Linger (3 page)

That was long before anything started brewing in the Persian Gulf.

I was thinking about all that late that afternoon just before Christmas—the first one ever without Bobby.

I was tired from basketball practice. Coach had worked our tails off because there was a scout from one of the big three colleges looking over Barley Dicks, our best player.

I decided to get in a nap before I went on duty. As I went up the front walk, I could see that Lingering Shadows was dark. No one knew I went up there. I’d read there, sometimes. There wasn’t any TV. I’d read novels and short stories, all kinds. I wasn’t like Bobby, who’d narrow in on one writer, read only that one, then swear by him. I liked to skip around. Bobby liked to see if he could write himself. He’d start stories and never finish them.

I sneaked up the stairs, afraid I’d run into someone on staff who’d report me. I was off limits. I wasn’t supposed to leave the kitchen/dining room/lounge area.

I was halfway up the steps when I heard Mr. Raleigh’s voice coming from Lingering Shadows.

He was saying, “I didn’t want this to happen, and we’ve got to keep it from ever happening again! … NO! No!
You
listen to
me!
”

I didn’t hang around to hear more.

—F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
Private Robert Peel

Saudi Arabia

Christmas Eve. Saudi Muslims don’t want female entertainers over here unaccompanied by husbands, so Bob Hope drops the Pointer Sisters and Marie Osmond from his Christmas show; only female is Mrs. Hope.

Free everything courtesy of corporate America. Suntan lotion from Avon, disposable cameras from Kodak, golf balls from Wilson, and just in case the Iraqis don’t kill us, Phillip Morris sends cigarettes to do it.

I tell Movie Star about Christmas holidays at Linger starting ten days before, when they light the tree. After that, everyone who comes for dinner brings gift-wrapped toys for the kids at Eloise, the children’s home. Then on Christmas Eve Dunlinger plays Santa under the tree, passing out stuff to them. We all sing and drink cocoa.

Movie Star says his favorite holiday is
diez de Septiembre,
Mexican Independence Day. It’s not for anglos, though, he says. Are there chicanos at this Eloise?

I don’t remember. But I think of the Elizondo family again … and of Mañana, the reason for the blow-up with Dunlinger, the real reason I am over here.

I think of Carlos Elizondo constantly.

I
T DOESN’T HAVE TO
be a studio photograph,
my brother wrote her,
just a snapshot or something so I can remember what you look like. (Just kidding!) … You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it sure would be nice to see a pretty face besides Movie Star’s. Here a woman hides herself under something called a chador. It is like a sheet only its black and it goes over everything but the eyes…. What does your dad think of this war, I wonder, though, don’t say I asked since its not my business, but I bet that big flag is out on the front porch.

I was out of breath from running down the stairs and away from what was going on in Lingering Shadows. The phone was ringing and ringing, so I answered it the way we’d been taught to do.

“Linger. We open at six thirty. May I take your reservation?”

“Who is this?” said a voice that sounded like Mrs. Dunlinger’s.

“Gary Peel,” I said. “Who is this?”

“This is Mrs. Dunlinger, Gary.”

I felt relieved. I’d thought she was back there at the top of the stairs with Mr. Raleigh.

“Where are you?” I asked her.

“Now where would I be at this hour? I’m home, Gary, you know that.” The Dunlingers always ate dinner at home.

“Yes, Ma’am. I do know that.”

“But I’m looking for Lynn. Have you seen her?”

“No, Ma’am.”

I wasn’t letting anything register yet. I was only glad that what’d I first thought was going on up in Lingering Shadows wasn’t. The Dunlingers were like Ronald and Nancy Reagan or Clair and Cliff Huxtable from the old
Cosby
TV show. If they could play around on each other, then there wasn’t any such thing as real romance.

Mrs. Dunlinger said, “Lynn told us not to wait dinner and we didn’t, but Lake Budde is calling here every fifteen minutes for her.”

Why couldn’t they have ordinary names? Why did they always get called things like Thayer and Lake? There was even an Osborne in that crowd. Osborne de la Marin the Fourth.

“If I see her, I’ll tell her, Mrs. Dunlinger.”

“We’re on our way there, but I don’t think she’s there if you haven’t seen her.”

“I haven’t, Ma’am.”

“Lynn’s so popular with all the boys.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“She can have her pick, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“So … how’s your brother?” she said next, and I wondered if she’d been sending him a little message with those words, maybe telling him not to get his hopes up.

“He’s just waiting to see what’s going to happen, over there, I guess,” I said.

“Mr. Dunlinger says we’re not going to war, don’t worry. That Saddam’s crazy, but he’s not so far gone he won’t be interested in saving his own neck.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She was telling me what Mr. Dunlinger said President Bush ought to do when suddenly I saw Lynn.

She slipped out the door that led up to Lingering Shadows, all by herself, all in white, even the high-heeled boots she had on with fur tops above her ankles. She was carrying a white leather jacket with a fur top, too. So much for animal liberation.

I tried to get her eye. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk to her mother.

“Of course, Mr. D. was like a lot of Americans who thought Saddam was just saber rattling when he was threatening Kuwait. But he’ll get out now. Mr. D. says he has no choice.”

“I know it,” I said, but I was talking through my hat. I didn’t even know what was going on over there in the Gulf. I was trying to learn fast, because of Bobby, but it was really hard to understand.

I watched Lynn drop her jacket on the wing chair in the hall and head into The Regency Room in a white miniskirt. It was taking me a long time to admit what was going on around me, mostly because I couldn’t believe it.

“… so don’t you worry, Gary,” said Mrs. Dunlinger, “Bobby’s helping to scare the pants off that bully!”

I thought of the three words Mr. Raleigh wrote on the blackboard the week before, saying what the whole Persian Gulf crisis was for: ALL FOR OIL!

When Mrs. Dunlinger finally finished what she had to say, I told her I’d keep my eye out for Lynn.

I said I’d tell Lynn that Lake Budde was burning down the phone wires.

The Regency Room was the number-one dining room, where everybody who knew anything about Linger always wanted to sit. We’d put our old customers in there (see how you get swallowed up in Dunlingerland, saying “we” this and “we” that?). There’s shelves of old books against a paneled wall, these striped banquettes, the big crystal chandelier overhead, underfoot a thick rug you’d want to curl up and sleep on.

Early in the evening, Mr. Raleigh played his violin in that room, and later he played piano in the one next to it, The Grill, with plum-shaded leather chairs, and booths for lovers and people who didn’t think eating out was all about seeing who was there and calling across stupid things to them.

The whole Dunlinger family was up on one wall in oil paint: the grandfather and grandmother, then Ned, and Natalia and Lynn. Don’t forget Joan, the black killer cat who spent most of her life terrifying any creature that came into Lingering Pines, the small woods behind the restaurant.

Then I saw Lynn, when I came out of The Grill. She was at The Market Basket, which was what the salad bar was called. An enormous basket was suspended from the ceiling, full of raw vegetables, various greens, macaroni, cole slaw, mushrooms, the works.

I called over, “Lynn? Your mother says Lake Budde is calling every fifteen minutes for you.”

She was standing there nibbling on a carrot stick while she filled up a plate with other rabbit food.

She looked embarrassed. “I could die that she tells my business all over Berryville.”

“She just told
me
,” I said.

“If she told you, she’ll tell anybody.”

She must have seen my face, because she came rushing over to purr, “I didn’t mean it that way, Gary. That sounded just awful!”

I was beginning to think Mr. Raleigh had someone else up there, because that was what I wanted to think: that it wasn’t Lynn. Her hair was like silk falling to her shoulders, and she was smiling right into my eyes…. If war really did break out, maybe she’d even feel bad enough to
marry
Bobby. Or maybe he’d come home this hero she would really fall in love with. I wished Bobby everything good in the world but that.

She was fussing around me, cooing, asking me did I
ever
eat pasta or potatoes or bread? Because she bet not … not with my waistline, not with my “skin tone,” whatever that meant. She didn’t smell of Red. It was something lighter, more like summer flowers.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Gary. Does your brother like to read Stephen King?”

I told her about his James Jones period, and that I didn’t know what came after that, if anything did.

“Who’s James Jones?”

“He wrote
From Here to Eternity
.”

“I saw that on tape! Burt Lancaster made love to Deborah Kerr on the beach! It was really steamy!”

“I don’t remember.”

“Then you didn’t see it!” She laughed. “Anyway, I sent Bobby the new King in a Christmas box Mom and I packed for him. I sent him some English shaving cream, too, and some aftershave. And a few jars of Planter’s nuts, one entirely cashews. I love cashews the best, myself. Does Bobby?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t. I said, “
I
like them,” but she looked past me blankly as though I was the waiter at her dinner party and I’d suddenly made an unwelcome disclosure about my personal tastes.

She put down her plate for a moment and opened the white leather purse she’d hung from her arm.

“I have something for you,” she said. “I just love it, but Daddy’d be furious if
I
ever wore it.”

I couldn’t imagine what she would have for me.

It was a button, large and white with black letters and what was supposed to look like red drops of blood across it.

I’d seen it before on Mr. Raleigh’s bulletin board.

We SHELL not EXXONerate Saddam Hussein for his actions. We will MOBILize to meet this threat to vital interests in the Persian GULF until an AMOCOble solution is reached. Our best strategy is to BPrepared. FINAlly, we ARCOming to kiss you’re a——.

“I support the boys,” she said, “but not the reason they’re over there.”

“I don’t know too much about it,” I said.

I remembered seeing this fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl on CNN testifying how she’d seen these babies being taken from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait, who left them on the freezing floor to die.

I’d done a paper on it weeks before.

Lynn handed me the button.

“Your daddy’d be furious if
I
ever wore it, too,” I said. “How could I wear it anyway, with Bobby over there?”

“Of all people, you should wear it. Do you want your brother to go to war for Exxon, Gary?”

I wanted to ask her since when was she this big peace activist? But I knew the answer had to do with whatever was going on up in Lingering Shadows with Mr. Raleigh.

So I just said, “Bobby joined the Army. He knew he wasn’t signing on with a rock and roll band.”

Then she said something that really surprised me. She put the button back in her bag as she said it, not looking at me. “That was you on the stairs, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She waited until she had the bag back on her arm. Then she raised her eyes and for a second met mine.

She said softly, “Don’t tell anyone, Gary.”

“I won’t,” I said.

—F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
Private Robert Peel

Saudi Arabia

Christmas Day. With the mail comes the announcement we’re moving north tomorrow.

I have to leave everything behind since we lug around gas masks and protective gear. I’ve never read Stephen King, but the novel weighs about five pounds…. I put on something she sent called Elite by Floris, an after-shave “balm,” and the guys call out, Who’s the whore in the tent?

This tent is unheated, sleeps twenty (two women). I’m in a bag on top of a cot.

Now I wish I’d brought all the Planter’s nuts, but I only dumped some cashews in my pocket.

We are deeper in the desert now, and believe it or not the food is improving. Had T rations, turkey with gravy that tasted like a Swanson’s frozen dinner, but at least it was hot, not like the MREs, so-called Meals Ready to Eat. Ready for who to eat? is the question.

Now we got new visitors. These Bedouins pass through with their camels and goats. Nomadics don’t live in one place ever. Other newcomers are scorpions and sand vipers. Would you believe chickens? We’ve got them!

The reason for the chickens is they’re backups to our gas-monitoring machines. The machines are supposed to sound if there’s any chemicals, but in case they don’t, the chickens go belly up.

Now I know I never knew what lonesome was. Think of how I’d sit around home with MTV on, drinking a cold Coke in my Jockeys, chewing on a Milky Way. Not sure now I didn’t die pushing my Musty up to ninety, and this is hell. Sitting here in the long underwear Mom sent me, dreaming of nothing more special than a hot shower, sand behind the crystal of my Timex, underneath my fingernails, toenails, probably in my brain … and over the radio, Baghdad Betty is telling us our sweethearts are sleeping with Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bart Simpson!!! (Have a cow, G.I.!)

You’d think they’d check stuff out before they broadcast it. Be funny if anything was funny here.

Movie Star found some guy here who actually lived in Kuwait when he was a kid. He’s from Boston, a Corporal Sweet we call Sugar. He knows a lot about music, wants to write music, be a new Axl Rose or a Garth Brooks.