Reed Coleman - Gun Church

“I guess.”

I told her about the call from Meg Donovan and the Travers Legacy deal. That seemed to excite her.

“They offered you how much?”

“You heard me. It’s a lot more than I make teaching here.”

“And what did you say?”

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you just take it?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it in a way that will make much sense to you.”

Renee actually slammed the dishes in the sink and pulled out of my grasp. “I’m young, not stupid.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. The thing is I’m not sure I can explain it to myself in a way that makes any real sense.”

“Try.”

“It’s not that I don’t want the money. I do. It’s that all the other people included in this deal, they’re still writing. Go into any book store, go on Amazon and you’ll find their books. Mine are so long out of print you can’t even find them on the discount racks. My agent got me included in the deal because Frank Vuchovich got himself killed.”

She turned to me, brushed the back of her hand across my cheek. “But it’s still your work, Ken. What does it matter why someone buys it or reads it as long as they read it?”

I winked. “Spoken like an agent. You could have a bright future in the business.”

“Brixtonians don’t have futures.”

Christ, what do you say to that?

She saw the question in my eyes and rescued me. “You didn’t answer me. Why does it matter to you why they included your books in the deal?”

“Because in New York, I’m still a joke. No, I’m not even a joke. I’m a punch line to a bad joke.”

“You’re not a joke to me,” she said in that earnest way only the young can and not sound ridiculous. The St. Pauli Girl rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re here, not there. I can’t hear them laughing.”

“I can. I couldn’t before Meg called, but I can now.”

“Listen, Ken … you should take the money and get as far away from here as fast as you can.”

“Hey, you, where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” I asked, staring into her eyes. There was a depth to them I’d never seen in twenty-year-old eyes. “If I leave now, where would that leave us?”

“Us? I told you, I’m young, not stupid. Take the money, get out of this place, and never look back.”

“Don’t worry, kiddo, nothing’s going to happen with Stan Petrovic. He’s a bully. I’ve had the shit kicked out of me by better men than him. Besides, I stood up to him. I’ll be fine.”

“Is that what Jim says?”

“What’s this got to do with Jim?”

“Just forget it,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

She grew quiet, quickly finished the dishes, and left, but I knew she’d be back. They always came back. All except for Amy.

I met Jim after school as agreed, my old golf bag and clubs slung over my shoulder. He drove a beat-up Ford F-150 pickup. There wasn’t anything unusual in that. Pickups were de rigueur in Brixton. Took me a year to figure out that the parking lot at Wal-Mart wasn’t the staging area for a monster truck show. I didn’t say much of anything after I got into the cab. I figured to let the kid do the talking. He did some, but he was decidedly less expansive about the essential nature of handguns than he had been previously. He seemed far more interested in discussing what a prick Stan Petrovic had been and how cool it was that I stood up to him.

Even as Jim bragged on me, the St. Pauli Girl’s question rattled around in my head: “ If Jim wasn’t there, would you have … you know, done that?” Smart question, that. She knew and I knew the answer was no.

Hero worship is a potent drug. I knew firsthand that it could make both the worshipper and worshippee do some fairly risky things. Just ask the assistant editors and PR girls who’d slept with me, or the society fans who fucked me in bathrooms at parties with their husbands in the next room. Sometimes I wonder what those PR girls, the assistant editors, and the society dames think of me these days. There probably isn’t enough chewing gum or mouthwash in the world for them to rinse away the taste of those memories, if they remember at all. I laughed to myself, imagining them telling their middle-aged friends about having blown the great Kip Weiler. Kip who? Exactly, ladies. Kip who?

“What are you smiling at, Kip?” Jim asked, smiling himself.

“Just reminiscing.”

“Do you think about the old days much?”

“More recently. Since Frank Vuchovich was killed, I’ve been remembering things I haven’t thought about for a long time.”

“Like about your dad.”

It was as if he’d hit me with a steel pipe. “How did you-you know about that?”

“That he killed himself and that you found him? Yeah, uh huh, I know. Sometimes I think I know more about your life than I do about my own, Kip. If life was college, you’d be my major. So why did your dad do it?”

“Because he was a miserable person. I don’t know. He didn’t leave a note. Just like him too, not to leave a note. I think he did that just to torture my mother.”

We didn’t talk again for quite a while.

Every time the truck hit a bump, my old golf clubs smacked into the sidewalls of the pickup box. Not that I really gave a shit about those clubs. Although they weren’t quite as old as my brown corduroy blazer, they were woefully out of date. Jim noticed the racket too.

He said, “I guess I should have tied your clubs down.”

“They’re not my clubs anymore. They’re yours now.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t know what we were going to do today, but I didn’t think you really wanted to go hit golf balls, Jim. If I took a swing in anger after all these years, I’d dislocate both shoulders. I dug those old clubs out for you … as a gift.”

He pulled the truck over to the side of the road. Uhoh . I was a manipulative asshole, but I was much more adept at it with women. I knew just how to play them in the key of me. I was on less steady ground with men. Luckily, he didn’t get that goofy can-I-blow-you-now look on his face.

“I can have your clubs?”

“If you want them, they’re yours.”

“Thanks, Kip.” He shook the life out of my hand.

“You’re welcome. I’m happy to do it.”

And I was.

I should have gotten rid of those golf clubs a long time ago. I’d shed every other vestige of my old life except my car. Strange, the things a man clings to. I remembered all too well the last time I had used my clubs. Back then, “CC” at the end of a place name meant country club and not community college. I was teaching at Columbia, my writing career aimed squarely at the abyss. Things with Amy were deteriorating, and the end of my time at Ferris, Ledoux was at hand. Meg Donovan, in a misguided attempt to salvage what was left of my career, had arranged for me to meet with Peter Moreland III, an up-and-coming editor at the Travers Group. His rise through the ranks wasn’t hurt by the fact that his family was a majority stockholder in Travers’s parent company.

When he called, Moreland was all good cheer and WASPy old-boy charm. He was polite, self-deprecating, and flattered the hell out of me. He just loved Moira Blanco, but supposed a change of editors might do me some good. Chemistry in publishing, he noted, was a fickle thing. He even seemed willing to turn a blind eye to my recent coke-fueled self-sabotage. He said he always appreciated my edginess and hoped his editing could help re-sharpen it.

“Why don’t you come up to the club on Sunday? Oh, and please bring the missus,” he’d said as if an afterthought.