After the Workshop (7 page)

“Yup,” I said. “Only 155,000 miles on it.”

“Good God!”

“And there it is!” I wheezed, pointing.

Inside the car, I shoved my key into the ignition, but instead of starting the car, I turned and caught Alice staring at me.

“What?” I said, smiling.

“What?” she repeated.

It wasn’t, I supposed, the best place to rekindle a romance, but I knew if I didn’t do something right then, I might not get another chance. I leaned over the emergency brake and kissed Alice, and Alice kissed me back.

“Who’d have thought this morning,” I said, “that we’d be here now doing this?”

“Shhhh,” she said, unzipping my coat. “No talking.”

“It’s cold in here,” I said.

“Start the car.”

“And these bucket seats,” I said. “They’re not very—what’s the word—
conducive
.”

“We’ll use the backseat,” she said.

“Well, look at you,” I said. “Xavier Hollander.”

“Who?”

“No one,” I said.

“Just get the heater going,” she said.

And I did. We slipped into the backseat and, with our pants pulled either partway down or entirely off, and with buttons and clasps and zippers manipulated by cold, stiff fingers, we somehow managed, in such cramped and unkempt quarters, to engage in a kind of sex more appropriate for couples half our age: teenagers with no place to go and not entirely sure what they’re doing, confused by both the complexities and realities of anatomy. We weren’t confused so much as we were tipsy, and Alice had to whisper, “No, no, not there” and “Are you still inside me?” more times than I would have liked, and on two occasions Alice stepped down hard onto something sharp on my floorboard. “Ouch!” she yelled the first time. “I think I cut my toe on a bottle cap,” and then, a few minutes later, “Is it possible you have a cheese grater back here?” “It’s possible,” I said, remembering that I had bought one at Target a month earlier but couldn’t find it when I had gotten home and unpacked my purchases. I had even called the store manager to complain. And now here it was, slicing my ex-fiancée’s foot as she tried positioning herself for better leverage.

When we were done and lying across the Toyota’s backseat (designed, I was fairly certain, without two overdressed Iowa lovers in mind), Alice whispered into my ear, “My big toe is throbbing.”

“I would imagine,” I said, catching my breath. “Are you bleeding?”

“Maybe,” she said. She crossed her leg and examined her foot. “Yes,” she said, “I’m bleeding.”

“Oh,” I said, but neither of us took any action. I worried that the reason we were so lethargic wasn’t because of the sex but because deadly blue-gray exhaust had been seeping through a crack in the floorboard and we were now starting to asphyxiate—but then Alice sat bolt-upright
and said, “Whew! That was refreshing.” She clasped her bra and buttoned her blouse. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you escorting today? Didn’t you need to bring what’s-her-name to the bookstore? It’s already past seven.”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t tell you,” I said. “She checked out of her hotel.”

“Really?” Alice said. “Where did she go?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“Oh well,” Alice said, pulling up her underwear. “You can write your own memoir now. Call it
The Backseat
.”

“Get this,” I said, and I told her about Vanessa Roberts’s husband calling the publicist, worried that his wife was suffering from postpartum psychosis. “Do you believe that shit?” I said.

Alice stopped putting on her shoes and raised up. “And you don’t know where she is?”

“Not a clue!” I said, smiling. But even as I said this, I realized that these were simple dots to connect, and that I had been less than diligent, especially since I hadn’t even called Lauren back to tell her that Vanessa had checked out of the hotel.

“And you think this is
funny
?” Alice asked. “I mean, she has her baby with her, right?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“No,” Alice said, putting up her hand. She didn’t want to hear any more. “This woman’s probably in trouble, God only knows what kind of danger that poor baby is in, and here we are screwing in the backseat of your car.”

“Well, for starters, we’re not really screwing right this second,” I clarified.

Alice finished getting dressed, opened the door, and flung herself up and out of the Toyota. I had expected the passenger door to open and for Alice to slide back inside so that I could drive her across the river
to her own car, but she was already halfway down the parking garage ramp when I opened my door and climbed out.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Don’t you need a ride?”

Alice kept walking. I got back into my car, slammed the door, and backed out of the space, hoping to catch up with her, but by the time I rounded the corner, Alice had either ducked into a stairwell or disappeared into thin air. She was nowhere to be seen.

I
LEFT MY CAR in the parking garage and trudged back to the bookstore. Snow was already ankle-deep, and college students, usually sidled up to a bar by now, were outside playing in it. A few hard-packed snowballs whizzed past my head. Whether or not I was their target, I couldn’t tell.

There are few pleasures quite like walking into an independent bookstore on a snowy evening, and tonight was no exception. Once inside, I stomped my feet and said hello to Eileen, who was working the cash register and had been an employee there before I was a student at the Workshop. Other fellow night travelers had come in from the snow, wearing knit caps and scarves, their gloves tucked into their pockets as they perused the latest New York publishing had to offer. Here we were, all lovers of literature, gathered together on a night straight out of a Dickens novel. I half-hoped to look out the window and see Tiny Tim atop Bob Cratchit’s shoulders, but no: All I saw was an undergrad writing SUCK ME in the snow that covered somebody’s car while another guy bent over and pressed his ass against the car’s front door, hoping for an accurate imprint.

I climbed the stairs to where the author readings were held, but the only people up there were one of the store employees folding chairs and Tate Rinehart.

“Where is she?” Tate asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I looked everywhere.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Tate said.

I shrugged. “She checked out of the hotel. That’s all I know.”

Tate’s lips tightened into two worms spooning. He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “Vince? Yeah, Tate. Listen, the reading was canceled. Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I’m here with someone you know, though.” Tate looked up at me. “What’s your name again?”

“Jack Sheahan,” I said.

“Jack Sheahan?” Tate said into the phone. “She?
Han
? Says you two were in the Workshop together? Yeah, well, anyway . . . he’s my escort, so tell me where we should meet, and he can take me there. Sounds good, brother. See you shortly.” He closed the cell phone and said, “You know George’s?”

I nodded. Of course I knew George’s.

Tate picked up his canvas messenger bag and slipped it over his shoulder. “Vince is meeting us there,” Tate said. “I hope you don’t mind hanging out with us tonight. It’ll probably be just a drink or two, and then you can take me back to the hotel. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” I said. “But I need to make a call first.”

I walked behind the abandoned information desk, picked up the phone as though I worked there, and called my neighbor, M. Cat.

“Yo,” M. Cat said, picking up before the phone could even ring on my end.

“M. Cat? It’s Jack.”

“Jack who?”

“Your neighbor.”

“Dude,” he said. “
Dude!
That lady—the one from New York—she’s been calling here every fifteen minutes looking for you. Apparently, that
chick you’re in charge of checked out of her hotel, and now this crazy chick—the one from New York—is fucking
pissed
, dude. She is
pissed
.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “Easy. I
know
she checked out.”

“Do you have any idea just how
pissed
this insane New York chick is?” M. Cat asked. “She wants to string you up by your
cojones
. And for a chick, she swears a lot. You need to call her cell. You got a pen? You got some paper?”

“Listen. I’m not calling her,” I said. “But I need your help. There’s two hundred bucks in it for you.”

“Two hundred?” I heard M. Cat take a long hit on his bong. In a high-pitched voice still full of smoke, M. Cat said, “Do tell.”

What I told him was that I needed him to find Vanessa Roberts. I needed him to call all the hotels and motels, and once he found her, he would have to drive out there to make sure that she was okay. If need be, he should spend the night in the lobby to make sure she didn’t go anywhere she shouldn’t be going.

“Now here’s the thing,” I said. “According to Lauren”—I cleared my throat—“you know, the crazy New York chick Vanessa, may be experiencing postpartum psychosis. Do you want to hear the symptoms?”

M. Cat said, “Hey, man, I almost went to medical school. I
know
what postpartum psychosis is.”

“So you know how serious it is?” I asked.

M. Cat snorted. “Dude, I’m on it.” Before I could ask him to keep me updated via my answering machine, he hung up.

I turned to Tate, who was holding a recently reissued Stanislaw Lem novel that he’d written the introduction for. “Ready?” I asked.

Tate glanced down at the book, as though expecting me to acknowledge his contribution, but when I didn’t, he sighed and returned the book to the shelf.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

T
HE SNOW WAS coming down so hard now I put on a ski mask. Tate regarded me at first with suspicion until the onslaught of snow forced him to duck his head in order to see where he was going. “Just follow me,” I yelled into the wind as it ripped down Washington Avenue.

By the time we reached my car, Tate was shivering and knocking free the snow that had clung to his thick hair. His glasses had steamed over, but he couldn’t seem to clear the fog no matter how many times he rubbed at them with his shirttail.

Inside the car, Tate leaned back and sighed. “My God,” he said. “Is the weather always this bad?”

“Only in the winter,” I said. “And in the summers when the tornadoes come through,” I added. “Otherwise, it’s pretty nice here.”

Tate started sniffing. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

“What smell?” I said, though I knew perfectly well what smell he meant. I smelled it, too. It was sex.

“It’s . . .
familiar
,” he said. “But I can’t place it.”

I shook my head and shrugged. “Huh!” I said. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Maybe you would if you took off that ski mask,” he said. “Can you see well enough to drive?”

“Does a cat have nine lives?” I asked.

“No,” Tate said. “It does not.”

We said nothing else to each other. Each time I turned a corner after exiting the parking garage, the car fishtailed. With the ski mask on, I felt as though I were driving a getaway car. If I owned a prop gun, I could have held it up to Tate’s head and pretended I’d taken him hostage.

It was unusual for an escort job to continue beyond the walk back to the hotel. When Booker Award-winning British writer Clive Darling was in town several years ago, a young woman approached him after his reading and invited him to a farmhouse on the outskirts of Iowa City for an after-hours party. When we arrived, there were only seven or eight Workshop students there and none of them had gone to Clive’s reading. With the exception of the host, everyone feigned indifference to Clive’s presence. When the host introduced me to the group as “Clive’s keeper,” Clive visibly bristled. He cleared his throat and said, “This is Mr. Jack Sheahan. He is a graduate of the Workshop. A writer. He has published in
The New Yorker
. A story of his was anthologized in
The Best American Short Stories
series. He is not my
keeper
. Please pay him the respect he deserves.” The students had paused whatever it was they were doing (drinking, mostly; playing cards; poking fun at Nathan Englander’s jacket photo) to listen to Clive’s speech, but when he was done talking, they gave each other looks (Who the hell
is
this guy?) and returned to their activities, refusing to acknowledge either of us for the remainder of our time there.

Clive and I stood in a small kitchen and drank two beers each. The kitchen was full of appliances from the 1940s and 1950s, most notably a colossal stove that required a match for lighting the oven and a too-small refrigerator decorated with literary magazine rejection letters with
comments like, “We liked this one but couldn’t find room this issue” and “This one too violent—try again?”

Clive was one of the few writers I’d escorted who had asked me what it was I did besides escort writers, and I was so grateful for his interest that I’d unloaded a complete curriculum vitae, even as Clive stifled several yawns. I was happy nonetheless. Clive had put the little bastards in their place. “Thanks for what you said in there,” I said as we stood together, finishing our beers. Clive, still miffed, pursed his lips and wagged his head.

Before we left, Clive disappeared into a bedroom, presumably to retrieve his coat. When he came out without a coat, I remembered that he hadn’t brought one, and I suspected that he had remembered this, too, while digging through others’ coats—but this proved not to be the case. “I jimmy riddled all over their stuff,” he told me on our drive back to the hotel. When I asked him what he meant, he said, “I piddled on their bed, in their closet, and across their bureau.” “You
pissed
all over their stuff?” I asked. Clive nodded, then pointed to a semi pulling out in front of me. “Mind the truck,” he said, and I braked too hard, leaving a trail of black rubber across the asphalt.