Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  He waited in the car and saw Michael through the window, looking at a small stack. He picked one up, eyeing it carefully, then nodded to the man behind the counter. He slid that poster into a bag with the rest, then bounced to the car, and propped them up against the backseat, with only the tops peeking out.

  In the rearview mirror, Horace saw the words Exclusive Appearance.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Oh, this is pretty cool,” Michael said. “You know that guy Joe Grudeck? The guy going into the Hall of Fame? He’s going to do a signing in our store during Induction Week, and I’ll get to meet him.”

  Summer

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Grudeck sat at the club bar, a matted pile of fifties in front of him.

  “Good day out there, Mr. Grudeck?” asked Pete the Greek, one of the regular bartenders.

  “Yes, Pete, it was. Raked in a few Grants.”

  Pete leaned in and said in a low side grumble, “Between you and me, Mr. Grudeck, I love it when you take some of these fucks.”

  It was late and the place was emptying out. The three executives he played with were long gone, heads heavy by Dewar’s, wallets lighter by Grudeck. Now Grudeck sat and vigorously stirred his club soda with crushed lime to flatten it. He took three of the fifties and pushed them toward Pete, as if it were his cut of the hustle.

  “There you go, my friend,” Grudeck said. “Ulysses . . . S . . . and Grant.”

  Pete, now straightened up and toweling off a glass, put up no resistance.

  “Better than Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Thank you, Mr. Grudeck,” he said.

  “My pleasure, Pete. After all, we’re both workingmen,” Grudeck said, and gave him a wink.

  Grudeck was a scratch golfer. Every time he played in a pro-am benefit, the pros would tell him he was good enough to get a PGA card when he retired. At one event, he was paired with Dom Iosso, a tall, silver-haired, self-made New York apartment-house developer who branched out into resorts and first-class country clubs. He took distressed properties like old estates, even Victorian-era mental hospitals, and turned them into clubs with top-ranked golf courses.

  During their round, Iosso told Grudeck about the club he was building in “New Jersey equestrian country.”

  “I did my homework: You’re a Jersey boy, am I right, Joe?” he asked. “So while some people might laugh at the idea, you know the appeal. Wealthy area. The foxhunt and steeplechase crowd. Amazingly beautiful countryside, especially autumn.”

  “That’s not the Jersey I’m from,” said Grudeck. “But I’ve heard.”

  And so that day’s hustle was on.

  Iosso said he’d sunk ten million into restoring the mansion alone, converting it to a clubhouse with a legitimate four-star restaurant. Off the mansion were two wings of twenty-five luxury townhouses. One of the townhouses would be divided into separate living quarters for the club pro and a celebrity-athlete to play with members and draw new ones.

  “And that is where you come in,” Iosso said. “To raise the profile, give the place a little athletic panache.”

  Iosso finished his pitch: free condo, unlimited expense account at club restaurant and bar, annual salary of $75,000—all for playing about fifty, sixty times a year to fill out foursomes of members and prospective members. Grudeck didn’t have to live there; “consider the condo,” Iosso said, “your own luxurious private locker room.”

  “I know seventy-five grand is chump change for you,” Iosso said. “But we’re both workingmen, so you get this. I’m paying to put your name on the list of charter members, and I’m paying you a little extra to do what you would normally do: live, eat, play golf. Just do it at my place.”

  It was the “workingmen” line that sold Grudeck. Like him, Iosso was a pretender in a rich-guy world. Underneath his dress and manners and curse-free, deliberate enunciation was a subversive streak. He beat the privileged at their own insider games, and now they kissed his ass to play at his clubs.

  “And there’s one other thing,” Iosso said. “While we officially frown on gambling at the club, every now and then the subject of Grants or Franklins, even Clevelands, comes up during a round. These are grown men. Do what you will.”

  The deal was signed, Grudeck’s name went out on all sales brochures as “Charter Member,” and he moved into the completely furnished and decorated townhouse. All he had to do was unpack his clothes and his most valued trophies, and nail his plaques to the walls—actually, a club handyman did that. Grudeck signed a few autographs for him and tipped him a grand. That was the beginning of the country club life, and he never bothered to find another place to call home.

  * * *

  HE WRAPPED HIS HANDS AROUND the glass and the cold sweat cooled his palms, swollen and red from the two rounds of eighteen he played. The first was with the top pyramid from Johnson & Johnson, the second was with two hedge-fund guys and a whale they were trying to impress: a trim, compact guy named Stein-something, a New York acquisitions-and-mergers lawyer, who wore a navy-blue Y cap and hinted about his national championship squash days at Yale and the New York Athletic Club.

  “Seems we’re both hall of famers, Joe,” he said, amiably. “But I had to give up my game to make money. If only I’d picked a revenue sport.”

  Every time, with these fucking guys, Grudeck thought. Every time, there was a left-handed comment like that. As if Grudeck had won the lottery and didn’t bust his ass in the weight room, run bleachers in the off-season, spend a million hours in the batting cages, and fight to keep his weight down since he was a sophomore in high school. Like his strength and athleticism—and therefore fame and money—were some God-given gifts that didn’t require work. Just show up, and make the Hall of fucking Fame. Like he was the guy with the unfair advantage in life. Not them, the Ivy finance types. The entitled. Generation after generation of expensive prep schools and passes into Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. The “best and the brightest,” they called themselves, as if that legacy wasn’t bought and paid for by their fathers and grandfathers, as if they worked as hard for their connections as Grudeck did to be a top athlete. Best and brightest. That’s how they justified their salaries, even when their companies tanked. Grudeck wanted to come right out and say: “If I had a couple of seasons in the shitter, I’d be coaching high school baseball, not negotiating a multimillion-dollar golden parachute. Best and brightest? Fuck you guys.” Or when they talked about how “fierce” corporate competition was. “Take a fastball in the kidney, piss blood for a week, and tell me about me your dog-eat-dog world,” Grudeck wanted to say.

  So when the Yale squash man offered to “make it interesting,” Grudeck shot back, “How interesting?”

  “It’s your course,” said one of the hedge-fund guys, afraid of the answer. They’d played with Grudeck before.

  “Five hundred a hole; carries until there’s a low score,” Grudeck said. Prick.

  “Not that interesting,” said the other. “How about a hundred?”

  The Stein guy played it cool, making sure he didn’t blink as Grudeck looked at him.

  “Whatever you guys want,” Grudeck said. “I’m just a hired hand.”

  “Hand or gun?” the Stein guy said.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Grudeck said, knowing he sounded like an arrogant asshole. Fuck ’em.

  They settled on the hundred, and Grudeck offered to hit first. He teed up, and whipped the club with that big arcing swing of his, with a violence he knew made them wince, and posed for just a second to watch the ball disappear like a round rocket into the sky, knowing they were either watching the ball or the expanse of his huge, muscular back straining the fabric of his golf shirt. And by the time the ball touched down some 300 yards down the fairway, on a straight line between tee and flag, Grudeck was walking nonchalantly to his bag (no cart, no caddy for Grudeck), never watching the shot or turning around to see the look on their faces. Like, business as usual. Like, shove that up your ass.

  And
that’s how Grudeck always played it. To win. Big. No bullshit. No tanking, no stroking egos. No handicaps, no playing just to play, or to get loaded or to talk business or stock prices or mergers or about Grudeck back in the day. This wasn’t lunch. This was a collision at the plate.

  Grudeck shot six over, won every hole, and beat the execs by double digits. After sinking a ten-foot putt to win the eighteenth, he shoved six more fifties in his pocket, invited the group for a couple of drinks, saw them off in their cart, and began a slow, almost mournful walk back to the clubhouse. The thrill of winning, that boost of adrenaline or shot of testosterone and whatever primal urge it satisfied, was wearing off faster these days, and the Advil pops were more frequent. As he limped along, he wondered, how many more times? How much longer, before time and age and his fading place in people’s memories reduced him to an old-timer, a mere glad-hander, rather than the force of nature some people still called Joe Grrreww.

  * * *

  GRUDECK KEPT PLAYING WITH THE bubbles. Stirring, watching zippers form and float to the top and die in a fizzy explosion. He stared into his drink, wondering how many millions of guys in the world right now were doing the same thing. Sitting alone at a bar, staring into a drink, thinking about a woman. Stacy. Stacy with the beautiful facey. What to do about Stacy? For Grudeck, this was new territory. Forlorn. That was the word, wasn’t it? Jesus, what was happening to him? He knew. He was going stale; same shit, different day. Breakfast at the club. Golf. Lunch at the club. Golf. Dinner at the club. Drinks at the club. Get laid. Sleep. One man’s dream becomes another’s drudgery.

  Since seeing Stacy again, he thought about those two words he never once before considered. Settling down. If you loved somebody, shouldn’t they call it settling up? With Stacy, it was definitely up. She had lived somewhere in his consciousness for three decades, and now had come forward. And now the truth presented itself, right in front of him, unavoidable and pressing and confusing. She was the nearest thing to love—whatever it was—that he’d ever known; as close to filling that gray vacancy in his soul as anyone. And he wanted her to love him back. But he sensed a distance; worse, a distrust. He deserved it. He left, and never looked back. And if she ever found out about Syracuse . . . he knew she couldn’t live with that, and there was no way he could explain it. Not to her.

  What to do about Stacy . . . she came to St. Joe’s that night. Why, if she didn’t have feelings for him? And she was helping him figure out the damn speech, putting in time, listening to his stories, over dinners, during walks around the course. He held her hand; they kissed, a little. She told him he was sweet. He wanted to take her home and engulf her with his size and strength, but resisted, sensing her hesitation.

  Grudeck smashed a few more bubbles with the straw. How could he get her to trust him? An absolution of modern sins? Maybe she would eventually detect that. Maybe she would see the change. Maybe then, she’d give him a chance.

  Since he started seeing Stacy, he’d eliminated the “get laid” part of his routine, which wore on him as much as performing for the execs on the golf course. No more catering-company waitresses, or members’ wives, ex or current. And no more Darlena; Grudeck was feeling dirty about the whole thing now, like he was cheating on Stacy.

  He decided to end it one night, just like that. She came through the kitchen door, putting large hoop earrings back in her ears now that she was off. She glanced at him and gave him a smile no more than polite, professional recognition that only they knew said, “See you later.” She cashed out with Pete, changing the cumbersome singles and fives into bigger, more manageable bills. Grudeck caught up with her in the parking lot.

  “No more for now, okay?” he said. “But let me know if you need anything.”

  He handed her all the money in his wallet, at least one thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties.

  “Okay, Mr. Grudeck,” she said. “Thank you.”

  And she pocketed the money without another word.

  * * *

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Grudeck had a date with Stacy to work on the speech, but when Grudeck picked her up, he said he was tired of it.

  “Let’s go for a ride. You pick the place. Take me somewhere I haven’t been.”

  Stacy sat in the passenger seat of the Caddy and tied back her hair. It was a warm June day and the roof was open. She thought for a moment.

  “There’s a place I used to paint. Down the shore. You want to go that far?”

  “Baby, I’ve crisscrossed this country a thousand times,” Grudeck said, knowing it was irrelevant as soon as it came out of his mouth.

  They headed down the Parkway, over the bridge that spanned Raritan Bay.

  “I haven’t been down this way since high school . . . my summer job always got in the way,” Grudeck said as he looked at the expanse of central Jersey from the bridge peak. Below them, an oil refinery, a power plant, and a railway bridge, but off in the distance were the white sails of dozens of boats skimming the green, open waters. He pointed them out to Stacy.

  “Yacht season,” she said.

  He looked at her, strands of loose hair flying around her face, sunglasses pushed up tight against her eyes, bathed in the light from the roof. She felt his gaze, looked over, and smiled. He had never seen her look so beautiful.

  “What?” she said.

  He wanted to blurt out, “I love you,” but instead said, “Nothing. You’re just so beautiful.”

  They got off the Parkway onto Route 36, a state two-lane highway that ran though the bootheel towns of the Jersey bayshore. At the west end, there were weathered trailer parks, roadside bungalows, and a couple of go-go bars. The town names seemed familiar to him, Sayreville, Keyport, Hazlet, Keansburg, but he had never been to any. No, Sayreville. Played them in a state game. But that was it. It struck him suddenly, how little exploring he had done in his life. There was never time in high school, and in all those minor league and big league towns, all he knew was the hotel-to-ballpark route. And here, less than thirty miles from where he grew up, it was all foreign to him.

  “It gets prettier down the road,” Stacy said.

  They detoured off the highway and drove along the bluff overlooking the bay and the marinas. The sailboats and catamarans populated the briny water, and sliced silently through green-gray whitecapped swells whipped up by the bayshore breeze.

  “You ever think of getting a boat?” she asked, and hoped it didn’t sound like a monetary probe. She knew Grudeck was a millionaire, and millionaires bought boats, but she was only trying to gauge his interests beyond baseball and golf.

  “No,” he said. “No reason. Just never thought of it.”

  Stacy talked about a tucked-away fishing village called Belford, and a seafood restaurant only locals knew about. From the road, she pointed out the six-mile-long barrier island called Sandy Hook that she said was a miniature version of Cape Cod.

  “In the geologic sense,” she said.

  Grudeck sat dumbly, wondering about the world he never saw.

  In the far distance was the Oz-like New York City skyline, the neighboring squat profile of Brooklyn, and the Verrazano Bridge. It was late afternoon, and the setting sun glistened off the glass-and-steel and sandstone towers of Lower Manhattan, giving them a pink glow.

  They came to the crest of the hill and the great blue expanse of the Atlantic presented itself.

  “Whoa,” Grudeck said.

  “Just wait,” Stacy said.

  She pointed to a brown sign up the road that said, “Twin Lights Historic Site.”

  “Turn there, and go up the hill.”

  The road up was steep, pitted, and narrow, and overhung with trees. It curved up the hill; along the way were a few houses, with glass walls and decks facing the view. Toward the summit, the heights of the lighthouse towers could be seen over the trees. The two square monolithic castle turrets of dark brownstone were capped by the ornate glass enclosures that protected the Fresnel lens, and crowned with decorative metalwork.


  As they got closer, the whole structure appeared. It looked like a fortress or prison from Civil War days, dark, looming, and isolated, on the windswept hill.

  “Whoa,” Grudeck said again.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Stacy said.

  They parked and followed the path up to the building, where Grudeck noticed the cornerstone: 1870. The walkway took them to the front, where the bay and sea were laid out before them. Out on the horizon, tankers and cargo ships seemed still as they dotted the shipping lanes into New York Harbor. To the left was the full, long arm of Sandy Hook, with beaches exposed to both ocean and bay sides, thick with scrub vegetation in the middle. Straight ahead was big blue; the never-ending Atlantic. Below, to the north, was Highlands, once a fishing village, now compact with bungalows and marinas. South was Sea Bright, which had a seawall on its doorstep and the Navesink River as its backyard, sandwiching a stretch of oceanfront beach clubs and mansions.

  “Jesus, you can see forever,” Grudeck said happily.

  The upbeat tone took Stacy by surprise, and she wondered why. Then she realized it was the first time she’d ever heard joy in his voice. She took his arm and guided him toward a bench. After they sat, Stacy gathered her light jacket tight, up at the neck, crossed her arms, and gave a forced shiver.

  “Are you cold?” Grudeck asked, and moved close and put his arm around her.

  “It’s windier up here than it was in the car,” she said.

  “Here, I’ll warm you up.”

  They sat, quiet, for a few moments, listening to the muted crash of waves a few hundred yards below, and the wind in the trees on the slope.

  “Joe, can I ask you something?” Stacy finally said.

  “Sounds serious.”

  “It has to do with your speech.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you enjoy playing?”

  “What?”

  “Did you love it? I mean, any of it. Or did you just do it because you were good?”