John's Wife: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

whiny scolding, ever the backseat driver. Crowds like these were typically just so many potential car buyers for Stu, and he had imagined, as he always did, moving at least half his inventory in such a happy free-spending pack-up—mostly upmarket Lincoln-and-Merc trade at that, a real high-class sale barn—but he couldn’t even see their goddamn faces. When he did finally make a pitch he found himself pushing a four-wheel-drive farm truck on the little girl from France who seemed to think he was telling her a naughty joke. She was peering up at him, all smiles, waiting for the punchline, so he shifted gears, leaned close, and rumbled melodically in her frail papery ear: “Hinky-dinky, par-lee- ffoo! ” He winked, roared his big laugh, punched her softly in the shoulder, and thinking, well, the French they are a funny race, drifted off into the noisy blur, looking for the self-service pump: and the next thing he knew, Daphne’s hand was on the throttle and her tongue was in his ear.
    Gordon had taken the photo now sitting on the old car dealer’s desk, but Ellsworth had cropped and capped it for his weekly newspaper, Stu and Daph in, their partners out. This was not the tongue-in-the-ear teaser, but her cake-in-the-kisser boffo, though Ellsworth had caught both acts. Who hadn’t? Daphne was pretty manic in those days, hard not to notice, and old Stu, sitting beside her, so drunk his weepy red eyes were crossed, had been an easy target. Earlier that day, or maybe it was later, as she stretched for the bridal bouquet, her strapless bodice had pulled away and, instead of covering herself, Daphne had, whooping like a raffle-winner, grabbed the bouquet and held it to her face, her bare breasts bugging out over the fallen cups on either side of the clutched stems like startled cartoon eyes—another of Gordon’s photos, one that failed to make The Town Crier’s historic spread of course, though it remained to this day a backshop favorite, even though the model herself had, as one might say, outgrown it. The wedding had excited Ellsworth as had little else in his four years back here, and he had front-paged it two weeks running, both before and after, with two inside photo pages in the second week’s issue, he being yet another in this town with a special affection for John’s wife, more than that really if truth be known, but motivated as well by his newsman’s nose: this joining of the local fortunes made for a terrific story, he felt, just when the town most needed one. The entire area at the time was in something of a recession, lying dormant, waiting for something to come along and wake it up, and the wedding was like a fresh breath of life, a real pickup for everyone. Literally, as it turned out: for it was announced at the reception, like a gift from the good fairies, that the state highway commission had decided to route its four-lane north-south link to the new cross-country interstate highway—a sympathetic mating, as it were (Ellsworth’s thought)—past the edge of town, ensuring its continued prosperity. They all drank to the wedding couple’s health and to their own, Ellsworth climaxing the occasion with the recital, by way of a toast to the bride, of his newest poem, later to be published in The Town Crier:
    It may have been the Knave of Hearts
    Who stole the tarts away,
    But after all had played their parts
    ‘Twas Beauty stole the day!
    Though this poem was a great success, both in performance and in print, Gordon disdained it. Indeed, it saddened him. Ellsworth was full of himself, proud of his worldly travels and his quirky bohemian ways, but it was Gordon who had kept alive, though he no longer painted, their youthful artistic principles. They had been pals since the days of toy soldiers and model airplanes, Ellsworth great with the stories that dramatized their play, creating trajectory, Gordon a stickler for the detail that gave it its intensity, its body , as it were. Gordon could not remember