Roadwork Read online

  They discovered that they not only had enough for a table model TV, but that for another forty dollars they actually could have a console model. RCA had jumped the model year, the proprietor of John’s TV downtown told them (John’s was already buried under the 784 extension of course, long gone, along with the Grand and everything else), and was going for broke. He would be happy to let them have it, and for just ten dollars a week-

  “No,” Mary said.

  John looked pained. “Lady, it’s only four weeks. You’re hardly signing your life away on easy credit terms.”

  “Just a minute,” Mary said, and led him outside into the pre-Christmas cold where carols tangled in each other up and down the street.

  “Mary,” he said, “he’s right. It’s not as if-”

  “The first thing we buy on credit ought to be our own house, Bart,” she said. That faint line appeared between her eyes. “Now listen-”

  They went back inside. “Will you hold it for us?” he asked John.

  “I guess so-for a while. But this is my busy season, Mr. Dawes. How long?”

  “Just over the weekend,” he said. “I’ll be in Monday night.”

  They had spent that weekend in the country, bundled up against the cold and the snow which threatened but did not fall. They drove slowly up and down back roads, giggling like kids, a six-pack on the seat for him and a bottle of wine for Mary, and they saved the beer bottles and picked up more, bags of beer bottles, bags of soda bottles, each one of the small ones worth two cents, the big ones worth a nickle. It had been one hell of a weekend, Bart thought now-Mary’s hair had been long, flowing out behind her over that imitation-leather coat of hers, the color flaming in her cheeks. He could see her now, walking up a ditch filled with fallen autumn leaves, kicking through them with her boots, producing a noise like a steady low forest fire… then the click of a bottle and she raised it up in triumph, waggled it at him from across the road, grinning like a kid.

  They don’t have returnable bottles anymore, either, Georgie. The gospel these days is no deposit, no return. Use it up and throw it out.

  That Monday, after work, they had turned in thirty-one dollars’ worth of bottles, visiting four different supermarkets to spread the wealth around. They had arrived at John’s ten minutes before the store closed.

  “I’m nine bucks short,” he told John

  John wrote PAID across the bill of sale that had been taped to the RCA console. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Dawes,” he said. “Let me get my dolly and I’ll help you out with it.”

  They got it home, and an excited Dick Keller from the first floor helped him carry it up, and that night they had watched TV until the national anthem had come on the last operating channel and then they had made love in front of the test pattern, both of them with raging headaches from eyestrain.

  TV had rarely looked so good since.

  Mary came in and saw him looking at the TV, his empty scotch-rocks glass in his hand.

  “Your dinner’s ready, Bart,” she said. “You want it in here?

  He looked at her, wondering exactly when he had seen the dare-you grin on her lips for the last time… exactly when the little line between her eyes had begun to be there all the time, like a wrinkle, a scar, a tattoo proclaiming age.

  You wonder about some things, he thought, that you’d never in God’s world want to know. Now why the hell is that?

  “Bart?”

  “Let’s eat in the dining room,” he said. He got up and snapped the TV off.

  “All right.”

  They sat down. He looked at the meal in the aluminum tray. Six little compartments, and something that looked pressed in each one. The meat had gravy on it. It was his impression that the meats in TV dinners always had gravy on them. TV dinner-meat would look naked without gravy, he thought, and then he remembered his thought about Lorne Green for absolutely no reason at all: Boy, I’ll snatch you bald-headed.

  It didn’t amuse him this time. Somehow it scared him.

  “What were you sbiling about in the living roob, Bart?” Mary asked. Her eyes were red from her cold, and her nose had a chapped, raw look.

  “I don’t remember,” he said, and for the moment he thought: I’ll just scream now, I think. For lost things. For your grin, Mary. Pardon me while I just throw back my head and scream for the grin that’s never there on your face anymore. Okay?

  “You looked very habby,” she said.

  Against his will-it was a secret thing, and tonight he felt the needed his secret things, tonight his feelings felt as raw as Mary’s nose looked-against his will he said: “I was thinking of the time we went out picking up bottles to finish paying for that TV. The RCA console.”

  “Oh, that,” Mary said, and then sneezed into her hankie over her TV dinner.

  He ran into Jack Hobart at the Stop 'n' Shop. Jack’s cart was full of frozen foods, heat-and-serve canned products, and a lot of beer.

  “Jack!” he said. “What are you doing way over here?”

  Jack smiled a little. “I haven’t got used to the other store yet, so thought…”

  “Where’s Ellen?”

  “She had to fly back to Cleveland,” he said. “Her mother died.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry Jack. Wasn’t that sudden?”

  Shoppers were moving all around them under the cold overhead lights. Muzak came down from hidden speakers, old standards that you could never quite recognize. A woman with a full cart passed them, dragging a screaming three-year-old in a blue parka with snot on the sleeves.

  “Yeah, it was,” Jack Hobart said. He smiled meaninglessly and looked down into his cart. There was a large yellow bag there that said:

  KITTY-PAN KITTY LITTER

  Use It, Throw It Away!

  Sanitary!

  “Yeah, it was. She’d been feeling punk, thank you, but she thought it might have been a, you know, sort of leftover from change of life. It was cancer. They opened her up, took a look, and sewed her right back up. Three weeks later she was dead. Hell of a hard thing for Ellen. I mean, she only twenty years younger.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So she’s out in Cleveland for a little while.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  They looked at each other and grinned shamefacedly over the fact of death.

  “How is it?” he asked. “Out there in Northside?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Bart. Nobody seems very friendly.”

  “No?”

  “You know Ellen works down at the bank?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, a lot of the girls used to have a car pool-I used to let Ellen have the car every Thursday. That was her part. There’s a pool out in Northside into the city, but all the women who use it are part of some club that Ellen can’t join unless she’s been there at least a year.”

  “That sounds pretty damn close to discrimination, Jack.”

  “Fuck them,” Jack said angrily. “Ellen wouldn’t join their goddam club if they crawled up the street on their hands and knees. I got her her own car. A used Buick. She loves it. Should have done it two years ago.”

  “How’s the house?”

  “It’s fine,” Jack said, and sighed. “The electricity’s high, though. You should see our bill. That’s no good for people with a kid in college.”

  They shuffled. Now that Jack’s anger had passed, the shamefaced grin was back on his face. He realized that Jack was almost pathetically glad to see someone from the neighborhood and was prolonging the moment. He had a sudden vision of Jack knocking around in the new house, the sound from the TV filling the rooms with phantom company, his wife a thousand miles away seeing her mother into the ground.

  “Listen, why don’t you come back to the house?” he asked. “We’ll have a couple of six-packs and listen to Howard Cosell explain everything that’s wrong with the NFL.”

  “Hey, that’d be great.”

  “Just let me call Mary after we check out.�
��

  He called Mary and Mary said okay. She said she would put some frozen pastries in the oven and then go to bed so she wouldn’t give Jack her cold.

  “How does he like it out there?” she asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Mare, Ellen’s mother died. She’s out in Cleveland for the funeral. Cancer.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “So I thought Jack might like the company, you know-”

  “Sure, of course.” She paused. “Did you tell hib we bight be neighbors before log?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t tell him that.”

  “You ought to. It bight cheer hib ub.”

  “Sure. Good-bye, Mary.”

  “Bye.

  “Take some aspirin before you go to bed.”

  “I will.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye, George.” She hung up.

  He looked at the phone, chilled. She only called him that when she was very pleased with him. Fred-and-George had been Charlie’s game originally.

  He and Jack Hobart went home and watched the game. They drank a lot of beer. But it wasn’t so good.

  When Jack was getting into his car to go home at quarter past twelve, he looked up bleakly and said: “That goddam highway. That’s what fucked up the works.”

  “It sure did.” He thought Jack looked old, and it scared him. Jack was about his age.

  “You keep in touch, Bart.”

  “I will.”

  They grinned hollowly at each other, a little drunk, a little sick. He watched Jack’s car until its taillights had disappeared down the long, curving hill.

  November 27, 1973

  He was a little hung-over and a little sleepy from staying up so late. The sound of the laundry washers kicking onto the extract cycle seemed loud in his ears, and the steady thump-hiss of the shirt presses and the ironer made him want to wince.

  Freddy was worse. Freddy was playing the very devil today.

  Listen, Fred was saying. This is your last chance, my boy. You’ve still got all afternoon to get over to Monohan’s office. If you let it wait until five o’clock, it’s going to be too late.

  The option doesn’t run out until midnight.

  Sure it doesn’t. But right after work Monohan is going to feel a pressing need to go see some relatives. In Alaska. For him it means the difference between a forty-five-thousand-dollar commission and fifty thousand dollars-the price of a new car. For that kind of money you don’t need a pocket calculator. For that kind of money you might discover relatives in the sewer system under Bombay.

  But it didn’t matter. It had gone too far. He had let the machine tun without him too long. He was hypnotized by the coming explosion, almost lusted for it. His belly groaned in its own juices.

  He spent most of the afternoon in the washroom, watching Ron Stone and Dave run test loads with one of the new laundry products. It was loud in the washroom. The noise hurt his tender head, but it kept him from hearing his thoughts.

  After work he got his car out of the parking lot-Mary had been glad to let him have it for the day since he was seeing about their new house-and drove through downtown and through Norton.

  In Norton, blacks stood around on street comers and outside bars. Restaurants advertised different kinds of soul food. Children hopped and danced on chalked sidewalk grids. He saw a pimpmobile-a huge pink Eldorado Cadillac-pull up in front of an anonymous brownstone apartment building. The man who got out was a Wilt Chamberlain-size black in a white planter’s hat and a white ice cream suit with pearl buttons and black platform shoes with huge gold buckles on the sides. He carried a malacca stick with a large ivory ball on the top. He walked slowly, majestically, around to the hood of the car, where a set of caribou antlers were mounted. A tiny silver spoon hung on a silver chain around his neck and winked in the thin autumn sun. He watched the man in the rearview mirror as the children ran to him for sweets.

  Nine blocks later the tenements thinned to ragged, open fields that were still soft and marshy. Oily water stood between hummocks in puddles, their surfaces flat, deadly rainbows. On the left, near the horizon, he could see a plane landing at the city’s airport.

  He was now on Route 16, traveling past the exurban sprawl between the city and the city limits. He passed McDonald’s. Shakey’s, Nino’s Steak Pit. He passed a Dairy Freez and the Noddy-Time Motel, both closed for the season. He passed the Norton Drive-In, where the marquee said:

  FRI-SAT-SUN

  RESTLESS WIVES

  SOME CAME RUNNING RATED X

  EIGHT-BALL

  He passed a bowling alley and a driving range that was closed for the season. Gas stations-two of them with signs that said:

  SORRY, NO GAS

  It was still four days until they got their gasoline allotments for December. He couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry for the country as a whole as it went into this science-fiction-style crisis-the country had been pigging petroleum for too long to warrant his sympathy-but he could feel sorry for the little men with their peckers caught in the swing of a big door.

  A mile farther on he came to Magliore’s Used Cars. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he felt disappointed. It looked like a cut-rate, fly-by-night operation. Cars were lined up on the lot facing the road under looped lines of flapping banners-red, yellow, blue, green-that had been tied between light standards that would shine down on the product at night. Prices and slogans soaped on the windshields:

  $795

  RUNS GOOD

  and

  $550

  GOOD TRANSPORTATION!

  and on a dusty old Valiant with flat tires and a cracked windshield:

  $75

  MECHANIX SPECIAL

  A salesman wearing a gray-green topcoat was nodding and smiling noncommittally as a young kid in a red silk jacket talked to him. They were standing by a blue Mustang with cancer of the rocker panels. The kid said something vehement and thumped the driver’s side door with the flat of his hand. Rust flaked off in a small flurry. The salesman shrugged and went on smiling. The Mustang just sat there and got a little older.

  There was a combination office and garage in the center of the lot. He parked and got out of his car. There was a lift in the garage, and an old Dodge with giant fins was up on it. A mechanic walked out from under, holding a muffler in both grease-gloved hands like a chalice.

  “Say, you can’t park there, mister. That’s in the right-of-way.”

  “Where should I park?”

  “Take it around back if you’re goin in the office.”

  He drove the LTD around to the back, creeping carefully down the narrow way between the corrugated metal side of the garage and a row of cars. He parked behind the garage and got out. The wind, strong and cutting, made him wince. The heater had disarmed his face and he had to squint his eyes to keep them from tearing.

  There was an automobile junkyard back here. It stretched for acres, amazing the eye. Most of the cars had been gutted of parts and now they sat on their wheel rims or axles like the victims of some awful plague who were too contagious to even be dragged to the dead-pit. Grilles with empty headlight sockets gazed at him raptly.

  He walked back out front. The mechanic was installing the muffler. An open bottle of Coke was balanced on a pile of tires to his right.

  He called to the mechanic: “Is Mr. Magliore in?” Talking to mechanics always made him feel like an asshole. He had gotten his first car twenty-four years ago, and talking to mechanics still made him feel like a pimply teenager.

  The mechanic looked over his shoulder and kept working his socket wrench. “Yeah, him and Mansey. Both in the office.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  He went into the office. The walls were imitation pine, the floor muddy squares of red and white linoleum. There were two old chairs with a pile of tattered magazines between them-Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, True Argosy. No one was sitting in the chairs. There was one door, probably leading to an inner office,
and on the left side, a little cubicle like a theater box office. A woman was sitting in there, working an adding machine. A yellow pencil was poked into her hair. A pair of harlequin glasses hung against her scant bosom, held by a rhinestone chain. He walked over to her, nervous now. He wet his lips before he spoke.

  “Excuse me.”

  She looked up. “Yes?”

  He had a crazy impulse to say: I’m here to see Sally One-Eye, bitch. Shake your tail.

  Instead, he said: “I have an appointment with Mr. Magliore.

  “You do?” She looked at him warily for a moment and then riffled through some slips on the table beside the adding machine. She pulled one out. “Your name is Dawes? Barton Dawes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Go right in.” She stretched her lips at him and began to peck at the adding machine again.

  He was very nervous. Surely they knew he had conned them. They were running some kind of midnight auto sales here, that much had been obvious from the way Mansey had spoken to him yesterday. And they knew he knew. Maybe it would be better to go right out the door, drive like hell to Monohan’s office, and maybe catch him before he left for Alaska or Timbuktu or wherever he would be leaving for.

  Finally, Freddy said. The man shows some sense.

  He walked over to the door in spite of Freddy, opened it, and stepped into the inner office. There were two men. The one behind the desk was fat and wearing heavy glasses. The other was razor thin and dressed in a salmon-pink sports coat that made him think of Vinnie. He was bending over the desk. They were looking at a J.C. Whitney catalogue.

  They looked up at him. Magliore smiled from behind his desk. The glasses made his eyes appear faded and enormous, like the yolks of poached eggs.

  “Mr. Dawes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Glad you could drop by. Want to shut the door?”

  “Okay.”

  He shut it. When he turned back, Magliore was no longer smiling. Neither was Mansey. They were just looking at him, and the room temperature seemed to have gone down twenty degrees.