At the Jim Bridger: Stories Page 5

  The binoculars had belonged to Donner’s father and they were the best set he’d ever seen. He sighted Big Jess standing well into the trees on the far side. Donner breathed out and held so he could focus. The moose wasn’t moving, and Donner couldn’t tell if he was looking across at the party.

  Certain decisions are made in daylight and certain decisions are made in darkness. Winter has its own decisions and summer has its own decisions, as do spring and fall. Donner drew a chestful of the sharp air. He’d made a decision last February with the woman whom he could now see dancing inside the painted window. It was made in the frigid early twilight under low clouds while the car headlamps passing on the highway seemed useless little fires that wouldn’t last the night, and that decision to use his story as he had, to show it to her, burn it like a match, had led to this new darkness and the longer night.

  THE CLICKER AT TIPS

  BY THE TIME I PULLED open the big wooden door of Tips, Eve had finished off a third of the English beer menu. She was sitting dead center in the middle of the big empty barroom like a lost child. On the other side of the bar station two guys played pool at one of the twelve tables. The floor in Tips was varnished cement; it was not a very comfortable place, but they filled it every night with all the young brokers who were still in mourning for college.

  “Did you notice how there’s no work anymore?” she said when I sat down. “This place used to be a factory.”

  “I work,” I said

  “No you don’t. You fly around and talk for money.”

  “Eve,” I said. “You don’t think air travel is work?”

  “You get introduced, walk to the podium, always a nicer piece of furniture than I have in my whole house, and then you pause a beat because you’re sure that every eye is on you, then you pause again and then you give your lecture. Afterward they hand you a big check. They pay you for those pauses.”

  There was an edge in it; I could hear it, but Eve always had an edge. I had wanted to see her; it had been two months, silence since our last meeting, dinner downtown. I was surprised that, her mention of her house, the rooms of which Ī knew well, had quickened everything.

  The waitress came over, a tall young woman with long braids. “Did one of you guys want the clicker?”

  “Moi,“ Eve said, presenting her palm. The girl placed the television remote control in it. The five televisions around the room were all set on the pregame show. I asked the waitress for a pint of Bass and a platter of the wings.

  “Are we on television?” I asked Eve.

  “We are. We’re on the six-fifteen.”

  “Who are you scolding today?”

  “That same sleazeball with the jewelry.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was able to push me down and stride nobly to his Lexus. That’s why I want to see it.” Eve was ombudsman for Channel 14, sniffing out consumer complaints. Last week she’d put a bottled water company out of business, and this week it was this guy Gene Somebody and his fake Navajo jewelry.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I sat, on my ass in Scottsdale and did the report and realized I hadn’t been pushed to the ground since you took that privilege two years ago.”

  “Eve,” I said.

  “Let’s have another pint.” She was speaking over my head to the waitress, who came round and set my beer smoothly on the table. “But something from the Continent now. Something from some country that doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  “Pardon?” the waitress said.

  “Eve wants the Yugoslavian lager,” I told her. I looked at my full glass. “Make it two.”

  “Yes, the little hero comes to the door, sees the mike, and bolts. Some sixty-year-old in tight jeans pushes me down. I just want to see it. Is this a soulless place or is it me?” She drank and looked at me. “God, what a word and me to use it.”

  “It will have soul in a thousand years.”

  “Should we wait? Pardon: Should I wait?” She pointed the remote at the television near us and it flipped forward to fourteen, where our pal Jeff Nederhaller was anchoring the news with Monica Young. Jeff and I had been part of a pretty tight circle a few years before; we had all worked at the newspaper.

  I said, “Jeff looks good. Everyone should get divorced.”

  “He’s nuts. He is an outright idiot. Marriage keeps people fat and sane.”

  “Very fine. So I’m sane.”

  Eve drilled me with a look. “Oh, are you married?”

  “Eve,” I said. “Let’s have a nice time. Let’s have a few beers and a nice time.”

  Around us the place was filling with the Monday Night Football crowd, clusters of six and eight people pushing tables together, hanging their coats on the backs of the heavy wooden school chairs, ordering pitchers of imported beer. The group beside us watching the corner TV all wore blue blazers and pin-striped shirts, a kind of uniform, young guys with great hair, talking loudly and making bets on the Bears. Some of them were from Chicago. There were days when everyone in Phoenix seemed to be from Chicago.

  “Laborers,” Eve said. “Stevedores.”

  “Middle management from Motorola,” I said.

  “Longshoremen, teamsters.” She looked at me and said, “Oh, don’t be so smug. Take your jacket off, let’s see your stripes.”

  I did, hanging my tweed coat on the chair. She scanned my black polo shirt and said, “You dress like an actor.”

  I considered commenting on her sleek silk dress, dark green, the black sash around her waist, how she looked good, dressed not to kill but certainly to harm, and in the half second I had that thought it settled on me just how good she looked, not the dress but the choice of it. She was beautiful, smart; she looked in every way superior. She was impeccable, always. No wonder the scared little guy pushed her down.

  “You’re dressed like a guy whose latest movie we should have clips of, someone who flew in from the coast. The whole world’s a talk show.”

  “That it is.”

  “So, Matt, what’s your latest project?” She wanted me to start being clever, to fence, to fight.

  “You called, I came along.”

  “Such power.” She drank her beer and narrowed her eyes. “Out of affection or fear?” The room was picking up, voices through the muffled waves of clicking pool balls.

  “Eve, you’re wearing me out.” I toasted her. “I was thirsty.”

  After a car commercial, there she was on the screen in that green dress, holding the microphone in front of her face. She looked smart and serious, and when she pointed behind her to the storefront, Anazazi Gems, in the sunny little strip mall, and turned, the camera followed her. The man in jeans had just emerged and was locking the glass door when Eve stepped back in frame, poised if not smug, and said, “Mr. Fuller, Eve Moran from Channel 14 News. We’ve had your genuine Indian jewelry analyzed by two independent experts and they’re telling us that it’s imported. Could you tell-” This is when Fuller bolted and we saw the sky for a moment as the camera was jarred, and then there was a tilted shot of Mr. Fuller boarding his silver Lexus and then an unsteady pan back to Eve sitting in the gravel of the little parking island. She didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t even try to get up, but turned her legs to one side as if she were sitting on the deck of a yacht and went on, “We tried to contact Mr. Fuller’s workshop in Pay son, but the phone was disconnected some time ago and the address we received is that of the Sunshine Laundry and Dry Cleaners, which has been at their location for more than twenty years.” Sitting like that, holding the mike up, her knees to one side, Eve looked beautiful. “In Scottsdale, this is Eve Moran, Ombudsman, Channel 14 News”

  The screen went back to the console two-shot of Jeff Nederhaller and Monica Young and they said something, a joke about the news being a rough business, and thanked Eve for that report.

  “Fabulous,” I said, meaning it. “And you’re okay?”

  “I took Chuck for margaritas at a little place two doors
down, a dive. He got a black eye from that bump on the camera.”

  “Chuck’s a good guy,” I said. “This is two lawsuits and a written apology.”

  “Please. It’s a black eye, a sore ass, and the afternoon off.” She smiled. “Though I do think that was a stunning report. Did you see that gravel?”

  “You’re something else.”

  “Again, please. Save that for someone you’re willing to seduce.” She looked at me over her glass. “Although I’m glad to hear you still love me. How’s Debbie?”

  “How’s Debbie?” I said the name and felt it ring the way your wife’s name rings in such places at such times. “Debbie is fine,” I said. “She’s still working with the utility commission. Debbie’s fine. She’s having a success actually.”

  “We never thought anything but success for that girl.” I could hear the faint echo of those margaritas in Eve’s voice; she was a little drunk.

  The game had come on all over the bar except for on our television, which was now showing Hard Copy. In the corner near us the group of young regulars had circled their chairs around two of the little tables and were making noises about Chicago this, Arizona that, even though it was going to be a one-sided exhibition. There were five or six guys. They leaned back in their chairs and pointed at the screen from time to time, yucking it up. They got to me for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t envy them so much as want to correct them, ask them to display some real comaraderie, some real something the way I had with my friends Eve and David and Christopher and Jeff and Deborah, now Debbie, my wife. We had met in magical ways and hung out in the real places like a kind of family over an evening of drinks and appetizers, plate after plate, and we had talked wickedly, tenderly, and we all knew that those hours once or twice a week were our real lives, the center. One thing led to another; there was a sense of things happening. I hated these young guys and their surface lives, a night with the football game. I hated the evening coming on this way, and my life, one good part of it, over.

  “You’re looking anemic,” Eve said. “Sorry you came? I haven’t seen you in what? Two months.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, finishing my beer. I signaled the waitress and she stopped. “Let’s have some Red Stripe,” I told her.

  “And a little tequila?” Eve said. “You always like a shot with your Red Stripe.”

  Her remembering tapped me a little, but I didn’t miss a beat. “Right, then,” I said. “Shots.” The young woman and her braids went off. “What do you hear from Christopher?”

  “Christopher has not called me,” Eve said. “My sources tell me he’s become a naked careerist at the paper, kissing editorial butt long into the night.”

  Christopher had taken the features job at the paper and had his little photograph above the keystone column twice a week. When he first got on, Eve used to clip the picture and affix it to envelopes like a stamp and drop them by the various offices with a phony cancellation.

  “He doesn’t need to do that; he’s the best writer they’ve got. If we’d stayed, we might have learned to write.”

  “A dripping success like the rest.” Eve lifted the remote and began leafing through the channels.

  “Are they going to show your assault again at ten?” I asked her.

  “I’m afraid it’s the only news they’ve got, unless there’s been a solution in Bosnia.” She stopped at a black-and-white screen: the ocean, a frigate in a gray studio gale. Errol Flynn was in trouble on the high seas. “Jesus,” Eve said, “look. A real movie about real work.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s a real ship in real jeopardy, storm tossed. Every man on that vessel is thinking about his god.”

  “That vessel is five feet long, being tossed by a wave machine in a studio pool.”

  The waitress came and set our drinks on the table; there was now a city of glasses. I touched Eve’s glass and tossed mine back and she matched me, biting on the lime in the wake.

  On the screen a man climbed in the rigging. Eve was getting loud: “The man holds a knife in his teeth while he risks death high above the deck.” Eve was loud; several heads turned. “His fucking knife in his teeth.”

  I’d seen this; she wouldn’t stop until there was trouble. She’d make a mess and end up crying and I’d hold her until she was certain I was miserable, my shirtfront wet, wrecked from her crying; we’d get m her car and there would be some kissing until she was absolutely certain that I was more miserable than she was, and then she’d get straight, sit up, be brave, and we’d part, promising to call. It was a friendship; it was that thing, the postcoital friendship, always hard to balance. We’d been lovers for three months two years ago. I had been in the process of getting married at the time, and it all had been a dangerous game. I mean, Eve knew I wasn’t going to marry her. She came to the wedding and glowed there, wearing the occasion on her chest like a medal. I’ve known her for a long time and she never stood as tall as she did that day, her chin a lesson for the congregation and an inside joke for our office friends. She immediately started going with Christopher, also a joke, two careerists, doomed from the get-go. Now we did this: she called, we met, I took my medicine. The drinks had registered in me a little, but I was pretty sure I wanted it over now.

  Errol Flynn was back on deck, his face wet, hurrying to organize the men on the ship, and I reached across Eve and took the remote and changed the channels until Arvell Larsen, the weather guy, popped up. She turned her head with great care toward me and said, “I wasn’t going to make a scene. I was just happy to finally see a man with a knife in his mouth climbing the rigging. It’s been a while.” She lifted her glass and it seemed to light her face there; her clear, handsome face was compelling. She had a kind of hard perfection wonderful on television. People who just met her always looked twice in the first minute. “Can you stay? We could order some food. You like the quesadilla, right?”

  I looked at her. I like to look at people; I like the charged moments and Eve knew it, accused me of being addicted to them and thereby manipulative, coy, fake, an asshole. We had eye contact there, and anybody can say what they want to say, but eye contact is it, the beginning, middle, and end. It is better and worse, stronger than fondling in a hallway, stealing a kiss, better than any touch, and I held the look, feeling it work in me, glide, and then I reset myself and opened my mouth.

  “You better not,” she said. “Not that our gal Debbie has assumed an interest in cooking or learned to cook or even how to gather and prepare half a meal, but it will be dinnertime soon, and where is the new husband? Shall we picture her there in your bright new kitchen, standing at the ready as if to open the fridge: What is that worried look on her face? I’m being such a bitch here. Is she concerned about her mate or…Fuck it, Matt. This is just the way I talk. I like Debbie. You can’t stay to eat. And me, what do I want to do, eat bar food with some man? Please, forget I said anything.”

  Our table already looked like the party was over—seven glasses, three bottles, two napkins, assorted silverware splayed around the ashtray, the plastic bib holding the drink specials on one side and the appetizers on the other. I began to line up the silverware. It had been an old game of ours to remove the card with the appetizer specials on it, fold it inside out and write notes, sayings, mine always being, “A thirsty man has nothing for tears.” Now I just lined it up with the rest of the gear; I was lining things up. The late sun had dropped to the roadway and shot three powerhouse beams through the room, making the whole place only brown and gold, a science fiction scene, too bright, dangerous, throwing the shadows of the pool players against the far wall like storm clouds for a beat, and then a moment later as I finished my pathetic organizing of our tabletop, it all broke, the square girders of light dissipating into the bogus brown bar light, and we both looked up at our television for a moment, a woman identical to Eve with a microphone in front of an apartment building in New York. We couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  I took a drink of the R
ed Stripe. “I like the bottles as much as the beer,” I said.

  Eve leveled her look at me. “That’s the way it is.”

  “The worst beer bottle?” I asked.

  “Michelob,” she said without hesitating. “Stupid. Designed for nothing. Looks like it should be full of children’s shampoo.”

  I smiled. “You’re sharp,” I said.

  “Don’t,” Eve said, pointing the television remote at my chest, “you patronize me. You can leave anytime you want, but do not sit there and try to kiss my ass.”

  There was a cheer from the corner and the tall guy in a blue pinstripe shirt stood and raised his arms in a victory salute. Eve went on, “But this isn’t a good idea, is it? Idle chatter. We were smart and good at it once, but it was because it led somewhere. We’d meet and fence and once you saw how bright I was again we’d go to bed. Now it is what it is: idle chatter.” We watched the tall guy high-five his buddies, and Eve pointed. “There you are now. You had a couple of shirts like that; it’s a good shirt for you, so blue, so noncommital.”

  Now I was ready to get out. The beer was good and I always liked the rush of being with Eve, being seen with her, but I wanted to leave, get back to my life. Eve pointed the remote at the tall young man, and I saw the channel change over there.

  “Oh my God,” Eve whispered.

  “What did you do?” I asked her.

  There was an uproar from his mates. One cried out, “What’d you do, Ted!” and Ted turned and opened his arms before them—I’ll take care of this—and reached up to the elevated screen and put it back on the game. He turned and pointed at the guy who had complained, said something, and they all laughed.

  “When you’d come to work in those shirts, I couldn’t wait for you to take your jacket off, come by my desk.” Eve wasn’t looking at me. “They have a nice upper yoke, well made, and the cotton is satisfying to iron. The first time I saw that shirt, I knew you’d put it on the back of the rocker in my bedroom.”