Ed Gorman: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

“How do you know they were pointed? I didn’t even get to ask them.”

“C’mon, Sam. Don’t try and shit a shitter. We’re both defense lawyers. We know how it all works and what it all means.”

I leaned back in my comfortable leather armchair, drained the last of the Pepsi in the tall glass with the little pink terrycloth cover on it, and said, “So did either of you know her well, Jack?”

He stood up. He was so tall he looked like a totem pole, an upper-class totem pole. He said, “I admire you for asking it, Sam. That’s what you want in a lawyer and an investigator.” He put a hard hand on my shoulder and began to pull me up. “Now, I hope you’ll admire me for defending the sanctity of my home and asking you to leave.”

He was still very much in control.

“You mean you didn’t go to the Hawkeye game?”

“I’m not much of a sports fan, Sam. Never was, actually.”

“You could get deported to Missouri for saying that.”

Hesitation. “I’m sorry about last night.”

I was in jeans and a sweatshirt and a beer, sitting in my apartment with my feet on the coffee table and thinking about how stupid-looking toes are.

“Sorry? For what?”

“Oh, you know. Telling you about-everything.”

“I had a very nice time last night.”

“I’m kind of screwed up now.”

“I’ve been kinda screwed up my whole life. Not to pull rank on you, you understand.”

She laughed. “I had a good time, too, but I don’t think it was fair to you. You know, you should have certain expectations and all.”

“You let me worry about my expectations.

Really, Linda, I want to see you again.”

“Sam, it’s just-it’s not a good time.”

“You could make it a good time.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure. We could go have some dinner someplace and then just go for a ride the way we did last night.”

“But-what happens when the night’s over?”

“I come home and take a cold shower and sit in an ice bath and read the Bible. Same thing I do every night.”

Her laugh again. It was a small, shy, affecting laugh. “You clown.”

“You know you want to go.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I can just tell. I have these powers.”

“It’ll get awful frustrating for both of us at some point.”

“We’ll worry about that when we get to that point. How’s that?”

“I really appreciate this, Sam.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, and I’m being serious now. I’m not doing you a favor. This isn’t some kind of pity date. I like you. Last night I had a good time-if you discount the underlying existential dread that’s always with me, I mean.”

This time she giggled. “I think that’s what I h. Existential dread. And that sounds a lot more impressive than telling people you’re depressed.

Just about everybody’s depressed. But not all that many people have existential dread. I’m not even sure what it means and I’m impressed.”

“Maybe we’ll fall in love.”

“Oh, Sam, c’mon.”

“Why not? You’re lonely and I’m lonely and you’re short and I’m short.”

“And you have existential dread and I have existential dread.”

“See, what did I tell you? Sounds like love to me.”

“So what time are you planning on picking me up?”

“How about seven?”

“I’m staying here at my mom’s. Not in Iowa City.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“So am I.”

“Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. I was working in the emergency ward one night about six months ago. I had to substitute because there was a very bad virus going around and a lot of staff were home sick. Anyway, this woman came in.

She’d cut her wrists. She was in pretty bad shape. We got her fixed up and then she took off. You’re probably wondering what the point of this is.”

“I’m getting a little curious.”

“The woman was Brenda Carlyle.”

“Mike Carlyle’s wife?” Mike

Carlyle being the owner of the most successful local lumberyard, and a former All-Big Ten running back.

“Right.”

“Was Mike with her?”

“No. That’s what was so funny about it.

David Egan brought her in. I walked in on them once and he was kissing her.”

The Griffins lived in one of those venerable old brick mansions that had probably looked venerable and old the day the builders finished it. It belonged in one of those sappy Mgm British romances with Greer Garson, all noble and cold, and Ronald Coleman, all noble and hesitant.

They’d each do three or four noble things in the tedious course of the flick and then one of them would die doing something so noble it was difficult to even speak about it. Personally, I prefer Hot Rods from Hell.

There were vines up the ass (and on all sides of the house, too) and mullioned windows that bespoke even greater antiquity than the vines.

A blue Caddy convertible and a dark green Caddy sedan were in their proper garage slots. The doors were open for some reason. The drive and a half block in either direction were jammed with new and expensive cars of various kinds.

Inside, amid all their friends consoling the Griffins, there would be canap@es and sandwiches and hard liquor served by a maid who made less in a lifetime than most of the men present made in a year and who probably worked twice as hard. It was my class anger and sometimes it was fine, resenting the upper class, and sometimes it wasn’t fine, not when one of their daughters had been killed and I was petty enough to deprive them of my pity.

I would have made a good Marxist if only I could have believed in all the economic and sociological horseshit the Commies hand out.

I said a kind of prayer for the soul of poor Sara Griffin and also a kind of prayer for her parents. My older brother had died. None of us in the family, even all these years later, was ever again quite the same. The Griffins, despite the two fine and shiny cars in their open garage, would never again be quite the same, either.

No way I was going to go inside and try to talk to them with all the company they had.

Late afternoon now, autumn sky ripening into the color of grape and blood as a quarter-moon traced itself against the blue of the sky between gold-outlined clouds. There’s a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night’s. I had always felt it as a child and felt it still.

I decided to get ready. A shower and fresh clothes would knock the mood out of me. I felt ridiculously eager to see Linda again, to be bound up in that quiet, sensible, good-girl prettiness of hers, the gray gaze so eternal and wise behind her glasses. How fitting she should be a nurse, I thought. And then smiled. It didn’t take much to tumble me down the rabbit hole of infatuation. And with Linda I sensed the tumble would be worth the risk.

One hour later, shaved, showered, smelling of Old Spice and Lucky Strikes, I stood at the door of her mother’s two-story white frame house on a narrow working-class street that showed-with its shiny new cars and all the new home repairs-how well most people were doing in the United States at the moment. There had been some violent economic ups and downs after the war, but for the most part, this was the golden age of America.

There were jobs aplenty, several years of peace following the Korean War, college money for anybody who needed it, Playboy clubs, American Bandstand, the Twist, and the Flintstones, and who the hell could ask for more than that?

She was surprised to see me. She wore a quilted robe. I could smell supper. It smelled very good. She said, “Didn’t you get my-”