A year after I began working at the Sears advertising department, I became a regular at Hosmer’s Lounge, a neighborhood bar a mile and a half north of the Detroit border at 8 Mile Road.

     One Friday night when I entered I saw radio producer Bill Swift sitting alone at the bar. It was surprising to see him without his wife. I’d been to four or five parties at his house, he was a hub of activity in the Detroit radio production biz. I wasn’t on his level, he was prominent in the local scene, but I’d talked to him once or twice. I’d never seen him at Hosmer’s.

     At one of his parties there was talk about one of the DJ’s at the top FM rock station having to fly to Las Vegas and he was terrified of flying. The next day I recruited a few of the party people and we created a 90-second radio skit about the DJ’s flight and WABX aired it several times. It was funny.

     Bill’s wife was the most vivacious host and always in astonishing costumes at the parties. I’d never seen them apart. I sat at the other end of the bar and watched him drink. I wondered if I should try to talk to him.

     I was a lot different person than I’d been when I started at Sears. I’d never had an office job before. I must have been a rough-edged kind of guy. Fresh in from the farm and a job as a lineman for the phone company. Heavy labor. We were not only required to wear ties, but also tie clips. I used a paper clip and the boss didn’t like it. It’s a clip, and it’s on my tie, I said, and converted the disciplinary talk to a discussion of semantics.

     After a year on the job as a copywriter at Sears, I was a different man.  

The advertising department was now my turf. I had a new confidence.

     There was an open stool next to him so I sat down and said “Hi Bill, I’m Colin, I’ve been to a couple parties at your house.”

     He looked at me for a moment and then said, “It’s the dog boy!”

     Oh, that. He had a young St. Bernard and at the party I was yakking about how good of a dog trainer I was and somebody said to me, oh yeah, well train the Bernard to do something.

     Trapped! So I made a joke of it. I’d just finished eating a banana. I used my best command voice to tell the dog, “Take this peel to the kitchen and put it in the wastebasket.” I reached forward with the peel and the dog grabbed it and took it to the kitchen and put it in the wastebasket.

     People urged me to train the dog to do another trick but I declined, you can’t predict outrageous luck like that. I never expected that the dog would actually do it.

     Bill Swift remembered that, and then he remembered I did the radio skit. “You scared the crap out of Rick Williams,” he said. “That was so funny. How many tons was it that a 747 weighs? Held up only by air!”

     So then we talked a while. I liked his parties because the attendees were successful artists of one stripe or another, creators at a high level that I aspired to. I wanted to be a writer and I had higher aspirations than the Sears newspaper ads I was writing.

     I asked him where his wife Rita, was, she was always with him, such a smart and beautiful woman, always dressed to perfection. She was really hot for a 40-year-old, and witty. “Maybe you didn’t hear about it, but I tended her table at the Cranbrook Art Fair a couple months ago. Somebody from one of your parties recommended me to her–she had to supervise the new kiln being installed at your house. Rita has such a dynamic color sense in her silkscreen prints. I didn’t know she was using the same motifs in her pottery glaze.”

     “She needed that kiln to make a better match with her prints,” Bill said. “The cadmium reds and chromium greens can become volatile and boil out if the kiln overshoots its target temperature by even a few degrees. And when you can hold the temperature stable in the critical 1,800-to-1,400-degree window, micro-crystals can grow. It creates a multi-toned glaze she couldn’t get with the old kiln.”

     “It was a strange thing for me at the art show because I thought the customers would want to discuss art and design, but they just pressed me to take a lower price for a print, but Rita’s assistant told me to accept only the price-tag amount.”

     “Yes, she’s insistent on that,” Bill said. “It’s one of the things about her.”

     “I never actually talked to Rita, just the assistant. Is she meeting you here? I’ve never seen you except with her.”

     Bill drained his glass and gestured at the bartender. “Another double bourbon, Ralph, thank you.”

     He turned back to me. “Your skit for Rick Williams was funny but it wasn’t new. Comfortable tropes about fear of flying, a fresh assemblage of old parts.

     “Rita’s stuff is new. People don’t like truly new stuff. It doesn’t fit into any of the existing structures. It upsets the existing applecarts, causes turbulence that interferes with the placid flow of the cashstream. 

     “New ideas are irritating, but pearls can form around them and eventually they are considered to be beauty. Did you know that “Rita” means “pearl?” She’s like the grain of sand that forces the oyster to create a pearl. She’s a burr under the blanket.”

     “So how did you start hanging out at my parties, Colin? Who invited you?”

     “It was Big Dan Brown, one of the radio-station couriers I see at the Sears ad department every morning.” There was a lot of camaraderie among the couriers for the newspapers and radio stations. They passed along rumors of what was happening at other major Detroit retail advertisers–you think you guys have it bad at Sears, here’s how bad it is at Penney’s right now.

     “I don’t have anything to do with the radio spots, they’re made at the Sears home office in Chicago, I just write newspaper ads, but Dan keeps me up to date on what’s going on.”

     “I know Dan. He’s trying to sell songs to Motown.”

     “Yeah. I was having lunch with him and he said, you’re always talking about being a writer, we got a great song with no lyrics, why don’t you throw something together? He told me the title, but I was unable to generate a thing. I froze and couldn’t deliver. Songs are like poetry and I’ve never been able to do poetry.

     “One of the Hosmer’s regulars here is Felix from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, I said. “he plays backup violin for Motown tunes. He knows Dan.”

     Bill looked around the bar. “I know Felix. Is he here?”

     “Nope, he’s got a concert tonight.”

     Bill relaxed and gestured to the bartender again. He was pouring down the booze pretty fast.

     “About Rita,” he said. “Have you ever heard of bipolar disorder?”

     “Sure,” I said, “it’s the new term for manic depression. It’s a Jimi Hendrix song–Rick Williams and the other WABX Air Aces play Hendrix a lot, the AM stations won’t touch it. That’s why Rick won the award that he has to fly to Vegas to accept.”

     “That’s what made it funny, he’s one of the Air Aces.” Bill drank down half of his bourbon in one gulp when Ralph brought it, then said, “Rita is a complicated person. I came home and found her on the floor with an empty pill bottle in her hand.”

     “Oh my gosh.”

     “I called the police and they took her to the hospital in an ambulance. It was touch and go, but they saved her.” He took another smaller sip of his drink. “I could never get her to tell me why she did it. She said she didn’t remember doing it.”

     “My sister’s husband shot himself,” I said. “Their 9-year-old came home from school and found his father dead on the floor. He was a carpenter and he put a drill bit down the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun and fired it into his own heart. We never found out why he did it.”

     “Suicide is a sin,” Bill said. “There are sins of omission and sins of commission. It’s selfish–they don’t have to cope with what they’ve done to other people. Bring me another one, Ralph.”

     “Here’s the thing about Rita, Colin. She keeps doing it. I’ve found her comatose from pills four times now. It’s been a wrenching experience every time. Four times in ten years and she won’t tell me why.”

     He gulped down half of the next glass of bourbon. “I’m a sinner now. I found her on the floor again today. Instead of calling the police, this time I came here.” He began to sob. “I can’t handle it any more.”

     We talked for another hour.  I had to go to the men’s room and when I got back Bill was gone. I never saw him again.