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Authors: Scott Phillips
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door-to-door salesman in the summertime, he looked to her like the biggest go-getter in town, the kind of kid people thought of as a future president of the United States or, even better, U.S. Steel.
They were married in 1940 after he got his business degree, and a year later he was assistant office manager in the sales division of Collins Aircraft, the youngest manager in the whole company. After Pearl Harbor he volunteered for the army over the company’s objections, and nothing was quite the same after that. He came home after the war a master sergeant and spent a year working at Collins, treating Sally like the only mistake he’d ever made and trying to think up better, faster ways to make money. She was two months pregnant with Loretta when he stunned her by quitting the job at Collins and reenlisting. Opportunities in the peacetime army were good for a man like him, he said, and he didn’t want her traveling in her delicate condition; he’d send for her once the baby was born. He never did, and though he dutifully sent half his pay home every month—at first, anyway—it was years before she saw him again.
A couple of weeks earlier she’d found a picture of him in his uniform, a hand-tinted 8-by-10 taken when he got home in ’46. She’d studied the portrait for a long time, trying to find some trace of the real man somewhere in the face of the friendly, smiling soldier.
She hoped he was burning in hell. What she’d done, she’d done for Loretta, and for the sake of having a little fun, a pretty scarce commodity for a woman with a small child and no husband around and a full-time defense plant job, and she wasn’t sorry for any of it. Not for one goddamn minute of it.
Gunther found himself standing next to the lake in the painting. It was all wrong, too much of a lake and not enough of a big rocky hole in the ground, and that mountain behind it should have been just a gently sloping rise, but he knew more or less where he was. It was dusk, the start of a warm summer evening, and he made his way around the shore and up a path through a clearing to the cabin: two bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a living room. A dim yellow light shone in one of the bedroom windows, and before he looked inside he knew what he’d see: Sally Ogden with her feet in the air.
And there she was, thirty years old again and making that loud, throaty sound of hers, a skinny little freckle-faced guy propping himself up on top of her with his skivvies around his ankles and Sally’s red fingernails on his hips, eyes rolled back in his head as he pumped away. Sally looked like she always did, like she was enjoying the hell out of herself.
Gunther wasn’t jealous. He just wanted to ask her a question, and he could wait until they were done. He admired her as he waited, her long black hair undone and splashing all over the pillow, her lovely soft belly, those legs that looked like they could have pinched the scrawny fellow on top of her in half if she wanted. Abruptly she turned to Gunther and looked straight at him as she cried out with unfeigned and unashamed joy.
He opened his eyes. His second erection in as many days was fading, and the front of his shorts were wet. There was a thin white line of light visible under the window shade and the digital clock on the desk read 6:17, as good a time to get up as any.
It seemed crazy now that he’d ever forgotten who Sally Ogden was, and it made him wonder if Dot hadn’t been right to put him into the home. He put his clothes on, wishing he’d thought to bring a change or two with him, and was dismayed to realize he couldn’t retrieve the question he wanted to ask Sally in his dream. From his shirt pocket he pulled a business card with Loretta Gandy’s picture on it in black-and-white above a business address and phone number, and her home address and phone scribbled on the back. It might embarrass her if he showed up at her place of work in his current state; better to go to her house
They were married in 1940 after he got his business degree, and a year later he was assistant office manager in the sales division of Collins Aircraft, the youngest manager in the whole company. After Pearl Harbor he volunteered for the army over the company’s objections, and nothing was quite the same after that. He came home after the war a master sergeant and spent a year working at Collins, treating Sally like the only mistake he’d ever made and trying to think up better, faster ways to make money. She was two months pregnant with Loretta when he stunned her by quitting the job at Collins and reenlisting. Opportunities in the peacetime army were good for a man like him, he said, and he didn’t want her traveling in her delicate condition; he’d send for her once the baby was born. He never did, and though he dutifully sent half his pay home every month—at first, anyway—it was years before she saw him again.
A couple of weeks earlier she’d found a picture of him in his uniform, a hand-tinted 8-by-10 taken when he got home in ’46. She’d studied the portrait for a long time, trying to find some trace of the real man somewhere in the face of the friendly, smiling soldier.
She hoped he was burning in hell. What she’d done, she’d done for Loretta, and for the sake of having a little fun, a pretty scarce commodity for a woman with a small child and no husband around and a full-time defense plant job, and she wasn’t sorry for any of it. Not for one goddamn minute of it.
Gunther found himself standing next to the lake in the painting. It was all wrong, too much of a lake and not enough of a big rocky hole in the ground, and that mountain behind it should have been just a gently sloping rise, but he knew more or less where he was. It was dusk, the start of a warm summer evening, and he made his way around the shore and up a path through a clearing to the cabin: two bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a living room. A dim yellow light shone in one of the bedroom windows, and before he looked inside he knew what he’d see: Sally Ogden with her feet in the air.
And there she was, thirty years old again and making that loud, throaty sound of hers, a skinny little freckle-faced guy propping himself up on top of her with his skivvies around his ankles and Sally’s red fingernails on his hips, eyes rolled back in his head as he pumped away. Sally looked like she always did, like she was enjoying the hell out of herself.
Gunther wasn’t jealous. He just wanted to ask her a question, and he could wait until they were done. He admired her as he waited, her long black hair undone and splashing all over the pillow, her lovely soft belly, those legs that looked like they could have pinched the scrawny fellow on top of her in half if she wanted. Abruptly she turned to Gunther and looked straight at him as she cried out with unfeigned and unashamed joy.
He opened his eyes. His second erection in as many days was fading, and the front of his shorts were wet. There was a thin white line of light visible under the window shade and the digital clock on the desk read 6:17, as good a time to get up as any.
It seemed crazy now that he’d ever forgotten who Sally Ogden was, and it made him wonder if Dot hadn’t been right to put him into the home. He put his clothes on, wishing he’d thought to bring a change or two with him, and was dismayed to realize he couldn’t retrieve the question he wanted to ask Sally in his dream. From his shirt pocket he pulled a business card with Loretta Gandy’s picture on it in black-and-white above a business address and phone number, and her home address and phone scribbled on the back. It might embarrass her if he showed up at her place of work in his current state; better to go to her house
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