Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (18 page)

After a brief tangle with a phone book, I walked the sixteen blocks to Lila’s apartment. I thought it was only right not to call ahead. At this early hour, she’d be sure to be home.

Lila lived in Whilewillow Village, not a village at all but a large, multi-unit, cubist, prefab, apartment building surrounded by sixty hedges designed to hide all the seams. The architect involved in Whilewillow Village lives somewhere else, and comfortably on the money he should have been divorced from in a malpractice suit. After I located the front entrance, which was closer to the rear, I climbed to the fourth floor and knocked loudly on Lila’s door. I was debating whether to open with: “Remember me?” or “Okay, you shit, we’re going to tell the police about being at the drive-in; come on,” when the door opened and Wayne Hardell pulled me into the apartment. Oh la.

Big Nicky, looking bigger than ever was seated on the brown sofa, and Wayne Gunn sat next to him looking at the pictures in
T. V. Star Magazine
. Hardell shut the door.

“Hey, Larry. How you doing? We heard your name on the radio tonight.” Nicky said. He was wearing his triple knits again, a light green leisure suit. The shirt had vast triangular collars which framed his florid face like a platter.

“No doubt. You’re looking relatively sporty, Nicky, I hope your presence here portends the assistance I seek.” No one said anything. The tangible sense of assault and battery was in the air. It was one of those situations where to cope one needs to have been drinking. Since it was all thin ice anyway, I skated on: “Look fellas, friends, and former colleagues, I need a grain of assistance … by the way thanks for all the cards and letters, flowers, and news, while I was in prison … Nicky, I thought you of all people would try to send out a file … Listen, I simply want to clear my name and to be reunited with my recently abused truck once again. I’ve been fleeing things and serving your time, going backwards long enough. If the credible trio of yourselves, or Lila, or Darrel Teeth, would step up and tell them where and why I was while you were climbing telephone poles in Beaver and shooting at strangers, why then I could begin again going nearly forward with this malady known humorously as my life. Come on, Nicky, please.”

They said nothing. I counted them: one, two, three. Wayne Hardell stood out of the hunker he was keeping beside Nicky and moved to the window indifferently, like a man looking for a bus. Then he walked behind me to the door and squinted at all of us. Since he was the only thing moving in the room we all watched him. When he turned, I looked at Nicky.

“Oh shit, Nicky.”

“Yeah, I hate this stuff,” the fat man said. “I have to leave, Larry.” He was the one buffer between me and the unspoiled meanness of the Waynes.

“Oh, shit.”

Nick pushed and lifted himself out of the couch and squirmed for awhile pulling the green knit slacks out of the crevice of his awesome rear-end, saying, “Larry, oh Larry. We want you to not ask us these things. We want you to forget. We don’t know what you are talking about.” He opened his arms in a gesture of sincerity and honesty, those things, and then he smiled. “We thank you for your help and we hope you have learned something while you were at the facilities.”

“Prison, Nick, prison, from which I had to escape risking my neck in order to be treated to this? Look, Nick,” it was time to plead, “My fiancee, a girl who received from me the same affection you bear the noble Lila, will never communicate with me again unless my name is made clean.”

“Many men, Larry, are far happier as bachelors. Goodbye.”

“Where’s Lila, Nicky?”

“Who?”

“Oh, I see.”

“Goodbye, Larry, I don’t want to see you again.” Nicky walked to the door; Hardell held it open for him.

“Nick, oh shit. Instruct your fine apprentice here not to strike me with any metal objects, wrenches, for instance.”

“I’m just happy we were able to capture you before you committed further crimes against society. Bye, bye.” Hardell closed the door on this portion of my possibilities and turned, facing me.

“Come on, Wayne, don’t squint at me that way. We’re colleagues, remember?” I moved back before he stepped on me. He wanted to hit me pretty badly. It had been hard on him waiting while Nick and I negotiated.

Wayne Gunn said: “Come on, we can’t stay.” He indicated me with his forefinger while looking at Hardell. “Do this.” Hardell stepped for me again.

Hardell kicked me. I couldn’t believe it. It was a sharp kick with the toe of his wing tip and I could feel the skin barked. “Oh, kick me, you big man,” was all I could manage. My cleverness was up to its neck in fear. Hardell was five inches taller than I.

“Knock him out and let’s go.” Gunn said.

Hardell hit me in the face. I took it on the right cheek bone, and it knocked me down. I then made the mistake of springing right back up. I did it, I suppose, to assure myself that I was still alive. My temper, also, that odd monster of emotion I rarely glimpse, rose finally like the dripping head of Godzilla from Tokyo harbor, ready to bite.

“Look, you crooks,” my voice broke to a tenor as I danced, hands out, beyond kicking range, “crimes have been committed; I did not commit …” There was a serious shortage in the room of heavy objects such as lead pipes or candlesticks for me to raise and strike villains with. “And you mindless bastards did. And we know it! Everyone in this room knows. Now …” Gunn stepped on the sofa cutting off my last escape. Absurdly, I raised the phone book at them. “Watch out!” I yelled. It was a pretty good yell. As the book fell open in my hand, no friend’s number in sight, Hardell jump-stepped and socked my forehead. My head hit the wall instantly, and Gunn lowered an entire mahogany coffee table on the part in my raised hair. True, I had not yet begun to etcetera when the lights inked, and my body followed my wilting clothing to the floor. Through the murky canvas of unconsciousness, I thought I could hear Wayne Gunn phoning the police. I kept hearing the word, “whereabouts,” “whereabouts,” and then the busy signal and the distant ringing.

I awoke in Lila’s apartment at dawn. My neck was sore when I moved it one way, and as I ran my hand over the muscles I felt the stiff brown line of caked blood that led up through my hair to a new tender extrusion on my scalp. It was as big as the Ritz. Every time I pressed it with my fingers, my eyes closed involuntarily. For a moment I felt like the last true phrenologist: “Son, your skull tells me that your life has become distorted.” Then my leg began to sting where I had been kicked.

Ah violence, that cleanser. We do not solve our problems, we kill them. Wrenches and tables are more instrumental in problem-solving than psychiatrists will ever be. “Violence,” from “vio” (Latin) meaning wooden club, bludgeon, and “lence” meaning the hands of a villain, my head, no help. I sat on the floor, opening and closing my eyes, waiting for things to become lovely again. Then I remembered the police.

Had Wayne Gunn called? Would they be here any minute? Are they here now? I jumped up to look out the window, and sat suddenly down again. Then the blood came back and I stood up. The bulge on my scalp felt as if it would burst. I still hadn’t heard my name on the bullhorn: “Okay Larry, come out. Throw down the machine gun. We know you’re in there!”

Outside the snow had melted except for the crescents on a few car tops. The police did not have the place surrounded. No one had the place surrounded. The streets were clear. A woman stood at leash-end nonchalantly looking the other way while her twin Saint Bernards had their massive holiday near the front tire of one of the parked cars. I could hear birds recovering from the snow, ready to continue now with the last of summer.

The police had not come, which did not surprise me. It does not seem to be a causal world.

I washed my face and noted Lila’s cosmetics arranged like a minor city on the counter in the bathroom. She still lived here all right; just not when I was around. Nicky saw to that. Rubbing my face with the towel I started to feel better: brash and healthy like the escaped convict that I was. I could also sense renewal in that I was getting angry.

I dialed the police and stuck a corner of the towel in my mouth.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I said. “This is Larry Boosinger. Have there been any calls for me?”

“Hello, Hello?”

“Hello! This is Larry Boosinger. You know, I escaped from the pen last night, and I wondered why the police haven’t answered the call they received …”

“Hello, sir, you’ll have to speak more clearly.”

I pulled the towel out of my mouth.

“Hello, sir, can you speak just a little slower.”

I hung up. They are trying to ignore me, I thought. They are not even tracing the call. They probably do not trace calls anymore. I was supposed to be wanted by the police. I went back to the window and looked at the empty street where the woman was being dragged away by her two monumental housepets. It was another brand-new day, and I wasn’t going to blow it.

I called Eldon and let it ring thirty times. A voice answered: “Kenny here.” The new roommate.

“Where’s Eldon?”

“Right here. Hold on.”

“Hello?” It was Eldon’s voice.

“What do you think of the third as compared to the first person?”

“Christ, what happened?”

“I’m at large.”

“You don’t sound any different. Where are you?”

“Whilewillow Village. I’ll be the citizen in overalls standing in front.”

“Moustache?”

“Not yet. Hey. Bring some of my clothes.”

I left a note taped to Lila’s mirror:

Twenty minutes later Eldon picked me up in his car.

“I shouldn’t do this,” he said. “Most hitchhikers are ex-convicts.”

“Most folks are criminals too. How are you?”

“Fine. Let’s go fishing.” he said. His helmet seemed the perfect artifact of homecoming.

“Might as well. Prison escape, poaching. It’s all the same.”

“Escape, oh boy! Fill me in.”

So I told him the sandy, lumpy, twisted historical romance of the last twenty-four hours. When I finished, he was silent. He looked at me, his mouth a line. I felt suddenly vulnerable, uncertain of what to add. It must have been how he felt returning from the hospital. I remembered how we’d joked about the skull brace he wore. I finally had talked him into throwing the gruesome thing away, and we went downtown in February to purchase a football helmet. I’d wanted one with wings or ram’s horns on it, but, since it was the off season, we’d had to settle for the red one. In the street right after he’d put it on (I made him), he said, “Are you sure about this?”

“I am if it’s you in there.”

Now, in his car, I looked at his mouth which began to quaver. Then: the laughter. He laughed and laughed until I laughed briefly at his laughing. There were tears from laughing, and he had to pull over as he couldn’t breathe from laughing.

“This is funny. This is very funny,” I said. “You can stop laughing; there is no goddamned reward.”

“A table. A coffee table.” He arched back in the seat and laughed extremely, making only a little noise. Then he put his hand on my head and felt the bump. “Not bad. You should wear a helmet.” Collapsing again.

“Are you going to be all right?” I said. “I mean do you want me to drive so you can enjoy yourself?”

“Hello, Larry,” he answered. “It is so goddamned fine to see you again.”

“On behalf of my head, I’d like to say that it is very fine to be here.”

The sun was on the edge of the Wasatch Front, and the shadows were receding on the far side of the valley. The barren Oquirrh Mountains were becoming golden.

“You have arrived just in time for the fun,” Eldon said.

“Meaning what?”

This.” He reached into the backseat which as always was littered with novels, biographies, and newspapers, and he handed me a page of the newspaper. He pointed to a half-page ad.

I read:
“GRAND SLAM STOCK CAR DEMOLITION DRAG RACE SPECTACULAR!!
Uinta Raceway proudly announces the finale of the season.
ALL
or
NOTHING
for more than a dozen famous entrants. See Championship Crashdriving as that Daring Demo Duo Gunn and Hardell take on the Lone Racer Darrel Teeth in a Knock Down! Tow Away! Demo Derby! Bring the whole family to see these Daredevils. Slams! Bangs! Thrills!” The race was scheduled in two days.

“Gunn, Hardell, and Teeth!” I looked at Eldon.

“Yes, and I’ll bet Nicky and Lila as well. I was afraid I’d be going to the races alone.” He smiled. “I’ve been following these guys all summer. They closed down the Flying W, you know. I guess it got hot for them after you fell, and Nicky’s over near Roosevelt selling ‘used’ cars and fixing the stock-car races.”

“We’re going to the races,” I said, staring out at morning in the valley.

“Yep. Unless you’d like to call a lawyer and tell him everything and start and finish things the
right
way.”