Fantastic Metropolis

Even at the hearing—hastily arranged because one of Richard’s Manhattan colleagues knew a paper shuffler attached to the DA’s office—when the man who had driven head-on into 55-year-old Ellie Blenheim’s ‘74 Mustang II, her pride and joy, the very first and only car she had ever had all to herself, the result of Matt’s job at the small advertising and design studio over on Downing Street earning him a company vehicle. The car—a Dodge, something that Matt couldn’t get out of his mind, recalling the line from The Graduate about old Elaine Robinson got started in a Ford… old Ellie Blenheim got wasted by a Dodge—hit his wife’s Mustang with a combined speed impact of around 80 miles an hour on MacDougal outside of a dimly lit store that sold second-hand CDs and old vinyl albums… the kind that Matt and Ellie used to buy when they were first going together… stuff on the old Blue Note label, Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver… stuff like that… even when that man, early twenties, soused on booze and who knew what else, got only a suspended sentence and a driving ban, Matt had shrugged.

“Suspended fucking sentence,” Richard had said as they came out of the courthouse somewhere uptown—Matt couldn’t remember that either—“he should’ve got a fucking suspended sentence… they should’ve hung the bastard.”

“Hanged,” Matt had said, correcting him without even thinking what he was doing, thinking instead of Ellie’s eyes and Ellie’s smile… wondering suddenly how he was going to be able to live without them.

“What?” Richard had said, his eyes wide and staring. “Hanged? What the hell are you-”

“Dick, watch your language,” the shrew-faced dental receptionist from Des Moines had said softly, glancing around at the people passing them on the sidewalk as they walked to Richard’s Toyota Four Wheel through the late October sunshine, smiling her perfectly capped-teeth smile, a receptionist’s smile, devoid of real warmth, all show and no feeling. Small-time corporate, just like her husband.

Dick. Matt hated that word. Dick was what drunks called their peckers.

Matt wondered if that was the way Sandra saw her husband: a pecker with a pocketbook… he liked the alliteration even though ‘wallet’ was actually the most appropriate word. Maybe that was the way Sandra saw her husband… a phallus that earned almost obscene amounts of money which enabled them to live in palatial splendor in a nineteenth century family house on the Farmington River, about 10 miles west of Hartford, where even the garages had heat-sensor security devices and cameras, though break-ins were a rarity.

Richard Blenheim’s life was one of gadget measurability and an almost sterile orderliness. Matt and Ellie had never liked going to visit… had never liked having to place newspapers in the newspaper rack, being told like they were kids, patronizing words, detailed explanations of how neatness made for an ordered mind. Thankfully, invitations had always been thin on the ground.

Coming out of the courthouse, Richard had shaken his head, thumped his chest a couple of times to dislodge both his acid attack and the unfairness of it all, mad more at the fact that someone had gotten away with something than at the fact that his mother was dead… never mind that she had effectively been murdered. Richard being corporate again, following rules and guidelines, taking care of business.

But for that very reason, Matt knew, having spent a considerable portion of his own life facing boardroom battles and business politics, Richard would never be a success. He had never learned one of the most important rules: there are battles to fight and battles to walk away from. You get the two mixed up—the tendency to do which was human nature—and you wind up winning none and making yourself look like an asshole to all and sundry. When he had said as much to Ellie, after one particularly fraught weekend at a seafood restaurant up near where Richard and Sandra lived, a meal during which Richard had insisted not only a completely free meal but also a second complimentary meal, again for four, for the somewhat less-than-heinous crime of (a) Ellie’s bisque being cool and (b) their main courses arriving after those served to a couple who had come into the restaurant a good half-hour behind them.

“You don’t get nothing unless you show these bastards who’s the boss,” Richard had confided to his father, not so sotto voce, thumping his chest and then slugging back claret like it was water. On that occasion, Matt had decided against lecturing his son on double-negatives.

Not surprisingly, Ellie hadn’t gone a bundle on having Richard called an asshole: she didn’t particularly like the word and she certainly didn’t feel it appropriate for Matt to think it of his—their—own son. But then, when she thought Matt wasn’t watching her, she stared glassy-eyed out of the window as they drove back to Manhattan, watching the world go by and wondering what they had done for their only son to turn out that way. And what way is that? Matt imagined one of the gremlin voices in his wife’s head asking. Like an asshole, he imagined the response from one of the other voices.