Tim Sandlin - Social Blunders

“Life is much like the self-locking carabiner,” Bucky Brooks said as he fit himself into his harness and prepared to rappel off the Blacktail Butte shield.

Samantha Lindell’s blue eyes sparkled in the mountain sunlight. “Bucky, you pick the oddest moments to turn philosophical.”

“Think about it,” Bucky said, then he took the two loops of rope in his rough, yet sensitive, hands, leaned back over two hundred feet of air, and jumped.

Not the first lines of Tale of Two Cities , I admit, but books have been opened on less. Somewhere around page ten, I met Wanda, and now, a year later, Bucky and Sam were mired on page sixty-four, still nowhere near base camp, much less the mountain. Bucky had been asked to guide the President’s spoiled-rotten son on a five-day climb up Half Dome in Yosemite Park, and one of the three bodyguards who were supposed to accompany the party had been revealed to the readers as a KGB agent with assassination on his mind. The President’s son had been rude to Sam—called her a “chick,” said “Chicks can’t climb with men”—and that was as far as I got.

The five years before I met Wanda I produced five books; one was even mentioned in the New York Times Book Review ’s annual juvenile fiction roundup. Then, fifty pages in a year. Nothing in the last four months. Some would take this as a sign I was better off without her, but I don’t know. There had been no way to maintain writing momentum and hold my marriage together at the same time.

Wanda had crises. I’d put out two pages, then she’d have an anxiety attack over personal fulfillment or President Reagan or something. Kafka himself couldn’t have written the week before Wanda started her period.

Maybe it’s better to work on a marriage than write sports books for teenagers. People say, “Gee, weren’t Dostoevsky and van Gogh admirable for all the sacrifices they made to create their masterpieces,” but I say the true artistic hero is the guy who gives up everything to produce something crappy. Anybody can lose a wife to win a Nobel Prize. Try losing a wife for Bucky on Half Dome .

I flipped through the manuscript, finding a phrase I liked here and there, sometimes an entire sentence. The scenes had been written weeks or even months apart, so the thing lacked consistency. The President’s son had red hair on one page and blond hair three pages later.

It wasn’t all tripe. A paragraph on page thirty-five gave me an idea for later in the book—Bucky could save the KGB agent’s life, even knowing he meant to kill the President’s son. I got to thinking about the President’s son and what it would feel like to be constantly coddled and resented. Would the boy stay a jerk or grow to learn tolerance of others and respect for nature?

This was interesting. For the first time in months I looked at my own writing as a source of potential. Maybe the book could be saved and I would be more than a bank account for one group of women and a climax-producing object for another group. Living your dreams through what you can do for women isn’t truly satisfying. Not like creating a novel.

I finished the last page and turned it over onto the pile. The question was: Carry on or trash it? Would a teenager someday pick up my book and be improved by it? Most teenagers are so unhappy, a book doesn’t have to change their life, just help them forget it for a few hours.

Wanda said my Bucky stories would inspire some pimply bookworm to take up mountain climbing and he’d fall off a cliff and get killed and it would be my fault. She first slept with me because I was a writer, but she couldn’t stand me when I actually wrote.

After six rings I decided the company had no one in charge of answering phones. Maybe she was at lunch, or maybe she didn’t exist. I pictured women all over the building muttering to themselves. “Not in my job description.”

“I need some money.”

“Wanda, how did you know where to find me?”

“That Nazi maid of yours told me where you were.”

“Her name is Gus.” Gus must have told her the place I’d least likely be and accidentally gotten it right.

“This separation isn’t working out,” Wanda said.

“Does that mean you want to come home?”

Her laugh dripped with derision. “I need some of our money. Paul says his needs are not being met.”

Paul? “You left me for a kid named Manny.”

“Okay, Manny, then. Have it your way. I don’t want to argue, I just want cash. I held your sensitive little psyche together for a full year. Believe me, I earned my half.”

I wondered if Shirley was listening in. “Nobody’s disputing that you earned your half, Wanda. I only want you to come home. I love you.”

Her sigh winged across the telephone lines. “I know you do, Sam. Don’t grovel.”

“I didn’t mean to grovel.”

“I must face the fact that I don’t love you and I never loved you. Can’t you understand how humiliating this is for me. I gave my marriage everything and now I must admit defeat.”

“You don’t sound humiliated.”

“I am truly devastated by your failure as a husband, Sam.”

I stood up behind my desk. “I’m not the one who humped the pool man.”

“How dare you throw that in my face. Your neediness made me hump the pool man and all the others. I didn’t want to cheapen myself but you forced me to and I will never forgive you.”

All the others? The conversation led where it had to from the start. “I’m sorry, Wanda.”

“Just send me the money. Twenty thousand for the first payment.” Wanda gave me an address in High Point. She ended with, “You should prepare yourself. Paul and I are thinking of moving back into the house.”

“But it’s my house.”

“I have as much right to live there as you.”

I chose to flush the manuscript down the toilet, but anyone who has faced an open commode with sixty-four pages in hand knows the futility of that idea. No symbolic act should require a plumber. Instead, I closed both lids and removed the top of the tank. Then I slid Bucky and Sam into the tank water and carefully set the top back into position.

Katrina Prescott’s health club had once been an office building for upscale orthodontists and Realtors and such, but the owners went Chapter Eleven and the new people kicked the young professionals out, tore down most of the internal walls, and hired a bunch of personal trainers from California. I’d been offered a piece of the club, but investments have never been my thing. I’m loyal to golf carts.

The extremely healthy-looking surfer at the front desk seemed to know who I was. She said, “You’re late.”

“I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Mrs. Prescott is waiting in the private sauna. Just follow the hall to the end and turn left.”

I found Katrina Prescott sitting on a wooden bench in a very hot room. She had one towel wrapped around her head and another towel around her body.

She said, “You’re late.”

“Couldn’t we go somewhere where it’s not so hot?”

“Take off your clothes, darlin’, you’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather not do that, Mrs. Prescott.” I looked for a place to sit, but the only choice was a wooden bench lower than the one Katrina sat on, which would afford me an uncluttered view up her towel. Better to remain standing.

Katrina’s skin sparkled from a film of perspiration. She said, “You really stuck a bee in Skip’s jockey shorts.”

“Can’t we go somewhere else? I don’t enjoy hot, confining spaces.”

Katrina lowered her body towel. “Do you like my breasts?”