At the Jim Bridger: Stories (6 page)

He was hooted down, and in the ringing laughter, Donner saw Rusty Patrick turn and look into his face. Rusty’s expression opened in strange surprise and he came immediately over to where Donner and the woman stood by the stone fireplace.

“No way,” he said, shaking Donner’s hand. Then he said it again and clapped Donner in an embrace. He opened his mouth again to say something, which would have been,
What are you doing here?
or
Is it really you?
but with his mouth open, he just hugged Donner hard again.

They were spilling champagne, and Donner could sense the woman at his arm also against him, but he could not speak. The room seemed to be glowing. Donner could only
put his arm around Rusty and hug him again, feeling the whiskers against the bones in his face. When they stood back, Rusty asked the woman, “So, you must be his wife?”

She took his arm in their close circle and said no, she was his friend.

“I’m Rusty,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve heard about you.” Now she had her hands on both of his forearms. “I’ve heard the wonderful story.”

“One minute!” the bartender called. “Make amends or wait a year! Who needs champagne! Where’s my sweetheart!” His wife, Kay, appeared at his back and they kissed. The room was full, everyone shoulder to shoulder.

Rusty Patrick opened his face to Donner in a profound look, plaintive and deep. A basket full of noisemakers suddenly appeared between them, and the men took one each and started blowing the honking whistles until the accordion sounded the countdown: ten…nine…eight. The men’s look held. Donner felt a smooth hand on his face and the woman pulled him down, and she kissed him tenderly, keeping her hand there as the minute and the hour and the year lapsed for the people in the Jim Bridger. A shotgun sounded from out on the highway, and paper dots fell into everyone’s hair.

Immediately the band fired up and the room sorted itself out, alcoves of people widening until the dancers had some space. It was another version of “The New Year’s Polka.”

Rusty’s buddies all slipped back into the bar, but Rusty Patrick came to Donner, speaking in his ear. “How’s your son?” the man said, his voice full of real concern. “Did he make it home? Did you talk to him?”

Donner could only nod at Rusty then and drop his eyes and step back. The young woman who was not his wife had snugged the turquoise cap onto her head and threaded her
hair out the back in a ponytail. “Let’s dance!” she called in the thrumming noise. “I haven’t danced all year!”

Donner was watching what his body did, and what it did now was push Rusty and the woman together and smile at them. “Go to it!” he said. “This runs a thousand dollars a day in Sun Valley. I’m going to get some air.”

The night was ripped, filled, upended with stars sizzling in the deep chill. Donner felt his scalp tighten against the gathering cold, and he blew great plumes into the air. He retrieved his binoculars from his car kit, and when he shut the door, the dog stood in Rusty’s truck to be stroked.

“Come on, Scout,” Donner said, patting his leg. “Let’s go see the moose.”

Scout stood two feet on the tailgate and Donner lifted the animal to the ground rather than have him jump. They walked around the side of the old Jim Bridger to the wooden deck over Long Pond. There were two people finishing an argument as he arrived and the woman said to the man, “That’s four strikes, Artie, and you damn well know it.” They went in, releasing a quick rush of noise.

The binoculars had belonged to Donner’s father and they were the best set he’d ever seen. He sighted Big Jess standing well into the trees on the far side. Donner breathed out and held so he could focus. The moose wasn’t moving, and Donner couldn’t tell if he was looking across at the party.

Certain decisions are made in daylight and certain decisions are made in darkness. Winter has its own decisions and summer has its own decisions, as do spring and fall. Donner drew a chestful of the sharp air. He’d made a decision last February with the woman whom he could now see dancing inside the painted window. It was made in the frigid early
twilight under low clouds while the car headlamps passing on the highway seemed useless little fires that wouldn’t last the night, and that decision to use his story as he had, to show it to her, burn it like a match, had led to this new darkness and the longer night.

THE CLICKER AT TIPS

BY THE TIME I PULLED
open the big wooden door of Tips, Eve had finished off a third of the English beer menu. She was sitting dead center in the middle of the big empty barroom like a lost child. On the other side of the bar station two guys played pool at one of the twelve tables. The floor in Tips was varnished cement; it was not a very comfortable place, but they filled it every night with all the young brokers who were still in mourning for college.

“Did you notice how there’s no work anymore?” she said when I sat down. “This place used to be a factory.”

“I work,” I said

“No you don’t. You fly around and talk for money.”

“Eve,” I said. “You don’t think air travel is work?”

“You get introduced, walk to the podium, always a nicer piece of furniture than I have in my whole house, and then you pause a beat because you’re sure that every eye is on you, then you pause again and then you give your lecture. Afterward they hand you a big check. They pay you for those pauses.”

There was an edge in it; I could hear it, but Eve always had an edge. I had wanted to see her; it had been two months, silence since our last meeting, dinner downtown. I was surprised that, her mention of her house, the rooms of which Ī knew well, had quickened everything.

The waitress came over, a tall young woman with long braids. “Did one of you guys want the clicker?”

“Moi,“
Eve said, presenting her palm. The girl placed the television remote control in it. The five televisions around the room were all set on the pregame show. I asked the waitress for a pint of Bass and a platter of the wings.

“Are we on television?” I asked Eve.

“We are. We’re on the six-fifteen.”

“Who are you scolding today?”

“That same sleazeball with the jewelry.”

“What did he say?”

“He was able to push me down and stride nobly to his Lexus. That’s why I want to see it.” Eve was ombudsman for Channel 14, sniffing out consumer complaints. Last week she’d put a bottled water company out of business, and this week it was this guy Gene Somebody and his fake Navajo jewelry.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I sat, on my ass in Scottsdale and did the report and realized I hadn’t been pushed to the ground since you took that privilege two years ago.”

“Eve,” I said.

“Let’s have another pint.” She was speaking over my head to the waitress, who came round and set my beer smoothly on the table. “But something from the Continent now. Something from some country that doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“Pardon?” the waitress said.

“Eve wants the Yugoslavian lager,” I told her. I looked at my full glass. “Make it two.”

“Yes, the little hero comes to the door, sees the mike, and bolts. Some sixty-year-old in tight jeans pushes me down. I just want to see it. Is this a soulless place or is it me?” She drank and looked at me. “God, what a word and me to use it.”

“It will have soul in a thousand years.”

“Should we wait? Pardon: Should I wait?” She pointed the remote at the television near us and it flipped forward to fourteen, where our pal Jeff Nederhaller was anchoring the news with Monica Young. Jeff and I had been part of a pretty tight circle a few years before; we had all worked at the newspaper.

I said, “Jeff looks good. Everyone should get divorced.”

“He’s nuts. He is an outright idiot. Marriage keeps people fat and sane.”

“Very fine. So I’m sane.”

Eve drilled me with a look. “Oh, are you married?”

“Eve,” I said. “Let’s have a nice time. Let’s have a few beers and a nice time.”

Around us the place was filling with the
Monday Night Football
crowd, clusters of six and eight people pushing tables together, hanging their coats on the backs of the heavy wooden school chairs, ordering pitchers of imported beer. The group beside us watching the corner TV all wore blue blazers and pin-striped shirts, a kind of uniform, young guys with great hair, talking loudly and making bets on the Bears. Some of them were from Chicago. There were days when everyone in Phoenix seemed to be from Chicago.

“Laborers,” Eve said. “Stevedores.”

“Middle management from Motorola,” I said.

“Longshoremen, teamsters.” She looked at me and said, “Oh, don’t be so smug. Take your jacket off, let’s see your stripes.”

I did, hanging my tweed coat on the chair. She scanned my black polo shirt and said, “You dress like an actor.”

I considered commenting on her sleek silk dress, dark green, the black sash around her waist, how she looked good, dressed not to kill but certainly to harm, and in the half second I had that thought it settled on me just how good she looked, not the dress but the choice of it. She was beautiful,
smart; she looked in every way superior. She was impeccable, always. No wonder the scared little guy pushed her down.

“You’re dressed like a guy whose latest movie we should have clips of, someone who flew in from the coast. The whole world’s a talk show.”

“That it is.”

“So, Matt, what’s your latest project?” She wanted me to start being clever, to fence, to fight.

“You called, I came along.”

“Such power.” She drank her beer and narrowed her eyes. “Out of affection or fear?” The room was picking up, voices through the muffled waves of clicking pool balls.

“Eve, you’re wearing me out.” I toasted her. “I was thirsty.”

After a car commercial, there she was on the screen in that green dress, holding the microphone in front of her face. She looked smart and serious, and when she pointed behind her to the storefront, Anazazi Gems, in the sunny little strip mall, and turned, the camera followed her. The man in jeans had just emerged and was locking the glass door when Eve stepped back in frame, poised if not smug, and said, “Mr. Fuller, Eve Moran from
Channel 14 News.
We’ve had your genuine Indian jewelry analyzed by two independent experts and they’re telling us that it’s imported. Could you tell-” This is when Fuller bolted and we saw the sky for a moment as the camera was jarred, and then there was a tilted shot of Mr. Fuller boarding his silver Lexus and then an unsteady pan back to Eve sitting in the gravel of the little parking island. She didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t even try to get up, but turned her legs to one side as if she were sitting on the deck of a yacht and went on, “We tried to contact Mr. Fuller’s workshop in Pay son, but the phone was disconnected some time ago and the address we received is that of the Sunshine Laundry and Dry Cleaners, which has been at their location
for more than twenty years.” Sitting like that, holding the mike up, her knees to one side, Eve looked beautiful. “In Scottsdale, this is Eve Moran, Ombudsman,
Channel 14 News”

The screen went back to the console two-shot of Jeff Nederhaller and Monica Young and they said something, a joke about the news being a rough business, and thanked Eve for that report.

“Fabulous,” I said, meaning it. “And you’re okay?”

“I took Chuck for margaritas at a little place two doors down, a dive. He got a black eye from that bump on the camera.”

“Chuck’s a good guy,” I said. “This is two lawsuits and a written apology.”

“Please. It’s a black eye, a sore ass, and the afternoon off.” She smiled. “Though I do think that was a stunning report. Did you see that gravel?”

“You’re something else.”

“Again, please. Save that for someone you’re willing to seduce.” She looked at me over her glass. “Although I’m glad to hear you still love me. How’s Debbie?”

“How’s Debbie?” I said the name and felt it ring the way your wife’s name rings in such places at such times. “Debbie is fine,” I said. “She’s still working with the utility commission. Debbie’s fine. She’s having a success actually.”

“We never thought anything but success for that girl.” I could hear the faint echo of those margaritas in Eve’s voice; she was a little drunk.

The game had come on all over the bar except for on our television, which was now showing
Hard Copy.
In the corner near us the group of young regulars had circled their chairs around two of the little tables and were making noises about Chicago this, Arizona that, even though it was going to be a one-sided exhibition. There were five or six guys. They
leaned back in their chairs and pointed at the screen from time to time, yucking it up. They got to me for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t envy them so much as want to correct them, ask them to display some real comaraderie, some real something the way I had with my friends Eve and David and Christopher and Jeff and Deborah, now Debbie, my wife. We had met in magical ways and hung out in the real places like a kind of family over an evening of drinks and appetizers, plate after plate, and we had talked wickedly, tenderly, and we all knew that those hours once or twice a week were our real lives, the center. One thing led to another; there was a sense of things happening. I hated these young guys and their surface lives, a night with the football game. I hated the evening coming on this way, and my life, one good part of it, over.

“You’re looking anemic,” Eve said. “Sorry you came? I haven’t seen you in what? Two months.”

“I’m fine,” I said, finishing my beer. I signaled the waitress and she stopped. “Let’s have some Red Stripe,” I told her.

“And a little tequila?” Eve said. “You always like a shot with your Red Stripe.”

Her remembering tapped me a little, but I didn’t miss a beat. “Right, then,” I said. “Shots.” The young woman and her braids went off. “What do you hear from Christopher?”

“Christopher has not called me,” Eve said. “My sources tell me he’s become a naked careerist at the paper, kissing editorial butt long into the night.”

Christopher had taken the features job at the paper and had his little photograph above the keystone column twice a week. When he first got on, Eve used to clip the picture and affix it to envelopes like a stamp and drop them by the various offices with a phony cancellation.