Inhaltsangabe
An architectural phenom, Jack Lambeau returns to his hometown to resurrect the dying lakeside village, but a reunion with an old friend is spoiled when Jack's fiancée comes between them. A first novel. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Tom Barbash's fiction has appeared in Tin House, Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University, where he now teaches. He is also the author of On Top of the World.
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Last Good Chance
part one
Homecoming
Chapter 1
Dusk set on the sidewalks of Lakeland, New York, and the children roamed free, gathering around parked cars, or squirting water pistols under the Lakeland Theater's gold art-deco marquee. A trio of girls gathered at a pay phone while one talked urgently. On his walk home from the Lakeland bureau of the Syracuse Times Chronicle, Steven Turner watched them with both the affection of nostalgia and a little pity, all made up, same blue eyeliner and lipstick; fourteen-year-old cheekbones hollowed with rouge. Turner wondered what it would be like to grow up here rather than downstate, a dozen blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge. If he'd been one of those boys across the street, strutting beneath a backward baseball cap, hightops unlaced, baggy Orangeman T-shirt hanging to the knees. He might be more resolved now, he thought. He might be married, for instance, to one of those small-town sirens, and he might repair bridges or command a respectable road crew for a living instead of churning out news stories people glanced over at breakfast and then dropped in the trash, or under a dog.
Turner remembered the first time he actually saw this, a Doberman puppy at a friend's apartment shitting right over one of his Sunday features. "That-a-boy," Turner had said. "Don't hold back. Show me what you really think."
He could convince himself sometimes--because Turner needed to believe this--that what he did was imperative, and that his life up here was as well. He was twenty-eight years old. He was reasonably healthy, though prone to colds in winter because of his bad hours. He was liked and esteemed by most of the people he interviewed and worked with, if invisible to the newspaper's decision makers. He'd managed to make an enemy out of his immediate supervisor (not without cause: Turner told him once to go fuck himself), and while they decided not to fire him, they'd passed him up for the last three promotions. He was an energetic observer, he'd been told, but jealous editors complained he overwrote his articles and lost the purpose (and any news) along the way. "Well, I guess we know about his screwed-up childhood now, but who cares? He's a housing inspector, right? Wasn't this going to be about housing codes?"
But tonight, more than for his career, Turner had begun to have concern for his emaciated social life, because it was Friday and there had been a time not so long ago that he'd had company on his Friday nights. He didn't even have a decent beer-drinking partner now that Jack Lambeau had gone into premarital retirement. Turner was on his own.
He walked now across the Elm Street Bridge, to the town's thornier east side, where he lived in a peeling-paint rental house that listed noticeably on its flawed foundation. Turner's apartment had two bedrooms, one large and one tiny, a living room, and even a small sunken dining area. The floors slanted slightly. And the amenities were a trifle archaic--the bathroom had only a shallow tub, no shower, and a toilet that tilted worse than the floor. At night the street drummed with sounds from the corner bar. Turner had his windowpinged once with a BB-gun, and several times he'd watched fistfights break out in the street. There was an edginess to this part of Lakeland that both disturbed and intrigued him. It wasn't unheard of to spot a syringe along with the crumpled beer cans at the basketball courts near the old armory where he played pickup games, or to find kids with primary-colored hair, nose rings, and a few tattoos.
His furniture was either dilapidated or bohemian, depending on your perspective. Turner took pride in the fact that nothing, not the lavender couch (which came with two stuffed pillows) nor his brass framed bed nor the swollen chartreuse armchair, which he settled peaceably into now, had cost him more than $75. To cut down on clutter he'd recycled a roomful of newspapers and kept only his own stories, which he sorted into loose categories: Rural Crime (there were strange ones--Satanic Possessions, Animal Sacrifices, Shotgun Accidents Involving Grade-Schoolers), Tearjerkers, Governmental Dirt, and Profiles--puffs and slams.
He smoked a joint and then read for a while, Gogol's Dead Souls. Friday evening and again this was his date--a dead Russian. After a half hour Turner's phone rang. It was his landlady, Mrs. Willhillen.
"Hello, Steven?" She was the only person outside his family who called him by his first name. "You know on Friday afternoons at the Captain's Quarter they have a lovely Polynesian buffet."
Her voice was high-pitched and saccharine. The first time she'd called, Turner had thought a friend was playing a joke. He'd responded with a sexual suggestion that Mrs. Willhillen fortunately hadn't comprehended.
"Thank you, Mrs. Willhillen."
"It's very authentic. Do you like roast pork?"
"Very much."
"Did you get the pie I left for you?"
"I did. It was delicious."
"I've made better, to be honest. Well, bye then, Steven."
She'd been calling once or twice a week with suggestions: a garage sale, or a church dinner a single boy could take advantage of. They were designed to cheer him, but they had the opposite effect.
He decided to go for a walk.
He entered a bar. He drank a beer and played a game of pool, which he won on dumb luck. His opponent sunk the eight and then angrily watched the cue ball drop too before glowering at Turner as if it had been his fault.
Outside, the street was bathed in fluorescent light that shined off the trucks and souped-up Camaros and Mustangs that swept by. Turner stared at the cars in a slit-eyed rendition of the redneck cool faces that hung out the windows, and he imagined riding that way through the night, spitting Skoal, revving his muscled-up engine at intersections, stopping every once in a while for a tall boy and a few shots of Jaegermeister (the third one of which he'd get on the house), being hauled outside at a quarter past two by a cop he'd know from high school, who'd make him walk a straight line for his freedom.
Turner had had only a passing fondness for Bruce Springsteen until he lived in Lakeland, and now all his songs seemed heartbreakingly perceptive.
He decided to call a secretary from the college whom he'd met at a bar once. He read her number from a napkin he'd left folded in his wallet.
"Kathy?"
"Yes?"
"It's Turner."
Her silence was disheartening.
"Turner?"
"The reporter. We met at the Saw Mill?"
"The Saw Mill? Oh, Turner. Yeah, I remember you. You were supposedto call a while ago." He pictured her doing something else while she spoke to him, cleaning out a drawer perhaps.
"Yeah, well, I was wondering, if you weren't doing anything, if you'd want to maybe get a drink later?"
"I don't think so. I've got plans."
"Well, I just thought I'd take a chance," he said. "How about some time next week?"
"Maybe. Give me a call."
Of course she had plans, he thought. Friday night for Chrissakes. Who calls someone out of the blue to make plans at eight o'clock on a Friday evening?
He thought he'd treat himself to a decent dinner in order to pick up his mood. No fast food. Hardees or Burger King would do him in right now. He'd see a wizened old man in the corner, talking to himself over a ketchupy cheeseburger, and imagine that as his future. He chose Giovanni's Fine Italian Food, where he could eat at the bar and talk to the bartender, Serena, a rough-edged, perpetually tanned woman of twenty-two who lived with a wealthy sporting-goods store owner twice her age, and occasionally, when the sporting-goods store owner was away, had sex with Turner, and shared with...
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Zustand: Muy bueno. : En Lakeland, Nueva York, Jack Lambeau, un experto en diseño urbano, regresa a su ciudad natal para reinventarla como un destino turístico. Steven Turner, un reportero local exiliado, observa los éxitos y fracasos de la ciudad. Entre ellos se encuentran Anne, la prometida de Jack, una artista con secretos, y Harris, su hermano, contratado para encubrir los errores del pasado. A medida que se acerca el invierno, las tensiones personales y locales aumentan, y los cuatro personajes deben encontrar su camino a través de transformaciones inesperadas, mientras intentan responder a la pregunta: ¿Cuál es el precio de la lealtad, la bondad y el amor? EAN: 9780312422677 Tipo: Libros Categoría: Literatura y Ficción Título: The Last Good Chance Autor: Tom Barbash Editorial: Picador USA Idioma: en Páginas: 456 Formato: tapa blanda. Artikel-Nr. Happ-2023-04-20-b3bfdb8c
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