Jacob's Folly

by Rebecca Miller

  “Oh, Gebeck,” said the count, as Le Jumeau drew up his linen and fastened it around his waist.

  “Monsieur le Comte?”

  “If there are any rituals you feel compelled to perform throughout the day, no matter how insignificant to you, please advise me.”

  Le Jumeau’s snigger broke over my head like a raw egg.

  22

  The phone rang cruelly in the middle of the night. Leslie felt a sharp pain in his right eye as he answered.

  “It’s Don,” said a low, conspiratorial voice on the other end of the line.

  “Don?” The sound of his father-in-taw’s voice at this time of the night was an automatic emergency. Leslie sat up immediately. “I’ll be right over,” he said.

  “No, no, son,” said Don in a slurred whisper. “We’re not at home. We … just need a ride.”

  “Where are you?” asked Leslie.

  Leslie drove along the coast to the east end of the island, where the mansions were. He looked down at the beach. Near the shore, the waves were marbled with phosphorescence. The great houses stood at the edge of the bluffs. Leslie smiled, thinking that Don had finally found his way to his kind of people. He turned down a road lined with perfectly maintained hedges.

  Iron gates opened for the truck the moment he arrived at the address Don had given him. The house, at the head of a long, circular drive, was large, shingled, beetling over the crashing sea. All the windows were illuminated. Leslie recognized Don’s Chrysler parked outside.

  Leslie rang the bell. The door opened immediately. A small man with a mop of tong-curled brown hair, wearing what looked like a boy’s blue blazer, looked up at Leslie expectantly.

  “Hello, sir!” he said.

  “I’m looking for Don and Libby Jenkins,” said Leslie. “Don called me and said he needed a ride,” he said.

  “Did he mention that?” said the younger man nastily, stepping back to let Leslie into the house. Leslie noticed that his host had a very shiny face. His skin looked like ironed wax. He had tiny, dark, crescent eyes and a plump mouth.

  “I’m Ross Coe,” he said, offering a boy’s hand for Leslie to shake.

  “Leslie Senzatimore,” said Leslie. He found Ross Coe distinctly alarming. “Where are Don and Libby?”

  “Just down here,” said Ross. He wore patent-leather loafers with no socks, Leslie noticed as he followed him down a wood spiral staircase. Leslie found himself descending sideways. His feet were too long for the steps.

  Don and Libby were sitting silently among a clutch of chattering people. Don was in his usual cherry cashmere and gray cravat, his elongated, squared-off head flushed and seemingly more creased than usual. He glanced at Leslie sheepishly, but made no move to get up, and said nothing. Libby, stuffed into a low-cut leopard-print minidress, sat beside him holding a glass of green liquid between her palms. She was staring into it, as if for an answer. Ross Coe led a petite, elegantly dressed older lady across the room. She had luxuriant brown hair. “This is my wife, Helga,” said Ross Coe, presenting the woman with a flourish of his small hand. Helga Coe had a fixed smile on her withered face, and big white teeth.

  “Welcome to our home,” said Mrs. Coe, in what sounded like a German accent.

  “Good to meet you,” said Leslie, then he stood at the lip of the room, arms dangling, waiting for Don and Libby to make a move. But both his parents-in-law sat immobile.

  “Ready to go, Don?” Leslie asked.

  “Sure, sure,” Don said. But he didn’t move. A youthful, elfin man in his sixties wearing a white cap, white jeans, and a crisp white shirt sprang out of what seemed to be a bathroom, singing, “Love is in the air …”

  Ross Coe let out a high giggle, his shiny, ball-of-wax face contorting as if pushed this way and that by a sculpting hand, his eyes growing even smaller, like slits. It was impossible to tell how old he was.

  “Leslie Senzatimore,” said Ross Coe, “this is Derbhan Nevsky.” Derbhan Nevsky ran spryly up to Leslie and took his hand between both his rigid palms, leaning forward and thereby shrinking still more. “Great to meet you,” he said in a grating voice. Leslie was fighting the urge to lie down on the couch. He wanted to sleep so badly. It came to him that he was almost a foot taller than every freak in this room.

  “Don, it’s late, I gotta get up early,” Leslie said, looking at his watch. Three o’clock in the morning. He may as well forget about sleep.

  “Sure, sure, son,” said Don absentmindedly. His face was livid, his eyes unfocused.

  “They drank a little of the Green Fairy,” Ross Coe said. “Strong stuff. Sit down for a minute.” Leslie could see he wasn’t getting Don and Libby off the couch anytime soon. Sighing, he sat on the slippery leather.

  “What line of work are you in, Leslie?” asked Derbhan Nevsky, leaning forward in his chair with a jerk. His every movement seemed provoked by an electric zap. His clothes were bleached blue-white. Even his sneakers were white. His face beneath the cap was tanned, leathery, humorous.

  “Boat repair and customizing,” Leslie answered. There was a pause.

  “Senzatimore Marine!” exploded Nevsky, lifting off the couch and pointing at Leslie as if he had guessed a clue at charades.

  “Right,” said Leslie grimly.

  “Senzatimore Marine, top-of-the-line customizing of classic boats, best in the state,” Nevsky said, opening up to Ross Coe to share this news. Leslie attempted a smile. “Ross! Here’s your man!” Ross Coe smiled vaguely, nodding, as he sat down to a gleaming grand piano.

  “That must be a sound business,” said Nevsky, whipping back around to Leslie.

  “It’s not the worst,” said Leslie.

  “Probably helps to have Don here for a father-in-law.” Nevsky chuckled.

  “What was that?” asked Leslie, looking at Don, who gave him a strained smile. Ross Coe began to play.

  “Rosco’s a genius,” pronounced Nevsky. Leslie noticed that Libby’s eyelids were fluttering.

  “What is the Green Fairy?” asked Leslie.

  “It’s absinthe, a kind of alcohol brewed from herbs,” said Nevsky. “They’ll be fine. Rosco’s father was in shipping. Coe Frigates. He made billions in the eighties. Sent Rosco to Brown. As for me, I’m in entertainment,” he said.

  “Oh?” asked Leslie.

  “Personal management. I used to be out on the West Coast. But not anymore,” he continued, snapping his fingers with both hands. “I fried myself out there. Had everything I could wish for. Back in the day. Overdid it. Rising from the ashes now. Based in New York. Rosco here. Obsessed with boats.” Snap. “You should get to know him.” Leslie had a look at Ross Coe, playing the complex piece with ease, swaying back and forth with the music, his waxy face shining. Behind him, his aged wife stood with a patient, capped smile, reading the music and turning the pages when he needed her to.

  Don and Libby were silent on the way home.

  “So what was all that about?” asked Leslie, glancing at the lurid sunrise, maraschino red bleeding into the sky like it was paper toweling.

  “That young man,” said Don.

  “Ross Coe,” said Leslie.

  “Yes. That young man is one of the richest residents of the state,” said Don. “We happened to meet him at the Mexican restaurant in Patchogue.”

  A pause as Leslie thought of the place. “Ranchero’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I was one of the richest residents of the state I wouldn’t be eating at Ranchero’s.”

  “He and his wife like to meet people there,” said Don, a bit mysteriously. Leslie nodded.

  “They are sociable people who like to mix,” added Don, as though in response.

  “And match,” said Libby from the backseat.

  “So then, you mixed a little at Ranchero’s, and then you went home with them,” said Leslie.

  “For a drink,” said Don.

  “Plural,” said Libby.

  “I developed a terrible headache,” Don said. “I’m a migrain
eur, as you know.” Libby cracked up. Her laugh was loose, hissing. She was plastered.

  “So you’ve made some new friends, anyway,” said Leslie.

  “These people could be of real interest,” said Don. “They are connected to avenues of intelligent risk. Of credible investment.”

  “Investment,” repeated Leslie, hiding his concern.

  “Sensible investment,” said Don. “These are cultured people.”

  Leslie nodded. “As opposed to me,” he said, without rancor.

  “It’s just a different sphere, Leslie,” said Don.

  “Oh, dry up,” growled Libby.

  By the time Leslie had unloaded Don and Libby into the parent trap, it was nearly five. Deirdre was sitting up in bed when he walked in.

  “What the hell did they do now?”

  “Oh, boy,” said Leslie.

  “Tell me.”

  “They got snared by a couple of strange people, this very rich young short person with a face like I can’t even begin to describe, sort of—rubbery—he plays the piano—and his German wife, who must be seventy.”

  “Where did they meet—”

  “At Ranchero’s.”

  “Really?”

  “This guy Coe. Coe Frigates. He has a house in East Hampton. The worst of it is, I think Don is making them think he has a lot of money. I’m too tired to talk about it. Oh, and your father’s getting a migraine.”

  “Why do my parents have to live right next to us?” asked Deirdre. “Why can’t we rent them a house someplace else? Like Arizona?”

  “Can we talk about it in the morning? Please?” Leslie lay down. “I only have two hours.”

  It had been Leslie’s idea to install her parents next door, five years ago, when he and Deirdre went to visit them in their eighteenth-century stone house in Connecticut and it was so clear that they weren’t managing to live on Don’s Social Security. Libby was working as an incompetent waitress in a roadside diner off Route 7, a sad little bungalow sandwiched between a McDonald’s and a Wendy’s. Don had been caught siphoning gas from a neighbor’s tractor. Yet he insisted on taking the bus into the city once a month in his wedding tux so he could go to a concert at Carnegie Hall. It didn’t matter what was playing, he just needed to be there. Leslie came home from that visit depressed. After three days of brooding, he suggested buying the house next door for the in-laws. He didn’t realize they were to become his children.

  Leslie turned out the light and lay on his back, trying to void his mind so he could get some sleep. He was so tired, but his heart was pumping in his chest like he’d run up a flight of stairs. Hot beneath the duvet, he flung his great leg out from under the fluff and lay there. Deirdre shifted, mute. She was clutching her sleep-rights tight.

  As he waited for unconciousness, an ugly notion settled into Leslie’s mind. He had humiliated himself at the Coe house. He felt obscurely ashamed—but for what? He went over the visit, but he could find nothing wrong in the way he had acted. If anything, Don and Libby had made fools of themselves. Maybe that’s what it was. He was embarrassed for them? Yet it was personal, this sensation. There was fear mixed in too. Why? What harm could those weirdos do to him? He never had to see them again. Giving up on sleep, he got up and walked to the bathroom.

  As he showered, Leslie concentrated on the coming day. He would begin by polishing out the scratches on the windshield of the 1968 Lyman. If that didn’t work, they would have to order a new windshield; no way around it. He loved working on the old boats. He’d send the guys out on the outside jobs; he was too tired to drive all day—though he’d have to get Don back to the Coe house to pick up his car eventually. Maybe he’d let Deirdre do that. Thinking about his work, lathering his body, Leslie cleansed his mind as well as his skin. By the time he dried off, he was whistling.

  23

  Derbhan Nevsky was breakfasting at that moment, newly sixty, sporting a pair of white jeans pressed by his mother and current housemate, Silvia, along with a bleached white shirt—also octogenarianly pressed—and tumble-dried sneakers. He looked like Mr. Clean without the muscles, or the earring. He blazed with new sobriety, singleness of intent, and the remains of a West Coast tan. As much as he had wanted to get to the top when he was a young man, that ambition was nothing compared with his determination to climb back up now that he was old and toppled. He sipped his sugary black coffee, his first of twelve cups for the day. Silvia walked in, a tidy figure wearing lilac pull-on trousers and a matching blouse, the paper in one hand. She poured herself some coffee, then aimed a sprinkling of Frosted Flakes into the china cup. Lit a cigarette.

  “What are you up to today?” she asked, dipping her spoon into the coffee and taking a bite of soggy cereal.

  “I’m going to see Bridget,” Nevsky said, in his sped up, jerky way.

  “Who’s Bridget?”

  “Bridget Mooney. Remember her? I lived with her. Before I moved to L.A.”

  “Oh. The big one.”

  “She wasn’t so big,” he said. “She was curvy.”

  “That’s not what you said at the time.”

  “I was an idiot.”

  “You’re telling me this?”

  “Okay.” Nevsky got up to go, springing out of his chair as if he had just remembered he had a plane to catch.

  “You marrying her now or what? She must be sixty years old,” said Silvia, pointing her powdered face in his direction and raising her penciled-on eyebrows up a notch. “Just like you are.”

  “Forget about it. She’s an old friend. She teaches in Far Rockaway now.”

  “That’s a coincidence. You both ended up in Queens.”

  “I’m going to see her class. Looking for the next big thing,” said Nevsky, leaping over to his mother and kissing her on the cheek.

  She shooed him away, chuckling. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Throw me a twenty, will ya? I’m low on cash.” Nevsky unpeeled a bill from the wad in his pocket, knowing full well his mother had more money than he did; she just hated spending it. Now over eighty, Silvia had welcomed her firecracker of a son two weeks earlier with the shrug of a fellow addict, told him his dinner was in the oven, and caught the bus to Atlantic City so she could work the slot machines till dawn and return, silent and morose, the following morning, having lost yet another chunk of her husband’s life insurance money, one quarter at a time. Silvia was counting on dying any minute. If she didn’t, she warned Derbhan, he would have to support her completely. She didn’t give a shit about reforming herself. Her addiction gave her a spiritual high, a sense of absolute, all-consuming hopefulness she defied any holy roller to replicate. She was a fatalist through and through. “If you’re born to be hung, you’ll never be drowned” was her favorite expression. Hence, her unending consumption of Benson & Hedges extra-long cigarettes, her breakfasts of Frosted Flakes in black coffee, and her absolute devotion to one-armed bandits. She simply didn’t believe in freedom of choice. Thought it was absolute hooey. This made Silvia Nevsky a very relaxed individual.

  Derbhan jittered spryly along the sidewalk in his blazing whites, snapping his fingers as he wove through the human traffic, scanning faces. Somewhere there was a girl. He needed to start with a girl, a face, a surprise. Something to build onto. There was a new movie franchise he had just found out about, an old casting agent friend of his had tipped him off. They were looking for an unknown. Someone stupendous. Derbhan needed to find some girls. Boys too, but Derbhan was better with girls. He ran down the subway steps in Woodside, feeling invigorated and intensely happy.

  It had taken him some time to find Bridget Mooney. Her acting school in Manhattan wasn’t in the phone book anymore, and he hadn’t kept up with any of their mutual friends. It wasn’t till he ran into her son, Gavin, while he was in line at the drugstore, that he caught a break.

  Gavin was around thirty-five, with a big sloppy build, wearing trousers covered in smears of clay, and a rank T-shirt that Derbhan, who was himself fastidiously clean, had smelled before he rec
ognized the kid in profile. Even though he hadn’t seen him since he was a teenager, there was no forgetting that bulldog face.

  “Gavin!” Derbhan had called out in his boyish, hoarse voice. Gavin turned around, his angry eyes expecting something bad.

  “Derbhan Nevsky,” said Derbhan.

  “Whoa,” said Gavin, looking him up and down. “You’re back.”

  “Risen from the ashes.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “How’s your mother?” asked Derbhan.

  “She had a stroke,” said Gavin ruminatively.

  “Oh, Christ, I didn’t know,” said Derbhan.

  “She’s okay, she still teaches.”

  “I looked up her school, but it was—”

  “She gave that up. It was too much. She teaches in Far Rockaway now. Bought the bungalow next to us.”

  “You’re married?”

  “With two girls,” said Gavin joylessly.

  “And—let me guess—a sculptor?”

  “Potter,” said Gavin.

  “Wow. Pots. Give me your mother’s number, I’ll give her a call,” said Derbhan, shifting from one foot to the other. Gavin noticed this.

  “I’m clean, by the way,” Derbhan said with an embarrassed grin.

  “None of my business,” said Gavin, flipping open his phone. He read out Bridget’s number so quickly that Nevsky barely had time to punch it into his phone.

  “Let me repeat that back to you,” said Nevsky, doing so.

  “Yup, that’s it,” said Gavin, not checking.

  Once he’d picked up his prescription, Gavin made an insolent little salute and ducked out of the shop, his eyes on the floor.

  Derbhan Nevsky took the 7 train to Times Square, then walked to Port Authority and got on the A to Far Rockaway. He stared at the newspaper while snapping his fingers, a lifted, excited feeling in his belly. Seeing Bridget again after her stroke alarmed him somewhat—what if half her face were drooping like wet underwear hung on a line?—but still, he looked forward to seeing his old friend. Plus she might have some interesting students. She always used to. Then again, maybe she was just clinging to the idea of teaching; maybe her class was stuffed with losers, or worse, virtually empty, a sad shadow of the days when she trained some of the hottest young actors in New York.