Koko. Peter Straub
overseas, and I’m trying to help him out. You don’t have to tell me he tapes like a sailor on a three-day drunk – I’m doing what I can for him.’ He looked at Conor, but could not meet his eyes for long. ‘I wish I could say something else, Red, but I can’t. You’re a good little worker.’
‘I suppose I was on a picnic the whole time I was in Nam.’ Conor shook his head and clamped his mouth shut.
‘I’ll give you a couple extra days’ pay. There’ll be another job, come this summer.’
Summer was a long time coming but Conor said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I got something else lined up. I’m gonna take a trip.’
Roehm awkwardly waved him away. ‘Stay out of the bars.’
2
When Conor got back to Water Street in South Norwalk, he realized that he could remember nothing that had happened since he had left Ben Roehm. It was as though he had fallen asleep when he mounted the Harley and awakened when he switched it off in front of his apartment building. He felt tired, empty, depressed. Conor didn’t know how he had avoided an accident, driving all the way home in a trance. He didn’t know why he was still alive.
He checked his mailbox out of habit. Among the usual junk mail addressed to ‘Resident’ and appeals from Connecticut politicians was a long, white, hand-addressed envelope bearing a New York postmark.
Conor took his mail upstairs, threw the junk into the wastebasket, and took a beer out of his refrigerator. When he looked into the mirror over the kitchen sink, he saw lines in his forehead and pouches under his eyes. He looked sick – middle-aged and sick. Conor turned on the television, dropped his coat on his only chair, and flopped onto the bed. He tore open the white envelope, having delayed this action as long as possible. Then he peered into the envelope. It contained a long blue rectangle of paper. Conor pulled the check from the envelope and examined it. After a moment of confusion and disbelief, he reread the writing on the face of the check. It was made out for two thousand dollars, payable to Conor Linklater, and had been signed by Harold J. Beevers. Conor picked the envelope up off his chest, looked inside it again, and found a note: All systems go! I’ll be in touch about the flight. Regards, Harry (Beans!)
3
After Conor had gazed at the check for a long, long time, he replaced both it and the note in the envelope and tried to figure out somewhere safe to put it. If he put the envelope on the chair he might sit on it, and if he put it on the bed, he might bundle it up with the sheets when he went to the laundromat. He worried that if he put it on top of the TV he might get drunk and mistake it for garbage. Eventually Conor decided on the refigerator. He got out of bed, bent to open the refrigerator door, and carefully placed the envelope on the empty shelf, directly beneath a six-pack of Molson’s Ale.
He splashed water on his face, flattened his hair across his skull with his brush, and changed into the black denim and corduroy clothing he had worn to Washington.
Conor walked to Donovan’s and drank four boilermakers before anyone else came in. He didn’t know if he was happier over getting the traveling money than miserable about losing his job, or more miserable about losing his job because of that asshole Woyzak than happy about the money. He decided after a while that he was more happy than miserable, which called for another drink.
Eventually the bar filled up. Conor stared at a nice-looking woman until he began to feel like a coward and got off his stool to talk to her. She was in training to do something in computers. (At a certain point in the evening, about sixty percent of the women in Donovan’s were in training to do something in computers.) They had a few drinks together. Conor asked her if she would like to see his funny little apartment. She told him he was a funny little guy and said yes.
‘You’re a real homebody, aren’t you?’ the girl asked Conor when he turned on the light in his apartment.
After they had made love, the girl finally asked him about the lumps spread across his back and over his belly. ‘Agent Orange,’ he said. ‘I sort of wish I could teach them to move around, spell out words, shit like that.’
He woke up alone with a hangover, wishing he could see Mike Poole and talk to him about Agent Orange, wondering about Tim Underhill.
1
‘Well, here it is,’ Michael said. ‘There’s a medical conference in Singapore next January, and the organizers are offering reduced fares on the flight over.’
He looked up from his copy of American Physician. Judy’s only response was to tighten her lips and stare at the ‘Today’ show. She was eating her breakfast standing up at the central butcher-block counter while Michael sat alone at the long kitchen table, also of butcher block. Three years before, Judy had declared that their kitchen was obsolete, insulting, useless, and demanded a renovation. Now she ate standing up every morning, separated from him by eight feet of overpriced wood.
‘What’s the topic of the conference?’ She continued to look at the television.
‘“The Pediatrics of Trauma.” Subtitled “The Trauma of Pediatrics.”’
Judy gave him a half-amused, half-derisive glance before taking a crisp bite out of a piece of toast.
‘Everything should work out. If we have any luck, we ought to be able to find Underhill and settle things in a week or two. And an extra week is built into the tickets.’
When Judy kept staring silently at the television set, Michael asked, ‘Did you hear Conor’s message on my machine yesterday?’
‘Why should I start listening to your messages?’
‘Harry Beevers sent Conor a check for two thousand to cover his expenses.’
No response.
‘Conor couldn’t believe it.’
‘Do you think they were right to give Tom Brokaw’s job to Bryant Gumble? I always thought he seemed a little lightweight.’
‘I always liked him.’
‘Well, there you are.’ Judy turned away to place her nearly spotless plate and empty coffee cup into the dishwasher.
‘Is that all you have to say?’
Judy whirled around. She was visibly controlling herself. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Am I allowed to say more? I miss Tom Brokaw in the mornings. How’s that? In fact, sometimes Old Tom kind of turned me on.’ Judy had ended the physical side of their marriage four years before, in 1978, when their son Robert – Robbie – had died of cancer. ‘The show doesn’t seem as interesting anymore, like a lot of things. But I guess these things happen, don’t they? Strange things happen to forty-one-year-old husbands.’ She looked at her watch, then gave Michael a flat, sizzling glance. ‘I have about twenty minutes to get to school. You know how to pick your moments.’
‘You still haven’t said anything about the trip.’
She sighed. ‘Where do you suppose Harry got the money he sent to Conor? Pat Caldwell called up last week and said Harry gave her some fairy tale about a government mission.’
‘Oh.’ Michael said nothing for a moment. ‘Beevers likes to think of himself as James Bond. But it doesn’t really matter where he got the money.’
‘I wish I knew why it is so important for you to run away to Singapore with a couple of lunatics, in search of another lunatic.’ Judy tugged furiously at the hem of her short brocade jacket and for a second reminded Michael of Pat Caldwell. She wore no makeup, and there were ashy streaks of grey in her short blonde hair.
Then