by LEE OLDS
The day after the christening Sandy again informed Hartwig she was taking him someplace. He didn’t have to dress up to look nice. And you know I began to think Hartwig enjoyed these mysterious rides of hers. He enjoyed being chauffeured about by a handsome woman in the racy convertible with the top down. He might not’ve enjoyed this ride so much if he’d known where they were going but by the time they arrived there it was too late. She stopped the car they both got out and she began to show him around.
“Where?” Said Hammond.
“Her mother’s estate in Redwood Grove, where else?” I said. “I guess after having survived what had been to her a close call at losing her love interest to her best friend at the christening she wanted to somehow cement the deal by impressing him.”
After cruising along a private road through a luxuriously wooded countryside, when Sandy turned under a stone arch upon which the word Hightower was relieved, I’m sure Hartwig got the idea.
“What?” He almost stood up in his seat. “You never told me. This’ your mother’s?”
“Don‘t worry,” said Sandy, “she won’t bite and besides I doubt if she’s home.”
The estate consisted of twenty-six acres in one of the richest areas in the county. You know it perhaps?”
“I certainly do,” said Hammond. “That’s where property’s measured in diamonds and twenty-six acres there amounts to a lot of carats.”
The long driveway that was arbored by oaks ended at an ivy trellised carriage house with ample room for cars and a living unit upstairs. This was the maid’s quarters. In the left slot stood a Bentley and to the right stood a Bentley, one navy blue the other maroon. The center was empty.
“What on earth goes there?” Hartwig pointed.
“Mother’s sedan,” said Sandy. “It’s what her chauffeur prefers to drive and she seldom uses the other two. They’re more like keepsakes.” The sedan, of course, was a Mercedes.
“Oh, really,” said Hammond, “what a slip, a mere Mercedes aside two Bentley’s, a pity.” I laughed.
With that Sandy showed him around. They reached the main building, which was a Florentine villa. It was bordered by porticoes walkways and surrounded a courtyard. Two afghans bounded from the garden area where they’d been carousing.
“This Tristan, this Isolde,” said Sandy. The long legged male leapt up at Hartwig and hooked its paws on his shoulders. Its tan coat shimmered like a golden fleece.
“I can see,” he said. “Your mother likes big things.”
“Yes,” said Sandy, “that’s the one thing we have in common.” She winked pruriently. With that she led him to the pool at the foot of a magnificent terraced garden on the hillside. Here they sat under a parasoled table as the Filipino maid, her dark complexion contrasted against her light smock, brought them drinks.
“Peem’s cups,” as Sandy liked to call them. They had one; then another as Hartwig tried to take everything in. He was impressed. The main structure had been laid in the same sparkling granite block as the carriage house and at the pool’s end stood another villa, a replica in miniature of the larger one. The walkway around the pool was white marble and a large statue of Minerva stood just across from them. The materials had been imported from Italy. If you can imagine Hartwig’s impression of the beach house, try to fathom it here. The surroundings were so elegant they made him nervous.
“Hartwig nervous?” Said Hammond. “That’ll be the day. He was licking his chops. The man doesn’t have a nerve in his body.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We all have those. That’s how come we’re reflexive creatures.”
As the two sat there looking like innocent peasants, who’d just found their ways into a Florentine castle, Sandy rose to answer a phone call, then informed Hartwig she couldn’t take him inside to show him around for they didn’t have time. Her mother was due home soon and she didn’t feel it was the right moment for an introduction.
“She thrives on appointments,” said Sandy. “They rule her entire life from luncheons to the opera. Everything’s written beforehand in her book. But perhaps another time we’ll visit.”
No wonder she drove her husband crazy Hartwig wanted to comment but refrained. Sandy did say this to him, however, which though put in an odd way indicated to me a proposal of some sort. Taking both his hands and putting them to her cheeks she focused her large grey eyes on his and said in a general fashion,
“I want what you’ve got.” The stunned Hartwig sat back in his pool chair and replied humorously if not hyperbolically,
“What’s that Sandy, my sinking houseboat, my broken down old car? Or my great bank account which has all of several hundred dollars in it?” She smiled, obviously appreciating his humor and honesty and not wanting to be hard on her intended, replied.
“You know what I mean.”
He didn’t exactly know, of course, for the suggestion’d been too broad, too general. But in the next breath when she asked him if he’d ever thought of having children, Hartwig must’ve inferred what was on her mind.
“No,” he said, “at least not right away. It’s not the right time (state of the world). One has to wait and see.” He must’ve felt the squeeze and wanted to stop it right there. There’s an implied trust when you’re going with a young woman, of course, that they’ll continue their monthly precautions. One slip of their part whether intentional or not and the man is stuck. Unless, of course, he can convince the woman to have an abortion. If you can get one nowadays. But outside of your opinion they have complete control over the faculty as long as you’re having sex. After Sandy’d made her point in those impressive surroundings the two drove back to the beach house. I’m sure it passed through Hartwig’s mind as to what it’d be like to live so opulently without another care in the world except the counting of your money like Midas. June, should she see fit, had nothing like that to offer him and Sandy knew it. You can see the temptation developing in a puerile sort of way.
‘Here’s my mother’s mansion; you can see so much of it today. If you’re a good boy I’ll bring you back and show you the rest’. I believe she’d made her point. Then guess what?
“What?” Said Hammond. “she brought him back? The deal was clinched? I know they didn’t marry.”
“No, Sandy disappeared. It was like from the face of the earth too. She’d taken Hartwig back to Sausalito and when he tried to contact her again she wasn’t there.
“Well, where the hell is she?” Hartwig‘d actually gone out and confronted the son. He swore up and down he didn’t know. His mother hadn’t told him a thing but she’d taken the two dogs with her and the car. She probably wouldn’t come to any harm, but she was so discombobulated she just might. If he didn’t hear eventually he was going to notify the police.
“In the meantime,” the boy’s eyes lit up ridiculously, “I can have the house to myself.”
Hartwig looked around a bit and already detected signs of partying. But sitting down to face the hard reality on his own he figured she’d been playing him along and had run off with another man. He was amused at the swindle but not angry for a woman’s whim seldom disturbed him. He figured that’s what she wanted to do and she did it. He was better off without her. Things had been becoming a little too thick and now… No wonder, of course, they were so attracted to him. He always withheld a part of himself they knew they could never reach and their attempts led to a never-ending desire.
Hartwig couldn’t be worrying about that sort of stuff. In a week or so he’d written her off and had let Gloria come back into his life.
“Gloria?” Said Hammond. “You mean after that she’d even have him?”
“In … a sense,” I said, “by that time she didn’t have much choice. Remember Johansson and his crush on her, well instead of lightening up it went from bad to worse. The young hot-blooded Swede, who couldn’t take no for an answer, harassed her at work to the point Larson, his superior, another Swede, had to let him go. He’d called the strapping young man into his
office and confronted him directly.
“I know your mother and your father. They’re both good people and do a lot for the community. You were a good lad yourself until something got into you but you continue to pester that poor young girl. She’s very upset you know. She cries on the job. I can’t have that. I’ve observed your taunts. You had your third and last warning, son. You’ll just have to find another job.”
“Really sir,” said Johansson, “but I was just teasing. What’d she say about me?” His eyes’d open wide. “It’s her that causes it.”
“Doesn’t look like teasing to me. You don’t clay someone’s hair and call it teasing.”
And that was that. Johansson had to go home and tell his parents, the schoolteacher and the harbormaster. He came in drunk that very night and his father kicked him out of the house. So where’d he go? Where else but down to Gloria’s where he banged on her door and tried to kick it in. Luckily they built them firmly in the days that building went up. She called the police. He waited around and they came and took him to jail. The next day she went to the DA’s office to get a restraining order but even that didn’t seem to do much good. Johansson kept after her. Kicked out of his house he got his sleeping bag and knapsack and joined the other vagrants that slept nearby in the small park by the bay. He, in essence, had chosen to ruin his life or damn near it.
“And all that for a piece of ass. Some piece it must’ve been I might add,” said Hammond.
“It wasn’t merely that,” I reminded him. “Remember with some males there’s a lot more involved. Their entire egos become wrapped up in the love object. Then watch out if you’re rejected. You go wild trying to regain your status.”
“Sounds like you’ve done a little of that hounding yourself in your day,” Hammond remarked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe in that sort of behavior. I’m just telling you how things occurred.”
So, sleeping in the park at night and also drinking with his cronies by day, Johansson had no one to watch over him. He’d lost his job having been thrown in jail again. His former offenses began to haunt him. It got to the point he’d shadow Gloria, wait hidden in the shadows across the street from her place. That tiny road the factory was on had very few lights. She was frightened to go home again after dark. She became nervous and skittish on the job and was even thinking of quitting it and moving out of Sausalito. Women can get to the point like that you know. With someone stalking and threatening to kill them (he’d done that twice) they become frightened of their own shadow. And she was no tomboy either who could fight back though she was strong for her size. She was all ladylike, a genuine princess who had a very feminine nature that broke down completely wherein violence was involved. She couldn’t imagine violence let alone stand it. Think when it turned on her.
“I’d rather not,” said Hammond. “She sounds like a sweet person. He, a creep.”
“She was, she was,” I said with a wistful sigh. “I wish you’d been around to meet her.”
At any rate one night she’d been unavoidably detained uptown and couldn’t get home before dark so she’d taken a cab. Remember now, she had no one. Her father had departed the family when she’d been a young girl. Her mother was a potter in Santa Cruz. She couldn’t go to her though she’d most likely thought about it. And although the cabbie let her off in front of the building she had to walk the corridor between it and the next to reach her apartment in the back. As she emerged from the cab, paid and heard the door slam and the cabbie who she’d been too embarrassed to reveal her situation to had left, halfway down the alleyway between her and her door who’d she encounter but the Swede. His teeth shone sadistically and his yoke blond hair had a dull sheen to it. He was obviously a white man even in the dark. There he stood teetering back and forth from one foot to the other. He was so close the vapor of alcohol from his presence turned her stomach like a cloud of gas.
“So there yuh are,” said the voice. It was Johansson, naturally.
“So,” said Hammond. “What’d she do?”
“What’d you do?” I told him, “in a case like that? She did mention something about the order for him to stay away but half-heartedly and in a very timid voice. And do you think that sort of threat’d stop a man like that, never. As he approached her she threw her purse to the ground and ran like the blazes, the madman stumbling drunkenly after her. And luckily he was drunk for he ran very poorly.
“And where in the hell did she go at that time of night anyhow? You say there were only commercial buildings in the neighborhood? They were all closed.”
Well, she surely didn’t come to my house though I’d’ve welcomed her and called the cops without reservation. Hartwig’s houseboat wasn’t far. She went there, ran down his gangplank and immediately breathed easier when she discovered the padlock was off the door, which meant Hartwig was home. She banged on that wooden barrier like it was a kettledrum. Stanley heard the commotion too. He ran out his doggie door and halfway up the gangplank where Johansson had halted at the top. The dog stood barking furiously at the intruder. He was going to attack him if he came down any further. That little black, white and brown Beagle was going to attack a two hundred pound man. And he would’ve done it too. At least he would’ve tried. As soon as the light went out, of course, the Swede slinked off into the shadows. He knew whose houseboat it was and who Hartwig was too. Though I don’t believe he was afraid of the man physically, for some strange reason he didn’t want to be seen by him doing what he was doing. As soused as he was, he was embarrassed perhaps. Who knew?
He was gone as Hartwig let his frightened subject in. She was shaking so badly she could scarcely talk. Her teeth were chattering like she’d been swimming ten minutes in the Arctic Ocean.
“What the hell’s wrong?” He asked her.
“I … I don’t care whether you’ve got anyone here or not. I need somebody to help me.” And, of course, there wasn’t. It’d been several days since Sandy’d left him off and gone escapading somewhere. Trying her best to forget him who she knew to be so bad for her, Gloria’d been staying clear of the area. Now out of necessity she’d been forced back into it for she knew no one else to turn to. And withal, it seems, Hartwig’s embrace.
Over a hot cup of tea Gloria told him everything about Johansson.
“Really,” said Hartwig. “Johansson’s done all that. What’d you do to him?” She confessed everything, even how sick she’d become, and later after reassuring her she’d be safe there, the two retreated up to their bed in the loft. After all they’d been going out together for over a year. Almost every night and… Now they were back in touch. Things looked like they might work out after all between them as long as Johansson caused no further problems.
“And did he then?” Said Hammond.
“With them, no,” I said. “With someone else, yes.” I didn’t elaborate.
But right then Gloria took a week off and to her eminent relief Hartwig brought her to the city where they stayed at his mother’s. The first thing they did the next day, of course, was to retrieve her purse. It was lying right where she’d thrown it, a little ways under the foundations of the building next to the factory. Its foundation had been raised to keep it dry from the high tides that sometimes inundated the area. Johansson hadn’t found it, a good sign.
Sylvia, Hartwig’s mother wasn’t there to receive the two and the dog as they pulled up to the old three story Victorian on Webster street. She, a diligent woman; a little like June, our working female, was still in court when they arrived. Hartwig let himself in with his own key for although he and his mother’d been at loggerheads for some time she, quite righteously I might add, wanted him to either go to work or to law school. She still trusted him and she adored Gloria who she felt would be the perfect goad her son needed to become motivated. Especially if the two’d marry and he had someone to support.
She by the way hadn’t heard anything of her son’s relation with the Hightower woman though she’d heard a lot a
bout her in social circles. Most of us had. Sandy had a strange ability to cause trouble among the elite who she frowned upon and her promiscuity was notorious.
“Didn’t that bother Hartwig at all?” Said Hammond. “At least while he was going with her.”
“I don’t think he’d been exposed to this side of her too much.”
Remember their stomping grounds so far had been at the beach and in Sausalito, not San Francisco. Even though she’d slept with her share of beachcombers it wasn’t the same as bedding a socialite. When the President has a tryst in the hallway of the White House that’s something. A carpenter or a realtor one’s met in a hide away bar doesn’t draw much attention.
You remember Sylvia’s old Victorian, don’t you? It was on Webster Street just up from the old Stanford hospital that’d been converted into a large modern medical center. The house was three stories high and scrunched in between others of the same variety, all beginning on the corner from the hospital. Of all those old wonders Hartwig’s, with its peaked roof and widow’s walk stood out and the inside was like a museum due to the artifacts Hartwig’s father had inherited from his parents. These included a full, erect suit of armor, which held an upright lance in one hand, a shield in the other.
“Really,” said Hammond, “things that’d certainly be useless today among man’s weaponry, cluster bombs and all, but they certainly served their purpose at the time.”
“And well they did,” I said, “one’s only wish would be that there’d come a time when nothing of that sort’d be needed. We’re at a point, of course, where we know that’ll never occur. We’ll be destroyed first and undoubtedly by our own hand.”
“Please!” Hammond looked up in alarm as I described a Baldwin grand, a pedestal clock, several sculptures and the large ancestral portraits in the living room, all handsome people if somewhat gruffly expressioned; Hartwig’s relatives.
Sylvia, his mother, was definitely not a ‘people person’. She was a no nonsense woman who was attracted to persons for their work ethics and their cultural tastes. Her assessments of them were onerous. She lived in that enormous house all alone having a maid in twice a week to keep it clean.
