Backstab (9 page)

“I think you've seen a real man,” I said. “There are some around.”

“That's what my friends tell me,” said Roberta, as if maybe she was starting to believe them. She put on her ugly knit cap, designed to ward off any man, good or bad. She slipped on her coat and went off to work.

Her story was a haunting one, and would make a good column. I kept thinking about her “real man.” I knew one of them, too. It was now 8:30
A.M
. I drove over to Lyle's house. I could tell he was awake. The front curtains were open to let in the morning sun. I had a key, but I rang the doorbell to give him some warning. I could smell fresh-brewed coffee. Lyle came into the hall freshly showered, wearing his big fluffy white robe.

“Hi,” I said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” he said. He didn't say anything else, and I didn't want him to. He began kissing me. His lips were soft and warm and slightly rough and tasted of strong coffee. We kissed all the way up the stairs to his bedroom.

Afterward, I fell into a deep restful sleep, with no bloody dreams. When I woke up at 11:00
A.M
., Lyle wasn't in bed. I could hear him in his office, typing on his old IBM PC-XT. The keys on the ten-year-old computer made an odd hollow
thock thock
sound. I felt good, except my left arm was numb. That's because Lyle's twelve-pound gray tomcat, Montana, was sleeping on it. I moved the cat. Monty purred and stretched. So did I. Then I showered, picked up my clothes off the floor, kissed Lyle good-bye and went to the office. It was a good day after all. I had a man who loved me. I had a column before noon. What more could I want?

Well, asbestos gloves for my mail, for starters. There was another letter from the Aryan Avenger, and this time I didn't laugh it off. Okay,
I did sort of snicker when I read the envelope. This one was for “Francesca Whore,
City Gazette
Toilet Paper.” The mailroom had not marked it “Addressee Unknown,” but sent it on to me. Thanks a lot, fellas.

Inside was a poem, and it was nasty:

Heard your bartender Burt

Got himself hurt.

The knife was red.

The JewBurt was dead.

Where did the Aryan Avenger get the idea that Burt was Jewish? He was buried from St. Philomena Catholic Church. Must be his last name. Burt was named Meyer. A lot of German Jewish people have that name, but so do lots of German Christians. The phone rang, and I set the letter down on my desk to study it later.

Once the phone started ringing, it wouldn't quit. The minute I finished one call, it rang again. The calls got weirder and weirder. It had to be a full moon. The first call was from an anguished-sounding woman. I couldn't tell anything about her except she seemed older and fairly educated.

“Pleeeeze, you must help me,” she said, and began crying.

“What's the matter, ma'am?”

“I am the victim of a government conspiracy. The government is holding my daughter hostage. I will give you the whole story.”

When you hear those words, you know it's not Deep Throat on the line with your Pulitzer prize.
Some poor soul hasn't been taking her lithium. “Can you tell me what's happening?” I said, cautiously.

“You won't turn me in? You won't give them my name?” Now she sounded frightened.

“No, ma'am.”

“My daughter is being held captive by government scientists at Southern Illinois University.”

Yep, definitely low on lithium. SIU is a staid commuter college. “I don't think SIU would be involved in something like that, ma'am.”

“Please, help me. She's being held captive and forced to have sex with German shepherds.”

“How old is your daughter?” I asked.

“Forty-five,” she said.

“Listen, there's a lot to be said for a German shepherd. He won't leave the seat up or drop his socks by the bed. And shepherds rarely come home drunk.”

I was sorry the minute I said it. The woman's problem may have been imaginary, but her pain was real. I had no right to make light of it. She didn't get angry at me. She sounded hurt, and that made me feel worse. “Please, can't you help me?” she said. She was begging.

“I'm sorry, ma'am. It's not the kind of story I do.”

“Can you give me the name of someone who would do the story?”

I disliked several people enough to sic this woman on them, beginning with Charlie. But it wasn't fair to her. Charlie may have deserved her, but she didn't deserve him. “No, ma'am, I
don't. I'm sorry. Maybe you could put your story in a letter and send it to the city editor.”

“Pleeeze,” she began wailing. “Pleeeeze. Help me.”

I couldn't. I was sorry, and I said so. Then I quietly hung up. I automatically reached for my coffee cup and took a swig. Ugh. It tasted like old tennis shoes boiled in liquid shoe polish. It was left over from yesterday. The only thing worse than newsroom coffee is old cold newsroom coffee. Before I could get some fresh, the phone rang again. This time it was a man. He sounded angry.

“I want to talk to you about that stupid fucking column you wrote,” he said.

“Er, which column was that, sir?”

“The one you did August eighth,” he said. “You got your facts wrong.” August? This was February. Surely there should be a statute of limitations on raging readers.

“What was the column about, sir?” I try to handle people with complaints, no matter how crazy, before they call Hadley. If the guy was a major advertiser, or related to one, Hadley might make me apologize, even if nothing was wrong. When I finally calmed the guy down, I discovered my error—I didn't mention his product. He'd invented a new pool toy, and I'd done a story about some of the wackier things floating around local pools.

“You mentioned all those out-of-town guys and said nothing about a local person, nothing!” he fumed. “I've invested thirty thousand dollars
in this goddamned invention. It's the new pet rock, but not one store will carry it. It's all your fault.” I thought he should spend a few hundred on charm school lessons. Instead I told him to send me some information about his invention.

“Fuck you, it's too late now. It's February,” he screamed, and hung up on me.

I put down the receiver cautiously. I checked to see if the phone was glowing or something. Maybe someone put my number by the pay phones at the state mental home on Arsenal Street. Maybe I should just hang it up, phonewise, and not pick it up anymore. Let voice mail catch the next call.

The phone rang again. “Third time's a charm,” I told myself stupidly, and picked it up.

It was another upset person, but I couldn't understand this man enough to find out if he was angry or anguished. He was crying and talking at the same time, and the sounds came out as a series of gulps, squeaks, and sobs. Finally, he was calm enough to talk slowly. “Francesca, it's Jamie,” he said.

Jamie was Ralph the Rehabber's friend. They used to be lovers, but after a few years their romance mellowed into a deep friendship. Jamie found a nice young doctor to live with. Ralph found a nasty old drag queen. But Ralph and Jamie still cared for each other, and kept in touch. If Jamie was calling, something must be wrong with Ralph.

“He's sick,” I said before Jamie could say anything else. “I knew he shouldn't be taking out
plaster ceilings with that cold. He was hacking and wheezing. He has pneumonia, doesn't he? He had an asthma attack and you had to take him to the hospital. He's in intensive care.”

I was describing the most benign of the possible disasters, so Jamie wouldn't tell me the worst. I knew the worst. I could hear it in Jamie's voice. But it wouldn't be true until he said it. That's why I kept talking.

Finally, he interrupted me. “Francesca,” he said gently, “Ralph's dead.” His voice wobbled, but he went on. “He had an asthma attack in the house he was rehabbing. No one was around to help him. The police think he died sometime yesterday morning. His mother didn't hear from him last night and got worried, because she knew he was sick and he'd promised to call her. She called me early this morning and asked me to check on him. I didn't find him at home, so I went to the house on Utah Place. I…I found him.”

Jamie's carefully controlled composure fell away, and he began sobbing, harsh rusty sobs. I find men's tears more terrible than women's, because many men aren't used to crying.

“It was horrible,” Jamie said. “I went around to the backyard. Ralph usually kept the kitchen door open, so he could run back and forth to his truck. I could hear the radio on upstairs—K-SHE blasting ‘Stairway to Heaven.' But I didn't hear Ralph banging on the ceiling with his crowbar, bashing out chunks of old plaster in time with the music. He loved doing that. Called
it Ralph's Greatest Hits. Said it was the best part of the job.”

I laughed. There is still a lot of little boy in Ralph. Correction. There was.

“I went upstairs,” Jamie said. “There were drop cloths down over the floors, and the staircase, woodwork, and floors were covered with thick gray plaster dust. Gravel-sized chunks of old plaster crumbled underfoot. I found Ralph in a room that had primrose wallpaper. He was lying on his back on the floor near his ladder, with hunks of plaster and drifts of dust all around him. There was a bloody cut over one eye. Ralph was slate-gray, almost blue. I knew he was dead, just by that color. He didn't go peacefully. He'd ripped off his face mask and clawed at his chest for air.”

I shuddered to think of Ralph, who looked so cool and aristocratic, fighting frantically to breathe. He was so scared in December when the asthma attack sent him to the hospital. I remembered he never went anywhere without his inhaler after that.

“Didn't his inhaler work?”

If I asked calm, reporter-type questions, I would think calm, reporter-type thoughts, instead of picturing my friend gasping like a fish flopped out of an aquarium.

“He didn't have it in his pocket.”

“Ralph always had his inhaler. Always. He never forgot that asthma attack last winter. He said it felt like a big rock was crushing his chest.
He kept inhalers everywhere. He even had one hanging on his ladder. What about that one?”

“It wasn't there.”

“Something's wrong, Jamie. Ralph always had inhalers around.”

“Nothing's wrong,” Jamie said. “Ralph was sick and used them all up. He didn't have time to go to Walgreens for more.”

“For that, Ralph would make time.”

Jamie stayed silent, which is how he gets when he disagrees with you but doesn't want to fight. He was right. There was no point in arguing. A debate wouldn't bring Ralph back.

“What can I do to help?”

“Can you get Lucy and bring her over to his mother's house? She's parked on McDonald, in back of the Utah Place job.”

“Sure.” Lucy was Ralph's red truck, named for his favorite redheaded actress, Lucille Ball. The truck definitely had personality.

After a few more words I can't remember, we hung up. I did remember Ralph's message on my answering machine. The one I'd forgotten to return yesterday. Ralph had a question for me the night of Burt's wake, but I wouldn't pick up my phone. I was too tired to talk to my friend. I told myself I'd get back to him the next day, but I didn't. I was distracted by Burt's funeral and the column I had to write. I didn't have time to call Ralph back. Wouldn't have to worry about that now, would I? He would never bother me again. Well, I wasn't going to cry a bunch of useless tears. I was going to help him the one way I
could. I called Lyle so he could follow me when I drove Ralph's truck to his mother's. Lyle said, “Hello?”

I burst into tears.

Now I sounded like Jamie: I was sobbing and gulping and trying to tell Lyle about Ralph's awful end. Finally, I pulled myself together enough to make Lyle understand that I needed to deliver Ralph's truck to his mother's house.

“Wait there,” Lyle said. “I'll come by the paper and pick you up. You're in no shape to drive right now anyway.”

I dried my eyes with an old Kleenex I found at the bottom of my purse and looked around my department. It was two o'clock, and the neighboring desks were empty. The staff was still at lunch. Nobody had seen me crying. Good. It was bad for my image. Now if they saw my red eyes, they'd think I was hungover or just plain surly. Much better. I reached for my briefcase, and knocked over the dregs of the day-old coffee on my desk. It ran all over the letter from the Aryan Avenger. The black letters smeared over the SS lightning bolts. The phone started ringing. I left it all—the coffee-soaked papers and the crazy ringing phone—and went outside to wait for Lyle.

He picked me up in front of the building in Sherman, his gigantic '67 gold Chrysler. The car was as big as a living room. The first time I drove Sherm I thought there was something wrong with the gas gauge. It kept going down. Sherman was a gasaholic. He was also a magnificent
vintage car. When he rumbled down the street, smaller vehicles got out of his way, and larger ones looked at him with respect. But the best thing about Sherman was his bench seats. I don't know why they quit making car seats so you could snuggle up with the driver. I slid all the way over and kissed Lyle on the ear. He had the softest ears, like suede.

“How are you?” he said, and one look told him I was taking my loss hard.

“Poor Ralph,” Lyle said. “Poor you. This is awful.”

It was. I knew it was bad, because I didn't feel anything. Just an odd floating sensation, like I was watching myself outside myself, behind a glass wall.

I told Lyle what I knew about Ralph's death. By that time, we had turned onto Utah Place. I think Utah is one of the prettiest streets in the city. Handsome old houses line a wide grassy center parkway planted with graceful trees and gardens. The houses were built around 1904, the time of the St. Louis World's Fair, when the city was at its zenith. There was talk about moving the nation's capital out of that dismal swamp, Washington, D.C., to a successful city like St. Louis.