Sorry for Your Trouble Read online

  Dedication

  Kristina

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Nothing to Declare

  Happy

  Displaced

  Crossing

  The Run of Yourself

  Jimmy Green—1992

  Leaving for Kenosha

  A Free Day

  Second Language

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Nothing to Declare

  All the senior partners were having a laugh about a movie they’d seen. Forty-Five Years. Something, something about the movie taking forty-five years to sit through. The woman McGuinness thought he recognized was into it with them at the far end of the table—leaning in, as if hearing everything for the second time. “Miss Nail!” they were calling her. “What do you say, Miss Nail? Tell us.” They were all laughing. He didn’t know what it was about.

  The woman wasn’t tall, but was slender in a brown linen dress, a tailored dress that set off her tan and showed her well-drawn body. She’d glanced past him twice—possibly more. A flickering look asking to be thought accidental, but could be understood as acknowledgment. She’d smiled, then looked away, a smile that said possibly she knew him, or had. So peculiar, he thought, not to remember. Eventually he would.

  They were at the Monteleone, the shadowed old afternoon redoubt with the bar that was a carousel. It wasn’t crowded. Outside the tall windows on Royal a parade was shoving past. Boom-pa-pa, boom-pa-pa. Then the trumpets not altogether on key. St. Paddy’s was Tuesday. Now was only Friday.

  At his end, the younger associates were talking about “contracts for deed.” People were getting rich again, they said. “Help the banks out,” one of them said. “The first fish to go ashore. Gut und schlecht. Man would rather will nothingness than not will . . .” Theirs was the old Poydras Street Hibernian firm Coyne, Coyle, Kelly, McGuinness, et al. Friday was the usual after-hours fall-by with the juniors. Give them a chance to find their place, etc. McGuinness was there to be congenial.

  The woman had arrived with someone. A Mr. Drown. Someone’s client who’d left. She was drinking too much. Everybody ordered the Sazerac the moment they arrived in New Orleans. The guilty taste of anise. She’d had three or more.

  Her eyes passed him again. Another smile. She raised her chin as if to challenge him. The old priest was to her left—Father Fagan in his dog collar. He’d fathered a child, possibly two. Had diverse tastes. His brother was a traffic judge. “Why would sex with me be better than with your husband?” he heard the woman say. The men all laughed—too loud. The priest rolled his eyes, shook his head. “What did Thomas Merton say . . .” Old Coyne said. The priest put his hand to his brow. “What’re they saying now?” someone said where he was sitting—one of the young women. “Nothing new,” was the answer. “Coyne thinks he’s a priest when what he is is a son of a bitch.”

  “Miss Nail! Miss Nail! What do you say about that?” They were shouting again.

  THEY HAD TRAVELED TO ICELAND TOGETHER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago (though to be here now was shocking). Both students in Ithaca. They’d known each other only slightly, which hadn’t mattered. A Catholic-school boy from uptown. Her mother, a rich landscape painter living in the Apthorp; her father on a yacht in Hog Bay. Both parents were colorful drunks. Minor exotics.

  They’d first decided on Greece for spring recess—again, knowing little of each other, but ready for an adventure. Mikonos. The limpid water. The little bleached houses you rented for pennies. Each day the natives caught a fish and cooked it for you. However, there was money enough only for Iceland. Their trip wasn’t being advertised at home. She was then called “Barbara.” A name she disliked. He was simply Sandy McGuinness. Alex. A lawyer’s son. His mother was a school teacher. Nothing about them was exotic.

  With their pooled money they took a package flight to Reykjavik and the bus to the far western fjords. Ten hours. There’d be hostels, they believed; friendly Icelanders, wholesome, cheap food, cold Scandinavian sun. But there’d been none of that. Not even a room to let. A fisherman who tended a cod-drying rack far out a dirt road, and who spoke little English, offered them a sod house with goats asleep on the roof. Free of charge. Sandy was in love with her before the flight departed.

  In the sod house, they slept cold together, talked, smoked cigarettes, sat beside the fjord in what little sun was available. He made unsuccessful efforts to fish, while she warmed her legs and read Neruda on Machu Picchu, Ken Kesey, Sylvia Plath. She told him she had Navajo blood on her father’s side. He was a blacklisted director. Her mother was in essence a courtesan and half-French. About herself, she said she wished to acquire repose—the inner resolve (elusive) she’d read about in Fitzgerald. She told him she’d loved women.

  The fisherman provided them cod, hard soda bread, herring, yeasty homemade beer, blankets, candles, kindling for the March chill. One night he invited them. There was his wife, and two children who spoke English but were shy. The wife scowled at Barbara. They visited only once. They were twenty. It was 1981.

  Sandy McGuinness did not know, really, what to think about what he was doing. When they talked, Barbara punctuated her phrases with small, audible intakes of breath, as if these were conversations they neither would forget—though in his view they didn’t seem very important. What he did think was that she was beautiful and intense and unfathomable, but possibly not as smart as he was. Often, as their week idled past, he would see her watching him as he performed his homely duties required to keep them warm and dry—moving wood, airing blankets, sweeping. She was assessing him, he knew, as prelude to some decision. He didn’t know what needed to be decided about him. And then she told him, unexpectedly, she was intending to stay on after he left—to learn to read the sagas, which she believed would help confer the repose she so badly wanted.

  To which Sandy McGuinness thought: Yes. Loving her did not mean more than how he felt at that moment. He would go happily back. Perhaps he would see her again, or not. He was thinking about veterinary school. She could read her sagas. He also felt he could easily marry her.

  On their last day, they’d gone into the little town for Sandy to find the bus, after which she was returning to the sod house. She’d arranged to do domestic work for the cod dryer’s wife—a victory, she said. She also said—to him, smiling into the glinting sun, looking luminous and foreign in her big blue sweater—“You know, sweetheart,” she said, “we don’t want anyone else once we’ve learned who we are. It’s a very hard choice to make.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. His cheap, black-nylon bag sat beside him at the bus stop. She had the smile. Radiant. Caramel-colored eyes. The shining mahogany hair she dried in the sun. They had made love that morning—not very memorably. She had begun to talk with fewer than the necessary words. As if so much didn’t need to be said, and so much was obvious. She was, he felt, pretentious and self-infatuated. Leaving was a fine idea. What he’d be missing was miss-able. In the stark light her face bore a coarseness he hadn’t noticed, but supposed he would grow to dislike.

  “Good choices don’t make very good stories,” she said. “Have you noticed that?” The sun passed across her eyes, making her squint.

  “I haven’t,” he said. “I thought they did.”

  “We’ll see each other again, won’t we?” she said. “We’ll talk about that. Decide if it’s true.”

  She kissed him on the cheek, then began making her way purposefully back down the narrow street.

  BARBARA HAD NOT COME BACK TO ITHACA. THOUGH HE’D HEARD things. That she had changed her name from Barbara to Al
ix and entered divinity school at Harvard. That she had been for a period an artist’s model. That she had been ill—mysteriously. TB, possibly. That she had married a doctor and lived in New York City. They were all plausible futures for her. Nothing was mentioned about the sagas. He was starting law school in Chicago and meant after that to move home to practice. The foreignness he’d liked—conceivably, briefly loved—could take its place in the routine of memory. The place in his life she occupied—Iceland, he privately called it—had evolved to be a good story he told. A trip he’d once taken with a girl.

  SHE WAS STANDING NOW, EXCUSING HERSELF TO THE TABLE. SHE HAD given him another look—pursing her lips for his not having spoken, not making a to-do over her. But had she expected to find him simply because she was in New Orleans—after all this time? A small city’s small accommodation. Still, so odd not to remember her sooner. Though no odder than that a woman he’d nonchalantly loved in college should turn up now and here. She was thinner, fitter. She didn’t look fifty-four. He still saw himself as young. Youngest among the partners. There was no template for these things.

  She was going, so it appeared, to the LADIES. The junior men had moved on to the “paradox of thrift.” The “fallacy of composition.” “Building a house from the top down.” He had no part in any of that. His book was in admiralty. Enormous boats.

  “Make way,” the priest was now saying loudly. All the men were standing—to be gentlemen. “Miss Nail. Miss Nail is having a pee. Or are we wrong?” They were growing too used to her.

  The sleeveless brown dress was simple but chic. Her legs and skinny ankles shone under the bar’s chandeliers. Outside, the parade was still in partial swing. A ragged troop of clowns. The police bagpipers’ unit.

  “Well, you could’ve . . .” she said as she slipped past him, as if not expecting to be heard by anyone but him. She might’ve been about to laugh at him. Her dark eyes he now recognized.

  “You could’ve,” one of the younger men had heard and repeated in a whisper. The LADIES was out of the bar across the hotel’s golden lobby.

  “I just didn’t expect . . .” he tried to say, turning to her. She paused as if it was he who’d spoken first. She was much more attractive being older. No coarseness in her features now, just rich, unfailing skin. The men at her end of the table were discussing her, which she would know. That she’d drunk too much was visible in the changeableness of her expressions. As if she couldn’t quite decide something. Her hands seemed uncertain, though her eyes were sparkling.

  “Well. Would you, my dear?” she said dismissively.

  “Of course . . .” he said. “I . . .”

  “In the lobby. In whatever time it takes me to become presentable again?” She was moving toward the doorway to the lobby, beyond which the bellmen turned to notice her. Her shoes were slender, expensive, in pale blue. She had a sporting aspect and smelled of something tropical. She hadn’t heard him say “Of course.” Just looked around as she eased past. What would her name be now? Possibly Barbara again.

  AT THE FAR END OF THE BAR, ON A RISER, A DRUM KIT SAT, UNUSED. A tall, older black man in a white shirt and dark trousers had begun to estimate the drums’ positioning. Soon there would be music, and the Carousel Bar would be full. People present for different reasons would become an audience. It was past five. The parade was finishing in the street. Some of his partners were standing, readying to leave, waiting to see if Miss Nail would return. The associates had begun talking to another firm’s young lawyers at the next table. Hershberg–Linz. Oil and gas litigators from when it was all booming. Now they did commercial realty. Built buildings. Barely the law at all. The noise level was going up. “That Miss Nail,” he heard someone say and laugh.

  IN THE LOBBY, HE WAITED BY THE VITRINE WHERE THERE WERE books and photographs of famous writers who’d stayed in the hotel. Tennessee. Faulkner. It was that sort of place—self-styled literary. Tourists who’d watched the parade were flooding into the lobby from outside—hot, weary, in need of what the hotel offered. The bellmen ignored them, smiling. The revolving door was permitting gusts of hot, mealy air to mingle with the inside cool. “Were those real?” he heard someone inquire. An Iowa farmer’s accent. “They were so beautiful. The pink feathers. So many.” People were pulling suitcases past the bellmen. It was long past time to check in.

  “I was just thinking how nice it is to arrive someplace,” she said, suddenly beside him. The tourists had momentarily captivated him. The priest was hurrying past, his white straw hat on, consulting his cell phone. “I was thinking about arriving to Paris, of course. Not here,” she said. “It’s too hot here. It’s only March.” There would be no words about long ago. But what then could they say? Make a list of things, but here they’d still be.

  “Who’s Miss Nail?” he said.

  “She’s Mr. Drown’s unfunny fantasy.”

  “What became of him?” Sandy said. The client, no longer in attendance. “Did he skip out?”

  “Well,” she said. She looked fresher, her eyes less sparkly. A tiny pearl of water remained on her chin. She touched it and smiled. She smelled of a cigarette. “The king of wishful thinking is no doubt in his Gulfstream flying back to Dallas. We had a disagreement. A small one.”

  They were side by side, talking like any two strangers waiting at a coat check, soon to be elsewhere. She carried no purse.

  “This is a grand old barn, isn’t it?” she said, looking around. She still smelled good. “Bell boys, escritoires, a cigar stand.” She liked it.

  “My father used to do his hijinks here,” he said. “In the fifties.”

  There was the sudden quick intake of breath. “Hijinks,” she said. “There’s a useful word.” Her eyes passed him. “What did he do?” She seemed to have found a way to be for now.

  He should leave, he thought. He had—they had—other plans. His wife. Clancy’s with old friends from Chicago. He understood that any time you were with Barbara a re-appraisal of life might be coming. It had been that way before but hadn’t changed anything. Still. Wouldn’t any woman wish to inspire that?

  “Did you think,” he said, “if you came to New Orleans you would just conjure me?”

  Her eyes passed him again, came back and stopped. Her mouth made a tiny pucker. “Yes, well. Didn’t I?”

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  From outside on Royal Street, there was a large crowd noise. A whooping. A bass drum pounding very fast. The parade after the parade was approaching. That was all they would say about the past.

  “Lay on, McGuinness, you dog,” someone shouted across the lobby through the crowd. Coyle. “You’ve stolen all our fun.” He was departing, also wearing a hat.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Do you have time for a walk?” she whispered.

  “You said it’s too hot.”

  “It is rather unnatural, though, isn’t it?” She put a fingertip to her chin where the water pearl had been but was gone. A bruise darkened the bony back of her left hand. It betrayed her.

  “How’d you hurt that?”

  She looked at her hand as if at a wristwatch. “It wasn’t very hard.”

  “Did someone do it?” Possibly she’d fallen.

  “Of course,” she said and rounded her eyes in mock surprise. The revolving door whooshed with warm air and street noise. “Are we taking a walk?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I’m a paying guest here,” she said, pertaining to the hotel. She looked around her again as if to admire everything. “I have a suite on a high floor. It’s named for some writer I never heard of. I see the river.”

  He wondered—was he acting toward her now in a way he’d acted twenty-five years before? What would that way be? Awkward? Distant? Disapproving? Too infatuated? It hadn’t been so satisfactory, then. Possibly there would be another way to act.

  THEY EXITED OUT INTO ROYAL, WHERE THE SECOND-LINE HAD passed. Here was the breathless wall of early spring heat, the rich aroma o
f afternoon, the dregs of the day. A single white-faced clown came strutting along in big red shoes, stopping traffic, toting a tiny metal drum he tapped with a spoon. Nothing ever surprised. Sandy was instantly hot in his suit coat and took it off. They could walk to the river she could see from her room. Not a great distance even in the heat. The wind would be cool there. They were surprisingly together here, but not a couple.

  They passed antique emporiums, a Walgreens, a famous restaurant, the Word Is Your Oyster book stall. Two large policemen on motorcycles, blue lights flashing, sat watching. Someone was smoking pot in a door entry. Bums drank wine on a curb. It was the French Quarter.

  For a period they walked, and she did not speak, as if her mind had traveled away and become delighted. There was still the damp breeze and the late-day sun slanting between buildings. Her brown dress blew against her thighs.

  They turned through an alley—a shortcut to the cathedral and the handsome square with the statue of the dubious president upon his rearing steed. She had a small, delicate limp, he noticed. Something she’d acquired. Though it might be the blue shoes.

  “It doesn’t seem real here,” she proposed, like a new thought.

  “Real?” he said, pretending to mock her, which he thought she would realize. Possibly Drown, the client, was waiting for her in the high-up room while this was going on. “I was born here,” he said. “It’s real enough.”

  “Why would you ever build a city here, though?” she said. “You always talked about it. Why is it good? Do you have to stay because you’re from here?”

  “More,” he said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Where do you live?” he said. It seemed preposterous to ask such a question. And where do you live? As if he might go there.

  “In D.C.,” she said as they continued on. “Just barely. I have a husband.” A cigar shop was in the alley, also selling masks and pralines. “Oh, do. Buy a cigar,” she suddenly said. “You always liked cigars, didn’t you?” The store was closed, darkened.