Acting on a hunch, I asked Ed if he would care to sit with us.
“Why, thanks,” he said, and even though the place was hopping, he took a seat beside us.
“So, that’s what it was.” Peabody cried out in an agonized wail, causing some of the out-of-state fellows to wheel around in our direction.
“For God’s sake, Ed,” he continued, his voice cracking with emotion. “Why didn’t you say you wanted to join us? How were we to know? If we’d had so much as a hint of your distress, we would have been only too happy to include you in our plans. Binny adores your company. You know how I feel about you. You have such a lovely place here, have I told you that?
“Betty,” he called out to the kitchen. “You’ve a very pretty face, really you do. There’s no need for you to get down on yourself about your appearance.”
Betty looked at him as if he was insane. Muttering something along the lines of “stupid asshole,” she started scraping the griddle in a violent manner. Ed and I squirmed with embarrassment and half the place stared at us.
Ed put his head in his hands and said, “I can’t deal with the fucker. I never could.”
Then he got up from his stool, shifted the position of his big belly, and walked behind the counter.
“Oh, dear,” said Peabody. “I’ve done something wrong again, haven’t I? Perhaps I should have another go at him.”
“Eat your eggs,” I said, and dug into my own.
When we had finished our breakfast and the crowd had begun to thin out, I took a sip of coffee and brought the conversation around to his proposal of the night before.
“What exactly did I say?” he asked, still looking nervously over at Ed.
“That you could make me rich,” I said, marveling at my directness.
“Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. “I suppose I did say something along those lines.
“Well, come along then,” he said, getting up from his stool. We can’t very well discuss it here, not given Ed’s horrible attitude toward me.”
He calmed down somewhat after we had left the diner, but I remained on guard all the same since I had never met such a sensitive individual in my life. And you never knew when you would get another one of his eruptions.
To work off our breakfast, we took a walk along the river, which trailed through the center of town in a picturesque manner while serving no particular purpose. Though we had once been a dynamic hub for interstate commerce, all such traffic had dried up long ago, with the coming of the air age. Peabody led the way, and we cut through the Indian Memorial Park, a tourist attraction that rarely attracted anybody; the attendant in charge practically had to grab people off the street to get them to look at the tomahawk display. Then we walked along the shabby stores of Main Street, many of them boarded up casualties of the new mall. There was a tuxedo store that had managed to survive and another that repaired caneback chairs—but that was about the size of it. The deterioration of Main Street is not just our story, it is an American story, and one that had better be reversed if we are to survive as a nation. And don’t tell me about cyberspace. That alone is not going to do it.
“You seem to know the area pretty well,” I said.
“I bloody well should. My grandfather owned a place in the hills, and I spent many a happy summer there as a boy. Ed doesn’t recall this—or prefers not to—but he and I skinny-dipped together on several occasions and laid out on the rocks afterward, dreaming of the future, discussing our cocks and the like. I’m sure you’ve often done that sort of thing with a friend.”
Actually, I hadn’t. And I could not even imagine lying out on the rocks and discussing cocks with Little Irwin, for example, who, as it happened, was hung like a horse. We had discussed pussy, of course, as is only normal. As a matter of fact, that’s all Little Irwin wanted to discuss—but we drew the line there. Still, I let Peabody go on.
“Ed was quite something to look at then, a bit of an Adonis, really, not that there was anything between us of a sexual nature. I looked him up when I came back to settle my grandfather’s estate and was delighted to see he’d chosen Betty as his wife. She’s quite formidable, don’t you feel?”
I nooded in agreement since she was certainly that. And Betty was fine if you needed someone to crack a whip and keep you in line. Or if you favored stocky little Nicaraguan pepper pots in general. But bless her—and may she live to be a hundred and have the immigration laws turned in her favor—she had never been my particular cup of tea. And I was not alone. I had heard others say: “Hey, Ed, you’re the one who has got to live with her, am I right?” To which Ed would stick out his jaw truculently and say: “You’re fuckin’ A.”
I did not know Ed during his formative years, having been brought over from Tennessee when I was ten—so it was difficult for me to envision the porked-up, and quite frankly, slovenly proprietor of our diner, as some kind of Greek god. And I did not particularly want to think about the youthful pair lying around bareassed discussing their dicks … But at least I had a more detailed explanation now as to why Peabody had shown up in our community rather than the many trendier locales that were obviously available to a man of his means.
Peabody’s office was on the top working floor of our high-rise office building, the last one to be constructed before the developers ran out of funds. It was much as I had pictured it—a large airy space, sparsely but expensively furnished with a long steel desk, a state-of-the-art computer, a bank of phones, a stereo console and a screen and slide projector. What was unusual was that the walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs that appeared to have been taken at the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany, a period in history that had always fascinated me.
Among the subjects depicted were a midget on a towering unicycle, a grinning impresario with clown makeup and a gold-toothed dancer in black lingerie and spiked heels, standing with her legs apart and taunting a man who lay on the ground in handcuffs, looking helplessly up at her crotch.
Unless I was mistaken, the fellow being humiliated bore an uncanny resemblance to Valentine Peabody.
This jarring touch notwithstanding, I admired the harsh beauty of the photographs and thought about asking Peabody for a duplicate set of prints. Obviously they would conflict with the essentially French Provincial-style that Glo had designed for the cottage, but I felt confident that I would be able to work them in.
The overall decor at the office confirmed my feeling that Peabody was involved in something global, with a possible S&M twist to it.
Peabody offered me one of the two leather chairs and got right down to business.
“I work for a chap name Gnu. Thomas Gnu. He’s an enormously wealthy man—arguably the richest in the world, although he prefers to keep a low profile—you won’t find him showing up in Forbes, for example. I suppose I shouldn’t, but I’ll let you have a quick look at him.
“Not a word about this,” he said, as he removed a slide from his desk.
“You can count on it,” I said, with some irritation, since he seemed to think I was going to reach for the phone every time he scratched his nose!
Peabody inserted the slide in the projector and then put on some Charleston-style music, which I felt was unnecessary, since it did not go with the image on the screen. But for reasons of his own, he seemed to be trying to create some kind of jazzy Weimar-style mood.
The man on the screen was a shriveled-up fellow who wore a black turtleneck and a black suit jacket that was several sizes too big for him. So much so that his little fingers barely protruded from the jacket sleeves. His skin was chalk white, and he had a full head of black hair, too full actually, which led me to believe he was wearing a toupee. His face had a simian quality to it, and he did not look happy, which I could fully understand, judging from his appearance.
All in all, he came across as one of those ancient commissars who always sat glumly in the background while someone like Brezhnev made a speech.
What ever happened to those fellows, I won
dered, now that the Soviet Union has fallen apart?
“He’s quite something, isn’t he?” said Peabody.
“He’s no Cary Grant.”
“He’s not feeling very well these days,” said Peabody, somewhat in defense of his employer.
Then he turned down the music and switched off the projector.
“He’d been ill for some time and given up for dead. Several of his associates were all for pulling the plug when I stepped in and argued successfully against it. When Gnu recovered and heard what I’d done, he fired the whole bloody lot of them and appointed me his chief aid and confidant.”
Though Peabody’s story had a dark side to it, I realized, as I listened to it, that I was thoroughly enjoying myself. It was the first time I had ever been close to money and power on a global scale—though, of course, no business had as yet been transacted.
“He’s quite a bitter man,” Peabody continued, “as you can well imagine. Gnu has no family to speak of, and his sole remaining goal in life is to settle the score with several of his old adversaries, enemies, really—which is why I thought you might be able to help us.”
At this point, I could feel myself getting agitated, but I tried to remain casual, as if I was no stranger to conversations of this kind.
“In what capacity?” I asked.
“At first, Gnu handed me a list that was a yard long—he’s accustomed to working on a large canvas. But I told him it wasn’t practical and had him winnow the group down to a handful of the more disagreeable candidates. We decided to start with a chap named Dickie Moué who tormented him at Groton, mercilessly teasing him about his multiracial origins and circulating photographs of Gnu’s tiny penis.
“One night, just as Gnu was about to lose his virginity to a townie, Moué barged into their motel room with a choral group and led them in a chorus of “Everything Happens to Me.”
“The poor bastard,” I said, and quickly realized the irony of my showing sympathy for a fellow who had more money than God.
“It was quite awful,” Peabody agreed. “As a result of the motel episode, Gnu became impotent for decades and oddly enough, it’s only in recent years that he’s regained some measure of virility. Likes blowjobs and the like, although frankly I don’t see why, having never cared for them myself.”
Peabody’s admission puzzled me. I thought back to my experience with Glo who would volunteer now and then to oblige me in that area (and then roll her eyes in exasperation as if I was the one who had brought it up—and that I was some kind of naughty fellow for doing so). My point is—the very idea of a desirable and highly intelligent woman (who should have known better?) licking away at my privates had to be one of the high points of my life, far exceeding any successes I had achieved in poultry distribution. How awful could I be if some bright-eyed charmer was willing to do that for me!
Apart from special occasions such as anniversaries and birthdays (mine, of course), Glo kept them short and sweet (early on we called them “hors d’oeuvres, then we took to labeling them “starters”) and who could blame her. She also never failed to remind me of my good fortune, pointing out that most women do not really like to deliver them up—and only do so as an accommodation.
“Believe me,” she would say. “I have checked with my girlfriends.”
That came as a surprise to me, and was disappointing in that it cast doubt on the motives behind the occasional treat I had lucked into during my bachelor days. But I took her word for it and recalled, in support of her position, the night Myron Grimble, one of the Grimble brothers, had stood up at Frolique, his body shaking with anguish, and announced: “I have never gotten a blowjob.”
Little Irwin was so moved by this pitiful admission that he offered to rush right out and see if he could set one up that very night. Myron’s brother, Vernon, was not half as charitable.
“Sit down, you fool,” he said, yanking at his brother’s sleeve. “You do not make such announcements in public.”
That, of course, was easy for Vernon to say since it was widely known that he was a rubber-bones and could give himself blowjobs.
But maybe I had led a privileged life after all.
Peabody continued telling me about Thomas Gnu’s early humiliations.
“Now none of this may seem like much to you, but Gnu has been smarting over these incidents for years.”
“I can see why. And I can understand why he’d want to get back at the fellow. If it were me …”
“He wants Dickie Moué eliminated,” said Peabody cutting in sharply, “and I thought you might be just the fellow to see it through. We’ll pay you a fee of $175,000 with an advance of $75,000, and the balance upon completion. If you like, we can have the funds transferred to your account in CDs.”
I was amazed. Was it possible I was the one he was talking to? Or was it a case of mistaken identity? Yet there it was—whoever he was talking to—right out on the table. Unless I’d heard him incorrectly, Peabody was asking me, William H. Binny, who had never so much as run a stop sign, to take the life of a fellow human being, though in truth, the swinish Dickie Moué might not answer to that description.
I could feel myself starting to get dizzy and I hoped I was not about to faint, which I have done before in moments of great stress. My father had been a fainter as well—particularly during his Tennessee days—and had trained my mother to revive him by pulling at his nose when he lost consciousness.
I let a few seconds go by while I collected myself, making it seem I was sorting out a variety of proposals that had been offered to me and trying to decide which one to pick.
“I don’t know about the CDs,” I said finally, as if that was the one consideration that had been holding up my decision.
“Whatever,” he said with a dismissive wave.
I felt a follow-up question was called for at this point and decided to ask the most logical one.
“Why me and not a professional?”
“We considered that option, of course, and rejected it. These people have a way of coming back to you. You’re never quite rid of them. There are demands for more money—and that’s the least of it. You become entangled with their associates. It all becomes very messy. We wanted someone out of the stream.”
“I’m certainly that, all right.”
“And besides, you’re quite professional. I’ve always admired your work—you’re quite brilliant at it—take on a task, finish it through. Now that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you, I couldn’t be more convinced that you’re the man we’ve been looking for.”
It was clear that my background had been investigated. And it was no accident that Peabody and I had come together at the diner. No doubt he had contacted Ed and asked him to come up with someone in the community who was a little desperate and short of funds—and Ed had selected me. Then Peabody—with Ed’s help—had arranged for us to hook up, as if by chance. Peabody had been playing me like a fish, and I had innocently gone for the bait.
As for his knowledge of my so-called brilliance on the job—that could only mean that he had gotten his hands on my efficiency report at the poultry distributor—one that had given me the equivalent of rave reviews. (When I first saw it, I could hardly stand to live with myself.) It was intended to be a private communication, but considering Peabody’s global capabilities, it would have been child’s play for him to tap into it.
“You didn’t happen to see my ER, by any chance?”
“I don’t read,” he said quickly, as if it were a point of pride. “A bit of Shakespeare now and then, some Neruda, but that’s the lot. My sister may have gotten a look at it. She’s the reader.”
He paused, then said: “You don’t happen to have read any good books lately, have you.”
“The Plague,” I answered quickly, and without thinking, as if one had been visited upon me. Considering the nature of his proposal, it was probably no accident that I had chosen the most desolate work that the Frenchman Camus had ever come up with.
“Sounds fascinating,” said Peabody. “I’ll ask my bookseller to reserve a copy.”
At this point, I felt I’d had enough and decided to put an end to the discussion before I got in any deeper.
“I’m enormously flattered,” I said, realizing I sounded a little like Peabody, “but there’s no way I can see my way clear to do this.”
“I rather thought that would be your initial response,” he said, “but do take some time to consider it. You haven’t been heard from, so to speak, for quite a while, and you don’t want to be shortsighted and disappear from the screen entirely. Think of it as an investment in your future.”
I could see now that Peabody was aware of my desperate job search—which had come to nothing despite the high quality (and expense) of my résumé.
“I do have some work,” I said, trying to summon up some pride.
“Oh, yes, I’d quite forgotten your responsibilities at the suntan emporium.”
He said this with a raised eyebrow and that slight hint of contempt that the English are able to convey so effectively. Since that’s about all they’ve got these days, you can see why they cling to it.
“How much time do I have?” I asked, aware that I had left the door open a crack.
“We’d like to move on this as soon as possible. Dickie’s in Miami now, and it would be useful to catch him before he leaves for St. Bart’s. Suppose you sleep on it and call me tomorrow.
“I’d very much like to work with you,” he said, coming over to give me one of his hugs. “In addition to all your other qualities, you have such a lovely smell.”
I cannot explain why I was embarrassed by the sudden compliment. Yet embarrassment was what I felt, and the best response I could manage was a self-conscious “Why thank you, sir.”
A Father's Kisses Page 4
