FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

  “Yeah, well that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I made the suggestion. As far as that stuff goes, though, Eddie, my mom wouldn’t probably be your type. She’s—well, you know, she’s a mom. But she’s nice, she’s really nice, and I told her all about you, and she’d really like to meet you. And, truthfully, I think you’d probably get a kick out of her too. She’s smart in her way, and down to earth, and if you’re hungry, she can cook up something that I guarantee you’ll absolutely love. She’s fabulous in the kitchen, my mom is—So what do you say? You want to spend the evening with the Mulroys? See how the other half lives for once?”

  “Hey kid, I used to be the other half when I was your age. So what the hell—Give me the address of your fuckin’ garage. I’ll see you at 7:00 on the nose.”

  But wouldn’t you know it? Tommy’s mom was working late. Some waitress, name of Angela, with boyfriend trouble—Tommy said it seemed no matter what boyfriend she had at the time, the girl had trouble with him. When Eddie got to the garage, Tommy had just gotten off the phone with his mother and the estimated time of her departure from the diner was sometime between 9:00 and 10:00. No fabulous dinner at the Mulroy residence that night, apparently. But Tommy—gotta love the kid—he had another bright idea, namely:

  “Hey, how about this, Eddie: Why don’t we just go straight to the diner and have Mom make us something there? Cosmo gives her free rein in the kitchen, and whatever you feel like eating, I’m positive Mom can cook it up as well as anybody can.”

  “Cosmo’s the proprietor, I’m assuming?”

  “Right. He owns the place. Mom’s been working there since my dad died—over seven years now.”

  Eddie checked his Rolex. 7:22—And he was starving! Half a sweet roll for breakfast, some cheese and crackers on the plane, a puny bag of peanuts. Then nothing since the goddamn peanuts till now, no sustenance whatever, if you didn’t count the calories in the couple of ounces of Dewar’s he’d taken from the Phoenician’s mini-bar. His mouth was dry, his stomach growling, and therefore Eddie thought: Sure, why not? Cosmo’s Diner?—Yeah, screw it; what the hell.

  “Hey Tony, you listening? You hear what the kid just said?”

  “No, sir. I make a habit of not listening to the conversation of my passengers.”

  “Yeah, I bet you don’t. OK, well Tommy here’ll tell you where the place is that we’re gonna eat. See if you can get us there ASAP.”

  What Eddie was expecting wasn’t exactly what he got. New Jersey has loads of diners, some of them primarily Italian, most of them fundamentally either Portuguese or Greek. And one thing about the Jersey diners, is that they’re big and lavish and have voluminous menus offering everything from BLT’s to lobsters, everything from pesto sauce to Rubens with genuine kosher corned beef. The diners of Jersey are legendary for their quality and diversity, and if a typical Jersey diner was what Eddie had in mind, he sure as hell didn’t get what his Jersey mind conceived. What he got instead was a tiny little run-down burger joint with seating for maybe forty customers jammed in, splits in the orange vinyl seats, ratty counter stools, smoke pouring from a greasy grill, and two frazzled waitresses, one of which was Dottie Mulroy, according to the name tag on her uniform blouse: a fifty-something, moderately hefty woman with a purple polka-dot scarf of silk around the neckline of her soiled white blouse, and a pretty, ruddy, pudgy face. The moment she saw them enter, she rushed over to the door and gave her handsome son an enormous hug.

  “Is this him, Tommy? Is this that nice man you stayed with, Mr., um, Mr….”

  “Eddie,” Eddie said. “Just Eddie. No ‘misters’; I’m allergic to ‘em, Mrs. Mulroy—OK?”

  “Eddie, sure.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers—in both of her warm, moist, cracked, and calloused hands: Working women’s hands, washerwomen’s hands. And when he looked up at her face, he saw that it was lined and blotchy too, a working woman’s face to match the hands, the kind of face he wasn’t used to seeing in his million-dollar world. In his million-dollar world, even the restaurant workers, even the menials who cooked and cleaned and butlered in his home and chauffeured in the limos that took him here and there—all of them had soft hands and smooth faces, and were dressed up to the nines, devoid of polka-dot scarves and soiled white uniforms like the stuff that Dottie Mulroy wore. But their hands were colder, clammier, not like Dottie Mulroy’s at all. If Tommy was showing him how the other half lived, then this other half looked pretty damn attractive in comparison with the supposedly ‘better’ half he knew.

  “Best seat in the house for my boys,” she said, and led them to just that very spot, a booth—the only presentable one in the restaurant, so far as he could tell—with vinyl that wasn’t cracked or torn, a tabletop that wasn’t worn or chipped, a front-row panorama out the window at the parking lot with its scattering of mostly older-model cars—well, other than the limo, of course, with gangster Tony sitting straight-backed in the driver’s seat jiggling a toothpick in his mouth and looking in the rear-view mirror for the Feds—maybe the same ratty toothpick he’d been chewing on last week when he’d dropped Tommy and his sister on the tarmac—Damn thing looked at least a full week old.

  Inside the restaurant were about a dozen patrons, more than the cars in the parking lot would suggest, but there were residences on the side streets too, down around the corner from where the diner sat, so maybe some of the customers had a habit of taking a walk to get their suppers. And, truthfully, no reason Eddie could see for the people to go anyplace else: The vapors from the grill and fryer smelled pretty goddamned good.

  Maybe they smelled that good because he was hungry. And luckily, Dottie Mulroy wasn’t cruel enough to make them wait. She didn’t bring them menus. Instead, she came back right away with two glasses of water and a basket of fresh-baked-looking rolls, and asked him—she didn’t bother asking Tommy:

  “OK, Mr. Eddie, what can I make you good to eat?”

  “What are my choices?”

  “Well anythin’ pretty nearly. But I got some stuff fresh. The specials we get in fresh, not froze; so what I got today fresh, not froze, is some nice lookin’ shrimps—the special calls for fried, but I can make ‘em anyway you like. And I got some nice-lookin’ veal too. So anythin’ you’d like with shrimps or veal, anyway you’d like it, I can whip you up. That sound OK?”

  “Mrs. Dottie, as hungry as I am right now, anything you make will be OK. I’ll leave it up to you. Just whatever you make, make lots of it.”

  She knew what Tommy wanted. He always got a burger. So off she went, and, while Eddie chomped hungrily on a roll—terrific rolls, by the way, fresh and crisp and buttery—While he was chomping, Tommy stared at him in a funny way—a quizzical kind of way, probably reading his mind again, just like Ben, for he asked abruptly:

  “So—You’re not expecting much of Mom’s cooking, are you, Eddie? You aren’t; I can tell.”

  “Why? Did I say anything? What did I say to make you ask me that?”

  “No, nothing that you said—It’s your eyes. I can see it in your eyes when you glance over at the kitchen that way. You don’t expect much from my mom. But you’re going to be surprised. Everybody always is when they don’t know what my mom’s cooking is like. That guy Cosmo—he’s over at the register; you see who I mean? He owns the place, but all he knows how to do is slice the gyros and warm the pita in the microwave. Then the short-order guy in the kitchen—his name is Johnny—You can see his head now and then. All he’s responsible for is the stuff they throw on the grill. Everything else they serve here, my mom makes. The other waitresses fill in for her when she’s got to cook, but since they’re shorthanded tonight, Cosmo’s going to be running around doing most of the bussing and serving himself. It’s funny to see him having to actually do some work.”

  And the kid was right. It was kind of funny to watch. Cosmo, this pudgy little bald guy in a nice silk shirt and pleated pants, who looked as though he’d never left the register before. He fumbled with the silver
ware and glasses, took the plates of food off the serving counter and brought them to the tables one by one without a tray, which doubled and tripled the ridiculous amount of running around he had to do. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would have been hysterical, but if it was still short of being hysterical, it was still a total hoot to watch.

  And while Eddie was watching, smiling, salivating at the scents emanating from the kitchen, Tommy said:

  “So—I didn’t ask you yet, Eddie: That report—I never got it in my email. Did you forget to send it out?”

  “Report, kid? I’m not sure….”

  “The echocardiogram. Ben’s test. Did you forget to send it out?”

  “There wasn’t anything to send.”

  “You mean he didn’t get it done?”

  “No, kid, he got it done on Wednesday, just like I told you on the phone. But nothing showed up; so, like I told you, there was nothing for me to send.”

  “It was read, though, right? A cardiologist read it? A cardiologist should have done it too, not a technician. That’s what I specified, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I had them do just what you told me. Carole made the calls, and she’s a stickler when it comes to Benny’s health. Harvey Axelrod was the guy Ben went to, and he’s not only the best heart doc in all of Jersey, but he’s also kind of a friend as well. Harvey was an investor in the Corporation from day one, and Ben’s efforts have made him a mint over the years. He could’ve retired twenty years ago on his profits from AthCorp alone, but I guess he likes what he’s doing so much he just keeps on doing it—Hell, Harvey’s probably gonna die in the office taking care of people who never pay him a dime—So yeah, Ben had the best guy in the area do the test and a loyal friend to boot. And if Harvey said everything was fine, then you can bet the family fortune that Ben’s heart is just as good as anybody’s. We all knew he was gonna be OK, but now we’re sure of it; and it’s a big relief to everyone, I can tell you that.”

  “That’s good, Eddie. That’s great. I just wondered why I never got the pictures in an email like I asked.”

  “Pictures? They do pictures? I thought it was just a test.”

  “The pictures constitute the test. I would have liked to have seen the images.”

  “Why? Would you even know what you’re looking at?”

  “Yeah, I would. It’s kind of a long story, but to make it short, the cardiologist who did our echos—mine and Rachel’s—over the past few years: He’s got this ’69 Camaro that I worked on for him, and he was so happy that I got it running like it should—the carb was clogged, that’s all—that he taught me all about my dad’s disease and what to look for on the echos. Matter of fact, I went to his office and he even let me do some hands-on, testing a couple of his patients with the machine. I guess he told the patients I was a student doctor or something, so anyway….”

  “Jesus, kid! Is there anything you don’t know how to do? I think if you got a migraine, you’d figure out a way to open people’s skulls.”

  “No, I don’t do skulls, Eddie—And another thing, I’m a really lousy cook. But my mom’s a great one—A fantastic one, in fact—And here she comes, by the way, with your dinner and probably some other little dishes she’s managed to whip up. You’re about to have the best diner meal you ever ate.”

  He smiled ironically. But the kid was right—damned if he didn’t hit the nail smack on the head! That food! The smell of it, the taste of it, the little carafe of wine she dug out from God-knows-where in some hidden recess of the little joint: All the next day, on the flight back to Jersey, on the way to the Corporate Headquarters with Luther motoring Tommie to his joyous reunion with Ben, and throughout the afternoon and evening, sitting home with Charlotte, while Ben and Tommy were together talking, communing, making their optimistic plans—All that day and through the morning afterward, Eddie could recall with salivating vividness the taste of Dottie’s scrumptious shrimp appetizer—creamy, garlicky, with some bread crumbs on top to crisp them up and hold the sauce against the surface—The texture of those fresh-baked rolls. The richness of that heaping plate of veal siciliano, made richer, tastier, more buttery than anything even Franco’s had ever turned out on one of their evening forays to the City—WOW!

  And to top the whole incredible dinner off, what could have been more scrumptious than the pungent sweetness of Dottie Mulroy’s caramel apple pie? Bar none, without exception, the best damn food he could remember having had.

  Ever.

  35

  Automotives. For thirty years the subject had been mired someplace between moon-boots and eight-track cassettes in its level of interest to AthCorp’s business brains, but now….

  Ben shuffled through the stack of print-outs in the center of his desk, setting some on the pile to the left; the others getting shuffled to the right. The left-hand companies were tentative at best: You could buy them at bargain-basement prices, sure, but to ante in, you’d need to be either a flaming idiot on opiates or some bean-counter looking for a write-off on his corporate tax—That’s how abysmally bad they were.

  The other pile of businesses for sale—the right-hand stack—looked somewhat better, a bit more solvent, a bit less toxic to the bottom line. They were available if you were inclined to take a chance, but you’d have to pony up a little extra cash.

  Whew! Ben shook his head. This was the kind of high-risk foolishness that AthCorp had never even glanced at before; or if it had done so, it did it holding its corporate nose. Rust-belt industries, union woes, market share on the skids, stock valuation on the perpetual downslope—for thirty highly successful years this had never been Ben’s cup of tea. He’d avoided automotive stuff like anthrax—to Atherton’s infinite benefit and the rejected companies’ inevitable loss. ‘The Wizard of Wall Street’, he’d been called, not infrequently, and for the best of reasons; ahead of the curve all his working life: Out of IBM and into Apple just as it was starting its ascent. Then Intel weeks before the government anted in; into the dot-coms in the nick of time. Missed out on Facebook, true enough—that was a bummer—But all the other winners got purchased right on cue: eBay, Amazon, Google, Microsoft: He’d piled up a fortune just dabbling in their common stocks, getting in, getting out, then getting in again at precisely the optimal inflection point.

  With invariably resulting profit, too—so immense an obscenity of profit that dumping all the stock and buying up the companies themselves had been his next inevitable step. And why not? If you knew the trends well enough to pick your equities better than the so-called experts did, you could figure out why the companies that were ailing were ailing, and come up with the perfect remedies to nurse them back to health. The buying up of which purported turkeys, the careful preening, the knowledgeable husbanding, then finally the selling-off once they got fatted up enough to justify the sale—That had turned Atherton’s multi-millions into multi-billions, then wound up with the multi-billions stacking up so fast you couldn’t hope to count them anymore.

  Ben had loved the challenge way more than he loved the billions he earned. Buying up some dog-of-a-company and grooming it to be Best-in-Show, making some smart guy with a good idea the immoderate fortune he deserved, keeping a thousand workers from the unemployment rolls—Lots of fun—Getting paid lots of bucks for doing lots of good.

  But the money was a worthwhile reward for the labor, no doubt. Millions at first, then billions, then tens of billions—And then, once you get so filthy rich you lose track of the multi-billions in your stash—well, wouldn’t you know it, but FaceMate comes along! Talk about your business windfalls! Talk about your golden goose, your money tree, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you’ve been looking for forever—Man-oh-man!—This little baby was the goddamn mother lode!

  Ben set the papers in his hand down on the desk and went to his computer screen to check—just for fun, just out of curiosity. There was a direct line icon to and from Rajiv in Columbus right on the desktop, one click and you’re in, and he opened it up for the late
st scoop: Which was terrific, as usual, as expected—Total enrollees in the site, as of this morning at—what did it say? Ten o’clock? Yes that was the latest tally, and it tallied someplace north of—Damn!—Five hundred million and change at twenty bucks a pop. Cash flow, with the twenty-buck surcharge figured in, now running something over two billion dollars a month, and growing by the minute. Thirty billion profit during the next full year at least, even without projected growth, plus the ad revenue which was just now starting to flow in. Alex and Rajiv were set to become the talk of the financial universe. And as for AthCorp itself, it was on the receiving end of twenty cents on the dollar, four hundred million a month, close to five billion a year all told. And when the website sold for cash or held out for an IPO offering on the exchange—The final tally was practically incalculable!

  Fun. Ben had always had lots of fun with surplus money to play with, and now there was so much coming in so fast, so effortlessly, that you had to work hard to spend it before the tax man came knocking at your door. Lots of money—but who knew how much time? Well, isn’t that true of everyone on earth, though, once you think of it? Nobody knows how much time he’s got. Catch the wrong microbe, get hit by a truck, fall off a ladder screwing in a light bulb and bump your head—And there’s your final chapter, all said and done. What did it matter anyway? You live a great life, achieve more than you’d ever dreamed of achieving, survive triumph and tragedy—the summit of triumph and the nadir of tragedy—But you make it. And once you’ve made it, the final chapter isn’t all that daunting anymore.

  Ben set down the sheaf of papers he hadn’t yet relegated to either side, opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk, and peered down in, probably for the dozenth time today.

  How much his life had changed—it was incredible! First that picture! One look at it, the first quick startled look, and all the long-deleted memories of youth had flooded back—in an instant. And amazingly, unaccountably, it wasn’t just the bitter memories that he recalled after all these years; not just the anguish, not just the emptiness of loss. Now, looking at that gorgeous picture, he remembered a lot of the good things too, the optimistic days of being twenty, the feel of Lizzie in his arms. Those exquisite memories! He’d thought he’d scrubbed them from his mind forever. But one brief look at that photograph, and he’d discovered them again—And they were great!