Fridays at Enrico's (7 page)

But a long time ago, when he had first decided to become a writer, he sat down and thought about the various ways to go. He could just start writing. Put down his experiences and what he thought about them. That was what had gotten him into this in the first place: the things he had seen. The way they made him feel. Or another way to go would be to sit down and doggedly read through all the war novels and see what had already been done. The drawback being that he might end up imitating the other war writers, and
that was not what he wanted to do. Hell, he wanted to write the
Moby Dick
of war. Or at least try. The third option was to get a college degree, though he had not graduated from high school. Just learn what they could teach. He did have a GED certificate, given him by the army when they thought they were going to make him into an officer, so he could get into some college that didn't have too high standards. He ended up doing all three.

Funny how things happen, though. Here was this ten-thousand-dollar gift, the same amount the army would have paid his father if he'd been killed. All he had to do for it was finish his novel, which he intended to do anyway. But here he was, unexpectedly in love with a girl who was unexpectedly pregnant. Just at the exact moment in history when he could afford to get married. He could even afford to quit parking for El Miranda and settle down to full-time writing and reading.

He had read all the war novels he could stand, just to find out what was left for him to say, from
The Gallery
, by John Horne Burns, and
Guard of Honor
, by James Gould Cozzens, all the way to
War and Peace
, by Guess Who. He read Hemingway and Dos Passos and Mailer and Jones. He read
The Red Badge of Courage
. They all had two things in common. They were great books and great writers, all far beyond anything Charlie Monel could do even if he spent the rest of his life writing. Two lives. Especially that fucking Tolstoy, who almost made it worth Charlie's while to commit suicide. You want to talk about your
Moby Dick
of war, Jesus . . .

The only thing left for Charlie, should he decide to continue his meaningless career, was to say what went on in Korea and Japan while he had been there. What had happened in Kim Song. What his fellow POWs had been like. What he had been like. That stuff was left to him. Otherwise he would have quit long ago.

Now the only problem he faced was talking Jaime into getting married. He'd fallen in love a fraction of a second after he first saw her, he decided. It wasn't quite love at first sight. But she was acting skittish, one minute ready to spend her life with Charlie, the next minute wanting to go off somewhere by herself. She was perfect for him. She was much better looking than he
had any right to expect, and she was smarter, funnier, and a far better writer than Charlie. They could live together and raise their children and she could teach him to write as well as she did, while he taught her to jump out there a little more in her writing. And he could protect her from the harsher forms of reality. She shouldn't work. Work, being a waitress or something, would break her down. She'd been talking about running off to a small town and getting a menial job, so that her writing would take on more reality. Charlie doubted it. There was nothing wonderful about working at a menial job. The wonderful part of his working day, like any working stiff's, was getting off work. She romanticized work the same way she romanticized writing. Of course so did he, but in a different way.

When Charlie told Jaime about the Saxon Award she seemed to take it well, not getting too excited, giving him a nice kiss and telling him that he of all of them deserved it.

“Really?” he asked. “Why?” He wanted to know.

“Because you have such promise.”

They were side by side in The Coffee Gallery, drinking beer. It was a Saturday afternoon and the place was filling with tourists, not ordinary tourists but low-lifes, motorcycle types, bad-guy types. He didn't like these new people who were jamming North Beach. They drove up the rents and filled all the good bars.

“How long could we live on ten thousand dollars?” Jaime asked.

“Oh, two, three years,” he said.

“You're such a monk,” she said. “But you're going to Iowa, aren't you?”

That was the question. Should he go ahead and apply for that greased-up scholarship? Did he want to arrive in Iowa City with a pregnant wife? Did Jaime want to transfer to Iowa? Could she get into their undergraduate program? Was he willing to leave her behind? He imagined sitting in a snowbound dorm in the middle of nowhere, getting a letter from Jaime where she tells him about going to Tijuana for an abortion. It made him shiver. If she'd do that, she didn't really love him. He didn't know why he felt this way, but he did.

“You wouldn't get a fucking abortion, would you?” he asked her. There
was a table of guys next to her. A big black character in a sleeveless tee with a big chromed length of chain over his shoulder was grinning at his remark. Every time he and Jaime had a private moment, some asshole interfered. He glared at the guy, who smirked insolently. They could have been out in the street in about twelve seconds, but instead Charlie smiled and said, “Have a beer!” He signed the waiter for rounds for both tables.

“No,” said Jaime.

“No what?”

“No, I won't get an abortion.”

He moved his head down closer to hers. “Then let's get fucking married.”

“
Let's get fucking married
,” she mocked. He didn't like her swearing, but since it was him that taught her, what could he say?

“If we get married, I won't go to Iowa,” he said. “We can get a place here in North Beach and live on my grant and write.”

“Sounds like heaven,” she said. Something was wrong. She loved him. He knew it. Or hoped he knew it. But she was holding back. She had him by the nuts, of course. She knew he'd do anything she asked. So, what the hell.

“What's bothering you?” he asked. He inwardly cringed, waiting for something awful. But after draining her glass of beer she burped gently, excused herself and said, “My mom. If I move in with you, she's all alone.” She squeezed his hand. “I could keep living with my mom and have the baby while you went to Iowa.”

“Fuck that noise,” he said. “Your mother can live with us.”

“No, she can't,” Jaime said sadly. “My mother's a drunk.”

11.

The last big event before finals was Charlie's master's oral. He had to sit in a little room with three educated men and tell them, in his own words, some great truth
from literature that they presumably didn't already know. He had to commit an act of scholarship right in front of them. He'd known all along that this event was coming up, but he hadn't let it worry him. Not until the night before.

“Jesus Christ, what am I going to say to those people?” They were in his apartment, which had changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Instead of Charlie's old war surplus cot, they now slept on one of Jaime's twin beds, which she and Charlie had brought over from Washington Street. And there were lots of Jaime's things around the place, clothes, books, a noisy fruit grinder Jaime used to make her “Tiger's milk cocktail,” which Charlie had tried once. Actually, he preferred the stuff they had given him in prison camp. Jaime was in the kitchen now, dressed only in her underpants and one of Charlie's tee shirts. Her blonde hair stuck out all over the place. She did the dishes while Charlie straightened the sheets. After dinner they had jumped into bed, of course. They were always jumping into bed these days. She'd go home soon to her mother's new apartment, and Charlie was feeling the panic.

“Just tell them you're big and strong and that you promise to write beautifully, if only they give you this master's degree. Beg them,” she said over the clatter of washing dishes. “Ask them to consider that you've fought bravely for your country, and now you would like a master's. They'll be sure to feel sorry for you.”

“God damn it,” he said, and sat down on the freshly made bed. Jaime's bedding. And there was a big box of bedding and stuff over in the corner, taking up precious room. First she filled him with love, then she filled his apartment with stuff.

“If you swear at them, they'll probably be frightened,” she said, and came into the room. She looked at him fondly. “You're getting stage fright, aren't you?”

“Is that what it is?” He'd felt this way in Korea, but in Korea he'd expected to. Here and now it felt bizarre that he should fear meeting three men he knew perfectly well liked him and had every intention of passing him through. These were the same guys who were pushing him toward Iowa, so
that he could be like them, respectable writers who also taught college. Ray West, Utah man, author of a book about the Mormons and a great short story called “The Last of the Grizzlies,” which is exactly how Charlie was feeling tonight; Herb Wilner, author of brilliant stories published in places like
Esquire;
and old Walter Clark. Charlie rubbed his stomach, hoping to ease the discomfort.

“I have to go home and study,” Jaime said. “You're getting your master's, but I'm probably going to flunk out.” She and Edna had moved to a big apartment on Sacramento Street, between Leavenworth and Jones. Charlie had helped them move in. It was kind of pathetic. All their good furniture was gone, and what was left didn't halfway fill the place. They had beautiful hardwood floors, which Charlie washed, waxed, and buffed for them with a rental buffer, but nothing to go on them except for some little rag rugs. Edna had obviously rented the wrong place. She should have rented a small furnished apartment and saved herself some money, instead of this ghost apartment, full of echoes. Charlie could tell Jaime hated to go home to it. But she was the only company her mother had. Edna didn't like her old friends anymore. Most of them were connected to the
Chronicle
, killer of Farley, and the rest were socialists, Marxists, communists, etc., and as far as she was concerned, a pack of fools. She wouldn't even go to Tosca anymore, not that it was a Marxist hangout, but the memories must have troubled her. Charlie hadn't known Farley very well, just one of the reporters who drank around North Beach, but he'd seemed like a nice guy, maybe a little tense about world affairs. He could imagine how Edna might miss him. But she just sat home in her expensive, under-decorated, ghostly apartment, swilling red wine.

“We should all move in together,” he said again. Though he didn't particularly want to, it was better than this. But Jaime wouldn't have it.

“I don't want to become a cliché,” she said to him mysteriously.

The actual master's oral was comical, he decided, well after it was over. He was fine in the morning, attending classes, taking some books back to the library, eating a stuffed pepper in the cafeteria, but when he showed up
at Wilner's office the stuffed pepper exploded or something and he had a terrible need to shit. Instead he knocked bravely on Wilner's door and clenched his buttocks.

Wilner opened the door and came out. He was a small mild-looking Jewish man who had been All-American in 1944. He smiled nervously at Charlie and said, “Let's go for coffee.” As they were crossing the campus Wilner said, “I threw up a couple of times before my master's oral.” They sat in the cafeteria, and while Charlie sipped nervously at his bitter coffee Wilner told him stories of how the biggest bravest guys sometimes collapsed into terror at the thought of orals. “It's really mysterious,” he said. “How these big bruisers will turn white at the thought of exposing their minds.”

“Yes,” said Charlie. It was too late to kill him.

Wilner stood up abruptly. “Well, time to go,” he said. The oral lasted forty minutes, from the time he walked into the tiny office where Clark and West stood grinning and shook his hand until the point when he walked out of the room, his knees weak, his stomach tense, his buttocks still clenched. He had no idea how he had done. He leaned against the wall and waited for Wilner to come out. He'd chosen to speak on
Moby Dick
, even though he had been warned that
Moby Dick
was a very demanding subject, and perhaps larger than he needed. But he loved the book and knew it better than any other, and so he opened his mouth and started blathering, word tumbling after word, no sense being made, until he didn't have any words left in him and shut up.

Wilner came out and silently they walked down the long empty corridor toward Wilner's office. At the door he turned and shook Charlie's hand.

“Call me Herb,” he said. He had a nice strong handshake. Charlie was a Master of the Arts. All but for the formality of his last final, four days away. And then the application to Iowa.

“Honey bear,” he said to Jaime over the phone. “I gotta get out of town. Let's drive up to the mountains, just overnight or so, get some air, do a little gambling, get drunk, have fun, and then come back for our finals.”

“You're the boss,” she said. Charlie had to laugh.

PART TWO