The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man (9 page)

BOOK: The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man
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The Hardware was jammed with Christmas crowd, especially in the area around the annual exhibition model railroad.

Tom didn’t like what they had done with the opportunity. “There’s no program to it,” he said. “It’s the whatever layout. An any-which-way world. Where’s the real life in it? Authority. Questions about existence.”

“I always wanted a trestle bridge,” said Lloyd. “And even…now, don’t laugh at me, okay?...an engineer’s striped cap when I run the train.”

Tom grinned.

There was another layout in the store, smaller and lacking audience. But when Tom investigated, he came back to Lloyd and pulled him by the arm to see it: a mountainous geography in which track hurtled around corners between some sort of arrogant industrial construction and an innocent, victimized little town.

Lloyd nodded. He liked it when Tom pulled him along by the arm, and when Tom analyzed the missions of the trains, and when folks in the store stared admiringly at Tom and wondered if he and Lloyd were related.

 

 

Another Saturday and more of The Game. Lucy and the kids were at Lucy’s mother’s, so it was just that horrible Jake, who came crashing into Lloyd’s room with “I’m going to ball you like a chick, short stuff!”


Tom
!” cried Lloyd, at his desk, his eyes fixed on his computer screen.

From the living room, Tom amiably called out, “Leave my housemate alone, Jake!”

“When do we tell him?” Jake called back.

Lloyd waited till Tom appeared to ask him, “Tell me what?”

Jake answered. “Officer McThomas Buckner here made things hot for my realtor to even the score for, like, when he was blackening your fair name.” To Tom, Jake added, “Except will that compromise the sale of my house?”

“Told you from the start to get another realtor, didn’t I?”

“What happened, exactly?” Lloyd asked, turning around in his chair.

“That guy who started the rumor you were skipping out on your lease,” Tom replied. “A true weasel.”

“Just before you came,” said Jake, “he tried to sell me his sister.” Mock-solemn, Jake pulled off his cowboy hat and held it over his heart.

“What happened, Tom?” Lloyd asked again.

And again it was Jake who answered, as he put his Stetson back on his head: “My scumbag of a realtor was showing the house when Tom and I blew in. Very nice couple looking at it. Young marrieds from the Baptist church on Winneshiek. After all the screaming, they’ll never look at houses again.”

“When was this?”

“This morning,” said Tom. “Helping Jake move his stuff out of the garage to the scrapyard, and we saw—”

“Officer
McThomas offered to arrest my realtor, who began yelping a certain amount here and there all over my house.”

“Arrest him for inventing those lies about me?” asked Lloyd, closing down his laptop. “Accusing me of trying to sneak out on my lease?”

“Arrest him for he’s a stupid irritating perv, how about?” said Tom.

“Which Officer
McThomas proceeded to state at the time,” Jake added. “
In
so many words, and I couldn’t be happier.”

“He tried to pretend that he didn’t remember you,” said Tom. “All a misunderstanding, as many a felon will say. Haven’t I seen his act before, with deceitful eyes looking away as he double-talks me? Not to mention poking his fingers at me—physical provocation, designed to infuriate officers of the law. Very popular among that type.”

Jake cut in with, “So Officer McThomas is, like, ‘Oh, right, you don’t remember?’ A guy such as you does
not
remember a handsome fellow like the housemate here?” Looking at Lloyd, Jake added, “And in your cute shorts, too, right?”

“Jake—”

“Did you tell him that, Tom?”

Another of Tom’s silences. It sounded odd in the room after the quick overturn of voices. Both Lloyd and Jake, used to Tom’s momentary lulls, simply waited.

“He won’t bother you again,” said Tom at last. “I know that much.”

Jake suddenly went very still, slowly turning around to end up looking right at Lloyd. Then he whispered, “Do you know what I’m going to do to you, little
jazzboy?”

“You hold on there, Jake,” said Tom.

Lloyd stood up, his eyes blazing, as Tom grabbed Jake with “You going to miss the pre-game for me, now, Jake?”

“Let me smooch him up?”


Out
!” Tom cried, though he winked at Lloyd as he and Jake left.

Moving the laptop to one side, Lloyd sat back down, taking out a sheaf of the blank copy paper he had laid in. Now it begins: he made his first rough diagrams for the model railroad he and Tom would build. It would take many hours and a ton of sheets, but when Lloyd was sure of what he had he was going to make four-color plans to show Tom: a layout with fascinating towns, a mountain overlooking a trestle bridge, and perhaps a roundhouse for storing the rolling stock. Real life in it. Then they could start construction.

 

 

Tom was already on it, picking up four by eight plywood sheets, raw wood for joists and stringers, and two by fours from the lumber yard for the raising of the table. Sturdy. Permanent. Upon it, a little world would form and evolve as a simple starting oval reached out to branch lines and turnouts, as graded inclines accommodated the surrounding geography, as roads and figures socialized the space.

Tom and Lloyd worked on their table only when both were free at the same time, because it was theirs to create together; if either was to sneak in and advance the project by himself, it would have felt like adultery. Tom set up a miniature tool bay there, where his father had lived and died, with an X-
Acto knife folded into a safety case, needle-nose pliers, a screwdriver set, tweezers, a rail nipper, a mill file and needle files, pastels and dull cote for weathering, paints and brushes, and a variety of adhesives for work with plastic, metal, or wood.

“Aviator glasses?” asked Lloyd, rummaging around in the shallow see-through plastic tray while Tom worked on the table.

“When you cut rail,” said Tom, aligning one table leg with a corner of the top, “little bits of metal go crashing right up at you.”

Striking a pose in the glasses, Lloyd said, “’Men, this mission we fly today will save a corrupt and unknowing world!’”

“How about you fetch me the hammer which I can’t reach it while holding all this together, instead of playacting the day away?”

Handing over the hammer, Lloyd said, “’Commander, the men are proud to serve under you.’” Tom suppressed a smile as Lloyd added, “’They’re too shy to tell you themselves, sir.’”

“How about giving me a little room, Lindbergh?”

“Boy, you really could have started this thing anytime, Tom. You always had it in mind, right? Why did you wait till now?”

Working a nail a half-inch into the wood before he hammered it, Tom said, “I sent for the Walther’s catalogue. From Wisconsin.” After hammering a bit, he put in, “Because they won’t have everything we need in The Hardware. We can make a start, sure. First purchase is always a locomotive, right? Track and a bit of stock. Gravel, tree stuff. Maybe a house or two. Get the feel of the thing as it begins.”

“Gosh, there’s so much…
makingness in it. I guess that’s why guys get so proud of their layouts.”

“Didn’t you do any building on that railroad at the orphanage?”

“It was all built when we got it. The family came over and set it up for us. The Hickses, by name. Then they shook hands with us, and we just started running it.”

Tom readied another nail in the wood. “Shook hands with you?”

“Yes. Even the youngest kids in the family. It was very ceremonial, and they said ‘Good morning’ while they did it. Sister Charity lined us up for it, and I liked it so much that I got back on line so I could shake hands again.”

Tom hammered the nail home.

“Later on, we’d ask if we could add some buildings to the layout, but Sister said that would be ungrateful.”

Tom leaned the table top along the wall and turned to Lloyd with the grin he wore when he teased. “Sister Charity, was it? Wonder if you boys ever jacked off to a thought of Sister Charity when she wasn’t solving problems like Maria.”

“That would be blasphemy eight times over.”

Tousling Lloyd’s hair, Tom said, “Let’s get this place cleaned up, now.”

“What about the towns, Tom?” Lloyd asked, as they put the room to rights. “Plastic models or build our own?”

Collecting the tools and nesting them in the bay, Tom offered, “That start-from-scratch
hobbycrafting stuff never really works. Everything ends up looking like a cake decoration. I’d stick with the kits. The Walther’s book will give us a fine selection. Maybe we’ll rip a few of them up and put them together in our own way, if you so desire. Personalize it, you know.”

“Boy. We could start any day, right?”

“Soon as we get this table up and you take off those dopey glasses.”

 

 

After law enforcement and the gym, Tom gave most of his time to Lucy, and weekends were official Tom Days for the kids. Still, Tom and Lloyd stole stray hours out of Tom’s schedule, and, as winter set in, the table was all but finished. Tom continued to observe that Lloyd roamed about town in a coat meant for autumn. Lloyd replied that he didn’t do all that much roaming.

“Rebellious as ever” was Tom’s assessment.

But at least all of Lloyd’s places were nearby. His relationship with the newspaper was conducted online, and his gym and shopping lay in the mall across the road. The only real jaunt in Lloyd’s routine was his bike ride to the pool party. And, as it happened, Lloyd hadn’t been attending much lately.

In fact, Lloyd hadn’t been going at all. Then—greatly to his surprise—Junior made one of those “Hello, stranger” phone calls.

“Everybody’s asking for you,” Junior told him. “Clark says you’ve found a racier crowd. You know how he likes to speculate. Who could they be, Lloyd?”

“The crowd I found isn’t racy.”

“So there
is
another set! Will you write your newspaper columns about them now? We’ve got new slang for you, though. When Clark really freaks for something, he says, ‘That is so
distributed
.’ I use it, too.”

Lloyd missed them. He remembered wryly, fondly, how Junior would rush over when Clark launched some new bit of mischief to join in on it,  or how the servants would go professionally blind when Clark announced “The Las Vegas Pas de
Deux Contest” and dared one of the girls to take part. And Lloyd missed the hyper food presentations and swimming in the heated water and he missed Portia.

But showing hunger is the first sin, and Lloyd carefully doesn’t mention Portia to Junior. He waits Junior out, because Lloyd is certain this call is an assignment. And as anyone can tell you, it isn’t Clark or
Annamarie who gives the orders in that group.

And yet. They kept on talking without Junior’s ever quite getting to Portia. He had no message from her to Lloyd—no she wants to see you again or is so sorry for fixing a low rating on you or dismissing you with that ray gun of the
haveitall young.

No, Junior sailed right along to “You’ll come tonight, won’t you? I know you will, guy, with those smart grownup’s jokes of yours, and your manly charm.”

 

 

 

Doesn’t anybody work around here besides the servants? Lloyd wondered, as they took his things. It isn’t vacationland any more. Summer is over. It’s time to begin. But those kids were still
foofing around. Lloyd tried to picture growing up with them at St. Catherine’s, imagining how they would suit the havenothing culture of thrown-away children living on a state budget. No—here she is: Portia. It costs money to smile to like that, Lloyd thought, as she came toward him.

“My lovely Lloyd,” she said. “You’ve been writing about such incongruous things of late. The etiquette for watching television football. Shoppers at the Hardware. And model trains!”

She gently waved a no-no finger at him, then took his hand and kissed it.

“Hello, Portia.”

She looked very right. Not…sumptuous, no, but sweet and able. If I were Clark, she’d say yes in a second, wouldn’t she?

Annamarie
and Junior crowded around, welcoming Lloyd with more than casual warmth, he thought. And Clark paid him the ultimate compliment, guiding Lloyd’s hands to Clark’s upper arm to feel the separations.

“See how nice?” Clark asked him, and of course Junior cut in with “Try mine!”

Lloyd was looking at Portia.

“They’re children,” she told him, with such appeal, such guiltless beauty. “You can tell them anything, and they’ll believe. You can take them anywhere, and they’ll have fun.”

Lloyd had carefully planned his speech; now he forgot the words. He drew her away from the others. He said, “I’ve missed you.”

BOOK: The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man
6.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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