Around this same time—I was in my late twenties—I wrote and published a crappy little novel, a formulaic thriller that looks increasingly dated and implausible. An agent who was an old college acquaintance of my father sold the book as a paperback original to a fairly prominent publisher, and I received an advance that was nothing if not modest. I was excited by the prospects and felt certain that I was on my way to a career as a writer. There were several delays in the book’s publication—which I was assured was quite routine—and I had to wait more than two years for its arrival in bookstores, only to have all my confidence instantly transformed to outright shame by the appearance of a blurb—attributed to, of all people, Karl Malden—splashed across the front cover: “I really enjoyed this book!”
As far as I know the book received exactly one review, a brief and entirely dismissive notice in the Minneapolis paper. Greer, from his cloister in prison, somehow managed to get his hands on that review, which he was kind enough to send to me along with a snide critique of his own.
The Friday afternoon that Greer was released from prison, Janice had driven out to Stillwater to pick him up. That evening we hosted—very much against my wishes—a party at our home in northeast Minneapolis. This was the second time I’d been forced to celebrate in a similar manner Greer’s surely undeserved freedom, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what there was to celebrate. My wife, unfortunately, had inherited her mother’s denial as surely as Francis had received his no-account criminal disposition from his father.
It was a mercifully small gathering. Slim Chung and Gilbert Borocha were there, as well as Greer’s mother (lurching around the room with a cigarette clenched in her teeth and her oxygen rack gripped in her emaciated fist) and a handful of people who were mostly strangers to me. I had to hand it to Greer. He was a smooth and handsome character, a first-rate actor who could charm the pants off the most chaste woman in any room. He worked the party like he was running for office, and as the rest of the guests became progressively more inebriated, he never seemed to show the effects of the prodigious amounts of alcohol he was consuming.
It had been my understanding that Francis would not be staying at our house the night of the party, but as had so often been the case, my understanding was seriously flawed. After the last of the guests departed, he was still there at my kitchen table regaling Janice with some story, and a short time later my wife was hauling blankets and pillows out into the living room to make up Greer’s bed on the couch.
Disgusted, I went up the stairs to my study. I had papers to correct and my mood was darkening by the hour. It was never good news when Greer showed up on my doorstep, and I thought I had noticed some clearly conspiratorial conversations between Francis, Borocha, and Slim Chung at several points in the evening. When Janice came up to bed I gave her the silent treatment. It was impossible to talk with her about Francis without setting off a prolonged argument.
I later ventured downstairs (I have a difficult time sleeping under the best of circumstances, and having Francis Greer under my roof made me even more restless than usual) and found him sprawled on the couch watching a pay-for-view porn movie on my television.
“That’s going to show up on my records,” I said to him.
“Yeah, Richie, I’m sure those records are of a great deal of interest to many people,” Greer said. “Someone’s probably scrutinizing them as we speak.”
“You’ve been away, Francis,” I said. “Things have changed. That sort of information is widely and irresponsibly disseminated these days. The real issue here is that I don’t recall you asking my permission to dick around with my cable. You do understand that I’ll be billed for that?”
“Relax, Rich. I’ll go out first thing in the morning and sell some plasma so I can repay you your seven bucks. Would that make you happy?”
“What would make me very happy,” I said, “was if you would go out first thing in the morning and find someplace else to stay. You must have friends here. Janice has mentioned that you were corresponding with a number of women while you were in prison.”
“Those were old women, Richie. Christians.”
“I’m sure old Christian women have homes and spare bedrooms,” I said.
“Fuck you, Rich,” Greer said. “You’ve really been getting on my nerves.”
“I’d like nothing better than to get on your nerves, Francis,” I told him. “You’ve already brought more than enough trouble into my life. So fuck you, too, and goodnight. And I’m absolutely serious: I want you out of here first thing in the morning.”
The next morning Janice came up to tell me that Francis was gone. She was alarmed and wanted to know if I had any idea of where he might be. I told her, of course, that I had no clue, which was certainly the truth. I had no intention of recounting the conversation I’d had with Greer before I went up to bed. Janice was visibly upset and a short time later she left in a sulk for her part-time job at Target.
As I sat down to drink my morning coffee and read the newspaper it occurred to me that this was the day we were to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoatat the State Theater downtown. We had planned to have dinner somewhere beforehand. I went over to the bulletin board in the kitchen, where the tickets had been pinned next to the calendar. My intention was simply to confirm the date, but I discovered that the tickets were gone.
At this point Francis Greer couldn’t have been further from my mind. There were any number of things in my home that I might have suspected Greer of stealing, but tickets to a Broadway show were not among them. I called Janice on her cell phone.
“Do you have the tickets to that Donny Osmond show?” I asked her.
“Oh shit, that’s tonight, isn’t it?” she said. “They’re on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”
“They’re not there. And what’s with this ‘oh shit’ business? I thought you wanted to see that fucking show.”
“I did,” Janice said. “But look, Richard, I just heard from Francis. He told me that you kicked him out of the house in the middle of the night. He’s very hurt.”
“Jesus, Janice, I did no such thing. Francis is a pathological liar.”
“Francis might be a lot of things, Richard, but one thing he’s not is a liar.”
“That just goes to show you how good of a liar he is,” I said. “If you honestly believe I kicked him out of the house in the middle of the night, you’re out of your mind. I simply asked him what his plans were.”
“Last night wasn’t the time for that, Richard. Francis hadn’t even been out of jail for twenty-four hours.”
“Prison, Janice,” I said. “Francis was in prison. There’s a difference there I think you should be aware of.”
“Oh fuck, Richard. I don’t have time for this.”
“Where the hell are those tickets?” I asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Janice said. “I just told you. They were on the bulletin board.”
“They’re not there. Are you sure you didn’t put them in your purse or something?”
“I’m positive. I never touched those tickets, and I don’t feel like going to the damn thing now, anyway. I told Francis I would meet up with him later.”
“Jesus, Janice,” I said. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She hung up the phone.
I spent the morning fuming, and tried with little success to get through the pile of freshmen composition papers on my desk. By late morning I was sitting in the living room with the blinds drawn, drinking beer and watching women’s beach volleyball. The phone rang at one point and when I answered I heard only silence on the other line, and then whoever was calling hung up on me. I checked the number on the caller-ID and saw that it was from a pay phone in Columbia Heights.