Well That's My Story

My eyes glistened as I took her out for the last walk. We went down the apartment stairs. At 14, her hips were a constant bother and her eyesight was dimming so she moved more slowly and more carefully.

I didn’t need a leash. She never strayed far from my side. Even as a pup, she took her role as my protector seriously.

We followed the path an into the meadow where she never tired of wandering, sniffing smells that seemed to interest her, occasionally finding a treat that someone had discarded.

I was in no hurry. She stayed close.

“So this is it,” she said.

I had long since gotten used to the voice of my dog being in my head.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“You’re crying.”

“I am not.”

“You think you can fool me? I’ve known you since I was six weeks old. I know you better than your mother does.”

“You’re not angry? I feel like I’m betraying you.”

“No. I’m little sad. I’ll miss these walks. I like being curled up at your feet. I like alerting you when someone comes. I think I did my job pretty well.”

“I feel terrible. I hate that it has to end like this.”

“How did you expect it to end? Your lifespan is five times mine. Being the master comes with responsibility.”

“It’s a hell of a burden.”

“I enjoyed life. I love you. We wrung a lot out of a very few years. I know I can’t tell you not to be sad, but don’t be sad for long.”

“It wont’ be painful for you, you know. I’ll make sure of that.”

“I know. You’d never hurt me.”

“There’s a bit of pressure from the needle. But you never flinched when they gave you shots. The vets always loved you.”

She sighed contentedly.

“You took good care of me but I’m feeling old. I worry all the time that I won’t be ready when you need me. I worry that I can’t keep up. I have good dreams though.”

I smiled. “You bark in your sleep.”

“Do I? It’s pleasant there, in the dreams”

“I will miss you.”

“You really bug me,” she said.

“Why’s that?” he asked

“You know, everything about you,” she said.

“Really? Everything?”

“I can’t stand your shoes. I don’t like your hair gel. And then there’s the stuff in between,” she said.

“Mate-dot-com said we’d be perfect for each other,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Odd, isn’t it. I don’t even really like the name Jeff. I’m not sure why they paired us.”

“I think I see the bug,” he said. “My name is Robert.”

“Thank god,” she said. And she left.

She reached across from the passenger seat. She had a sly smile and a halter top, each worn the way only 20-year-old girls can.

She cupped her hands and I felt suddenly warm. She turned in her seat and cradled them. She unbuckled the belt and leaned over them, brushing a fingernail over the light fuzz and then, surprisingly, blowing on them, the way you would at a Vegas crap table. I jumped when she nuzzled them and smiled.

The ride ended too soon. And when I opened her door I watched her poke the fuzzy dice one more time with her finger. They were still swinging from the rear-view mirror as she walked  away.

Even the way the phone rang sounded angry. Marty sat at his desk, his head gripped in is hands, watching it, listening to it, unable to touch it.

He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his nose, gather itself at the very tip, then fall softly onto the legal pad where it spread into a small circle and made the ink run. Marty shivered against the Arctic blast that blew through the office, where there was no thermostat setting except Frigid.

Marty listened to the phone ring a fourth and fifth time, shrill as a mother screaming “Martin J. Emmerson, you come here this instant.”

He screwed his eyes shut, a feeble defense against anxiety. Stripe would not stop at a call. There would be a visit, perhaps as Marty was walking to the bus, maybe as he was unlocking the door to his apartment.

It would be startling. Stripe was like that. Silent. Menacing. An ambush in a $3,000 suit.
Marty tried to do the math in his head. But anxiety had frozen the gears. It had been Friday when Stripe had called and given Marty the weekend to get the money. Or else.

“Damn United Way,” Marty finally screamed to no one in particular. “Someone else will have to be chairman next year!”

There is a time when a man has to choose. He sits at the bar,  fingers playing over the mahogany,  thinking done. He stares into space for a moment, reviewing once again his mental calculations, the logical steps, the intuition that has brought him to this point.

He breathes and holds. He exhales long and hard.

His mind and conscience are clear.
The time for  thought has been shoved aside by the time for action.

He glances up at the woman’s expectant face on the other side of the bar, her body partially hidden by beer taps.
“Lite,” he says.

“Any regrets?”

“I never learned to surf.”

Father Lattimore took a look at the doughy white old man in front of him.
“You don’t strike me as the surfing type.”

“Can’t really stand the ocean. And I can get a sunburn in a dark room.”

“Then surfing does seem like an odd hobby for you,” the priest said.

“Maybe. Still, I can’t get the image of getting up on that board and being carried along by the waves out of my mind. Maybe it’s a product of too much Beach Boys music.”

“Could be,” Father Lattimore said. “I see lots of people who are heavily influenced by modern music.”

“I guess that’s about it as far as things I missed out on.  Most of the things I wanted to do, I just did them.”

“Yes, I understand,” the priest said.  “I believe that’s why we’re here.”

“It’s a good way to live. You come home at the end of the day with some money and the feeling that you’ve really accomplished something. I found that if I put things off, well, I just never got around to them. So I learned early on to just get on with it.”

The priest nodded.

“Except for surfing. I never got around to that.”

The priest looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it’s time to be going.”

“Can’t you stay and chat awhile longer. I’m actually enjoying this.”

“I’d really like that,” the priest said.  He made the sign of the cross and gave the old man a wafer. “But I’ve got two more executions after this one. Today’s schedule is just murder.”

Ralph envied Sam. He envied him in a way that was not healthy. When Sam brought home a girl, Ralph would hang around and make little snuffling noises until Sam told him to get out.

Sam did bring home some beautiful women. Ralph remembered the flight attendant from Brazil. She glided across the room and left such a soft scent in her wake. She curled up on the coach, knees pulled up, feet tucked under her with such grace that Ralph felt immediately like curling up next to her.

But she was Sam’s And Ralph was forced to live vicariously as he watched Sam’s fingers stroke the delicate tanned skin, caress a neck that was surely soft as silk. Ralph was saw awestruck he almost whimpered.

Ralph envied Sam’s social life in general. Sam always went such interesting places. Ralph stayed home and daydreamed until Sam returned with wonders and stories.

He’d bring bags from the World Market stuffed with figs and hummus and the most fragrant prosciutto and provolone. Bags from Saks with suits that looked as if they would simply slide onto the wearer.

Ralph envied Sam’s taste in food. The wines he paired steaks that leaked when pierced with a fork and that cut as if they were simply ready to fall into bite-size pieces.

Ralph’s resentment grew. He growled at himself. Sometimes he thought it would be the simplest thing to just do Sam in and take his place. He would be the one at the head of the table. He would open the wine, get the girl, sleep on the silk sheets.

But then Ralph would shake his head, walk slowly back to the basket in the corner of the room, curl up and gnaw his bone

He came to visit her quietly in the night. Even after two years, she had never gotten used to sleeping alone and so she woke easily despite the care he took.

He had wanted to watch her peaceful look for a while, the expression she wore when the worry of the days left her.

But she came awake and looked hard at him as he stood by the bed. Her eyes narrowed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. But he looked so handsome and rugged in his uniform. His peaked officer’s cap at a rakish angle, One button of the blue jacket undone. Her face softened and she couldn’t help but smile.

“I needed to see you,” he replied.

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss you every hour I’m awake. I miss waking up next to you. I miss going to sleep beside you.”\

She wanted to reach up and touch him but she was too overcome with emotion to move.

He smiled. “Your letters mean the world to me. I have to read them when the rest of the guys aren’t around. I don’t want them to see me cry. I read them over and over and i cry every time.”

“They’re supposed to make you happy,” she said.

“They do,” he said. “That’s why I cry.”

“When did you get back?” she asked.

“I can’t stay. I  wanted to watch you sleep for a bit. You always looked so gentle in the night.”

She swallowed hard. She didn’t want him to see her in  tears.

“It’s almost morning,” he said. “You’re going to get a message from the Air Force. It will tell you I served with honor and I did my duty. It won’t say how much I love you and how much I will miss you.

“I came to tell you that.”

There were three stoplights. LM Whitman had counted them as he drove from the sign that said “Flat city limits” to the sign that said “Leaving Flat city.”

The city lived up to its name in geography, atmosphere and general appearance. The signals, on Main Street, were at Oak, Elm and Maple. If you took a right on Main the roads petered out into dead ends. If you took a left you would pass First Avenue, There was no Second Avenue.

LM eased his battered Ford Taurus through the town twice to get his bearings. Not because it would be difficult to find the building at 14 Main Street — the Flat National Bank was the only three-story building on the strip — but because he didn’t feel comfortable unless he’d scouted the potholes and the dead ends. A man needs to be able to make a quick getaway.

His mother had taught him that, involuntarily, after three successive men who weren’t his father but who lived in their house had slipped away. She had promised him that things would be better for him when he grew up. But when LM was 16, she screamed once in the middle of the night and then she had vanished too.

There were plenty of parking spaces in front of the bank and a small metal sign that said “2-hour parking M-F.” He chose to pull the Taurus to the curb one block down. He crossed Maple against the light. The only thing in the town that moved during his 60-second walk was a plastic bag that blew down the sidewalk.

The interior was just like a bank. Marble, flourescent light, three indows at the counter with semicircular cutouts to slide your monety through. Just one tired looking teller.

She had 25-year-old skin and 40-year-old boredom.

“Help ya?” she said without taking her eyes off the emery board that she worked lazily over her thumb nail.

LM silently slid a piece of paper through the window opening.

The woman looked down and her eyes narrowed. “Got ID?” she said.

LM fished his driver’s license from a battered cowhide wallet. He flicked it with his finger. The teller looked agitated when it banged against her hand.

“LM Whitman” she read slowly. “That stand for something?”

“No,” LM said, not bothering to add that he was named for the pack of cigarettes his mother had on the table in her hospital room.

The teller looked at the license again and held it up, turning it to change angles in the light. She couldn’t tell a fake license from an Acme coupon, but she felt obliged to put on a show. She heaved a huge sigh of effort getting off her stool and moved away from the window. She returned with two keys.

“I’m s’posed to keep the door key,” she said as she pushed them toward LM. “But I figger you can let yourself in.”

LM nodded and took the keys.

“Make sure you lock up on the way out,” she reminded him.

“And don’t take too long,” she shouted as he walked away. “We close in 20 minutes.”

Behind the locked door, a narrow wooden table was the only furniture in the room. Built into the wall were a dozen safety deposit boxes. LM’s key had 0003 printed on it. Ambitious, he thought.

His key pulled the box from the wall and he set it on the table.

There were just four items inside. One was a revolver. LM spun the cylinder. Needs oiled, he thought. He replaced it. There was a birth certificate; the original, not the doctored one. He left that alone. He knew what it said. There was a bundle of bills still in their Flat National Bank wrapper. He fanned them, then stuffed them in his jeans pocket.
Finally, there was a stack of photographs held together with a fraying rubber band. He took those too and locked up.

“Where will people be this time of day?” he asked the teller.

“Diner,” she said. “It’s on …”

“I know,” LM said.

At First and Oak he entered the busiest place in Flat. A couple of heads turned as he walked to the back of the diner but no one paid much attention until he started laying photographs on the counter one by one as he moved toward the exit.

Behind him he heard confusion, then astonishment and finally anger as he left the diner. He got into the Taurus and in 30 seconds he was “Leaving Flat city.”

He smiled at the start of his own personal joke, “A mayor, a  banker and a police chief walk into a bar …”

The focus group said Ford’s new car needed to attract mid-20s women.

“Horoscope readers,” Rich Denton said.

“What?” asked Amy Leslie.

“People who read that little section of the paper that tells your future,” Denton said.

“I know what a horoscope is,” Leslie said. “But why do you think that appeals to women?”

“That’s who I see reading them in the supermarket checkout line,” Denton said.

“And when was the last time you were in a grocery?” Rosetta Stone asked.

“It’s been a while,” Denton admitted. “But some things don’t change. OK, Let’s work on a name from the Zodiac. How about the Ford Cancer?”

“Ummm, that has some unpleasant baggage,” Stone said.

Denton mused on that. “You might be right.”

“Ford Aries?” Willie Pratt ventured. Pratt was the new member of the team and a world-class suck-up.

“I think that’s been done,” Denton said. “Dodge.”

“Oh,” Pratt said. “Must be before my time.”

Stone rolled her eyes.

“How about Virgo,” Denton said.

Leslie sang softly “Like a Virgo … touched for the very first time.”

“Not sure we want that association,” Denton said.

“How about Taurus?” Pratt said.

Stone reached over and slapped the back of his head. “Shut up.”

“Maybe this just isn’t in the stars today, ” Denton said. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow. The paper says that’s going to be a very creative day for me.”