The Cost of Lunch, Etc. (2 page)

“Well, make her remember. Doesn’t Susan play with her kid?”

“Let’s leave Susan out of this.”

“Out of what?” Duncan reared back from the wheel. “Can’t you make a simple phone call?”

William Saltzman (Bill, Duncan had called him: hello, Bill, help!) made and broke reputations. His earlier poems were in the newer college anthologies. He had put out a paperback of younger poets, and why not me, dear god. Would he be gay? He was supposed to have had that affair with a woman anthropologist. Besides, his poems were full of breasts. She reached down the neck of her dress and jerked the bra straps tighter. Made a languorous face of surrender and giggled in disgust.

“There’s the Low Blow.” She leaned over Rhoda’s shoulder to point.

“Yes, love, but do you think I can check the car with the hat girl?

The dashboard clock read five to nine. Her stomach dropped.

“There’s a parking lot,” Rhoda sang out.

“We’re paying through the nose for a sitter. Hold on. Plenty of on-street parking.”

They passed the Low Blow again. If it were like other jazz spots there would be nothing to eat. The rock music she heard with her last man never came there. Maybe afterward sandwiches, roast beef or pastrami. The clock hand slipped down from nine. “Maybe he won’t wait, Duncan, if we’re late.”

“What do you think he’ll do, go home? He’ll be there.” Around the block again past Nail It, past the Hoochie Mama All Night Hairdressers, past the Low Blow and Orvieto’s pizzeria and Ron’s Ale House and around the other corner. She sank back, cradling her cheek in Sandy’s coat. Open the door and make a break for it. “There’s somebody pulling out!” she yelled. He jammed on the brakes and backed into position, ignoring a Cadillac leaning on its horn.

“See,” he said, expansive on the sidewalk with an arm guiding each woman, “Why pay a bundle? A little patience. Keep cool.”

She dodged free of Duncan’s arm entering and shrank behind him. What was the use, he wouldn’t like her stuff. He’d say it was too female, too wet, too emotional, the way her own professors had. He must have his own protégées.

Duncan got tense, solider. “There he is.”

“Where? Which one?” From behind she poked his arm.

“By the bar, talking with that big African American fellow.”

Peeking around him, she studied W. Saltzman. Over loose and baggy Army fatigues he wore what had been a
good leather jacket lined with fleece. He ought to feel hot in almost steamy room. He was tall with a gaunt face, a short kinky mustard yellow beard streaked with gray and a paunch sloping somewhat over his pants. His gaze on them, when finally he ended the conversation and waved them over, was cold and cat green.

She thought him a fine-looking man, because he was W. Saltzman and she knew his poems backwards, and because his cheeks and forehead were textured like weathered bark, and also because he had a satyr’s paunch and must like food. But his eyes were cold as the sidewalks outside. Shuffling behind came a man his age and seedier, broader built, with a ruddy face, strong white hair and a knowing grin. Saltzman left the bar at a slow deliberate amble, looked at Duncan’s outstretched hand for a moment, touched it.

Duncan said nervously, “How are you making it?”

W. Saltzman grunted. He said hello to Rhoda, looked then at Maud, was introduced. “We need a table, Ed,” he said to the person who asked how many of them there were.

“Sure, Willy, right up front.” They hung back in brief conversation. The table was tiny and near the small stage. Saltzman and his friend, still unintroduced, sat on one side, and the three of them huddled on the other. The set was starting.

“Uh, Bill,” Duncan began.

Saltzman looked at Duncan with his eyelids lowered and then raised in disbelief. He motioned they should listen. The first round of drinks was on the house: Saltzman was known here. The second Duncan bought. The bourbon hurt her stomach. The tenor sax was a name she had heard, though she had thought him dead: a contemporary of Charlie Parker. She listened conscientiously, conscientiously not looking at Saltzman. Her hands sweated cold.

Saltzman offered a cigarette. She fumbled. Politely he lit it. The sound was dull, finally. The music said little to her,
and after a while she was not listening but daydreaming about her next-to-last man, about getting published and getting laid and getting fed and keeping warm. She was drowsy and the music lulled her.

Duncan asked, “What’s that smell?”

She felt a stab on her thigh. “Oh, shit.” A hot ash had fallen from her cigarette and burnt through the dress. She brushed at it.

“What’s wrong?” Saltzman looked halfway interested.

“Nothing, nothing really.” Her face heated.

The waitress in short shorts brought another round and, after a longish pause, Duncan again paid. Fixing her gaze on Saltzman’s mustard beard she willed him to notice her, to speak. At last when the set finished, he did, asking gently, “What do you do with yourself?”

Hadn’t Duncan explained? “For a job you mean? I was teaching, and then—”

He nodded and leaned back as if his curiosity were satisfied. Quickly she added the important part. “But that’s just what I do to support it, you know. I mean, I write poems.”

His face shrank. Very quietly he mumbled, “Fuck.”

His friend said cheerfully, “Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it. They think it’s poetry, but it’s snot.”

Her words lay on the table like a fat turd. For a moment she hated him. Did he think he would be the last poet? Duncan, the bastard, had said nothing. Produced her as random female.

Saltzman turned to him. “That workshop, how about it? I expected to hear by now. Is it coming off?”

The friend was staring at Duncan with shrewd assessment. Duncan furrowed his brow. “Arrangements take time. Departments of English grind exceedingly slowly and grind exceedingly fine. I’m pushing for it, every chance I get.”

“Eh.” The friend’s mouth sagged. He shrugged his disbelief.

“I have to know soon. Other things depend on it.”

“Like he has to pay the rent.” His friend smirked. “And eat sometimes. Poets pay rent too. Ask the little lady.”

“I’m trying to get a decision,” Duncan said. “I’m trying to put it through. But you know how encrusted with tradition—

“Out on the west coast I had twelve readings in two weeks, including a couple of lectures.”

“Kids were standing up outside wanting to hear him,” the friend said. “Crowds of college kids.”

“By the way, Saturday the seventeenth we’re having a sort of pre-holiday thing. Wassail bowl and all, right, Rhoda? Most of the department will be there and the boys from the press, and we’d sure like to see you. And your friend too,” he added weakly, but the tone of the invitation was confident.

Saltzman’s old tomcat eyes went opaque. Duncan was putting it on the line. Even if Saltzman went, he wouldn’t know if Duncan could or would arrange the workshop. Cf. her vague feeling that Duncan could have saved her job. “Sounds fine,” said Saltzman. “I’ll let you know. I’m spending the holidays in New York, and I don’t know when I’m leaving.”

The friend did not reply. Rattling the ice in her glass Rhoda came alive to ask, “Don’t think I caught your name?”

“Charlie Roach,” he said, inclining his head.

“He’s one of the West Side roaches,” Saltzman said and caught Maud’s gaze as she smiled. She had given up. She pitied him with his grizzled beard and still needing Duncan.

Rhoda was being social. “And what do you do?” her voice slurred from rapid drinking.

Charlie grinned. His teeth were stained and worn down in his ruddy face. “Anything, Ma’am.”

“Charlie’s a true fan of the golden rule, though he likes to operate a little ahead of the beat.”

Rhoda was flustered, as designed, but Duncan was enjoying the show. They couldn’t shock him if they slit their
gullets on his tweeds. Saltzman lolled back, withdrawn. She remembered the poems in her purse and bowed her head, fingering the cigarette burn that had marred her dress.

They were leaving. As they passed the bar, guys here and there slapped Saltzman’s shoulder. On the sidewalk he halted, turned. For a moment he stared at her and she stared back. His eyes, ice green, were glacial crevasses, his mouth curled in a perhaps amused smile.

The eyes said he was bored sick with women wanting to fuck his name, with men wanting to suck his talent: he’d been used and used like an old toothpaste tube, he was well chewed. She looked back posturing, can’t you see my ineffable Name, I’m as real as you but you only wanted a young girl to chew on tonight: your mistake, Willy, I’m good and you won’t get into my biography for saving me, so there!

Following Duncan and Rhoda to the car she said hopefully, “Damn, I’m starving,” but nobody answered. In the back seat she huddled into Sandy’s coat. The first time she wore it she had found old Kleenexes in the pocket and unable to have preserved Sandy, preserved them. Then she caught a cold.

Not that long ago she had brooded over slitting her wrists: she felt ashamed. There were years, years yet of inventive tortures and deprivations, of hollow victories and bloody defeats. She no longer felt sorry for Saltzman. She would wear the same face. The worst that could happen then might be to meet a kid who had eaten her books and survived.

As for Duncan she could no longer afford his lasagna: she perceived he was her natural predator. The system supported him, and he supported the system. In any attempt to make a deal, he was more powerful than she and would prevail.

My daughter Suzie and my brother Adam really got after me about what they called my hoarding. I live alone. My husband died when he was just fifty-eight of one of those heart attacks that hit without warning. He was playing golf—something he enjoyed but was never much good at—with another dentist and two podiatrists on the Wednesday when he just keeled over on the fifth hole trying to bang his way out of a sand trap. At first they thought he was kidding them. I was only fifty then.

I continued working, of course. I was a paralegal for thirty years in a small law office that did mostly real estate, wills and probate and small business stuff. I was really as much a secretary as a paralegal, if I’m honest. But it wasn’t taxing. I liked the two men I worked for and it paid decently, a middling middle class wage, you might say. Four years ago, I retired. Actually they retired and closed the office, and at fifty-nine, I wasn’t about to get hired to do anything better than greeting folks at Wal-Marts or bagging at the supermarket.

I had the insurance from Walt. I’d put it in CDs like my boss recommended. I had Walt’s social security, which was better than mine would have been. I was okay. The mortgage on our house we paid off decades ago. It was the same house where I raised Suzie and my son Brady. Brady’s out in
Arizona, so I only see him maybe every couple of years when he sends me tickets to fly out there. The last time was for my granddaughter Olivia’s wedding. A very nice affair that must have set him back I can’t imagine how much. Olivia’s pregnant now, he tells me. I’ll be a great grandmother before I can take that in. Amazing. Makes me feel ninety.

Suzie tried to get me to move into an apartment, but why? I’m used to this house. I know my neighbors and they know me. We don’t hang out together, but we keep on eye on each other’s property and have a friendly chat over the fence now and then. I have a nice little garden out back and a two-car garage. This house has three bedrooms so I have plenty of room for my things. That’s what Suzie and Adam object to, as if there’s something wrong with liking bargains and pretty things and useful things other people throw away. If you ask me, people discard too many items nowadays. I feel sorry when I see a perfectly good lamp or glassware or a rug that’s still usable or even a flowerpot sitting in a dumpster or out on the street waiting for the pickup to be taken to the landfill. So I bring them home. I know I’ll get some use out of them by and by. And books and magazines. Perfectly fine to read. And VCR tapes. At garage sales I can always find something interesting. When you live alone, you appreciate entertainment. I always have the TV on even when I’m reading. It’s company. I like to keep up with the news and a few of my favorite programs, but mostly I appreciate hearing another human voice.

So I collected. Who cares except my busybody daughter and then she enlisted my older brother, who always used to try to boss me around before I married. He and his wife, Liz. She gives me a pain in the you-know-where. She seems to feel superior that she never worked. So she stayed home and raised two children. Big deal. I worked and raised two children and they turned out just fine. She always has her hair done and her nails too. As if at our age, anybody gives
a damn, excuse my language, what her nails look like and if they’re pink or red or purple. I’m too busy to fuss about my nails. Long red talons would never survive one of my scouting trips, collecting the wonderful stuff people discard. Besides, until Suzie butted in, Liz and Adam had no idea about my hobby. We always met in a restaurant (they paid). Liz had no desire to come by my house, and I have even less of a desire to visit them. I’d visited once and everything was so tidy and white and black I kept being afraid I’d spill coffee on that huge white couch as big as a boat. Adam and I never did have much in common.

So what if I filled up the dining room with my finds and the spare bedrooms and the hall that leads to them and half the living room. Who am I about to dine with, anyhow? What do I need spare bedrooms for? In the living room I store my reading material and VCR tapes and some extra VCRs people threw away. You can’t buy a simple VCR any longer, and I keep about a dozen spares for when they go on the fritz. I’m always watching for them because I have a library of almost a thousand perfectly good tapes I can watch whenever I choose. My daughter calls it a mess, but I have them all cataloged. Just ask me. I can pull out any show I want, great old movies, some I saw and loved, others I never got a chance to see. Going to the movies used to be cheap, but now it’s too rich for my purse. Why would I need to go to the movies anyhow with people nowadays being so rude and talking all through the movie and yakking on their cell phones? I have enough movies so I can see one whenever I choose. Now isn’t that luxury? Every tape is catalogued. I have an old file cabinet I found behind the office building on 8th Street and in it every single book and magazine and VCR tape is listed, so I can pull out what I want. It may look a junkyard to Suzie, but it just plain isn’t—or rather wasn’t.