How to Fall off a Cliff: A Novel

By Jerry Zelinka

The common arena for the story is an upscale apartment cluster, Madrid Place, during four seasons in a Southwestern city where the first chapter begins, Kensy O'Brien, a naive newcomer, is found dead of an apartment suicide. The year is 1975. A large variety of tenants are described; Shell and Hunter, besides Kensy and Kathy, are the foremost characters. Shell Findley, a middle-aged playboy, runs with Hunter, an Osage Indian, of similar age and pursuits. There is description of striking Kensy's early years.Paul House, a conservative bachelor, lends contrast to his lively, sexy neighbors such as Brook, a lithe goddess, whom he adores covertly, but never reaches. A crude professional gambler is a resident who finally hits the Big One, then does not enjoy the riches when fate deals a power dive. Kathy Gonzales, a new resident, who decided to end her life earlier, conceals the step from new neighbors as she surveys romantic potential among the Madrid tenants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496906878

Jerry Zelinka

Jerry Zelinka, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1934, now resides with his wife, Suzanne, and a Turkish Angora cat, Happy, in new Canaan, Connecticut. He held positions as technical writer and editor for manufacturing firms in the Southwest, reported for United Press International, taught technical writing and English composition at Tulsa Junior College, and was consulting technical writer for Gumman Aerospace, and Sikorsky Aircraft Company. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from University of Tulsa, and did Master's work in English Literature at Vermont College of Norwich University.

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How to Fall

Off a Cliff

A Novel

Jerry Zelinka

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AuthorHouse™ LLC

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www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© 2014 Jerry Zelinka All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/22/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0689-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0688-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0687-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907525

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter One: Madrid Place, a Fortress

Chapter Two: Hunter and Frederick

Chapter Three: Kensy O’Brien

Chapter Four: The Pool

Chapter Five: Shell and Hunter

Chapter Six: Kathy Stumbles

Chapter Seven: Bach

Chapter Eight: Debbie

Chapter Nine: Kensy and the Leap

Chapter Ten: The Gun

Chapter Eleven: Ted

Chapter Twelve: A Reminiscence

About The Author

CHAPTER ONE

An imposing spring sky poised majestically above Paul’s head as he stared into a vaporous immensity of thin clouds. Then a tall, athletic Indian approached him, his arms embracing the plastic laundry basket filled with pungent bachelor clothes. He put the sweet-scented load down upon the new grass, midway to his apartment’s door, turning, with that primal half-smile:

Hey, Paul, see anybody up there in Heaven that we know?

Other mornings the remark would have been allowably humorous, but not today. Paul did not answer immediately, as Hunter studied the tightened face, now older. Nothing would be funny to him this morning, the face said. Paul then breathed out slow and careful words.

Something… something happened last night, Hunter.

Uh, what is it you’re—? Hunter offered, not wanting to utter much; he felt something weighty was coming, news more important than… Hunter noticed the world seemed to quiet. Paul had always hated to be a bearer of dramatic news. This time, the news was overly-dramatic. He felt as if he were playing Bogart with baggy pants in a 1941 black-and-white film. Particularly at this moment he disliked appearing as that corny character. He took a deliberate breath and exhaled slowly.

Kensy. Kensy shot herself last night.

It sounded so melodramatic and affected that Paul hated it all over again. As he uttered the last word, it did not sound like his voice. This was because his throat tightened and tried to choke off the words, because it was as if he could stop the sentence, he could stop the truth of it.

Twenty-five caliber automatic. That’s what the paper this morning said it was. It didn’t say why. Just that she’s dead.

His chest relaxed now. His shoulders and his throat relaxed. The truth was out. They must live with it. They must all live with the truth, damn it. Hunter was silent. Then he peered at Paul’s face, looking for any suggestion that what he had heard was not so. But no trace of denial was there. The Indian knew it was true. Paul gazed at him through his new, old face.

Jesus Christ, Paul, I can’t believe it. I saw her just yesterday around four or five… , he said, but he knew that remembrance would not make a spark of difference. Not now. It was a senseless statement. She was dead. What a damned shame. Several of Madrid neighbors thought of Kensy as a younger sister who needed their protection, rather than a sexual interest. This included Hunter. Then a fat, intrepid sparrow, a bug-hunter, hopped past them, through the dewy grass and near their feet. Hunter, temporarily distracted, thought to himself that spring had chosen a sad moment this morning to blow her breath into the Madrid Place apartment complex. The year was 1975.

In ’75, as the year before, winter’s harshness was showing signs of softening at the edges and hinted that balmy, romantic weather might soon return to favor the Southside apartments. The auspicious grouping of Spanish-style buildings was, most inhabitants agreed, the most attractive their Southwestern city had yet built. The apartment group was even modestly elegant, with formal landscaping that included vivid redbuds, rich and dark pines, and an abundance of yuccas which produced prodigious clusters of fragile, white blossoms rising from sword-shaped leaves in summer when the air was tepid.

Madrid Place was designed especially for singles, but included married couples and couples enjoying a popular scheme of living together as if being married. Owners of the complex had ruled that while children were not welcome, dogs and cats were allowed. This was probably because the animals chose to nonchalantly fertilize the grass, and oftentimes the impervious cement walkways leading to the buildings.

A lagoon like swimming pool was the Madrid’s geographic center, complete with a modest waterfall at one end whose delicious sound hinted that with eyes closed one could imagine oneself deep in a Polynesian hideaway, or on the island of Bora Bora in the 1870s. A lazy willow shaded the pool’s west side. A dark green, wooden bridge arched across the middle of the pool to a rock and cement island placed in the center. During the winter months the island Mecca vanished into the atmosphere as surely as the summer slipped aside. Then the lagoon was ignored; for last summer’s sunbathers it did not exist in reality but was like something they had dreamed.

Late in spring and during summer, Madrid Place was similar to a medieval European sanctuary. The inhabitants seemed to find entertainment among themselves. Shelter, security and other social needs were so available that some tenants did not feel it was important to go outside the fortress-like complex.

Inside the complex perimeter the deep gray painted wood planking framed two-story white stucco exterior walls which became peach in color when the sun rays slanted exactly so. This was especially true in summer when the light was strong. The high roofs were of bright terra cotta tiles which had become gray-tinged from the hot, sunny seasons. Shaded walks and gazebos provided an amount of genteel dignity. At the southern perimeter of the complex was a well-used tennis court where browned, lively enthusiasts strained, sweated and enjoyed.

Inhabitants of the Madrid boasted a diversity of occupations. Among these were salesmen, a doctor who avoided his neighbors, engineers, school teachers, a writer, and several middle-management young executives. The Madrid was reputed to house a highly paid female prostitute, although there was some disagreement as to whom it might be. Others living at the complex included real estate salespeople, a professional gambler who was said to haul in large amounts of money, a portrait artist, some accountants and a large number of retirees. The older people learned to enjoy each day as it came, to savor old friends, foods, pets, and children who were related to them. They were bemused, seeing young adults chase around and seemingly, carry out their important and secret missions which only they felt must be accomplished in the time allotted. However, the oldsters longed to be participants with the young ones… but solemnly understood their limitations which precluded that.

The apartment comlex was only six years old. Those who had leased from the beginning felt that they were the aristocrats of the village and would often describe colorful past tenants. These early occupants would soon tell you they were the charter ones. It was pleasant when newcomers envied them their singular accomplishment of being original tenants.

Although not a charter tenant, it could be said that Hunter was one of the unusual persons at the complex. No one at the Madrid asked Hunter how he came by his name. It could have been that he was Osage, and American Indians were once considered bold hunters of wild game rather than more docile crop harvesters. Perhaps he was so labeled because it appeared that he was an adventuresome type. It was true that during the 1950s, while plodding through a small college in eastern Oklahoma, he had smoked pot when it was considered a strange, dangerous experience in that section of the country.

I mean how perverted could you get? Hunter explained to Shell Findley, Well, that was bad shit back in those days. And I think they would have hanged me and the other tough guys if we were caught at it. You notice I said ‘hanged,’ not hung. See, I know the difference.

Oh, I figured you knew the difference, Shell answered. After all, you’re a goddamn educated playboy.

Shell Findley, Hunter’s confidant and carousing pal, also kept an apartment at the Madrid. He had not really been aware of the distinction between the two words, but when he thought about it admitted that the Indian with his master’s degree in English must be on top of a few things in this world. Both men were nearly the same age, pushing 43 years. They had been divorced about the same time, which was shortly before taking apartments at the Madrid. Both were at ease with most people and enjoyed partying, and being around any crowd which was loose, unaffected and having fun. Shell was fair-skinned, with graying curly hair, a medium build with protruding stomach, and said that he had British and Irish ancestors. As residents of the Madrid, each had a feeling that he was on a vacation because there were no lawns to be maintained, no mandatory housework to do, no disciplining of the children, since their marriages were dissolved. I’m not a lawn slave anymore, Hunter had said to Shell after his divorce was final. You don’t know how much time I used to spend on those lawns. Sure, they looked good, he laughed, but not for long. He and Shell, both bitter from their deteriorated marriages, unconsciously repressed any characteristics that even remotely suggested a domestic existence. The traits that Hunter and Shell held most in common were their drinking, romancing women, and an honest joy of living the relatively uncomplicated life of a single person again.

You should have been around here when the Indian and I first got our divorces, Shell was overheard saying at the apartment pool one day.

Hunter and me, we got this contest going. We made this bet. I don’t remember now what we bet, but it was to see which one of us could screw the most women during two weeks’ time. And we couldn’t count it if we had to pay for it, Shell recalled.

What a time that was. Hunter won it though. He had 10 different ones and I ended up with eight. God, some of those were pigs. Yes. But a couple were good-looking honeys, as I remember them.

The vocations and personalities of Irish Shell and Osage Hunter were very similar. They were both full-time salesmen, and took their job images home to wear for the evening, but were probably unaware that they did: They were advanced extroverts. Both wore chrome-trim glasses, over-the-ears contemporary haircuts, drank the popular scotch and water, and wore bead chokers around their necks.

One crisp Saturday afternoon by the Madrid pool, Hunter was debuting his Snoopy sweatshirt while lazily sucking in the cool spring air. He turned to Shell:

Just thought of the most classic movie titles I ever heard. I mean, if these titles aren’t classic, I don’t know what is, he said.

Do you want to hear them? Hunter asked.

Have I got a choice?

No, actually. These were really playing as double features at the Cameo, downtown.

Well, what were they? Shell asked, interested.

This is the truth now. They were ‘A Hard Man is Good to Find’ and ‘I Wish I Was in Dixie.’ Isn’t that neato? Hunter blurted out proudly.

Oh Christ, that is truly something. Ahem, really. Shell chuckled as he appreciated Hunter’s bit of ribald knowledge recalled. Shell filed it. The titles were too good to let die. He would relate the films title story again the next time he had friends over to his apartment.

The suicide of one of the tenants at the Madrid had shocked others who lived there. They had understood she was an intricate woman, but… Kensy gone?

Kensworth never got used to her name. As a young girl in the mid 1940’s, she told her friends her name was Ann. But it was never long before they learned differently. Then she would ask them to call her Kensy, but never Kensworth.

She was educated in Catholic schools in Oklahoma until she was sixteen and the overall Catholic philosophy became a deeply rooted part of her. Kensy believed the church’s doctrines so thoroughly that all about her became either good or bad, black or white. During her life, this perspective was to frustrate or complicate otherwise compatible relationships with people she knew.

Kensy was a beauty. Her eyes were hazel, large, intelligent, unforgettable. The perfect brows were sculptured finely. After she was married and vicious quarrels broke out between Kensy and her husband, half his attention would be drinking in the beauty of the flashing hazel eyes while toe-to-toe he and Kensy spouted words that never should have been spoken.

She felt she was Irish. Kensy O’Brien was proud her ancestors had been Irish—on her father’s side, anyway. She looked Irish, with her turned-up nose and long, dark hair. Kensy was skinny as an adolescent. Her family was always coaxing her to eat more. She didn’t, but as some women will, she acquired a good figure after moving into her 20s decade.

If Madrid Place had an anachronism, it was Kensy. She never wanted the world, or herself, or her friends to advance further than 1955; that was her time of security. She had not yet felt the hurt, disillusionment, and pressures to change that the rest of the world would feel during the 60s and 70s. She was still living at home during the 50s and the father that she loved was near. Excitement and romance were in her body. Kensy was to retreat to those sunny days many times during the frustration of her married life. The year 1954 was her first year in college, her apex, and she would never return to that flush of life again. It hurt her, when she lived at the Madrid to think that year now existed only as a memory, when it once had been so real, so true.

A lifetime rival for Kensy was her mother, Dora. Theirs was an uncommon relationship in some ways. The rivalry never existed until Kensy was nearing womanhood and seemed a threat to Dora… that must be turned back. Kensy and her father had a warm, mutual regard for each other that Dora could never really permeate, partition, or influence. Kensy put her father on a high pedestal: he was honest, painfully so, incorruptible, a faithful husband, definitely religious, and many women thought he was physically attractive. To his credit, one summer he even refused an out-of-town business trip to Ottawa, when it meant he would be taking the trip with his attractive secretary, a woman in her twenties.

Daddy, have you loved my mother ever since you met her? seventeen-year-old Kensy once asked her father.

Yes, I have, sure, he replied. How could he say that he had become a worrisome workaholic in order to get away from his wife and domestic tedium, and that he still felt a deep physical pang whenever he was near blossoming, young women. It could be in an innocuous circumstance, like when he talked to a young female store clerk. He wanted so much to be a model of the well-behaved, responsible husband and household head. Did he still love Dora and had he always? He did not know. What was more important to him was that others thought he did.

Dora, Kensy’s mother, was plain, pale and overweight, and had always been so, even as a child. The years of her youth were spent in a small town in northern Florida. As the daughter of a successful G. P. doctor, Dora had a relatively effortless young life, always the recipient of whatever her father could offer her; since she was his only child, the rewards were substantial. Whatever she lacked in physical attractiveness, Dora overcame by an abundance in cunning. This cunning first showed itself when Dora was a child, and would twist her thin, blonde strands of hair and tell her father transparent untruths to gain small favors. The village idiot would not have believed her, but the benevolent Dr. Hunnicutt was much more vulnerable.

Perhaps the doctor saw through the subterfuge, but if so, no one ever knew. The image of her father was the kind of mate that Dora sought out and found in Harold, Kensy’s father. Harold possessed the same loyalty, and the same tendency to overlook Dora’s selfish and weak traits.

On an August night in 1931, when the air hung sweet and heavy on the town of Pasacoula, Florida, a perspiring and idealistic Harold wiped his brow and dramatically asked Dora Hunnicutt to become his wife. Of course he thought it was entirely his decision when asking. Dora hesitated in answering, but not for long.

Oh, Harold, do you think I possibly could make you happy? I really wouldn’t want very much for myself. But I’ll try if you want me to. Yes, I’ll marry you. The right timing. The right words. Anne Bancroft could not have played the scene on a stage better.

Harold was not a bad catch for the doctor’s 24-year-old daughter, many in provincial Pasacoula said. He brought in $140 a month as a hard-working accountant. He knew he had value and knew the employer could see that any good employee with loyalty was worth a substantial sum.

There are plenty of men who would give a right arm to have a job during these tough times, much less an office job like mine, Harold told her, narrowing his eyes.

However, the G. P. doctor would have been disappointed with his daughter’s choice of a mere accountant for a husband, had he lived to see it but Dora and Harold found the old fellow dead of a heart attack. He was lying under his overturned wicker rocker on the screened-in porch, having died unnoticed at nearly the same time Harold had proposed. Dora had insisted on coming immediately to tell her father what she assumed the old fellow would take as quite splendid news.

As facts often become obscured after a person dies, the truth became accordingly distorted with the doctor’s demise. Word rapidly got around that Dr. Hunnicutt’s fatal attack was brought about when the young accountant told the doctor he intended to marry Dora. After a day’s time, half the town accepted this version of the doctor’s death over the one Dora explained. It was the more colorful of the two accounts and the townspeople preferred color above the ordinary. While a cold atmosphere remained about the town, there was a burial, a marriage ceremony, and the newly wed O’Briens left Pasacoula, not to return for many years.

Paul House was a Madrid Place tenant who was hard to figure out, or so you were told if you were around the Madrid people in the spring of ’75. Paul could not easily be stereotyped. This was because he was clearly an introvert, and did not wish to communicate with very many of his neighbors about anything at all. Most seemed drab to him.

However, Paul did have interest in one person who resided at Madrid Place. He not only was interested, he burned… for Brook. At 27 years old, she caused primal stirring in virtually every male she came in contact with. But Paul’s continuing desire for Brook James was not adequate to arouse or warm her. He simply could never reach her innermost self.

Once, with Paul a few feet away, during a party, Brook said, I could never make it with Paul. You know why? She was addressing a younger female friend, but never explained the reason. And Paul, the rest of his life, would never know. Then she turned to him abruptly.

Goddamn, Paul, come over some evening. Nobody comes over. I’m here in this fucking apartment by myself lots of evenings, Brook said. Paul wanted to accept her words literally, and wanted them to mean she understood him for all his worth, would love him, would give him loyalty and warmth. But he knew he was hearing a normal, harmless expression that for her, could be meant for any guy.

Brook, you don’t have to use crude words because other people do, because your nutty friends do. Those words are extraneous, nondescript, and bloody well do not shock anyone, Paul exploded.

Oh, shit. They are not all that bad. You hear them on television. Most of them. I have to express myself. I wouldn’t feel myself if I didn’t use descriptive words some of the time. Lighten up.

Another trait of Brook’s which Paul considered a puzzle was that she maintained a clean, orderly apartment, yet managed to keep herself neat and presentable every time he saw her. It had always been his belief, and verbally expressed occasionally, that a woman who kept herself looking sharp usually lived in a sloppy, cluttered house, and vice versa. He admired Brook for her orderly neatness, but never told her that he noticed.

Paul’s living space was no more than 20 yards from Brook’s apartment at Madrid Place. A winding cement walkway led from his apartment, and passed by Brook’s large living room window and also near the ivy-encircled bedroom window.

That enigmatic window. In the evening, when Paul walked to his car placed in the carport, he would pass close to the intriguing bedroom window. He often formed a mental picture of Brook, half-dressed, amorously entertaining an attractive man. Woman? No, most likely not. And Paul would get a mental image of her lover: thick brown mustache, tousled full head of hair, muscular and definitely confident of his effects and his ability with women in tender settings. Paul tried not to let his thoughts linger on the dream-like sultry scene. But there was something about this different woman that led him to concede that with her anything was possible. She was not a narrow person. Defensively he told himself, that he would not be so curious if she could manage to turn the room lights out in the evenings so that he would not be drawn to look. When seldom he visited, Paul noted the furnishings in Brook’s apartment were surprisingly tasteful and expensive. This was not very understandable to Paul. That is, how could a woman with brains and taste come on like Brook did, and talk as she did? It was incomprehensible to Paul, but perhaps this was part of her personal mystique that drew him to her. Another element which Paul knew to be a reason for his fascination with her was her striking features. Paul had always been an easy touch for good-looking women. He was not bothered that Brook was petite at five-foot-four and a half. That was a plus. It made him feel larger and manly and conscious of his six-foot frame when he was near her. This made her more feminine in his perception. And her adequate breasts…

One winter night, several months before Kensy’s suicide, Paul sat alone in his somber apartment, a small, Spartan,