“Whaling was ridiculous,” said Rosemary to anyone who would listen.
“Dangerous,” said Joe. “But immensely profitable.” He was carrying plastic bags full of steaks and other groceries, which he put on the kitchen counter. “I think we have enough,” he said.
“I think you overdid it,” said Sally, smiling at the big man.
“You’ll find I tend to do that,” he said, smiling back.
“I look forward to it,” said Sally.
It felt like they were speaking some sort of code. Rosemary gave Andrew a cautionary look. He didn’t know what it meant but he kept silent. “Where’s Shiva?” she said.
“I thought he and Cynthia went for a walk,” said Andrew. “But I’ve been napping…as instructed.”
“He and Cynthia definitely went for a walk,” said Janis. “She was quite insistent. Wanted to show him whatever she and Sally had seen on their run, she said.”
“There wasn’t anything to see but sand and sea grass,” said Sally.
And Cynthia’s breasts, Andrew said to himself. She was selectively prudish, evidently.
“They didn’t invite you?” said Rosemary.
“I didn’t want to go,” said Janis. “To be honest, sitting still for an hour suddenly sounded very appealing. And I’ve been improving myself by reading Melville.” She held up her copy of Moby Dick as if to prove it.
Well brought up, Andrew said to himself. Reads the book her pretentious host puts in all the guest rooms to prove he’s educated.
The freckles definitely worked. They allowed her to look old-fashioned and modern at the same time. Or was it wise and innocent? Anyway, it was a winning combination.
Andrew realised he’d been looking at Janis too long. “George will be staying with us too,” he said, addressing Sally.
“It’s complicated,” said the Governor, as if in explanation.
“Sleeping arrangements?” said Rosemary quietly.
“We’ll have to see,” said Sally. And then in a louder voice, “Sweetheart, we ought to get the water boiling for the lobsters. Maybe Joe can help you.”
“Whatever you ask,” said Joe, smiling at Sally.
There was a low stone and concrete construction behind the house, with a long iron grill on which it would be possible to cook several dozen steaks at once. There was an oversized pot resting upside down at one end. Andrew explained that it was easier and safer to fill the pot with water before they started the fire. “I should probably have a long hose,” he said, “but I don’t, so we have to use these jerry cans.” He and Joe began filling the cans from the faucet on the side of the house and pouring the contents into the pot. After a couple of round trips, Joe wanted to check the pot for stability. Then he wanted to be sure that, with the pot already on the grill, air would get to the fire. “I understand fire, being an engineer,” he explained, “and I used to build fires when I was a kid, of course, but these days I don’t get much chance to barbeque.” He paused. “Cyn thinks that’s un-American.”
“Coming from Texas.”
“I suppose that’s the explanation,” said Joe. “She doesn’t know shit about barbeques, of course. Her Texas is air-conditioned. Doesn’t like getting her hands dirty. But she thinks I should have one in Greenwich.”
“I don’t suppose Shiva and Rosemary know much about barbeques either,” said Andrew, spotting an opening.
Joe was now lying prone on the ground, looking through the holes in the back wall of the construction that would allow air to be drawn in by the fire, once it got going. “Rosemary’s crazy,” he said matter-of-factly. “Smart, but crazy. What she knows about I could not predict. But Shiva’s tougher than you’d expect. He’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty. He’s just tired of having to do so. I see how this thing works now. But you have to pull out the charcoal from the last fire.” He came around to the front of the grill and began scraping out the remains of the previous weekend’s barbeque. “You should have done this earlier. When it rains, the charcoal gets soaked and then it’s messier to deal with. Have you got some old newspapers I can dump it on?” By this point his hands and arms were black and his shirt front was streaked with mud and charcoal.
Andrew went around to the back door that went directly into the pantry and brought back a pile of last weekend’s Sunday papers. “I should be doing this,” he said to Joe.
“No sweat,” said his guest. “I like getting my hands dirty – in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”
“So you and Shiva could get along?” said Andrew. He held his breath as Joe considered his answer.
“As men, yes. He has guts. He has brains. I admire what he’s done with the unholy jumble of businesses he got handed when his father died. I just worry about his energy level. I worry about our not being able to make decisions because he’s too tired. Or worn out from being sweet and reasonable with his impossible brothers.”
“The walk to the lighthouse?” said Andrew.
“Oh, that. Yeah, he doesn’t take any exercise at all, as far as I can figure out. I’m talking about mental energy. But we’ll see. We haven’t talked about strategy yet – what we actually do with this business you want us to jointly own. If we could agree on a general course of action and he could give me authority over tactical moves that might help.”
Andrew’s heart sank, but he decided he should wait until he could talk to Rosemary.
“There, I think it’s cleaned out. Now let’s finish filling the lobster pot and get a fire started.”
“You want to go in and wash your hands?”
“No, under the tap is fine.”
Three more round trips with the jerry cans and Joe had another question: “You didn’t know about cleaning out the charcoal, did you Andrew?”
“Cathy usually does it.”
“Shitty job for a girl,” said Joe. “Cyn would never consider cleaning out wet charcoal with her bare hands.” He laughed at the idea.
“Cathy doesn’t seem to mind,” said Andrew. “New Englanders are like that. Hard winters and all.”
“But she forgot this week?”
Andrew began to feel apprehensive. “Guess so.”
“What are we using for tinder and where are the logs, and most important, where are the matches?”
“I normally use the previous weekend’s newspapers,” said Andrew.
“But I’ve kind of messed them up,” said Joe. “Where are the logs? I hope you keep them dry.”
He did not. There was a year-old cord of wood neatly stacked further away from the house, but it wasn’t, in fact, under cover. Andrew had brought the matches, however, which was a relief. He was beginning to feel totally incompetent.
Joe fetched two logs and stood them on their ends beside the grill. He took a folding knife out of his pocket. “I’m going to teach you some woodcraft, Andrew. I used to be a boy scout.” He drove the knife repeatedly into one of the logs and began to peel off bits of bark and then dry splinters. “I don’t suppose you know what ‘squaw wood’ is, Andrew?”
“No.”
“It’s dead branches that haven’t fallen all the way to the ground, so they’re dry. You go wander around your yard and see if you can collect some. Start with that tree over there.”
Andrew obeyed – wandering around felt like all he was good for – and within a few minutes brought back an armful.
“I probably didn’t need to make all this splinter tinder, with the squaw wood you’ve got on the property,” said Joe, “but it’s a good thing for you to know about.”
“You mean in case there’s a nuclear winter and we all have to depend on our survival skills? That’s why I live in Manhattan – so there’s no danger of surviving.”
Joe laughed. “You never know when survival skills will come in handy.” He began to build a little tepee of splinters and then squaw wood twigs and then larger branches. He slid two of the logs under the grill on either side of this combustible construction, and then laid medium-size branch
es across the logs. “Now you repeat that further along,” he said. “I think we’ll need three modules – one under the lobster pot and two for the steaks. Here, you don’t know shit about building a fire, do you?”
“I’m afraid I’m pretty urban,” said Andrew, who had never been a boy scout. He was trying his best to get honourably dirty but his body resisted lying prone the way Joe had, so he was sitting cross-legged.
Joe laughed. “That’s right. Remember, you’ll want to add another log to each module once the fire gets going. But you don’t want to do it too soon. And you want to take the wet bark off the logs if you can because that will be the moment of maximum vulnerability for the fire.”
“I never thought of a fire as being vulnerable,” said Andrew. A girl with freckles was another story.
Joe pondered Andrew’s statement for a minute. “So Cathy’s always made the fire?”
“Usually.”
“Why not today?”
Andrew was working on an answer, but Joe cut him off. “Listen, Andrew, I don’t want to play games. This person who’s just taken Rosemary and me to the whaling museum isn’t your wife. She’d never been there before. But I knew it already because I do very thorough research. I Googled you. I had someone go through all the pages. I’ve seen your wedding pictures in the Boston newspapers of twenty years ago. This Cathy is a pretty good imitation, but she’s not the girl you married.”
Andrew let out his breath. “Do you want the long version or the short version?”
“We gotta keep the fire company for a while,” said Joe.
“Well, to start with, you’re right of course. But it wasn’t something I planned. I don’t even know who this Cathy is, to be honest.”
“Funny thing is,” said Joe, “I feel like I’ve met her before. But give me the long version.”
It took about half an hour. They got the fire well established.
Joe was a patient listener. “So you and your real missus have been hanging on by your fingernails, it sounds like,” he said when Andrew was finished.
“I suppose we have,” said Andrew. “One tries not to focus on those things.”
“I may need to suggest another approach, if we decide to work together.”
“A new model every other year?” said Andrew.
“I wasn’t talking about that,” said Joe. “What I meant was, I believe in acknowledging reality. It’s healthier.” He paused. “And as you might imagine, I don’t like people keeping anything a secret from me – not that they normally can.”
Andrew felt dizzy. “There’s something else I ought to tell you then,” he said after a moment. Now he felt like he was throwing himself off a cliff. Or maybe he’d been in free fall all weekend.
“Shoot,” said Joe.
“I’m having a little trouble at my firm. They may be trying to get me to retire.”
Joe thought about that for a minute. “Aren’t you kinda young for that?” he said.
“‘Retire’ is a euphemism,” said Andrew.
“Getting pushed out?” said Joe.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Those phone calls?”
“Guy who’s technically my boss being unpleasant.”
“Technically?”
“You’re right, Joe. If I’m facing reality, he is my boss and he can fire me.” Andrew felt better, oddly, just saying that. Joe didn’t say anything so he went on. “Investment banking firms are organised to permit self-delusion. We all call ourselves
‘managing directors,’ even though we don’t manage anything. Bonuses are mostly secret. The only way you really know where you stand is by seeing where your office is. And I’m getting moved to a smaller one this weekend.”
“Any particular reason your boss wants to jettison you?”
“He’s new in the job. I haven’t produced much in the past two years. I come up with my own ideas. I try to concentrate on significant transactions. Success is unpredictable. Pushing me out is a way for him to establish his authority.”
“Stupid way to run a business,” said Joe. “Does your technical boss happen to dislike you for some reason?”
“Oh, probably. He didn’t go to Harvard. One tries not to focus on those things.”
Joe laughed. “That again.”
“Wall Street is a tightrope,” said Andrew. “Not a good idea to look down.”
Joe was silent for a couple of minutes. “I wish I could tell you this deal is going to happen. But I can’t. Or not yet.” He was silent for another minute. “Let’s pretend we haven’t had this conversation,” he said finally.
“Sure,” said Andrew. He had no idea what he was agreeing to.
“I don’t want you looking down,” said Joe, evidently reading his mind. “But going back to our earlier discussion,” said Joe, “what I wanted to ask was, have you got any particular attachment to this substitute Cathy? Because I find her quite amusing.”
“Be my guest,” said Andrew.
“I’m your guest already,” said Joe, standing up. “But I want to be a good one. Is it safe to leave the fire while we get cleaned up?”
“Always has been in the past,” said Andrew. “But you go in. I’ll watch it for a while.”
I’m not totally stupid, Andrew told himself, just terrified. Maybe if he sat quietly, useful ideas would present themselves. They didn’t. He reverted to his fall-back strategy for coping with anxiety: thinking about sex.
When the men had finished their port and Andrew had gone up to his freezing room on that comic opera shooting party weekend he’d been sent to as an associate, Venetia of the bathtub was already warming his bed. “Get in quickly before I die,” she’d said in a hoarse whisper.
She was wearing flannel pyjamas. She laughed at his nightshirt. She made him put his arms around her and warm her up. For two or three minutes neither of them spoke. Parts of him began to express curiosity about their plans.
“We’re going to kiss a lot,” she said, as if in answer. “But that’s all we’ll do.”
“I thought you wanted to ‘bag’ me,” said Andrew. There’d been a lot of wine at dinner and he was feeling bold.
“For the purposes of this weekend, I already have.” She kissed him on the mouth. He responded. “And you’re married,” she continued.
“I am,” he said.
“With an infant daughter.”
“Eleanor.”
“And you’ve never been unfaithful.”
“Correct.”
“So you need to be punished.”
“For what? I haven’t been unfaithful yet. All I’ve done is think about it. I thought about it all through dinner, by the way. How could I not?”
“Exactly,” said Venetia.
“You’re a terrible tease, you know?”
“I know.”
“We came down to dinner separately. You never spoke to me during cocktails. You were seated far away down the table. You never looked at me.”
“That’s how the game is played,” said Venetia.
“All I could think about was you stepping into the bathtub and introducing yourself. That and the prospect of keeping each other warm tonight.”
“Punishments are for things that aren’t a person’s fault, things they had no choice about.”
“Is that so?”
“You don’t know anything about punishment, do you? It’s the main thing you learn at an English boarding school.”
Andrew didn’t reply.
“You have to be punished for thinking about me precisely because you can’t help it. I plan to enjoy the fact that you can’t stop thinking about me. And I am not going to let you be unfaithful,” she continued, “until you are desperate to be so.” She kissed him again. “It’s deeply philosophical – or maybe I mean theological. Transgression and retribution as one. Wanting me will be painful because you are a healthy young man. Having me will be painful because you will feel guilty about it. It’s like taking a barge through a lock. You have to ge
t the water to the level of the next stage before you can proceed.”
“This is a weird conversation,” said Andrew. His American soul could recognise witchcraft, even light-hearted witchcraft.
“I will give you my address,” she said, ignoring his outburst. “I live alone, in a tiny house in Chelsea. Very fashionable neighbourhood. This coming Wednesday – that’s Tuesday night if you haven’t been to bed – you will stand on the doorstep without ringing the bell. At precisely two in morning I will open the door. We’ll see what level the water is at then. But first we have to practise being in love. So kiss me some more, but make your hands behave.”
Rosemary materialised in front of him. He was startled. He was embarrassed to have been thinking about Venetia. He half expected Rosemary to chide him for doing so. He didn’t think he’d tell Rosemary about Venetia. Or Janis. Tell Janis, that is. Not that the subject of Venetia needed to come up. “Joe’s figured out about Sally-Cathy,” he said without standing up.
“I was going to tell you that. She had trouble finding the museum. And Joe misses nothing.”
“He thinks you’re crazy.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” said Rosemary.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” said Andrew. It sounded like a profession of love.
“Of course you don’t,” said Rosemary. “It’s Joe I had to confuse. I had to make sure he didn’t start hitting on me, which could have troubled Shiva.”
“Not an issue,” said Andrew. “He’s decided he likes my wife – Sally-Cathy that is.”
“Which leaves us the minor problem of Cynthia,” said Rosemary. “I’m afraid she’s turning out to be surplus to requirements.”
“I thought she and Shiva went for a walk,” said Andrew.
“That was so she could take her top off again, I expect. He’ll have liked that, but it won’t get her anywhere.”
“Really?”
“Cynthia has too many angles,” said Rosemary. “I have too many angles. Shiva wants soft.”
“I like your angles,” said Andrew.
“Stand up,” said Rosemary. He complied. “You need to go clean up, play host, pay attention, not drink too much. I put fresh clothes in the servant’s room for you. And think about this. Nothing we can do will save Cynthia’s marriage, and it shouldn’t be saved. She’ll be cashing in her pre-nup, as those contracts are evidently called, by the end of the summer. Not a bad pay-check for what? – two hundred fucks. The only issue with Cynthia is to keep her from getting in the way of the romance we care about.”
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