Trying the Knot by Todd Erickson Page B

that.”
    He turned away from her and shuffled over
paper clippings strewn across the floor. He called over his
shoulder, “It seems you really have it in for Nick.”
    “Don’t start acting all fraternal toward
Nick. It’s not as if you’ve ever had any loyalty to your fellow
man,” Chelsea said.
    “And you do? It seems like you really have it
in for him.”
    “For your information, I don’t hold anything
against Nick. And even if I did harbor an old vendetta, I’d be more
than justified,” she said.
    With his back to her, he eagerly went back to
work cutting apart articles and piecing them back together in
columns. Dropping the subject, Chelsea settled in on the top of his
desk. Surveying the cluttered sprawling room, she sat fiddling with
radio knobs. A commentator’s foreboding voice speculated whether or
not the upcoming nationwide recession was the result of Fed
chairman Alan Greenspan not lowering interest rates enough, or an
oblivious President George H.W. Bush’s apparent disinterest in
domestic policy.
    “Your job seems tedious. Do you plan to work
here forever?” she asked. “What kind of cash do you make?”
    “Don’t laugh, a little more than six bucks an
hour.”
    “How do you live? You shouldn’t have quit
college,” she marveled.
    “Oh, my God, I didn’t drop out, I
finished.”
    “You don’t even have a date for the wedding,
do you?”
    “No. Do you?”
    “Who would come all the way up here for a
hillbilly wedding? Did you ask that girl you were so wrapped up
with last year?”
    “No. Because it’s this year, and she’s
wrapped up with someone else.”
    “If you loved her, you wouldn’t let anything
stop you.” She took a sip of her vodka and flipped through the
overflowing Rolodex. “Cowardice isn’t sexy, Thaddeus.”
    “Who says I’m still carrying a torch?” Thad
said defensively. “It was probably first-lust syndrome.”
    “You could’ve at least asked her. Just look
at you, you’re a Petrarchan mess,” Chelsea said, and he rolled his
eyes.
    “Stop pestering me,” Thad pleaded as he
glanced at his watch.
    “You have to tell Kate. She has a right to
know, that’s all there is to it,” she paused and added, “This whole
melodramatic scenario bores me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because their story doesn’t speak to me.
Does that make any sense?”
    Thad mumbled from behind his cigarette, “It
sounds vaguely pretentious. Who does speak to you?”
    Chelsea thought for a minute and said,
“Vange.”
    “Vadge? I knew it.”
    “Make me barf. Gross. Evangelica speaks to
me, that’s who.”
    Thad ashed on the floor and said, “Well,
let’s hope it’s not from the grave.”
     
     

 
    chapter six
     
    Inside the split-level home in the cul-de-sac
on the outskirts of town, time had come to a standstill during the
mid-1970s. Portnorth’s one lame attempt at a suburb amounted to a
dead end street near the small airport two miles from downtown.
    A picture of Gerald Ford hung on the paneled
living room wall alongside a family portrait, in which the Dooley’s
wore embroidered bell-bottoms and matching jackets. Texan tuxedos,
as Evangelica referred to their denim outfits. The house was
decorated with every macramé, ceramic, and latch-hook creation born
to a less than civilized world. Owls, mushrooms and frogs were the
general motif. These had been Mrs. Dooley’s hobbies before hitting
the road with her painted Mrs. Butterworth bottles and intricate
stained glass designs. After becoming a widow, she traded in her
all-American housewifery crafting pastimes for a booth in the
nomadic flea market circuit.
    It was forever dusk in the depressing
colonial home. The wall-to-wall carpeting was an ankle-deep, burnt
umber shag to match the fake brick walls. The avocado curtained
windows barely let in any light, and every room felt ominously
unwelcoming. But Benjamin had lived in this house for most his
life, and he thought nothing of the dark, cavernous atmosphere.
    He returned