Tomcat in Love (27 page)

“So who was it?” said Mrs. Kooshof.

I shrugged and thought fast. “My travel agent. She recommends Siberia.”

There was a brief respite, then another telephonic clap of thunder.

Herbie.

He was calling from the Tampa airport.

His flight departed at midnight.

He would be looking me up in the very near future.

“Home wrecker,” he snarled, which I found nothing if not ironic, but by that point it was hard to pay heed to each drop in the bucket, each cat and dog.

The phone exploded once more as we were preparing for bed. I did not blink an eye.
Sur moi le déluge
.

Wearily, I picked up the receiver and listened for a few moments to the inspired jailhouse invective of Mr. Robert (Doc) Kooshof. Large portions of the conversation went over my head, but I was given to understand that I was now a dead man. In one particularly poetic passage, the good doctor referred to me as a “wife-fucking motherfucker,” a phrase of such inanity that I could not withhold a small chuckle. Which was a tactical error: The gentleman had no sense of humor, nor would he listen to reason when I attempted to explain that I was laughing not at but with him. “Here’s the skinny,” Doc hissed. “She’s my motherfucking wife. You marry her, I’ll make it a funeral. Same flowers. Same church.”

I thanked him and staggered back to bed, where Mrs. Kooshof lay waiting in all her immodest Dutch splendor.

I was a dead man.

Why not?

——

Then again at midnight.

Groggily, now envisioning a retaliatory raid upon the grave of Alexander Graham Bell, I reached for the foul instrument at bedside.

“Hey, jerkoff,” said a voice from my distant past. “Guess who?”

“Spider,” I sighed.

“Yeah, man, Spider,” said Spider. “And guess what else?”

“I’m a dead man?”

“Ooooo! Right as rain!”

I nodded at the dark. In the face of this drencher there was little worth saying.

“You there, man?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth? More or less. Anyhow, this is just a reminder that we got your number, Tommy. And we also got these super-duper, extra-sticky memories.” He laughed at this. In the background, barely audible, were several other familiar voices. “You want to talk to Tulip? Bonnie Prince Charming?”

“Not though he were the risen Christ,” said I.

“No sweat. Understand completely. But the fact is, man, they think of you often.”

“Do they?”

“Oh,
yeah
. Like almost every hour, every day.” There was a short, icy pause, then he laughed again. “That air strike you called in on us—I mean, holy cow, we pooped in our panties. Yes, sir, each and every one of us. Naughty, naughty boy.”

I stared stupidly at the telephone. “You’re still upset?”

“Who said ‘upset?’ ”

“It sounded—”

“Just keep your eyes peeled, Tommy. And watch your back. Judgment Day.”

I sat up in bed, rubbed my eyes, glanced over at my dead-to-the-world fiancée.

“You’ve been tailing me?” I whispered. “All these years—watching?”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” purred Spider. “Who the fuck knows? Even this call, Tommy—maybe it’s your imagination.” His voice was silky and humane, almost comforting. “On the other hand, a promise is a promise. We
told
you there’d be a price to pay.”

He laughed again.

“Nighty-night,” he said, and hung up.
^*

Near dawn, as Mrs. Robert Kooshof slept on, I spent a laborious half hour with my screwdriver, removing the telephone’s base plate, disconnecting the ringer, all the while trying to imagine a remedy to the myriad problems at hand. Even for a man of my spiritual dexterity, I had far too many balls in the air, too many bases to cover, too many demands issuing from too many directions.

My instinct was to flee. An early-morning flight to Puerto Rico, perhaps, and then onward to Guadeloupe or Martinique. The notion sorely tempted me—a fresh start, a clean slate—yet when my repairs were complete, I retired to the bedroom and lay at the side of Mrs. Robert Kooshof.

Sleep did not come.

For several hours I watched the lighted dial on my alarm clock,
hoping for a brainstorm, but my thoughts seemed deformed by desperation. At one point, as dawn approached, I found myself studying the calm, contented face of my fiancée. Truly lovely, I thought. So generous and goodhearted and loyal. Inexplicably, lying there in the dark, I felt a sharp, unfamiliar stab of sentiment. I curled up against her; I nearly broke into tears.

Certain truths were manifest.

I did not want to harm this woman. I did not want to lose her.

By all rights, Mrs. Robert Kooshof was the ideal partner for me, yet I also had to face squarely one other looming truth. This was not love. Not yet. Not what I imagined love to be. Right or wrong, my entire life had been devoted to Lorna Sue—the one and only, the girl of my dreams—and there was no relief from the unspeakable pain of betrayal, the grief and horror, those aching ligaments of love that reached all the way back into childhood.

My vision blurred.

I heard myself moan.

I gazed down at Mrs. Robert Kooshof, but what I beheld at that instant was Lorna Sue standing against a small plywood cross. And opening her arms to me in an autumn cornfield. And playing blackjack till dawn. And sprinkling onion powder on a heap of noodles. Granted, she could be self-righteous and self-centered. She could be greedy. She could be slothful, imperious, vain, cruel, thoughtless, pious, glacial, sullen, short-tempered, narcissistic, sarcastic, callous, unfaithful, and unloving.

Yet she was Lorna Sue.

Irrational, maybe, but the human heart beats at its own brute pace, obsessive and mindless, mere muscle.

T
he next morning Mrs. Kooshof departed for Owago just after breakfast. Earlier, upon awakening, we’d had an unfortunate little tiff over the matter of parole. It was my contention that she ought to have informed me of Doc’s pending prospects, while Mrs. Kooshof took the position that love conquers all. (Tell it to Romeo. Tell it to Lorna Sue. Tell it to your ex-husband, that unfaithful traitor who now dwells in Fiji.) In any event, after some acrimonious give-and-take, we had more or less agreed to disagree, sealing it with a quickie, after which Mrs. Kooshof drove off under the apprehension that the world and we were well.

Her departure gave me operating room.

For my reunion with Lorna Sue, I dressed in a natty red bow tie and my favorite seersucker suit, applied a splash of cologne, armed myself with an umbrella, and motored swiftly across town to the
university. I was apprehensive, of course, about a possible encounter with Lorna Sue’s jilted tycoon, not to mention the more dangerous Herbie, and therefore took the precaution of ascending a back staircase to our sixth-floor departmental offices.

My heart, I will admit, was beating fast. A day of trial lay ahead.

Quickly, I picked up my mail and messages, pausing only to greet a well-machined new secretary by the name of Sissy Svingen. (Twenty-three years of age. Twenty-two-inch waist. Flared nostrils, sandy brown hair, bowling-pin hips, hearing aid, bulging black sweater, a lamentable dusting of dandruff at the shoulders.) I cleaned the girl up, gave her a welcoming hug, and then listened attentively as she informed me that the university’s president had requested that I stop by his office later that afternoon.

The news instantly cheered me.

“Well,” I sighed. “At last.”

“Sorry, sir?”

Tragically, the girl had difficulty manufacturing her s’s—a damp, sputtering hiss that filled my airspace with hard-driven moisture. (The
déluge
continued.)

I edged backward.

“A long, dismal story,” I told her. “But well worth your while.”

Briefly, then, I informed her that I had been a seven-time nominee for the Hubert H. Humphrey Prize for teaching excellence; that in each instance I had been torpedoed by collegial skulduggery; that over the years I had lodged more than a dozen formal complaints. Given this background, plus an urgent presidential summons, it was safe to assume that I had finally trounced the pathetic competition.

“It’s that time of year again,” I confided, “and I suspect the prize is mine. More than suspect—I am
due
. Overdue.”

To her credit, my frothy new secretary positively glowed at this happy news. Here, as usual, were the signs of hero worship.

“Well, that’s swell!” Sissy said, with a spray of sibilance that called out my handkerchief. “You should celebrate. Kick up your heels! Spread your wings!”

I nodded and stepped out of harm’s way.

“And perhaps we shall,” I said, without hesitation. “A drop of the bubbly after hours? A plate of oysters?”

“We? I and you?”

“Certainly,” I said. “I and you.”

It occurred to me, if only for an instant, that these events had a troubling historical chime and that I was biting off, as it were, far more than I could reasonably chew. Yet in times of distress there can be no harm in distraction. Misery loves firm company.

“What we’ll do,” I instructed, “is meet at the Ramada. Six-thirty on the dot.”

“Ramada?” said Sissy.

“A short, healthful stroll.”

“I know where it
is
,” she said. “But I think—you know—I think it’s probably a hotel, isn’t it?”

“The dining room,” I said sternly.

The poor girl blushed. Furtively, with understandable nervousness, she tucked a lock of hair around her hearing aid. “Well, gosh, that’s super-super sweet. Except—well, you know—we’re both university employees. I mean, is it allowed?”

“Oysters?” I said.

“No, silly! Consorting! This is my first job out of sec school, and I sure don’t want trouble.” She studied me with a flustered yet unequivocal gaze of admiration. “You aren’t married, are you?”

I blinked.

By coincidence, this was precisely the question I had asked of myself at the very instant I caught sight of this lusciously handicapped chippie. And the answer was a resounding negative. (Mrs. Kooshof, of course, would have objected. But on the other hand, to risk an automotive analogy, what possible harm could come from kicking Sissy’s well-balanced tires? Or to stretch the analogy to its fulsome extreme: If young Toni had the sleek lines of a Jaguar, my new secretary could be likened to a safe, sturdy, meticulously engineered Volvo. Nothing fancy, but the wipers worked.)

I informed her, in any case, that I was currently on the open market—a free soul—and then raised my eyebrows. “Do I impress you as the encumbered type?”

“Yeah. Kinda. What about a girlfriend?”

I hesitated only an instant.

“Indeed so,” I said. “I am blessed with a phalanx of such chums, hundreds upon hundreds.”

“I don’t mean that.”

“Well, dear, then I am not sure—”

“I mean a
steady
,” she sputtered. “Somebody
serious.
”

Reflexively, I gripped my umbrella. With each misty syllable I had the sensation of revisiting my morning toilet.

“Serious is as serious gets,” I said craftily, and perhaps meaninglessly. “Think it over. No reason for a snap decision, of course, but bear in mind Shakespeare’s advice. ‘What’s to come is still unsure/In delay there lies no plenty.’ ”

Sissy stared at me blankly. “Jeez, I’m not much on Shakespeare. Like I said, I went to sec school.”

“And a most talented graduate,” I assured her. “Each of us would benefit, I am quite certain, from a rigorous erotic curriculum.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I said
sec
school.”

“Exactly.”

“Secretarial! Are you making fun of me?”

My confusion was genuine. The time had come to repair to the snug, dry confines of my office. “Bear in mind the Shakespeare,” I said hurriedly. “ ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure.’ ”

All in all, then, it was an amusing initiation to the workday, and as I marched down the corridor I made a mental note to enter the moist young lady’s essential data in my ledger. (This would require, in Sissy’s case, the manufacture of brand-new columns and categories, but of course such innovation was in large part the joy of it all: refining the various phyla and biotypes.) In my office, door locked, I immediately set to work on the project, and for more than three hours I was oblivious to the pressures upon me. (For safety’s sake, I had stored my new ledger in a well-secured file cabinet, away from prying eyes and burgling brothers.) It was good to be back on the
job. For the first time in weeks I felt a professional contentment, safe in my scholarship, and at one point I found myself humming a happy little marching melody from those distant glory days of Vietnam—
I met a girl in Tijuana
 … (It struck me, just in passing, that I might someday author a monograph on the eerie similarities between wartime combat and peacetime romance. Blood lust. Mortal fear. Shell shock. Despair. Hopelessness. Entrapment. Betrayal.)
She knew how but she didn’t wanna
.