John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

“Don’t be mean,” Kath said. “I’ve got to live with these people.”

“With what people?”

Leo broke in, extending one thin arm. A stage whisper: “Not now, ladies. This one’s the best thing here.” And Dory played to him again, her face reanimated: “Oh yeah, oh really. Check out the scumbling.”

What? Dory and Leo were talking about a wall-size oil, a stretch of Peoria Road in winter, roughed out in descending swaths. Rain, road, scrub. Midway up the closest foreground there jetted an orange flare, some New-Year’s blossom, which made it look as if the murmurous view might split down the middle. Was that “scumbling?”

But the artist had set too high a minimum, six hundred dollars. Nobody lifted a paddle.

“This is humiliating,” Dory said. “It’s like a ritual slaughter.”

“You know,” Leo said, “you really should be more generous. You heard our Mizz Wick.”

“What, about living with people?” Dory faced her; it felt like too soon after last time. “Kath, I don’t get it. You’re a grownup. You don’t have to live with anybody.”

“Well…”

“I mean, the only people you really have to live with — right? — are your lovers.”

Unexpectedly Kath found herself laughing. Her chin dropped, her hand felt its way across her loosening mouth — and what, had she forgotten about laughing? About giving herself a break? The auction program on the table before her for once looked nothing like an actor’s promptbook; its print had turned to feathers, to bugs.

“What’s so funny?” Dory asked. “There’s your lover, like whatever you have with him. And then there’s everyone else.”

Kath’s diaphragm rippled, and along her waistline the gargoyles winked. Yes, laugh, Kath. Just laugh.

“Mizz Wick?” Leo asked.

“Hey, I mean it,” Dory said. “There’s your lover and then there’s everyone else.”

After all, Kath reminded herself, it wasn’t going to get any easier tonight. The item after next was Dory’s. And God knows Kath could make herself crazy with that face up beside the podium. That proud glare: Hey, Wick—/ had her and you didn’t .

“Come on, Kath,” Dory said. “At least get it together while they sell off my piece.”

Kath fought for a breath, she reached for the champagne. With that she noticed the faces nearby. The woman who’d made the miniature was watching again, with her Broadway grin. When Kath caught her eye the woman nodded, and meantime the artist’s husband, eyebrows up and grinning himself, tapped a thumb against his canary’d chest. Well, well. The acoustics in the hotel basement had protected her. The wrangling with Dory had gone unheard; all that had come across was an interesting threesome having themselves a time. Kath checked left-right, she knew how laughter freshened her look, and she was met with honest eye contact. One or two of the men licked hors-d’oeuvrey fingers, but that was better than the rigged faces she was used to. Well. The only meanness she could find belonged to Dory’s Moroccan doctor, up beside the podium.

No doubt as Dory had laid on the pastels, she’d fallen into a recapitulation of her father. The family lived in Unity, in the high desert country, and the hint of home gave her sheeny layers a baleful depth. Now bidding was brisk. No surprise to Kath, after the team spirit she’d read in these faces. The closing offer came from Mrs. Glynde.

“I…can’t… believe it,” Dory whispered.

When the girl had no expression — other than those puzzled eyes — you saw the baby fat in her cheeks. She leaned across the table, doser to Kath than she’d been all night. “I mean, what’s going on?”

Didn’t Dory notice these faces? Suddenly the girl was everyone’s favorite. They tipped their heads, congratulations, attaway, and a man at the next table, a circuit-trainer Kath recognized from the Fitness Center, sent a runner their way with still more champagne. Kath kept her own look party-hearty.

“Well Dorr,” she said, “the woman came out a winner. Nowadays she’s got too much money to have hard feelings.”

Behind the girl, across the room, the Jean Seberg cut bobbed beside the boy who’d brought the receipt.

“Oh, Kath.” Dory’s mouth had gone square again. “Would you for once stop thinking about money?”

“Hey,” Leo put in. “What is it with this Glynde woman? What’s going on?”

“Hush now,” Kath said, “both of you. This next is mine.”

Actually she’d marked this a “Maybe.” She’d found it agreeably weird, a collage that combined shredded IBM discs with a straw doll dressed as the Flying Nun. But the design was like calendar blocks and it had a ponderous title: The Woman’s Point of View . Plus anything by this artist would cost. She was well connected, a Hewlett-Packard wife. The men at the collagist’s table were the most in-shape at the auction, and they settled back as the bidding began, sharps at the ball game.

Kath worked her paddle hotly. The auctioneer lead the crowd, pitch and yaw. She wound up ninety dollars over the minimum, duking it out with one of the wives at the artist’s table. When the thing was gaveled sold—“To the lady in black!”—the room burst into applause.

Dory kept her hands in her lap. She sat stiffly, and Kath could see every stud on her rodeo shirt.

“That’s what all this is about,” she said, “isn’t it?”

The kid with the receipt stood at Kath’s elbow, but Dory felt closer. “Hey, I mean,” she went on, “let’s give the little lady a big hand. That’s the whole point, right?”

“That’s enough, Dorr.” Kath tried to make it like Mother Knows Best. “We all know you don’t want to be here.”

“Oh, excuse me. I have some emotions, excuse me.”

Behind the girl, the miniaturist wore a dandy smirk, worth a wink in reply. Hi, again; hi. But then that woman and her husband once more faced the stage.

“I should have realized,” Dory said, “we have to forget all about my emotions. This is the Wicked Wick Show.”

At the edges of the girl’s sleeves, the torn threads were blue thorns. Kath was struggling for a comeback when Leo hooked her housemate by the elbow. The wine had threaded his cheeks but his eyes were purposeful. Did Dory have any idea, Leo asked, what Kath had been through when her marriage broke up?

“It was like a cyclone hit,” he said.

“Don’t give me that,” Dory said. “She had money. She had a place.”

Kath had more or less forgotten the old man was at the table. But he was wearing the girl down already; her cowboy buttons disappeared beneath her crossed arms. “Oh Do-ro-thy,” Leo chided, “oh now, I certainly don’t feel used.” Kath let him take over, reopening her checkbook. That Flying-Nun piece had busted her balance down so far that anything else would have to go on plastic. Meantime Leo’s tone grew warmer, more among-pals, and Kath understood that Dory didn’t want a scene either. The gray nap on these walls, this plastic-wood furniture — it must have reminded the girl of the whispering rooms at the clinic. Now Dory was the one with a hand at her mouth.

“Leo, you don’t know the whole story either. You’re part of her hocus pocus too.”

“Oh, what’s the harm done?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t the old gal go home with a few new friends?”

Dory shrank between them, her chin doubling against her collar, her looks briefly spoiled. Around their table erupted new laughter, the crowd was sensing success, and Kath brought up her head, open-mouthed. Oh, see. Numbers meant mercy. Besides her own, more than fifteen thousand homes had been mortgaged here, between the river and I-5, and given those numbers she was bound to find a few at least with whom she might laugh. Leo kept his eyes on the girl, his jowls limp. Not until the hubbub died did he reach for his paddle.