As we swung into the pretentious blue-fountained portico of the Pavilion I saw Sondra pacing the cavernous lobby looking in bewilderment at her wristwatch. It was almost 7:30. She looked very fetching in a clingy jersey dress, an interesting departure, I reflected, from her customary modest and unrevealing attire.
I thanked the driver and gave him a 15-cent override on my traditional quarter tip for his reaffirmation of life, and hopped out. The uniformed doorman gave the revolving door a push for me and I took Sondra’s arm.
“Sorry I’m late. It’s been one of those days.”
“Any news?”
“No. A few possibilities eliminated, but I’m afraid nothing on the positive side.”
She nodded in a kind of mute resignation and we got on the elevator. The ride up was awkward and we kept our eyes forward as if to reassure each other that this was not a social engagement. It was unthinkable to me that our concern for Richie could be tainted by thoughts of a romantic nature. So why did I have these thoughts of a romantic nature?
“I’m afraid I’m not prepared for guests,” I said unlocking my door. “Place is kind of a mess and I don’t have any meat defrosted.”
“Oh, we can rustle something up.”
“I’m good on short-order stuff,” I said eagerly.
“You’re a man of many parts.”
“Shoot, a plateful of bacon and eggs doesn’t make someone a man of many parts.” I pushed the door open. “Well,” I said with a sweep of the hand, “there it is. The rent was ridiculous when I moved in four years ago and they’ve raised it twice since then, to Fantastic and then to Drop Dead. But at least it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter and you can’t punch a hole in the wall unless you’re real mad.”
She looked around appraisingly, made some obligatory “oohs” and “ahhs” about my view of the Triboro Bridge, which at that moment was picking up the last glint of the setting sun, then turned to my lithographs. She studied them with a professional, hands-behind-the-back posture. “These are quite nice,” she said. There was a note of surprise in her voice.
“Oh, just something an artist friend gave me.”
“Who is he?”
“She,” I corrected her, feeling an unaccountable flush of embarrassment suffusing my cheeks.
“Ah.”
“Will you have something to drink?”
“Maybe some white wine on the rocks.”
“You got it.”
I uncorked a bottle of Chablis and poured out two glasses. I opened a jar of smoked walnuts and dropped into my pony-upholstered sling chair opposite the suede sofa where Sondra sat with her feet curled beneath her. I raised my glass “To Richie’s safe return.”
“Yes.”
I sipped my wine. “You sounded pretty uptight on the phone.”
“I couldn’t talk.”
“Because of your father?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Why, yes. How did you know?”
“What was so secret you couldn’t discuss it in front of him?”
She compressed her lips. “Just something I’ve been thinking. My father... well, you see... um, when I think about it, it seems so . . . why don’t we forget about it?”
She sipped at her wine and shook her head in disgust.
“Look,” I said, “maybe it’s silly but maybe it’s not. Why don’t you tell me? I promise not to have you executed.’’
She swished her wine around for a minute, then sighed. “It’s something—a remark my father made last year when everybody was talking to us about the fantastic salaries ballplayers make, you know?”
“Yes?”
“Well, we were sitting around the dinner table and daddy said—it was only a joke, you understand—he said, ‘You know, with all these valuable ballplayers around, it’s a wonder nobody’s ever kidnapped one and held him for ransom.’”
My mouth dropped open. “Your father said that?”
“Yes, but jokingly. You have to understand, he’s always saying things like that.”
“But in this context...” I said, wondering. “He didn’t want you to tell me this, did he?”
No, because he knew it would sound suspicious in view of what’s happened.”
“That’s for sure. And yet—well, why would a man have his own son kidnapped? For money, maybe, except your dad is well fixed. Hell, he even said he could raise half a million himself, toward the ransom. No, I think it’s just what it appears to be—an innocent remark that turned out to be a dead-on prediction.”
“Yes, she said, “except...” She picked at a piece of rug lint on my sofa. There was something more.
“Except what, Sondra?”
“Except that his behavior... he’s been doing an odd thing since we came to New York.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he goes out in the afternoon or evening for hours at a time, and nobody knows where.”
“Have you asked him?”
“Yes. He says he’s been seeing business associates, but he gets very evasive when mother or I try to pin him down. And two days ago, the day before Richie disappeared? Daddy went out in the afternoon and when he came back he said he’d been having drinks with this old friend of his, Paul Gaines of Mutual of New York. Well, mother called Paul and Paul didn’t even know we were still in town!”
“Where do you think he goes?” I asked.
“Well, Paul jokingly implied that daddy must have a...” She made a face.
“A lady friend?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“He’s never struck me as... that kind. And mother says, to her knowledge daddy’s never... daddy’s always been true.”
“Tell me about the relationship between Richie and your father.”
She shrugged and stared. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re like this.” She held up two intertwined fingers. “Of course, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, they used to fight a great deal.”
“About what?”
“About a lot of things, but somehow they always boiled down to basketball. See, daddy had this idea that Richie could be the greatest—I mean, the greatest. But Richie had other interests besides basketball. For a while he was interested in becoming an actor. Then he talked about traveling. But whatever he wanted, daddy would say no, you’ve got to be a basketball player.
“It all came to a head over this girl Richie started seeing, Shawna Parks. Richie was really in love with her and talked about marrying her in his junior year and then going into daddy’s insurance business when they graduated. Well, daddy made his life so miserable they finally broke up. Richie was heartbroken for about six months. Then daddy took him fishing and they talked and Richie realized daddy was right, that with hard work he really could become the greatest basketball player of all time. Since then, they’ve been—well, as I said, great pals.”
“What does your mother do every day?”
“She goes out shopping. And she really does. She comes back with something every day. It’s almost a compulsion with her.”
“Yes, but that she comes back with something every day doesn’t necessarily mean...”
“My mother?” Sondra laughed. “Forget it. My mother is dingbat city, she hasn’t got a larcenous cell in her body.”
“And you’re pretty certain you’re reading your parents right?”
She laughed nervously. “Gee, I think so. I mean, I don’t think I have too many hang-ups about them.”
“No, your hang-up is about Richie.”
She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that—well, you’re pretty crazy about him.”
“Shouldn’t I be?” Her voice quavered defensively warning me I was probing what this psychiatrist friend of mine calls sensitive material.
“Sure, but I suspect you deny yourself a lot of things on account of him.”
“Yes, I guess I do. In many ways he’s the most important man in my life.” She fixed me with an intense emerald gaze. “You think he’s keeping me from getting involved with other men?”
“You do sink an awful lot of energy into that boy. Do you, uh, go out much?”
“Of course I go out. It’s just that there’s never been anybody...”
“As good as your brother.” As soon as I said it I could have bitten my tongue. She withered me with a flamethrower look and fingered her purse as if thinking of leaving.
“You sound almost jealous,” she said.
“Me? Jealous?” I laughed. “What have I got to be jealous of?” But even as I said it I knew she was right.
She suddenly looked confused and embarrassed. “I’m sorry. That was very presumptuous of me, wasn’t it?”
“No, not if the presumption is that I like you.”
I was glad I said it, but the interplay now collapsed in a fluster and we both sat sipping our wine for a minute in anguished silence.
Finally she said, “Is that your wife and daughter?”
“The picture on my desk? Yes, that’s them. How do you know about my wife and daughter?”
“Trish told me.”
“Ah Trish, of course.” I looked over my shoulder at the silver-framed snapshot on my desk. Dark-haired Nancy, white teeth lighting up the suburbs, on the backyard swing with Jody in her lap. Jody holding a kid-sized football in her hand, by the laces the way daddy taught her. Her mouth is open wide and she is shrieking some tyrannical command at me. I felt the vestigial stirrings of the old heartache and turned away. “It’s my ex-wife,” I said.
“I mean ex-wife. Where are they now?”
“In Fort Worth.”
“Do you...?”
“Send them all my money? Yes.”
“No,” she laughed. “Do you see them?”
“Yes, every few months I try to get down there. I also get Jody summers, and Christmas week.” I closed my eyes, it seemed for only a second, and felt my mind flooded by the memory of the child’s last embrace, arms and legs wrapped around me so tightly that it took two stewardesses to pry her off me. To walk away from the plane last December was about the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.
“I’m sorry, does all this make you uncomfortable?”
“Somewhat” I admitted. I got to my feet aimlessly, looking for a way to divert the conversation. “Hey, you hungry?”
I don’t think she was, but she understood what had prompted the question. “Yes, why don’t we make dinner? I’ll help you.”
We went into the kitchen and assembled the makings of a quick meal, bacon and cheese omelets, my special garlic English muffins, and my patented coffee. The kitchen was small and the constant bumping of bodies eroded much of our constraint. By the time we had the meal prepared we were almost completely relaxed. We set the table, lit some candles, stacked some Billie Holidays on the hi-fi, and sat down to eat.
I don’t know why, but I felt a strong need to tell her how it had happened, the thing with Nancy, and I began to talk, looking first into the hypnotically flickering candles, then into her green, empathy-filled eyes. “It was my third year at Dallas,” I said. “I was just coming into my own. My rookie year had been so-so; my second, I was fourth in the league in receptions. Then in my third year...” I closed my eyes and tried to bring the scene into focus, feeling anxiety mount as if it were about to happen all over again, not just the splintered ankle but the splintered life that followed it as well.
“You don’t have to...” Sondra said.
“No, it’s all right. In my third year I was really burning up the league. Probably would have led it, too.”
“What happened? I know you were injured.”
I laughed. “Injured? Darlin’, I was dee-stroyed.” I poured myself a cup of coffee and lit a cigar. “It was the sixth game, against St. Louis. It’s the third quarter. We’re down by a field goal. We have the ball on their 38, third and three. Don Meredith, you know who he is?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, he sends me on a tight slant, between the middle linebacker and the strong-side linebacker. Do you follow this?” I arranged some silverware and saltshakers on the table.
“Yes. We watch a lot of football.”
“Okay. Now it seems that the Cardinals’ middle linebacker, an animal by the name of Larry Wilson, has been coming up fast on inside handoffs. So Don is going to make Larry come up by faking a handoff to one of our backs, Don Perkins. That’ll freeze Larry long enough for me to get behind him. Only trouble is, Larry, who’s wilier’n a mama bear, doesn’t buy the fake. He sees me coming across and drops back to pick me up. To make things worse, Don throws high and behind me. I gotta tell you, I made one helluva catch, but as soon as I went up for the ball I knew Larry was about to give me his best shot.”
I closed my eyes again and replayed it for maybe the thousandth time. I’m high in the air, stretched to the limits of my frame. I’ve spun around to the left to catch the pass behind me, and my ankles are twisted around each other like a ballet dancer’s. I know Larry is going to roll-block me ankle-high, but what can I do? I’m completely exposed, extended like an acrobat hanging by his thumbs. But these things happen so goddam fast. The bolt of agony as my ankles are riveted together by the force of the tackle. The world revolves 270 degrees. The sky rolls away and I see the stadium upside-down.
My ankles, still locked together, one of them already a jumble of shards, are the first thing to strike the semi-frozen turf. A second explosion of agony. A third as the safety falls on them. And all I can think to do is look to see if I still have the football. I find it still tucked in my arms. I laugh! Then I cry. Then I pass out.
“God,” Sondra gasped, stuffing her napkin in her mouth.
“That’s all right. I probably only had seven or eight good seasons left anyway,” I laughed.
Sondra didn’t laugh with me. “What happened then?”
“Well, the croakers did a pretty good job with my foot, considering the X rays looked like a jigsaw puzzle before it comes out of the can. The thing is, it’s not the same ankle I went into the Cardinal game with, and it never will be. It still aches on damp days and when I kick my clients out of my office. Coach Landry said he thought I could rehabilitate it with hard work, but I don’t think either of us believed we could ever really put Humpty-Dumpty together again. But even if we did, I might always...”
“Hear footsteps?”
“Hey! You do know your football!”
“So, what did you do?”
“Do? I started my own rehabilitation program. One pint of bourbon a day the first six months, increased to two a day the next six months. Alcoholism is a proud old tradition in the Bolt dynasty, and I was determined my daddy wouldn’t be the last drunkard in the line.”
“And your wife…?
“I don’t have to draw you any pictures,” I said. It came out as a growl but I didn’t apologize. “Let’s just say everything went to hell in a hand basket. When I started beating up on her, she started thinking about getting out; when I started beating up on Jody, she decided it was time. Her moving out just made things worse. I got frantic and began drinking my weight daily. I started drifting and every once in a while I’d wake up to find myself washing dishes in Tulsa or hitching in Wichita or puking in Needles, Arizona. Somewhere in there I signed some divorce papers. I was one very busted-up human being.”
I looked down and found her hand enclosed in mine. She had not tried to pull away, and when I released her she held on, gazing at me with tear-rimmed eyes that flickered in the candlelight.
“This wasn’t supposed to be a tearjerker,” I laughed nervously.
“What happened after that?”
“What happened after that was Roy Lescade, bless his heart. That’s my assho... my tight buddy from school days. He was working for a Dallas newspaper and took it upon himself to track me down. Partly because he thought there was a good story in it, but partly out of love, too. Love is what makes Roy such a good reporter. It’s also why he’ll never be a great one.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well,” I explained, “he finally caught up with me in Taos, New Mex. I was drunker’n a grizzly at cider time. We had a happy reunion and he says, ‘Thunder Bolt, I know where we can get the world’s potentest booze, and all you can drink free.’ I said, lead me to it. So he took me up into the hills and sat me down on a mountain overlooking—you know Taos?”
“No.”
“It’s got to be the most beautiful spot on earth; even the hippies and the coal interests couldn’t ruin it. Anyway, I’m sitting there looking out over the valley, but it’s just one big blur to me. I says, ‘Okay, Roy, where’s that booze?’ And he sweeps the valley with his hand and says, ‘There it is. Isn’t it intoxicating?’ And then he quotes a poem: ‘I taste a liquor never brewed in tankards scooped of pearl.’”
Sondra smiled. “That’s Emily Dickinson.”
“Right. I says, ‘Roy, I don’t know about tankards scooped of pearl, but if I don’t have a belt of Old Granddad I’m gonna come out flailing.’ He says, ‘Go ahead.’ I took a few whacks at him but I was so pie-eyed I just passed out.
“I came to next day, sober and ornery, and he wouldn’t let me within sniffing distance of a liquor bottle. We spent a month together, fighting every day, getting that monkey off my back—I was his prisoner. Then one day he says, ‘You know what?’ I says, ‘What?’ He says, ‘You whipped me today for the first time. You’re getting stronger.’ And so I was. Another month and I was restored, He took me back to Dallas to live with him. He stuck to me like a Siamese twin until he felt I could be trusted not to resume my dissolute ways.”
“Obviously, you didn’t.”
“It was the toughest job I’ve ever had to do, but I held. He made me eat properly, work out, rest up and keep myself busy. After a stretch I was in good shape. Not good enough to play football again, mind you, but to take my rightful place again in society, as they say. Roy brought me around to Clint Murchison, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and persuaded him to give me a job in the Cowboys’ front office. I did that for a couple of years, and one thing led to another and I went into agenting. And today I’m sober, respectable, and poorer than a church mouse on welfare.”
As I talked I listened to myself and thought: how easy I’m making it sound, how painless when I summarize it in a few sentences. Absent was the agony of innumerable temptations to give up and sink back into the euphoria of alcohol. Absent was the sense of the appalling waste of time and energy and money and hope on an act, attenuated over two years, of pure self-destruction. Absent was the heartbreak of realization that I had thrown away all that was dearest to me. Now, in the telling, all this was just dry biographical fact lightened with a few jokes. Somewhere along the way the feeling had gone out of it and it was now, like my injury itself, a healed wound that throbbed worse on some days than it did on others.
“One day, a few years ago, someone offered me a drink,” I said to Sondra. “I downed it and thanked him and walked away and it wasn’t until that night that I realized I’d taken a drink. The craving was gone. I didn’t hate myself any more. I could take booze or leave it. I was a grown-up. But now I ask myself, grown up for what? Shoot, grown-up and a buck fifty will get you into the unreserved seats at Shea Stadium.”
Sondra gazed at me for a long minute, then got up and kissed me. Not passionately, just—I don’t know, understandingly, appreciatively, something like that. We held it for a long time. I made no attempt to follow it up with an embrace—it wasn’t a sexual kiss.
I got up and walked around the room feeling a strange turbulence in my stomach. There’d been a lot of girls since Nancy but only a couple that had meant more to me than Fuck and Forget, and the signals pulsating in my brain told me Sondra was definitely earmarked Serious Business. If I chose to make it so, at least.
“You never explained about Roy Lescade,” she said to my turned back.
“Roy, yes? Well Roy never wrote the story.”
“The story about you?”
“Uh-huh. He felt it would hurt me. He felt that no matter how sensitively he handled it, people would always think of me as a former stumblebum. Now that might get me a lot of sympathy, but it would also get me a lot of distrust. People would be afraid to hire me, deal with me, work with me, care for me—marry me. Oh, a few inside people know about my past, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Roy sounds like a good man.”
“I owe Roy my life. Plus some good stories to make up for the one he never wrote.”
I gazed out my window and watched the car lights gliding over the Triboro Bridge like two endless trains, a white one for cars coming at me, a red one for cars fleeing the city. My back was still turned to Sondra and I was reluctant to look at her. I guess I was fearful that when I faced her I would see that she didn’t care. Or maybe, even worse, I would see that she did.
The cool, tender hand on my neck answered the question. I pivoted and Sondra was there, her body close to mine, her face raised for a kiss, eyes shut and lips full and moist and faintly parted. My arms slid around her slim waist and hers around my neck. I drew her tight to me and kissed her, this time with desire, my tongue thrusting into the sweet recesses of her mouth where it twined with her own tongue. Beneath the thinness of her dress I could feel her small firm breasts, the dainty swell of her abdomen, the warm junction of her thighs. I felt myself hardening.
She did not pull away with maidenly modesty. On the contrary, she responded with a gentle rotation of her pelvis. We held the kiss for a long time, our bodies separated from the act of love only by the gauge of our clothing.
I took her hand and led her into my bedroom. She stood before me calmly if a bit shyly, waiting for me to guide her. I reached behind her and unzipped her dress. She wriggled her shoulders and it felt to her feet. Her breasts were high and tip-tilted, her dark nipples erect with anticipation. I kissed them gently and she shuddered. I removed her panties and she stepped out of them and stood before me in the deep shadow of early evening, unashamed and ready. I knew then that she wasn’t a virgin, but I also knew she was far from experienced; she was, I suppose you might say, a student.
I stripped out of my clothes and faced her, letting her study me. She ran her hand over my chest, then down until it encircled my hard erection. She nodded almost imperceptibly and lay down on my bed, arms beckoning and legs parted. I kneeled down between her knees and looked into her eyes, hoping to express to her how much more this meant to me than a roll in the sack. Her eyes acknowledged the message, then closed. I slid into her and she moaned softly.