I wasn't going to let my experience with Mrs. Caputo effect my quest. On my way back home that evening I decided I needed a break but that it would be a short one. Yes, I had regrets about Father Murphy but all in all going to the church, meeting Sister Colleen, seeing, and getting the picture of him and me together was a wonderful experience. I felt there were other good experiences out there for me, I just needed some time before my next one.
Several weeks went by without hearing from Kathy. I wasn't close to having the nerve to call her, she was back from Princeton now, living at home but that didn't stop me from thinking about her, everyday, over and over until I would get frustrated with myself. I remember sitting in my office beating myself up about what a fool I was to ever get involved with her, how I had put myself in a position where if she chose she could twist my life in knots, when I got a call from a guy who represented our little rice company account. He was bitching to me that his products didn't have enough shelf space in some Pathmark supermarkets in New Jersey.
"I don't understand how come Ricearoni has three rows on each of its items and Barkley's only has one. I know they outsell us but not three to one." He was right, it wasn't three to one, it was five to one and he should have been happy that his items were on the shelf at all. I knew first hand that our headquarters salesman's relationship with the Pathmark buyer was the only thing keeping Barclay's three flavored rices in Pathmark and that wasn't going to last forever. Of course I couldn't tell this guy that, he'd only blame us for their sales and he wasn't around enough or understood his own business enough to understand the dynamics. He was one of those guys that represents a company in perhaps ten different marketing areas and he'd come into New York every few months, raise some hell and be gone. And by the time he came back he'd have forgotten all of the 'problems' he'd uncovered on his last trip and just go out and find some new ones. So my job was to get us through the night.
"Listen Tony, I'm aware of that situation and I've got Billy Thomas working on getting those stores changed. Pathmark's shelf set calls for two rows for each of your items but they have a supervisor in southern New Jersey who likes to screw with the shelf allocations. Give me a week, ten days and we'll have all the stores corrected." In a week or ten days this guy will have been in three different markets out of New York and forgotten all about our little situation. But handling problems, if you can call them problems, like those, in a totally bullshit way was a major part of my job. Really, the most major part and that's why I didn't want to be a retail sales manager my whole life. Shit, if I could have I would have never gotten into it.
After my very brief fling with college and an especially uneventful three years in the service of our country (US Army, serial number RA12669592, one of the two things I learned in three years, the other was how to spit shine shoes) I bounced around until I found myself working for Scully Sales. I began by calling on supermarkets, a retail sales representative for a broker. The absolute lowest job on the food chain of sales, any kind of sales. My job was bitching and moaning to store managers who were torn between taking advantage of my free labor and having to actually give in to my pleas for more space on their shelves or a few extra cases for some sale item we represented. I hated every moment of it and tried unsuccessfully to find something better all the while I was doing it. But through a series of people quitting and getting fired an opportunity for me to be promoted to supervisor, where I would manage eight people doing what I had been doing, opened up. It meant a few grand more per year and a chance to at least feel like I was getting somewhere, so I interviewed and got it. And I got it only because Jim Lohan liked me.
I know I fucked up the interview big time, I spoke too fast, repeated myself and wasn't very clear as to why I felt I would be good managing people. But Jim later told me that I seemed to want the job a lot more than the other candidates I was competing against and he just had this good feeling about me. That feeling about me is something I'd cherished and I knew I'd be putting on the line if he found out about Kathy and me. And where were I but wishing the phone would ring and it would be her voice on the line.
It was late in July when I walked into my office after lunch and saw a note on my desk that said 'Janice called'. I can't say I had thought that much about her since the last time we spoke. I hadn't thought much about women since I'd met Kathy. She'd be the one to pop in my mind and I'd quickly try to stamp her out by immediately thinking about baseball. Or politics. Or the weather. As if thinking about other women would lead my mind back to Kathy. But I was glad to see the name Janice on that note and punched in her number before I actually sat down in my desk chair. She wasn't around but I got into her voice mail and left the kind of message that said if you're interested I sure as hell am.
I ran my regular route when I got home. I nearly got hit by a guy turning on to Merrick Road just as I was beginning to cross it and I tripped in the park and fell, scraping both my palms on the cement. And when I got home I discovered my supper plans had fallen through... I was out of TV dinners. Moments like that are tough when you're alone. Loneliness is something that you must manage. Leaving the lights on, playing the radio loudly, leaving the TV on all day. But you can't escape it and when little things go wrong they get magnified and when a number of little things go wrong in a short period of time the loneliness gets louder than any sound I can manufacture. So it was in that climate that I heard one of the few sounds loud enough to drown out my lonely, the telephone.
"Hey Sean, how you doin'?"
"I'm okay, it's really good to hear your voice, I've been meaning to call you. I've been thinking a lot about you lately. What have you been up to?" A little bullshit but so what.
"It's good to hear YOUR voice. I've been traveling a lot with the job, getting home on Friday beat to hell and just hanging out on the weekends. I've really found myself missing the time we spent together. The reason I called is... look, how about dinner, JUST dinner this weekend. I don't know about you but I'd like to see if we could develop a different kind of relationship than we had. Maybe explore the possibilities before we revisit the other stuff." I was sure missing the other stuff but I was missing the companionship of a woman nearly as much.
"Perfect. Why don't we do Friday night just in case we have so much fun we want to do it again Saturday?"
"I know how your mind works Sean and you know I know but Friday's good. Pick me up at seven thirty. You pick out the restaurant."
I didn't leave Janice's apartment until almost three o'clock in the morning so both my run and Saturday afternoon with the Lohans started late. The afternoon was nearly shot when Jim and I sat down for cigars and conversation. And under the heading of 'expect the unexpected' Jim proceeded to say things I would never have dreamed to be hearing coming from his lips.
"I heard you telling Maureen you were out with your old friend Janice last night. I've always liked that girl, Sean... so how'd it go?"
"I've got to tell you, it was great. Different but great."
"How so?"
"Well, she called me and kind of wanted us to try a new kind of relationship, to try to have a friendship, something we never really had, before we went back to the physical thing, which we certainly had. I'd been with her dozens of times but not like last night. We talked about things we'd never gone near in all the dinners we shared or in those relaxing times after sex when you just lie around and shoot the shit. I learned... we learned more about each other in the five or six hours at her place last night than in all the other times together. I'm going to see her again tonight. I don't know what it all means other than I had a great time."
"Did you tell her about Kathy?" I remember thinking, "Man, where'd that come from?" I always knew, from our earliest conversations, that Jim was able to look inside me better than anyone I'd ever known... read me like a book. And this was another example. I had talked of BOTH my times with Kathy with Janice and I decided on the spot to do the same with Jim. Like ripping a bandage off a hairy leg I did it quickly and without thinking too much about it. And waited for my comeuppance.
"I can tell from the look on your face my friend that you're expecting some big-time lecture or a threat or something, right?"
"Eh, yeah."
"Well, forget it. I mean you would have gotten one except for Maureen. A few weeks ago I told her what you told me about you and Kathy and how I had 'handled' it with you. And she shocked the shit out of me. Basically she said I was all wet. That you and Kathy were adults, that you guys weren't hurting anybody though you obviously stood the risk of getting embarrassed pretty badly somewhere along the line. And as far as Scully and his threats, well he'd most likely be selling the company, what's left of the company, out from both you and me in the not very distant future so what the hell was the difference. Sometimes things get screwed up in your mind because your premise gets fucked up. That was me, Morph. I got hung up on acting like your old man instead of your friend. So what do you think of that?" Jim was smiling broadly.
I was still a bit shocked but I wanted to go and kiss Maureen. I thought about the time Jim intimated that Scully might even do something more than just fire me but I decided he must have been using some hyperbole to make his point and scare my ass.
"I'd like to go and thank Maureen."
"Nah, she made me promise that I would tell you I thought of all this not her. So you can't say anything about it. At least for a while. So have you heard from Kathy, have you called her?"
"No, and it was only a couple of weeks ago that I realized whatever contact there would be it would have to be from her. she's graduated; the only phone number that I could call her at was in her dorm at Princeton. I sure as hell can't call her in her old man's house. he's too fuckin' cheap to give her her own phone line, so I'd be calling her on his number. And he's got that damn caller ID. Hey, maybe she's got her own place? By the way, are you going to tell Maureen about my second encounter with Kathy?"
"First of all, Jack said she's still living with them, that she was looking for something but only half-heartedly. She knows how to reach you that's for sure. Secondly, I guess I'll tell Maureen. She seemed to get a charge out of the first story and the second one's better so maybe she'll get a bigger something out of it and I'll benefit, know what I mean?"
"Well I'm glad my stories may be helpful to you guys." I remember Jim, for those few minutes was a different Jim. Younger and looser, I'd never quite seen him that way before and it struck me. I realized I just hadn't seen the boy in this middle-aged guy and it was neat to watch. He asked me if I wanted Kathy to call me, ALL things considered.
"Jeez, I guess so. But now I've got this thing with Janice, I don't know. Things can change so damn quick in life. A few weeks ago I was absolutely convinced I'd fallen in love with Kathy, now I don't know."
"Ly, Sean, quickLY." We shared a laugh in the name of Bob
Tyler and lit up a couple of cigars. My world was opening up
wider by the moment and on my ride back home I wondered how
prepared I was.
Questions? Comments? Please send e-mail to jbearden@ieee.org
Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden