Running the Bulls Page 11

  Silence sat, lopsided, between them.

  Then, “How’d you like to be the guy who counted those twenty-eight thousand mice?” John asked.

  The Phone Call

  “We went down the stairs to the café on the ground floor. I had discovered that was the best way to get rid of friends. Once you had a drink all you had to say was: ‘Well, I’ve got to get back…’”

  —Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises

  We’re snuggled in between Big Beautiful Woman and Nails, Nails, Nails,” the travel agent told Howard, when she phoned to alert him that his packet for Pamplona was ready and waiting. As Howard headed the little Aston Martin out toward the mall, he tried not to visualize where the place lay. It sounded like some sort of painful initiation involving cleavage and clawing. At Patterson Street, the exit to his old life, it seemed as if the little car made its own decision to bear right. Howard simply rode with it, the wheel moving in his hands of its own accord as it turned smoothly past Mrs. Fennel’s white house on the corner. At first, he was surprised at how quiet things were on Patterson. Had his former life always been so serene, so easily defined? Lawns were neatly mown, the first cuttings of the year, and now, with the top rolled back, the fresh scent of grass wafted through the open car.

  At Ellen’s house—as he had begun to call the place—the shades were drawn, although it was well past breakfast. Howard slowed the car just enough to get a good look. The newspaper was still lying where the paperboy had thrown it in the early hours of morning. That wasn’t so unusual, considering Howard had always been the one to trudge out in his slippers each day and retrieve the paper. Before the house fell backward in his wake, he noticed that Ellen had left the garage door open again. There was her little gray Celica, its butt peering out at passersby in a most suggestive way.

  Howard gunned the Aston and sped to the end of Patterson, circled around the cul-de-sac, and sped back. The garage door seemed to laugh at him this time by, a black, open mouth. If Howard had told Ellen once, he’d told her a million times to close that damn door, whether she was at home or not. It was nothing more than an open invitation to robbery, and he didn’t care to hear from her how low Bixley’s crime rate was. This was America, for Christ’s sake. Violence was now a part of the American dream, a few slices of the pie. Howard’s—no, Ellen’s—house disappeared behind Marjorie Cantor’s overgrown lilac bush as Howard braked for the stop sign at the end of Patterson. How much time does it take for the human thumb to push down gently on an automatic button that says Close?

  By the time he got to the mall, Howard was still feeling tension over the garage door. It didn’t matter that the divorce papers, if Ellen agreed to sign them, stipulated that she would keep the house, a house on which they had finally made their last payment after thirty years of licking stamps each month and pasting them on envelopes. In compensation for half of what the house was worth, Howard would settle for the money they had hoarded as their life savings. Sixty-five thousand dollars. This might put Ellen short on ready funds, but that wasn’t his problem. She should have thought about that the day she let Ben Collins unhook her bra. Let her sell a few clay pots, make some extra coins that way. Let her find work as a ballet dancer. Her retirement pay should sustain her, but it was her problem now. He pulled the little car into a parking spot between an older model Buick and a big green Wagoneer. That’s what Howard liked most about the Aston Martin. It was like maneuvering a Chiclet. You could park it on an area the size of a bathroom rug and still have room to step out, stand back, and admire the little beast.

  The Bixley mall was busy for an early morning weekday but Howard didn’t mind. These days he almost seemed to find comfort in what Hardy had called the madding crowd. The men, women, boys, and girls that he met, on his way to the spot between Cleavage and Clawing, seemed like warm strands of water coming at him. A soft blanket of humanity, not too close to smother him but close enough to remind him that he wasn’t quite alone. Without Ellen at his side, Howard Woods had begun to look solitude square in the face. And the face that looked back at him bore a grimace, not a smile. Then, there it was, in black letters painted onto glass, Bixley Travel Agency.

  “Eloise?” Howard asked, as he stepped through the glass doors and into an office so small a mouse’s fart would have blown it to smithereens. The woman behind a desk that seemed built of Styrofoam looked up at him and smiled.

  “You must be Mr. Woods,” she said. Howard nodded. He judged her to be in the midthirty range and so immediately eliminated her as a possible date for the Seniors Dance. “Don’t lose this,” Eloise warned, as she handed him a manila envelope, her fake fingernails so long and so red that Howard was almost afraid to reach out and take the thing from her grasp. There was no doubt where Eloise had recently spent a lunch break. What Howard saw gripping his travel packet were Nails, Nails, Nails. “That first page has some important phone numbers and addresses on it, such as the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, so be extra careful that you don’t misplace it,” she instructed him. Her voice was unnaturally loud, and Howard soon realized this was probably in deference to his age. Eloise was deliberately cranking up the volume for this senior. The very idea irritated him. Did she think him incapable of hearing, for Christ’s sake? Does the younger generation believe that when one retires one must turn in the eardrums, as well as the keys to the office?

  “The good news is that no inoculations are required when entering or leaving Spain,” Eloise said, a little smile appearing around lips that were also red. “So you needn’t, you know, worry about that.” She gave him a quick little look. Did she think his withered ass would turn to parchment and crumble at the first prick of a needle? Howard tried to respond—he was going to Pamplona to run the bulls, for Christ’s sake—and this was when he realized that Eloise didn’t desire any response from him. She plowed onward with what was obviously her memorized travel spiel, with Pamplona substituted for, say, Dublin, or Lisbon, or Sydney. For Howard to reply was to interrupt the speech and perhaps cause her to lose the way. “The second section contains your ticket and hotel info, as well as a map. And the third has historical and local facts and places that you might want to visit, including museums, bars, and restaurants. If you have any questions at all before you leave, don’t hesitate to call me.”

  “Thanks,” Howard said, for she seemed to be finished. He accepted the packet from her hand, avoiding the inch-long nails, and opened it. It was all neatly arranged and quite simple, just as Eloise had predicted. The ticket had a Mr. Howard Woods booked on an American flight from Bangor’s International Airport, on the third of July, to Boston, where he would connect to a British Airways flight to London’s Heathrow. From there, it was straight on in to Bilbao Airport, in España.

  “Your car rental info is right there,” Eloise noted. She reached out with a red talon and tapped the sheet of paper in question. Did she think him blind as well as deaf? “With a route all laid out for you from Bilbao to Pamplona.”

  “Yes, I see it,” he said. How could he not?

  “Don’t lose it,” Eloise warned again, as if Howard might at that very moment let the ticket drop from a hand that had simply forgotten it held something. Her next move would be to pin the damn thing to the inside of his jacket, the way his mother had pinned his childhood mittens. “We’ve got you in a standard room with three single beds, at the Tryp Sancho Ramirez.”

  This surprised Howard. He was to share a room with two other people? He had thought he’d have his own room, or better yet, a room at some hotel like the Montoya. He remembered Jake Barnes, asking old Montoya about the rooms. Did you give Mr. Campbell the room on the plaza? And then Montoya, smiling in his embarrassed, deprecating way, nodding and saying, Yes, all the rooms we looked at. By God, that’s how it should be done! With a few words, a few gestures. Save all the big emotion for the running of the bulls, the fights, and then the drinking afterward. Howard had even told Eloise that his first choice was the
Montoya Hotel. Now, she seemed to read his mind, one-celled as it was, and as only a travel agent can. She looked down at the notes on her desk, Howard’s file, as if it were some kind of “tourist profile,” such as police keep for criminals.

  “That hotel you asked about,” she said, and struggled to read her own writing. “The Montoya?” Howard nodded, waited. “It doesn’t exist, Mr. Woods. It may have, you know, years ago, but it doesn’t anymore. But you’ll like the Tryp Sancho Ramirez. It’s very modern. And the room is only fourteen thousand eight hundred pesetas.”

  She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. Music started up next door, at Nails, Nails, Nails, a local radio station that was currently airing a commercial for the store. Are you tired of looking at nails that are chipped or bitten or just too brittle? Then get on down to Nails, Nails, Nails, because boy, boy, boy do they have a deal for you!

  “That’s only about eighty-five dollars,” Eloise comforted.

  “But I’d really like a room of my own,” Howard said, trying not to think of Virginia Woolf and those other whining biddies. Suddenly he was a child, a boy tired of bunking in the same room with a younger brother or sister. A strange sense of helplessness overtook him just then. Eloise gave him a weary look. He could almost hear her later, telling the other travel agents the story. You think that’s funny, wait till you hear what a customer just asked me. He wanted his own room. Ha ha ha.

  “This is in July, Mr. Woods,” Eloise said. Howard could hear the forced patience in her tone. He feared she would thrust a complimentary calendar into his hand, something else he could lose. “July in Pamplona, Spain. You’re lucky to get a straw mat on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Crap.”

  Considering that, Howard turned and discovered the glass door only six inches from his nose. If Eloise’s nails got any longer, she would be forced to keep the door open. He imagined them growing so long that one day they would be wrapping around trees in the parking lot, trellising. His nose so close to the glass, Howard saw that the letters for Bixley Travel Agency were now backward. It threw him for a moment, as if it were symbolic of how his life had ended up. Backward. He turned and looked at Eloise, who was just examining a chip in the polish of her index fingernail. He felt compelled to explain himself. See, my wife, Ellen, slept with this guy named Ben Collins, and now, well, it’s no life being a steer.

  “Forget something?” Eloise wondered. Before she could warn him again not to lose anything, including his dignity, Howard stepped through the glass door and was gone.

  ***

  Howard cut a wide arc as he approached Books Etc., not wishing to run into Billy Mathews, which is exactly what his detour did for him.

  “Hey, Mr. Woods!” It was Billy’s voice. Howard stopped and peered across the mall at the bookstore. Had Billy Mathews, hanging out too long in the science section of Books Etc., slowly morphed into some kind of human Hubble telescope? “Right here, Mr. Woods.”

  Howard looked around. To his right was a small grove of indoor palm trees, a tiny park, if you will. Some design genius had been busy. The idea was to suggest to the casual shopper that a tropical paradise had rooted inside the mall. An illusion of sorts. An oasis in a Maine desert. Around the palm trees were tall, tropical-looking flowers, what Ellen had once pointed out as Birds of Paradise. Below the trees and flowers lay a tiny fishpond in which red, tropical-looking fish pirouetted just below murky, tropical-looking water. Near the pond, and bolted down in case a shopper tried to steal it, was a green metallic bench. On the bench, his ass cheeks perfectly situated over the metallic slats, sat Billy Mathews, holding in his hands, of all things, a book. Beside him sat a McDonald’s soft-drink cup, its straw at half-mast.

  “Billy,” said Howard. “Imagine running into you again.” Billy beamed, as if this were some kind of compliment. He put the book facedown on the bench and picked up the McDonald’s cup. Howard watched as dark liquid was sucked up through the straw. He hoped it hadn’t come from the pond.

  “I’m on my fifteen-minute break,” said Billy, putting the drink back down. “I get two breaks a day, besides lunch.” Howard considered this. Two breaks a day. Billy was a lucky man, since most people go their whole day through without a single break. Just ask Howard Woods.

  “Well, nice to see you again, Billy.” Howard nodded. “You take care.” With that, he tried to step back into the path of mall traffic, but Billy was too fast for him.

  “Wait! Mr. Woods!” Howard couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard, could he? After all, Billy was just a note short of a bellow. Howard stopped and looked back at paradise. From his seat on the bench, Billy had a palm frond growing up out of his head. He smiled at Howard. He waited. Finally, Howard gave up and walked back.

  “What is it, Billy?” he asked. He tried to sound kindly, patient, the way a teacher should sound. But dammit, Billy Mathews needed to be reminded of one little fact: Howard Woods was no longer his fucking teacher!

  “I been reading this book,” said Billy. He picked up the facedown book and showed Howard the cover. To Howard’s utter amazement the boy was several pages into The Sun Also Rises.

  Billy waited, as if for a pat on the head.

  “Well, well,” said Howard. The book was new, its spine intact, its cover shiny, the kind of covers that publishers now like to put on older novels, hoping to reach a younger market. Howard imagined Hollywood just then and a remake of the movie. Harrison Ford would be Jake Barnes. Madonna as Lady Brett. Billy Crystal as Robert Cohn. Antonio Banderas as Pedro Romero, the Spanish bullfighter who becomes Brett’s lover. Howard could see these four heads now, all positioned on the cover according to star status, a bull ring behind them, a bull snorting at their backs, the dust of the arena in a passionate swirl over their heads.

  “I found it for you the other day,” said Billy, happy to have been of service, even if it was useless service. “But you had already left the store, and so, well, I figured I’d just buy it for myself. Employees get twenty percent off on paperbacks.”

  “Well, well,” said Howard, as he searched for a better response. He reached for the book and opened it. “Papa Hemingway. Imagine.” He looked down at the page Billy had dog-earred to mark his place. “Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?” “What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell.”

  “So what do you think so far?” Howard asked. He simply couldn’t help himself. It was a literary car wreck all right, and Howard felt compelled to slow down for it. Billy stood and deposited his soft-drink cup in a nearby trash can that had been cleverly hidden within some Birds of Paradise. He turned to Howard, who was just passing the book back to him. Billy took it in his hands, rubbed a finger over the shiny cover—Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Crows—as he thought about his answer. Howard had never seen him this pensive when he was actually required to read The Sun Also Rises for a grade.

  “I think they’re just very sad people,” Billy said finally. “But then, I’m only on page seven.” Howard nodded in sympathy.

  “Keep in mind that it might get worse,” he said. “Well, nice to see you, Billy.” Howard started to turn.

  “Wait a sec, Mr. Woods,” Billy implored. Howard racked his brain. How was it Jake had gotten rid of Robert Cohn? Oh yes, he had taken him down to a bar, had a drink, and then said, “Well, listen, I got to get back.” Jake Barnes knew how to get rid of pests, but what could Howard do? Take Billy to McDonald’s for another Coke? Squander the boy’s last break of the day just to be shed of him?

  “What is it, Billy?” Howard asked, waiting.

  “I’d like to talk to you about the book, you know, see what you think, see what I think. Maybe we could meet here in the mall. There’s a café just around the corner, near the video store.” Howard forced a smile.

  “Listen, Billy,” he said. “I’m leaving the country soon, for a time.” It sounded so very, well, expatriate, and he liked the tone of
it. Leaving the country soon for a time.

  “You going to Norway?” asked Billy.

  “Norway?”

  “Yeah, I know you were looking at that Norway book.”

  “I’m really too busy, Billy, to sit and discuss books,” said Howard. “But maybe sometime next year.” And with that Howard turned on his heel and made a dash past the palms and red fish and lush flowers. He left Billy alone to ponder Papa Hemingway.

  ***

  On the drive home Howard stopped at Red’s Tavern to pick up one of Red’s famous chicken sandwiches. He would eat it alone in his room, at the Hotel Holiday Shit, hardly a place for old Señor Montoya to roam the premises. But it would have to do until Howard returned from Pamplona, a reborn man with a new plan. He was sure this would happen. It was a literary theme, for Christ’s sake. You go, you see, you change. His sandwich sitting beside him on the car seat, as if it were his date to the senior’s dance, Howard pulled out of Red’s parking lot and turned toward the Holiday Inn. He had decided not to cruise down Patterson Street again, at least not today, maybe not ever. Wind ripped at his thin hair as he shifted the little car into third, let her build herself up to a nice speed. On the floor mat of the passenger seat, weighted down by his own copy of The Sun Also Rises, lest he lose the blasted thing, was his travel packet to Pamplona. He was going. He was seeing. He was doing it.

  “That old Bilbao moon, I won’t forget it soon,” Howard sang. Wind ripped at the sides of his mouth, the words streaming out like water. “That old Bilbao moon, just like a big balloon.” What had become of Andy Williams? Was he still dating Ethel Kennedy, his fellow senior? Was Ethel wearing Andy’s ring, her husband dead long enough that America could finally allow it? “That old Bilbao moon would rise above the dune, while Tony’s Beach Saloon rocked with an old-time tune.” Howard’s eyes welled with tears. Did he miss Andy Williams that much? He wiped the warm tears away, steering with one hand. “No paint was on the door, the grass grew through the floor, of Tony’s two by four, on the Bilbao shore, but there were friends galore, and there was beer to pour, and moonlight on the shore, that old Bilbao shore.”