“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore. Darling.”
Debbie was winding up for a good one. A. Lawrence Whitten tried to calm things with a tentative, “Now, children,” but it was Brenda who headed off the fight.
“Hello-oo!” she bellowed. “Look who’s here!”
That got us noticed. Every head in the room but the busts of old Whittens on the mantel turned to us with a guilty look on the front of it. Even the tradespeople, who had no doubt long since stopped hearing family spats in houses where a wedding was imminent looked as though they’d been caught stealing a cherry off the ham.
All of a sudden I felt embarrassed. I also felt a little disappointed that Brenda hadn’t let it go on a little longer, because the details of the fight that had ended the first Whitten-Sewall engagement were still a dark secret, even to the people who’d stayed at the party.
The spell lifted, and the faces all broke out in smiles, as if I’d dreamed the whole thing. Debbie embraced me, Grant and the old man shook my hand. There was small talk. Debbie wanted to know how my trip had been. Grant Sewall asked me how I liked living in New York City.
He asked me that every time he saw me. Despite the fact that Grant was a top executive with one of the largest communications companies in the country and made, at a conservative estimate, 2.46 times the money I did, he was jealous of me because I worked for the Network in New York. He didn’t even bother to hide it. It’s a pretty common attitude for people in the industry who don’t have New York or Los Angeles in their resumes. One of my early mentors told me, “Remember, kid, you can’t be King Kong unless you go where the Empire State Building is.”
It led to a certain amount of hostility between us. He envied me my job, and I thought he was a horse’s ass to be jealous of a crummy job like mine.
I smiled at him and told him that living in New York wasn’t a matter of liking. “It’s genetically determined. There’s a chromosome for it. Been in my family for generations. Now I get uncomfortable when I have to start breathing air I can’t see.”
That got a laugh, but Grant’s eyes were cold, as though I’d put him down. With some people, you can’t win.
I ignored him and listened to a gruff greeting from A. Lawrence Whitten. “Nice to see you, Cobb,” he said. A lifetime of being The Boss had given him the habit of calling everyone by his last name. “I understand you’re doing some Network business while you’re here.”
I admitted it. “I’m giving a pitch for Network Cable to anybody who’ll listen. We haven’t been doing very well in this part of the state.”
“You’re going to lose your shirts on it. Should have made it a pay service. You’re never going to get enough sponsors to make money on culture.”
“You’re just the sort of person to hear my pitch, then. I’m surprised Whitten Communications isn’t after the franchise here.”
The old man grunted. “I could have gotten it, but I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. I have all sorts of lawyers fighting off antitrust now, because I own the newspapers in this town along with my stations. Why give them more to attack me about? I’ll get my share of cable operations.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “Why did the Network send you to pitch the committee, Cobb? Aren’t you Special Projects? What’s going on?”
The old guy was sharp. I was still trying to come up with something plausible when I was saved by Debbie.
“Where’s Spot?” she demanded. Her father muttered something about that being a damned silly name to give a fine animal.
“Dan’s brought him around to the kennels,” I told her.
“I want to meet him,” Debbie said. “Let’s go. We’ll be back in a minute, everybody.” She grabbed me by my wrist and hauled me from the room. Almost as an afterthought, she looked back at the tradespeople. “You may go home,” she told them. “Leave things the way we have them. It’s not going to rain Saturday, anyway.”
CHAPTER 5
“Here’s my proposition, friend; tell ya what I’m gonna do ...”
–Sid Stone, “Texaco Star Theater” (NBC)
WE LEFT THE HOUSE the back way and headed toward the kennels. Debbie did not let go of my hand. She was being friendly to the point of coquettishness. Keeping in practice, probably.
“You look wonderful, Matt. Heredity or not, New York agrees with you.”
“You look pretty terrific yourself,” I told her. “The whole family looks well. Grant should be prosecuted for exceeding the handsome limit, but there’s nothing new about that.”
“Flatterer,” she said. She tossed her yellow hair around her as if to shake the compliments from it. Her face brightened. “How about Brenda? Isn’t she turning into a beauty?”
“Has turned, I think.”
Debbie nodded. “It’s a good thing I’m going to be an old married lady. I wouldn’t want to start bringing dates around anymore with her in the house. I mean, she was always pretty, but with her ... condition, she’s always had a tendency to be a little fat.”
“She didn’t look fat the last time I saw her.”
“Oh. When was that?”
Oops. Cobb steps in another one. That stupid engagement party would have been a good topic to leave alone. “Ah, a couple of years ago when I, ah, came up for—”
“Oh, then.” Debbie waved a hand to show me she didn’t mind my mentioning it. “She’d already started trimming down by then. She was just a little plump.
“But now she’s great,” Debbie went on. “I’m so proud of her. She watches her diet and exercises—Dan helps her with that. He is a darling, isn’t he, Matt?”
I looked at her. All I trusted myself to say was “Yes.” It occurred to me that she was daring me to make something of it. I left it alone.
“Anyway,” Debbie went on, “it’s done wonders for her. She used to brood about her leg a lot, call herself a freak and a cripple and things like that, but she doesn’t anymore.”
I had two reactions to that, neither of which I voiced. One, if I were to lose a leg, I might not cry constantly in public, but I don’t think many weeks would pass without my having brooded about the situation at least once. Two, a person who has stopped brooding about something does not mention that something twice in the first thirty seconds of a conversation, the way Brenda had that afternoon.
I smiled all the way through the kennels. One Samoyed can be beautiful, but dozens of them all at once are silly: animated white puffballs, punctuated with black dots for noses and eyes and occasional flashes of pink when mouths were opened.
Dan met us and took us to Spot, who’d already made himself at home in his new luxurious surroundings. He did seem happy to see me, but there was no trace of “get me out of here” in his behavior.
Debbie dropped to one knee and scratched Spot’s throat with one hand while she examined him with the other. It was a brief business, but while it was going on, I could see a different Debbie—no more poses of any kind, just a competent young woman doing a job she liked to do.
Dan saw it, too. “Well?” he asked. “How good a job is Matt doing as foster master?”
She kept her attention on Spot while she answered. “Excellent,” she said. “Really excellent. His coat is magnificent, his teeth are perfect. Beautiful conformation, even if he is the slightest bit undersized for a male his age.” Debbie looked up at me. “I remember you told me once, Matt, that you never had a dog when you were a child.”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head. “Well, you must just come by it naturally. And Rick and Jane have done their part as well. This is a magnificent animal.” She ruffled Spot’s fur. “Magnificent!” she told him. “A magnificent animal!”
Spot is a pushover for flattery; he never gets tired of hearing how beautiful he is. He began to thank Debbie in his customary way, with a big, disgusting slurp job on her face. He’d only dragged his tongue across her cheek once or twice, though, when he pulled his head back, made that snuffling noise dogs
make when they have something in their mouths they don’t like, gave Debbie a dirty look, and trotted over to his water dish, where he began lapping noisily.
I was laughing. “This is a first,” I told Debbie. “He usually loves the taste of makeup. The oil in it or something, I suppose. It restricts the women I can bring home to the ones who don’t mind having their makeup licked off.”
“By Spot you mean?” Dan asked, and everybody laughed, including Debbie, who had seemed a little more upset than necessary.
“He ... he wouldn’t like this makeup,” Debbie said. I thought I caught a touch of ruefulness in her voice.
“So you really think I’m doing a good job?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.” She had her hand to her face where Spot had licked it, as if his tongue had burned her. She turned her head away for a second, looked at her fingers, glanced at Dan for a second, then looked at me with her rich-girl smile back in place.
“Yes, I do, Matt,” she said, and she was back to the way I’d always known her. Still, it was interesting, after all these years, to get a glimpse of the girl Dan had fallen in love with.
We walked back to the house. Debbie and I did all the talking, which was unusual with Dan around, but then he had a lot on his mind. He certainly looked as though he had a lot on his mind. He walked a little ahead of Debbie and me with his head down and his hands in his pockets. He would have been kicking at pebbles if the Whitten groundskeepers had been so slovenly as to allow any pebbles to be present.
Debbie still wanted to talk about Spot. “I’m very happy about the way he looks, Matt. You might run him a little more to tone up his muscles into tip-top shape, but other than that, he’s perfect.”
Then she had a proposition for me, or rather, for Spot. “Listen, Matt, let’s breed him!”
“Now?” It was a stupid remark, but it was the first thing that jumped into my head. My brain frequently surprises me that way; I hear myself saying things I have no awareness of having thought of. Out of every thousand times it happens, the ratio breaks down to 800 stupidities, 198 serendipities, and 2 flashes of brilliance.
Debbie answered the question, stupid or not. “No, tomorrow. Vanilla—she’s our prize bitch—is coming into heat, and we haven’t been able to find anyone really terrific to breed her with. They’re related in just the right way, too, so it will be good for the gene pool. I’ll even supervise it myself. What do you think?”
I told her to go ahead; it wasn’t as if Spot were the one who was going to get pregnant, sticking me with a bunch of puppies to worry about.
“You want to come watch?” Debbie asked me.
I was put off for a second, a little anthropomorphism at work. Then I thought, what the hell, it’s not as if the dogs mind, and besides, Spot has been known to sneak in where he wasn’t wanted and watch me doing it. Let him see what it feels like.
“Okay, if I can make it. I’ll be tied up in the first session of that hearing tomorrow until late afternoon.”
“Can you be here by four o’clock or so?”
I told her I thought so, but you never could tell. It was arranged that if it looked as if I was going to be too late, they could start without me.
Then she invited me to stay for dinner, but I told her I had to bone up for the meeting tomorrow. I have become a very good liar through diligent practice.
“In fact, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience, I’d like to borrow Dan. There are some technical computer questions that are going to come up, and I’d like him to vet my answers.”
Dan looked at me quizzically, but he saw I wasn’t fooling and fell in with the gag.
We agreed to make it tomorrow night, after the dogs got through. Back at the house, Grant seemed to be glad Dan and I weren’t going to be hanging around, Brenda mad (she’d spent her time getting prettied up for us, apparently), and the old man indifferent.
I didn’t much care. There were all sorts of currents flying around that house, and I wasn’t going to wire myself up as a conductor for any more of them until my old pal had had a chance to let me know just what the hell they all meant.
CHAPTER 6
“Here’s to good friends. Tonight is kind of special ...”
–Arthur Prysock, Löwenbräu commercial
WE WENT TO EAT at the House of Hans, a German-style delicatessen to the north of Sewanka. The sandwiches there are a foot across and three inches thick, every cubic inch of them delicious. Some of my favorite memories of college days have to do with Hans’s.
That night, we got a great honor: Our meal was served by Hans himself. Hans was a man who understood the meaning of destiny. He was born to be a German innkeeper. He was small and stout, fussy and friendly, with a grin that showed bright white teeth and twinkling eyes.
Hans had been a POW during World War II and had won the heart of an American nurse. After the war, he’d followed his beloved to a new home but fulfilled his destiny by becoming a German innkeeper in the United States. Probably the best one.
“Ha!” Hans said, as he put down his tray. “I read the order in the kitchen. Roast beef and Würzburger. Reuben and Würzburger Dark. Two orders of Kartoffeln. It rings a bell. I bring the order myself, and I see I am right. How are you, boys? Especially you, Mr. Cobb—” Hans’s use of the word “mister” did not imply any great quantity of respect; he used it more the way a teacher will in scolding a wayward student.
“Especially you,” he went on. “Daniel at least I have seen once or twice within the last few years or so. What brings you back here at last?” I started to answer, but Hans cut me off. “Eat, eat your sandwich while hot it stays. I don’t mind if you talk with your mouth full.”
I never needed much persuasion to chomp into one of Hans’s Reubens. Magnificent. Hans baked his own bread, cured his own meat, pickled his own sauerkraut, and for all I knew, mixed his own Russian dressing. He imported the cheese. It was no surprise that the stuff Hans served tasted terrific; the only thing that surprised me was that he didn’t eat it all himself.
I got lost in the wonders of the sandwich and the nutty, sweet taste of the beer. Hans had to remind me to talk. I put my table manners on hold, and told him about the cable TV hearings and the wedding.
“Wedding? Who is getting married?”
“Debbie Whitten,” Dan told him.
Hans’s face lit up. “The blond young lady who raises the white dogs? She is your young lady, nein?”
“Nein,” Dan said. He took a sip of his beer. “Not anymore.”
Hans always got more German at emotional moments. “Listen,” he said, taking a chair at the table with us. “We are old friends. When I say it is you boys who have made me rich in my old age, by finding me here, off in the hills, and bringing your college friends—I am a tradition with the college students now; they jog twenty-four miles from campus to come here, and that is all because of you.
“So when I say we are friends, I am not just blowing the hot air at you. I tell you this: I was a soldier. I loved the Fatherland, but I didn’t love Hitler. Every German says that today, but for me it was true. I could have crossed a mountain from my home and been in Switzerland and safe from the war, but I was in love with a fräulein who jilted me, and I joined the army to become a hero and win her back.
“I didn’t become a hero. A drunken American captured me while I was relieving myself in a stream. That was the best thing that ever happened to me; there (later, I mean) I met my wife. I was a failure and probably a coward, but she loved me anyway. And I have been a happy man ever since. And the girl I had loved had married a swineherd and was a crone before she was thirty.”
He stopped talking. There was an embarrassed silence.
“So now,” Hans resumed, “you are wondering what the old fool is trying to say, are you not? It is this: If you are a good and honorable man (as I know you to be, Daniel), and you have a true love for a woman, and she is too big a fool to return it, then you are better without her, and she deserves whatever she gets,�
� Hans got to his feet with a great whoosh of air. “Eat up, now. Whatever you like, there will be no check. But don’t forget to tip your waitress. There is no reason for her to suffer for my generosity. I must get back to the kitchen.”
We tried to talk him out of putting the meal on the house, to no avail. “Come back before you leave town and eat with me again. I will let you pay.”
He walked back to the kitchen. Dan and I talked about what a great guy he was and similar harmless nostalgia for the rest of the meal.
I got an order of Hans’s apple dumplings for dessert. I’d just put the first sweet-sour spoonful in my mouth when Dan said, “There’s no computer stuff you want to know about, is there?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what is it?” He stroked his beard.
I looked at him. “You’re actually going to make me say it, aren’t you?” He kept stroking. “All right, then here goes. What is the deep significance of all the veiled references and knowing looks out at the Whitten place? Start with yourself and work from there.”
“What do you mean, Matt?”
“Why did Debbie shoot you that meaningful glance after Spot licked her face? Just for instance. What the hell happened at the damn engagement party? Debbie and Grant were just about to go into a nice, dirty argument about it this afternoon when Brenda cut them off. You’d think they’d have had that settled, with the wedding four days away, but apparently not. I feel like I’ve walked into the middle of a movie, and I don’t know if it’s a comedy or a melodrama or what.”
“It’s probably what,” Dan told me.
“Thank you. You are a big help.”
He finished his beer. “Okay. Look, Matt, I don’t know what happened at the party. Don’t you think I wish I did? Whatever it was, it woke Debbie up for the first time in her life.”
And drove her into your arms, I didn’t say.
“What about that stuff at the kennel?”
“Oh, that.”
Killed with a Passion Page 3
