Chapter 25

I go to McDonald’s and get served by a man in his sixties. We look at each other like this is a bad joke. “Four Big Mac’s,” I say and he says, “Will that be for here or to go?” He’s looking at Muller’s big gut.

“To go,” I say, and then the ginger ale can goes off in my head. I tell Muller I have to go outside, making for the door, tripping over strollers. Muller comes out with our burgers and stands next to me by the car. I’m smoking a cigarette with shaking fingers.

Muller suffered panic attacks a few years ago. I remember Mary telling me about it after our last visit to Krupsky’s office. Judy took Muller to specialists. They told him it was stress. His video department was made redundant, and since most video departments were redundant, Muller joined the unemployed. The attacks kept coming. Then he collapsed in a mall. An ambulance brought him to emergency, tests were done, and no major arterial plaque was found. Muller’s heart, as one doctor described it, “beat like a tribal drum.” A week later, he dropped like a stone in a Taco Bell.

He got over it somehow, and I guess I have to do the same. I still can’t understand what sent me over the edge. Getting fired, sure, but I knew it was coming. Why weren’t Nick, Dewey, or Margot having panic attacks? Then I thought of Iris. Why would she need a psychiatrist? She’s the sanest individual I’ve ever known. She and Frank grew up dirt poor in Belfast. The thing about Iris, rich as she is, she still listens with the ear of a local barkeep. If she’s seeing a psychiatrist, it’s probably doing him more good than her.

After dinner, I give Iris a call. We haven’t talked in a couple of years. I take the phone out on the back deck, stepping on a bottle of Muller’s sun tan lotion. Iris answers on the third ring. “You poor man,” she says with her cooing Irish accent. “All those years of loyalty. Do you want me to sock Frankie for you?”

“That okay, Iris.”

“Well, let me know if you do. Your Mary must be beside herself. Tell her to call me if she wants to talk.” She gives me the name of her psychiatrist and some advice about trimming hydrangeas. She thinks we have hydrangeas. “Good luck, Sam,” she says and hangs up.

I sit there in the dark, listening to The Rec Room of Sound through the window. Otis is throwing out a song to some woman who just got back from having a nose job. “Here’s The Dramatics singing, ‘What You See is What You Get’, and let’s hope that schnoz of yours turns out to be a good one, Whitney.”

Three thousand twenty views. I guess moral turpitude sells, but you’d think at least one person would shoot him in the ass. I go back inside as Otis announces he needs another pee break. He leaves us with Rufus Thomas singing “Walking the Dog.”

I’m wondering about this psychiatrist business. The whole thing is a bit of a doddle as far as I’m concerned. Where does talking get the average person? Nothing really changes. At least Krupsky admits it’s a crapshoot. And it’s probably true that psychiatrists take more pills than their patients. People go to psychiatrists because nobody else will listen to them. They’ve worn out everybody else’s eardrums.

I’m also thinking about this fishing trip coming up with Nick and Dewey. Judy and Muller should be back in Seattle by then. I asked Judy the other day when they’re leaving. “Why are you trying to get rid of us?” she said. I told her about the fishing trip in August. “Can’t you take Muller with you?” she said. Muller came up the basement stairs holding his oxygen mask. The strap was broken. He was looking for scotch tape or a stapler.

I tried calling Nick this morning and got his answering machine. Dewey said he’s probably down in Florida, deep sea fishing or buying local artifacts for his craft shows. Dewey’s been filling in at his brother’s picture framing shop. “I’m waiting for a lull,” he told me on the phone. “The place is crazy right now, Sam. All you do is take orders and send the pictures to a framing factory. Everyone uses the same company. Nobody undercuts anybody.” He wants to check out the towns up north, maybe corner the market in Wausau. “Come in with me,” he said. “We’ll be the framing kings.”

I told him I’d think about it. Now I’m sitting in the kitchen, watching The Rec Room of Sound. Bisquick is hopping about, pecking at the computer screen. I think of my family and friends, the strange scenario playing out all around me. Everyone is moving on, getting things done. Look at the obstacles they’ve overcome. Nick, Dewey and Margot lost their jobs just like me. They’ve picked themselves up. Christ, Otis has over three thousand viewers now. Sponsorship is in the wind. Ruby and Max have their own painting company. All I’m doing, as far as I can see, is babysitting my daughter’s husband, and attempting the occasional water rescue.

The next morning, I’m sitting around the sunroom. There’s dead air over at Otis’s place. Half the time he just lets records play through, catching catnaps in his chair. I watch him suddenly jump up, push Bisquick off his turntable, and cue up another song.

“We’re back”—he coughs—“This one goes back to when Ruby was still in short dresses.”

Ruby is carrying paint cans from the laundry room. “What song are you talking about?”

“I’m getting to it, Ruby.”

“All I heard was me in short dresses.”

“Like I was saying, folks,” he said. “Here’s a song done by Linda Lyndell called ‘What a Man’ recorded around 1968.”

“Damn right I was in short dresses.” She goes upstairs.

“Any of you wondering what Ruby’s doing with all the paint,” Otis says, “she and Max have a bunch of new contracts. According to our business manager—” he turns the computer to show Margot sitting at a desk in the corner—“Ruby and Max are booked all summer. Right, Margot? It’s really hopping, huh?”

Margot looks over her bifocals. “Nothing’s hopping til the money’s on my desk.”

Max comes downstairs in painter pants and a red bandana. He and Ruby obviously have a uniform worked out.

“How’s it going, Max?” Otis says.

“I’m working my ass off, old man. Try it some time.”

“There you go, folks,” Otis says. “Capitalism in motion.”

I watch the computer screen with everyone rushing about. Things are really moving over there. It gives me an idea. I go downstairs and pull the oxygen mask off Muller. His eyes pop open. “Get dressed,” I say. “We’re going to work.”

“Where?”

“Painting with Max and Ruby. The sun will do us good.” He practically flies off his cot.

“I don’t know how good a painter I am,” he says.

“Just get your socks on.” I go start the car and sit there smiling. What better way to get Ruby out of Muller’s system? The man moves at the speed of a possum. How long before Ruby kicks him in the pants?

Muller comes out wearing one of his tie-dyed shirts. I thought those things went out in the sixties. He takes a bent cigarette out of his back pocket and lights it. “What do you think Ruby’ll have us doing?” he asks, and I tell him I don’t know. Probably scraping eavestroughs. “I’m not great with heights, Sam,” he says. “I get dizzy.”

Driving across Division to Clybourn, Muller fiddles with his hair, patting down wandering curls. I’m surprised he hasn’t licked his hand and tried to tack them down. “This isn’t a church social,” I say to him.

“I could have used a shower, Sam.” He keeps looking at himself in side mirror.

We arrive just as Max and Ruby are getting the last of their stuff out of the basement. Otis is reading the paper with Margot’s bifocals.

“You’ve got yourself two painters,” I tell Ruby.

“Painters?” Otis says. “We need Muller up in the kitchen.”

“Not today, Otis,” I say. “What about it, Ruby?”

Ruby looks Muller up and down. “Have you ever worked with a brush, Muller?” Ruby says.

“A few rooms around our house.”

“I guess you’ll get the hang of it. You’re not going to fall off the ladder, are you? You look at bit tipsy.”

“I just woke up,” he says. “Sam dragged me out of bed.”

“He’ll be okay,” I say.

“He’d better be okay,” Margot says. “We don’t have medical.” We all look over at Otis’s computer screen.

“Do you think anyone heard that?” Max says.

“Like a church testimonial,” Otis replies.

“Boogaloo,” Bisquick squawks.

“Let’s get moving,” Ruby says. She starts taking a bunch of rollers upstairs while Max grabs some paint sheets. “Muller, you go with Sam.”

“Can’t I ride with you, Ruby?”

“There’s no room in the truck.” She brings out two bandanas. “Here’s your headgear,” she says us. “Buy yourself some painter pants on the way home. We have a strict dress code.”

We get in our respective vehicles and drive off. “Can’t I ride with you, Ruby?” I imitate Muller. “You’re embarrassing yourself, you know that?”

“I just like being with her, Sam.”

“You’re not going to be with her. You’re going to be up a ladder.” Muller starts fiddling with his hair again. “Here,” I say, grabbing his bandana out of his pocket. “Tie this on your head. You’ll be getting a lot of sun.”

“I wish I brought my baseball cap.”

“You can wear your baseball cap tomorrow. Today you’re going to work your ass off. Eight hours of scraping and you won’t give a shit about Ruby. You won’t give a shit about anything.”

“If you say so, Sam.”

“Ever see painters when they finish for the day? They look like crap. You’re going to look like crap, too. So’s Ruby.”

“I can’t imagine that, Sam.”

“Imagine it, Muller.”

He ties on the handkerchief with the flap down over his face.