Ed Gorman: Bad Moon Rising

“Yeah, I actually do. But most of them aren’t here tonight.”

“It’s summer. A lot of them are on vacation.”

She yawned and tilted her perfect head back. When we went to high school together her name was Wendy McKay. Because of the Mc in her name and the Mc in mine we sat together in homeroom where, eventually, she was forced to talk to me. She’s admitted now that proximity alone had forced her to converse. We were social unequals. She was from a prominent family whose gene pool had endowed her with shining blonde hair, green eyes, and a body that was frequently imagined when teenage boys decided to seek the shadows for some small-town self-abuse.

She married into the Bennett family believing that her husband loved her. Unfortunately, as she learned all too soon, he’d still been in love with a girl he’d known all his life. After he was killed fighting in Vietnam, it all became moot.

As we had both passed thirty, we didn’t try to delude ourselves. She’d gone through a period of sleeping around and drinking too much. She’d ended up spending a lot of money on a shrink in Iowa City. I’d come close to being married three times. We wanted to be married; we even wanted to have a baby or two. But unlike me, Wendy wanted to go slow. So I kept my apartment at Mrs. Goldman’s even though I spent most of my nights at her house, shocking numerous guardians of local morality.

“Am I drunk? I can’t tell.”

“A little.”

“Damn. Don’t let me do anything stupid.”

“Why don’t we make a pass through the house once more and then head home?”

I stood up and took her hand. She came up into my arms and we spent several minutes making out like eleventh-graders. I opened one eye and saw over her shoulder the couple who had appeared unheard on the veranda. I smiled at them as I eased out of the embrace. They didn’t smile back.

“It doesn’t do you any good to watch the tapes of those cops beating up the hippies,” Wendy said as we passed through the open French doors and went back inside where three young musicians with long hair were playing guitars and singing Beatles songs. Somebody somewhere was smoking pot. As a lawyer and a private investigator for Judge Whitney, I had the duty to find and arrest this person. I decided to put it off for a few months. “You just get depressed, Sam.” She didn’t sound as drunk as either of us thought she was.

As we mixed with the throng inside, she said, “Remember, don’t watch those tapes again. You get too worked up.” Then she hiccupped.

The networks were running tapes of this afternoon over and over again, the ones of Chicago cops clubbing protestors. The protestors weren’t exactly innocent. They screamed “Pigs!” constantly; some threw things and a few challenged the cops by running right up to them and jostling them. There were no heroes. But since the cops were sworn to uphold the law it was their burden to control not only the crowd but themselves. Dozens of kids could be seen with blood streaming down their faces. Some lay unmoving on the pavement like the wounded or dead in a war. In the TV room of this mansion several men stood watching the tapes, their hands gripping their drinks the way they would grip grenades. When I’d been in there, about a third of the men were against what the cops were doing. The rest wanted the cops to inflict maximum injury. One man said, “Just kill the bastards and get it over with.”

For the next twenty minutes we circulated among the faux hippies. Most of the people we said good-bye to were cordial and even amusing, aware of the irony of middle-aged hippiedom. One man, a school board member I’d disagreed with on a few fiery occasions, even patted me on the shoulder and told me he agreed with me about the Chicago cops. “No excuse for what they’re doing. I would’ve said something in the TV room but I didn’t want to get my head taken off.” I probably wouldn’t be as fiery next time.

For a roomful of people dressed as hippies, most of the conversations sounded pretty square. The men discussed business; the women discussed domestic life and gossiped a bit. While Wendy excused herself to go to the bathroom-still hiccupping-I let a drunken city councilman tell me that he was going to start sending me all his personal legal business because “The big shots want too much money. You have any idea what they charge an hour?” Then, weaving around while he stood in place, he raised his drink, aimed vaguely for his face, and said, the glass a few inches from his lips, “You don’t have the greatest reputation, but for the kind of stuff I’ll be sendin’ you it doesn’t matter.”

Wendy reappeared and rescued me. Her hiccups were gone. She looked around the largest of the rooms and said, “I wish there were more people from our class here.”

“They aren’t successful enough to be here. I only got in because you brought me.”

“You’re like my gigolo.” She laughed, but a certain dull glaze remained in her eyes. Where liquor was concerned she was the ultimate cheap date. A couple of drinks and she was at least semi-plastered.

“Let’s try the front steps this time,” I said.

“Huh?”

I grabbed a cup of coffee for Wendy. We sat on the front steps of the enormous house, enjoying the midwestern night. Trumbull, the man who owned it, was the director of four steel plants. His wife was from here, so they bought this place, turned it into a masterpiece, and lived in it during the warm months. Florida was their home when the cold weather came. The drive that curved around the place was crowded with cars. We’d be long gone by the time most of them left, so we wouldn’t have any trouble getting out. But many people well into their cups were going to have some frustrating moments if they all tried to leave at once.

Wendy caught a firefly. She cupped it in her hand and said, “Hello, little fellow.”

“How do you know it’s a fellow?”

“Take a look.”

In the shadow of her hand a golden-green light flickered on and off. “Yep, it’s a fella all right.”

She laughed and let him go. After her head was on my shoulder she said, “I know these aren’t your kind of people, Sam. But remember, your kind of people aren’t my kind of people, either.”

“I thought you liked Kenny.”

“I don’t mean Kenny. I mean your clients. Some of them are really criminals. I mean bad people.”

The front door opened behind us. Our haven had been invaded again. We could have kept on talking but we were self-conscious now. I got up and helped Wendy to her feet.

“Hope we didn’t chase you off,” a woman’s voice said from the shadows.

“No. We were leaving anyway.”

When we were out of earshot, Wendy said, “Very nice, Sam. You’re really learning social skills.”

“You mean instead of saying, ‘Look, you sorry bastard, you ruined our whole evening.’?”

“Exactly.” She clung to my arm woozily and kissed my cheek. “See, isn’t it fun being polite to people you hate?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Look who’s talking.”

As we drew closer to my car, I slid my arm around her shoulders. We had our battles, but most of the time there was peace, something I’d never had much of in my past affairs. I’d started to believe what I’d heard a TV pop psychologist say, that some people liked agitation in their relationships. I’d just always assumed that was the way it had to be. But Wendy showed me how wrong I’d been.

Somebody called my name twice. I turned around and shouted back.

“There’s a phone call for you, Sam,” the female voice said.

I yelled my thanks.

“A client,” Wendy said.

“Most likely.”

“Poor old Sam.”

“Poor old Wendy.”

“I don’t mind. Right now, relaxing at home sounds better than this anyway.”