“No problem,” Nolan said.
“I, uh... may need to stay a week.”
“No problem.”
“You really are a good friend, Nolan, underneath it all.”
Nolan said nothing. Then he turned to go.
Jon said, “Thanks, Nolan. G’night.”
“Night, kid.”
Nolan stepped out into the hall; then he peeked his head back in and said, “Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“Lose the mustache.”
7
Two weeks later, on a colder Sunday night, snow on the ground, Sherry was feeling pissed.
She had been invaded. It was as simple as that. This Jon person shows up, out of the blue, and simply moves in. Just like that. Like he fucking owned the place.
The screwy thing was, he and Nolan weren’t even particularly nice to each other. They rarely spoke. They went their own way. On no occasion in the two weeks since he’d been there had Jon ever eaten a meal with them — with the exception of Thanksgiving, last week. She’d made a turkey and all the fixings, a rarity, since she seldom cooked; she and Nolan ate at restaurants, sometimes their own, on weeknights, after the dining room closed; but more often one of the many other restaurants in the Cities: Nolan’s accountant had confirmed that if he ate his meals at rival restaurants, he could deduct the meals, on a basis of “checking out the competition.” So when Sherry made the grand gesture of actually cooking a meal at home — particularly something as elaborate as a turkey dinner — she would like to have the sullen son of a bitch all to herself, at least.
But, nooooooo — this “kid” (as Nolan called him — though he seemed to be in his mid-twenties) had to join them. Jon was polite enough, and praised the meal, more overtly than Nolan (but that was no big deal — her man was as stingy with his praise as he was with his money) but what little table talk there was was confined to the football game the two of them had just watched, that and the football game they would watch next, into the evening! Men. It was hard enough living with one — now she was living with two!
She and Jon had barely spoken as the days turned into weeks; he seemed to be avoiding her — and when he couldn’t avoid her, when he came face-to-face with her, he’d give her a twitch of a smile and avoid her eyes, avoid looking at her, as if he couldn’t bear to, as if she were something horrible to look upon.
It was early Sunday evening, and she was driving back to the house after a long afternoon of solitary shopping, at Brady Eighty’s chief rival, North Park. She had shopped there primarily to figuratively thumb her nose at Nolan. It drove him crazy when she shopped anywhere but Brady Eighty, because of the discounts she could get at their “home” mall. Normally, she lived and let live where his tight streak was concerned; after all, he provided a good home for her, and paid her a salary, a generous one, for her hostessing at Nolan’s. So she had her own money.
But she relished the pained look that would register on that Lee Van Cleef mug of his, when he saw the sacks from North Park stores.
“They don’t have a Limited at Brady Eighty,” she’d explain innocently, shrugging.
And he’d shake his head, eyes wide.
Childish of her, she supposed, as she tooled her midnight-blue Nissan 300 ZX across the bridge at Moline; the river tonight was smooth, shimmering with ivory, reflecting the three-quarter moon that rode the sky like a gray-smudged broken dinner plate. The fuel-injected toy she drove had been Nolan’s gift to her last Christmas. She felt a fool, and an ungrateful one at that, for considering him a Scrooge.
Who cared why he had affection for Jon? He clearly had it, despite his surly treatment of the “kid.” And Jon clearly looked up to Nolan, despite his efforts to stand up to him and be equally surly.
She knew the story. She knew Jon had been the nephew of a man named Planner, an old guy who ran an antique shop in Iowa City, who on antique-buying jaunts would seek out, scope out and scheme out what Nolan referred to, euphemistically, as “institutional jobs.” Robberies was what they were, and when Nolan had been on the outs with those Chicago gangsters, Planner had helped him line up “one last job,” asking Nolan to take Jon along, his green, young nephew, whose criminal experience had been limited to a couple of gas station stickups with several wild friends. As a favor to Planner, and out of desperation, Nolan had undertaken the job — a bank robbery — with Jon and those two wild friends, one of them a young woman who worked at the bank in question. The “job” had gone well enough, but shortly thereafter, the Chicago gangsters descended on Nolan, who got shot up, bad.
Jon, however, had stuck around after the “job” and spirited the wounded Nolan away, to safety and a doctor.
Maybe it was that simple — Jon had saved Nolan’s life, once; maybe that was what linked them. She knew, too, that the old antique shop guy, Planner, had later been killed by the Chicago people, and that Nolan felt responsible, and seemed to have taken the “kid” under his wing, after that. They’d pulled a couple more jobs and faded into separate, straight lives: Nolan with Nolan’s, Jon with this rock ’n’ roll band he traveled with.
He was also a cartoonist, Jon was, and apparently his rock ’n’ roll band had split up and his creative energy was being channeled into comic books, at the moment. He had set up a corner of the rec room downstairs, by the sliding glass doors facing the swimming pool (covered over with plastic now), where he could work in “natural light,” he said. He had a drawing board where he worked on big sheets of heavy white paper, drawing in pencil, then going over it in ink. He was really quite good — the drawings were realistic but pleasantly goofy; it was something about outer space, sort of a skewed Star Trek. She had found one of the comic books lying around and she had read it and found it amusing. She would hate to admit that, but she did find it amusing.
He was no trouble. None at all. Quiet. Living his own life. He filled the little refrigerator behind the bar with little cans of orange juice, which seemed to be his only breakfast. She didn’t know where he took his other meals — he was in and out, driving Nolan’s Trans Am, while his own vehicle, an old light blue Ford van from his band days, was at a nearby service station for some work. What he was doing with his time away from the house, she had no idea. Mostly he spent long, long hours at the drawing board.
The problem wasn’t Jon. The problem was his presence. This Las Vegas trip was coming up in two weeks. She had counted on having a month with Nolan to work on him. To put her plan in motion. To put it simply, her plan was to get Nolan to marry her — “on the spur of the moment” — in Vegas. In one of those charmingly sleazy little wedding chapels she’d read about. She would orchestrate it so it was his idea. Nolan was the kind of man who only acted on his own ideas; she knew that well — she’d been giving him ideas to have ever since she met him.
But having that extra person in the house was throwing things off kilter. Their sex life was off — she was uncomfortable having sex while somebody else roamed the house. Even though Jon stayed downstairs, she found herself trying not to make noise, during lovemaking, not wanting Jon to hear. Why she cared, exactly, she didn’t know; but she did. It bothered Nolan too, whether he knew it or not — their little ritual was undone: he could no longer go downstairs to shower while she luxuriously bathed and readied herself for him. They had to share the bathroom, and sharing a bathroom is a sure way to kill the mystery.
She loved this man so. He was all she had in the world; both her folks were gone, and her life without him had been a mess: a failed attempt at college; working as a waitress at a Denny’s, for Christ’s sake. To every other guy she’d ever known she was just a piece of ass. Nolan treated her like a person, with a certain unspoken respect. And he treated her like a piece of ass, too, when the time was right, and she liked that as well.