A couple of weeks before the Christmas party at Scully's home, Kathy hit me with something she said she'd been considering.
"My mother, and even daddy, are beginning to wonder why they never get to see any of the guys I tell them I'm dating. They're really good about not asking where I am when I don't come home at night. I intimate that I've spent a night with a girlfriend, or I've driven down to Princeton to see an old friend, and sometimes I even kind of make them think I've spent the night at a guy's place."
"The stuff with a girlfriend and all that, you've told me before, but what's up with this 'a night at a guy's place'?"
"Sean, they know I'm a red-blooded young woman with a strong libido, and I'm trying not to make them suspicious. Anyway, what I'm getting at is, I think I'm going to get a date for the Christmas party. How's that sound to you?" I wondered how her parents knew that she had a strong libido, but let it go.
"What's the difference? If you think you need to do it, go ahead. Who's the lucky guy?"
"I was thinking of asking a guy I knew in high school-- his name is Brian Jensen. I heard he's back from Dartmouth, and he's doing his 'Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate' imitation..."
"Like you."
"Like me, that's right. If I call him, he'll come-- he was always crazy about me."
"How do you know he doesn't have a girlfriend?"
"I don't, and what if he did?"
"Maybe he wouldn't want to-- may I dare say-- take you up on your invitation."
"Nah, no chance. Be honest, Sean-- you think he's going to turn this down?"
"Man, you are a trip. Do what you've got to do, but you do understand I've got to be there-- right?"
"Of course I do, that's what's going to make this so much fun."
"Fun for who?"
"Fun for both of us."
"How do you figure that?"
"You'll see." It never quite worked out that way.
A few days before the party, I got a call from Larry Lantini, from Krause.
"Sean, I bought you guys a few more months; but between you and me, you won't make the summer. Carl's getting bumped upstairs, and the guy who's going to replace him has already told people that the first thing he's going to do when he becomes national sales manager is fire Scully Sales. He knows Jack from about fifteen years ago when he was a young region manager, working in New York, and Jack fucked him. Now it's going to be time to pay the piper."
"Seems like Jack's been paying the piper for a lot of years now."
"His piper account is way overdue, Sean, way overdue. Merry Christmas, buddy."
"Yeah, Merry Christmas."
I couldn't bring myself to tell Jim in person, so I called him in his office.
"Listen, Murph, I consider that good news. I thought we'd get fired at the end of the calendar year. Something else: I just want you to know I'm working on a deal, and if it comes to fruition, it means a place for you and me and quite a few of the people here, retail and headquarters sales people both. I know you won't, but I'm still gonna tell you: don't say anything to anybody." That old saying about turning chicken shit into chicken soup? Jim could actually do it.
The note on the bulletin board reminding us of Jack's Christmas party said ‘Nine PM.'
I tried to be fashionably late, and showed at ten-thirty. No good. There were less than a dozen people, of the fifty or so that were left working for Scully Sales, down from well over a hundred three years ago. But Jim and Maureen were there, and I spent the next hour or so sitting with them in the back of the living room, facing the entrance and noting who'd showed up and who didn't.
One of the very last was Kathy and her date. She hadn't described him to me, and as soon as I saw him, I knew why. He had to be six-three, maybe six-four, with what could only be described as an athletic build. He had blonde hair, and one of those little beard/mustache things that go from the top of the lip and curl down around the chin. As I was sizing him up, I heard Maureen whisper to Jim "Holy shit, look at that." They made a hell of a couple, the big blond jock with this beautiful girl in your basic little red, cling-to-every-contour-of-her-very-contoured-body, dress. Her signature big hoop earrings, this time in gold, a matching thick gold chain around her neck, and sexy black high-heeled shoes.
I watched Kathy make the rounds, very much the way she did exactly a year before, except then she was with her mother, and this time she was escorted by Brad Pitt on steroids. I decided I'd wait for the introduction, give her a smile and maybe a wink, and look to make my exit.
"Brian Jensen, this is Jim Lohan and his wife Maureen. Jim's my dad's right-hand man and oldest friend. And this is Sean... it's Murphy, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's right. Pleasure to meet you, Brian, and it's nice to see you again, Miss Scully."
"Please call me Kathy. Brian, Sean's got a very important job with the company-- he's head of the retail department. In fact, you were made a vice-president not too long ago, weren't you?"
"That's right. Jim put a piece of paper in front of your dad, and told him he needed to sign it to move Scully Sales from AT&T to Sprint for a better phone rate. And you know how your dad watches the company's money. So here I am." Jim, Maureen and Kathy laughed; college boy hesitated before joining in, albeit feebly. A few more seconds of small talk, and they were gone.
"You know, fellows, I always knew she had the looks to be in the movies, but now I know she has the acting skills. So what do you think of her date, Sean? Looks like real competition to me."
"Stop breaking the guy's balls, Maureen-- you're just jealous it's Kathy with that guy, and not you."
"You're so clever, Jim-- how did you EVER read my mind like that?"
"Hey, I told the two of you what she told me, and I believe her. One thing: through all the strange times with her, she's never lied to me. Not even a little white one. So let her parade him around here for a while, but I'll be with her after she ditches him-- maybe even later tonight."
"Come on, Murph, you and I could use a cigar. Can you mingle a little if we go outside for a couple of minutes, honey?"
"Oh, I'll be just fine-- in fact, Mary's sitting alone, as usual." Mary was Mary Scully, Kathy's mother. And she did look lonely in her own home at her husband's Christmas party, lonely because she was married to Jack Scully. And particularly alone at that moment, because Jack had, same as last year, drunk himself into a stupor, and had been cozily tucked into his bed by his long-suffering mate.
We didn't stay outside long enough to finish the cigars-- it was December twenty-second, you know. When we got back inside, it was apparent that something had just happened. A lot of the guests were milling around near the front door, and there was a loud buzz in the room, way out of character for a Scully Sales Christmas party. We spotted Maureen, now with some woman I didn't recognize. Jim approached her.
"What's going on?"
"Kathy threw her drink at lover boy, and he stormed out of here, bumping the wife of one of your guys, Sean. The husband went after him and-- what's his name, Brian, right?-- shoved him into a wall and kept walking. Kind of ugly. Mary and I were sitting right over there, and we saw everything except the drink thing."
"How do you know she threw her drink on him?" I was in a tough spot; I really wanted to go and see if she was all right, but why the hell would I be doing that?
"Because we went and found Kathy in the kitchen, and she told us. I left Mary alone with her and came back out here. See, those damn cigars made you guys miss all the action. Actually, Jim, it's the most action at a Jack Scully party since the time he got so drunk he fell and broke that four-thousand-dollar grandfather's clock, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember, but this sounded so much better. Shit, and it was freezin' ass out there too."
Mary Scully came out of the kitchen and asked for everyone's attention.
"Kathy's fine. Nobody's hurt. Please, everyone, go back to having a good time." An extremely private and reserved woman, it must have been excruciating for Mary Scully to say even those few words; but it did get things, for the most part, back on track. I watched the hallway leading to the kitchen for a sign of Kathy for a few minutes before deciding to take a chance and wander in. She wasn't there. I came back and caught Jim's eye; he motioned me toward the double glass doors leading outside.
"Maureen couldn't say anything with Toby's wife standing there, but Kathy whispered to her that you should meet her in her bedroom as soon as you can."
"What, is she crazy? That was stupid, of course we know she's crazy. I can't do that; I don't even know where it is. Is it near where the old man is zonked out?"
"No, he's on the second floor, and she's on the third. I'll make sure Mo and I keep Mary busy. Get up there, do your stuff, and get out. This is great, Sean, I'm in a fuckin' movie. I love it."
"Yeah, fuckin' mission impossible. I'm scared, man. I really don't want to do this." The stairs were off a hallway a distance from the very large living room where Mary and most of the people still were, and I slipped out and climbed them, very gingerly. I'd already decided that if anyone but Mary saw me, I wouldn't panic; they'd have no reason to say anything to her, and Jack was out for the night. I was just petrified that Kathy's mother would come upstairs while I was up there, and then what the hell would I say? She wouldn't be catching us doing anything, that I was certain of.
"Over here, Sean-- come in and close the door." She was in her bed, partially under the covers, but she, at least, had nothing on above the waist.
"Listen to me: put your clothes on and meet me outside, or meet me at a diner, or whatever you want, but I'm not fooling around here, I swear to God." She pulled the covers down and did her best Hustler Magazine pose. I turned my head, but I couldn't help laughing.
"Forget it, you whacko, I'll meet you at my place in an hour. Be there!"
"I won't be able to spend the night, you know." A win, a clear win. I was loving it.
"You stay as long as you can-- see you in an hour." I tiptoed down the stairs and mingled a few minutes before saying my good nights. I wasn't in my front door more than five minutes when I heard Kathy pull up. I looked out the window and watched that lovely body saunter up the red brick walkway, and wondered how I was able to walk away from her a little while back-- until the thought of her old man, one floor away, crept into my mind.
We fooled around for a moment or two when she came in, but I couldn't get the obvious questions out of the way.
"Okay, what happened with you and your friend?"
"What happened was, I carried out my plan." She gave me a little contented smile.
"Go ahead, I'm listening-- this oughta be good."
"When I was a senior in high school, I was friendly with a girl named Kristin. We weren't super tight, but we were pretty good friends. She was going with Brian since the summer before, and I was kind of moving from guy to guy. Twice this slime ball asked me out, while he and Kristin were supposedly going steady. I never told her because I didn't want to make her feel badly, but that bothered me a lot. Then the night of the senior prom, Kristin and Brian were in the city, and he just dumped her for some girl he picked up. She told me how coming back in the limo with the other couples was the worst moment she'd ever experienced. So I already knew him as a true low-life.
"I lost touch with Kristin until last year, when I ran into her at the Roosevelt Field Mall over the holidays. We got to talking, and she told me that the summer after their prom adventure, Brian somehow wormed his way back into her life. They saw each other a few times, until they spent some time alone in her parent's home. The son-of-a-bitch stole two necklaces from her, and a watch and a bracelet from her mother. They couldn't prove it, of course, but when she confronted him about it, he laughed in her face."
"How does that fit in with....? Wait a minute. Let me guess: you caused the little skirmish tonight-- he didn't do anything, right?"
"Right. I got him in the kitchen and told him what I just told you. Then I told him to give me his wallet and credit cards, which I would destroy, after which I was going to throw a drink in his face and yell at him for grabbing me. He was then to just leave. And if he didn't do exactly as I said, I'd rip my blouse, scream out that he was trying to rape me, and get my father to call the cops to lock him up. And I told him the second option was really my favorite, but I was cutting him more slack than he cut Kristin, because I knew he was a born asshole and couldn't help himself."
"What did he say?"
"He said I was a crazy bitch. I said that I may be crazy, but I've got to do this for Kristin. He stood there for a minute, just looking at me, then he gave me his stuff. I checked it out to make sure his license was with his cards, yelled at him to get his hands off of me, and threw the drink in his face. That's it, Sean-- what do you think?"
"What did you do with all his credit cards and stuff?"
"Here, you take them-- just get rid of them."
"Great, so I'm a goddamn accomplice. Jeez."
"Ain't love great?"
"All right, if all that stuff about him is true, he deserved what you did, but you still are a crazy bitch. Seriously, why did you feel you had to get even for Kristin?"
"After Kristin told me the story, I told Walter about it, and how much it bothered me. He asked me if doing something to Brian would make me feel better. I'd never even considered it, but I thought about it for a few days, and I told him I WOULD like to do something."
"So he encouraged you to get blondie?"
"He encouraged me to follow my heart."
"Follow your heart? Isn't that a strange choice of words, all things considered?"
"Walter was an unusual man, with an unusual take on the world."
"I can't argue with you on that. What did you tell your mother when you left tonight? You know, that's a strange choice of words, too-- I mean, you're twenty-two years old, for Christ's sake."
"You chose the words, Sean. I didn't say anything She'll be asleep when I get home. I think you're the old-fashioned one, not my parents. One more thing-- before you ask: I think you're much cuter than Brian. Okay, then: do you have all the answers you need from me now?"
"If the operative word is 'now', the answer is yes. Let's start over from when you were in your bedroom, and I was trying to leave."
I'm back in Indiana, and I'm deciding if it makes sense to call Kathy, or just pop in on her when I get back to Long Island. I have to admit, as juvenile as it sounds, there's a part of me that needs, in a big way, to walk in on her sitting home alone on a Saturday night. I guess I'll never grow up.
To save money, Jack didn't renew our lease on a storefront we used to store products and merchandising tools from our principles. And in all fairness to Scully, with fewer principles, we had less of everything to store. But we still needed space for storage, and Jack had Jim reconfigure our office building somewhat. The new setup left my office intact on the first floor, but Jim and Rick were moved upstairs into what had been one of our two conference rooms-- something else we could now do without. And that meant that Ruthless was now the secretary for Jim and Rick, along with the old man, something that didn't go down well with a woman who had worked for Jack, and only Jack, from the day that he opened the Westbury office twenty-five years ago. But that was the way it was going to be, and on a Monday afternoon in early March, I was sitting in Jim's new office. It looked exactly like his old office, with one major difference: it had no window.
"How the hell are we going to smoke our stogies in here, Big Jim?"
"Tell you what, Sean, it's not going to matter. You and I, the old man, and Murry Birnbaum of B&H are the only people in the world who know about what I'm going to tell you. And it won't be common knowledge for a week or two." B&H stands for Birnbaum and Huber, a medium-sized New York broker, located in New Jersey. For the most part they're everything that Scully Sales is not: good to their people, effective for their principles, and growing.
"You've cut a deal with B&H?"
"They need to discuss this with a couple of their principles, but this time next month, you and I and at least seventy-five percent of your people, nearly all of Rick's guys, and at least a good percentage of the administrators will be working for B&H. And the way the deal was put together, they've promised to keep everyone they initially bring on for a minimum of twelve months. Murph, I feel really good-- I can't imagine cutting a better deal for the folks here. And your job will be as the number one man to their vice-president of Retail, Bob Barnes-- you know him, don't you?
"Yeah I do, nice guy. He's kind of near retirement age, isn't he?"
"Sean, he's sixty-six years old, he wants out, and he'd have left already if they had someone capable of replacing him. All you need to do is show them you're half as sharp as I've told them you are, and you'll be the man, and old Bob can put himself out to pasture."
"Well, this sounds great-- almost too good to be true. What are the chances of something going haywire at the last minute?"
"There's always a chance, but I think it's minimal on this one. So just keep it under your hat and sit tight."
It was a week or two later that Kathy and I were to have what seemed at the time to be a conversation somewhere out of the blue. We were in a restaurant in Bayville, at a table with a perfect view of a calm Long Island Sound.
"I can sense you're like me-- not the marrying kind." It was a lot to digest in one sentence, and I took my time responding.
"Well, you're giving me new information about you, and making a not-necessarily-correct assumption about me. Let's start with you."
"Oh, I thought you figured that out about me, considering all that I told you about my childhood, my family, and their relationships to one another. Look around, Sean: not too many married people are happy, you know?"
"I think you could say not too many people are particularly happy, period. Do you really think married people are less happy than the rest of us? I seem to remember reading articles about how married couples live longer and are more satisfied with life, that kind of stuff."
"I've read things like that too, but who knows why people say what they do to people taking surveys? I'm going by what I've seen in my life, Murph, my experiences and the experiences of friends I've gone to school with."
"We'll leave you alone for a minute. How'd you get the idea I was against marriage?"
"I just concluded that from the stories you told me about the families you've gone back to see, what you yourself went through as a kid, all of that."
"But I was a foster child, bouncing around for fifteen years. I don't think that was a good barometer of what it might be like to find someone you love, and spend your life with."
"I would just be so afraid that I'd choose the wrong person. Then what happens?" I was a bit bewildered. Kathy had her idiosyncrasies to be sure, but as an extremely intelligent and street-smart young woman, she wasn't sounding like herself.
"What do you mean? When couples make mistakes, they part. Half of marriages don't make it, right?"
"I wouldn't want that to happen, especially if kids were involved."
"Well, I sure as hell agree with you on that. Is there any particular reason you brought this topic up tonight?"
"No, not really. I've never been as open with anyone before, and I guess it's just another piece of me I wanted to share with you." We'd been drinking our after-dinner coffees, and the check came.
"As soon as I get working, I'm going to start catching up on my share. I calculate I owe you about eight hundred thousand dollars in restaurant bills."
"Well, I've been keeping track and your estimate is a little low. But this work that you'll be doing, any idea what it might be, or even when it might be?"
"No, not yet, but I'm working on it. Pun intended."
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Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden