Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien

  “Us?”

  “Well, naturally. And she’s going to the dean unless we do something fast.”

  I issued a small, appreciative chuckle. “In my experience,” I said calmly, “a little denial goes a long way. There’s no proof, right?”

  Tony sighed. “Well,” she said, far too slowly.

  “Well what?”

  “My stupid diary,” she moaned. “I wrote down a few things. About the thesis. About you and me. And now that rotten, rat-fucking Megan, she’s bringing it to the dean.”

  I shut my eyes. The word diary, like its close relative ledger, immediately took its place in my interior dictionary. (Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will truly crush us. Do not forget Fiji, where your ex-husband now inhabits a little grass shack by the sea, his nights lighted by a trillion stars and a willowy young redhead named Sandra. Is Fiji still Fiji? Does not the word redhead make your tummy turn? So, too, with me, the word diary.) I could not be blamed, in any event, for feeling a wave of trepidation; my priggish colleagues would have trouble understanding the joys of a closely supervised tutorial.

  “The whole story.” I sighed. “Start at the start. I’ll need every detail.”

  “I already told you.”

  “Everything. Pretend it’s life and death.”

  It required ten minutes of stern interrogation, but I eventually learned that Toni and her roommate had fallen out over a trivial matter involving the university’s hapless football team. The particulars were difficult to follow, but apparently Toni had “borrowed” a certain young linebacker for an evening, a chap who happened to be Megan’s personal chattel. Escalation ensued. Push came to shove.

  “What gets me,” Toni whined, “is they barely even knew each other. It’s not like they were married or engaged or anything.”

  (Engaged: Do I make my point?)

  “So you entertained this gentleman?” I inquired. “Your roommate’s boyfriend?”

  “Well, yeah. And Jake too.”

  “Jake would be …?”

  “Megan’s backup. He’s a wide receiver. It’s really childish, if you know what I mean, but she got pretty mad at me. She went out and did Ronny.”

  “Did?”

  “Did. The usual.” Toni yawned and curled up on my desk. “Ronny was mine. Cute guy. Naturally I had to get back at her—I had to—so I did Sid.”

  “You did Sid?”

  “Yeah, I did.” She blinked at me, then glared. “This isn’t the time for bullshit. You’d better come up with something fast.”

  Briefly, my gaze fell to her thighs.

  It was a temptation, I must say, but decency and common sense prevailed. (Betrothed is betrothed.) Fond as I was of this tasty side dish, I could not condone such escapades, or participate, and yet even so I felt a sharp stab of jealousy at Toni’s indiscriminate ways. Plainly, I was not the only barracuda in this mermaid’s steamy sea.

  “The diary,” I said. “Incriminating?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “And this meddling roommate—where would I find her?”

  “At the dorm,” said Toni. “She’s there right now. I mean, if you can fix this, maybe then we’ll see about …”

  Provocatively, she let the sentence slither off into the romantic underbrush.

  “Done,” I said.

  Not an hour later, I was in face-to-face negotiations with the roommate in question, Miss Megan Rooney, a creature of smallish stature but multiple charms. I was dazzled: a pinup girl for gnomes. This choice little tidbit topped out at four feet eight—barely visible from my lofty elevation—yet each taut, symmetrical, hard-won inch counted at least double on the Chippering erotometer. (Long chestnut hair. Enchanting hindquarters. Amoral gray eyes.)

  Fearing refusal, I had not telephoned for an appointment, instead simply announcing myself over the dormitory intercom. After a disgraceful thirty-two-minute delay, the young lady made her appearance, dressed in the fashionable togs of the day: black tights, short pleated skirt, yellow scarf, clashing red shirt. She led me into the very sitting room in which Toni and I had spent so many happy hours communing over Western wedding vows.

  Miss Rooney’s posture was slack, her attitude insolent.

  “So where’s my slut roommate?” she mumbled. “Afraid to face me, I suppose.”

  I gave her a severe smile. “As far as I am able to ascertain,” I replied, “neither one of you lacks for nerve. This is between you and me.”

  I then went straight to the point.

  She was in the presence, I explained, of a war hero, a recipient of the Silver Star for valor, and therefore not one to be trifled with. (A rare instance in which a Chippering sentence labored under the weight of a misplaced preposition.) I informed the little tigress that actions carry consequences, that Judas eventually found himself at the end of a rope, that tit will almost inevitably lead to disastrous tat.

  The microscopic Miss Rooney seemed less than overwhelmed.

  “If that’s a threat,” she squeaked, “you’re in even deeper shit. You better just watch it.”

  “Is that right?” I said. Her tinny voice had distracted me. Like a Saturday-morning cartoon character—a talking flea, perhaps, or an inch worm. Moreover, despite the serious business at hand, I could not help but admire the girl’s scaled-down physique. Toothsome, I thought. (An engaged man, yes, but not yet blind to our glorious, ever bountiful world.)

  I sat beside her on a sofa, reducing our height differential, and then proceeded to outline several compelling arguments in behalf of discretion.

  The simple cliché, I had long ago discovered, is almost always effective with the sophomoric crowd, and I now employed the device in abundance. (No need to rock the boat. Let bygones be bygones. Do unto others. Cast no stones.) My tone remained firm, to be sure, but I tempered these remarks with the occasional gesture of sympathy: a reassuring squeeze of the knee, an avuncular stroke of the hair.

  “Believe me, I completely understand the situation,” I said gently, even soothingly. “And I’m sure it’s all very upsetting. Jake and Ronny and Sid. I know how treason feels.”

  The diminutive Megan rolled her eyes.

  “What about Geoff?” she said. “I had dibs on him. A punter, and really cute, and he’ll be a kabillionaire someday.”

  “Punters,” I said stiffly, “were not mentioned.”

  “I just bet they weren’t. Or Billy Bob. Or Jumbo Tomilson.” She looked at me with something close to anguish. “How would you feel? I mean, it’s like she’s hogging the whole stupid team.”

  Again, I had not been given all the facts—barely half, as it turned out. It occurred to me, however, that there was something to be said for the brutish sport of football. Although far from successful on the gridiron, these Golden Gophers certainly had no want of offensive punch and thenceforth I would be following their fortunes with a much keener eye.

  I shifted position on the sofa, sliding closer to Miss Rooney.

  “You’re right, the numbers don’t lie,” I said rather smoothly. “A breathtaking body count by any standard. Your roommate, if I may say so, appears to be—what’s the proper term?—perhaps something of a glutton.”

  “A porker!” Megan cried. “A sow!”

  I nodded compassionately. I put a calming hand to the small of her back.

  “Sow, indeed,” I said. “And clearly you’re the victim here. You’ve been swindled, I dare say—shortchanged in the punter department—but all the same I see no reason to strike back at the blameless. I’m a mere spectator, after all. Consigned to the bleachers.”

  I transferred my hand to her stomach.

  (Her red shirt had slipped upward a revealing inch or two. Serendipity, of course, yet I found myself examining the tiniest navel I had ever encountered, taut and mysterious, an inverted little thimble that positively beckoned my pinkie.)

  “The point,” I said shakily, “is that you needn’t involve me. I’m an innocent in all this—driven snow, et cete
ra.”

  “What a laugh,” Megan muttered. “Innocent.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So get your hooks off me.”

  I smiled. “A mere plug of lint. Consider me your chimney sweep.”

  “Off!” she piped.

  The girl jerked away.

  “Toni was right,” Megan said, and tugged down her shirt. “I mean, Jesus, you really are a pompous old jerk. Fucking desperate too.”

  I sniffed at this. “Incorrect,” I said. “On all counts.”

  “I’ve got the diary! I’ve got you!”

  “Perhaps so,” I said. “And I must insist upon its instantaneous return.”

  Megan laughed her squeaky laugh. “Get real. It’s all there in black and white, so you’d better start looking for a job in … in the Yukon.”

  “Yes?”

  “Or Siberia!”

  Under the circumstances, to be frank, her suggestion struck me as tempting. Recent developments had strained my emotional boundaries, and for a few moments I envisioned life in the cool, uncomplicated confines of a north-country igloo. No visitors. Certainly no women. Perhaps a perimeter of land mines to keep out the riffraff.

  It was this image, in part, that brought a quaver to my voice.

  Inexplicably, my breath came in quick, raspy gobs.

  And then out of the blue, without forethought, I heard myself issuing the most shameless pleas, nearly sobbing, an altogether loathsome performance that even at the time shocked and embarrassed me. Yet I could not stop. (Stress, no doubt. Too many irons, too hot a fire.) My voice sailed up a full octave, high-pitched and hollowed out, and for an instant it seemed that this sudden squeaky condition had been transmitted to me by way of a terrible new virus.

  Disgusting, yes, but my little outburst paid off.

  The girl finally sighed. “Jeez, all right,” she said. “I guess we can figure something out. Keep your spit off me.”

  I sat up straight.

  “A solution?” I said.

  “Maybe. Let me think.”

  Once again, her taut little navel had worked its way into my field of vision. The girl frowned, ran a hand across her stomach, then smiled with pygmy pleasure.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “I hear you have a way with words.”

  “God’s gift,” I admitted.

  “So let’s do business.”

  It was a straightforward transaction. The young lady was a junior; her thesis was not due for nearly a year; we had time to burn. On the downside, to be sure, Megan was an art history major, one of the few subjects in which I am less than wholly versed. Still: no problem. For years, through thick and thin, I had been a fervent, even zealous believer in the value of adult education.

  I nearly giggled.

  By all rights, I had driven a merciless bargain. Quickly, before she could add to my work load, I shook the girl’s hand, turned on my heel, and walked away a victorious and much lightened individual.

  Outside, Toni paced the sidewalk.

  “Done,” I said happily. “It’s fixed.”

  “Nifty. What about my diary?”

  I pulled the little volume from my breast pocket, began to hand it to her, then halted.

  In an age chilled by purgative sexual politics, feminine extortion has become the bane of all who trod the bleak, arctic halls of academia.

  I returned the diary to my pocket.

  “Safety first,” I said.

  But this was hurricane season. The torrents did not abate.

  That evening, at the conclusion of the dinner hour, Mrs. Robert Kooshof leaned back in her chair and announced with devious solemnity that she had acquired the services of an attorney in Owago. She had initiated divorce proceedings; her incarcerated husband-beast had been alerted via certified letter; her house was up for sale; she had begun the tedious labor of assembling a bridal trousseau. That very day, in fact, she had spotted the ideal engagement ring—a trove of diamonds nestled in solid gold—and had taken the liberty of putting down a modest deposit in my behalf.

  As I digested these facts, along with Mrs. Robert Kooshof’s Swiss steak and scantily mashed potatoes, I was startled to hear my telephone awaken from its long slumber.

  Mrs. Kooshof smiled.

  “And a new phone,” she said brightly. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Fiancée or otherwise, she had no right. Already, in our short relationship, the woman had rearranged my furniture, repainted the den, cluttered the bathroom with feminine contrivances of every stripe, and roundly criticized the remaining decor as “Bunker Sterile.” (Amazing, is it not, how quickly the conjugal contract takes effect? How the words “I will” have all the potency of their linguistic kissing cousins “I do”? Familiarity breeds cheekiness, if not outright contempt.)

  Now the telephone.

  Sulking, I rose to my feet and plodded down a hallway to the squealing electronic beast, only to be greeted by the unhappy voice of Lorna Sue’s tycoon.

  “You fucker,” he began.

  Beyond that, his language eluded me—a blue streak, a biblical blur—but the essential nut of it seemed reasonably clear. Lorna Sue had left him. She was threatening divorce. He blamed me. (There was a reference, I am quite sure, to certain purple undergarments.) The man’s voice was bellicose. And he was not calling from Tampa. He was in a phone booth down the street, in possession of a hockey stick, and wished for an interview.

  I begged off with a few choice words, none consolatory, and abruptly replaced the receiver. A moment later, even before I had processed the momentous news, my new telephone once again bawled for attention. “It’s me,” Toni said. (I had no time to correct her grammar.) Next came a hooting noise, then young Megan’s squeaky voice: “Yeah, man, and me!” Drunkenly, giggling like the silly schoolgirls they were, the duo requested my presence at an evening soirée in progress along fraternity row. “The whole team’s here,” said Toni. “We need you to run interference.”

  I glanced down the hallway.

  “Interference,” I said crossly, “seems right up your own dark alley.”

  “Oh, come on!” said Megan. “Rock ‘n’ roll, Tommy!”

  Tersely, with no further effort at decorum, I explained that I could not make it. I alluded to storm clouds. “Believe me,” I told them. “When it rains, it pours.”

  “What rain?” said Toni.

  Megan laughed and said, “Wear your rubbers, tiger.”

  Again I declined.

  Again I replaced the receiver.

  And again I had taken not three steps when the phone once more injected its venom into my fragile, fast-beating heart. Lorna Sue this time. Her voice sounded shaky, the connection full of static, but I gathered she was calling from a DC-10 winging its way northward from Tampa.

  She wanted me back.

  She forgave me everything.

  “I’ll be there,” she said, “in an hour.”

  “An hour?” I said.

  “Right. Maybe less.”

  My dreams, in a sense, had come true, yet I confess that it was a bewildering moment for me. Telephonic overload, in part. A gorged sensation. Mrs. Kooshof’s spicy Swiss steak still lingered on my palate. “Splendid,” I whispered. “But let’s make it tomorrow.”

  There was an intake of breath at the other end of the line. “What’s wrong with right now?” said Lorna Sue. “Is somebody there?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well, I can’t see why—”

  “Tomorrow,” I repeated. “At the office. Be sure to knock.”

  As I moved back to the dinner table, reeling, it struck me that my pitiful little life had taken on complications that might test the sturdiest human constitution. A love triangle was one thing; this had assumed the shape of a heptagon.

  “So who was it?” said Mrs. Kooshof.

  I shrugged and thought fast. “My travel agent. She recommends Siberia.”

  There was a brief respite, then another telephonic clap of thunder
.

  Herbie.

  He was calling from the Tampa airport.

  His flight departed at midnight.

  He would be looking me up in the very near future.

  “Home wrecker,” he snarled, which I found nothing if not ironic, but by that point it was hard to pay heed to each drop in the bucket, each cat and dog.

  The phone exploded once more as we were preparing for bed. I did not blink an eye. Sur moi le déluge.

  Wearily, I picked up the receiver and listened for a few moments to the inspired jailhouse invective of Mr. Robert (Doc) Kooshof. Large portions of the conversation went over my head, but I was given to understand that I was now a dead man. In one particularly poetic passage, the good doctor referred to me as a “wife-fucking motherfucker,” a phrase of such inanity that I could not withhold a small chuckle. Which was a tactical error: The gentleman had no sense of humor, nor would he listen to reason when I attempted to explain that I was laughing not at but with him. “Here’s the skinny,” Doc hissed. “She’s my motherfucking wife. You marry her, I’ll make it a funeral. Same flowers. Same church.”

  I thanked him and staggered back to bed, where Mrs. Kooshof lay waiting in all her immodest Dutch splendor.

  I was a dead man.

  Why not?

  ——

  Then again at midnight.

  Groggily, now envisioning a retaliatory raid upon the grave of Alexander Graham Bell, I reached for the foul instrument at bedside.

  “Hey, jerkoff,” said a voice from my distant past. “Guess who?”

  “Spider,” I sighed.

  “Yeah, man, Spider,” said Spider. “And guess what else?”

  “I’m a dead man?”

  “Ooooo! Right as rain!”

  I nodded at the dark. In the face of this drencher there was little worth saying.

  “You there, man?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Ain’t that the truth? More or less. Anyhow, this is just a reminder that we got your number, Tommy. And we also got these super-duper, extra-sticky memories.” He laughed at this. In the background, barely audible, were several other familiar voices. “You want to talk to Tulip? Bonnie Prince Charming?”