Sway (8 page)

“Yeah?” he asked breathily. “She's not dating anyone, though, right?”

“I don't know. We didn't talk about it. Give me another week and I'll have what you need. Though I'll be honest, I'm not really sure why you're wasting your time on this.”

“You wouldn't understand,” he said. “She's different from other girls. She wouldn't use a guy for his money or get with another guy just to make you jealous, you know?”

“I guess,” I said halfheartedly. “Pretty girls are a lot of work—poor return on investment most of the time.”

Ken grinned. “You know it. But this one's worth it. Believe me.”

“You're a mess,” I said with a shake of my head. “You'd better get your emotions in check or this girl's going to walk all over you.” I felt a lump in my throat as I said this, realizing my jaw was clenched tightly, and I wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

 

NINE

I took Heather to Paolo's on Friday night and it was all work. Heather loved going to Paolo's because (1) it was expensive and the place to be seen in our town on a weekend night, reservations always hard to get; and (2) the decor involved a lot of strategically placed mirrors so Heather could admire her own youth and beauty from many angles while she carefully avoided eating any of the food she ordered.

Tonight she wore a black dress littered with rhinestones and multiple layers of flounces that clashed with my summer-weight wool jacket and slacks. Her blond hair was streaked with highlights, too artistically blended to be natural.

Anthony, the owner of Paolo's, greeted me with a smile and a handshake as I asked after his son, a shy, queer kid who had been bullied mercilessly his freshman year at Wakefield. I had someone who looked after the kid now, didn't let anybody mess with him. Socially he was still a little off, but at least wasn't taking regular beatings for it.

“He's very good, Jesse, very good,” Anthony said with a broad smile. “I thank you for all you've done for him.”

“I didn't really do anything, Anthony. Justin's a good kid. He just needed to make friends with the biggest guy in the school.”

Anthony laughed and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “This is true, yes.”

Anthony showed us to a circular booth and snapped our linen napkins with a flourish before laying them gently on our laps. He gave a slight bow and another smile before leaving us to the care of the waiter.

“I was surprised when you called me,” Heather said once the waiter had taken our drink order.

“Why's that?” I asked as I carefully kept my eyes from straying to the line below her jaw where her pancake makeup ended and her real skin tone began.

“Just because,” she said, her voice close to a whine. “You haven't called me in a long time. Even when we were seeing each other, you always acted like you didn't care if I was coming or going.”

“I've just been busy,” I said. “Got a lot on my plate.” I picked up the menu and scanned it intently, though I always ordered the same thing.

“I know you haven't been seeing anyone, haven't been dating. You haven't dated anyone seriously since you broke up with me.”

“Is that how you see it? That I broke up with you?” I asked without looking up from the menu.

“What would you call it?” she asked, leaning forward, her bosom resting on her clasped hands. “We went out. I wasn't seeing anyone else. Then you just … left.”

“Some people are better on their own,” I said, wondering where the hell the waiter was with our drinks. Heather reached across the table and put a hand on my forearm, her fingers so cold, it raised goose bumps on my skin.

“I'm glad you called,” she said, then trailed her fingers up toward my elbow. “Do you know why girls love guys who play the guitar?” she asked.

“Tell me.”

“It's your arms,” she said as she parked her chin on the heel of her other hand and smiled suggestively. “Something about the muscles in your arms. They're different from the muscles guys get from lifting weights. It's very sexy.”

“I don't play guitar anymore,” I said, wanting to pull my arm away from her touch.

“Right. I … uh, I forgot,” she said with a horribly inappropriate nervous laugh.

The waiter came with our drinks and we ordered dinner. As I knew she would, Heather ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, then ate only a few bites of it. Tonight was going to cost me, in more ways than one, but it was a long-term investment. Keeping David happy meant less work in the long run. I just had to keep that in mind as the night wore on.

“So,” Heather said as she watched me pile the last bite of my food onto the back of my fork. “Does this mean I'm going to start seeing more of you?”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and set it aside before I answered her. I had to tread carefully here. “You know I've got a lot on my mind, right?” I asked. “I need my friends, that's all.”

“Are you saying I'm your friend?” she asked as she twirled a lock of hair over her finger and her eyes got a little misty.

“Sure, of course. But—” I let my eyes wander to the other diners as I said, “I guess it's hard for me to talk to anyone. Maybe anyone other than David.”

“David who?” she asked with a puzzled frown.

“David Cohen.”

“The nerdy guy with the baggy clothes?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, you know, he's not all about image and getting wasted. He's a good guy.”

“Huh,” she said, “I never would have figured you guys for friends.”

“Well, we are,” I said. “People don't really know him, don't understand him because he's smart, interested in different stuff. And, you know, even though he's super rich, has a huge trust fund and all of that, he keeps it to himself. Doesn't put on airs about having a lot of money or anything.”

I could see her brain working overtime, calculating all the things a guy with looks like David's might buy for a girl with the physical charms Heather possessed.

Her eyes were moist and I knew she was hungry for more detail. She wasn't going to get it, but I dropped one last sweetener to ensure her interest. “Anyway,” I said with a shrug, “I just wish other people could see his good qualities, maybe appreciate a person for something besides looks for once.”

“I wish everyone thought the way you do,” she said. “I mean, everyone thinks I have it so easy because I'm beautiful and popular, but it's not as if I don't have problems too.” She put on a pout that looked well practiced. If I ever did think about getting it on with Heather again, one of her pouts was enough to put me off. It was fascinating to watch someone who was so completely self-absorbed.

I sat back and tried to coast through the rest of the evening. My work was going as planned, but I still had to figure out how to get her home without putting my mouth on her overglossed lips.

 

TEN

It turned out that Mr. Dunkelman liked to complain. A lot. When I picked him up on Saturday to go to the football game, he complained about how hard it was to get in and out of my car because the seats were low to the ground. He complained about the print on everything being too small to read. He complained that sausage gave him the runs even though he ate two with onions and mustard during the game while I silently prayed that his bowel irritability wouldn't manifest until after I dropped him off at the old folks' home.

But most of all, he liked to complain about how ungrateful his children and grandchildren were, none of whom, according to him, ever came to see him. It was his intent to run out of money at the moment of his death so his heirs could not profit from his demise. And, apparently, he had plenty of money to go around, which he intentionally wasted on risky investments and crap he saw on QVC just to piss off his kids.

When I asked him why he didn't leave his money to some charity, he said they were all fronts for anti-Semitic terrorist cells or were run by Oprah Winfrey, whom he hated with the passion of a religious convert. “She's fat, she's thin, she's fat, she's thin—always talking about how she's eating her emotions,” he said. “I'll tell you what she's eating is a lot of pies.”

“You got something against fat people?” I asked, mostly to give him shit, but he took the question at face value. Literalism was one of his other personality traits that could be alternately irritating or amusing, depending on my mood.

“I don't have anything against anybody,” he said.

“Except anti-Semites and fat people,” I amended, “and, by extension, Oprah Winfrey.”

“All I'm saying is if you're going to be fat, just embrace it and be fat. Don't go on television and whine about it all the time. You seen these shows they have on TV now? It's a game show—honest to God—where the way to win is to lose the most weight. That's what we've become in this country. A bunch of fat slobs who only lose weight if there's a cash prize in it.”

“You're like a font of wisdom,” I said. “Now tell me an anecdote about how much you sacrificed during WW Two.”

“How old do you think I am?” he asked.

“Definitely old enough to remember World War Two,” I said as I drained my last sip of beer.

“I was a kid during World War Two,” he said, indignant. “I served in Vietnam, the early years. I was such a dumb-ass I volunteered for service in '65. Thought I was going to get to see the world, take advantage of the G.I. Bill.”

“I was born in 1995,” I said.

“Shit,” was all he said, then he watched the game for a while in silence.

After that exchange, he didn't complain as much. Except for complaining about his bowels. That was a constant. Everything he ate or drank had some potential negative outcome for his bowels. I began to wonder if by the time you reached the wisdom and experience of old age, it no longer mattered because all you could think about was your shit—color, consistency, frequency. And if it's a bunch of old guys running the country in Washington, D.C., how much time could they really devote to the country's problems if they were constantly thinking about excrement? When I asked Mr. Dunkelman that question, he just barked out a laugh, but he did go for almost thirty minutes without mentioning the wrong end of digestion.

Instead what he talked about was how much things had changed since he was a kid. “I was a city kid,” he said, “from a solid middle-class Jewish family. You know, I was ten when we got our first television. What do you think of that, huh? No Internet, no cable television, no car phones.”

“Why would anyone have a car phone?” I asked with genuine curiosity.

He waved a hand to shut me up and continued with his monologue. “We used to go to the movies, my friends and me, one Saturday a month. Looked forward to it like it was the Super Bowl. It surprised me, to get to this age, see all this change in the world, the crazy technology, only to find out people haven't changed at all. People are exactly the same now as they were when I was a kid.”

“People never surprise me,” I said.

“Why is that?”

“Because,” I said, “people can be relied on to always look out for number one. People think nothing about lying, cheating, stealing—as long as they see it as something they want or need, they're always willing to justify it.”

Mr. Dunkelman nodded but said, “It can seem that way—when you're young. The older you get, the more you understand. There's a lot of hurt in the world. You know, your parents, they're just people. Like you. You think when you get older, you get things all sorted out, or you forget what it felt like to be young. That's not it. You get older, you learn a little about the world, learn what it is to love someone else more than you love yourself, and you think, if only I had it all to do over again, I could do it better. Be a better person. When you have kids, you see an opportunity to do it better through them, tell your kid all the secrets you wish you had known when you were that age. But it doesn't work that way.” He chuckled mirthlessly as he said, “Because your kids don't give a shit. They think you're just a crazy old man who spends too much time thinking about his bowels. I'll tell you the secret. You'll ignore it. People your age always do. But when you get to be my age, you realize there's only two things that really matter in this world.”

“Oh, shit. Hold on while I get a pen so I can write this down,” I said, and patted my pockets as if trying to locate a pen.

“Shut up, you schlemiel,” he growled. “I'm telling you. You won't listen to me—the same way people ignored Moses, treated him like he was some crazy old devil who was leading them in circles in the desert. Fifty years from now, you'll look back and realize I was right. The only two things in this world that really matter are the people who love you—and I don't mean your family. Sometimes the people who love you best have no blood relation to you. But in the end, all that will matter to you are the people who really love you…,” he said, then paused as the quarterback stepped out of the pocket and ducked a tackle to take a Hail Mary pass at the twenty-second mark. “The people who love you, and how often you shit. That's all there is.”

“Jesus, that's depressing,” I said. “No wonder your kids never come to see you. You didn't tell them that story, did you?”

He dismissed my comment with a wave of his hand.

“Maybe you just need to work on your delivery,” I said thoughtfully. “You don't exactly come across as the wise old prophet. Maybe more like a really, really angry Regis Philbin.”

“
Uch
. Don't even mention that schlemiel to me,” Mr. D said with disgust. “Why is he famous?”

 

ELEVEN

That Monday school was, as advertised, too long and boring to keep my attention, but there was an interesting development at the end of the day. Peter Smalley was waiting by my car when I got out to the parking lot, slumped against the front quarter panel, his hand gripping two library books against his leg while he looked at his phone.