He took the keys from Foster, and they started to the door.
The back pats and cheers were considerably slower and more reserved now. "You guys did a great job," somebody from the art department said to Brolan and Foster. Foster drunkenly issued his standard public relations line. "We couldn't have done it without everybody in the agency pitching in."
But Brolan was having a hard time talking at all. He felt he wanted to cry or smash something, or both.
2
BACK IN THE FIFTIES trips to downtown Minneapolis always meant a movie at the RKO Orpheum on Hennepin or the Radio City Theatre on South Ninth. Afterward you hung around the Rexall Jacobsen Drug Company trying to catch the attention of pretty Swedish girls who couldn't have cared less about your stupid grinning and flirting, and then checked out the latest copies of Mad and Amazing Stories (with those neat Valigurksy covers) or-if you were feeling especially brave-a magazine with pretty girls in it. In those days the tallest downtown building was the Foshay Tower, and the biggest events those involving Senator Hubert Humphrey and his rallies for such causes as old-age benefits and civil rights. Of course in those days the remnants of Minnesota's old Communist party still existed, though its members tended to be hard-headed Norwegians instead of soft-bellied Russians.
Brolan recalled all this as they made their way down Seventh Street to the parking garage. Foster was drunker than he'd thought, stumbling and weaving along, twice bumping into Brolan. In the graffiti-covered elevator taking them to the tenth story of the parking garage, Foster even cupped his mouth as if he were going to vomit.
"We did it, pally," Foster said when he said anything at all. "We did it. We picked up goddamn Down Home."
"Not we, my friend. You. I'm just along for the ride."
"You're the best copywriter round."
Brolan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. Foster had always been a brother to him, maybe to substitute for the brother he really had. Steve was a physician in Chicago, not only successful but a mass-going Catholic with a Betty Crocker wife and three Leave It to Beaver kids. The time Brolan's eighteen-year-old son, Rick, had been arrested for public intoxication at a Vikings game, Steve had called under the guise of commiserating. But actually Steve had wanted to remind his older brother what a mess he'd made of his personal life and say it was no wonder his eldest was carrying on in the same tradition.
In what he later had to admit was guilt, Brolan had exploded, telling his preening, perfect brother exactly what he thought of him and his Barbie doll family. Then he'd smashed the receiver down so hard, it pulled the wall phone from its moorings.
But with Foster it was different. Foster thought Brolan was crazy, too, but unlike Steve, he had a real affection for Brolan, even for Brolan's excesses. In fact, at a business retreat once, Foster had admitted that he sort of lived vicariously through Brolan. At least sometimes. All those babes.
So, it was easy for Brolan to like Foster. To feel protective of him, grateful for everything. To be always thanking him for the way he held the agency together and made sure they always made payroll (when you had thirty-nine employees, payroll was your cross and payday your Good Friday) and for the fact that each year they showed a better and better profit.
He was thinking all these fond things of his good pal Foster when the shorter man said, "Oh, shit," turned to the corner of the elevator, and let go with a stream of yellowish chunky barf.
"You okay?" brother Brolan said, trying to avoid exactly looking at the mess.
Foster nodded yes and gave him the thumbs-up sign and then started barfing again.
Brolan would sure hate to be the next guy who got on the elevator.
The parking garage smelled of the day's fading heat and car oil. Only a few vehicles sat in the shadows on the slanting floor. The cars, even Brolan's new 300-E Mercedes, looked like tired beasts dozing. The garage's low ceiling always made Brolan nervous. He suffered from mild claustrophobia. He could imagine the roofs caving in and his being buried alive, suffering for hours, gasping and crying out for each breath, pinned in the darkness and dust waiting for death itself.
They went past Foster's copper-coloured Jag. Foster didn't even look at it. Between his excess weight and the slanting floor, he was out of breath. "Son of a bitch," he said. "This is like mountain climbing." Then he added, "I'm so goddamned fat."
Brolan said what he always said, what Foster wanted him always to say. "You're not fat. You just need to lose a few pounds."
It was sort of like telling Brolan that his hair was really brown beneath all that white stuff.
"Sure, pally, sure," Foster said.
As they reached the car, Brolan thought he heard the exit door nearest them squawk shut. For a long, irrational moment there in the deep shadows of the garage, the smell of exhaust harsh in his nostrils, he had the sense that somebody had been watching him as he'd made his way with Foster up the ramp.
Then he thought he heard distant footsteps running down the concrete stairs behind the metal exit door.
But who would have been watching him, and why? He realised suddenly how isolated they were up here; how deep the shadows were; how far away the city seemed, even though they were in its belly.
He might have mentioned all this to Foster but what was the use of talking to somebody as drunk as Foster was?
He walked over to the Mercedes, the passenger side. First get Foster all squared away, all buckled up, then take care of himself.
"Can't find the old hole?" Foster laughed. "That's what I said to Suzie Simmons once. I can't find the hole, Suzie."
Brolan waggled the key in Foster's face to show that everything was all right.
Foster started to make another joke.
"Shut up," Brolan said quietly. "Please."
"What's wrong?"
But how could Brolan explain it? This sense of dread, of something wildly wrong in an otherwise familiar universe, some terrible sense that matters had gotten horribly out of hand?
"C'mon," he said, very sober now. "C'mon and get in the car."
A few minutes later they were wheeling out of the garage. On the steering wheel, Brolan's hands were trembling.
3
GREG WAGNER WOKE UP TO David Letterman's smirking at him. Actually Letterman was smirking at a young actress who'd just told him of her mystical experiences, but the camera had pushed in tight on the gap-toothed TV host, and so he gave the appearance of smirking directly at Greg. Of course by now, age thirty-two, Greg was used to people smirking at him. He was four feet nine, and spent a lot of time in his electric wheelchair. He'd been born with spina bifida. While the hump on his back had been diminished by surgery, he was still unable to feel anything in the lower part of his body. He could not always control his bowel or bladder functions. This made winning the hearts of beautiful women more than a little difficult
He had fallen asleep in front of the TV. His first thought on waking was:
She's dead.
He wasn't sure why he thought this, but he knew that it was more than a simple pessimistic thought. He knew-was somehow absolutely certain-that God, or something, had granted him the power to know her fate.
And he knew-despite the past twenty-four hours of hoping against hope-that she was dead.
Emma.
Dead.
He moved away from the TV set into the kitchen. The duplex had been built specially for him. He could wheel or walk anywhere inside it handily, quickly.
In the soft blue kitchen-"It's such a peaceful colour," the matronly decorator had clucked-he took a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and drank half of it down in three quick gulps. God, was he thirsty.
Taking more of the Coke, he looked around the kitchen. Actually he agreed with the gushy woman who'd decorated both sides of the duplex. This soft blue was a peaceful colour. The custom-built oak cabinets and antique drop leaf table, two ladder-back chairs, and Oriental rug also contributed to the sense of harmony and civility. Like the living room, with its beamed ceilings, deep leather furniture and built-in bookcases, the kitchen was a place where he could shut himself away. Inside this duplex he was the master. It was the world that was odd, not he.
Knowing he shouldn't-he hadn't been doing his exercises a lot lately-he went over to the refrigerator again. This time he got out a slice of balogna, folded it in half, and started munching on it. The fat content was probably something like 99.9%. Wonderful.
He went back to the living room, surprised that he'd been hungry in the first place. Because he knew she was dead. Knew it
A reddish glow from the fireplace flickered across the painting of Linda Darnell that hung to the right of the fireplace itself. Darnell was a beautiful actress from the forties, his favourite era. He collected fanatically all sorts of movie memorabilia, from pin-back movie star buttons with the likenesses of Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford on them (both from the early 1930s and worth a great deal of money) to original lobby cards that depicted such stars as Hedy Lamarr, Abbott and Costello, and Carmen Miranda. This was another means of escape, and how he loved it, entombing himself within the confines of the Technicolor fantasies of the forties-Ty Power as Zorro, Clark Gable as Rhett, and Alexis Smith as anybody. He thought Alexis Smith was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He played Stallion Road, her 1947 picture with Ronald Reagan, at least once a week on the VCR.
Only when he thought of his one and only trip to Las Vegas a few years before did he become depressed when confronted with all his movie memorabilia. In Vegas he'd met many of the people he'd corresponded with over the years, and while on paper they'd sounded like nice, normal people, they'd turned out to be sad oddballs. Just as desperate for love and acceptance as he was. He should have felt right at home-they seemed to be far more accepting of him with his curved back and wheelchair than he was of them-but he'd left after the first day, flown back home, and sat in his living room and cried. For the first time, he despised all his silly movie things-the Bette Davis doll, the Ruby Keeler ice cream cup lid, the painted plaster of Paris Rudolph Valentino-Vilma Banky Son of the Sheik bed lamp and incense burner-the pathetic little icons that gave him his pathetic little pleasures. Later, on that first night back from Vegas, he'd taken the black hard-wood walking cane he'd someday hoped to use (before the doctor said that particular operation would not be successful) and smashed half of what he'd owned.
Remembering that terrible night, he went over to the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialled Emma's number. Almost instantly the phone began ringing on the other side of the duplex, where Emma lived.
Correction: had lived.
The phone rang and rang, sounding lonely, mournful.
He had never deceived himself about Emma. She was no mental giant. But she was a beauty, and she was possibly the kindest, most tender person he'd ever known. Being a prostitute had not coarsened her in any way. She still retained that curious farm-girl innocence and the sweet, soft laugh, and when his own nights grew too long and treacherous-there'd been a few suicide attempts in the past, and she knew about them-she helped him from his chair and sat with him on the couch, her sweet white arm around him, and they watched TV, just as if they were real lovers; and one night, she let her breasts slip through the sheer fabric of her dressing gown, and he'd held them and kissed them and revelled in the acceptance and love they represented.
He listened to the phone ring a few more times.
Dead.
Setting the receiver back, he went over to the radio to see if there was any news of a body being discovered anywhere.
Sobbing overtook him, his slight body and enlarged head trembling, shaking with grief so violent, it hurt his back.
Emma.
Dead.
4
IN ST. LOUIS PARK new money drove Mercedes sedans and Jaguars and the occasional Ferrari. Old money still tended to drive Cadillacs and Lincolns. Brolan had lived here for the past six months, after getting a very good deal from an acquaintance of his whose agency was going down. The man was moving to the West Coast, too many people here mad at him. Chapter 11 tends to ruin friendships.
The house was a board-and-stucco English Tudor accented with a brick facade and a tall chimney. The front door was enclosed by a brick archway and opened on a vaulted and skylighted entry hall. The vaulted living room, stone hearth fireplace, and three bedrooms were way too much for a divorced man, but given the tax advantages the place gave Brolan, he couldn't afford to live anywhere else.
As he guided his car into the right stall of the two-car garage, the door having just lifted automatically, he glanced around the neighbourhood. No signs of life. His neighbours weren't the partying kind, especially not on a weeknight. With the window down, he shivered slightly. During the past half hour, he had felt the weather shift. Autumn was coming to an abrupt halt in the Twin Cities. This happened most years. Tuesday it was in the seventies; Wednesday it was in the twenties.
Then he thought about the parking garage, the sudden sense of dread he'd felt. And still felt. There was no explaining it… It was something he simply sensed.
"Wish my garage looked this good," Foster said.
"Huh?" Brolan said.
"Your garage."