The Sportswriter (14 page)

“People don’t have any right to think you can make life better for them,” Walter said soberly. “But it’s what they want, all right. I agree.”

“I don’t know about rights,” I said. “It’d be nice if we could. I think I once thought I could.”

“Not me,” Walter said. “One lousy marriage proved that.”

“It’s a disappointment. I don’t mean marriage is a disappointment. Just ending it.”

“I guess.” Walter looked down at the fishermen at the dim-lit end of the bar, where they were huddling over some playing cards with fat Evangelis. One of the men laughed out loud, then another man put the cards in his coat pocket and smirked, and the talk got quiet. I would’ve given anything for a peek at those cards and to have had a good laugh with the fishermen instead of being land-locked with Walter. “Your marriage wasn’t disappointing to you, then?” Walter said in a way I found vaguely insulting. Walter had just the tips of his slender fingers touching the glass of scotch, and then he looked at me accusingly.

“No. It was really a wonderful marriage. What I remember of it.”

“My wife’s in Bimini,” Walter said. “My ex-wife, I need to say now. She went down there with a man named Eddie Pitcock, a man I’ve never seen and know nothing about except his name, which I know from a private detective I hired. I could find out a lot more. But who cares? Eddie Pitcock’s his name. Isn’t that a name for the guy who runs away with your wife?”

“It’s just a name, Walter.”

Walter pinched his nose again and sniffed.

“Right. You’re right about that. That isn’t what I want to talk about anyway, Frank.”

“Let talk about sports, then.”

Walter stared intently at the fish pictures behind the bar and breathed forcefully through his nose. “I feel pretty self-important hauling you over here like this, Frank. I’m sorry. I’m not usually self-important. I don’t want this to be the story of my life.” Walter had completely ignored my offer of a good sports conversation, which seemed to mean something more serious was on the way, something I was going to be sorry about. “It isn’t a very amusing life. I’m sure of that.”

“I understand,” I said. “Maybe you just wanted to have a drink and sit in a bar with someone you knew but didn’t have to confide in. That makes plenty of sense. I’ve done that.”

“Frank, I went in a bar in New York two nights ago, and I let a man pick me up. Then I went to a hotel with him—the Americana, as a matter of fact—and slept with him.” Walter stared furiously out into the fishing pictures. He stared so hard that I knew he would like nothing in the world better than to be one of those happy, proud khaki-clad fishermen displaying his fat stripers to the sun on a happy July day, say, in 1956, when we would have been, Walter and me, eleven years old—assuming we are the same age. I would’ve been doubly happy at the moment to be there myself.

“Is that what you wanted to tell me, Walter?”

“Yes.” Walter Luckett said this as if stunned, looking deadly serious.

“Well,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I know that,” Walter said, his chin vaguely moving up and down in a kind of secret nod to himself. “I knew that ahead of time. Or I thought I did.”

“Well, that’s fine, then,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“I
feel
pretty bad, Frank,” Walter said. “I don’t feel dirty or ashamed. It’s not a scandal. I probably ought to feel stupid, but I don’t even feel that way. I just feel bad. It’s like it’s loosed a bad feeling in me.”

“Do you think you want to do it again, Walter?”

“I doubt it. I hope not, anyway,” Walter said. “He was a nice guy, I’ll just say that. He wasn’t one of these leather bullies or what have you. And neither am I. He’s got a wife and kids up in north Jersey. Passaic County. I’ll probably never see him again. And I’ll never do that again, I hope. Though I could, I guess. I certainly don’t think anyone would care if I did. You know?” Walter drank down his scotch and quickly cut his eyes to me. I wondered if we were talking loud enough for the fishermen to hear us. They would probably have something to say about Walter’s experience if we wanted to include them.

“Why do you think you told me, Walter?”

“I think I wanted to tell you, Frank, because I knew you wouldn’t care. I felt like I knew the kind of guy you are. And if you did care, I could feel better because I’d know I was better than you. I have some real admiration for you, Frank. I got your book out of the library when I joined, the group, though I admit I haven’t read it. But I felt like you were a guy who didn’t hold opinions.”

“I’ve got a lot of opinions,” I said. “But I tend to keep them to myself, usually.”

“I know that. But not about something like this. Am I right?”

“It doesn’t matter to me. If I have an opinion about it, I’ll only know about it later.”

“I’d be happy if you wouldn’t tell me about it then, frankly, if you do. I don’t think it would do me any good. I don’t really think of this as a confession, Frank, because I don’t really want a response from you. And I know you don’t like confessions.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I think most things are better if you just let them be lonely facts.”

“I agree,” Walter said confidently.

“You did tell me, though, Walter.”

“Frank, I needed a context. I think that’s what friends are for.” Walter jiggled ice in his glass in a summary fashion, like a conventioneer.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Women are better at this kind of thing, I think,” Walter said.

“I never thought about it.”

“I think women, Frank, sleep together all the time and don’t really bother with it. I believe Yolanda did. They understand friendship better in the long run.”

“Do you think you and this fellow, whatever his name is, are friends?”

“Probably not, Frank. No. But you and I are. I can say that I don’t have a better friend in the world than you are right now.”

“Well that’s good, Walter. Do you feel better?”

Walter thumped the space between his brown eyes with his middle finger and let go a deep breath. “No. No. No, I don’t. I didn’t even think I would, to tell you the truth. I don’t think I told you to feel better. Like I said, I didn’t want anything back. I just didn’t want it to be my secret. I don’t like secrets.”

“So, how do you feel?”

“About what?” Walter stared at me strangely.

“About sleeping with this man. What else have we been talking about?” I darted a look down the long bar. One of the fishermen was sitting staring at us, apart from the others who were watching a TV above the cash register, watching the Yankees game. The fisherman looked drunk, and I suspected he wasn’t really listening to what we were saying, though that was no sign he couldn’t hear it by accident. “Or about telling me. I don’t know,” I said almost in a whisper. “Either one.”

“Have you ever been poor, Frank?” Walter glanced at the fisherman, then back at me.

“No. Not really.”

“Me, too. Or me either. I haven’t been. But that’s exactly how I feel now. Like I’m impoverished, just suddenly. Not that I want anything. Not that I even can lose anything. I just feel bad, though I’m probably not going to kill myself.”

“Do you think that’s what being poor’s like? Feeling bad?”

“Maybe,” Walter said. “It’s my version anyway. Maybe you’ve got a better one.”

“No. Not really. That’s fine.”

“Maybe we all need to be poor, Frank. Just once. Just to earn the right to live.”

“Maybe so, Walter. I hope not. I wouldn’t like it much.”

“But don’t you feel sometimes, Frank, like you’re living way up on the top of life, and not really living all of it, all the way down deep?”

“No. I never felt that way, Walter. I just always felt like I was living all the life I could.”

“Well, then you’re lucky,” Walter Luckett said bluntly. He tapped his glass on the bar. Evangelis looked around, but Walter waved him off. He let a couple of ice cubes wiggle around in his mouth a moment. “You’ve got a date, don’t you pal?” He tried to smile around the ice cubes and looked stupid.

“I did, anyway.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Walter said. He laid a crisp five-dollar bill out on the bar. He probably had plenty of such bills in his pocket. He adjusted his sweater around his shoulders. “Let’s take a walk, Frank.”

We walked out of the bar, past the fishermen and Evangelis, standing under the TV looking up at the color screen and the game. The fishermen who’d been staring at us still sat staring at the space where we’d been. “Come back, fellas,” Evangelis said, smiling, though we were already out the door.

Awash down the boat channel and the dark Manasquan River, the night air was fresher than I could’ve imagined it, a cool, after-rain airishness, an evening to soothe away human troubles. Over the water, halyards were belling on the metal masts in the dark, a lonely elegiac sound. Lighted condos rose above the far river bank.

“Tell me something, would you.” Walter took a deep breath and let it out. Two young black men holding their own gear and plastic bait-buckets were loitering on the gangplank of the
Mantoloking Belle
, ready for an all-night adventure. Ben Mouzakis stood in his pilot’s house staring down at them from the dark.

“If I can.” I said.

Walter seemed to be feeling better in spite of himself. “Why’d you quit writing?”

“Oh that’s a long story, Walter.” I crammed my hands in my pockets and weasled away a step or two toward my car.

“I guess so, I guess so. Sure. They’re all long stories, aren’t they?”

“I’ll tell you sometime, since we’re friends, Walter. But not right now.”

“Frank, I’d like that. I really would. Sit down over a drink and hear it all out. We’ve all got our stories, don’t we?”

“Mine’s a pretty simple one.”

“Well, good. I like ’em simple.”

“Take care, Walter. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“You take care, Frank.”

Walter started toward his car at the far end of the gravel lot, though when he was twenty yards from me he started running for some reason, and ran until I couldn’t see him anymore, only his white shorts and his thin legs fading in the night.

 
    Central Jersey dozed in a sweet spring somnolence. DJ’s as far south as Tom’s River crooned along the seaboard that it was after eight. Nighttime streets were clearing from Bangor to Cape Canaveral, and I was out of luck with Vicki, though I tried to make good time.

At Freehold I stopped for the hell of it and called her apartment where no one answered; she unplugged the phone after bedtime. I called the nurses’ private hospital number—a number I’m not supposed to know, reserved for loved ones in case of emergency; the regular hospital number with the last digit changed to zero. A woman answered in a startled voice and said her records showed Miss Arcenault wasn’t scheduled. Was it an emergency? No. Thanks, I said.

For some reason I called my house. The answering machine clicked on with my voice, cheerier than I could bear to hear myself. I beeped for a message and there was X’s managerial-professional voice saying she would meet me the next morning. I hung up before, she was finished.

Once, when our basset hound, Mr. Toby, was killed by a car that didn’t bother to stop—right on Hoving Road—X, in tears, said she wished that time could just be snatched back. Precious seconds and deeds retrieved for a better try at things. And I thought, while I dug the grave behind the forsythias along the cemetery fence, that it was like a woman to grieve over a simple fact in that hopeless-extravagant way. Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things. Only that’s exactly what I craved now! A precious hour returned to me; a part of Walter’s sad disclosures held over till a later date—hardly the best of things.

What’s friendship’s realest measure?

I’ll tell you. The amount of precious time you’ll squander on someone else’s calamities and fuck-ups.

And as a consequence, zipping along the Jersey darkside past practical Hightstown, feeling ornery as a bunkhouse cook, the baddies suddenly swarmed my car like a charnel mist so dense that not even opening the window would rout them.

Nothing in the world is as hopeful as knowing a woman you like is somewhere thinking about only you. Conversely, there is no badness anywhere as acute as the badness of no woman out in the world thinking about you. Or worse. That one has quit because of some bone-headedness on your part. It is like looking out an airplane window and finding the earth has, disappeared. No loneliness can compete with that. And New Jersey, muted and adaptable, is the perfect landscape for that very loneliness, its other pleasures notwithstanding. Michigan comes close, with its long, sad vistas, its desolate sunsets over squatty frame houses, second-growth forests, flat interstates and dog-eared towns like Dowagiac and Munising. But
only
close. New Jersey’s is the purest loneliness of all.

By disclosing an intimacy he absolutely didn’t have to disclose (he didn’t want advice, after all), Walter Luckett was guilty of both spoiling my superb anticipation and illuminating a set of facts-of-life I’d have been happy never to know about.