Searching for Steely Dan Read online

  “It’s the incompetence of the working people.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Yeah … incompetence.”

  She could see that he was working up a head of steam. “Could you be more specific?”

  “Yeah. It’s the clerical help. They’ve got their heads up their asses.”

  She decided not to mention the fact that Eddie himself was clerical help, albeit a lead sales associate. “Go on,” she said.

  “Specifically, clerical help in music stores, and more specifically, a fat piece of shit by the name of Reuben who didn’t hold a copy of that CD for me.”

  Correct that: a boring week with an unhappy husband. “Are you going to sue the bastards?” She raised her eyebrows, and thought about tapping the ashes off an imaginary cigar a la Groucho.

  He scrunched his face. “Funny,” he replied.

  “Eddie, why didn’t you just go to another store?”

  “What makes you think other stores will have it?”

  “Oh, yeah, excuse me, all the Steely Dan fans have already rushed right out and snapped up every copy in town. What was I thinking?” She watched as he sat down at the table. “Are you going to call your boss?”

  “What for?”

  “Uh, maybe to keep your job? Which is where you’re supposed to be, right now?”

  Eddie muttered a few words to himself. To her, it sounded like “fuck it,” which she’d heard way too many times in the last few weeks. She put the spoon down, turned off the gas burner, walked over to the kitchen table and leaned over the chair opposite him.

  She spoke softly. “Eddie, this is bullshit. You’ve got to stop with this obsession about Steely Dan. All the time, Steely Dan, Steely Dan, Steely Dan. I can’t stand listening to that music anymore. I want you to call your boss, right now, and tell him you got sick and had to go home.”

  *****

  He just sat there, head down, tapping the silverware with his fingers, staring at a pattern of yellow flowers on the placemat.

  His wife raised her voice. “Eddie. Do it.”

  “Alison … I don’t think I’m going back.”

  “Eddie. Another job you’re going to walk away from? How many is that now?” He continued to tap on the silverware. His wife sat down opposite him.

  She spoke softly again. “Eddie, you know I love you.”

  He looked up and smiled, trying not to look like a whipped dog. “I love you, too,” he replied.

  “But Eddie,” she continued, “love is not getting us anywhere. What’s happened to you? You used to be interested in writing. I haven’t seen you sit down and write for months now. All you do is listen to that music, or fool around on your keyboard.”

  His head dropped, and he went back to staring at the flowers.

  “Eddie. Why don’t you try to get a job at a newspaper? Or a magazine? You have a degree in journalism, for Christ sake.”

  They had had this discussion—argument, really—many times. Why wasn’t he using his degree? Or, why had he gotten a degree in journalism anyway? And then the inevitable: why not take some evening classes and learn how to do something else?

  She leaned toward him. “Or why don’t you go back to work at the bookstore?” He could tell she was trying hard to control her voice, but an edge had crept in. “Jerry’s the manager now, isn’t he? Call Jerry and get your old job back.”

  Jerry was his best friend, and had been promoted to store manager a few months ago. Alison liked Jerry. They had even gone out a few times together, he and Alison with Jerry and whoever he was seeing at the time. Jerry was a fun guy—“the life of the party,” Alison liked to call him—and she thought he had a serious side to him, too. Career oriented, she thought. He was manager of a fucking bookstore, for Christ sake.

  He snuck a peek at her. Her cheeks were bright pink, on their way to cherry red. She was about to come unglued.

  “Eddie.” Her voice rose. “What about the bookstore? What about writing? Or are you just going to sit around here and vegetate all day?”

  He looked up at her. “Vegetation sounds good. I could probably be good at that.”

  She stood and moved away from the table. “Eddie, why don’t you get out?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Why don’t you just get the hell out?”

  “Maybe I will,” he said, and regretted it immediately. He heard her mumble something that sounded like “I don’t care anymore” as she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Uncharacteristically, she kept on walking. A few seconds later, he heard the front door slam, and then a car starting, backing up, and roaring away.

  He had fucked up, and he knew it. A wave of fear shivered through him. It wasn’t like Alison to get so angry. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what his life would be like without her. Then, pushing the negative thoughts from his mind, he got up, walked over to the stove, and turned the gas burner back on. At least he would have something to eat before he left.

  3

  After eating a bowl of linguini with marinara sauce—washed down with the rest of the merlot—Eddie packed an overnight bag, locked the apartment, and headed north toward his parent’s home in Saddle River. He decided to take the direct route, right up the Garden State Parkway, and loaded The Dan’s The Royal Scam into the car’s CD player to keep him company. It was an hour’s drive in normal traffic, but at nine on a Tuesday evening he could do it in forty minutes, still plenty of time to think about his situation.

  He loved Alison—“the love of his life”—but he realized all too well that their relationship had deteriorated. He thought it had something to do with her career. In December, she had been promoted to account executive at the advertising agency, and she wasn’t cooped up in the office anymore. She was out there drumming up business, pitching ideas, and meeting clients. Meeting new people.

  And he had just been kicking around since college. After graduation and a June wedding, he had gone to work at a bookstore, a job he thought would be a good starting point for a career in writing. He wouldn’t get bogged down, he thought. He could just do his job, come home, and work on his writing projects. And he had liked the bookstore. He had even done well there. After a year, he was in charge of the fiction department, and a couple of years later, a shift manager—no small accomplishment, he thought. But then came problems: clashes with a new boss, a matronly woman who insisted that he get to work on time, every single day, without fail.

  After the bookstore had come a succession of jobs: a year selling furniture—good money, more than at the bookstore, until the boredom had finally overwhelmed him—and then sales positions at a home improvement store, and now a drugstore.

  Since graduation, he had written a number of short stories, jumping from one genre to another, trying his hand at science fiction, mysteries, and even a literary attempt or two. He had even tried to write a novel. He wrote sporadically, when the mood was right, and when he felt inspired, which hadn’t been very often in the last few months. He would compare his short stories to those he read in New Yorker, Ellery Queen, and numerous other magazines. When he thought he had something really good—after weeks of editing and revising and fine-tuning and word-smithing so that each sentence was “just right”—he would make his copies, write his cover letters, and send them off, sometimes fifteen or twenty submissions at a time. And then the rejection slips trickled in, one after another. He saved every one of them. He’d read somewhere that keeping your rejection slips was a good way to stay inspired. So far, it hadn’t worked.

  He parked in front of his parent’s house, a two-story red-brick monster on Gabriel Way, and began walking up the gentle slope. He stayed on the granite walkway, which wound through beds of dead groundcover and rotting flowers, victims of the harsh winter. In another month or two, he thought, all these flower-beds would be completely replanted—by the gardeners, of course. He rang the bell, and immediately heard shouting inside, first by his mother: “Can you get that?” and then his father: “No, I can’t, I’m busy,” and then his mother
again: “I’m busy, too,” and then his father again: “So, we’re both busy. You get it.” It was like listening to the back-and-forth of a tennis match. He heard his mother again: “Harry, I’m upstairs,” and finally, his father’s concession: “All right, already.” A few seconds later his father peeked through the entry window and then opened the door.

  “Hey, Easy. What brings you to this part of the world?”

  “Hey, Dad.” Harry Zittner was a heavyset man with stick legs, and was wearing a Mets T-shirt, baggy shorts, and slippers—his normal attire for an evening in front of the television—but covered tonight with a heavy robe in deference to the weather. He had run his own accounting firm for more than twenty years, a one-man shop specializing in financial advice and preparation of tax returns. He’d finally sold out to H & R Block, and now managed an office for them in Teaneck.

  He saw the overnight bag in his son’s hand. “What’s wrong?” he said as he beckoned him to come inside.

  “Problems at home,” Eddie replied as he walked in. His father closed the door and he followed him into the living room. This was the house his family had moved into, what, fifteen years ago, he thought, when he and his brother were in their early teens. The furnishings were contemporary Italian, dotted with artwork and lamps his parents had purchased on a number of trips to Europe.

  “What kind of problems?” his father asked as he sat on the sofa, and then shouted in the direction of the stairs, “Ellie. It’s Eddie.”

  Eddie glanced at the screen—his father was watching Law and Order—and sat down on the adjacent love seat. Seconds later he heard his mother’s muffled reply: “I’m coming down.”

  His father picked up the remote and switched off the television. “So, you gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  Eddie looked up from the empty screen. “Let’s wait for Ma, and I’ll tell you both together.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later Elaine Zittner glided down the stairs and made her entrance, wearing a silk robe and slippers. “Ellie the Shark” as she was known in the local real estate community had been a top-producing salesperson for as long as Eddie could remember. His mother had been very attractive as a young woman, and still worked hard at the gym to keep her figure. Her blond hair streaked with grey was a more accurate indication of her age; Eddie’s parents were in their late fifties. He stood as his mother walked toward him. She smiled and gave him a hug.

  “So, what’s wrong?” she asked, the suspicious gleam in her eyes tempered by the concern on the rest of her face.

  “Problems at home. Alison threw me out. Can I crash here tonight?”

  “Sure,” his father said. “What happened?”

  “I was a jerk. I said the wrong thing.”

  “What?” his mother jumped in with a smirk. “Did you criticize her cooking?”

  “I told her I was quitting my job, and she told me to get out, so I said ‘maybe I will.’”

  His father grimaced. “Eddie, we know Alison. She’s pretty even tempered. What else is going on?”

  His mother seized the opportunity: “Is it sex?” She grinned, displaying the mouthful of teeth that were yet another reason for her nickname. “What, you’re asking for it too much? She’s not giving it to you?”

  “Ma, give me a break, will ya?”

  “She’s not good enough for you, anyway. Remember what I told you before you got married? She’s too quiet for you. She’s got no personality. You need someone with a little more life to her.”

  Like you, Ma?

  “And she’s not even a real Jew.”

  “Ellie!” his father said, indignant. Harry Zittner was always a voice of reason and tolerance. “She’s a real Jew, just like us. She’s a Reformed Jew.”

  His wife made a face. “That’s not a real Jew in my book.” She took pride in being a member of a Conservative congregation. She even went to services every now and then. And if she nagged him enough, she could get her husband to go with her—once in a blue moon. The temple was where she made most of her real estate contacts, but she was not averse to dealing with Reformed Jews. Or non-Jews.

  But yet another thought had popped into her head. “I’ll bet it’s that crazy music you’re always listening to. What is it you call it, steal something?”

  “Steely Dan, Ma.”

  “Eddie,” she said, serious now, intense, “You’ve gotta stop this craziness about that music, and find yourself a real job. Look at you. You’re almost thirty years old, no career, no home, nothing. Look at your brother, Mark, with a good job and a nice apartment in Manhattan. And he’s younger than you!”

  “Ellie,” his father said, “take it easy.”

  “Easy nothing, Harry. Mark has a nice career going, Alison has a nice career going, and Eddie’s got nothing. That’s probably why she threw him out.”

  “Ma, Dad, hold on. It’s a lot of things with me and Alison. The job thing is just part of it.”

  “Stop with the craziness about the music, too. Why can’t you listen to Celine Dion like a normal person?”

  Eddie quickly suppressed a gag reflex. “Yeah, Ma, you’re right. That’s part of it. I’m probably driving her crazy with Steely Dan. It’s just something I’m interested in, you know?”

  “No, I do not know,” his mother said, shaking her head like a bulldog tearing meat off a bone. “Grow up. Make something of yourself.”

  “Ellie—” His father jumped in, but it was too late. Elaine Zittner was already on her feet and moving across the room. Her husband and son watched as she disappeared up the stairs.

  “Dad, listen, I’m just going to crash here tonight. Okay? I’ll call Mark tomorrow. Maybe he’ll let me crash at his place for a while. Maybe I can find a small apartment near his place.”

  “What, you’re going to move to Manhattan now?”

  “Yeah.” He thought about it for a long moment. “Yeah, maybe I will.”

  *****

  Over the objections of his father, who implored him to sleep in one of the guest rooms—his old bedroom, in fact—Eddie decided to sleep in the basement.

  The basement was divided into two rooms: a large one paneled in wood, and a smaller, unfinished utility room that was dominated by the oil furnace. Eddie stretched out on an old sofa, the only piece of furniture left in what had been the family game-room. Moonlight filtered intermittently through long rectangular windows as clouds rolled across the sky. Another storm coming … He gazed at framed photographs that still hung on the walls, photographs that recorded family vacations in the Poconos and Adirondacks, and fishing trips to the New Jersey shore. He spotted a couple of old fishing rods leaning in a far corner, and a cardboard box overflowing with baseball bats and gloves. The billiard and ping pong tables and easy chairs were long gone, likely hauled away, he guessed, by a charity—tax deductions his father wasn’t about to miss.

  But fond memories of his childhood were soon displaced by worries about Alison. He tossed and turned, tangling himself in the sheets and blankets. Frustrated, he got up and took his CD player and earphones out of his overnight bag. He lay back down listening to Gaucho. The end of a perfect day. He drifted off to sleep.

  4

  Wednesday, March 1, 2000

  Eddie woke early as sunlight flooded the room. After putting on a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, he climbed up the stairs into the kitchen, where his father was making coffee, something his mother usually did.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  “Hey, Easy, good morning,” his father replied, fumbling with a coffee filter. And then his father looked up, and smiled, and his eyes danced, and Eddie remembered the face that had delighted and comforted him a thousand times as a child. “How was it sleeping in the basement?”

  “Okay. It was fine, Dad.” He plopped down on a chair. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Uh … I don’t know. She went out early.”

  Eddie glanced at his watch: just after seven. “What, a meeting?”

  “I don’t know,
” his father replied. “I didn’t see her. Maybe she had a breakfast meeting, you know, or maybe she went to work out.”

  Or maybe she didn’t want to see me.

  Breakfast was a bowl of fiber-fortified cereal. Like many people of their generation, his parents were obsessed with calories and roughage and the like, and Eddie’s father had had a number of health problems over the years. There was no other cereal in the house. Eddie sprinkled some Equal over it—no sugar in the house, either—and threw in a handful of raisins.

  As they ate, his father asked him about the money situation: Did he understand how expensive it was to live in Manhattan? Did he need some help getting by? No, he replied, he was in good shape. He and Alison had socked away some money, and he didn’t think Alison was nasty enough to keep him from having access to it. Anyway, we were talking about a few weeks, or maybe a month or two. He would find a job, a temporary job, in Manhattan. And he could always sell his car, he thought, if it came to that. He wouldn’t need a car in Manhattan. His Honda Accord, three years old and completely paid off, should be worth something like ten grand. But he would need a car when he moved back to Somerset.

  Then, in his own subtle way, his father steered the conversation back to those same points that a few hours earlier had been bludgeoned into Eddie’s head by his mother. They talked about Eddie’s career, his father making many of the same points, quietly and rationally, that Alison and his mother had made, and then advise, predictably, to focus a little more on his career and his marriage, and a little less on music. The soft sell, Eddie thought—as smooth as the opening riff of “Babylon Sisters.” He nodded absently as his father spoke, and shoveled more cereal into his mouth.

  After breakfast, his father went upstairs to finish dressing, and Eddie sat down to make some phone calls. The first one, to his boss at the drugstore, would be easy, he knew, because his boss didn’t get in until noon. He left an apologetic voicemail, quitting for personal reasons—a family emergency, if you will—compelling him to take care of matters in another state. He planned to find the time to pick up his personal stuff “one of these days.”