The Clarinet Polka (4 page)

Half the time I couldn't believe it'd been real, and it would have made a terrific story to tell the guys at the PAC, but somehow I never got around to telling it. I had a strong feeling for that girl—which was weird considering I didn't even know her name—really protective of her or something. Like, hey, you dumb broad, you should be more careful. You shouldn't be screwing strange guys in the back of panel trucks, like the next strange guy might not be a nice guy like me, why, Christ, he might be
anybody
, and how could you do something like that
with your kid with you?
And I kept doing reruns in my mind—seeing her laying on the floor of Vick's truck with her bare ass sticking up—until I began to get sick of it. It made me feel itchy and jumpy, you know what I mean?

Well, a couple weeks went by, and then Vick was telling me that some girl's been coming into the shop looking for me. “What girl?” I said, playing dumb, but I knew who it was. She must have memorized Vick's address from the side of the truck. “She's got more on her mind than her picture tube,” Vick said.

I took to hanging around the shop in the afternoons, and she finally turned up late in the day. “When do you get off work?” she said. “I need to talk to you.” No hi, hello or any damn thing. Shit, I thought, she's pregnant.

The minute she walked into the shop, my heart practically jumped out of my throat, because, my God, I hadn't just been making her better in my mind. She really did have a figure that would stop traffic. “I can take off now,” I said. “You want to go somewhere and have a drink?”

She shook her head. “Let's go for a walk.”

Well, you can walk around in Center Raysburg, but it isn't exactly a place where you
go for a walk
, so I took her down to the river. There's a spot where it's all overgrown and nobody can see you from the street, as I well know because I used to go there with the boys back in high school before we had our draft cards. We'd always be able to find somebody's uncle who'd slip us a case out the back of the bar—“Huh, huh, huh, I'm glad this is for your grandmother”—and we needed a place to drink it. I hadn't been down there for years, and it felt strange taking the Mommy there.

She wasn't wearing her little-kid outfit that day, but she was wearing a miniskirt—with white socks and perfectly clean little white tennis shoes—and for some crazy reason I thought that was sexy. And then on top of everything else, I was wondering what the hell I was going to do if she was carrying my kid. I might have been a shitty Catholic, but there was no way in hell I was going to have anything to do with an abortion.

She wasn't talking, and I kept searching my mind for something to say. It was right after Neil Armstrong had been walking around on the moon, and I remember saying some dumb thing like, “Hey, pretty big step for mankind, huh?” and she looked at me like I had two heads.

She was wearing her dead-eye sunglasses just like the last time. We're standing there on the riverbank, and I light a cigarette, and she's staring across at the Ohio side, and she says, “I'm a married woman.”

“I did manage to notice the ring,” I say, “not to mention the kid.”

“I've got another one. A little girl. She's just turned four.”

We're standing side by side looking at the river. The sun's still high, and it's hotter than hell, and I'm waiting for her to drop the bomb on me.

“My husband's a doctor at the St. Stevens Medical Center,” she said. “He's highly respected. We have a good marriage. We're very happy.” She said it like she was back in the second grade, reciting in front of the class.

“I don't even know your name,” she said. I told her, but she didn't tell me hers.

“Listen, Jim, I don't want you to think I do that sort of thing all the time.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to make any more of a fool of myself than I already had.

“I've never done anything like that in my entire life. I was shocked at myself afterward. It was, I don't know, just some kind of crazy stunt—”

“Right. Yeah, I figured that's what it was. Just some kind of crazy stunt.”

I could see she was suffering, and I just wished the hell she'd get to the point. “Look,” I said, “don't think twice. Everybody has their crazy moments. Why don't we go somewhere and have a drink?”

“No, I've got to get home. I left my kids with the girl next door, and my husband will get home, and he'll wonder where I am. I'm always home when he gets home. You do understand, Jim, I can't see you again.”

“Sure, I understand that.”

She didn't make a move to go, and we stood there for so long it was starting to get ridiculous. “Honey,” I said, “are you pregnant?”

She looked like I'd hit her, and then she laughed. “Oh, God, no. I'm on the pill.”

Then, even though the sun was beating down like hell, she took off her sunglasses and put them in her purse. She turned and looked at me, and she had great big brown puppy-dog eyes, and I thought, oh, Christ, that's all I need—because she was just absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. She looked straight into my eyes, and I saw how she was looking at me, and finally I got it.

I bent down and kissed her, and she started kissing me back like I was her long-lost love she hadn't seen in years. I pushed her up against a tree. She was like a big doll—didn't move or anything—let me push her anywhere I wanted her to go. I reached up under her skirt and pulled her panties down. She helped me do it and stepped out of them. I felt like I was in a trance—hey, this can't be happening. Anybody on the river could have seen us, but I didn't give a shit. When I came into her, she screamed bloody murder. That stopped me, and I said, “What's the matter? Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she said and grabbed my ass with both hands and pulled me into her, and then, just like the last time, it was over in about two minutes flat.

She pushed me away and picked up her panties off the ground and started to cry. I mean really hard. Sobbing.

She started walking along the riverbank, crying, and whenever I'd get too close to her, she'd motion me to go away, but I'd be damned if I was going to go away. We must have done that for the better part of an hour. I kept trying to say dumb things to her, like, “Come on, honey, what's the matter?” but she wouldn't say anything, so finally I just shut up and followed her, keeping a few feet back. I offered her a smoke, and she took it and puffed on it like somebody who doesn't smoke. It was ridiculous, but she was still carrying her panties in her hand. The first thing she said was, “We can't do this again.”

“No, of course we can't,” I said. “Let's go somewhere and get a drink.”

“I can't have a drink with you,” she said.

“Why's that?”

“Because I'm a married woman.”

I began to wonder if she had all her smarts. “Sure you can,” I said. “We'll go someplace really quiet. Someplace where you can be sure nobody knows you. Okay? You pick it, okay?”

Eventually she said, “Oh, hell, anyplace will do. We never come down here.”

So we started back up to the street, and she still hadn't put her panties back on, and I made a motion like, hey, aren't you forgetting something? and she said, “I stepped all over them. They're all muddy,” and she put them in her purse.

There was a Greek place near Vick's shop where I used to go for lunch and I knew they'd sell me a shot. I took her into the back room. It was still early, so we had it to ourselves. I told the Greek I wanted a double. She said, “Can I have a gin and tonic, please?” and the Greek and I just looked at her.

“This is West Virginia, honey,” I said.

“Oh. That's right. I'm sorry.”

The Greek asked her if she wanted a shot of gin. “Yes, please,” she said, and the Greek brought us our shots. I knocked mine straight back, and she watched me do it, and then she knocked her gin straight back, and the Greek grabbed the glasses and shoved them in the pocket of his apron. I ordered a pitcher and a couple cheeseburgers. She said, “I can't have an affair.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. This is the last time I'm going to see you.”

“Any way you want it to be is how it's going to be,” I told her, and I believed it.

Her name was Constance Bradshaw. She's got to be kidding, I thought. Nobody is named Constance Bradshaw. But that really was her name—Connie to her friends. She and her husband were from Baltimore, and they both came from prominent families there. That's exactly what she said—prominent families—and she even told me her maiden name just like it might mean something to me. I was tempted to tell her that the Koprowskis were fairly prominent in South Raysburg too, but I didn't. I'd got my rocks off, and I had that double shot in me, and there was a beautiful cold pitcher of beer sitting on the table, and I honest-to-God thought I'd never see her again, so I was being just as nice as pie. Somehow it was important to me to act like a nice guy and not like an asshole. I still thought I was in control of things.

She told me that she and her husband had been in the valley only a couple years and she still wasn't used to the place and wasn't sure she ever would be. Some days she just plain hated it. “I don't know why I'm telling you any of this,” she said.

She asked me what it was like in Vietnam. “Honey, I lied to you,” I told her. “I was in the service, but I wasn't in Vietnam.”

She looked disappointed, so I thought I'd better tell her some war stories. “You heard of Rolling Thunder? Going to bomb them back into the stone age? Well, I was part of that. I was stationed on Guam. I was one of the guys that maintained the aircraft.”

She asked me about being in the service, and everything she asked me, I answered her honestly. I think I even told her about Jacobson getting killed. I asked her what her life was like, and she said, “I have a good life. I love my husband, and I love my kids. We have a wonderful home. I just wish we could have stayed in Baltimore, but it's okay. We're not going to be here forever.”

We sat there for maybe an hour, and she started to get fidgety, so I delivered the little speech I'd worked out—“You're really a beautiful woman, Connie, and I really like you. I'm glad we got together in this crazy way we did. And I just want to wish you all the best, okay?”

“Thank you,” she said. “You're a nice man, Jim.”

When we stepped out onto the street, it was twilight—that blue-gray time of night that's so pretty it hurts. She said, “I'll tell him I went shopping in Raysburg and I'm going to a movie. It's kind of weird, but he'll believe me. I've never done anything like that before, so he'll believe me.”

She went in a phone booth and called her husband, and I guess that's what she told him. “The funny thing,” she said to me, “is we have a perfectly good sex life.”

I walked her to her car. It was parked kitty-corner to Vick's shop. It was a red Mustang, brand-new. She didn't make any move to get into it. “Has your boss gone home?” she said.

I took her into the shop and screwed her on the floor in front of Vick's workbench. This time we weren't in any hurry. I'd never in my life had sex with a girl that was so damn easy. Usually there's a lot of fumbling around until you get used to each other, you know what I mean? But with Connie everything was perfect right from the start—like maybe we'd gone through the preliminaries in some other life. Afterward, she just totally stank of sex, and I said, “I'm sorry we haven't got a shower in here, but there's a little sink in the back where you can wash up.”

“Oh, no, it's all right,” she said. “I'm okay.” I thought, oh, come on, your husband hasn't got a nose? But I didn't say it.

I walked her to her car, and she said, “Don't you ever dare call me at home. I really mean it. I can get away next Tuesday afternoon. Is that okay for you? Can you take time off in the daytime?”

“Sure,” I said, “so long as you don't mind the back of the truck.”

“I don't mind the back of the truck. You know the wharf parking lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Two o'clock, okay? Go to the level just below the roof and park. If there's anybody in there, anybody at all, just wait until they go away. And then I'll get in the back. Okay?”

She kissed me and got into her Mustang. She rolled the window down and said, “If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll never see you again.”

I knew there was something more, so I waited to hear it. “If you ever tell anybody about this,” she said, “I don't know what— Look, Jim, I really want to impress this on you. You can't tell anybody. Not your best friend. Not
anybody
.”

“Okay.”

“You could wreck my whole life. You've got to promise me.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“I want you to swear to it.”

“Okay, Connie. Sure. I swear to God, I won't tell a soul.”

She drove away up the river. It was after eleven by then, and I wondered what she was going to say to her husband the highly respected doctor when she got home.

*   *   *

I was true to my word. I didn't tell anybody about Connie. But the person we both forgot about was Vick Dobranski. I go into work the next morning, and he says, “So, did you replace her picture tube?”

If I'd seen it coming, maybe I could have dreamed up some lie he would have believed, but he took me completely by surprise, so I go, “What the hell you talking about, Vick?”

“The girl in the miniskirt.”

“Oh. Her. Yeah, I replaced her picture tube all right,” and I gave him a big grin hoping that would be the end of it, but of course it wasn't.

Okay, so now we're into the Jim and Connie Show, Phase One. About once a week—sometimes twice when she can get away—Connie and I are doing our spy routine. I go sailing into the wharf parking lot, wait till the coast's clear, open the door to the back of Vick's truck, and she jumps in. I drive over to the south end of the Island, park somewhere, usually down by the Downs, and we fuck our brains out. At the longest, it doesn't take much more than an hour, and the only talking we do is to arrange for the next time. And every time I'm thinking, oh, my God, sex doesn't get any better than that, and then the next time it gets better than that.