David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

While Fran was in the bathroom, Cal told Cammy one more time that he’d have his cell with him and that if anything at all—Okay, Daddy, okay . Fran came out with fresh lipstick. Cal slung his bag over his shoulder, kissed the lips lightly and he was out of there. In the lobby, Hector asked if he wanted a cab; he said no thanks and stepped out into sunshine. Hot for October. So at the Hertz place on Seventy-Seventh, he chose the convertible over the SUV—shit, let’s go for piggy and slinky—and it arrived still dripping, long, low-slung, midnight blue.

He double-parked at the corner of Forty-Ninth and Tenth Avenue and got out his cell; better not to wait in front of Margaret’s building, even though the boyfriend was off reporting a story. Or that was the boyfriend’s story. Cal’s story was a Milton conference in Princeton, which he would tell Fran was so tedious he couldn’t even write the piece of mockery he’d had in mind. Margaret must’ve had a story too. They’d fucked the first time on Tuesday afternoon, her place, the boyfriend ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain not to come home early. So a weekend had been a must. This weekend had been a must.

She came around the corner wearing sunglasses and a Dodgers cap, bag over her shoulder, cigarette pack rolled into the sleeve of her white T-shirt. Cal got out and said, “Welcome to my midlife Chrysler.”

“ I’m impressed,” she said.

“With the car?” he said. “Or the jeu d’esprit?”

“The car,” she said. “I told you I was a simple girl.”

He put her bag in, slammed the trunk, then looked her over good. “We like the nips,” he said.

“What, these?” She looked down, grabbed a handful of T-shirt on each side and pulled it tighter. “Externals,” she said. “Can we have the top down?”

“I won’t say the obvious,” he said. She reached for her door handle, but he thumbed the button on the key ring, the headlights flashed and the locks snapped shut. “You haven’t greeted me properly.”

She looked behind her, said, “Yeah, fuck it,” stepped to him, took hold of his ass and pulled him into her. Her tongue on the roof of his mouth, right back to the soft palate. Fingernails in his neck.

“Jesus,” he said. “Who taught you the password?”

“Come on, you’re easy to read.” But she was breathing hard too. “Like Nancy Drew.” She stepped back. “Okay, so Nancy gets accepted to art school, goes into class with her pencil and stuff, and there’s Ned Nickerson sitting there on the podium with all his clothes off and his dick standing straight up. So what did she do?”

Cal thought, then nodded. “Got it.”

“I put the dick in to throw you off,” she said.

“I won’t say the obvious,” he said. “No, actually I won’t say that .”

—

Cal had been circling Margaret all year —and getting signals back: he wasn’t that much of an asshole. She was the best of the writers he’d inherited. His first week, she covered a drive-through Christmas-lights festival in Pennsylvania. He asked her out for coffee and said it was a waste for her to keep writing for the Bottom Feeder section. Sure, she’d said: that was why she did it.

Naturally he’d gone back and read the stuff she’d done for Lingua Franca and Nerve . The Nerve piece was just a riff about an ex-boyfriend and gave away nothing about her own sexual stuff. But her name for the guy—Dick Minim—came from what, the Rambler ? (He looked it up: the Idler .) So how could you not want to do her? According to Nancy, the managing editor, she had a history with married men but had lately moved in with some guy her own age. “So I gather you’re into Johnson,” he’d said as the waiter set down their coffees. “What girl isn’t?” she’d said.

—

He looked over at her profile, chin out like Mussolini, as she lit a cigarette: American Spirits in the yellow. “You mind? I’m down to three a day.”

“Do it,” he said.

“I promised myself that if I couldn’t keep it to three I’d just quit.”

“And that’s working?”

“So far. This is the first day. It would be nice not to end up like my father.” She blew smoke up and away. “Actually, you know what this car could use? One of those crown things on the dashboard. With the air freshener?”

“Yeah, speaking of fresh, do you know yet what you’re giving us for next week?”

She blew out smoke again. “Not really. Maybe the Christian board games. That or toilet-paper tots. You know, on the wrappers?”

“Yes,” he said. “That. Now that is unwholesome. That little girl with the eyes? Done deal.”

“So,” she said, “you’re not at all freaked out about this, right?” Another drag of cigarette.

“Why, are you?”

“So-so. You know, I’m theoretically in this appropriate relationship.”

“I think I’ve just been called old,” he said.

“And of course these things always end so well,” she said. “So why did the blonde go to Mass?”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Mass as in, not Massachusetts. Okay.”

“Because she heard they had a guy there who was hung like that.” Cupped her hands, spread her arms.

They stopped at the first service area so she could pee and check out the crap in the gift shop. People coming out: three white boys with backward caps and baggy jeans ending mid-shin; a fat woman in skin-tight burgundy pants, with a foot-tall cup of soda, dragging her scrawny daughter by the hand; an ex-Marine-looking geezer with white crew cut and I ♥ MY GRANDCHILDREN T-shirt. “This is so Fellini.” She put both hands around his upper arm. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“Sheer self-interest,” he said. A pudgy couple came rolling toward them, holding hands, in matching plaid Bermudas: he in a bulging knit shirt, she in a bulging Old Navy T-shirt. “That, on the other hand, has to be true love.”

“You are completely evil,” she said. “I want your cock in my mouth.”

“Here and now?” he said. “Or just on principle?”

—

Their cabin was to have a deck overlooking the lake. The view was prominent in the pictures on the website: green trees and blue water in some; in others, skiers kicking up a spray of snow. The guy on the phone told Cal this would be the best weekend for the leaves, and sure enough. As they drove north, the colors came on and it got too cold to keep the top down. Cal got a joint out of his cigarette case.

She guided him off the Northway onto the state road, then onto the county road, then onto the dirt road, then onto the dirt road they wanted, which ended at a log building with an OFFICE sign and antlers over the door. Inside, a grandfather clock was going Gonk gonk gonk gonk . The guy behind the counter—the same one as on the phone?—handed across a map of the trails and two key cards, imprinted with pine trees.

“We get stuff walking out of the rooms all the time,” he said. “Even up here in the boonies.” He had this fucked-up ear—looked like it had been burned off. “This you folks’ first time?”

“Second, actually,” Cal said. Margaret kicked his ankle.

“Well. Good to have you back.”

“We’ve been looking forward to it,” Cal said.

They drove up to their cabin, from which no other cabin could be seen: another selling point. Cal set their bags on the doorstep and stuck his card in the slot.

“I love this,” Margaret said. Gleaming log walls and a white chenille bedspread on a queen-size brass bed; a blue-enameled woodstove, quarter-split birch chunks in the woodbox. Smell of actual woodsmoke.