Part 2: The Men, and Olive
by Jack Mauro
[Editor's Note: This is the second chapter of Jack Mauro's five-part summer fiction serial. Last week, Enola Tyrwhitt was stung by a bee and met a new beau—Drew Morrigan.]
It is maybe just a bit curious that, at the very same time Enola and Betsy are about to molest heaps of soft fabric in the women's department of Dillard's and further explore what has been done to Nolie's heart, Drew Morrigan is informing his best friend that a girl has come along. A girl, moreover, not expected nor wanted to pass quickly by.
Note that the timing of these revelations is not precisely identical. But that would be very curious indeed, as men are always a little behind in these things.
Drew and Robby LaSalle are taking turns lifting a bar above their respective chests. They do this often, and always at the West CourtSouth, to which they belong and in which they stroll like a pair of knights in a kingdom boasting far fewer knights than peasants. That is: Drew strides languidly and Robby tags along like a vassal with big dreams. They are not, mind you, especially arrogant young men. Certainly not Robby. But a gym is not an egalitarian sort of place. Youth and muscle tone implicitly command where there is little talking, and where everyone is busily trying to maintain or regain youth and muscle tone.
Robby takes his turn on the bench and straddles it on his back. He is smaller than Drew, as most men are in fact and all men are in Drew's innermost calculations. Robby's sneakers meet the gym floor—of course they do—but it is a contact that can never be fully taken for granted.
"So who is she?"
Drew is behind Robby's head. He is supposed to "spot" him, to be at the ready should the weight suddenly be too much. And it is a perpetual sore point to Robby that Drew never quite does this. He stands where he should, all right. Yet the readiness is never there. Drew wipes his face with his towel, or looks away, or ties a Nike. Each time Robby takes his turn, he lifts with fear on one end of the bar and a touch of resentment on the other. If Robby were placed at a table and under a hot light, or at a table with many drinks, he might declare that there is a streak of pure selfishness running through his best friend. As it is, he thinks this only for a moment or two, several times a week.
"Nolie. Enola."
Robby waits until the bar is safely lowered to his thorax before responding. "Enola?", he gasps.
"Right. Enola." Drew pauses. Robby lifts. The bar begins to shake. Drew brings a finger to his face and scratches a perfect cheekbone. Robby's eyes, facing upward like a flounder's, see this and grow wide in terror. Then anger gives him strength and he slowly, slowly brings the bar down.
"Tyrwhitt," says Drew.
Robby sits up. He is panting in small gulps, like a terrier. Whenever Robby sits up after finishing a set with Drew at his side, his breath comes this hard and rapid, as it comes for the man jumping up in bed from a nightmare.
"Well, what's she like?"
Drew nods his head a few times and says, "She's okay." Robby nods in response.
And that, more or less, is men in love.
Burrows Marketing Research and Development, it says on the glass door at Cumberland and Gay, and it says it in script so discreet, there can be no doubt that the people within know what they're doing.
Olive Hogarth Burrows, proprietress, is usually described—well out of range of her own hearing, generally—as either a pug dog in a dress or a tank in a dress. From these less-than-flattering appraisals it may be safely inferred that she is short and squat of frame. And that she wears dresses. These things are true. But there is, if absolute truth be told, more tank than dog to Olive. She is disconcertingly and almost metrically square. Even her head is cubed, a small block on a larger. Which renders the curls in which she sets her black and gray hair every evening a jarring sight to the new acquaintance. There is upon meeting her an undefined sense that some misguided militia is attempting to sneak artillery through the enemy lines in a preposterously coquettish way.
Betsy works here. She was hired because Olive liked her sass. Enola was employed six months later. Olive felt that Betsy was too sassy, and Enola's wholesomeness provided a vital contrast.
"Siddown, honey," Olive commands Enola. As Enola takes the chair facing Olive's desk with the modesty of a pigtailed schoolgirl at an assembly, Olive swiftly hoists her bulk onto the desk itself. Which makes a low groan, like the sound desert dunes might make under the weight of a passing offensive.
"Nolie. Nolie," Olive says. There is real affection in her throaty voice. "Now, I ain't your mama. Am I, baby?"
Enola considers this. No, Olive Burrows is not her mother. Yet to agree seems hard, somehow.
"No, ma'am."
"Ahhh-live!" A stubby forefinger wags to underline the correction.
"Sorry. No, Olive."
"But there's no denyin' I could be. I'm old enough. Lord knows that's true." Again, Enola is distressed at having to concede to a point irrefutable, yet vaguely rude. Her reply is a tiny smile and a tilted head.
"More'n that, honey—I know men." Which is a thing a woman says when she has known only one man, and known a good deal of heartache at the hands of that man.
Outside Olive's office, Betsy is on the telephone. She is speaking to Haslowe, Haslowe and Johns, brokerage house and current trout at the bottom of the Burrows barrel. She is almost reluctantly hinting at promotional strategies that will imprint the firm in the minds of East Tennesseans as a sort of composite of the Red Cross and the Justice League of America.
Back inside, Olive is about to tell Enola about men.
Next week: Of Olive and Layne
July 4, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 27
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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