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83. Selva Andersen
did not attend. . . .
Selva
Andersen did not attend Larry Whyffe’s class the following morning, so all my
fidgeting and anticipation went for naught. Later, after I’d finished my
classes for the day, I ran into Julia Stein in the mail room. “What are you
doing this afternoon?” she asked me. “We have to get you outfitted.”
“Outfitted?
Am I going on a safari?”
“We
have to get you an outfit for the band,” she said disgustedly. “Honestly,
Jonas, you have the attention span of a two-year-old.”
“Well,
permit me to think about something else once in a while,” I said. “After all,
I’m not even a member yet.”
“You’re
a member,” she said. “Mark McKinley is sick. I hope it isn’t just you and me
this weekend.”
So,
after lunch at the cafeteria—Julia wouldn’t let me anywhere near Casey’s—we hit
a couple of the high-priced shops on 14th Street, where hippie-style clothing
was purveyed to young people who could afford not to make their own. What Julia
had in mind for me was a leather vest; she wanted it tight, to emphasize my
thinness and presumable decrepitude. In a place called the Brass Ring she found
just what she was looking for. It cost eighty dollars.
I
balked. “Eighty bucks!” I cried. “That’d buy me four ounces of the best
marijuana in Texas!”
“We’re
not in Texas,” she pointed out. “It’d probably only get you two ounces here in
Lincoln.”
“All
the same,” I insisted, “it’s too damn much money for a stupid little piece of
leather.”
“What
do you want to do? Shoot a cow?”
“Let’s
keep looking,” I said. “There’s got to be something cheaper than this.”
We
went through the downtown stores without finding another vest. “What about Dirt
Cheap?” I suggested, as we were leaving Gold’s on O Street; the record store
was just two blocks away.
Julia
shook her head. “I go in there almost every day,” she said. “I don’t like their
clothing. It’s tacky. Any more suggestions?”
I
thought a bit. “Tell you what,” I said. “There’s a place on West O Street that
sells actual cowboy shit. You know, lariat ropes, stuff like that.”
“You’re
kidding,” Julia said. “In Lincoln? Take me there.”
“We’ll
have to go get my truck,” I said.
“My
car’s closer,” she said. “Plus, it’ll start.”
Julia’s
Buick was hidden away behind the X-Cell Bookstore, where a narrow alley gave
access to the back entrances. “Usually there’s a wino or two back here,” Julia
said. “Don’t know what’s wrong today. Must be too cold for ‘em.”
“I
talked to Leonard,” I said as I waited for her to unlock the car. “He’s going
to make me do that paper on David Jones.”
“David
who?” Julia took off her glove to free the windshield wipers, then opened her
door and leaned across to pull up the lock knob on my side.
“Jones.
The Welsh-English poet and visual artist. World War One vet. The book I’m
doing’s called In Parenthesis.”
“Parentheses,” Julia corrected.
“Hey,
he’s English,” I said. “Would he get it wrong?”
“No,
but you would.” Julia started the car and roared the engine; I winced, feeling
sympathy for the bearings. “So how’s it going?”
“It’s
not. Leonard Strange and Lewis Rey both have some interest in the guy, so
everything by or about him is checked out permanently. Apparently there’s some
sort of rivalry between those two.”
“No
kidding,” Julia said. She took her foot of the gas and put the transmission in
reverse; the engine gulped and died. She shifted into neutral and started it
again.
“What
do you mean, ‘no kidding,’” I said. “Is this one of those deals that everybody
knows about but me?”
“Keep
talking.” She tried reverse again; the engine died again. “Third time’s a
charm,” she muttered, cranking the starter.
“I
don’t know. Rey’s the chair, and Leonard wants to be?”
“That’s
too easy.” This time when she eased off the gas, the engine idled calmly; she
shifted the transmission, her tongue in the corner of her mouth. The thing
stayed lit. “What do you know about Lewis Rey’s wife?” she asked, turning to
look behind her as she backed out.
“I
saw her once through their picture window,” I said. “She’s not much older than
us.” I thought about it. “Graduate student?”
“One
point,” Julia said. “For two points, tell me whose advisee she was.”
“Leonard’s,”
I said. “No shit.” Julia was still smirking. “There’s more?”
Julia
had backed around in an areaway behind the buildings, so that we now faced west
toward Tenth Street. “I’ll give you a hint,” she said as she shifted into
drive. “Rey was already married at the time.”
“That
doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “So?”
“She’s
still here; you’ve met her.” We’d passed the back side of the Green Frog and
reached the mouth of the alley, next to Lebsack Brothers’ tavern. Julia looked
south, then pulled out northward, crossing all five northbound lanes, to turn
west on Q Street, the street separating the Lincoln Journal-Star offices and the police station’s garages. We’d then
go south on Ninth Street and west across the viaduct on O. I must still have
looked blank, because Julia added yet another clue. “She works in the library,”
she said. “When I stay in Lincoln on the weekends, sometimes I go to synagogue
with her.”
“Barbara
Justman!” Julia grinned. “Good God,” I said. “What a soap opera.”
“Sex
in the catacombs,” Julia said. “It’s a complicated world we live in, Mr.
Smith.”
“My,
my,” I said.
“Yes,
indeed,” she said. “My, my.”
The
tack store was in a low steel building on the south side of O Street, somewhere
around the zero block, where the city planners of the century before had
decided that civilization should end. Julia passed the steelyards at the end of
the viaduct and turned left into the gravel lot, parking beside a horse trailer
with a For Sale sign. Behind the frosted plate glass window hung a tangle of
bridles. “Were you ever in love with horses when you were a kid?” I asked.
“Not
me,” she said emphatically. “Horses stink. They have large hard feet and are
unreliable.”
“My
sentiments exactly,” I said. “Makes me feel a lot better about you.”
“So
what are we doing here, then?”
“Looking
for a vest,” I reminded her.
We
entered the store warily. From the other end of a rather long aisle, a girl who
looked to be in her late teens approached us. She was a tiny thing with
fluffed-up blonde-tinted hair that showed a darker color at the roots; she wore
blue jeans stretched across hips that seemed about a foot wide, and her blue
eyes showed a lot of white around the irises. “Can I help you?” she asked us in
a high-pitched voice.
Julia
eyed this cowgirl apparition skeptically. “Do you have a men’s clothing
section?” she asked in a commanding voice.
The
salesgirl stared at Julia’s breasts, her coarse black hair, her silver
earrings, her bracelets. “Yes,” she squeaked. She turned and practically
sprinted toward the rear of the store. We glanced at one another and followed,
past aisles of ropes, halters, currycombs, brushes, hoof trimmers, mane
clippers, pill guns, pump sprayers, medicines, shampoos, salves, tapes, waxes,
reins, cinches, straps, quirts, conchos, tassels, shells and harness bells, to
where she hovered nervously beside a rack of fluorescently-colored shirts.
Julia
inspected the shirts, running her fingers over the slick, glowing cloth. “These
are men’s?” she asked incredulously.
“Cowboy
drag,” I explained. “They tie silk hankies around their necks, too.”
“La,
la,” Julia said. “I wonder whether Jerome knows about this place. He’s rather
fond of leather, actually.”
“If
he doesn’t,” I said, “some of his customers surely do.”
The
salesgirl vanished in a little poof
of terror, leaving her juvenile perfume. We moved on to look at a row of
fringed jackets. Julia fingered everything, fascinated. “Some of these aren’t
bad,” she said. “They’re a little off, though, if you know what I mean.”
“Too
serious,” I said. “No self-awareness in these clothes.”
“Too
much like John Wayne,” she agreed. “I can’t see Greg wearing one of these.”
“He’s
queer, isn’t he?”
“Gay,
you mean,” she said. “That’s what they’re calling it now.”
The
manager came up to us, a middle-sized, fiftyish fellow with trimmed blond hair
and a ruddy, unwrinkled face. He had the look of a retired game warden. “Can I
help you?” he asked coldly.
“We’re
looking for a vest for him.” Julia gestured toward me. “It has to be leather,
dark brown or black. I want it to match his hair.”
“Like
a motorcycle vest? We have nothing like that here,” he said. “Our customers are
horse people, as you can see.”
Julia
looked at him incredulously. “Horse people?” she said. “And who do you think
this is? You’re looking at the great Alfonse D’Amatore, chief animal trainer
over all five divisions of the Parker Brothers International Circus. He trains
camels, zebras, donkeys, elephants, monkeys, dogs, and bears. He’s taught a
Lippizan stallion to dance the minuet, play the piano, jump through a ring of
fire, and dive from a twenty-foot platform into a tank of water not much bigger
than the average-sized bathtub. You want horse people? You’re talking to some real horse people. Where are the God-damned vests?”
The
man looked me over, his lips white; I stood a little straighter, as befits a
chief trainer. “How does he play the piano?” he asked.
“It’s
a big keyboard,” I explained. “He can only hit one note at a time. He isn’t
exactly Liberace.” The blond man’s ears were getting closer together. “He plays
the opening bars of the theme music from Bonanza,” I said.
“Let’s
go, Alfonse,” Julia said. “I don’t really want to look at their cheap shit.”
“Now,
Anyuta, darling,” I said gently. “Don’t work yourself into one of your rages.”
“I
mean it,” she said. “Get me out of here now before I put a curse on these
people.” Julia turned and marched toward the door; I looked at the manager,
shrugged, and quickly followed. Once we were safely in the car, she burst into
laughter. “Bonanza!” she
spluttered.
“It’s
your fault,” I said. “You’re the one who told him about the piano.”
“A
horse can play the piano about as well as you play drums,” she said. “You
really ought to get a vest that’s bulletproof.”
“Hey!”
I said. “That was mean.”
“Sorry,
Jonas,” she said. “That Nazi asshole’s put me in a funk. I think I’d better
take you home before the real Julia shows her snaky locks.”
“What
about the vest?”
“Forget
the vest,” she said. Julia turned the car east, toward downtown Lincoln and her
new life as Jerome Weld’s mistress. “What do you think?” she asked. “Do you
think he believed us?”
“We
had him confused, anyway,” I said. “You look pretty convincing as a gypsy. Did
you ever want to run off and join the circus?”
“When
I was little, it was one of my pet fantasies.” She turned down Ninth Street to
deliver me to my apartment, driving in silence for a block or two. “Funny
thing, though. I never did like animals,” she said. “Especially horses.”
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