Almost Like Being in Love (38 page)

GORDO: Fuck the screenplay! Do you know who just left you a voicemail? Brandon Tracey. That guy with the Corvette who took you to St. Louis. He’s marrying Jennifer in October and he says it’s all because of you.

TRAVIS: Bullshit. What did I do?

GORDO: Travis, everybody you touch falls in love! Can’t you see that?! The only one who’s coming out of this whole deal empty-handed is you! It’s just not fair. At least call Craig before you leave. You never know.

TRAVIS: And tell him what? Gordo, A.J. was right. It’s been twenty years! What kind of a dope hitchhikes three thousand miles after twenty years to chase after someone who’s probably forgotten him in the first place?

GORDO: Your kind, Travis. And remember how I kept telling you to change?

TRAVIS: So?

GORDO: Don’t ever listen to me again.

Dear A.J.,

You’ve got to do something. This time he means it. And my bag of tricks is empty.

Here’s a guy who never gives up. I could tell you lots of stories, but the one I remember most is when we were 16 and he decided he wanted to meet Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. I guess most kids would have settled for autographs, but not Trav. Somehow he wound up having dinner with them, and nobody could figure out how that happened—including Steve and Eydie.

His whole life has been a rehearsal for this. We can’t let him down.

I…love you.

Gordo

P.S. I’ve been a little afraid to ask, but what happens when this is over and you’re back in St. Louis? Will it turn out that we were just a summer romance? Was it only T’s leftover stardust? Will we forget about the sparkles in our hearts? If the answers are yes, yes, or yes, bypass the questions. I don’t need the answers that badly.

Dear Gordo:

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a broken heart up close. He’s gone into the bathroom three times to brush his teeth—but when he comes out, his eyes are red and his breath still smells like Cheetos. Until today, I always thought that Toby Heller was the real thing, but I was wrong. Toby Heller didn’t even qualify for the preliminaries.

I
do
have a plan. But I’m not looking forward to it. In about an hour, I’m going to begin throwing a little attitude his way. 'I’ll probably use phrases like “pain in the ass,” “spineless quitter,” and other spontaneous extracts from the Dictionary of Disparaging Invective.) That ought to create a frosty chill until morning. Then I’ll stop speaking to him entirely. By the time we check out of this dump at noon, the tension should be thick enough to strangle a medium-sized house pet with. But the lid won’t blow off until we turn left onto Congress Street, which is where I intend to pick the paterfamilias of all fights. At 12:35 on the nose. Right in front of the Sweet Shop. Once I’ve tossed him out of the car and suggested that he reacquaint himself with his thumb, he’ll probably go looking for a phone so he can call you. And the closest receiver is directly behind the booth in which Craig and Charleen will undoubtedly be ordering whatever virus passes for the Friday Special.

It’s the best I can do on short notice. And I hate myself for it already.

I…love you too.

A.J.

P.S. In spite of my venomous performance, I’ll be parked around the corner waiting to see what happens. 'I might as well confess that I’m a closet pushover. You’re bound to find it out sooner or later anyway.) P.S. 2. After we leave here, we’re stopping in St. Louis long enough to determine that my assistant manager hasn’t, in fact, turned my establishment into a crack house. Then I’m pumping twelve gallons of supreme unleaded into Robert Mitchum and he’s heading west. With me, with Beaver, and with Sweet Charity singing something called “I’m the Bravest Individual.” Hell, if it works for Beav, it can work for me.

Just remember one thing: Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF

Travis Puckett

What a sordid place for the glory that was once my life to have come to an end—a fetid booth in a squalid hashery with only a toxic baloney sandwich standing between me and eternal darkness. What a dismal epitaph to so much sparkling hope. Cast rootless to the winds by a faithless kindred spirit who withdrew her troth '“Here’s a quarter. Call Gordo. Have him bail you out.”( and the errant boonfellow who won’t get off the fucking phone '“That line is busy. For 75 cents, AT&T can leave a message for you.”(. Oh, the perfidy.

This has been a day right out of David Copperfield. First the hangover, now this. If I weren’t so depressed, I’d kill myself. And what did I do to piss her off?! One minute she’s drying my tears, and the next thing I know my ass is on the street with a torn backpack hanging from my scapula. I look like a bag lady who owes seventeen hundred dollars to Neiman-Marcus.

Big deal. So I’ll hit the road. I’ll hit the road and head home where I belong. If I’m lucky, maybe a trucker’ll let me ride in his van long enough to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Otherwise, I’ll have to crawl over broken glass and beg Andrea to give me back my grant—assuming she isn’t pointing a loaded .45 at my crotch. And if she is, let her shoot. Who needs a dick? I wouldn’t fall in love again if you ladled me Ethel Merman out of a Stoke-on-Trent soup tureen. How’s that for irony? Oh, what a desolate way to finish off what could have been a—

Holy shit.

Oh, no.

Look who’s on his way back from the salad bar.

This was a setup! Duh! Now what do I do? Keep your head down—that’s
what. Maybe he won’t notice. Who’s that with him? Probably Charleen. She
fits A.J.’s blotter profile. Oh God, they’re coming this way. Don’t sit in the
next booth don’t sit in the next booth don’t sit in the next booth don’t sit in
the next booth don’t sit in the—Shit! They’re sitting in the next booth! Craigy,
please don’t look up. I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to you again. Just let me
sneak out of here without rocking the boat and I promise I’ll never ever ever
forget what we once—

He looked up.

Our eyes met.

His jaw dropped.

And for the first time in twenty years, the one-dimple grin wasn’t just a memory any more.

13

Craig

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Craig

FROM
: Charleen

DATE
: June 11, 1998

SUBJECT
: Wrapping Up

The
Kessler
petition’s been bluebacked and filed. Not that we need any more gratuitous karma, but it turns out that Larry Dysart is representing Noah’s mother. Remember Larry? The lush with the nose hairs who took me to a Swedish smorgasbord and attempted to order the server’s breasts?

Craig, stop brooding and go home. You’re behaving like one of those awful women in
Valley of the Dolls.

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Charleen

FROM
: Craig

DATE
: June 11, 1998

SUBJECT
: Valley of the Dolls

I’ve watched it four times this week. “Ted Casablanca is no fag—and I’m the dame who can prove it.” Sigh. How could we survive without such heavenly dreck? I’m almost ready for Mommie Dearest again.

Home? What’s that? Oh! You mean that half-empty house on Loughberry Lake where you can roll around on the living room floor shrieking “I’m Neely O’Hara!” all you want, and nobody’s there to tell you to shut the hell up or take a shower with you or fuck your toes off?

I tried calling him at the hardware store to arrange a peaceful surrender at the Appomattox courthouse, but he’d already left to have drinks with a client and then go bowling with him. How did I get elected to do all the suffering? Is this a trade-off for not knowing how to cook?

Tell me the truth. Do I really have a reason to think that Travis is going to show up in Saratoga Springs? Or am I inventing another mirage because I need one?

Take care of my Ashley, Scarlett.

Love,

Melanie

P.S. How could I possibly remember which one Larry Dysart was?

Let’s get real, sweetheart. If we had to limit our caseload to those attorneys who haven’t cross-complained against us just so they could sniff your nylons, we’d be practicing in another state by now.

P.S. 2. By the way, aren’t you proud of me? You’ve been sleeping with Jody for three days and I haven’t even asked you how big it is yet.

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Melanie

FROM
: Charleen

DATE
: June 11, 1998

SUBJECT
: How Big Is It?

Craig,

I realize that during the past two decades, I haven’t exactly been the soul of discretion—that my ofteninexcusable lapses in tact and good taste have found me revealing intimate secrets about men who deserve a good deal better from me. But that’s over. I’ve reformed. You might as well get used to the idea.

However, in deference to the confidential chumminess we nurtured for lo, those many years, I’ll admit this much. When Ethel Mertz said, “I have sufficient,” she’d obviously never fucked Jody.

Since you asked, Travis is not on his way to Saratoga Springs. An enigmatic phone call to a gynecologist in St. Louis doesn’t necessarily point a finger at Colonel Mustard with a candlestick in the library.

There could be a number of other rational explanations—though, offhand, I can’t think of any either.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. First love is always the perfect one—but it never lasts. That’s what makes it perfect. If boyfriends actually bounced back after twenty years just because we still ached for them, we’d have to rewrite the book on romance. And even Elizabeth Barrett Browning wouldn’t believe it.

Try to get some sleep. We have an irascible judge we need to tame at 10:00 A.M. I’ll bring the whips.

By the way—I love you.

Ch

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Charleen

FROM
: Craig

DATE
: June 11, 1998

SUBJECT
: Rewriting the Book on Romance

Rent
Brigadoon
, then talk to me about miracles in the morning.

Better yet, talk to Travis. He invented them.

By the way, I love you too.

Cr

Craig McKenna

Attorney notes

The nearest jazz club is way down in Albany, but they serve rosé

wine and the air is thick with lazy curls of cigarette smoke. So after a desolate dinner of lima beans and a Shake ’n Bake chicken breast that left the kitchen looking like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow had just paid a house call, I put on my dark glasses and hit the road. Lenny Bruce was back.

If this were 1942, I could have syncopated my anguish to Charlie Parker on alto sax, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Kenny Clark on drums, and Ray Brown on bass. Instead, I got stuck with the Goldschmidt Brothers, whose idea of dangerous is “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” played in A-minor. But it didn’t matter. After two hours, my options were clear:
1. Run for office, lose Clayton.

And what good is changing the world if you have to fall asleep by yourself? Remember Fanny Brice? “Flo, I love hearing an audience applaud—but you can’t take an audience home with you!”

2.
Keep Clayton, lose Craig.

Maybe in ten more years he’ll let me pick the movie on Saturday night. Meanwhile, I can sign all of my credit card receipts “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

3.
Knock off the rosé wine unless you want to lose Kessler vs.

Kessler to a hangover.

How am I going to tell Noah that the court said no again? How can I look into those eyes and admit that I let him down? Even the Miles and Miles and Miles of Heart song won’t work this time.

4.
Grow up and admit that Travis doesn’t even remember you
any more
.

But what if Charleen is wrong? That happens occasionally.

Suppose he’s heading north on I-87 right now, deliberately breaking every statute in the Vehicle Code for me? What would he say when he got here? Would he let me borrow a page from his playbook?

redoubtable

Formidable, fearsome; Carlton Fisk in 1975; you in a couple of years, after you’ve won your first hundred cases.

cavalier

Chivalrous, noble; remember when the guy in the Pacer called you an asshole? That wasn’t cavalier. Remember when you pretended to lose the coin toss so I could be Smerko? That was.