105. When McKinley and Shemansky. . . .
When McKinley and Shemansky came to get the band stuff, I helped them load it and took a load myself in the back of the pickup. It’s known that members of bands and baseball teams begin to despise one another; with us it hadn’t yet come to that, but we worked in silence that evening, right up until it was time for us to play and we had to put on a vivacity we did not feel. I suppose the others were blue because they were too poor to go away on vacation, while I was in a bad mood because Selva would be getting married. Musically, it was one of our better nights. Julia, of course, wouldn’t talk to me, and I responded by nagging her with the drums, playing odd beats to trip her at dramatic moments. This got to be funny after the audience caught on. It went part way toward restoring some harmony between us, but once the show was over and we were free to leave, she kept the other two between herself and me. Dexter Coffey walked her to her hotel, then came back to the Frog to have last-call with us. We looked each other over and decided not to go for breakfast.
Saturday night’s gig began the same way. The difference was that Selva Andersen came in a little before midnight and stayed to chat while the bar closed down. Julia stuck around, too; the presence of the two women made it a party, so we all went out to Lederer’s after 1 a.m. I entered without guilt, knowing Grace and The Goon were making the best of things out in Nevada, but I hadn’t counted on her friend Sheila being there. Julia had not forgotten. “Jonas’s girl friend works here,” she confided to Selva. “Be careful so that little waitress over there doesn’t pour a pot of coffee down your back.”
Selva straightened involuntarily and put a hand to the back of her collar; even though it was warm, she wore a long-sleeved blouse as usual. “Jonas has a sweetheart?” she asked. “Is it that snub-nosed blonde?”
“No, but Blondie’s a friend of hers,” Julia replied. “Last time we all came here, I thought she was going to poison me.”
“She wanted to poison you because you were behaving like a brat,” I put in. “Grace is off on a gambling trip with her manager. They expect to make a bundle out in Vegas.” Calling The Goon her “manager” was a euphemism; “pimp” would’ve been more like it. I wondered briefly how she was doing out there.
“Jonas’s friend has Jackie Kennedy hair,” Julia went on maliciously. “She’s five feet eight or nine and weighs ninety pounds. She has a gap between her teeth like the Wife of Bath.”
“She also has a pleasant disposition,” I said. “And a working brain.”
“My brain works fine,” Julia said evenly. “It’s certainly working better these past few days.”
“Enough of this dreary squabble,” Dexter Coffey said, his arm above Julia’s shoulders. “Let’s get some eggs and meat on the table. It’s been my observation that people fight when they’re hungry.”
“Grace can beat anybody here at Scrabble,” I said. “That includes you, Dex.”
“Well! I guess that proves you aren’t using her,” Julia said.
“Enough, enough!” Dexter Coffey said. “You two go to your rooms. Or room.” Selva gave me a sidelong, green-eyed look, her hand still touching her neck. She seemed comically wary when the blonde waitress came around.
Selva wanted to know from Julia what it was like at the Clayton House. Julia wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “It’s nothing but a salesmen’s dormitory,” she said. “I’ve spotted two hookers working the place. They dress like secretaries, but if they’re taking any dictation they’re taking it in bed. They give me dirty looks all the time, too. I’d move to the Cornhusker, but it’s farther from Jerome and from campus.”
“Maybe I’ll come and stay with you,” Selva said. “We could pick ourselves up a couple of salesmen. That big apartment gives me the creeps when Adrian’s not there.”
“Now you’re talking,” Julia said.
“I sold magazine subscriptions,” Mark McKinley volunteered. “We traveled all over the Midwest. It was a new nightmare every week. None of us could afford a hooker, though. Maybe the boss did.”
“These aren’t magazine salesmen,” Julia said. “They’re higher on the food chain.”
“I sold vacuum cleaners,” Dexter Coffey said. “Anybody wants a vacuum-cleaner demonstration, I can give you one. I can get dirt out of your carpet that you’d never believe was there.”
“How do you do that?” Selva asked.
“You press down on the dumb thing,” Dexter said.
“I sold Great Books,” Robert Shemansky said. “I sold Plato and Aristotle and Dante around Dayton, Ohio. Great Books.” He nodded wisely. “You know, most of those people had nothing on their coffee tables but the TV Guide. It was very sad, selling those Great Books.” Shemasky generally drank a lot during our performances, and now he looked ready to cry. He was sitting next to Selva Andersen, too.
“I’ve heard it’s a crooked business, those Great Books,” I said darkly.
“Oh!” Shemansky shuddered. “Crooked!” He rubbed his face. “The whole thing was just a front for a collection agency; people ended up in debt for years. You saw those boxed sets at garage sales all over Dayton. Never been opened.”
“No crookeder than magazine subscriptions,” Mark McKinley said. “We told the people we were earning money for college. I guess that’s true, because our boss was sending two daughters to TCU, but us salesmen were lucky to get through the summer without starving. I suppose it was good for business, the way we got all desperate and pathetic by the first of August.”
“What did you do that was crooked, Jonas?” Julia asked me.
“All I did was drive truck for the old man,” I said. “Nothing crooked about that, unless you count trying to miss the scales when you’re a little heavy. What about you?”
“I worked as a cashier at a plumbing-supply outlet. I sold toilet seats. The only thing crooked was lying to my friends about what I’d done all summer. What is it with this coffee? It tastes like shit.” Julia scowled at her cup and glanced in the direction of the waitress. “Better not say anything,” she grumbled. “She already hates me.”
“I worked as a waitress at a drive-in,” Selva said. “I must’ve fit right in with the teeny-boppers, because people kept asking me if I’d graduated yet. No one ever asked how I was doing at the University.”
“Somehow I pictured you hanging out at the pool,” I said.
Selva gave me a measured look. “I have to stay out of the sun, Jonas,” she said. “I have an aunt who’s had skin cancer already, and she’s only thirty-three.”
The blonde waitress brought our omelets. Shemansky had fallen asleep, leaning on McKinley’s shoulder, so we divided his food between us. Julia gripped her fork and glowered at her plate, teeth clenched. “They’ve done something to this omelet,” she said. “I can’t even stand the smell of it. I’m never coming here again.”
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