by LEE OLDS
Hartwig wasn’t a bad player; no Bream or Segovia, but he never intended to be a professional. Like the bad poetry he wrote (and it was bad) the endeavor was part of the mystique he used to intrigue women and claim he was somebody.
“That,” said Hammond, clapping both hands to his large uncovered knees, “I can believe. And he’s not the only one like that. North Beach’s full of them.” He looked around as if to see someone but no one was there. Except a crane perhaps. They fed in the shallows at dark.
Without any fanfare I took out a hundred dollar bill, handed it to him, reminded him of the wager and informed him Sandy was in town. She’d undoubtedly be where she was every night at seven p.m. when she was here, and that was having her nightly drink(s) at the Tempest Bar, which was right down from her condo.
“What am I to do with this?” He held up the Franklin.
“Do anything you like. If you’re going to meet her you can’t do it on nothing. You at least have to buy her several drinks. This’ for that.” He looked at me with grave concern for he knew how poor I was then. And also as if to indicate how little I knew about women if I thought that’s what it took to get them.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They (the boys) gave it to me. You owe them nothing except an attempt, of course.”
“Well, he appeared to stand on the threshold of doubt, but without any fanfare I about-faced and left. As I walked home I began to think maybe this was a dirty business I shouldn’t’ve gotten into. In other words I began to feel guilty.”
“You … when you weren’t even the one?”
“Yes … But remember, who’s really who in this world, eh. Like one, like the other. Perhaps on a universal basis all men are responsible for each other.” Hammond gave no dissent and I … I scarcely knew what I’d said though it did seem to ring some sort of bell.
Hartwig’s greatest asset, of course, was his physical appearance. His biggest liability was that he thought he was an intellectual and had talent. As a corollary to that sort of individual, naturally, they don’t feel like they have to work; contrarily they feel that the world owes them a living. That it should be grateful to merely bask in the sunlight of one of its greatest products, themselves. You might call the tendency conceit, but oddly enough, he didn’t come off that way but more like the honest Joe you’d enjoy meeting anywhere. Somehow he included his acquaintances (or even strangers) in his own superiority as though to demonstrate they too possessed it. Not everyone accepted this but some did. One look at him and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling to entertain, and in certain cases I’d seen it linger after he’d departed the scene.
He had his mother’s straight blond hair, his father’s blue eyes, and though that man’d been a diminutive, feisty individual, Hartwig was robust and athletic like his grandfather’d been. His Roman nose and noble mouth gave him the semblance of a statesman. And there he was, clean, polo shirt and slacks, a hundred dollar bill in his pocket, driving uptown in his old clunker to meet a woman he’d seen around (he didn’t know whether she’d even noticed him), but had never so much as addressed.
“So,” said Hammond. “How’d he make out?”
“Don’t know. At least not right away. We were sitting at the Venice at one of the outdoor tables when he drove by in his old red clunker with his dog in the front seat and waved. Some of us thought that was it. He’d taken the money and run. Gone on a little vacation down to Malibu where he had a friend he sometimes stayed with.”
“Unlikely,” said Hammond. “A hundred dollar bill wouldn’t’ve gotten you far even then.”
“Right.” Several hours later he drove by us again, heading in the opposite direction towards his houseboat. This time, however, he had another passenger. Hammond, I swear it was her, the socialite beauty. Dark skinned, luxurious sandy blond hair sitting beside him no less in a Dior or Versace one of those designer type dresses, with her elbow dotted by tiny blond hairs leaning on the window sill, a contented look on her face as though it’d been a chariot of the Gods she rode in.
You should have heard the speculations among us as to what’d happen for she’d obviously left her car parked and he was taking her down to his houseboat. A match made in heaven.
“A match made in … Hardly. Once she took a mere look at the place she’d flee. But go on.”
The five of us’d actually felt like driving down there and barging in on them but we didn’t. We let them have their peace. And some peace it must’ve been. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day when Hartwig burst in on me while I was studying – my cat, Louise, high-tailed it onto the refrigerator in one bound where she’d spit and hiss from time to time at the interloper, Stanley, who’d made himself comfortable under the table – that I heard what’d occurred. Not only had Hartwig succeeded in his quest (at least initially), but he’d also solved the problem with the other girlfriend he thought.
“Really, two birds with one stone?”
“Something like that.”
Chapter Two
The wooing of the socialite, that is getting her down to his houseboat, was easier than he thought, for Sandy Hightower not only knew Hartwig’s family in the city but his father. Before he’d passed away from a bad liver, he had actually tried a case for her and won it. Something about an ownership dispute she’d had with a partner in a racehorse the two both owned. The man claimed the money she’d given him was for shares in any purse won; not in the actual ownership of the horse itself. But Hartwig’s father had evidently settled the man’s hash.
Now, there was a worker, and an upright fellow when he wasn’t drinking too much, which came to be unfortunately always. Then he drank himself to death. Hartwig’s mother … you remember how cold and calculating she was. Still is to this day. Opposed to sympathy in almost all her associations. It’s said she drove the man to his fate but that’s neither here nor there …
“That’s right,” said Hammond. “We certainly didn’t do that. Why either one of us could’ve slipped into the same rut. It was our decision not to weaken alike.”
“Either that or strong wills saved us. I like to think the latter, but then, neither you nor I had wives like that and we’re still with them.”
“There,” said Hammond, “you go again. You say wills saved. I say we saved ourselves because we opted to. And that’s because we’re all born with equal ones.”
“Oh, yes,” I remarked rhetorically, “but perhaps not so equal if strength of character has anything to do with it and I believe it has. The man had a weak character and his fate proved it.”
“Yes,” Sandy’d told Hartwig at the bar. “I not only remember how intelligent your father was but also how good-looking. You resemble him.”
She leaned over towards Hartwig touching his forehead with her hair and insisted upon buying him a drink. He’d already had to fend off several other wolves just to get the seat next to her. But he’d done that. He had a knack for that sort of thing. Though a dark space with high ceilings and scant decor that resembled a chapel more than a bar, the Tempest was also a pickup joint for town singles. Not a few of the local hustlers had tried to get next to her; none’d so far succeeded.
The rumor about her promiscuity had been over embellished, or she was more faithful to her partners than one’d assumed; waiting truly for her lover to be released so she could go back to him.
“Really?” Hammond asked. “You’ve obviously seen this Brochowitz fellow you’re talking about. How old’s he? And what’s he look like?”
“Same age as Hartwig,” I said. “And maybe better looking. Younger than her.”
“So,” Hammond sipped at his Collins. “There was more to her attraction for him than just insanity or pity? There was physical att … or maybe just pure lust is a better word.”
The first disclosure she made to Hartwig was that she’d just come from work. She’d changed in her apartment before descending the hill. She did charitable work in a home for the elderly disabled.
“Why,” she cast
her large grey eyes on Hartwig, “I work there I’ll never know. Their minds are gone. They crap in their beds and their one expression is petrified. Like Downs kids they all look the same.”
“You obviously want to help them,” said Hartwig, “though why life’s so sacred for some people they want to live that way is beyond me.”
“Yes, life at any cost. It is insane. If anything is, that is.” She spoke nervously and ranted on about her every day experiences until Hartwig couldn’t get a word in edgewise. In other words she rambled on and on about nothing, which in some obscure way made sense while Hartwig was just trying to get her out of there and down to his houseboat. He didn’t want to suggest her place figuring that’d be too obvious.
Of course the more she talked the more she drank and by then Hartwig was buying her drinks. In just several hours, after popping the question twice, Sandy finally agreed.
“Why, yes, I’ll come down to your houseboat if you’ll drive me as long as it’s only for one drink. Then I have to go home. I’m expecting a call. I know you. I can trust you I’m sure.” She eyed him suspiciously.
But with that he led her across the street, she jumped into his old jalopy and that’s when we saw them drive by. As to trusting Hartwig, all right, she naturally didn’t know what she was getting into. Her so-called reputation’d never match his. It was said by women once you went into his houseboat you didn’t come away unfucked, but well fucked at that. At least that was his reputation and I can attest to it. There was a dirt parking lot full of house boaters’ old cars, and believe me, they stood out. Why, in the adjacent areas on both sides where floated the palaces or at least solid looking homes on impervious hulls, the lots held Mercs, BMWs, Audis, Lexuses, you name it, all the better quality vehicles. All new and shiny, the others’ old and shopworn by contrast like their owners’ personalities.
One sacred relic that provided an excuse for these impoverished to remain there was the old hull of a paddlewheel ferry that had somehow attained landmark status. Like everything else of theirs it was decaying but for the time being it provided a tourist attraction that the city didn’t yet feel it could tamper with, i. e., tear down and boot all the undesirables out of the spot they (the inhabitants), had enough irony to deem their place.
“A ghetto in paradise,” was the way they introduced it or when asked declaimed where they lived.
Naturally it was dark when the two reached the area so to Sandy it had a storybook or Conradian appeal with sinister figures (women included) standing like Plato’s cave shadows around the campfire, arguing and fighting in their inimical yet sympathetic fashion as the egregious by contrast so often display. Several women were fighting over the communal showers, which were housed in plywood boxes and still going strong at that time of night, but the dogs and people seemed friendly enough as Hartwig led his new acquaintance down the main pier, a patchwork affair with loose boards that tripped you. He helped her along that obstacle course as Stanley led the way, bulled through his doggie door and suddenly the two were inside. Hartwig turned on the light.
Yes, humans could live in a place like that, dressed as they were. Go to any (and most are) impoverished country and you find the same sort of hovels, many with dirt floors; people within dressed in civilized clothes that signify they’re not so much different from us. They’re human beings too though we like to think of them otherwise, indeed that you can’t judge a man by the cut of his dress but you can by the place he lives in. We consider them responsible for their predicaments and not worthy of any outside help unless it’s proffered as a meaningless sacrifice from those who are more fortunate than they…
“Well,” said Hammond. “There’re certainly plenty of them in the world. It’s the price we pay for the democracy of having offspring …”
“Partially,” I agreed. “That’s certainly part of it.”
The inside having been exposed, Sandy slipped off her coat, threw it over the back of Hartwig’s couch and began nosing around. She noticed immediately, of course, how run down the place was, but she liked it; considered it funky. The kitchenette by the entranceway was grimy to say nothing of the toilet and shower stall. The little propane hot water heater stood under the sink. He had electricity though the wiring had been done sloppily and would never meet code.
“And why should it?” Hartwig informed me, “if it really doesn’t have to since it’s never inspected and unaffordable anyhow. But … at least I have hot water in my place though yours is on land.”
“Want to trade?” I challenged him. “You turn your boat over to me and I’ll consign my lease to you. What say?”
I knew he wouldn’t agree for he owned the boat and I wouldn’t have either for I wouldn’t live in a wreck like that myself.
Sandy stuck her nose into everything, the wall case, which held his books, his CD collection, his food, his booze and even climbed a few rungs on the ladder to peek into the loft or tower in the castle as he called it, before settling down on the couch. Hartwig brought her a glass of wine, a local cabernet of dubious quality, but it was cheap. It was wine and it was cold. You see the same little propane tank that ran the hot water heater also ran the refrigerator …
“You’re kidding,” said Hammond.
“No, I’m not. That’s the way he bought it, completely furnished. A tank lasts two weeks and costs five dollars to fill, pretty cheap utilities if you ask me even though primitive and dangerous too if there’re any leaks.”
“Completely furnished?” Hammond pooh poohed. “The former owner must’ve run out to the garbage dump and collected the stuff just before he sold it.”
“No,” I answered him. “The man lived like that with a wife and three small children too.”
“What about the socialite now?” Hammond redirected me.
“Oh, her?” Hartwig did everything he expected to while she did everything he didn’t expect her to. He played mood music, invariably classical, which she evidently didn’t understand very well but didn’t mind. Since nights can be chilly down there on the water he began a little coal fire in the potbelly stove whose stomach soon glowed bright red like an ingot in a forge as it radiated heat throughout the tiny place. The two talked over their pasts and backgrounds. And though Sandy kept reminding him it was getting late and she had to be home since she’d come over for one drink just to see the place in case he’d forgotten, Hartwig managed to side track her onto another subject. If it wasn’t a trip to Mexico he was dreaming of it was a hunting excursion to Patagonia. …
“Hunting? Did Hartwig ever hunt?”
“Of course not,” I answered. “I’m surprised you asked but you have to say something in those situations. Have you ever pitched a woman? You’ll say anything. This Hartwig was very good at. He made you believe he was somebody. At least to casual acquaintances, who had no way of finding out differently. If you could see through the flak you found a different man. If not, nothing. Almost nothing.”
“Sorry,” said Hammond apologizing for his ignorance simply because he was pleased by the substance.
At any rate though the two necked a bit in front of the stove and the alcove window, Sandy didn’t want to go to bed and Hartwig didn’t want to take her home. He claimed by that time he was too intoxicated to drive and though he offered her his jalopy she was tipsy enough to claim the same impairment. There were no cabs in the vicinity at that time of night, so the two reached a compromise.
“Really,” said Hammond. “What was that?”
“Well, she agreed to stay there until morning if he let her sleep on the couch but if he insisted she sleep in his bed it had to be with all her clothes on either way.”
“What?” Said Hammond. “I thought this was a bonafide Geisha girl, not a thirty-two year old virgin. That … that’s what she’s starting to sound like. It’s difficult to see how she got her reputation at all …”
“Now,” I said, “you’re beginning to see the light.”
She wasn’t such a bad sort and though not ex
ceptionally intellectual, extraordinarily sensitive. She was extremely lonely and it’s my guess she wanted to be loved for herself or have someone she could respond to fall in love with her. That she’d never had even with her ex-husband who’d been a rancher, evidently. Perhaps she felt Hartwig was that person. A sort of pariah like herself but resourceful in his own way and what’s more from her background. You know there is such a thing as love at first sight. Could that’ve been occurring here? Hartwig did comment on how attractive she was even before that evening. It was a wonder he hadn’t approached her before though she claimed she’d never noticed him. Oh, well, there’s a first time for everything and often as not a lot more to it than meets the eye.
Around midnight, the two went to sleep, Hartwig upstairs in his loft bed and she on the couch in the living room with all her clothes on and cramped by the dog who’d insisted on curling up with her. Several hours later, in the dead of night, there came a furious knocking on the door. It was like a burglar out there attempting to get in and commandeer the place. The entire house (boat) shook as if it was on a sea of jelly. That, of course, would’ve only made sense if there was anything in there worthy of stealing. Hartwig’s guitar, perhaps, but again that was no Stradivarius. There were plenty of violent characters in the neighborhood, addicts and the like, so who knew who might be out there to bring you harm. It might be ‘Jack the Ripper’.
Being so near the door, Sandy gave a start and almost fell off the couch at the racket. She was fully dressed so she had nothing to hide yet she held her blanket up as if she did. The door rattled some more. A voice yelled, a woman’s. Someone was desperately trying to get in but the old latch evidently held and Hartwig appeared at the top of the stairs in his boxer shorts. By that time Stanley had proceeded to the front door and stood behind it barking and whining, sometimes sniffing excitedly as though he knew who it was.
