Turtleface and Beyond (12 page)

Jolene hissed at Clifford and told him to sit down. She pinched me and said I should go up there and retrieve him, but I was wary of making another spectacle of myself. Clifford rambled on a little while longer. He told us about how he and Jolene had been trying to have kids but he thought his sperm was shaped wrong and couldn't swim correctly. “Some of them have two heads,” he said. “Imagine if one of them made it through, and then what would happen?”

That's when Willis showed up. He wandered up next to Clifford and stood there with a big wide grin on his face. His light blue suit was all crumpled and his shirt was undone and there was a big splotch of barbeque sauce on his chest where I suppose he'd fallen over into the plate of food I'd left for him. He didn't seem to mind this though. He was more relaxed, and his limp wasn't so bad. He patted Clifford on the back and then gave him a big bear hug. Clifford reciprocated and then sat down, much to Jolene's relief. Willis stayed up there though, gazing out over the bewildered wedding guests with a wide joyful smile.

In a loud, booming voice, Willis said, “People, I stared into the cold face of death today. I met the Grim Reaper himself, and here I am, alive to tell the tale. Now, I'm not a religious man, for the most part. I think one god is just as good as another, but today … today I found Jesus. I just want to tell you all that this wedding must be a blessed union because it has already saved one poor wretch like me. I was out there alone, loaded full of the serpent's venom, when along came these fine people.”

With that Willis pointed at us.

“They showed me mercy. They sucked the poison from my veins and delivered me from an eternity in hell! Where's that bride? Where's the groom? I want to thank them personally for bringing on the angels that saved my life!”

Willis yanked Luke and Margaret up front with him and they all engaged in a tipsy three-way hug. Luke's father marched up there and joined them, and then so did the long-haired preacher. Soon there was a whole bunch of people hugging each other in one happy mass. Even Amanda the accordion player and old Mr. Fiske joined in.

Amanda broke away and started playing “Amazing Grace,” and Willis pushed them all away so that he could sing along. When he was done, Luke's father hugged him again and they both fell down.

Jolene didn't know what to make of this. “Oh, Margaret,” she said, and got up to powder her nose.

Clifford took a long sip from his drink. His eyes were all glassy in a way I'd seen them get before. Most likely he would have no memory of the night's proceedings.

After dinner they cut open the cake and then there was a big bonfire out back and Luke sang a few more songs and everyone slapped Willis on the back, congratulating him on surviving that snake attack. Mr. Fiske pulled out his silver flask again and Clifford took a swig and announced he needed to lie down.

“Help me with him, Georgie,” said a voice from behind me. It was Jolene. I helped her walk Clifford over toward the hay bales, where we laid him down in relative privacy. I started to walk back to the bonfire but Jolene just stood there looking at me. I didn't want to meet her eyes, but I could tell there was no way around it.

Jolene let out a sigh. “Clifford can't drive now. He'll be out for hours,” she said.

“I'll drive,” I said.

“Oh no, you won't,” she said.

“I'm sorry about all this, Jolene,” I said. “About Willis. Cliff. Luke. Me…”

Jolene shook her head. “Such disappointments…” she said. I wondered which one of us was the biggest disappointment to her, or if it was just all of us put together.

Jolene's eyes got a little wet and she wiped at their edges. She looked very pretty like that. I'm not sure if I've mentioned how pretty Jolene could be. She was quite a beauty, there was no denying that. It was sort of a shame she'd ended up with old Cliff, actually. At least that's the way I felt about it just then. I wasn't thinking too clearly. I stepped forward and bent down to kiss her. I was going to show her that there were still a few good things left to look forward to. That's what I was thinking. My lips touched hers and she pulled away. It was a terrifically awkward thing to have done. She could have slapped me hard and been justified.

Instead she just said, “Um, Georgie…”

“Oh hey, I'm sorry.”

“Right, of course.”

“Let's go back to the party,” I said.

“Yes, let's go. You smell like a brewery. All of you do.”

I wiped my mouth with Willis's tie and we wandered back toward the fire.

Clifford woke up at some point and managed to drive Jolene home. They left without me, which was fine. I didn't want to have to sit in that car with them all the way back. I stuck it out until the end with Willis, Luke, Amanda, and that hippie preacher. Margaret had gone to bed long ago. Luke didn't want us to leave and kept making Amanda play songs on her accordion. But finally we just had to go.

Willis and I caught a ride back with the preacher and he dropped Willis off in front of his vehicle, which was still parked there by the side of the road. Willis said he was going to take a nap inside his car and then continue on in the morning to meet his lady friend for lunch.

“I'm going to ask her to marry me,” he announced. “And I want you both to be there for the wedding.”

“We'd be honored,” said the preacher.

“Goodbye, preacher man. And goodbye, Georgie,” said Willis. “Thanks for saving my life. Both of you.”

He gave us each a sweaty embrace and then walked away from us. After a few steps he turned around and said, “Georgie, I'd like my tie back now.”

I removed it from around my neck and handed it to him. It wasn't in very good shape, but he didn't seem to mind. The sun was beginning to peek up over the mountain and Willis limped back across the road and then collapsed onto the hood of his car.

 

WENDY, MORT, AND I

 

I was dating a woman named Wendy who was an actress. Or, she was trying to be an actress. I'd seen her in one of those art-house productions where everyone ran around the stage yelling and the plot didn't make any sense. A friend of mine was also in that show and afterward I went to the bar where they all hung out discussing the performance. Wendy had asked me how I liked the show and I told her she was the best part. This was somewhat true because Wendy had been naked throughout the second act and she looked great that way.

Anyway, we'd been dating for about three weeks, close to a month. We'd had sex after our second date. I, of course, had seen her naked once before, so it was a big turn-on for me to have her rolling around next to me now. I had noticed when she was onstage that she had a large mole just above her hip. It was kind of sexy and I'd thought,
I'd like to be up close to that.
And here I was! It was right in front of me!

We were like rabbits that first month, or at least we behaved how I've come to understand rabbits do, copulating at every opportunity. I've never seen evidence of this rabbit lust myself, but still I suppose the description is apt. It was an exhausting month. I was beginning to develop a theory about dating actresses because I had previously dated another one and she was voracious as well. Come to think of it, both of them, Wendy and this other one, were what you'd call struggling actresses, and so I think my theory, which stated that all actresses have large sexual appetites, actually applied more to the struggling ones. Not that it was a very scientific theory anyway.

Wendy would literally take a running start at me sometimes and we'd both fly onto her bed and land with a flop. Her bed consisted of this big saggy mattress and it wasn't an ideal platform for the things we were trying to do. Her poor neighbors must have hated us. The springs would squeak and every so often we'd roll sloppily onto the floor. I had bruises all over my knees and elbows.

One time Wendy told me her father was coming into town to see her in this new show she was in. She'd been rehearsing it for the past two weeks and as far as I could tell she was onstage for a total of forty-five seconds. She walked on, got hit in the face with a pie, and then said some line about a sinking ship and how it was better to stay aboard than live life as a coward. It was all some kind of avant-garde theater piece, so nothing was supposed to make any sense, at least I think that was the point. I was afraid to dig very deep because her explanation of the “thematic proportions” sort of irritated me. Wendy was very smart and charming and I thought this type of theater underutilized her talents.

Her father's name was Mort and he was a former Heisman Trophy winner. He'd played fullback for USC in the 1970s. He had agreed to marry Wendy's mother, a former cheerleader, only after Wendy was born, and the union didn't last. He tried to remain close to Wendy though, or so it seemed. He would come into the city every time she was in a new production.

We all went out to dinner after the show. Mort had looked me over with a lot of skepticism when we met at the theater. I could tell he'd been through all this before, meeting his beautiful daughter's loser boyfriends and having to pay for their dinner.

Wendy leaned over to Mort after we all sat down and said, “So, Dad, what do you think?”

I was horrified for a moment because I thought she was asking about me, wondering what Mort thought of me, but she meant the play, which, by the way, was atrocious. You couldn't have paid me a thousand dollars to sit through that tripe again. Even the part where Wendy got pelted by the pie was poorly done. Her line about the sinking ship was inaudible because some fellow in a bird suit was chirping on the other end of the stage.

Mort said, “I liked it just fine, honey.” I could tell he'd used that response before on many an occasion.

“I know it wasn't a traditional production,” said Wendy.

“It sure wasn't,” I said.

Mort looked at me with disdain. I guess I wasn't supposed to criticize his daughter's plays. He was an intimidating guy, this Mort. He was still in great shape and could have kicked my ass in less than a minute. I'm sure he wanted to do just that too. Here I was knocking his daughter's acting, about to eat the food he would inevitably pay for, and hoping once again to hump her on that saggy mattress in the apartment he most likely subsidized as well. Boy, was I an asshole in this guy's eyes. I understood that, I really did.

We ordered our food and I tried to keep it simple, nothing too expensive, which would seem like I was trying to take advantage of the situation. Mort mostly talked to Wendy, asking her about her finances and paying as little attention to me as possible. At one point Wendy mentioned that I was a writer.

“For magazines? Newspapers?” asked Mort.

“Sometimes,” I replied. “I mostly write fiction though.”

I thought Mort was going to lunge across the table and slug me right there at the restaurant.
A fiction writer? Is that even a career? Do they pay people to do that?

Instead he said, “Oh.”

After we had finished eating, Wendy got up and went to the bathroom, leaving me and Mort there to stare at our laps uncomfortably. To my surprise, it was Mort who spoke up first.

“Look,” he said, “I don't know what the hell Wendy's doing with this theater stuff. She went to Brown University, for Christ's sake. That's an Ivy League school.”

“I know,” I said. I meant that I knew Brown was part of the Ivy League, but it came out sounding like I was agreeing with him about the theater thing, which incidentally I did, but it wasn't my place to agree with him on that.

Mort continued on, “I just want her to be able to support herself, that's all. She could do some commercials, some modeling just to pay the bills, and then pursue this artsy stuff on her own time.”

“Right, sure, of course.”

“Do you know anyone in those fields? Commercials? Modeling? I sure don't.”

“Well, not really,” I said. While he was talking I had decided that I would do something bold. I would pay for this dinner. This would impress Mort, I thought. I bet none of Wendy's previous boyfriends ever offered to pay for dinner. The check arrived and I grabbed it.

“Let me get this one, Mort,” I said.

“What?” He reached for the check in my hands. “Get serious, I'm paying.”

“No, really, I'd like to pay for this.”

Rather than being impressed, Mort seemed offended by this gesture. Wendy came back from the bathroom and looked at us in our uncomfortable standoff.

“Your boyfriend thinks he should pay for dinner,” said Mort.

Wendy said, “Just let Dad pay. He likes to do that.”

“No, really,” I said, “I'd like to pay for this one.” I said “this one” as if there would be many more.

“Don't be a jackass,” said Mort. His meaty hand darted across the table and took hold of the leather folder which held the check.

“No!” I said, much too loudly. I wouldn't let go. Mort scowled at me and pulled his hand away. He wanted me dead, I could tell.

I opened up the check and saw that it was for over $150. There was no way I could pay that. I had about $60 cash in my wallet and my credit card wasn't in working order just then. I felt my face turn hot with embarrassment.

“How about I'll just pay for my share?” I said. I handed the check back to Mort with my $60 inside of it.

“That would be fine,” said Mort.

“Daddy,” said Wendy, “don't make him pay.”

“He wants to,” said Mort. “I'll let him.”

Mort paid the rest of the bill and we went outside. I wanted to go home and leave Wendy and her father alone to catch up among themselves, but Wendy wouldn't have it.

“You're coming back to my place, right?” she said.

“I think I should get going,” I said. “I'll leave you two alone.”