Read Ebook: O+F by Wetterau John Moncure

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Ebook has 2288 lines and 65864 words, and 46 pages

"What kind of friend?"

"A lady friend, not a black pantser, I'm pretty sure. Francesca, her name was."

"Francesca? Tall chick? Good looking?"

"I wouldn't call her a chick, exactly. More like a Madonna by Modigliani."

"Yeah, Francesca. She lives in Cape Elizabeth. I was in a yoga class with her once."

"I ought to take yoga," Oliver said.

"The ratio is good, man. Francesca. That was years ago. She married some guy who works for Hannaford's."

"I knew it," Oliver said.

"They can't help it," Mark said. "They have this nesting thing." Dancers came to Portland, walked around the block a couple of times, and met Mark. Six to eighteen months later, they married doctors.

"Did you ever think of settling down?" Oliver asked.

"I'm trying, man. Who do you like in the NCAA's? Duke?"

"No way. Robots," Oliver said. "Smug. Bred to win from birth."

"I got a hundred on them." Mark made money helping executives scale the job ladder. He was amused and ironic about it. They knocked themselves out; he got the dancers--for a time.

"Hey, Richard!"

"Mark . . . Oliver . . . The boss let us out early." Pleased with this statement, Richard O'Grady, who acknowledged no boss but "The Man Upstairs," shuffled to his customary place at a long table on the other side of the bar. He was bright eyed, slight, and stooped, a survivor of diabetes and severe arthritis.

"Amazing smile!" Oliver said.

"A world authority on blood chemistry," Mark said. "You'd never know it--in here every night drinking scotch."

"Every night but Sunday," Oliver said. "I asked him, one time, where he got that smile. I thought he'd say something like: it was his mother's. He said, 'Don't know.' Then he said, 'Use it!' It was like a command he'd been given."

"Not too many around here that haven't had a drink on Richard," Mark said. "I'm outa here. Duke, man."

"Boo."

"Oliver," Richard called, "Help me with this plowman's lunch." Oliver sat on a wooden bench across the table from Richard.

"I'll have a bite," he said. "What's happening?"

"Oh, the usual," Richard said. "Palace intrigue. Too many chemists in one lab. I shouldn't complain; they do a good job." He bent over the table and lowered his voice. "One of the supervisors is a bit rigid. I hear about it, you know. I've tried to talk to her. It's delicate." He brightened as he straightened. "I'm sending her to a conference in Amsterdam. Maybe something will happen."

"That would be the place," Oliver said, cutting a slab of Stilton.

"How are you doing? Working?"

"In between programming projects at the moment," Oliver said. "Not sure what to do next. Sometimes I wonder what's the point of doing anything."

"Oliver . . ." Richard reminded him, pointing at the smoky ceiling, "you've got to trust The Man Upstairs. It's His plan." This would be too corny to take if it weren't coming from Richard.

"I wish He'd let me in on it." Oliver took a long swallow of stout.

"I'll tell you what I do when I feel bad," Richard said. "I find somebody who's worse off than I am, and I do something to help him out. Or her out. Works every time." He turned toward Sam and held one crippled hand in the air. "Over here, Sam, when you can." Oliver didn't think in terms of other people. He related to them as required, but his focus was inward. He imagined Richard's process: let's see, I feel bad; therefore, it's time to find person X who is worse off than I am and help him out. Or her. He could picture eligible persons, but he stumbled on the help part. What did he have to offer? Was a dollar bill going to make a difference? He felt blocked from the part of himself that might contain helpful things he could pass along.

"I like this chutney," he said, "good with this cheese. What was your father like, Richard?"

"Great guy," Richard said. He sloshed the scotch and ice cubes around in his glass. "I'll tell you a story about my father. He couldn't tell time. Someone gave him a watch, but he didn't want to learn. He was proud of the watch, wore it every day. He used to go to people and say, 'I'm having a little trouble reading this,' and then he'd hold his wrist up." Richard raised his arm proudly out in front of him. "And he'd squint, as if he had eye trouble. 'Oh, it's a quarter to nine,' they'd say." Richard threw back his head and laughed. "My dad was a great guy--could barely read, always singing. He worked on the docks."

"Hi, Richard." A thin woman approached. She had dark eyes and bleached blonde hair pulled into a tight pony tail.

"Hi, Sally. How are you?"

"O.K."

"Do you know Oliver?"

"Seen you around," she said, appraising him. Oliver felt about a four out of ten, maybe a three.

"Sally works at Mercy Hospital. That cigarette isn't doing you any good, you know."

"Nag, nag, nag."

"You got one for me?" Richard lit up the room with his smile.

"Oh, Richard!" Sally felt in her purse with one hand.

"What are you drinking?" Richard asked.

"I'll see you guys," Oliver said, sliding to the end of the bench and standing. Sally took his place. "Thanks for the eats, Richard."

"Stay warm," Richard said.

A plow rumbled by, as Oliver stepped out into the storm. He followed it along the white empty street. He considered stopping at Giobbi's Restaurant, but he turned up Danforth and walked to State Street where he lived in a second floor apartment on the last block before the Million Dollar bridge.

Verdi was waiting. He jumped from the window sill and made a fuss bumping against Oliver's legs. "Hungry, are we?" Oliver bent over and stroked him from head to tail. "Yes, very large and very fierce is Verdi. Very fierce." Verdi was brown and black, heavyset, with a large tomcat's head and yellow eyes. He padded deliberately over to the lengths of walnut leaning upright in one corner of the room and scratched luxuriously, stretching full length, as though he had been waiting to do this for some time. "Aieee! Swell, Verdi." Oliver hung his coat on a peg and gathered up the boards. For the moment, he laid them on the table. The cat was irritated. "How about some nice pine," Oliver said. "Much better than walnut. I'll get you a nice soft piece of pine. In the meantime . . ." He opened a can of salmon Friskies.

Verdi ate, and Oliver refilled his water dish. The boards were beautiful. He'd been right about the color of Francesca's eyes. There was an actual black walnut, a large one, at the edge of the parking area behind his building. It shaded his kitchen window during the summer and dropped hundreds of furry green walnuts that were gathered by squirrels each fall. Oliver had planted six walnuts in yogurt containers. He'd let them freeze first, done everything right, but none of them came up. The seeds were finicky for such a powerful tree. Maybe they had to pass through a squirrel. "Biology is complicated," he said to Verdi.

The kitchen had been a master bedroom in the original house. The appliances, counter, and sink were arranged along one wall and part of another, leaving plenty of space for a table in the center. The wall to the adjoining living room had been mostly removed; the two rooms functioned as one. Steps led to a landing and then to an attic bedroom with a view of the harbor. There was a fireplace that he rarely used. In one corner, a small table held a computer system.

Oliver sat at the kitchen table and ran the heels of his hands along the walnut. He enjoyed making things from wood: easy shelves, chests, a cradle once for a wedding present. He had a table saw and a router in the basement, but he kept his tools under a rough workbench that he had built along one wall of the kitchen. A "Workmate" stood in the living room near the door to the hall. Usually it was covered with mail.

The touch of the wood was reassuring. Deep in the grain, in what might be made from the grain, was something iconic and alive, more alive than what could be said about it. Oliver took particular pleasure in finishing a shelf or a chest, hand rubbing the surface and seeing the patterns of the grain shine and deepen. He would have to buy legs if he were going to make a table. Or learn how to use a lathe. He didn't have a lathe. Maybe he could make a small box--to hold something special. He could give it to someone.

Who? A wave of longing swept over him. Who would care? He had an impulse to put his head down on his arms and give up.

"No cowards on this ship, Verdi," Oliver said, standing. Toast. Tea. When Oliver was upset, he turned to food. He had a high metabolism and ate what he wanted. His body looked chubby on its short square frame, but there was more muscle than fat under his skin; he could move quickly when he wished. He had a wide serious mouth with strong teeth. His eyebrows and hair were black. His eyes were large and dark brown with lids that slanted slightly across the corners. Women looked at him and were puzzled by something that was different. He almost never got into it.

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