After the Workshop (28 page)

And so when I passed Mickey’s and saw through the all-but-frosted-over plate-glass window Leslie Buttons having dinner with Tate Rinehart, I knew that it was a done deal: Tate had been invited to teach in the Workshop.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. I knocked on the window. When Leslie and Tate turned toward me—Leslie smiling at the sight of me, Tate holding a burger up to his mouth—I gave Tate the finger. I slammed it against the window so hard, the restaurant’s other customers turned to see what had just happened. And then I walked on.

Leslie knew me well, of course. When I was in the Workshop, my funding came from a special bequest that was earning interest. Instead of getting paid directly through Human Resources, the way nearly every university employee was paid, once a month I was given a check handwritten by Leslie Buttons from one of the Workshop’s many special accounts. One weekend, after several days of bad luck at poker, I was called into Leslie Buttons’s office. On her walls were old posters for readings by John Cheever, John Hawkes, Gail Godwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and a dozen others, all of them signed to her, many of them thanking her profusely.

“I’m not giving you your check this month,” she said to me. She was sitting on her floor, rummaging through a box. She pulled out a nameplate with John Irving’s name on it. She held it up for me to see. “This used to be on his door,” she said. “Should I keep it?”

“What do you mean, you’re not giving me my check?”

She returned John Irving’s nameplate to the box and pulled out a tiny ceramic pig. “Jane Smiley gave this to me,” she said. She threw the pig into the trash can, placed the lid back onto the box, and said, “I hear you’re gambling it all away.”

“That’s my choice,” I said. “It’s my money. I can do whatever the hell I want to do with it.”

“The money we pay you with,” Leslie said, “was given to us by a famous writer on her deathbed. I can’t say who it was—that was part of her wish—but I thought you should know that.”

“So?” I said. “I’m failing to see the point.”

“The point,” Leslie said, “is that you are wasting money that was given to us in good faith.”

“Fine,” I said. “Tell you what. Give my money to Vince Belecheck, okay? I’m sure he needs it to buy more fucking work boots!”

Even back then, everyone in the Workshop knew that Belecheck was a trust-fund baby who was merely playing a role from one of his own bad short stories. A week after I had stormed out of Leslie’s office, she phoned me at home.

“Jack?” she said. “I’m calling to say that I’ve reconsidered. There’s an envelope in your mailbox.”

“I bounced two checks yesterday,” I said, “and my rent is past due.”

I waited for an apology, but none was forthcoming. She said, “You can pick it up anytime,” and hung up.

Needless to say, it was highly unlikely, even if my career had taken off, that I would ever have been invited back to the Workshop for a semester to teach. I wasn’t one of Leslie’s little darlings, as Vince Belecheck had been. And now to see a fraud like Tate sitting across from her all these years later was too much.

“Jack!” a man behind me yelled out. “Jack. Wait up, you asshole!”

I turned quickly, as if expecting a fight, and saw Larry McFeeley, my ex-weight-lifting drinking buddy from the Foxhead, trudging through the snow toward me and grinning. In all these years, I’d never seen him anywhere other than the Foxhead.

“Larry. What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

“I got kicked out of the Foxhead,” he said when he reached me.

“You
what
?” This was akin to getting an eviction notice on a house you had paid off and owned.

“About two weeks ago I started taking steroids again and—”

“Whoa!” I said. “Wait right there. You started taking
steroids
? Are you
kidding
me?”

Larry shrugged. “I shit you not.” He wiped a wet, meaty hand over his face and said, “Look. I smoke, I drink, I haven’t taken a decent shit in over two years, my diet is horrible, I eat antacids like they’re fucking Raisinets. I don’t think taking steroids for a couple of months is going to kill me.”

“But why?” I asked.

“I wanted to feel how I used to feel, you know, thirty years ago,” he said. “Just for a short while. I wanted to feel strong again.”

“What happened at the Foxhead? Did you get into a fight?”

“No, no,” he said. “I made a bet with this college kid that I could lift the pool table up over my head.”

“And?”

“And all I did was tip it over and break the damned thing.”

“Who do you think you are?” I asked. “Chief Broom?” When Larry said nothing, I added, “
You
know.
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
? That water fountain thingamabob? He lifts it over his head and throws it out a window? Does any of this ring a bell?”

“A water fountain?” Larry said. “Who the hell
couldn’t
do that? This was a fucking pool table. Solid slate.” He wagged his head, disappointed that I couldn’t see the difference, and sighed. “So,” he said, “what’s going on with you?”

Without intending to, I unloaded it all on Larry—losing Vanessa, the breast pump, the arrival of S. S., the horrors of Lauren Castle, the theft of my novel—all of it, every last detail. I was succinct but thorough.

“Holy Christ,” Larry said. “You need a drink. Where should we go?”

“Actually, I’m looking for the guy who stole my novel.”

“I’ll help you,” Larry offered.

“I’m just heading over to the Mill,” I said, “for an artsy-fartsy reading. He might be there. But, really, you don’t need to help. I appreciate it and all, but, really, I’ll be fine.” I started walking, hoping Larry would veer off toward the Brown Bottle or the Airliner, but he matched me step for step.

“Naw, this sounds about my speed tonight,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want Larry McFeeley coming along, but what could I do? Before today, I’d barely exchanged more than a few words at a time with the man, and although those words had had a cumulative effect over the span of years that I’d been going to the Foxhead, I honestly knew very little about him.

“You went to the Workshop, right?” Larry asked.

“Once upon a time,” I said.

“I write a little my own self,” Larry said. “Poetry, mostly. Maybe they’ll let me recite some of it tonight.”

“I’m not sure it’s that kind of reading,” I said.

Larry said, “Well, if it happens, it happens. I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge.”

“Sure,” I said. “You could do that, I suppose. If you really want to.”

“I don’t have a degree in it,” Larry said, “like you. I guess I’m of the belief that writing should come from the heart.” When we passed an alley, Larry stopped walking and pulled out a vial of medicine. He held it up between two fingers, showed it to me, and then shook it. “Want a boost? I can shoot you in your calf, if that works for you.” He started heading into the alley.

“You’re going to shoot it out here?” I asked. “Like a junkie? They’ve got bathrooms at the Mill, you know.”

Larry stared at the vial, holding it before him like a rare diamond, before reluctantly putting it away, and then the two of us trudged on to the restaurant.

I
NSIDE THE MILL, I looked for S. S., hoping to find him regaling a group of Naropa poets, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Shit,” I whispered.

After we secured a booth, Larry disappeared into the bathroom for a good ten minutes. I half-expected him to emerge with his shirt and pants ripped apart, looking like Lou Ferrigno in
The Incredible Hulk
, but as he waddled back to our table, I saw that he was still the same pot-bellied alcoholic I’d always known.

“First round’s on me,” he said and motioned for the waitress, ordering two shots and two drafts. I nodded. I should have told him that I was dead broke, but I was too humiliated to broach the subject. The drinks came, and Larry paid.

Vince Belecheck, walking into the back half of the Mill where the poetry reading was going to take place, slammed open the swinging double-doors like an old-time gunslinger. After a few minutes at the bar, he sauntered right up to our table and set down two shots and two beers, pushing one of each toward me.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Reconciliation?”

“Free booze,” Vince said. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Larry asked. “What’s a gift horse, and why the hell shouldn’t you look it in the mouth?”

Vince pulled up a chair and sat down uninvited. “Do we know each other, friend?” he asked Larry.

“You don’t know
me
,” Larry said. “But I’ve seen
you
around.”

“So, Vince,” I said. “Hoping to pick up a hot, young Amy Clampitt tonight?”

Vince wagged his head. “Nah. I’m meeting my fiancée here.”

I had picked up my beer and was about to slurp the foam but paused at the word
fiancée
. Was he shitting me?

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What about those poets you and Tate hooked up with? What about . . .”

Vince held up his palm. “Easy on the self-righteous indignation, Dr. Phil. We’ve been separated, okay? Is that good enough for you? But now we’ve decided to work things out.” His eyes wandered over to a table of six young women. He blinked a few times, as if trying to make them disappear, then turned back to me and said, “Tate Rinehart,” and huffed.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Want to know what that little fucker did to me?”

“He took your teaching spot for next year,” I said.

“How the hell did you know that?” he asked.

I shrugged.

Vince rubbed his face hard. “I knew he was called in for an on-the-spot interview, but I figured they’d just hire us both. The two of us together? It’d be like having Led Zeppelin and Elvis on the same marquee.”

“No doubt,” I said. I did both shots in quick succession. “But here’s what I’m wondering.”

“Shoot.”

“Why should I care?”

Vince cocked his head.

“About you,” I added. “About your fate.”

“Fuck you, then,” Vince said. He picked up his drinks and carried them to a booth near the stage, settling in by himself.

“Do you know how much the human head weighs?” Larry asked.

“I have no idea.”

“About twelve pounds. About the same weight as a bowling ball. That’s about 8 percent of a person’s total weight.” He thought about it a moment. “Seven or eight. Less if it’s a fat person’s head. Feel my bicep,” he said. “Go on. Give it a good squeeze.” Larry struck a bodybuilder’s pose with his one arm, even going so far as to tilt his head toward his fist. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, then reached over and squeezed it. To my surprise, the bicep was as solid as oak. It was as though his sagging stomach served as beard for the strongman he apparently still was. He motioned for the waitress. “This round’s on me,” he said, as if he hadn’t yet paid for any drinks. I didn’t argue.

Over the next hour, Larry took two more trips to the restroom. Whether to shoot more steroids into his thigh or take a piss, I didn’t know. As the restaurant filled, I recognized some of the Workshop students, the ones I frequently saw at the Foxhead and George’s, including a few who had been out with Vince and Tate last night. The vast majority of the people, however, were strangers. Whiskered and sunburned men roamed the restaurant like Bedouins, while mysterious-looking women clustered in groups, clutching poetry manuscripts to their wombs, or sat alone in booths, anxiously playing with their packs of cigarettes.

“Where the hell is he?” I asked.

“Who?”

“S. S.,” I said. “The guy who stole my novel.”

“If we find him,” Larry said, “do you want me to pop his head?” He held his hands apart, as though holding an invisible basketball.

“No,” I said. “That wouldn’t be good.”

The emcee finally climbed up onto the barely raised platform, motioning with his hands for the crowd to shush.

“My name is Billy Wexler,” he said, “and I’m a student in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics!”

A good three-quarters of the audience stood and cheered. A few held their fists high and hammered the air while barking like a pack of sickly dogs: “Whuh-whuh! Whuh-whuh!”

When the crowd quieted down, Billy Wexler leaned close to the mike and said, “For the record, we at Naropa don’t write poems about vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard or our year abroad. We write about
important
things. Things that actually
matter
!”

More “whuh-whuhs” filled the room. The Workshop students visibly bristled.

Billy Wexler established the ground rules. Someone from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics would read first, followed by someone from the
famous
Iowa Writers’ Workshop, if there were any volunteers. The word
famous
, I realized, was going to be the night’s recurring insult.

First up was a guy who looked like he belonged in a Spin Doctors tribute band. His name was Dusty Rhodes.

“Go, Dusty!” someone yelled. “Show these fuckers what we got!”

Dusty pulled a few crumpled sheets from his back pocket. He unfolded them and smoothed them out, looked up, grinned and chuckled, shaking his head, and then looked back down at his poems.

The first poem was about a woman slicing open her wrists as semen leaked from her veins. The final line was, “Your seed penetrates my carpet as I once penetrated you.”

“Whuh-whuh! Whuh-whuh!”

Larry McFeeley looked around, checking to see if anyone else was as disturbed as he was.

Dusty’s second poem was about a brutal rape between an Army drill sergeant and a ten-year-old Vietnamese boy.

“Whuh-whuh! Whuh-whuh!”

Dusty lowered his head by way of taking a bow and, trying to hold back his grin but not succeeding, returned to his booth, where a Janis Joplin wannabe high-fived him.