Chapter 22
Stop wasting my time.
You know what I want.
You know what I need.
Or maybe you don’t.
Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything?
Gimme some money! Gimme some money!
-
Spinal Tap
The time has come to leave our young (and not-so-young) lovers
for a bit and spend a little time with our friend, James Bulstrode. All our stories will
collide a bit down the road thanks to the re-emergence of a man from
Bulstrode’s distant past. And I
think I’ve hinted around at this past for quite long enough.
So, let’s leave Tré and Rosie looking gorgeous and sipping
cocktails at some fabulous club.
Let’s leave Brooke listening raptly as Teddy expounds upon some
depressing topic or another. Fred is pining for Mary. Celia and Gio are lying on the couch, legs and arms
entwined, watching Animaniacs. And Will will have to remain a cipher as we are
head into the Lightweight Group offices to pay a visit to Bully. He generally thinks of himself as
“Bully” when he’s in a good mood.
And he’s in a really good mood.
Just that morning, the long awaited phone call from an elder
at Fourth Presbyterian had come with an invitation to coffee. His nomination to the session was
imminent. In the meantime, his protégé, Tré, was developing a solid plan and
soon the rebrand of the Lightweight Group would begin. By this time next year, his picture
would be showing up in newspapers.
By this time the following year, his name would be gracing one of those blue honorary
street sign.
He was interrupted from happy imaginings of Bulstrode
Boulevard when a most unwelcome visitor entered the L.G.E. offices: a skinny,
rat-faced, greasy-haired, middle-aged man by the name of Karl Rafferty who wore
hard living and resentment like a weathered old suit; uncomfortable and poorly
fit, but all he had. The second
Bulstrode saw him, his carefully constructed persona started to pop and peel
away like paint beneath turpentine.
“Hiya, Bully,” the skinny man said, in a hard, flat Chicago
accent.
“Rafferty,” Bulstrode whispered, suddenly afraid.
His past was roaring up all around him.
In 1965, the year where it all began, Bultrode worked as a
bartender at The March and was not as you know him now.
Back then, Bully was the not only the kind of guy who went
to see The Beatles at Sox Park; he was the kind of guy who saw something in
that show that made him stop cutting his hair. He was charming, bordering on rakish. He smiled all the time. He flirted. He was the kind of man that other men liked and that women liked. He was cool.
He
was a great bartender.
If this were one of his shifts, you’d find him grinning
knowingly at someone from behind the bar.
Wearing a starched white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, a skinny tie
tucked into black pants, he mixed sidecars and old fashioneds, grabbing bottles
confidently and pouring without looking.
He flirted with the girls and jollied up the guys. He was quick with a light and a
chuckle. He grinned and flirted
and mixed drinks and sang along to You
Lost That Loving Feeling and did all he could to make people like him.
He was nice enough to the down-on-his-heels barback named
Karl Rafferty. So long as Karl did
the dishes and kept the beer stocked, Bully was friendly.
His regulars loved him. “Hey, Lightweight,” they’d say. “Pour us another one!”
They called him “Lightweight” because of a counterfeit he’d
worked one night while in front of rather than behind the bar. You see, Bully never drank to
excess. He never lost
control. But on the night of this
counterfeit, he’d found himself in front of the bar rather than behind it, and
The March regulars were determined to drink with him. Everyone wanted to buy him something. So Bully decided to fake inebriation as a defense against the drunken insistences of his sometime patrons. After two beers, he affected a slight slur. After three, he reeled a bit. His regulars thought it was hilarious
that this fellow who mixed drinks so expertly was so inexpert at handling them. They found his low tolerance charming
and ingratiating. They loved him
even more. They loved calling him
“Lightweight.”
The March, thanks in no small part to Bully’s ample
bartending talents, was the most popular bar in the neighborhood. And this neighborhood made up the
lion’s share of a ward that a certain bookish native son with family money and
good pedigree hoped to represent as alderman.
And thus it was that Judge Charles Ladislaw, Teddy’s uncle
and Will’s grandfather, made the fateful decision to host a fundraiser at The
March. Well, rather, the decision
was made for him. Judge Ladislaw
was running for alderman out of a sense of weary obligation, having fielded
countless appeals from would be political players who had money and connections
but lacked the sterling Ladislaw reputation and family name. They planned to put him out in front. They planned for him to be mayor.
The party was scheduled and various city bigwigs and monied
interests were invited. Judge
Ladislaw kicked off his campaign at The March. Everyone who mattered was there.
The Judge arrived with his wife, Ellinore, an hour or so
before the party was due to begin.
He was quickly enveloped by advisors, eager to coach him through the
list of the people whom he should be careful to engage and those he should
avoid. Platforms and projects were delineated; talking points were honed.
That’s when Ellinore, bored, made her way to the bar.
Ellinore was a pretty woman, but fadingly so and prone to
tempering her loneliness with a kind of calculated blowsiness. She smiled a wry smile at Bully and
asked him for a Gibson. As he mixed it, she pulled out her cigarette case and
adjusted the strap of her dress as it slipped down over her shoulder. Of course, her dress strap had slipped
down over her shoulder. It always
did. Bulstrode smiled warmly and allowed
a heavier than normal pour of gin.
He liked the way her dress strap slipped down her arm.
“So,” he said, setting the drink in front of her and
lighting her cigarette. “What’s a
nice girl like you doing mixed up with Chicago politics?”
Ellinore laughed and her husband’s people shot her a warning
look. They were worried about Ellinore
and had entreated her husband to speak to her about her behavior at the
party. He was to urge her to keep
to a two drink maximum. But this
was a distasteful a prospect for Judge Ladislaw. He was content to leave Ellinore to her own devices while he
was handled by the grasping crowd that he’d somehow let take over his life.
If he’d had his druthers, Ladislaw would have passed this
time sitting quietly in his study reading Gibbon or Homer and sipping a
brandy. But somehow he’d gotten
caught up in this and now it was something that would just have to be
done. Eventually the night would
end and he could go home.
Ellinore was happy, though, to be out, passing the time with
this handsome young man and his ridiculous haircut.
“Everything is politics,” she said. “Surely you know that. Bartenders know
everything. Ipso facto, you know
that everything is politics. We’re
all just part of the machine.”
“Not everyone,”
he said gently. “Not everything.”
The March was hazy with calculation and machination, and
it’s hard to know if Bully was being genuine. But I think he probably was. There was something about Ellinore that made him sad. At that moment, when it seemed like the
rest of the room was busy either ignoring or tolerating pretty, blowsy
Ellinore, he might not have been looking at her as a mark. At least initially, I think Ellinore
engaged in Bully a kind of lingering capacity for kindness.
Ellinore was so surprised by his gentle response that she
was momentarily at a loss for words.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass and found him looking right
back at her.
A young man interrupted their moment when he walked up
behind her and planted a dry kiss on her cheek. “I’m here, Aunt Ellinore,” said a very young Teddy. “As requested.”
“Hello, Teddy,” she said. “And it was your mother who ordered this command
performance, not I.”
“Well, Mother thinks it’s important that I be involved in
family business,” said Teddy.
“Since Grandfather died, I’m sort of the paterfamilias.”
“Yes,” said Ellinore.
“Sure. Now just… have a
drink or something.”
“I’d like a draft of beer, please,” said Teddy, without
looking at Bulstrode. He took a
seat at the far end of the bar, pulled a book from his pocket, and opened
it. Bully grinned at Teddy’s
poorly managed pomposity and drew the beer. Ellinore smiled.
As the party went on, Ellinore did a modicum of wifely
duty. She smiled when introduced,
hooked her arm through her husband’s affectionately, made plans to meet
political wives for tea at The Drake, and kept her blowsiness to a
minimum. But she glanced at the
bar every so often. And when she
did, and Bulstrode noticed, he smiled back at her, cheerfully conspiratorial. Ellinore was delighted.
It didn’t take much past that for the affair to begin.
A few nights later, Ellinore stopped in on her own and plans
were shortly made for a liaison at Bulstrode’s tiny apartment.
The affair went on for years. The longer it went on, the more besotted Ellinore
became. It was she who loaned
Bulstrode the money to buy The March.
And The March continued to make money under his ownership. Bulstrode moved from behind the bar and
started spending more time in the office than the front of the room. After a bit, he borrowed more money
from Ellinore and combined that with his March profits and bought another
restaurant. Ellinore used her husband’s political connections to grease the
wheels for liquor licenses and zoning approvals.
And during those heady years of property accrual and
infidelity, Judge Charles Ladislaw died suddenly of a heart attack.
And then Ellinore got sick.
And Bulstrode got a lot more restaurants.
