After the Workshop, page 5
“Yes. She checked in this morning. An early check-in.”
The woman typed away. The more the keys clattered, the hollower my stomach felt. She finally looked up and said, “I’m sorry, but she checked out an hour ago.”
“That can’t be right,” I said.
The woman nodded sympathetically and said, “No, I’m sorry, unfortunately it is right. She checked out.”
“Do you know who checked her out?”
“It wasn’t me.” She studied the computer screen, then said, “Charlie, come here.”
Charlie, with his shaggy hair and sad little goatee, looked like a beatnik, as did a lot of guys in Iowa City who were Charlie’s age—twenty-two, twenty-three, done with college but not sure what to do or where to go.
“Did you check out a Vanessa Roberts?” the woman asked Charlie.
Charlie said, “She have a baby?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yeah, I checked her out then.” Charlie studied me a moment then asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, there is,” I said. “I’m her escort.” When Charlie’s eyebrows raised, I said, “Media escort.”
Charlie smiled and said, “I was gonna say, dude, you don’t want to go announcing that in here.” When I didn’t return his smile, he said, “Yeah, she and the kid checked out. There was a bag back here waiting for her. For confidentiality reasons, I can’t tell you what was inside, but she took it out of the bag and tucked it under her arm.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Uh, no. Why would she do that?”
“Did she take a cab?”
“I didn’t look. Typically, we don’t follow our customers out the door.”
“I’m sorry, but are you getting smart with me?” I asked.
“I’m just saying . . .” Charlie said. He drummed his fingers. That’s when I saw the prison tats across his knuckles and realized I had seriously miscalculated who I was dealing with. One set of knuckles spelled LIFE, the other, DETH. I wanted to ask him how he had managed to get a job with tattooed knuckles, not to mention the rather egregious misspelling, but he was already making his way around the front desk to confront me face to face. “These questions,” he said. “I’m not sure you have a right to ask me. Do you have a badge or something? Oh, no, wait. You’re an escort.”
There are times when you know intuitively that it’s in everyone’s best interest to back off, and this exchange was almost certainly one of them. I’d seen it too often in bars, two men talking shit, the ante upped too quickly, everyone puffing up, and then a moment of eerie calm before someone throws a punch. These were explosive fights in which anything at hand became a weapon (beer bottles, pool cues, a dartboard), people ended up in the hospital or behind bars, half the furniture became next day’s kindling. Usually, innocent patrons ended up injured, sometimes from a thrown shot glass, though more likely from the losing pugilist tumbling into them, knocking them off a high stool. And so I saw this moment in the Sheraton for what it was: a fight, barely dormant, waiting for the first jab. And I wasn’t going to throw it.
“Thank you!” I said. I backed up, grinning. My teeth were pressed so hard together they squeaked. I was probably pumping my fists, too, but no matter: I was leaving. Everything would be fine.
I needed to make a few calls, but, as Lauren Castle had pointed out on numerous occasions, I didn’t own a cell phone. And as I had discovered recently while trying to call Lauren collect from the airport to inform her of a canceled flight, most pay phones didn’t work anymore.
“Shit,” I said, standing outside, cinching my coat tighter. The wind had picked up; clouds churned overhead. For lack of a better plan, I walked over to the bookstore to give them a heads-up that tonight’s literary luminary might not be showing up for her book signing after all, but once I arrived at the store and stared in at the elaborate window display of Vanessa’s book, I changed my mind. What if she had merely checked into a different hotel? What if I inadvertently set off a manhunt for a woman who wanted only better room service?
I slipped next door to Mickey’s, one of Iowa City’s many overpriced restaurants, and slid into a booth near the back. After ordering my food, I slumped down and spaced out. Back when I still believed that I was a writer, I spent all my time watching people. I used to bring a notepad with me, jotting down random details, like “crushed fedora,” “gimpy leg,” or “the forgotten dab of mustard on her chin.” These days, I merely stared ahead, into space, until my focus blurred.
“Jack?”
I looked up. It was Alice, my ex-fiancée, and she was covered in large snowflakes. Before today, I hadn’t seen her in years, and now I was seeing her everywhere I went.
“Alice!” I said. “It’s snowing?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. She started taking off her coat but paused to ask if I was expecting anyone. When I told her that I wasn’t, she continued slipping out of it. And then she joined me. “Jack, I’m sorry about this morning. I kind of freaked out. When I saw what you were buying, I thought . . .”
“That it was for me?”
“Not you, per se. Your wife. Thinking that you were married and I didn’t know about it just . . . well, it kind of freaked me out a little.”
My wife. I smiled.
Alice said, “But then I remembered your job. The whole escort thing. And then I realized what you were trying to tell me. And then I Googled what’s-her-name.”
“Vanessa Roberts?”
Alice nodded. “I saw that she was married and had a baby. And that she was on a book tour.” She looked like she wanted to say something else.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing. I guess I just started feeling guilty. I mean, here I am feeling shitty that you might be married, and yet—”
“What?”
Alice shook her head. Whatever she was about to tell me, she had decided not to. I didn’t press. She said, “That book. It looks terrible.” She made a face and shivered.
“It is,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t actually read it yet, but I can just imagine.”
Alice said, “The publisher says it’s a memoir in the same league as Richard Wright’s Black Boy or Elie Wiesel’s Night. Who writes this garbage?”
“The author, usually,” I said. “Or the author’s editor.”
“The Outhouse!” Alice said and harrumphed. “What a load of crap.”
I smiled. This was the Alice I had fallen in love with, a woman who cut quickly through bone and gristle, pulled out the still-pumping heart, and held it up for everyone to see.
“The Outhouse indeed,” I said. I was cheered that Alice had sought me out, so I asked, “How did you find me?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I came in to grab a bite to eat and saw you sitting here. You looked so sad.”
“Really? I did?” I smiled to prove her otherwise. “I’m fine,” I said. “No worries. Just a long day.”
When the waitress took Alice’s order, I asked for another draw of Bud.
“I’ll take one, too,” Alice said. And it was like old times again, the two of us meeting at Mickey’s for dinner, settling in for the day’s gossip over ice-cold beer. I ordered four more Buds over the course of the afternoon. To my surprise, Alice matched me mug for mug. When we paid up and stepped outside, I helped her on with her jacket. The flakes of falling snow were preposterously large and sticking to every surface, including my face.
“Oh, damn it,” she said. “I’m parked all the way across the river.”
“My car’s just over here,” I said, pointing to the hotel. “In the parking garage. Want a lift?”
It was less than an hour now before Vanessa’s event. I peeked into the bookstore’s window, but I had a good buzz going, and my eye was easily distracted. Instead of Vanessa Roberts, I saw Tate Rinehart standing near the front table of new releases, reading a copy of his own book. When he looked up, I smiled at him and he smiled back, but then his brow furrowed and he cocked his head. He’d recognized me, or, more likely, thought he’d recognized me but couldn’t quite remember who I was, despite the two of us having spent thirty minutes together only a few hours earlier.
In the parking garage, Alice and I were forced to walk up one ramp and then another instead of taking the stairs, like civilized humans, since I had foolishly forgotten where I’d parked.
“Click the button to unlock your doors,” she said. “Maybe you’ll hear it beep.”
“The locks are manual.”
In a voice that was more playful than critical, she asked, “Are you still driving that old Toyota?”
“Yup,” I said. “Only 155,000 miles on it.”
“Good God!”
“And there it is!” I wheezed, pointing.
Inside the car, I shoved my key into the ignition, but instead of starting the car, I turned and caught Alice staring at me.
“What?” I said, smiling.
“What?” she repeated.
It wasn’t, I supposed, the best place to rekindle a romance, but I knew if I didn’t do something right then, I might not get another chance. I leaned over the emergency brake and kissed Alice, and Alice kissed me back.
“Who’d have thought this morning,” I said, “that we’d be here now doing this?”
“Shhhh,” she said, unzipping my coat. “No talking.”
“It’s cold in here,” I said.
“Start the car.”
“And these bucket seats,” I said. “They’re not very—what’s the word—conducive.”
“We’ll use the backseat,” she said.
“Well, look at you,” I said. “Xavier Hollander.”
“Who?”
“No one,” I said.
“Just get the heater going,” she said.
And I did. We slipped into the backseat and, with our pants pulled either partway down or entirely off, and with buttons and clasps and zippers manipulated by cold, stiff fingers, we somehow managed, in such cramped and unkempt quarters, to engage in a kind of sex more appropriate for couples half our age: teenagers with no place to go and not entirely sure what they’re doing, confused by both the complexities and realities of anatomy. We weren’t confused so much as we were tipsy, and Alice had to whisper, “No, no, not there” and “Are you still inside me?” more times than I would have liked, and on two occasions Alice stepped down hard onto something sharp on my floorboard. “Ouch!” she yelled the first time. “I think I cut my toe on a bottle cap,” and then, a few minutes later, “Is it possible you have a cheese grater back here?” “It’s possible,” I said, remembering that I had bought one at Target a month earlier but couldn’t find it when I had gotten home and unpacked my purchases. I had even called the store manager to complain. And now here it was, slicing my ex-fiancée’s foot as she tried positioning herself for better leverage.
When we were done and lying across the Toyota’s backseat (designed, I was fairly certain, without two overdressed Iowa lovers in mind), Alice whispered into my ear, “My big toe is throbbing.”
“I would imagine,” I said, catching my breath. “Are you bleeding?”
“Maybe,” she said. She crossed her leg and examined her foot. “Yes,” she said, “I’m bleeding.”
“Oh,” I said, but neither of us took any action. I worried that the reason we were so lethargic wasn’t because of the sex but because deadly blue-gray exhaust had been seeping through a crack in the floorboard and we were now starting to asphyxiate—but then Alice sat bolt-upright and said, “Whew! That was refreshing.” She clasped her bra and buttoned her blouse. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you escorting today? Didn’t you need to bring what’s-her-name to the bookstore? It’s already past seven.”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t tell you,” I said. “She checked out of her hotel.”
“Really?” Alice said. “Where did she go?”
“I dunno,” I said.
“Oh well,” Alice said, pulling up her underwear. “You can write your own memoir now. Call it The Backseat.”
“Get this,” I said, and I told her about Vanessa Roberts’s husband calling the publicist, worried that his wife was suffering from postpartum psychosis. “Do you believe that shit?” I said.
Alice stopped putting on her shoes and raised up. “And you don’t know where she is?”
“Not a clue!” I said, smiling. But even as I said this, I realized that these were simple dots to connect, and that I had been less than diligent, especially since I hadn’t even called Lauren back to tell her that Vanessa had checked out of the hotel.
“And you think this is funny?” Alice asked. “I mean, she has her baby with her, right?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“No,” Alice said, putting up her hand. She didn’t want to hear any more. “This woman’s probably in trouble, God only knows what kind of danger that poor baby is in, and here we are screwing in the backseat of your car.”
“Well, for starters, we’re not really screwing right this second,” I clarified.
Alice finished getting dressed, opened the door, and flung herself up and out of the Toyota. I had expected the passenger door to open and for Alice to slide back inside so that I could drive her across the river to her own car, but she was already halfway down the parking garage ramp when I opened my door and climbed out.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Don’t you need a ride?”
Alice kept walking. I got back into my car, slammed the door, and backed out of the space, hoping to catch up with her, but by the time I rounded the corner, Alice had either ducked into a stairwell or disappeared into thin air. She was nowhere to be seen.
11
I LEFT MY CAR in the parking garage and trudged back to the bookstore. Snow was already ankle-deep, and college students, usually sidled up to a bar by now, were outside playing in it. A few hard-packed snowballs whizzed past my head. Whether or not I was their target, I couldn’t tell.
There are few pleasures quite like walking into an independent bookstore on a snowy evening, and tonight was no exception. Once inside, I stomped my feet and said hello to Eileen, who was working the cash register and had been an employee there before I was a student at the Workshop. Other fellow night travelers had come in from the snow, wearing knit caps and scarves, their gloves tucked into their pockets as they perused the latest New York publishing had to offer. Here we were, all lovers of literature, gathered together on a night straight out of a Dickens novel. I half-hoped to look out the window and see Tiny Tim atop Bob Cratchit’s shoulders, but no: All I saw was an undergrad writing SUCK ME in the snow that covered somebody’s car while another guy bent over and pressed his ass against the car’s front door, hoping for an accurate imprint.
I climbed the stairs to where the author readings were held, but the only people up there were one of the store employees folding chairs and Tate Rinehart.
“Where is she?” Tate asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I looked everywhere.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Tate said.
I shrugged. “She checked out of the hotel. That’s all I know.”
Tate’s lips tightened into two worms spooning. He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “Vince? Yeah, Tate. Listen, the reading was canceled. Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I’m here with someone you know, though.” Tate looked up at me. “What’s your name again?”
“Jack Sheahan,” I said.
“Jack Sheahan?” Tate said into the phone. “She? Han? Says you two were in the Workshop together? Yeah, well, anyway . . . he’s my escort, so tell me where we should meet, and he can take me there. Sounds good, brother. See you shortly.” He closed the cell phone and said, “You know George’s?”
I nodded. Of course I knew George’s.
Tate picked up his canvas messenger bag and slipped it over his shoulder. “Vince is meeting us there,” Tate said. “I hope you don’t mind hanging out with us tonight. It’ll probably be just a drink or two, and then you can take me back to the hotel. Sound good?”
“Sounds great,” I said. “But I need to make a call first.”
I walked behind the abandoned information desk, picked up the phone as though I worked there, and called my neighbor, M. Cat.
“Yo,” M. Cat said, picking up before the phone could even ring on my end.
“M. Cat? It’s Jack.”
“Jack who?”
“Your neighbor.”
“Dude,” he said. “Dude!That lady—the one from New York—she’s been calling here every fifteen minutes looking for you. Apparently, that chick you’re in charge of checked out of her hotel, and now this crazy chick—the one from New York—is fucking pissed, dude. She is pissed.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “Easy. I know she checked out.”
“Do you have any idea just how pissed this insane New York chick is?” M. Cat asked. “She wants to string you up by your cojones. And for a chick, she swears a lot. You need to call her cell. You got a pen? You got some paper?”
“Listen. I’m not calling her,” I said. “But I need your help. There’s two hundred bucks in it for you.”
“Two hundred?” I heard M. Cat take a long hit on his bong. In a high-pitched voice still full of smoke, M. Cat said, “Do tell.”
What I told him was that I needed him to find Vanessa Roberts. I needed him to call all the hotels and motels, and once he found her, he would have to drive out there to make sure that she was okay. If need be, he should spend the night in the lobby to make sure she didn’t go anywhere she shouldn’t be going.
“Now here’s the thing,” I said. “According to Lauren”—I cleared my throat—“you know, the crazy New York chick Vanessa, may be experiencing postpartum psychosis. Do you want to hear the symptoms?”
M. Cat said, “Hey, man, I almost went to medical school. I know what postpartum psychosis is.”
“So you know how serious it is?” I asked.
M. Cat snorted. “Dude, I’m on it.” Before I could ask him to keep me updated via my answering machine, he hung up.
I turned to Tate, who was holding a recently reissued Stanislaw Lem novel that he’d written the introduction for. “Ready?” I asked.
