Prosperity Drive (21 page)

To the toll of her confessions, he had added his own observations about Paula. His protagonist had developed her hairstyle, her furious way of smoking, her vulnerable optimism. Was that why he didn't fancy Paula? Because she was more value to him as raw material? No wonder he hadn't been troubled by inconvenient lust; he'd been trying to get inside Paula's head, not her knickers. She was the only one who could give the kiss of life to his 40,000 words of false beginnings.

Ted rose and walked to the window of the classroom. He pressed his forehead against the glass, glad of the cool clasp
of it on his temples. Outside the snow was having a tantrum. Angry trees made semaphore warnings. He felt like a character in a bad workshop story – overloaded with epiphany
. Jesus!

‘This Paula,' Valerie said, cocking her head quizzically.

He wasn't in the mood. Two hours of student versions of Paulas – foxy lap dancer, bisexual trucker, Baptist preacher's wife – had exhausted him more than his thudding head. He felt dispirited – and chastened for using Paula as a quick fix for his class.

‘This Paula,' Valerie repeated. She looked like a scrubbed virgin but he had seen her at student parties – the girl had a sassy mouth and a taste for dirty martinis. But it was her sexual frankness that intimidated Ted. Though he would never admit it, he was afraid of her voraciousness. Afraid of her.

‘Yes, what about her?'

‘She's not just a character, is she? She's a real person.'

Ted raised his hands in surrender.

‘People are more than their biographies, Valerie. That's what today's exercise was all about.'

‘She needs help, you realise that, don't you?'

Valerie laid a polished fingertip on Ted's arm.

‘She needs an intervention.'

‘A what?'

‘You know,' she said with a sweet fanged smile. ‘She needs to stop drinking, she needs a twelve-step programme. She needs to be confronted. You know, tough love.'

Ted was in no mood for tough love.

‘Let's just stick to fiction, Valerie, there's a good girl.'

‘Don't patronise me,' she snapped.

‘Look, Valerie, there's a difference between writing and real life. The sooner you realise the difference between the two, the better.'

She changed tack.

‘Are you trying to tell me something, Ted? I can call you Ted, can't I?' He got a whiff of musky scent as she flicked her hair back over her shoulder.

‘Look, Valerie, if you want to talk about your writing, I'm happy to accommodate you. Otherwise …'

‘You don't like my work, that's it, really, isn't it?'

He was tempted to be honest with her: it's not your work I don't like, it's you.

‘Your character study of Paula was flashy, Valerie, amusing in its way, but there was no depth in it, no pain, no real pain. You failed to imagine her fully.'

She grimaced sourly.

‘It wasn't a character study, it was caricature. Whereas
my
Paula …'

‘Your Paula?' she queried. ‘Who's confusing fiction and reality now?'

And she turned on her sharp heels and left.

An hour later, Ted was in Skipper's. He usually didn't go in on Tuesdays but he was parched and after the encounter with Valerie he felt in need of a stiff drink. He sat at the bar, slung his change on the counter.

‘The usual?' Skipper, holding a glass aloft, asked.

The beauty of Skipper's was its monosyllabic honour code.

‘Howdy!'

He looked up to see Paula just arriving. What was she doing here? He associated her with Thursdays and the well-oiled trajectory of the weekend. Somehow, he thought she only came in when he was here. Maybe she had a Ted for every night of the week? Get a grip, he told himself. You sound like a bloody jealous husband.

‘Paula! There you are!' he said, aiming for hearty, sounding feeble. He felt a twinge of irritation at her for not showing up last week. Then a pang of guilt as he remembered what his students had been doing for the past couple of hours.

‘What brings you in here on a Tuesday night?'

‘I drink here every night, Ted.'

It was his turn to feel betrayed.

‘What happened last Thursday then?'

‘Who are you?' she snapped. ‘My parole officer?'

‘Steady on, Paula,' he said. ‘What'll you have?'

Paula granted him a forgiving smile. What an unlikely couple we are, Ted thought.

‘Got a letter today,' Paula was saying, ‘from Debra.'

Debra was Paula's eight-year-old daughter; she was fostered out. She wrote dutiful letters to her mother every so often on notepaper dotted with pink hearts. Usually they were catalogues of her little doings – school, sleepovers, her sister Amy (Paula always bristled at the mention of Amy; foster sister, she would spit) and finished with a flourish of smiley faces and florid endearments
. Lots and lots of love, Debra. Big kisses, Debra. I love you, Mommy.
Paula always latched on to these.

‘See,' she would say, ‘she hasn't forgotten me.'

‘Great,' Ted said.

He was annoyed suddenly by Paula's awful faith that everything would work out.

‘What the hell's bugging you?' she said.

‘Nothing, nothing. Bad day, that's all.'

‘Tell me about it!' Paula started one of her long litanies. ‘Brian, you know the day manager, comes in today, he's in a foul mood. And I'm stacking, see, in detergents and he says Paula – hey Paula, you gone deaf or something? I've been calling you to the register for the last five minutes. We got a line stretching out to the parking lot. Get your fat ass up there! Little shit! He's not much older than my Mikey. I could put him across my knee and spank him …'

‘Did you?'

‘Did I what?'

‘Did you ever hit Mikey?'

Mikey was her son by Donny, the bricklayer. Being older and more troublesome he was still in care and had refused to have any contact with her.

‘What's gotten into you?' Paula's eyes blazed.

Ted was thinking of when he was a boy. How he'd longed for his mother to strike him. He wanted the badge of a bruise, some physical proof of damage. His father's anger was aimed at things, not people – small portions of food, lost pigeons, recalcitrant plumbing. Lately, Ted, too, felt like just breaking things. He took a gulp of beer.

‘Nothing,' he said miserably. ‘Want another?'

On the following Thursday he didn't go to Skipper's. He walked as far as the door but something stopped him. He had the sensation that there was someone right behind him, someone about to tap him on his shoulder. But when he looked back there was no one on Gibson Street; just the overhead traffic light turning from red to green. Another weekend in Faithful. He bought a slab of beer in the liquor store and went home to a TV dinner. The weekend felt all askew without the anchor of Thursday with Paula. His self-imposed exile didn't last. Damn it, he missed her, and his guilt about using her as biography fodder for his students had abated by Monday. Several days without drink had cleared his mind and cured him of the watchful paranoia he had fallen prey to. So it was with a light step that he pushed the swing doors open into Skipper's after a week's absence. His heart lifted at the sight of Paula perched at the bar swathed in cigarette smoke. It felt like a homecoming as she hallooed to him and tapped the stool beside her in that welcoming gesture that made him feel unquestioningly accepted.

‘Hi,Ted,' she said.

He settled into his familiar seat – whoosh of torn leatherette – and gave her a comradely squeeze around the shoulders.

‘Guess what?' she said. ‘I've had a letter from Mikey's case worker. Wanna see?'

‘Sure,' he said. He was determined not to yield to scepticism. He wanted to wind back to a time when his motives towards Paula were pure. If they had ever been. Paula rummaged in the large canvas sack that served as her handbag.

‘Here it is,' she said, fishing out a crumpled-looking piece of paper. ‘Dear Mrs Spears,' she began, ‘Your son Mikey has been the subject of a special case conference …' she began haltingly. Paula was quick with her own words, but she stumbled over bureaucratic prose. Ted found his attention wandering despite his best intentions. There was a scuffle at the door. Well, there often was at Skipper's – usually someone being thrown out. He turned towards the source of commotion. Three faces detached themselves from the blur of the crowd, for there was a crowd. And Ted recognised every single one of them. Eight of his graduate students from workshop, led by a determined, leather-jacketed Valerie. She marched up to the counter and clamped her hand on Paula's shoulder.

‘Are you Paula?' she demanded.

‘What the hell?' Paula started.

Ted swung down off the stool.

‘Now look here, Valerie. I don't know what you're doing. But leave Paula out of this,' he muttered to her.

‘So,' Valerie said, sidestepping him, ‘there really is a Paula.'

‘What's it to you, lady?' Paula said.

‘Um,' Valerie mused, ‘Ted here was rather unkind in his characterisation of you.'

Paula recoiled as the rangy Valerie looked her up and down. Beside her vividness, Ted thought, Paula looked like cardboard. Pale, depleted.

‘We're here to save you, Paula.'

‘Save me, from what?'

‘From yourself.' She jerked her head towards Ted standing with his hands hanging. ‘And from him.'

‘Look, lady, I don't know what religion you're selling but I'm not buying.'

‘What we have here is a standard co-dependency situation. He needs you to drink so he can. You're enabling each other.'

‘Who the hell is this, Ted?'

‘She's one of my students. Take no notice.'

‘You're never going to get your kids back, Paula. You've got to face that fact. Look at yourself! Why did you lose them in the first place? Because.' Valerie paused here and advanced, wagging a crimson-nailed finger. ‘Because your first loyalty is to this.' She picked up Paula's vodka and slammed it down on the counter spilling its contents.

‘Hey!' Paula said, affronted by the waste, and clambered down unsteadily from her stool to square up to Valerie. ‘What's it to you, anyway?' Then she fixed on Ted. ‘How does she know all this about me?'

‘Because dear old Ted's been getting off on your story.'

‘Ted?'

‘Only last week we were all doing a character study of you which he tried to pass off as a person in his novel. This from the guy who's allergic to the confessional in
our
writing!'

‘Valerie, that's enough!'

‘You're not in the classroom now, Ted.'

Ted turned to Paula beseechingly but Valerie persisted.

‘What you need, Paula, is to get away from people who are sucking the lifeblood out of you.' She shot a steely glance at Ted.

‘What the fuck!' Paula exhaled. ‘Is this, is this your idea of a joke?'

She was pacing up and down now, but there was nowhere to run to – no back entrance and Valerie's army stood four-square blocking the front door. Skipper's regulars gaped dully.

‘You need a real friend,' Valerie went on, ‘the kind of friend who will be totally straight with you. With no bullshit.'

Paula stared at Ted.

‘You been writing about me, Ted?'

‘It wasn't like that, Paula, honest.'

‘You been spilling my secrets? Talking about me in class?'

He shook his head vehemently.

‘You sad motherfucker!' she spat.

‘Anger is good,' Valerie interrupted.

‘Know why I drank with you? Because I felt sorry for you. Living alone with the ghost of a fucking book, how sad is that.'

‘Paula, please …' Ted started.

‘And all this time you've been sniffing around me like some perv going through my undies.'

There was a ripple of gnarled laughter from the curious crowd of onlookers. Valerie placed her talons on Paula's shoulder.

‘C'mon, Paula,' she declared, ‘let's get you sober, girl!'

She linked Paula's arm and to the applause of the bar's patrons (even the pool games had halted) she frogmarched her towards the exit, surrounded by a phalanx of Ted's students.

Ted slumped back on to his stool. The rest of the bar returned to their drinks, feeling let down in the wash of anticlimax. Ted signalled to Skipper for a double whiskey, which Skipper wordlessly pushed towards him. He drank greedily from the golden glass.

‘Have I just lost a regular?' Skipper asked.

‘She'll be back,' Ted said. ‘Can you see Paula on a twelve-step programme? I don't think so!'

That was three months ago. He had tried to track her down, desperately at first. He found out where she worked – Melvin's Superstore on Sycamore – but she wasn't there. Brian, the day manager, who looked about twelve, said she'd simply disappeared.

‘Heard she went to one of those Christian rehab places, out Conway direction,' he added as the pair of them stood in the dog food aisle.

‘You don't have an address, do you?' Ted could hear the jilted panic in his voice.

Brian shrugged.

‘Sorry, dude.'

He's avoiding Skipper's these days. One public scene in a town this size is quite enough, thank you. But it comforts him to imagine Paula still there, sitting at the bar happily, blamelessly sozzled, easing into blissful unwind. Climbing carefully down from the stool to go the Ladies' Room, rubber-limbed, wavering – or was that only how she looked to him because he was often in a similar state, dreamily drunk and blearily semi-detached?

He's still showing up for workshop. Well, life goes on; that's the trouble with it. Valerie Kleber smirks at him with a bitter lemon twist, while the others treat him with mutinous contempt. Well, why wouldn't they? He'd been unmasked as a sad old fuck. Wasn't that Paula's verdict? He felt bereft. Paula hadn't just walked out of his life – she'd walked out of his novel too. Now both of them were gone. There was a bleak sense of relief in acknowledging the novel had defeated him; but the loss of Paula, that was another thing entirely. That's the lesson, he wanted to shout at Valerie, smug with victory, that's the difference between fiction and reality. Reality breathes and hurts and drinks too much; it lets you down, it leaves things unfinished, up in the air, high and dry. Whereas fiction, fiction is just still life. Still fucking life.