Chapter 7

 

 

There was a rancid smell that permeated the entire apartment. So rank that upon entering, the fetid stench was so offensive, there was an instant gag reflex. You felt like vomiting. To keep from retching, you had to hold your breath. Either that or breathe through your mouth. Become a mouth breather of sorts.

“What did you expect?” she asked herself. Any place that’s above a drinking establishment isn’t exactly considered a penthouse.

The music wafted gently through the floor and from the baseboard heating units. “Glenn Miller, it must be, maybe Tommy Dorsey,” Linda thought to herself. Some big band sound that has passed into history.

Lou told her that she could use the premises any time it was necessary, and she’d come upstairs for a look-see. She’d have to be pretty desperate to have to consider this an alternative to using her legs and hoofing it home.

At the time she gets off work, around 3 a.m., the least savory characters can be seen wandering the streets. Some have that disturbing habit of talking to themselves. Very creepy stuff, even to a tough broad like Linda. So finding a place she could crash for a few hours seemed like good preparation.

She’d aged to being called a “tough broad,” but there was a classic beauty in this cigarette girl. For one thing, she always stood tall and proud, no matter the circumstance.

What Linda had learned over the years could in itself make a book.

She remembered her mother telling her to “consider the source” when it came to someone stating what they called a “fact.” Linda’s perceptions became intuitive after 30 or 40 years.

She remembered that acquaintances would ask, “Did you know…?” and would proceed to tell her some supposed matter of fact. After the acquaintance was finished, she’d say, “You know, you said, ‘Did you know?’ and even after you told me what you believe, I can’t say I really know the fact.” She insulted many a know-it-all person, many a clever man, with that line.

Her stepfather was also instilling common sense as she grew up. He’d trick her by catching her off guard with off-color jokes and bromides he’d picked up working at the mill. What Linda came away with after a childhood of lessons from parents, friends and the public school system was a street-savvy approach to everything. She became wise.

But for all that she learned as a child and adolescent at home and at school, there were thousands of little lessons Linda learned on her own.

Although work got in the way, she developed two maxims that kept her happy and healthy: Eat when hungry, and sleep when tired.

She’d always been able to maintain her slim and trim appearance through proper diet, and that did include eating food items when she desired. Starving herself was a sure way to build up a big hunger, and then all hell would break loose.

As for staying well rested, well, that was a no-brainer. She eschewed coffee. Coffee made her jittery and wired. No reason for that. She figured if she got the proper rest, everything else would follow, and it always did. Well rested, she was able to think clearly and act accordingly. Without the proper rest, there was no way to make the brain work properly.

Another lesson she learned was never to assume. She learned that the hard way.

Back in her younger days, when she first lived away from her parents in a tiny apartment in Southwest Portland, she dated a man named Gruber. When Gruber stopped calling her, she assumed he no longer had any interest in her. It was only months later, after talking to Gruber, she found out he wasn’t avoiding her: His telephone number had changed, and he had lost her number.

By making an assumption, she’d missed out on an opportunity to date a man she really enjoyed talking with about a range of subjects. Gruber was not a good-looking man, but he made up for it in intellectual prowess. Linda didn’t mind being with someone she considered smarter than herself; in fact, she made no bones about being interested in having men about her that stimulated her mind as well as her body.

Gruber was in fact proud of his capacity for mental gymnastics. He used to regale Linda with tales from his youth, including the audacity to claim having a subscription to a magazine called Intellectual Digest when he was in high school. Linda took that claim and others like it with a grain of salt.

“Yeah,” he had told her, “I used to hang out with guys two, three, four years older than I was in high school. I had no problem keeping up with those guys intellectually. That was my métier.”

“Your what?” Linda asked Gruber. She’d never heard the word, “métier” before, and thought at first he said “meatier.” Linda’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Gruber.

“‘Métier’ is a French word for an occupation or profession, that’s all,” said her friend.

“That burns me up,” Linda said. She gave Gruber a look that would have turned anyone to stone. Her eyes were afire and her face was all puckered up, as if she’d sucked a lemon.

“What? What burns you up?” Gruber asked.

“People using foreign words that nobody knows,” she said. “Latin and French are the most common, and it’s so condescending to use those words or phrases to make themselves feel superior.”

“Maybe it’s you,” Gruber said. “Maybe you have some sort of inferiority complex.”

“There you go again,” she said, “trying to sound all highfalutin and above the masses. It’s so irritating to me the way you make yourself out as some sort of high-minded smart ass. And don’t give me any ‘inferiority complex’ bullshit. You’re no smarter than I am, I know that. Just because you’ve read more books than I have doesn’t make you any wiser than I am. Fuck you.”

“Alright, alright,” Gruber said, exasperated by being chewed out by his female companion. He was thinking all the time listening to her that he really didn’t have to take this kind of shit from anyone. He especially found it aggravating that he was taking shit from a woman with whom he wasn’t having sex.

But Linda wasn’t finished with Gruber. She had another bone to pick with him and all the other smart-ass men she’d run into over the course of her life.

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” Linda said.

“I don’t like people, and most of them are men, who use 75 cent words,” she said, referring to multi-syllable words like “assuage” and “apocryphal,” for example. “People who use big words are trying to show that somehow they’re smarter than everyone else, but it shows their ignorance.

“The guys who use those two dollar words are showing their inadequacy of the English language; they’re usually the ones who didn’t go to college, and want to show the world that they’re as smart as the college guy. Or they did go to college, but they dropped out, and are now trying to make up for that lack of sheepskin with fancy words.”

Her friend Gruber looked at Linda in astonishment.

“It’s a ruse,” Linda continued. “It’s their way of feeling secure in the midst of their insecurity.”

“You’re beginning to sound like Freud,” said Gruber.

“No, I don’t know anything about Freud,” Linda replied, “except for popular cultural references. But that’s not saying anything. Anybody can spout off shit they’ve heard other sources say, it’s no big deal. Those are the same people who think in the same manner as bumper stickers. People who know slogans, but don’t know anything deeper than that. It’s like they’re a huge, inch-deep lake: They cover lots of territory, but there’s no depth.”

“Wow, are you ever angry!” said Gruber.

“You betcha,” she said back. “I’m angry because people who use big words are actually dumber than other folks with more common sense. They’re trying to cloud the issue, to make people think they know what they’re talking about. A person doesn’t have to use big words to get a point across. That’s something I learned a long time ago. It’s not the words, it’s how you combine them. A truly wise person combines words in interesting and unusual ways, to create a new thought. It’s like painting.

“Painters don’t necessarily use a paint that no one else is using,” Linda continued. “It’s not a different kind of paint, it’s a different way of using it, of expressing yourself. Same for words. There is no magic in being able to use big words. That’s subterfuge; those people are hiding their lack of imagination and their lack of the command of the English language.”

“It sounds like you have quite a command of the English language,” Linda’s male friend said.

“No,” Linda replied. “I’m no smarter than the next person. I’m still learning and growing and changing. I don’t have the answers. But at least I don’t pretend that I do, that’s disingenuous.”

“Now there’s a 75 cent word,” Gruber said, self-satisfied that he’d caught her contradicting herself by using a complex-sounding word such as “disingenuous.”

“I’m sorry,” Linda said, “I didn’t mean to throw that out there. Just slipped out.”

At her age, another woman would wear her hair shorter and her skirts lower. But Linda had that classic Nordic skin: pale, soft and clean looking. The kind of woman who doesn’t need to wear much if any makeup. She wore lightly-applied lipstick, but kept her blond hair basic. Sometimes she let it flow, easy and beautiful; other times, done up tightly with bobby pins. No matter, because she was Beauty, the men Beasts.

Her clothes were simple, too, not plain, but easy on the eyes, like her face. Easy on the eyes. She was the kind of a good lookin’ dame you’d be proud to call your wife. She was innocent looking; yeah, well, that’s one in her favor.

Because men trusted her, because she acted with such guileless innocence, she became confessor to numbers of men with no one else to turn to. The cigarette girl.

“Hey, babe!” Gunnar Swernbernin shouted as he snuck up behind Linda at the Club Festival.

“Eowww!” she shrieked as Gunnar grabbed her around the midsection.

Linda turned quickly around and slapped her molester. The sound reverberated throughout the club.

“Ouch!” Gunnar yelled. “You didn’t have to do that!”

“Buster,” she yelled back, “the next time you touch me, prepare to die!”

“Back off, sister!” Gunnar responded.

He knew that he’d met his match.

Linda later would review the entire incident, going over in her mind the details of each move leading up to Gunnar grabbing her. She wondered if she’d asked for his unwanted attention by the way she acted.

She mulled it over in her mind, time and time again that night. That was her personal technique both to live a fuller life and to set to memory what she’d experience of importance that day. She’d learned from a fellow who went to college, one of her good customers, that the way to learn was not only to attend classes and read the assignments, but to go over notes taken in class, to set the information firmly in the mind.

She’d only seen the man Gunnar Swernbernin once, when he’d stopped by to introduce himself to Lou as the new liquor distributor for the new Idaho vodka distiller; his particular brand was made from potatoes. Sounds weird, but the liquor was good, it was inexpensive and it was definitely tasty. Came in a variety of flavors.

She knew Gunnar, nicknamed “Tail Gunner,” as a tall, handsome drink of water, but nothing special. He was another man, nothing more.

She couldn’t quite remember if she’d said anything to him or not. Who knows? With some men, it doesn’t matter what a woman does or doesn’t do; if he has his sights on the woman, she’s a target for his wily ways.

The next day, the day after the incident with Gunnar, and after a brief mental review of the situation, she casually approached Lou to see if he could give her any insight.

It was slow at the Club Festival, one of those weekday afternoons where the only customers are truck drivers, businessmen and salesmen. Most of the time, in the middle of the day, no one was into any serious drinking. That sort of thing happened mostly at night. Mostly. There are the rare occasions where a bunch of guys or gals would come in to celebrate a promotion or someone quitting a seriously bad position.

Emily Lou Resnick was tending bar; Lou was checking out the inventory. Emily Lou’s job varied between barkeep and waitress, depending on the circumstances. That was the agreement with Lou, to add some variety and flexibility to the job of serving customers. Emily Lou and Randi Obvitz shared responsibilities, along with Lou, for keeping an eye on the bar; the two women also served as waitresses. They liked it, Lou liked it. There was also some flexibility for the cigarette girl, Linda Avery; depending on who was on shift that night, Linda would step in and work as a waitress, filling drink orders and getting food to tables. Linda enjoyed the flexibility for two reasons. One, it gave her something to do other than peddle her wares. Two, it was taxing walking around all night with her tray, so it gave her back a break.

“Lou, can I talk to you for a minute?” Linda asked him, hesitantly. Lou was always a busy man, always taking care of business, “TCB” as he’d say. Lou took his job seriously, although he had a sense of humor about him.

“Sure, honey, what can I do you out of?” he asked in his usual oddball way.

“I’m still kind of shaken up over what happened yesterday with that new liquor salesman, the guy named Gunnar.”

“Oh, you mean ‘Tail Gunner,’” he answered.

“Tail Gunner?” she in turn replied.

“Yeah, that’s the name I heard from some of the other booze pushers,” Lou said. “Seems the guy’s got quite the reputation as a ladies’ man. In fact, he uses that as his calling card. He says to folks that he’s not a ladies’ man, he’s one lady’s man. Get it? He’s only dedicated to one lady. Turns out that really means he dedicates himself to one woman at a time.”

“Nice guy,” Linda said. “He sounds like a real heel.”

“Oh, he’s harmless enough,” Lou continued. “He’s just a womanizer, a guy looking for a gal to hook up with.”

Linda thought carefully about how to phrase her question. Guys tend to defend their own kind, and she knew Lou was loyal to people, and that he didn’t like to gossip or backbite.

“Lou, I want to know more about the guy. He grabbed me yesterday, and it kind of scared me. I don’t like strangers grabbing me. Who would?”

“Nobody would,” Lou said, being empathetic. He kept an eye out for the women in the club, knowing the atmosphere. He also knew that men who’d had too much to drink tend to get out of control. A man full of liquor is likely to do anything, to act out in strange and bizarre ways. But he felt Tail Gunner was being frisky, that’s all. He said as much to Linda.

“Oh, he’s checking you out,” Lou told Linda. “He’s testing you to see if you are friendly or cold. What exactly happened between you two?”

Linda explained the incident, and how Gunnar has snuck up and grabbed her from behind.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Lou said. “It was probably a good thing you set a boundary, so he wouldn’t take advantage of you. With some men, you’ve got to be assertive, just this side of aggressive, because that’s all they understand. Gunnar is obviously one of those thick-skinned chowderheads who need to be told what’s expected of them.”

Linda hung her head in shame. She’d overreacted, and probably sent a signal that she was a cold fish, no fun, not in on the joke.

She left the bar with nearly as many questions as she had before. Talking with Lou was good, it was a relief to vent, but to be honest, she wasn’t any better off.

She was determined to ask someone else their take on the whole affair. It seemed like a logical step to ask another woman.

“I’m not sure what to do next,” she said to her friend Marcia Calibri.

“Do next about what, sweetie?” Marcia responded.

“That guy. You know, Tail Gunner, I told you about him,” Linda said, sighing heavily. Linda then explained what happened between them.

“What can you do about guys?” Marcia said. “I’ve been in a few relationships, and guys are so hard to predict. Trying to figure out guys is like trying to herd cats. Guys are all over the place, mentally, emotionally.”

The two women had met on Linda’s day off from the Club Festival, for lunch and a movie afterwards. They were sitting in the bar, drinking coffee after eating.

“I mean, it’s not that important, maybe,” Linda continued, “but I’m still worried about my reaction to this guy grabbing me. Maybe I should lighten up.”

“No, sweetie,” Marcia said. “You have every right not to be pestered by a guy, especially not to be manhandled. No guy has a right to touch you like that, especially a virtual stranger.”

“Virtual?” Linda asked.

“Yeah,” Marcia said. Then she understood Linda’s question. “No, I don’t mean an artificial stranger, like a hologram. Virtual as in, ‘in essence but not in fact.’ I mean, you knew the guy was a salesman. But you don’t know him personally.”

“I don’t want to know him personally,” Linda said. “He’s just a good-lookin’ hunk of meat to me.”