The New York (6 page)

“Dogs get mad, people get angry”

“All right, angry then.”

“Nothing,” Charlene said.

“Charlene,” I explained, “I had to get the ink on that contract before George changed his mind.”

“Ryan Patrick, I think your friend George is going insane,” Charlene said.

“He's been there for years. I told you that before. But money is money. And he ain't my friend, I only work there.”

“And you got your money and now you'll have to sleep with it,” she said.

When she's upset, her metaphors get sloppy. I said, “I talk to you four days ago and you had to cancel a dinner reservation at Tony's. You honestly blame me for sticking around New York for a couple of days to get assured of a job for next year?”

“Jack Wade offered you a job.”

That was it. Or part of it. I just forgot about Jack Wade in all this. And Jack and Charlene went to college together, I think. Jack was married, but that rarely matters with car dealers. On the other hand, maybe it was something else besides Jack Wade.

“You didn't want me to sign again?”

“What does it ever matter what I want, Ryan?”

“We'd have that much more to open that restaurant,” I said.

“Don't patronize me, Ryan,” she said.

There is nothing more miserable than being in the middle of Missouri at night talking by phone to your woman who is seven hundred miles away and she's pissed at you. So I told her that.

“There you go, Ryan. Feeling sorry for yourself. Look around you, Ryan. The world is full of people who could use a little pity. You're a major league baseball player making more money for each game you're in than most people make in a year of working. You can feel sorry for them.”

“Like Jack Wade,” I said.

“Like him.”

“Jack Wade can take care of hisself. Hey, Charlene, I did what you said, I put more money into Latin America “

“That's nice,” she said. “You still got that Canadian steel?”

“I guess so, it hasn't come up in my thinking so I must still have it,”

“I'd dump it if I had it,” she said.

That's what I mean, she's always thinking on three tracks at once.

“Well, then I'll get rid of it”

“You do what you want, Ryan Patrick. You always have. No one can tell you nothing.” Back to Track Number One, train now leaving.

“Not even poor li'l old Charlene Cleaver.”

“Charlene don't ever need a man's pity,” Charlene said, and that was it. She didn't slam the phone down, but she might as well have, it was that final. I knew if I called back now, I wouldn't get through. I think I saw where the conversation had been heading — right into a train wreck — but sometimes you hurry it along to get to the punch line anyway.

And when I finally fell asleep that night in Missouri, I dreamed of Charlene and Deke in the same dream with George. Sam was in the dream, too. They were all telling me what a sorry-ass dope I was and how every bad thing that was going to happen was my own fault. And some of the dream was in Spanish, which made me wake up sweating.

I didn't know — did not have a clue then — that Chariene was mad at me for reasons completely different from anything I imagined. It was just as well I didn't know, because I would have ended up driving all eight just to be with her.

George dumped a bunch of players in the next ten days while the World Series was engrossing the rest of the country. Not a trade. A dump. Con-tracts were up and he just dumped them. The New York newspapers were hounding him, but George mostly let Miss Foster take care of the reporters. He was spotted in Chicago with his pal from the White Sox, but before anyone could get to him, he was down in Kansas City with another owner and pal, and so it went, day after day, with George slicing skin off his payroll with the subtlety of a hunter gutting deer.

I did not get a warm welcome in Houston from anybody. Got in about eight
P.M
. after a grueling drive on a bad, rainy day. I rented a studio at the Longhorn Arms and sent out my laundry and called Charlene. She didn't answer, I put on my cowboy boots and went down to Mickey's Place and drank some beer and tried to get in the mood of being back in Texas. Texas, if I had to explain it, is sly and full of itself. Sort of like China used to be, the center of the world. It can get on your nerves, but Texans don't mean nothing by it, it just goes with the spaces they live in. Being in Texas is wearing boots without feeling like you're wearing a costume on Halloween. The country music was about Budweiser and losing a good woman and Budweiser again. It made me sad for myself. I went to the pay phone and called Charlene. Still no answer. It was about midnight then and I decided I could either sleep in my car or try out my bed at the Long horn Arms. I opted for the bed and slept till morning.

It was raining and dreary and it made my pitching arm ache. I drank some coffee and ate a bowl of chili at Ernie's Cafe, then I went by Jack Wade's store. “Store” is what the auto dealers call their showrooms when they're talking to each other. I tried to pick up those terms.

Jack was in because it was only eleven and Jack never went out to lunch before 11:20
A.M
. He also never came back once he was gone to lunch un- less he ran into someone at a bar who wanted desperately to buy a Honda right then and there.

Jack was about thirty-five, which was Charlene's age, and he was hefty and soft-looking, except for the eyes. Every owner in the world has the same eyes. Jack and George were born to be owners of men.

“Nice of you to come by,” Jack said in his drawl, the one that is heard on commercials on cable all night long. He didn't hold out his hand while I settled my bones on a straight chair in his office. He just sat there, belly sprawled out in that squeaky swivel chair, going back and forth. On the walls, he had a picture of himself with former governor Anne Richards and another with present governor Jeb Bush. I wonder if he switched them around depending on whether he was selling a Republican or a yellow dog Democrat.

“I had me some bidness to clean up in New York,” I said I said “bid-ness” because Jack likes to think talking funny is a sign of sincerity. If he was from Georgia, you wouldn't have been able to understand a word he said because Georgia people are hanging in there with their accents, no matter how much television they watch. Texas does yawls and all, but every passing year, another kid loses his critters and druthers. We all are going to end up talking like they do in Omaha on the 800 telephone line.

“You all ready to start, Ry?”

“Well, Jack, that's it. I got me a contract for another year.”

“Is that a fact? Seen in the
Chronicle
it was, that your crazy Jew boss in New York is gonna dismantle the team. How come is it he isn't dismantling you ‘long with those others?”

“Not a Jew, Bremenhaven,” I said. “German.”

“Same difference,” said Jack Wade. “Why is that? I mean, you getting a new contract? I thought you thought you was at the end of the trail, pard-ner.”

“Turns out I wasn't,” I said. I might owe explanations to Charlene, but I'd be goddamned if I would owe one to Jack Wade.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Just as well, pardner. Just as well. I don't think I could've used you now,”

That went through me like a butcher knife in a watermelon. I said, “Why's that?”

“I didn't know about your tax problem,” Jack said, leaning back in his swivel chair.

“I got no tax problem “

“Is that right?”

“That's right.”

“You got no tax problem.”

“Why you think I got a tax problem?”

“Why I think that is that when the tax man come by a day ago and sat down with me and we close the door, the Yankee son of a bitch I thought was looking me over was looking you over. He wanted to know what I paid you last winter both over and under the counter and that the gummint appreciated my cooperation. Then he toF me not to tell no one, just keep it under my hat.”

“Like you're doing,” I said.

“Well, shit, it's a free country. Besides, he shook me up so much I was over at Ernie's before noon and Ernie says that when the gummint comes lookin' for someone, you best not have nothin' to do with that someone. And besides, you never did call me from New York City, I don't know what you been doin' up there. And then I seen Charlene on Post Street and tol' her about the gummint and you and your tax trouble and she just buttoned up like she was frozen and walked away. I offered to buy her a drink for old times.”

“And she didn't take it.”

“Not that I recall,” Jack said. It was as certain as Jack ever is about what happens in late afternoon, let alone at night.

“Well, Jack, I'll tell you one thing. I ain't got no tax problem with the gummint,”

“Let me give you a word of advice, Ryan. If the gummint says you got a tax problem with them, you got a problem.”

“I ain't.”

“I don't care,” Jack said. “I just don't want to get involved in it. I got a bidness to run and I can't have a baseball player as my P.R. man who is wanted for fraud or something by the U.S. gummint. It might attract a certain clientele but it would drive just as many away.”

When I left Jack, I didn't even say good-bye. I was plain mad — angry — and confused, and jest a little bit thinking about Deke Williams telling me that the government got me by the balls now with that confidential thing I signed for George and how he wasn't going to call me on the telephone anymore for fear it might be tapped.

I drove out to Rice University Hospital, which is a big complex where they do routine miracles of healing and research. I admire it greatly and more so since Charlene showed me around one day to the good things being done there Charlene was due to be working. I parked in the visitors' lot and walked three or four miles through the complex to the building where Charlene hung out.

I saw her when I stepped off the elevator.

It's a special, even warm kind of thing to spy on someone you are crazy for when they don't know you're there. She was writing something down and biting her lip the way she does sometimes and I just wanted to give her a kiss long enough to last till morning.

“Charlene,” I said instead.

She looked up at me and said nothing for a moment. Then she put down her pen and got up. She was wearing brown slacks and a brown sort of blouse with pleats and her black hair was tied back with a red piece of rope or yarn. She has incredible skin, which I won't go into describing because I can't. I can say her eyes are gray and they go from the edge of blue to the edge of an Arctic kind of ocean, depending on what she's thinking about. Her eyes were about medium at this moment.

She stepped from behind her desk and came around to me, but she didn't give me a hug, which I expected her to do. “Come on, Ryan,” she said.

She led me to a cafeteria at the end of the hall where we got coffee and carried it to an empty table. We sat down at almost the same time. I told her she looked beautiful. It had been five weeks since I last saw her.

“When did you get in?”

I told her, and told her about going to see Jack Wade, but I didn't tell her about Jack Wade and the tax man. And I didn't tell her about Deke Williams and his conspiracy theory of government.

“What are you going to do?”

“I guess get a job for the winter,” I said.

“But not with Jack.”

“He rethought the whole thing and figured he couldn't use me right now,” I said, making it light and easy. Telling the truth is just frying eggs in bacon grease. Lying is making an omelette. “No hard feelings. I figure maybe I can get back on with Bruce Construction, if they're doing anything.”

“Back to the hammer and saw.”

“Honest work,” I said.

“It's that,” she said. There was trouble in her gray eyes still. She wasn't exactly here at the table with me, she was somewhere out of the hospital, I figured.

“Charlene, I been honest with you,” I lied. “I really miss you and I'm glad to be back in Houston but I got to know if you got someone else on the line now and if I'm a thing of your past.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because I been trying to reach you and you're always out.”

“You think I should hang around a telephone on the chance you might take time out from your busy social life and call?”

“What has gotten into you, Charlene? Five weeks ago, we was lovey and dovey. A week ago when I called telling you I was staying in New York a couple of days, we were still cooing and doing each other. Now, the last couple of nights, I been on the road coming home, it's all changed.”

“Maybe it all changed a while ago,” Charlene said. “Maybe you were just stringing me along. And then you tell me you're rehired by the team just when everyone else is getting fired.”

“What's got into your head?”

“Miss Roxanne Devon,” she said. Just like that. As if it meant anything to me.

“Who?”

“Come off it,” Charlene said.

“I never heard of such a person in my life,” I said.

“Roxanne Devon is not a common name.”

“Not to me. It would of stood out if I had met anyone with a name like that.”

“She lives in New Jersey and she wrote me. I got the letter Tuesday and she was telling me about you and her and how she was now shocked to find out that you had a woman on the side in Houston. It was some letter,” Charlene said. She said it in an even voice with only a little sarcasm thrown in.

“You believe that?”

“What should I believe? What's convenient for you, Ryan?”

“Charlene, I have had girlfriends and girlfriends, which is only natural because I am thirty-eight years old and of the heterosexual persuasion but you are it and you have been it for the year we've known each other. There ain't no Roxanne or Tanya or Mary or Janie or anyone else and I resent your thinking there would be,” I said.