The Essential W. P. Kinsella Read online

  “If you thought offering her a thousand a trick was expensive . . .”

  “It costs what it costs,” said Lieberman. “Money is not the object. I’m in love.”

  “How nice,” said Shaleen. “So, how do you want me to handle the situation?”

  “Remember the report I ordered from the detective? I’ll get it for you. It’s full of photographs. It details his every move, gives the complete history of his life. It tells everything but the length of his peter.”

  “I’ll check it out and let you know,” said Shaleen. “Maybe there’s a reason why she likes him. Maybe he’s well hung. Now, do I tell him I’m a hooker?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ll play it by ear. Some guys would be real excited to think a hooker has fallen in love with them, that they’re getting free what everybody else has to pay for. Then again, some guys would be mortally offended to find out the sweet girl they think they’re in love with is available to anybody with the money. By the end of the first evening I’ll know which kind he is.”

  “It will be easier than stealing sand off Waikiki,” said Shaleen. She had stopped by Lieberman’s condominium after her first evening with Larry McInally. “He’s a nice, pleasant, boring kid from Creede, Colorado, who went to college on an ROTC scholarship, married a cheerleader, and thinks he’s a great lover.”

  “Is he?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s 28 years old, was probably laid three times in his life in the back of someone’s car at a drive-in movie before he married what’s-her-name? He equates being a good lover to banging me all the way through the mattress to the floor. If he was mine, I’d give him his own fucking manhole cover to play with so he could leave me alone. He thinks pussy is made out of steel.”

  “You’re seeing him again?”

  “Of course. When do you want me to move him in with me, tomorrow or the next day?”

  “A couple of weeks at least, but keep him overnight next time. I want Kate to know she has a problem.”

  “I can’t imagine it, Lieberman, you’re in love with a fucking cheerleader.”

  The next time they met for lunch, Kate was distracted. No matter what Lieberman said, he couldn’t make her laugh. She picked at her food. What made it worse for Lieberman was that he knew exactly what was wrong: Larry McInally had spent the two previous nights with Shaleen.

  “It really hurts me to see her suffer,” Lieberman told Shaleen over the phone, late that afternoon. “What if I break them up and then Kate doesn’t fall in love with me? I don’t think I could live with that.”

  “Developing a conscience, are we? What do you want me to do, feel sorry for you, Lieberman? By the way, dear little Larry is thrilled to death about my being a hooker. He’s already planning to get out of the service as soon as his hitch is up; while I will continue to earn my living on my back. I think he sees himself in a ruffled shirt, wearing mirrored sunglasses and spending my trick money on stretch limousines and cocaine. He wonders why I burst out laughing for no reason while we’re getting it on.”

  “Don’t frighten him off,” said Lieberman.

  “You know I don’t think I’ve ever frightened a trick off. I know at least 30 other ways to make a john come, but never by fright.”

  “Just remember how much I’m paying you,” said Lieberman. “That should help you to control your laughter.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you for help if I wasn’t desperate,” Kate said at lunch a few days later. She was wearing the white dress with the green palm frond, the one Lieberman found so attractive. She reached across the table and took Lieberman’s hands in hers. “I don’t know what else to do, where else to turn,” she went on, her voice breaking. Her eyes were red from crying, her cheeks blotchy. Lieberman had never loved her more.

  “I know you like me . . . maybe more . . . ,” Kate said.

  “Much more,” said Lieberman.

  “That’s why what I’m going to ask you is so awful. If you say no, I’ll understand.”

  “Try me,” said Lieberman.

  “I followed him,” Kate said. “I hired a taxi and followed him to her building. I asked the security guard what unit he went to, and he told me. That was at five o’clock last night. I waited outside for seven hours. At midnight I decided he wasn’t going to be leaving, so I got the phone number from the security guard. She has a silent listing. I phoned, but all I got was her answering service. So I rang the apartment on the intercom, and when she answered I told her who I was and asked her to send Larry home so I could talk to her. The security man let me sit in his office until Larry left. Then I went upstairs.

  “I can never compete with her,” Kate cried. “She’s beautiful and rich and one of her dresses is worth more than everything I own. She was very nice to me. Her name is Shaleen Berger. She owns her own investment business. Larry’s madly in love with her. He’s planning on moving in with her next week. And she’s going to let him. But she’s not as crazy for him as he is for her. She hinted around, intimated that if I had some money, or if I had a rich friend who would help me out, that she could be bought off.”

  Kate held tightly to Lieberman’s hands. Her green eyes had a wildness in them.

  “I don’t have any money. I thought maybe you could loan me enough to pay her off. I really love him. I don’t care if that sounds dumb. I just do. I’d pay you back,” she rushed on. “And—I’ll do anything for you. You know what I mean. I’ll go back to your place with you right now, if you’ll promise to help me. I know how cruel this must seem, but if you love me, will you talk to Shaleen? Will you pay her what she wants to stay away from Larry?”

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help you out,” Lieberman said. “And you won’t owe me a thing. I appreciate your offer, but I’d never take advantage of such a situation. I only hope Larry knows what a lucky young man he is.”

  Though he didn’t need to, Lieberman copied down Shaleen’s name, address, and phone number.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Lieberman screamed into the phone.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” said Shaleen coyly. “I didn’t want to spoil your fun. I thought you’d be in bed with her, instead of spoiling my afternoon.”

  “You’ve ruined everything,” roared Lieberman. “I’m coming over, now!”

  “You do that, it sounds as if you need somebody to talk to. Whores are always good listeners.”

  On the way to her apartment, Lieberman considered ways of killing Shaleen. No hired killer for her. He visualized killing her himself, strangling her slowly, shooting her, using a knife. He discarded the methods one by one. He was not, and never had been, a violent man. Was that true? he wondered. He remembered a time years before, when his business was new. Union thugs had demanded a hefty percentage of his profits from a highrise he was building in return for keeping the site free of labor strife. He arranged to meet them at the construction site. As their car drove up, he’d dropped a concrete block from the fifth floor of the skeletal building. He could still see the glass of the windshield rising like water into the midnight air.

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Shaleen said, after Lieberman rumbled into her apartment. “If there’s anybody who knows I can be bought, it should be you.”

  “Why didn’t you send her away? Why didn’t you tell her you were taking her husband, like it or not? It would have sent her straight into my arms.”

  “But she was so nice,” said Shaleen. “The sacrifices some people are willing to make for love just got the better of me. If she’d come in with her claws out, screeching, I’d have been hard as nails, but she was just so sweet. She could see she was outclassed. I wanted to give her some hope. I suggested she might have a rich friend she could turn to for help. It was just a thought. How was I to know? I’d never seen her before,” and she smiled at Lieberman, pursing her lips in an exaggerated manner.

  “How much are you supposedly asking to send her husband back to her?”

  Shaleen named a figur
e that caused Lieberman’s eyebrows to involuntarily lift nearly half an inch.

  “There’s a condo two floors up that’s for sale for just that amount. I need a little security for my old age,” said Shaleen.

  “You don’t think I’m actually going to pay you. You were working for me. You’ve already double-crossed me.”

  “Think how good it’ll feel to help young love triumph, Lieberman. Besides, you wouldn’t want me to tell poor little Kate that you paid me to seduce her husband. Your little cheerleader is going to get misty-eyed every time she thinks of you for the next 40 years; she’ll tell her grandchildren the story of how this wonderful man loved her so much he paid off the evil woman who was taking her husband away from her. You’re too much of a romantic to pass up a chance to make the noble gesture of the century.”

  Lieberman, trapped like an insect on flypaper, wrote Shaleen the check.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he said hollowly as he passed it to her.

  “Told you never to trust a whore,” said Shaleen.

  He met Kate for lunch the next day.

  “It’s all arranged,” he told her.

  “I know,” said Kate. “She broke off with Larry last night. He came crawling home begging for forgiveness.”

  “And you forgave him?”

  Kate smiled sadly.

  “I’ll pay you back,” she whispered. “I’m flying home to Oklahoma City for a few weeks, kind of to get my head together, you know. Then I’ll start paying you back. And the other still applies.”

  Lieberman declined graciously. A tear oozed out of one of Kate’s green eyes and sat on her cheek like a jewel. Lieberman kissed her goodbye, his heart breaking. He wondered what Shaleen had told her. Kate seemed to think there was only a few thousand dollars involved. He was tempted to tell her the truth; she knew the value of a condo on one of the top floors of Yacht Harbor Towers. But Lieberman was too much of a gentleman. He wished Kate well and assured her she need not pay back the money.

  Lieberman felt very old in the mornings. He did not open the blinds. He thought of flying back to Denver. He again turned to an escort service for company. The results were most unsatisfactory.

  It was during the third week of his mourning that Shaleen phoned.

  “I’m coming over,” she said.

  “I didn’t call you,” said Lieberman. “What you cost I can’t afford.”

  “Tonight is free,” said Shaleen. “I owe you that much.”

  “And perhaps an invitation to your housewarming?” said Lieberman.

  Shaleen arrived all in white, the tips of her golden hair, frosted; several thousand dollars in gold chains circled her neck and wrists. “I saved you a lot of grief,” said Shaleen.

  “Did I ask to be saved?” glowered Lieberman.

  “You didn’t want to be married to a cheerleader. Incidentally, I didn’t buy the condo. I used the money to pay Kate off.”

  “For what?” said Lieberman.

  “To go home to the mainland and forget about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Aw, Lieberman, somebody had to look after your best interests. Your cheerleader might not be an intellectual, but everything you did was so obvious you might as well have carried flashcards. Actually it wasn’t Kate who came to see me, it was me who went to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, Larry McInally is a jerk. She was delighted to get rid of him. You could have had her anytime from the second lunch on, but you were just too backward to see it. She decided, since there was so much at stake, to play things your way, not frighten you off.”

  “Then she really cared for me.”

  “She thought she did. But, as we’ve both always said, Lieberman, everybody has their price.”

  “You really paid her off?”

  Shaleen nodded.

  “You paid her off with my money!”

  “I’m only willing to go so far. What do you want from me, Lieberman, a declaration of love?”

  “How much of my money did you give her? How much did you pocket?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “It would be interesting to know how much I’m worth to you.”

  “Fraid not,” said Shaleen. “A working girl’s got to have some secrets.”

  “I suppose you think I’m not in love with her, that I was never in love with her,” Lieberman said. It was almost a cry.

  “That’s what I think,” said Shaleen.

  “I suppose you think I’m in love with you,” wailed Lieberman.

  “That’s what I think,” said Shaleen.

  Lieberman sighed.

  “We deserve each other, Lieberman. We’re both interested in ourselves first. We’re ambitious, and we don’t give a fuck for ethics. You don’t have any business messing around with sad little cheerleaders from Oklahoma City. You’ll thank me for what I did, again and again, as the years go by. But tell me, Lieberman, what happens when two people who care mainly for themselves get together? One of them is going to have the upper hand.”

  “I know,” said Lieberman.

  “I wonder if you do? Remember, Lieberman, I don’t have a heart of gold. I’m interested in gold.”

  “I understand,” said Lieberman.

  “I’ll spend your money. There’ll be a premarital agreement. What’s yours is mine, what’s mine’s my own.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll keep my trick book. There’ll be other lovers . . . whoever and whenever I say. I only have to go to Denver once a year, in the summer, and for no more than 14 days. There’ll be times when I’ll embarrass you, Lieberman. I’ll dress like a whore when I meet your relatives. You’ll look like a foolish old man . . .”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll sleep with your sons.”

  Lieberman crossed the room, reached out his hand to Shaleen, pulled her to her feet and into his arms.

  “I’ve been widowed once,” he said into her golden hair. “It could happen again.”

  Shaleen laughed into his shoulder. Lieberman thrilled to the sound.

  The Grecian Urn

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Japanese red herring

  The mail slot in the door to my house is taped open. It measures 9½” x 1¼” and is 11” above the step. There is an empty Japanese orange box on the front step, and a three-inch-thick foam pillow on the floor just inside the door. I have placed food and water on the floor at strategic locations throughout the house, in red plastic dishes that once belonged to our cat.

  My son argues that with winter fast approaching it is uneconomical to have the mail slot taped open. He is nineteen, in second year university, majoring in civil engineering and doing very well. He has a very attractive girlfriend named Tanya, with a dark red, pouty mouth and exceedingly large breasts. My son often asks just exactly what it is that I expect to come through the slot. I tell him to trust his father.

  Recently, and inexplicably to everyone but myself, I have committed some rather bizarre little crimes. To explain to the authorities the perfectly logical reasons for my criminal activity would, as I see it, be far worse than simply accepting the consequences. Explanation would cause me to reveal a story far too ludicrous to be believed. It is, I contend, far better to let everyone concerned assume that for reasons unknown, I, Charles Bristow, age 49, have gone a little, no, more than a little, strange. I am, I must admit, a particularly inept criminal. It is, I suppose, because I have had no practice. Until very recently I was a most average member of the community.

  Suddenly becoming a criminal, and an inept one at that, is to say the least a traumatic experience. As a sort of last resort, perhaps in the way of therapy, although I am not at all sure about that, I am doing my best to convince everyone except my son that I am mentally deranged. I think I am going to try to blame my misfortune on the male menopause, about which I read a very interesting article in a back issue of the Reader’s Digest.

  A few weeks ago, if anyone had told me that I
would be attempting to convince people that I am insane, I would have laughed at them. Widowed for some two years, I lived quietly in my own home, mortgage-free, with my son. I was employed as a minor bureaucrat in the city civil service, and had held my position for some 30 years. I am currently under suspension without pay, pending disposition of the criminal charges against me. I gardened, bowled Tuesday nights, attended a church-sponsored friendship gathering on Saturday evenings, and subscribed to a book of the month club.

  As yet I have refused to discuss Allan or the urn while I am being held for psychiatric evaluation here at the J. Walter Ives Institute for the Emotionally Disturbed. Everyone knows about the urn. No one knows about Allan. The first time I was arrested, the night I broke the Grecian Urn, I was let out on bail, charged with wilful damage and possession of burglar tools, to wit: a hammer and chisel. The next time the charge was trespassing by night, followed by loitering, followed by a second trespassing by night charge, at which time my bail was rescinded and I was remanded in custody for fourteen days for psychiatric evaluation. Seven of those days have passed.

  I have submitted to a battery of tests: described my feelings toward my parents, tried to remember if I was bottle- or breast-fed, played with blocks and looked at ink blots.

  Unthinkingly, I chose to use the hospital phone to call my son and plead with him to leave the mail slot open. When all rational arguments failed I ordered him to leave it open, reminding him that I paid his tuition to university as well as the utility bills.

  My son complains that Tanya won’t come to the house since she learned of my strange behaviour. I sympathize with him. She used to come over Tuesdays and Saturdays, my nights out. It was seldom mentioned between us, but I could always tell because the air would be heavy with her perfume when I arrived home. Soon after Tanya began visiting our home regularly, my son took to washing his own sheets. I am quite proud of him.

  The phone was apparently tapped. The doctors were smiling like slit throats the next day. They must also have talked to my son, for they were inordinately interested in the Japanese orange box on the front step. I denied everything, even phoning my son. However, during the interview I doodled a number of Japanese flags on the paper in front of me and also wrote, Remember Pearl Harbor, in a tiny, cramped hand, quite unlike my own. As I left the room, nonchalantly whistling “Over There,” they converged on the paper like baying hounds.