out of him. Seemed the mutt had turned up at his back door, half dead; it had been in a bad dog fight or two, had half an ear chewed off, and hadn’t eaten for days. “A skeleton with a tail,” Nolan had described it.

Apparently the dog had touched a nerve in Nolan that Sherry hadn’t known existed. He took the dog in; in fact, he took the dog to a vet—spent money on it! And, while saying Nolan nursed the dog back to health would be going too far, the dog had somehow survived. And somehow knew Nolan was responsible.

If Nolan sat in his reclining chair, reading a paper, watching TV, the dog slept on the floor near his feet. When Nolan slept, the dog slept under the bed. When Nolan ate, the dog sat politely nearby, waiting for the inevitable scraps. Every now and then, Nolan allowed the dog up on his lap; he’d pet it, grant it a smile, and it would curl up and sleep there. But only now and then.

Sherry was more openly affectionate to the dog, and the dog returned the affection; but it loved Nolan. It was, after all, a bitch.

She let the dog in, and it followed her upstairs, tagging after her as she undressed. Then she heard its claws clicking on the stairs, heading back down to wait for Nolan again, as she got in the shower and let the hot needles wash away the hard-earned sweat from a day of shopping centers, pizza, and Robert Redford.

Soon she was in a black Frederick’s nightie, sitting on the couch, waiting for Nolan to come home and fuck her. She knew it sounded harsh, but that was what she was in the mood for: a good, hard, horny fuck. And she’d bet that Nolan would feel the same.

She was twenty and had a nice, if not busty, figure; she knew that her appeal to him was her youth, the suppleness of her body, the cuteness of her features, her California blonde hair (dyed or not). And she knew that his appeal to her (beyond this house and his affluence) was as a father figure. A coldly handsome, closed-mouthed father figure, perhaps; a father figure with bullet scars on his muscular body. A father figure who was great in the sack. But a father figure.

She’d first met Nolan at the Tropical, a motel he was running for the Chicago Family. Initially, she’d been a waitress there, and a bad one: it was when she got called on the carpet for spilling food in customers’ laps that she ended up in Nolan’s lap, and that pretty much was where she’d stayed the rest of that summer.

Then her father had called and told her her mother had had a stroke, and it was back to Ohio for Sherry. There would be no time to finish up college (she had a two-year community college degree and had hoped to get a four-year business degree) and the only job she could find was waitressing at a Denny’s. Which was better than hell, but just barely. And when she wasn’t waitressing at Denny’s, she was looking after her mother, which she didn’t mind, because she loved her mother, but it was sad. So very sad.

Three months ago her mother had died.

Sherry started back to college, and only a month in, she knew she couldn’t hack it. It wasn’t that she was stupid; she wasn’t particularly smart, either, but it wasn’t that she was stupid. More like bored. She was more bored than waitressing at Denny’s. It was a rare week that she didn’t think about her summer with Nolan. She had even cried herself to sleep a couple times, missing him, wishing she could have stayed with him.

Then, last month, he called. She didn’t even know how he’d managed to track her down, but he had. And he wanted her to come live with him.

“I need a hostess at my new restaurant,” he said.

“That’s like a waitress, right?”