John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

“I was attracted to it, Walter. What can I say? It was so the opposite of what I’m into in terms of content.”

But he’d been attracted to it. And Sitnell thought he understood, in fact with getting to know the man, with the second drink helping — Sitnell remembered that he himself had seen a spread by Arno once. Just a shadow in his mind’s eye by now, but he knew what Kroh was getting at. Seen it in the old LIFE? In one of the magazines that had circulated at the Allied hospital anyway. In those days, after Sitnell’s last action, it had been the name and not the work that got to him. In Italy, the Arno River had been where the Nazis set up their northernmost line of defense.

Sitnell ran his fingertips down and up one side of his reversible zipper. “You know,” he began — and then didn’t want to finish.

He didn’t want to share the war with a guy like this. The Arno action had almost killed him. Sitnell clenched his teeth till he could feel the booze in his gums, and he tried Mt. Hood again. The peak was afloat, a disintegrating arrowhead above the twilight fog. He looked around the lounge, but so stiffly this time that the barmaid headed back their way. Nachos/Men’s Room/Date of delivery? But then Sitnell had decided to get a third, and to tell Kroh about where the names connected. The need to say it had come over him like pain catching up to a wound. And once he’d started to talk, he felt good about it, excited; it was more than gin fever. It felt like he’d been working up to this since he’d come in. Though he could keep what he said in line. He’d worked the last two and a half years on the story of his time in Italy, after all. While the next round arrived, Sitnell played it tough. He took off his bifocals, gestured with them in one fist. He made sure to start with “You know.”

“I wonder if you can imagine,” he was saying after a minute, “what that last Kraut line looked like. The last, worst bastard of them all.” He swept his bifocals left-right across the tabletop. “The land stripped naked for a hundred yards in front of the river. Not a tree left standing, no cover anywhere this side of the Kraut emplacements.” Left-right, this time more noisily. “I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve never been so frightened. Nothing but you and them and—“

Kroh took hold of the hand with the bifocals. He pinched the wrist a bit, lifting it aside.

“Watch it on the samples, Walter,” he said.

Sitnell wound up concentrating on the lyrics in the latest tune from the speaker overhead. Something last chance, last chance. By the time he got his next swallow he was trying to think of the quickest way out of here. Though Kroh wasn’t long in sensing the change, give him credit. He’d been talking about studying design in Florence one summer. But then his rhythm slowed, his hands dropped.

“Walter, hey. Lemme just say, I’m coming at this from a different angle, I realize.” He even finger-doodled on the topmost drawing: no big deal, buddy. “See now a man like myself, my age. I’ve been trained as an artist really, and—“

“Oh stop that. We don’t live in sod huts out here anymore, you know. My own son you know, my youngest, he may be an artist.” Sitnell went through a finger-by-finger rundown of all the work the boy was putting in on the senior-class play, the sets and costumes and lighting.

“Wait a minute Walter, wait a minute. Senior-class play? You mean you’ve got a kid still in high school?”

Sitnell shrugged, his fingers still extended.

“Boy, Walter, you don’t slow down much, do you?”

“Well that’s my point, you ought to see what I have to contend with. My own son, sometimes he comes home from that play just lost in a dream. Singing and dancing and acting out all the parts, it’s goddamned amazing. The boy fills the house.”

“I can imagine, Walter.”

Oh sure. According to Sitnell’s wife, this guy didn’t have the first clue about children. “So don’t try to trick me, Jimmy. Don’t hand me any more of this talk about how different you are, how much younger you are.”

“Oh well, Walter, then — hey. I’m sorry , Walter.” He tugged the red tip of his lapel. “Honestly man, if it sounded like I wasn’t giving you credit, hey. I apologize.”

Sitnell thumbed the rim of his drink, frowned and pouted. That hadn’t gone right. He was still in the meeting, Kroh was still getting round him. Now the guy was buying time with his portfolio. He fit the samples back inside busily, counting and taking the occasional unnecessary peek. Sitnell thought of how his wife had started fussing with his hair. From time to time these last couple years, she’d stood over Sitnell while he was at his desk, picking and stroking and talking about his “wild mane.” It had got in the way of his work so much that finally he’d had to speak to her about it.

And remembering that, Sitnell had his plan. He waited till Kroh redid his bratty zipper.

“Jimmy, I don’t believe we can get together on this.” He kept it throaty and regretful. “Not on my book, anyway.”

“Walter, hey! Gimme a chance here.”

“No, it’s nothing to do with you, Jimmy.” Sitnell figured he could ignore how his pity for the man had changed, how leaden and achy it had started to feel. “Your work really, really brings people up short, I can see that. I can see you’re special. It’s just that my book, well.” Another mouthful of booze should see him through. He’d made the speech twice after all, first getting his editor to back off, and then his wife. “You haven’t got the picture yet, about my book.

“It’s just the story of a guy, he went to war. Like a million other guys who went to war. And then he went after those square-headed bastards the best he could, first in Sicily and then moving north up the boot. Just another Joe.” For some reason he couldn’t keep up eye contact. He found the basketball sneakers on the wall. “Some of the men this guy fought with, well, they were some of the bravest men he’d ever known.” But at this distance the tiger stripes were too blurred, they upset him somehow. He wound up scowling into space. “He’d never realized that the world had so many incredible men in it, before he went to war. He’d never realized there were so many of these incredible, brave, wonderful guys out there, and that so many of them had to die.”

Again the booze? Sitnell surprised himself, he went for his martini as if he wanted to hide his face. And once Kroh started talking — took the publicist a moment to realize the speech was over — Sitnell slurped up his olive and winced.

“Oh Walter, oh wow,” Kroh was saying. “That was beautiful.”

“Nnn.” The pulp was so fat and sour that Sitnell couldn’t straighten his tongue. “Gw, gw.”

“I mean, you say I’m a special talent. Hey. I’d say there’s room for two at this table.”

Didn’t this guy ever stop? Sitnell knew that he’d blown the speech, after all. He’d cut it in half and taped on the end. Forcing down the olive, he shook his head.

“No Walter, don’t be coy. Don’t be modest. When you talk like that, man, I can see ’em starting to pack the halls already.”

“What’s this?” Never; Kroh never stopped. Sitnell found himself grinning. “What’re we talking about now?”

“We’re talking about getting out and selling your book. We’re talking about speaking engagements, Walter.” And when the guy nodded, he even made the candlelight interesting. A yellow V, inverted, flared up and down his naked dome. “And I’ll say it again, you’re going to pack the house, Walter. I mean, I’ll make it a promise. Because this kind of thing, this kind of thing, really. It brings people together.”