Yours, - Guy by Robert F. Young

The postcard came in Friday's mail. Squires read it while he was waiting for dinner:

Hiya Partner!

I'm back in the old home town for a few days, revisiting old haunts. Am staying at the Maplecrest. Hope you can find time to drop in and see me.

Yours, - Guy

Squires read the words again. He couldn't remember ever having known anyone named Guy.

The card was the pictureless kind carried by the post office. It bore a local postmark and had been mailed the day before. Both the address and the message had been printed in uneven block letters with a soft-lead pencil. The name "Guy" was similarly printed.

Some crank, probably.

He consigned the card to the part of Friday's mail that was destined for the wastebasket. At once it vanished from his mind and did not return till early Monday morning when the phone rang. His wife, Adeline, answered it; he was in the upstairs bathroom, shaving. "It's for you, Nick," she called from the downstairs hall. "Someone named Guy."

He took the call on the bedroom extension. Oddly, he'd guessed it was Guy. "Hello."

"Nick? Guy. How are ya, partner?"

The voice was that of a total stranger. Squires was tempted to hang up. But he didn't. He'd sold cars all his adult life and had come to regard everyone he met as a potential buyer, not to be offended until proved otherwise. His recent acquisition of the local Chevrolet dealership had reinforced his attitude.

"Guy? I'm afraid I don't - "

"Now don't try to tell me you don't remember me. That you've forgotten those good old days at the old dirt track!"

Dirt track? Squires scoured his mind. He could find no trace of a dirt track - not even in the back where things that no longer interested him were relegated.

"What I was thinking, Nick," the speaker at the other end of the line went on, without waiting for a response, "was that, well, you're a busy man, a successful businessman and all that, and you probably don't have a helluva lot of time to spare, so what I was thinking was that maybe you and me could get together for lunch today, here at the Maplecrest. That way, your schedule won't be interfered with and I won't feel guilty about taking up your valuable time. What d'you say, partner?"

"Well, I - "

"You don't have another lunch engagement, I hope."

"No. But - "

"Great! One o'clock be okay? I'll be in the bar. We'll have a couple of drinks first - get to know each other again after all these years. See you, Zip."

After replacing the receiver Squires stood by the bed for a long time, staring at the wall. No one had called him "Zip" since he was ten years old.

Surely he must know Guy. Obviously Guy knew him.

Should he keep the engagement that had been forced on him, or not?

In the end, he didn't keep it. He might have, but at quarter after twelve Elton Cready of Edgewater Industries dropped into the showroom to talk Caprice. Cready was an every-other-year customer who refused to deal with any of Squires's salesmen, fancying that Squires gave him a better deal. He would have gotten the same deal regardless, but you don't argue with every-other-year customers, especially when they're of Cadillac caliber and do business with you only because you're local, a fellow Mason, and the nearest Cadillac agency is thirty miles distant.

Naturally he asked Cready to lunch. At Anthony's, of course. Anthony's catered to Cadillac-caliber people, and Cready would have been insulted if he'd asked him anywhere else.

He should have called the Maplecrest, he supposed, driving home from the showroom that afternoon. It was true he didn't know Guy's last name, but all the desk clerk would have had to do was consult the register. For that matter, all he'd have had to do was stick his head in the bar and holler, "Guy, you're wanted on the phone." There weren't that many guys named Guy.

"That Guy person called again," Adeline said when he came in the door. "He left a number for you to call back."

The number was jotted down on a memo pad next to the hall phone. Squires glanced at it as he walked past, heading for the kitchen. He got a bottle of Lowenbrau out of the refrigerator, opened it and carried it upstairs, sipping from it on the way. He set it down on the dresser while he showered. He'd never joined the scotch-and-soda clique or the martini-before-dinner haute bourgeoisie. He disliked scotch and he hated gin. What a man was shouldn't dictate what he drank, but what he liked. Squires liked beer. He'd drunk a lot of it in a lot of bars on his way up. Cheap stuff in the beginning. Now he drank the best.

He didn't dial the number Guy had left. He didn't go near the phone. All through dinner he kept listening for it to ring, but it didn't. After dinner he worked in the yard. Raking up leaves still sodden from the April rains. Picking up twigs and broken branches winter winds had torn from the trees. It was still too wet on the Edgewater Links for golf, and he needed exercise. Come warmer weather he'd give old man Hendriks, his regular gardener, a ring, and tell him to take over.

The phone rang when he was putting the rake away in the tool shed. "It's that Guy person again," his wife called from the patio. "He sounds like he's drunk."

"Tell him I'm not home."

"I already told him you were."

The voice at the other end of the line was slurred. "Zip, old buddy - how goes it?"

"About lunch," Squires said. "There was no way I could have made it." He went on to explain. "By the way, what's your last name?"

"I borrowed the name 'Oldfield.' I don't have one of my own. You never gave me one."

Irked, Squires almost hung up. Curiosity stopped him at the last second - curiosity, and a strange tingling along the length of his spine.

Finally he decided to play along. "What've you been doing all these years, Guy?"

"Racing - what else? Still at it, too. Trouble with me is, I never grow old."

"Racing?"

"Stock cars mostly. Daytona Beach, Atlanta, Rockingham, Charlotte - you name it, I've raced there. I've always wanted to drive in the Indy Five Hundred - I go there every year - but hell, who'd back a bum like me? It'd be different, maybe, if I ever won, but I never do." The voice at the other end of the line took on a whining note. "I've worked on cars all my life and I don't even qualify as a mechanic, to say nothing of a driver. All I'm good for is running errands for A. J. Foyt and the Unser brothers. And it's all your fault, Zip!"

"If you're no good, it's your fault - not mine!"

"Aw, Zip - I didn't mean to make you mad. I don't really blame you for my shortcomings - honest I don't. Hell, you were just a kid then! And I don't hold it against you either for not showing up today and leaving me standing here at the bar with nobody to talk to but myself. I know you're a busy man with all sorts of things on your mind. But geez, Zip, all I'm asking is for you to have lunch with me. Is that so much to ask? Is it?"

"No, of course not, but - "

"One o'clock tomorrow, then? Same place? Great! See you then, Zip. I'll be in the bar."

Click.

Squires wiped his forehead. He was still sweating from his exertions in the yard. But why was the sweat so cold?

He went to bed early. Lying in the darkness, he found himself speculating on what Guy looked like. His staying at the Maplecrest indicated that he was a long way from being well-off. All right, then - a seedy suit, no tie probably, and discount-store shoes slightly run-down at the heels. If he'd worked on cars all his life, as he claimed, there was probably grease ingrained in his palms and embedded in his fingernails. Maybe he had that dead-white complexion mechanics sometimes acquire. Probably needed a haircut, although that was hard to tell these days. A nest of blackheads, probably, on the back of his neck, perhaps half-hidden by his hair. His voice was that of a young, or fairly young man; but boozing the way he did there was bound to be at least the beginning of telangiectasis on his face.

Not a particularly prepossessing person. But commonplace. Commonplace enough, anyway, to allow Somnus, who had been waiting in the wings all this while, to come into the room.

"My guy just heard if you go slow you can save gas. See how slow he's goin'?"

"My guy heard if you go fast you can save gas. Whoom!"

"Bet you my guy could beat yours at the Indy Five Hundred, Zip."

"Bet you he couldn't!"

"Let's pretend this is the Indy Five Hundred. Here's the starting line. Right over here by the tree. Line up!"

"My guy's lined up. Shoot off the starting gun, Ted!"

"Here she goes! Ready?"

"Ready."

"BANG!"

"Zoom!"

"Zoom!"

At breakfast, Adeline said, "You've got something on your mind, Nick. Is it that Guy person?"

For a moment he was tempted to tell her about the dream. About the way reality seemed to be slipping through his fingers. But only for a moment. He knew that underneath she didn't give a damn about him any more than he gave a damn about her. The only difference was that she pretended to herself that she did, and he didn't.

The house was a compartmented stage on which they continued to act like husband and wife after, other than in a legal sense, they had ceased to be either. Maybe the kids marrying and moving away was partly responsible, but he didn't think so. The mere passage of the years would have been enough in itself to reveal that their marriage had been an empty shell to begin with, a shell they had filled with false kisses and ersatz endearments because doing so was comme il faut. A shell neither could fill with love, because the emotion they evoked in each other had, in the beginning, hinged wholly on sex, later, on a mutual concern for their offspring, and, eventually, on nothing at all. The shell had always been empty. It had only seemed full.

From the coign of vantage of the hilltop of the years, the view as seen from below was no longer visible.

The dream rode with Squires all the way to the showroom. It accompanied him into his office. He could not break free from it. At ten o'clock he told Merritt, his sales manager, that he had business in town, got in his Caprice and drove out of the lot. He drove through the business section and turned right at the light onto Central. He drove down Central to Sycamore Street, and turned left. After his mother died (his father had predeceased her) he'd remodeled the house and rented it to a family named Allerton. When he came opposite it he drove into the driveway and turned off the motor. Except for his Caprice, the driveway was empty. Allerton worked and his wife worked too, and the kids of course were in school. Good; he wouldn't have to invent excuses. He got out of the car and walked around the house to the backyard. The apple tree was gone - his father had cut it down years ago - and green grass grew right up to the back porch, or would when May shook the last of the long winter out of her hair. Right now the grass was drab brown. There was no sign of the old dirt track. Of course there wasn't. He hadn't expected there to be. He'd only wanted to look at where it had been, to see the site of the old "Indy Five Hundred" where, through a long and dreamlike summer, he and Ted had raced their tiny toy racecars. "My guy can beat your guy any day!" "Like heck he can!" "Zoom!" "Zoom!"

He walked over and kicked aside an abandoned baseball bat that lay where the starting line had been. The impression left in the grass by the bat made it all seem real again, and for a split second he glimpsed the two small figures hunched above the "old dirt track" pushing their silly little racecars back and forth in the dust. "Zoom!" "Zoommmmmmmmm!" . . .

When Ted died last year, had his guy died with him?

With an effort Squires braked the irrational train of thought that was overriding his common sense. Then he walked rapidly back around the house, got behind the wheel of his Caprice and drove back to the showroom.

The Maplecrest was old and run-down - a dilapidated monument to the pre-throughway days when the local tourist trade was thriving. This was the first time Squires had really looked at it in years, and he was amazed at how old and run-down it had become. He parked his Caprice partway down the block and sat behind the wheel. In the rearview mirror he could see the big bay window of the lobby and the weather-beaten wooden sign above the sidewalk that read: The Maplecrest Arms. You walked into the lobby past the desk, and on your right was the doorway that led to the bar and on your left was the doorway that led to the dining room. Between them was the wide stairway that led up to the second, third and fourth stories. He used to hang out in the bar, years ago when he was a fledgling salesman. He'd swung many a deal there. It was long and narrow and windowless, and a lack of adequate lighting had lent both the patrons and the ambience a grayish cast. Factory workers hung out there now, he'd heard, and transients, drunks and bums.

For the life of him he couldn't bring himself to get out of the car. It was broad daylight, the sun so bright it hurt his eyes, and he sat there frozen behind the wheel, early afternoon traffic edging by on his left, pedestrians passing on his right; sat there, scared.

At length he realized that he wasn't going to get out, that he wasn't going to go near whoever it was who was lurking in the shadows of that long, dimly lit bar, waiting to pounce on him the second he stepped inside. He started the engine, eased into the traffic flow and drove across town to Anthony's. After a chef salad that he barely touched, he returned to the office.

That afternoon when he arrived home the phone began ringing the moment he opened the door. He started to shout to Adeline not to answer it when he saw that she already had.

She gave one of those exasperated little sighs she was so good at these days, and handed him the receiver. He accepted it with outer equanimity, managing somehow to control the trembling of his hands. "Hello."

"Zip? Gosh, partner, it's good to hear your voish!"

His ersatz equanimity went down the drain in a sudden surge of anger followed by fear. "Get off my back, you drunken bum! If you don't stop harassing me, I'll call the police!"

"Aw, Zip - don't be like that. You've no reason to be mad at me. All I want is for us to get together so we can talk over old times. I've missed you like sixty all these years."

"Don't give me that! If you'd missed me, you'd have gotten in touch long ago!"

"I wanted to get in touch, Zip - gosh, how I wanted to! But you had kids growing up, and I knew there'd be no room in your life for me, and before that you were busy getting educated. Now it's a different story. You're all alone now, Zip, like me. I know you're all alone, wife or no wife - otherwise I wouldn't've been able to get through."

"I won't listen to such nonsense!"

"Sorry, Zip. I didn't mean to upset you."

Squires relented a little. Maybe the absurd association his subconscious had come up with was getting the best of him. Maybe Guy, whoever he might be, really was lonely. "If you don't like being alone, why don't you get married and have kids?"

Hoarse laughter. "That's a good one, Zip! That's the best one I ever heard. Me have kids? How in hell could I? You shortchanged me, old buddy - you shortchanged me all the way down the line. A racetrack driver who'd never seen under the hood of a car, who didn't know a piston from a fan belt, who didn't know first from second, neutral from reverse! . . . Well, I could do something about those things, and I did - as much, anyway, as a guy without an ounce of mechanical aptitude could. But this other thing - there wasn't a damned thing I could do about that! Oh, you shortchanged me all right - you shortchanged me but good! Sure, I know you were just a kid then, and didn't know beans about the birds and the bees, but just the same you did me wrong, old buddy, and sooner or later you're going to have to pay. So don't try to give me the bum's rush - it won't do you any good. If I have to, I'll - "

Squires hung up. He removed the receiver from the cradle and laid it on the hall table. Adeline, who was standing in the living-room doorway, opened her mouth to object, then closed it when she saw his face.

They ate dinner in silence. "Are you going to work in the yard tonight?" Adeline asked after they finished their dessert.

"No."

They sat watching TV. When darkness fell, Squires locked all the doors and drew all the blinds. He kept listening for the front-door chimes to sound, but they didn't - not till he and Adeline were in bed. "Who is it?" Adeline whispered. "Aren't you going to go down and see?"

"What difference does it make who it is? For God's sake, go back to sleep!"

The chimes sounded again. Then there was a silence. Presently someone began to knock. Squires lay in the darkness, trying to control the trembling of his limbs. The knocking grew louder. Should he call the police? He'd have to replace the hall-phone receiver first. He started to get out of bed. Just as his feet touched the floor, the knocking stopped.

He sat there poised, waiting for it to begin again. It didn't. At length there was the sound of someone stumbling down the front steps. Then silence.

He eased himself back into bed. Beside him, Adeline's breathing became deep, even. He lay sleepless almost till dawn, waiting for Guy to come back. But Guy didn't. The three harassment-free weeks that followed were sufficient to bring Squires back to his senses, and by the end of that time he had Guy safely filed away in a neat mental folder labeled "Crank, harmless." Then, two days before Memorial Day, he received another postcard.

This one was postmarked Indianapolis, Indiana:

Hiya Partner!

Well here I am at the good old Indy again. Same old hoopla, same old faces, but I just can't stay away.

Wish you were here - we'd show these dudes a thing or two. See you soon.

Yours forever, - Guy