Requiem for a Realtor (5 page)

“I think she is pleased with the result.”

“I wish everything was as pleasant for her.”

And then, unbidden, not unwelcome, came Bob's version of the story of Phyllis's marital problems, but Oliver's was not a theological approach.

“If he wasn't going to inherit a fortune, I'd tell her to leave him.”

“A fortune?”

And so David had learned the story of the great event that would happen on Stanley Collins's fiftieth birthday.

“How old is he now?”

“Forty-four.”

“That's not too long to wait,” David said carefully.

“But what if he doesn't?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if he should dump her?”

“Divorce her?”

It was not a wholly unpleasant thought, looked at from a nontheological point of view. Or even from one. In the eyes of the Church, Phyllis was not truly married to Stanley Collins.

“Maybe that would be best.”

“After she has stuck with him through hell and high water, best to be cut off from the money that's coming to him?”

“I hadn't thought of it that way.”

“Collins better not think of any way, I can tell you that.”

Oliver had become surly with drink, but that was a small price to pay for these confidences.

9

Bridget Carroll had received only two glancing mentions in the article that had appeared in the
Tribune,
but in half the photographs she was at Dr. Jameson's side, assisting as he worked on a patient. Sylvia, the photographer, had made sure that the face of the patient was not shown, but it was her insistence that put Bridget in so many of the shots. A little feminine solidarity, Bridget supposed, not that she had discontents along those lines. It was the fact that David was single that added zest to her job, and she rightly felt that she had become indispensable to him. Dentists came and went, the young ones, and those who were retired handled patients they had acquired in their own practice when they came to work for David and were perfectly content not to take on new ones.

When the article appeared, Bridget had bought half a dozen copies of that issue of the paper. It was at her suggestion that the story had become a brochure that was available in the waiting room. And it was Bridget who had called Sylvia Woods to see about buying the whole set of the photographs she had taken, had them framed, and decorated the office walls with them. Laura, who handled appointments and payments and answered the phone, had been immortalized at her several tasks, but none of those photographs had appeared in the
Tribune,
so she was especially happy to have the framed ones hung about. There was an immediate influx of new patients as a result of the article, but, of course, there was Mrs. Collins, too. In the informal manner of dental offices, she became just Phyllis.

Men are fools, of course, particularly where women like Phyllis Collins are concerned, but it came as a shock that David was susceptible to her pathetic efforts to be girlish. However, Bridget's allusion to the shortness of Phyllis's skirt brought a rebuke from David.

“I could put a blanket over her lap.”

“What do you mean?”

“This place is like thigh land when she's in the chair.”

He bristled. “That's enough of that, Bridget. I mean it.”

Stunned, Bridget had gone away on her crepe soles for a remorseful cigarette in the ladies. She kept a bottle of mouthwash there to remove the scent of cigarette smoke from her breath. As she swished and gargled, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was thirty-five, an age that seemed to have just crept up on her, but she had the look of a colleen: jet black hair, pale skin, a dusting of freckles, and great round blue eyes. And her smile was her own. David often had her smile for a patient to show what effect he was striving for. That meant he noticed her, but it seemed only a professional notice, as if she were an advertisement for his skills. Her reflected eyes flashed with anger at the memory of being scolded by David.

That had been only the beginning. David preferred to work alone when Phyllis Collins was in the chair and since she was the only appointment for the hour, Bridget had what should have been a welcome break.

“Is Mini Haha in the chair?” Laura asked.

“Mrs. Collins?”

She had half a mind to scold Laura as David had her, but she couldn't have been convincing. “With legs like those you'd think she'd wear slacks.”

If Bridget did not scold, neither could she enter into Laura's catty appraisal. It would have sounded like sour grapes. She took comfort in the fact that eventually Phyllis Collins would have the smile nature intended her to have, and that would be the end of that.

But when the orthodontist had performed his wonders, he scheduled another appointment for Phyllis, and even though Bridget had examined the X-rays, she feared he would perform an unnecessary root canal just to keep her in the chair. But that wasn't the end of it.

He phoned Phyllis from the office regularly, and Bridget became convinced he was seeing that woman Wednesdays when the office was closed. The address of the Collinses was in Phyllis's files and one Wednesday, trying to tell herself it was just an accidental turn, she drove past the address, and there was David's Chrysler at the curb. She went past the house in the other direction, too, wondering what was going on inside. She could have wept with frustration.

It wasn't simply that, however unconsciously, she had for the past four years gone to work in the hope that something would somehow happen between herself and David, there was also anger that he should be drawn to such a tart as Phyllis. And married at that.

That was the biggest surprise, in a way, given the thing David made of his religion. Before Phyllis, when he and Bridget would relax and chat after the last patient of the day, David had told her of his youthful desire to be a priest.

“I can believe it.”

He was pleased. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, you haven't married.”

“Is that what the priesthood means to you—celibacy?” He still wore the pleased expression.

“I was never drawn to it.”

He frowned. “Women will never be ordained.”

“That's all right with me.”

He seemed reassured. Good Lord. But it underscored his own seriousness as a Catholic. Bridget had thought that might be what finally brought them together, her and David. She began to attend Mass at St. Hilary's after David had spoken of the pastor with high praise. David went to the ten o'clock on Sundays, so that became Bridget's habit as well. He always sat near the front, and he was conspicuous because of his height as well as because of the obvious devotion with which he followed the Mass. That he was still there every Sunday even after Phyllis Collins became a patient gave Bridget hope. He couldn't be up to anything with her and then go to Communion.

It was attendance at St. Hilary's that got Bridget involved with Edna Hospers and the senior center. That is where Bridget came to spend her Wednesday afternoons. She and Edna were soon good friends. They would have coffee together in Edna's office where it was okay if Bridget wanted a cigarette.

“Go ahead. My Earl smokes, and of course Father Dowling often has a pipe here.”

Bridget steered clear of Marie Murkin, not an easy thing to do since the housekeeper seemed to watch for her. And then she was snared one Sunday morning.

“Is it true you work for Dr. Jameson?”

Bridget assumed Marie must have seen the story in the paper, but Marie said, “Edna mentioned it.”

Bridget admitted that she worked for David. She already knew he was a great friend of the pastor's, but Marie seemed to have a different attitude toward him.

“A spoiled priest,” Marie said, exposing her denture in a smile.

“A what?”

“That's what a man who wanted to be one but didn't is called.”

“I didn't know that.”

“That he wanted to be a priest?”

Bridget did not want to be quizzed about her employer, and she managed to escape. With Edna she could talk about David, girl to girl, so to speak.

“Do you see him aside from the office?” Edna asked.

“I wish.”

“Ah.”

After that, it was understood between them that she had a thing for David Jameson. Edna even talked of arranging something, asking Bridget and David for dinner, but Bridget vetoed it. At least for now. It would have seemed contrived.

“It would be. That's the idea.”

Oh, dear God, it was good to be able to talk about it, not that it really helped all that much. Oh, yes it did. It helped some anyway. And then Edna learned about David and Phyllis Collins.

“Marie told me, so, of course, it's probably not true.”

“It's true.” And Bridget burst into tears.

“But she's married.”

“And he's a man.”

10

Sometimes Willie Boiardo thought he hated music, his fingers feeling along the keys of the piano as he thought the thought. All those lessons when he was a kid, the inevitable ambition under the praise of one teacher after another, the fellowship at Juilliard, and then suddenly he was on the job market. He could play the whole repertoire of Mozart's sonatas effortlessly from memory, but in the meantime he took a job as pianist in an orchestra that toured the provinces, playing at proms when kids still danced like human beings. All that collapsed in the late sixties, with everything else, and by then any thought of a career as a concert pianist had floated away on clouds of grass and coke. His agent found him work playing in bars for drunks and illicit couples. Nonetheless, at the piano, Willie gave it all he had. Finally, Wanda had heard him and their agents arranged a deal and he became the invisible partner in her performance.

“Music” was popular music to Wanda. She sang from memory rather than by reading the notes, and when they practiced it was a joy to develop the right arrangement for her. When he had it, she knew, and that was that. No need to explain to her the technicalities, which she wouldn't have understood anyway. Wanda was in her early thirties when they teamed up; she might have been his daughter, but Willie made love to her on his keyboard while she entranced the clientele with her voice. He was invisible to the listeners, there at the piano, and he was invisible to Wanda as well. As often as not, she forgot to ask for a hand for her accompanist, and when she did, Willie had no illusions that his artistry was appreciated. He didn't care. Wanda sang to the world at large, but Willie played only for her.

On breaks, Willie went to the bar where he drank in anonymity. It was enough that Joe Perzel, the bartender, recognized who he was and put the tumbler of bourbon before him, one of the perks of playing. Wanda just disappeared. After they got booked into the Rendezvous, after they became a permanent fixture there, she got a dressing room where she could rest between sets.

Everyone fell in love with her; that went without saying. For women, she was the torch singer they had dreamt of being, for men she was the woman of her songs, tragically in love, filled with longing, pleading for their response. Willie understood this. It was his own reaction to her singing. Wanda was an earth mother, eager to take you in her embrace. At least while she sang. It seemed to have no carryover once the lights went up, the applause swelled, and she was off to her dressing room. She might have been a nun, so far as Willie could see.

They practiced twice a week, at the Frosinone Hotel where he lived, not wanting to go stale, polishing up the songs that worked, adding others from time to time. Those morning sessions, when only his hands seemed sober, were golden times for Willie. He and Wanda were a team.

“Willie, without you I would be nothing.”

“You could sing a cappella and hold the room.”

“Before we got together I was on my way to being a has-been.”

“Hey, you're talking to one.”

“You're so damned good, Willie. How did you end up like this?”

“Good luck.”

She kissed him on the forehead. He could have been a customer. If he had the gift of gab, he would have told her that he would rather play for her than give a concert in Carnegie Hall. That had once seemed a possibility, but to hell with it. He wouldn't trade playing to a paid audience in evening clothes for sitting in the smoky dark, backing up Wanda as she took her listeners by the heart and gave at least a passing meaning to the basic sadness of life.

“Is it the junk, Willie? You could kick it.”

“Easily,” he lied. “Growing up consists of outliving the dreams of youth.”

“Who said that?”

“Aren't we alone?”

Another kiss on the forehead.

He did get off the hard stuff, settling for grass, half expecting her to notice and applaud. But he, like his piano, was an instrument, a means, background. Wanda was the star and Willie gloried in her borrowed light. And then along came Stanley Collins.

If he had designed the kind of bastard he hoped Wanda would avoid, he couldn't have come closer than Stanley Collins. At first he didn't believe Wanda could take such a small-town hotshot seriously, even if this was her small town. She began to take her breaks in a booth with Stanley. From the bar Willie had observed the progress of the relationship with disbelief and dread. Finally he made the mistake of telling Wanda what he thought of Stanley.

“It would take three of him to make a man, Wanda. Don't encourage him.”

“Hey, do I try to run your life?”

“I'm not trying to run your life. I'm speaking as a friend.”

“Okay, you've spoken.”

In vain. What Wanda and Stanley had in common was their childhood in Fox River. And they both were Catholics.

“I didn't know you were Catholic, Wanda.”

“Half the world is Catholic.”

“I'm not.”

“What are you?”