by Sol Stein
I was checking my hair when Connie came up behind me and said, “You look terrific, Mary,” and I thanked her just as the front doorbell rang, the timing was that close.
“This is Nick’s lawyer, Mr. Bert Rivers,” I said very affirmatively. “My sister-in-law, Connie.”
“How do you do?” is all Bert said.
I saw Connie’s eyes thinking this could be a story, that Bert was taking her sister-in-law out, so I whispered to her, “If I was cheating, Connie, I’d pick a taller one.”
You can’t joke with Connie. She took it as confirmation, not denial. Premature matron Connie stood in the doorway of her large house, watching her sister-in-law drive off in sin with the funny-looking man, but she wasn’t going to spoil things between our families by not waving bye-bye to us. I waved back from the car and thought, Connie, don’t just lie there.
I felt good about how I’d looked in the mirror. With Bert Rivers driving his Eldorado along Queens Boulevard, I wanted to hang a sign out saying the short, bald man in a not very dressy business suit is not my date, he’s just driving the car. My date, I thought flying, was not Nick Manucci, it was that man I’d seen on TV and in the papers, Ben Riller.
That’s who was bicycling around in my brain when Bert said, “Mary, I have some not so good news. I want you to remain calm.”
Nick’s been killed.
“There’s been a problem at your home.”
“Nick’s there?”
“No, Nick’s in his office.”
“He’s okay?”
“Sure. It’s the house.” He looked at me for just a second. “There’s been a fire,” he said. “A bad fire. It may still be burning.”
I can’t believe it. We were just there four, five hours ago?
“I don’t know the facts yet, Mary, but Nick had a call from the police chief. It was a real conflagration, very fast. His guess was that it was set, some combustible, probably gasoline.”
Something was rushing around in my ears.
“By the time someone turned in an alarm it must have been a beaut.”
“On purpose?”
Bert nodded.
“Yes or no?” I said.
His voice was a croak. “Yes.”
“That man who came around with the message for Nick, is that it?”
“Or someone else from the organization.”
I guess it was organization that got me going. You know how you hear your husband is seeing other women and your first reaction is you don’t believe it. It’s like that with the mob. You hate what you see in the movies and on television, it makes it sound like all people of Italian extraction are in it somehow—which is a lie against my parents and people like them—and then you remember what’s-his-name who later got killed in Columbus Circle in a mob of thousands of people, how he got on television and said there was no mob, it was all a fabrication, and his own death proved the lie, but you felt your husband, whatever he did, he wasn’t one of them. But if you’re insisting he isn’t, aren’t you admitting they are? And it’s like waking up to the fact that your husband really is seeing other women, but you still don’t believe until you find the woman’s scarf in his car and you can’t alibi yourself anymore. It exists. And they do things like this, set fires, kill people.
Bert said, “I’m sorry to have been the bearer of bad news.”
If I tried to talk, maybe the words wouldn’t come out. “I’m thinking of moving back to Minnesota,” I said. “With the kids.”
“I’m sure you’ll want to talk this over with Nick,” Bert said.
“Fuck Nick.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nick didn’t need a second mortgage on those computers to make a living. He didn’t need to rub Barone’s face in something for the excitement.”
I wanted to tell Bert to drive to the house instead of to Nick’s office. It’s like hearing about a death. You want to see the body before you really believe it.
Bert said, “Your husband is a remarkable man, Mary. He’s really taking this all very well.”
“His wife isn’t taking it so well,” I said.
“It’s harder for women.”
You bet your ass, Mr. Rivers. “Actually,” I said, “having taught retarded children for quite a few years, I’ve developed a pretty tough skin, Bert.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“With those children,” I said, “it was always a case of trying to improve. I don’t consider a threatening visit from a hoodlum a potential improvement.”
“They’re trying to get to Nick because he’s got guts.”
I’ve got guts, Bert. I’m married to him.
I said, “I don’t like the business my husband is in.”
I shouldn’t have said it out loud. Not to his lawyer. I’ve been so careful all these years, thinking but not saying.
“Nick’s a respected businessman.”
“Respected by whom? The people he lends money to at those rates? Don’t they call that usury?”
Bert gave a little laugh, and turned away from traffic long enough to give me the smile that went with the laugh.
“That’s a common misinterpretation, Mary. We don’t like words like usury. It’s the price of Nick’s product, which is money. Another businessman wants to accomplish something he needs cash for, he doesn’t have cash, Nick provides a product, that’s all it is.”
“Whenever my father needed tide-over money for his business,” I said, “he went to the bank, and he was usually able to get what he needed at decent interest. All the women I know, their husbands borrow from banks. Why don’t the people Nick deals with go to banks?”
“I think your husband treats his clients much nicer than banks would treat those same clients. When he makes sure that the collateral covers his risk, he’s being prudent for your sake, really, and the kids, to make sure your family capital increases at a rate greater than the inflation rate. He’s a smart man, Nick, and a good man.”
Smart? Good? You take him to bed, Bert, just once. You see how smart he is. You see how good he is.
“I’m glad to be working for him,” Bert said.
I’m working for him, too. He doesn’t understand reciprocity. He makes each private transaction a deal, tat for tit.
“I didn’t hear you, Mary. It’s all that traffic noise.”
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
When those retarded children learned something new they were so grateful they kissed your hands. You wanted to kiss them instead because you were grateful. That’s what marriage should be like. When Nick took me to Bermuda, I thought he was through with the other women, and I warmed to him again for one week, and then we were home again, back in business.
I could be grateful for one thing. Bert wasn’t talking anymore. What I was thinking was that Nick sought Barone like a gypsy moth goes after the lure, he’s found the excitement he’s looking for: death.
“I know you must be upset,” Bert said, turning his head away from the traffic toward me. “This is just temporary, Mary. Nick’s got a plan for cooling Barone off.”
I know Nick better than you do, Bert. He wants to win and so does Barone. They can’t both win.
“Mary, all we need to remember is that we need to be seen in public for a while.”
“We?”
“I meant you and Nick.”
These lawyers move us around like actors on a stage. I won’t need lawyers in Minnesota. Two years ago, when I took the kids to Minnesota for a week, my mother talked to me like a mother and I broke down and cried. She said to me I was rich in money, poor in heart.
“Mary is unhappy,” she told my father.
My father’s response was simple. “Leave him, Mary. People get divorces all the time now, even Catholics.”
“He’d kill me,” I said.
“Don’t be silly, Mary,” my father said. “This is the twentieth century.”
I remembered Mr. Milford, whose lectures were always jammed with kids from other class
es. He said the twentieth century could be explained through place names, the Somme, Guernica, Lubyanka, Auschwitz, Babi Yar, Hiroshima. We students, with our lives before us, took him on, said he was too one-sided, cynical, too old. “What about Freud and Einstein, what about Picasso, what about computers?” we said, sure of ourselves. And Mr. Milford, with that marvelous, lost voice would say, “You judge a century not by its knowledge but by its acts.”
A good teacher leaves a tattoo on your brain. Long after I saw Mr. Milford for the last time, the place names continued their march of definition. My Lai, Budapest, Munich, Lod, Belfast.
I would take the children back to Minnesota. Away from the twentieth century.
25
Mary
Nick had taken me to the Four Seasons only once, on our tenth anniversary. I tried to keep from looking around the enormous, high-ceilinged room like a tourist. But I was one, wasn’t I, in places like this?
Nick introduced me to Benjamin Riller, impresario.
“How do you do?” he said.
I do, I do.
His face had what my father called character. He was holding his hand out to shake mine. It was just a hand, firm, warm, but it was as if I could feel it between my legs. I should have married a man like that.
I had to pull my hand away from his or I would have left it there. I had to take my eyes away from his, too, so I could say hello to his wife and defuse.
“My name is Mary,” I said to her.
“Jane,” she said. I tried to keep my eyes on her eyes. How could a person look so intelligent without talking? I had to look at her clothes. At her body. I wished I could see it all, naked, right now, next to mine, both of us looking in the mirror.
“What a charming dress,” she said.
Drop dead. I smiled and slipped into my place on the banquette.
The captain, preparing the way for his tip, introduced the waiter and waitress as if we had just hired them. Those two did their number, lifted unused plates and replaced them with other plates we wouldn’t use. Mr. Milford would have said what makes the buying of excess delicious is the knowledge that most other people can’t afford it.
“Hey, where are you?” Nick said to me nicely, not loud.
“Do they know about the house?” I asked.
“Ben was with me when the police chief called,” Nick said.
Mrs. Riller said to Mr. Riller, “What about the house?”
I could see he wished the subject hadn’t come up.
“They had a fire,” he said to his wife. “A bad one.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
I guess I was realizing that for me that house had gone down a long time ago except, maybe, for the garden. I wondered if the firemen had ruined the garden.
“Take a sip of your drink,” Nick said. “You’ll feel better.”
Once I was back in Minnesota, settled, I could meet somebody else. Someone who doesn’t cut his toenails in the kitchen on Sunday mornings. Someone who works at something I can respect. Work defines a person. Ben Riller did exciting things in the theater. You weren’t likely to meet someone like him in Minnesota.
I suddenly thought: Mr. Milford, how do I define myself to myself?
They were talking about the house, commiserating with me. Pay attention, I told myself, but what I saw was Jane Riller putting her drink away. Was she nervous? If I were married to this Riller, I wouldn’t be nervous. I wouldn’t want anything interfering with anything. I guess Nick would say she was a lady compared to me. He’s always comparing, like kids do about batting averages. A yellower yellow.
Just then the flashbulb went off, blinding me. Everything was white. Then gray. The photographer retreated.
It must be that racket where they bring out proofs. If you say no, they tear up the pictures of you right in front of your face.
“They’re not going to sell us pictures at the Four Seasons?” I asked.
“They’re not,” Mrs. Riller said.
We were busy with these miniature scallops in butter-and-herb sauce, the smallest bay scallops I’d ever seen, when Mr. Riller spotted this older gentleman sitting at a nearby table, a man with nearly white hair and a trimmed mustache who looked like he’d been secretary of state. Before I knew it Riller was table-hopping and bringing this really fine gentleman over to us and saying, “This is Harrison Stimson, Mary Manucci, Nick Manucci, you know my wife Jane, of course?”
“Of course,” Harrison Stimson said. Mr. Stimson shook hands all around as if he wished he were wearing gloves.
“Harrison,” Ben Riller said to no one in particular, “has been one of my staunchest investors over the years.”
“Oh,” said Nick, “you in this new one, too?”
Mr. Stimson’s eyes shifted in Ben’s direction. “I’m afraid not,” he said without looking at Nick.
That’s when Mr. Riller said, “My friend Harrison missed out on The Best Revenge. It will interest you to know, Harrison, that Nick here has picked up the balance of the units.”
Mr. Stimson said, “I’m sure Mr. Manucci will profit from his investment with you.” Bang, the damn photographer let loose another flash. I hadn’t even noticed him coming up to the table. Mr. Stimson looked like someone had belched. He whispered to Ben Riller, who called the captain over. The captain danced off on whatever errand Mr. Riller had sent him on.
“So nice to meet you,” Mr. Stimson said to no one in particular, certainly not to me, and then he got walked back to his table by Mr. Riller.
We were busy talking about nothing when Mr. Riller and the captain returned to the table from different directions and you could see the captain would have preferred to talk to Mr. Riller privately, and finally had to say in a way we could all hear, “I told the photographer not to bother you, sir, but he says he was hired by Mr. Rivers, who works for Mr. Manucci.”
Comment by Nick Manucci
When I was a kid in the street, the first thing I learned was control the face. Don’t let anyone ever see you’re bothered.
I did a deal with a Japanese businessman once. He was in New York for a few weeks. Rich as he was, he got himself into some kind of money jam, very temporary, and there must have been a little dirt connected with it because he got steered to the Seagram Building. I’ll never forget the control on his face, he needed ten thousand yesterday, he was nowhere near Tokyo, he couldn’t get at his own money without questions being asked, but when he showed up you’d think he’d come on a social visit.
I looked for a bead of sweat just below the hairline or over the lip. Nothing, just the frozen face. I asked him what kind of security he could provide, and this Oriental cucumber takes a small purple pouch the size of a half dollar out of the watch pocket of his vest and tumbles out into his palm five diamonds that must have been thirty, forty karats. I’m not a pawn shop, but if a guy who isn’t an American walks into a New York pawn shop, he isn’t going to get ten thousand for one week for anything. I don’t want to disturb his cool so I was very careful when I said, “May I see your airline ticket, please?”
He took the ticket out of his breast pocket and it checked out okay, Japan Air Lines, first class back to Tokyo in ten days.
“May I see your passport please?”
He hesitated.
“Please,” I repeated.
He handed it over. I put the passport and the ticket in my safe along with the diamonds because I wouldn’t appreciate his going anywhere without my knowing it, and he didn’t twitch a muscle in his face as he said, “Very well, Mr. Manucci. I will return the money in one week, as promised.” What cool! I wish I had a lot of customers like that.
All right, if I need Riller for camouflage, it’s just for a while. Meantime I wanted it understood I was running this show, so I played head man over the dinner, motioning the captain, things like that. Riller was keeping his end up, telling some story about a theater critic who realized he was in the wrong theater when the curtain went up. It was funny, but Mary was laughing too
fucking loud.
Riller, his wife, and Mary were all looking at me. I realized the captain was hovering on my left like a penguin, waiting for the joke to be over. Then he handed me this envelope and said it was left with the doorman just a few minutes ago. MR. NICK MANUCCI, CONFIDENTIAL. I know Bert Rivers’s handwriting. “Excuse me,” I said, and tore it open.
Dear Nick,
Sudden circumstances have made it necessary for me to suggest that one of the lawyers on the enclosed list would have experience with theatrical deals and might be able to represent you on your investment in The Best Revenge and perhaps in your other affairs as well.
I’m sorry to do this on such short notice but I have no alternative. I’m sure you will understand.
Sincerely,
Bert Rivers
I wanted to throw the table over with all those fancy plates, the food, everything.
I looked at the list of lawyers. I never heard any of those names. I wanted a gun, not a list.
Bert was fucking involved in everything I did, he can’t quit just like that.
Somebody got to him.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I have to make a phone call.”
You can imagine what shot through my head as I sidestepped people through that long lobby, and took the fancy staircase down to where the phones were. At least I didn’t have to do this from a wall phone, there was an empty booth with an accordion door. I sat down, closed the door, glanced at my watch, remembered that Bert’s private line rang in his home as well as his office. I plunked my coin in, and dialed.
Would you know a recording machine answers?
“This is Bert Rivers. There is no one in at the moment, but if you’ll leave your name and number…”
“Bert,” I yelled into the phone, “don’t fuck around, I know you can hear me, pick up the goddamn phone.”
“Hello, Nick,” he said. Just like that.
“Don’t give me hello Nick, I just got your note, you can’t quit like that, you never said anything, I got you on retainer. Everything seemed jake when you brought Mary down. What happened?”
