The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns
Chapter 5: End of Part 1
At least I still was working when Maddy and I caught wind of the party.
That was just over a month ago, back in late June, when Katie Jansen phoned to tell us that she’d been contacted for a number of people’s addresses and to expect something in the mail. From out of our collective pasts, from another lifetime, really, Sarah Brightman-Crowley, a tenant in Adam Wright’s house for a while, had reappeared and was trying to locate people who’d been part of that group in ’82 and ’83.
Apparently, she and her husband, Jack Crowley, had developed a software package that had rocketed them from well off to filthy rich, and they were now rounding up ex-business associates, long-forgotten friends, members from their old alma mater, and anyone else they could think of to strut their stuff in front of in a business launch/housewarming party extravaganza.
For a day or two I felt a sense of foreboding, as if this event would entail shitloads of posing from every possible angle and that nothing good could come of it. I should have listened to my inner voice; instead I quashed it, concentrating on the positive. They were bound to have an awesome bar.
The RSVP eventually came, stating casual attire; so on the night of the party, facing no gut-wrenching clothing decisions, I plucked my only jacket and my ever-faithful Dockers from their hangers and slipped into them. Maddy, on the other hand, stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging from the back of the bathroom door, hmmming and hawing, draping first one and then the other of two possible outfits in front of her. I could have stepped in and told her that she looked great in either one, and meant every word of it, but she’d have thought I was just trying to hurry her.
A short time later, she stepped into the bedroom. She’d chosen her outfit, my choice exactly now that I’d seen her in it, and had applied her usual minimal amount of makeup; my urge to be with her, to be proud of her, overwhelmed me.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“You certainly are,” I answered, Maurice-fuckin’-Chevalier smooth. I walked to her and kissed her on the cheek.
We trooped to the rec room and found the children. With the summer holidays starting the following Wednesday, they were about to gain a slight head start in their first taste of real freedom — not a Tuesday evening from seven till ten, or a Sunday afternoon, but a full Friday night with a possible 2:00 a.m. return time and no signs of supervision anywhere; so we stood before them now with our list of rules at the ready, brandishing the cellphone we’d be employing and attempting to blunt their mounting sense of adventure with talk of trust and responsibility.
And as Maddy picked up steam, I slipped back up to the kitchen; for the true, hard-core lectures about “rules” she held more karmic weight anyhow, as my searching for and plucking of my on-the-go joint from behind the sewing kit on top of the fridge would suggest. Not that Maddy didn’t mind the odd toke these days, but she had laid off for some time, thinking it not quite “right” while the children were toddlers. In summation, the words don’t be jerks while we’re out seemed far less hypocritical coming from her lips, and, really, all I could think of saying was “Lay off the sex channel, and I’ve got exactly four beers, no less, chilling in the crisper.”
I twisted the roach in a bit of plastic wrap to keep it from leaking, dropped it into my jacket pocket, and joined Maddy for the conclusion, nodding sagely and reiterating her wisdom about the ramifications of actions until at last we were dismissed.
We left the car in its parking spot and walked down to the subway, a ten-minute stroll on a green, breezy evening; after a quick jog on a westbound subway line and a five-minute ride north, we found ourselves rubber-necking Rosedale’s mansions.
As I’ve said, I love looking at these types of houses, being awed by their extravagances, and as we turned up the flagstone walk to 145 Dunnegin Road, I could imagine a fleeting history behind this one. Not constructed of mere brick, old-world craftsmen assembled this silver-grey mini-castle with granite hewn from the Canadian Shield in 1914 — with each block undoubtedly quarried and cut to exact specification at site, then dragged across corduroy roads and over inhospitable landscapes by Belgian draft horse to the nearest outpost. Stacked onto freight trains, the cargo arrived in the big city, possibly with part of a thumb or forefinger jellied between the occasional dense square. Perhaps not quite on the scale of the castles highlighted on A&E, this house, and the houses on this street, seemed to hold a sense of more than just the families that lived in them. They exuded a suffering inherent in their existence; they accentuated mankind’s addiction to needing so much more than was necessary.
Maddy rang the bell and Sarah Brightman-Crowley herself answered the door; blonder than I remembered her, with skin smooth and tight and teeth huge and white, she squealed, “Maddy … Maddy Moffatt?” She rushed out, hugged her close, then took a step back.
“You look fantastic,” she said, scanning Maddy up and down.
“So do you,” Maddy said. “It’s been so long.”
Eric’s birth had shooed her away as any sort of acquaintance (with Rachel’s arrival sealing the deal), and twenty-plus years had passed since Sarah had first stepped through Adam’s door, taking over Audrey’s room when she’d moved back home. But she and Maddy had meshed from the start, often going out for a drink or bite to eat during the time they’d lived together.
As for what she thought of me, I have no idea, but one incident had left me with a clue. Coming home late from work one evening, I’d found her stretched out on the sofa. Classical music, pleasant stuff, floated from the speakers, but I’d never heard it before. I walked over to the turntable and picked up the album cover.
“This is really good,” I said, reading it aloud. “Pachelbel’s Canon? I’m not familiar with it.”
Sarah looked up from the sofa, lifting an eyebrow. “No, I would think not. But it’s pronounced Pacobel, as in Taco Bell … and I’m sure you’re familiar with that.”
Now Sarah turned and extended me an arm’s-length hug. “Jim,” she said. “How are you doing?”
I resisted the urge to grab my stomach, shake it, and say, As you can see, I’ve been into the Tachelbel way too much lately, instead offering, “Good, good. How are you?”
“Just super,” she said, ushering us into her home.
We stood in the foyer. Above us hung a sparkling chandelier, its size suggesting the destructive power of a small bomb should it drop. And before us, a marble staircase swept upward, with tributaries branching left and right onto an expansive second floor.
The dining room to our left held two long buffet tables bearing hotplates and crystal platters brimming with exotic foods — a layout decadent enough, it seemed, for a grilled endangered species section; white-jacketed chefs, with their puffy hats tilted at cocky angles, stood behind the tables, creating plates for guests. The enormous bar, my one reason for being here, lay at the far end of the tables; red-jacketed barkeeps roamed its length, dispensing single malt Scotches, vintage wines, and champagnes.
To the right, through vast French doors, people stood around the living room in small knots, sipping said Scotches and tipping fluted glasses to their lips.
“Grab something to eat and drink, then mingle,” Sarah said, backing into the living room. “I’m sure I’ll see you later and we can catch up.”
Maddy and I stepped into the dining room. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m going to stuff myself with coquilles St. Jacques, mahi mahi, and any other seafood I can get my mitts on.”
She scurried to the buffet and I walked directly to the beer. When we met back in the doorway a moment later, she scooped a glass of white wine from a passing waiter’s platter, handed it to me, then eyed me suspiciously.
“Beer and no food? You’re not going to get totally hammered and take a whiz on their Persian rug, are you?”
I raised my bottle. “It’s Tuborg Light, for Christ’s sake. They don’t carry any of my brands here.”
“Not a single one of your eight favorites?”
Stung, I couldn’t help but eye her food and retaliate. “How about you? What the hell’s that? Duck liver?”
Scallops and prawns also littered a plate that held no hint of vegetables. “You’re not going to drop dead of a heart attack are you, squirting hot cholesterol all over the Brazilian hardwood when you hit?”
“I’ll eat some vegetables tomorrow,” she said, “when I’m hunched over a plate of chicken fingers at our kitchen table.” With that, she grinned wickedly, speared a scallop, and popped it into her mouth. I responded by tipping my beer to my lips and downing a third of it.
We wandered into the living room and an almost surreal scene. At just after nine o’clock, with the light of a fading summer evening barely penetrating the room and the rows of recessed halogen lights in the ceiling above laying down no more than a subtle glow, it seemed as if we’d stepped into a Botox party, a mixer for slightly over-the-hill Barbie dolls and recently retired Armani mannequins; I couldn’t be sure: was I hallucinating or dreaming in plastic?
We stood next to the doorway for a while, with Maddy looking happy enough as she tucked away her cuisine and scrutinized the crowd; I still felt uneasy … even with most of a fast beer in me. The room stretched forever and teemed with people, but I recognized no one. And the other men’s definition of casual dress didn’t agree with mine.
Finishing her food, Maddy set her plate on a side table and took her glass of wine from me.
“Thanks,” she said. “Now let’s get in there and, as the lady said, mingle.”
I followed her through the room. The overhead lights shone brightly now, obviously timed for full wattage at sunset, and at closer quarters I could see faces. Mostly middle-aged and obviously well-to-do, the partygoers seemed more real up close, although, undoubtedly, the number of wrinkles, creases, and chins wouldn’t correspond logically with the number of years on most birth certificates.
We continued weaving until, like stragglers in the desert coming across an oasis, we spotted Katie and her husband just ahead.
We saw Katie six or seven times a year socially (Maddy a bit more, meeting her for drinks downtown after work on occasion). An aide and speech writer for a prominent politician, she’d married Ted Davidson, a conservationist who, if less principled (stubborn, some might say), would be rich by now; their union had produced a bright and healthy son, Caleb, now nine years old.
As a couple they’d always provided pleasant and interesting company (partially due to the yin and yang of their professions and dispositions), and Katie and Maddy were still the best of friends; unfortunately living across town from each other made for more emails and phone calls than visits.
But the relief of sighting them was cut short, for with them stood Nick Burke. Now an internationally renowned engineer, he’d hung in at Adam’s house for a year and a half as a student, holding his nose even as he appreciated the price of a room. I’d thought him a pompous clique-weasel back then, trying on friends the way other people tried on trousers, looking for the brand that made him look best, and I expected nothing different from him at this time.
He stood before me, well-aged, rangy, with a salt-and-pepper thatch, more as a member of the Crowley/Brightman-Crowley in-crowd, I’m sure, than an alumni of the old house. With his brogues (purchased, undoubtedly, at Ye Olde Irish Shoppe) polished, his eyebrows trimmed, his ear and nose hairs clipped, and a Glenfiddich in hand, he greeted us first.
“Jim! Maddy! How are you? We were just talking about you.”
“Were you?” Maddy said, laughing. “Nothing nasty, I hope?”
“Not at all,” Burke said. “Just catching up. It’s been such a long time for all of us.”
“Years,” I offered.
“Fifteen, at least,” he said, “since I last bumped into you. And Katie here was telling me how you’re still in the landscaping business.” He looked me up and down, paying special attention, I thought, to the basic tweed. “That would explain the physique — hard to maintain at our advanced ages,” he said, chuckling.
Katie smoldered beside him. Ted inspected his knuckle hairs. It seemed as if Katie and Burke had been sparring (a sport they’d engaged in from the start) for some time already, and he’d just scored a point, embarrassing her completely.
“It’s all in the willpower,” I said, holding up my Tuborg Light.
“But seriously,” Burke said. “The Defazio Brothers! We should get together sometime. I could probably supply some generous contracts to your … uh, firm with a few of the smaller projects that—”
“Just to let you know, Jim,” Katie said, cutting off and staring daggers at Burke simultaneously. “He’s been the one talking about what you do for a living. I’ve been talking about that fantastic screenplay you guys wrote a few years ago.”
Right. The screenplay; two winters’ worth of work (when the kids had finally hit grade school and I’d started having most of my off-season free again), not to mention the subsequent years of turmoil, during which Maddy and I were played like puppets. The screenplay; a subject I’d tried to bury with varying degrees of success for some time now. And I suppose if there were any way for Katie to defend my intelligence at all in Burke’s opinion, that would have been it. But she’d miscalculated.
“Ah, yes. A screenplay.” Sporting a slick smile, Burke paused, sipped elegantly at his Scotch (complete with out-thrust pinky), then said, “The medium explored by those who’ve never bothered to learn how to write — or, to be more blunt, the new lottery ticket of the masses.”
He stood there, glowing, amidst a sea of the fortunate, and I had no response. Years of work — hard, serious work — had been invested in that screenplay. Of course, there’d been the fun, too; those cold winter nights, after we’d put the kids to bed, when Maddy and I would sit around, laughing, over-caffeinating, concocting predicaments for our characters in the next great romantic comedy as we outlined and revised. But Burke had negated it all in a single, toss-off slight.
“And I’d been telling him,” Katie said, growing red-faced, “how you guys weren’t just two more wannabes, and how you’d been wined and dined by a big-time producer for an entire summer.”
“Of course,” Burke said, looking at my beer. “Wined and dined. No wannabes, you.”
In the two decades, give or take, that we’d been incidental acquaintances, and in the fifteen or so since I’d seen him last, Burke hadn’t changed at all — unless he’d become more insufferable. He wasn’t a wannabe … or a neverbeen, as I’m sure he’d already labeled Maddy and me (especially me), and he knew it. He was in his element right now, and I sensed that he felt he had carte blanche, if that’s the expression I’m looking for, to belittle his inferiors.
I glanced over at Maddy. She wore a focused look as she zeroed in on Burke, and I knew the rest of the party didn’t exist for her now. “You’re not even aware of it, are you, Nick?” She said.
“Aware of what?”
“I’d say your disdain for the so-called little person, but it goes so far beyond that,” she said. “You’d have made an excellent upper-echelon Nazi.”
“Crudely put,” Burke said. “But I’m well aware of a certain social hierarchy, if that’s what you mean.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Katie said.
Maddy pulled out of her mode for a beat and turned to me. “Uh, Jim. It looks like you’re out of beer.”
I shook my bottle. She was right. Empty … and I hadn’t even noticed.
“And you could probably use a cigarette, too, couldn’t you?”
Almost ordering me to indulge in a beer and a smoke. I smiled at the paradox — then took a peek at Katie. Of course. She wore her own predator’s look. Who knows what he’d said to her before we got there. Now the two of them wanted to tear into Burke subtly and with precision, just like old times in that barren living room on Dalton Street, with no screaming, finger pointing, or profanities, and especially without me there to grunt Oh yeah! and Sez you, asshole! when I’d finally worked myself into a lather. I’d been dismissed.
I raised my empty bottle in a mock toast. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, Nick, I believe the missus has just sent me out for a cigarette and a beer. What do you think I should swill this time, a Low ’n’ brow?”
Leaving Burke to the women, I maneuvered my way to the bar, picked up another beer, and asked a bartender where I could smoke. He pointed me to the backyard, stating that I could get there from here, but that the journey would be sizeable.
I thanked him, and, clutching my dewy Molson Export Lite, began my trek. If I could find some space, I’d spark up that joint out back, too, because, truthfully, we were just twenty minutes or so into the evening and already I was starting to feel … I don’t know, Willy Lomanish or something. The tiny moth hole over my jacket’s right-side pocket seemed to be growing, my cotton twill pleated chinos had started a trickle of sweat snaking its way down my ass crack, and the premonition I’d felt when first hearing of this gathering, that nothing good could come of it, was rearing up again.
I forged on, until, passing some sort of library, I saw a group clustered around a sprawling table. They all held printed cards and a pencil. I stopped, looked over someone’s shoulder, and read:
Name of wine ___________
Country of origin ___________
Price ___________
Dryness ___________
On the table sat five bottles, wrapped in tissue paper so their labels weren’t visible, and three long rows of wineglasses. I tilted my beer to my lips and continued walking, only to hear, “Jim! Jim! Hold on.”
Sarah Brightman-Crowley herself had separated from the crowd and now motioned in my direction.
“Me?” I asked.
“Yes, you, silly. Don’t walk away. We’re having a wine-tasting contest.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I know almost nothing about wine.” Then I hoisted my beer bottle. “Plus, I’ve sullied my palate.”
“I won’t hear any of that,” she said, admonishing. “You don’t have to be a…” she paused long here, searching for le mot juste, I’m sure, before saying, “connoisseur. It’s a game — just for fun — and a chance to sample some really spectacular wines.”
The crowd parted, leaving me little option, so I slid into the room.
The rules were simple. Each contestant would sample from the five mystery bottles on the table and fill in the four blanks on the scorecard given for each, offering twenty available points. The person with the most points at the end would receive a five-hundred-dollar bottle of non-vintage Veuve Cliquot. In case of a tie, a mini playoff would occur.
An Asian man in serving garb appeared from nowhere and started pouring half-inch … what? shots? into each glass as Sarah spoke again.
“The wines you’ll be sampling range in price from ten dollars to a thousand dollars per bottle.”
I don’t know if she expected the group to gasp in awe at this bit of information, but this jaded lot did manage a murmur of approval, with the pompous-looking knob beside me muttering, “Hmpph, a ’66 Château Mouton Rothschild, no doubt.”
And while I might not have been so noble as to calculate how many orphans that last sum might feed, I did know it would feed our family for a couple of weeks — with a night out at the Red Lobster to boot.
“Of course, clarity will be an important clue,” Sarah said, “so you can use the solid white on the reverse of your information cards as a backdrop.” She paused, then: “Are there any questions?”
No one spoke, but I had a couple: Would a thousand-dollar bottle of wine really taste that much better than the ten-dollar bottle? And, could I be excused, please? I didn’t care about bottles that sold for a grand a pop, and I had no idea how I was supposed to behave here.
The woman to my right took a card and small pencil from a side table and handed them to me before reaching for one of the freshly filled glasses; she then smiled at me and motioned for me to do the same.
By now, what with the knot of people around me and the ceiling lights on full, my crack was sweating more than the beer bottle in my fist (which was better than the reverse, I suppose). I reached out, set down my beer and picked up my wine. The woman beside me swirled her glass and sniffed; I followed suit. At the head of the table, a beaming Sarah Brightman-Crowley sniffed, sipped, swished, and tilted.
Now everyone was sniffing, sipping, swishing, and tilting, and while the crowd looked upward with their mouths filled with nectar, I did what I had to, slipping out of the room and making a beeline for the back door.
The backyard was enormous; hard gravel paths wound their ways through an impeccable, close-cropped lawn dotted with topiary, stone benches, and whatever else it took to be a pseudo-English manor. Only a few people had made their way outside by that time, congregating on the flagstone terrace. I ignored them and followed a path to a secluded nook at the end of the property.
A three-quarters moon sat high in the sky, shining bright enough for me to check my watch. We’d been there half an hour and already I’d been heavily insulted, gently mocked, and forced to flee the premises. Meanwhile, back inside, Maddy and Katie sparred with an old nemesis, partially for the sport, but mostly in defense of my pathetic life.
I unwrapped the roach I’d brought with me, an inch-and-a-half stub of pretty good weed, and lit it. Between tokes, I sipped on what could very well have been thousand-dollar-a-bottle wine. Or it could have been the ten-dollar stuff; I really didn’t know, and I didn’t give a shit either way. All I knew for sure at the time was that I felt like a baggy-clothed hick with his temper on the rise.
And as I looked back at the lights sparkling from every window of every room of Sarah’s mansion, a larger group of beautiful people, laughing and clutching glasses, stepped through the terrace’s French doors. I dumped out my last bit of crappy wine and vowed to watch my beer intake. The last thing I needed was to fan my frustrations, make a scene over the next highfalutin’ clown to pull a superiority act on me, and get myself into a boatload of trouble.
There it was. A prophetic thought, to be sure, considering that’s exactly what fate had in store for me.
And soon.
Here ends Part 1 of Jim’s adventures. Part 2: The Incident begins next Saturday. Thank you for reading.