A squat man with bristly red hair sauntered directly to the bar at the Marriot Hotel lounge. "Gimme a boilermaker, Freddy." The fellow, who spoke with a thick Scottish brogue, sported a tuxedo with five onyx studs decorating the front of his pleated shirt below a shiny black bowtie. A strong chin complimented fair-skinned, boyish features. The bartender went off to fix his drink. "Chevas Regal,” he barked. “Not that rotgut you pass off on regular customers."
The dapper fellow turned to the man seated at his right. "What you drinking?"
"Coke, that's all.” Ralph Tucker lifted a glass with a watery brownish liquid. Half the ice had already melted away. “I'm trying to keep a clear head."
The Scotsman eyed him curiously. The bartender, a lanky, middle-age fellow with sagging jowls and a doleful expression, returned with the drink. "Woman troubles?"
Ralph nodded once but held his tongue. "I'm with the band," the fellow explained. "Paddy Macgregor." The two men shook hands. "We're playing a wedding in the next room over." Having said that, he reached for the shot glass, threw the liquor down his throat then followed up with a stiff swig of beer.
"Isn't it a bit early to be hitting the sauce, if you got to work all night?"
The man's pale blue eyes sparkled as he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "My family hails from Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. Unlike the stumblebum Irish, who can't hold their liquor, women, paychecks, land or much of anything else, we Scotsmen have no such problem. The man extended his right hand, palm down over the bar. The stubby fingers never trembled. Reaching into his rear pocket he removed a pair of metal brushes and began tapping out a percussive drum rhythm at breakneck speed on the mahogany surface of the bar. After a few fancy flourishes he returned the brushes to his pocket, polished off what remained of the beer and ordered another whiskey with beer chaser.
"Our friend's got woman problems."
"Don't we all," the bartender replied.
"No, it's not like that," Ralph insisted. "Years back, this girl threw me over for a guy with a six-figure income. In June her husband got caught embezzling funds at the investment firm where he worked. A week after the indictment, the chump drops dead of a heart attack, leaving behind massive debts and a mortgage six months in arrears."
"Aw shit!" Paddy sipped judiciously at the neat whiskey and ran a tongue over his lips. "When's the last time you seen this dame?"
"Twenty years ago," Ralph replied meekly, "back in my college days."
The bartender's bushy eyebrows heaved in disbelief. "Twenty years you carried a torch for some worthless female?"
"Maybe she was a dazzling beauty?" Paddy offered.
"Not especially. But she had a reasonably nice figure."
"My ex-wife," the bartender leaned closer, "was partial to dirty movies. For the first few years of our marriage, we shared a common interest." Even though the man behind the bar was a good ten years older than the drummer, his wearisome manner and dreary horse face made him seem considerably older.
Ralph shrugged philosophically. "No, we didn't have much in common. Sometimes you just love a woman for no apparent reason. The romance defies logic." He sliced the air with the flat of his hand trying to make coherent sense out of his fractured thoughts. "This woman … I never properly got her out of my system."
"I ain't so particular." The drummer lifted his beer and studied the amber liquid briefly before draining the glass. "Anyone of the bridesmaids in tonight's wedding party, with the exception of the two-ton maid of honor, could satisfy my carnal needs."
"Ditto!" The bartender screwed up his face in masochistic angst. "Between alimony and shared assets, my spouse cleaned me out in the divorce settlement." He bent over the counter assuming a confidential tone. "I don't need no money-grubbing bitch to fill in the missing pieces or make me whole. You're problem, if you don't mind me saying so, is you're too damn nice."
"C-H-U-M-P!" With a staccato flourish, Paddy Macgregor spelled the word out, leaning hard on each letter for dramatic effect. "Once you start indulging a skirt, you lose the upper hand." Paddy threw an arm around Ralph’s shoulder and pulled him close. "Don't take it personal. I'm just trying to school you in the ways of the flesh."
Ralph first heard about Becky Steinberg's troubles from a mutual friend, Sid Bentley. "Becky's down on her luck... sort of like Lily Bart, that pathetic character, in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth," Sid observed acidly. The fellow was as much an insatiable gossip as avid reader. When no comment was forthcoming, he added, "You know, the novel about the New York socialite who plummets into abject poverty."
"Never read the book," Ralph replied.
"Under the circumstances," his friend added, "maybe you should keep it that way."
It was Sid who told him about the indictment and Becky's precipitous fall from grace. The revelation left him utterly morose.
Paddy Macgregor slid off his stool and grabbed the beer. "I gotta finish setting up my drums."
When he was gone, the bartender pushed a plastic bowl of pretzels in front of Ralph. A minute passed in total silence. "Ever seen a crocodile leather belt?"
"Yeah," the bartender replied. "They're stupid looking and cost a goddamn fortune."
Ralph reached for a pretzel but thought better of it and pulled his hand away. "Ever seen an Orvis, genuine hornback crocodile belt?"
* * * * *
"Here’s why I can’t marry you, Ralphy." They were standing in the women's department of Ann Taylor at the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, Massachusetts. Big boned with prominent cheeks that sloped precipitously to a narrow jaw, Becky Steinberg was the sort of girl most men wouldn't give a second look. She was too klutzy, a regular Amazon. She walked flatfooted with her wide shoulders thrown back and weight of her body resting on the heels as though a metal pole had been taped from the nape of the neck straight down to the tailbone.
Becky Steinberg dangled a skinny, emerald strand with a gold clasp under his nose. The Orvis genuine hornback crocodile belt retailed for five hundred ninety-eight dollars.
Six hundred smackers! That was more money than Ralph would earn weekly as a college graduate at an entry-level salary! And it wasn't even all that attractive. Ralph swallowed hard. With her predilection towards plumpness, Becky's waist would swell beyond the outermost loop by early spring and then what? Did she try to sell the absurdly expensive designer original on EBay or through an upscale consignment shop? "You're gonna blow all that money on a stupid belt?"
"No," she returned the strap to the rack. "I already own one that I picked up at Bergdorf Goodman when I was in New York last month. I'm just trying to make a point."
Becky's father owned a kosher butcher shop in Manhattan. The man gave his only daughter an American Express Platinum credit card three years earlier when she went off to college. He didn't care how often daddy's-little-girl used it. Each month he paid the balance down to nothing. The tacit agreement was that Becky marry well. That is to say, the prospective groom had to arrive at the altar with a healthy investment portfolio because, once the marriage was consummated, Mr. Steinberg's American Express credit card became defunct.
"I’m addicted to fancy-schmancy." Becky ran her fingertips over the stippled surface of the Orvis original one last time, caressing the elegant hide. "When I'm in New York, a trip to the boutiques on Madison Avenue is like a pilgrimage to Mecca."
Ralph was going to point out that most Moslems could only afford the trip once in a lifetime, but clearly that wasn't her intent. "You won't marry me?"
"No and, for the hundredth time, stop asking." She leaned over and kissed him playfully on the side of the mouth. Becky, who never agreed to an exclusive relationship, was seeing other men and probably sleeping with them as well. She visited facial salons and booked regular appointments with a masseuse. Over the February vacation she joined her family at a ski resort in Vale, Colorado - all this on a part-time job and her father's American Express Platinum card. "I love spending money... it's part of my genetic makeup."
They were back out in the main concourse of the mall where a jazz quartet from the local high school was playing a Sonny Rollin's original, Oleo, on a makeshift bandstand. "All this shopping makes me horny. When we get back to my apartment, I'm going to do obscene and unspeakable things to your body."
"As soon as you find Mr. Moneybags," Ralph ignored the invitation, "you're gonna give me the bum's rush."
"That's a bit crass." The saxophonist finished the melody and now the pianist was negotiating the circle of fourths pattern that composed the bridge of the lightening fast, bebop tune. She grabbed his hand, raised it to her lips and planted a mushy kiss squarely in the center of the palm before folding the fingers back on themselves. "We get along great and always have a ton of laughs." As the last eight measures of the standard wound down, the reed player launched into an angular, improvised solo favoring pentatonic scales and broken arpeggios that ventured off from the original tonal center before the rhythm section, which had laid out for several measures, attacked the tune with renewed fury. "I'm horny as hell," she whispered under her breath. "Let's go home and get raunchy."
* * * * *
Ten minutes later Paddy Macgregor returned to the lounge. He didn't seem quite so steady on his legs anymore, and his eyes were coated with a glossy film. "Hit me again, Freddy."
"So what’s the decision?" the drummer pressed.
"Still considering my options," Ralph parried the question.
The drummer pulled the bowtie away from the collar and undid the topmost button on his tuxedo shirt. Somewhere between the bandstand and the bar, he had discarded the stylish jacket. "She cheated on you."
"We never had an exclusive relationship," Ralph qualified.
"Likeguysed," the drummer was beginning to garble his words together in a verbal salad, "the louse donyadirdy." Paddy paused just long enough to upend the shot glass, emptying the contents down his gullet. The drummer slapped Ralph on the back and winked his bleary-eyed, moral support before rushing back to the bandstand.
Ralph glanced up at the bartender. "How long have you known that man?"
"Paddy's been with the house band five years now. He's an alcoholic in denial."
"Can he make it through the night?"
Freddy shook his head. "Not hardly. I'm afraid that demonstration of fancy brushwork earlier this evening may have been his high water mark." The bartender slung the towel he had been polishing the countertop with down on the brass rail and lurched out from behind the bar. "Come with me." Freddy led the way two doors down to the Emerald Room function hall, where the band was playing a waltz, Sunrise, Sunset. Paddy Macgregor was seated behind the drums laying down a raggedy beat with only his right drumstick and left foot. The other hand hung limply at his side and his head slouched at a precipitous angle, the chin resting on his chest.
As they were heading back to the lounge Ralph asked, "The jokes taken aside, if you found yourself in my predicament, what would you do?"
"Aw, shit, I dunno! Life's a crapshoot." Freddie spoke in a rough drawl like someone whose train wreck of a personal life had run off the rails more often than he cared to remember. "The dame has probably got a drawer full of genuine crocodile belts so why lose sleep over the selfish twit." Freddy raised a hand in the air, indicating that he had something further to add but was struggling with his thoughts. "They got a term for women like her... hedonist. Yeah, that's it! Someone who puts her own needs and personal pleasure ahead of everyone else's." Freddy seemed particularly pleased with his appraisal. "She got what she wanted and don't deserve your sympathy any more than that swindler-of-a-husband."
"Hedonist," Ralph repeated. "Yes, that's true enough. She sure as hell indulged herself."
"They're worse than atheists," Freddy confirmed, "because they got no scruples,… no morals." His droopy face convulsed with a bewildering mix of conflicted emotions. "What if you went back with this woman and she treated you same as before?"
"Wouldn't make a bit of difference."
"Squandered your money and was unfaithful as a Babylonian whore?"
"I'd forgive her on a daily basis and thank God for the privilege of a second chance at happiness."
The bartender gawked at him in disbelief. "In my capacity here at the hotel, I meet a lot of unusual people - eccentrics, psychopaths, weirdoes, homicidal maniacs, perverts and assorted whack jobs," Freddy ventured, "but I ain't never run across anyone like you."
"I'll take that as a compliment." Ralph paid his tab and wandered out into the lobby where he dialed a number on his cell phone. After a brief conversation, he left the hotel and drove across town.
* * * * *
Rebecca Steinberg led Ralph into the living room, where the forty-watt bulb in a Tiffany lamp bathed the room in murky gloom. She pulled a white bed sheet off the leather sofa so he could sit down. Everything was in boxes, under cover or in profound disarray. "I didn't come to gloat," Ralph confessed.
"I appreciate your candor. What's it been… twenty years?"
"Closer to twenty-five," he confirmed.
"Most of my former, A-list friends," Becky observed with a papery-thin smile, "have deleted my number from their cell phones."
Ralph glanced around the dreary, airless room. The furnishings were all high end - high end and high maintenance. A sixty-inch, plasma TV hung on the wall over the fire place with a wireless hookup to an array of quadraphonic Bose speakers. The custom-built bar was trimmed with ebony and claret-colored rosewood. The exotic woods alone must have set the deceased back a small fortune. Not that household expenditures concerned the former Mr. Steinberg any more. "Have you eaten?"
"Haven’t much of an appetite lately."
Ralph rose to his feet and rearranged the eggshell white, silk bed sheet back over the couch. He wanted to flee the place, which felt more like a mausoleum than a home. "Maybe we could go somewhere and grab a coffee. I know you’re busy with the foreclosure proceedings and won't keep you long."
He shouldn't have said that. Becky never mentioned anything about the bank. He learned that unsavory tidbit from Sid, their mutual friend. At some point in the near future, a marshal would arrive at the front door to put Rebecca Steinberg out on the curb. The saving and checking accounts drained dry, the woman had exhausted every legal loophole. She had even pawned all her jewelry and disposable belongings. Nothing remained.
"I'm going to live with my daughter in San Diego, while I get my affairs in order."
"That's nice."
Becky shrugged. "At this late hour, choices are fairly limited. The bank intends to change the locks and board up the windows by the middle of the month."
"What arrangements did you make regarding the property?" It wasn't so much a house as mini-mansion with kidney-shaped swimming pool, wraparound deck and two-car garage.
"Nothing really. A week from Tuesday, I'll set the keys on the kitchen table, close the door behind me and never look back."
The sun was setting casting an even gloomier pall on the soon-to-be-abandoned house situated in a swanky section of Brandenburg just over the Attleboro line. A developer constructed three, split-level capes on a generous acre of land, leaving most of the old-growth timber intact. Becky’s home sloped down to wetlands in the rear of the property with a marshy pond that dried up through the late summer months. Pulling into the driveway ten minutes earlier, Ralph noticed the lawn overgrown with crabgrass and dandelions - this in a community where anyone who didn't schedule monthly visits from ChemLawn, was considered pariah! The swanky pool had been drained, the bottom coated with a greenish scum of dead algae and rotting maple leaves. "What did you do after college?" she asked.
"Opened a medical supply business. We sell motorized wheelchairs, hospital beds, inhalation therapy supplies…"
"You've done well?"
"We’re staffing a third location next August."
"I chose poorly.” Her resignation was palpable. “My husband, may he rest in peace, was a first-class schmuck.”
Becky, who was wearing a loose-fitting shift, disappeared into the bedroom where she changed into a blouse and skirt. She powdered her face and even threw on some blush to cover a mild case of acne back to high school which left some residual scarring. "Remember these beauties?" she quipped, placing a hand over her sagging breasts. The tone was humorous, not the least bit salacious.
"I remember," Ralph replied soberly.
"After breastfeeding three daughters, there's been considerable wear and tear."
The bluntness caught him off guard. Becky Steinberg was already pudgy when they first met, but her breasts… Well, there were no proper words to describe God's penultimate creations. Ralph averted his eyes, struggling to collect his thoughts. Upon arriving, he anticipated an older, more matronly woman, but the auburn hair shot through with gray and graffiti of crow’s feet littering the corners of her eyes hit like a sucker punch to the gut.
"He had a girlfriend," Becky said.
"Who did?"
"My former husband. Some ditzy twenty-something from the clerical pool. The other woman... she even had the gall to attend the funeral." Becky nodded, confirming the truthfulness of her account. “A shrimpy brunette with wire-rimmed, granny glasses... the way she carried on at the wake, you might have thought she was the bereaved." "I’d given up on him years earlier,” Becky added with an ironic smile, “so in a perverse sort of way, she was."
As she explained things, her daughters wanted their father buried through Stanetsky’s Funeral Home in Brookline. Becky preferred a pine box and unmarked grave in the paupers’ cemetery. “He left us penniless.”
“So what’d you do?”
Becky gestured in the direction of the fireplace where a turquoise plastic urn rested on the oak mantle.
Dust to dust. A few meager cups of chalky powder was all that remained of the formidable lover who stole Becky Steinberg away. There was something unsettling about carrying on a conversation with the decease’s remains six feet away.
Near the bay window a moss green comforter had been draped over a Steinway, baby grand piano. "Do you still play?"
"Not in years."
Ralph recalled a rather eccentric interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the melody in the right hand overpowered by booming arpeggios that transformed the lilting tune into a bombastic riot that had more in common with a Scott Joplin rag than classical music. "Come spend a week with me for old time sake. We can pick up where we left off. If nothing comes of it, go live with your daughter in California. No one need know."
Becky said nothing for the better part of a minute. Finally, she took a deep breath letting all the air out in staccato bursts through her thin lips. "I treated you badly, always putting myself first. All you stand to get are the dribs and drabs of a squandered life."
"You were honest to a fault. And anyway, that's all in the past."
Becky lowered her eyes. A Kieninger grandfather clock in the hallway stroked the hour.