by Chris Knopf
I couldn’t admit it right then, but I sympathized with him. I didn’t know shit about that stuff either.
“So Jonathan told you to get into art.”
Ivor grinned a little at that.
“That was the only call that worked out. Those things over there on the wall? Worth five times what I paid for them.”
They might have been Chagalls, or painted by somebody trying to look like Chagall. No factories or heroic workers. Rather some spindly impressionistic flowers, butterflies and starscapes. Fit right into the scrap-metal ambience of General Resource Recovery.
“Same deal?” I asked Ivor. “Jonathan told you which artists to buy?”
“Yeah. Got a bunch of stuff. All’ve gone up, last I looked.”
“Including the big Ellingtons.”
“Shit, yeah. Maybe ten times. Got em on the cheap. His own fault, douche bag.”
“Jonathan?”
“Nah, the artist. Ellington. Professional wingnut. I’d only paid him about two-thirds of what he asked for before he got em hung in the reception area. I just asked him to paint some more clothes on the girls. Too much tit. Can embarrass people. He wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t pay him the balance. Said he’d sue me. Showed up here with this little bottle-eyed shit of a lawyer. Wouldn’t let em in the building. Told him if he wanted the pictures back, I’d take em down myself. Got a factory over there full of guys who know how to use a crowbar.”
That really made him happy. The happiest I’d ever seen him.
“You sure got him where you wanted him,” I said.
“Yeah. I sure did. Douche bag.”
I looked over at Cleo again, hoping Dobermans couldn’t read minds. She looked back at me, now awake, with a blank, noncommittal stare.
“Okay,” I said to Ivor. “I’m sorry again for bothering you. I really mean it this time.”
I jerked my head over at Cleo.
“Can I stand up?”
“Sure. Just keep your hands out where she can see them.”
I stood up and offered to shake, carefully. He took my hand.
“So that’s it?” he asked. “I thought you had a question for me.”
He was right. I’d lost my train of thought. Often happens when the talk turns to modern art.
“I do. I just wanted to know how you discovered Jonathan Eldridge. Who introduced you in the first place?”
“She didn’t tell you? Joyce Whithers. Sold Eldridge pretty hard. I figured that’s how you got on to me. Used to play cards with her. Still do, couple times a year.”
“I thought her husband was the card player.”
“Nah, the old lady had the brains and balls in that family. It was her game. She just brought him in so there’d be somebody around to get her a Scotch on the rocks and light her cigarettes. Smart broad. Getting me mixed up with that putz was the only thing she ever screwed me up on.”
“Thanks. That’s really all I wanted to know.”
“Next time you got a question like that, you can try picking up the telephone. Number’s in the book.”
“Sorry You’re right. I will. I appreciate it,” I said, making motions to leave. Then I thought of something.
“I’d really appreciate it if you cleared me with Ike and Connie. I don’t want any trouble.”
He waved that off.
“Nobody’s lookin’ for trouble,” he said, although with less sincerity than I’d hoped for.
Cleo stayed put on the couch, but as I passed by she pulled back her ears and wagged her tail. When Ivor opened the door Ike and Connie could see me scratching the top of her head and cooing softly in her ear.
“Tu eres una niña hermosa. Estoy pensando que tu debes morder a esos hombres allí en el vestíbulo.”
“Cute pup,” I said to them as I fell into the parade back to the reception area.
—
I had an escort all the way from Ivor’s scrap-metal plant to the reaches of Suffolk County. A full-sized black pickup with a clattery diesel engine. They managed to keep several car lengths between us regardless of traffic or speed limits, so every time I thought they’d abandoned the tail they showed up again. I didn’t know if this was meant to convey a message, or just a signal, or even who was doing the signaling. Ivor seemed willing to let it go, but he might have been playing me the whole time. Or, Ike and Connie might have been taking a little independent initiative. Hard to tell. But it did interfere with my concentration, which was annoying, since right then I needed every bit of concentration I could muster.
I’d bypassed the traffic lights along the first leg of Sunrise Highway by going north and picking up the Southern State. From there I dropped down to Route 27 where they’d made it into a four-lane road. It was filled with cars and trucks, and local people trying to get back home to catch a little daylight savings relaxation in the outdoor furniture out on the pressure-treated deck. With a different car I might have been able to get some distance on the pickup by weaving my way through the heavy traffic, but the Grand Prix wasn’t exactly engineered for nimble lane changes.
It was, however, born, raised and modified to accelerate very quickly in a straight line, hurtling its impossible mass up to a cruising speed you wouldn’t want to experience in any kind of pickup truck.
I’d just passed the exit for Shirley, Butch’s beloved hometown, when I noticed Ike and Connie were boxed in behind a brace of compact Japanese sedans driving side by side in tight formation. In front of me Route 27 was clear of significant traffic, a set of parallel concrete ribbons dissecting the pine barrens and disappearing into the ocean haze hanging above the South Fork.
I rolled up the windows and pushed in the clutch. I slid the Hurst shifter into third gear, brought up the RPMs, then popped out the clutch while simultaneously sticking the accelerator to the floor mat. With all four barrels opened wide, the 428-cubic-inch V8 bellowed under the hood. Just shy of the red line, I put it back into fourth, but kept the throttle open and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the speed climbed up over a hundred miles an hour.
I started to run through a mental checklist of all the equipment failures likely triggered by the sudden torque loads and excess velocity, but quickly gave it up. Too many to count, and it wasn’t going to stop me anyway.
I looked in the rearview as the speedometer pegged at 120 and the tack was flirting again with the red line. No sign of black pickups or law enforcement. I’d felt some vibrations in the suspension system as the big car accelerated up to its top end, but now everything was settled down, a tribute to Butch’s skill with the wheel balancer.
I could sense the scream of the big block engine, but I couldn’t hear it above the wind noise. Reality distorts a lot when you move past a hundred miles an hour. It goes by so quickly it loses definition, and takes on a jittery, smeared quality. I could feel alarm rising up in my rational brain, which was involuntarily processing the possible consequences of losing control, which at this speed could happen from nicking even the tiniest road hazard. My solution was to ignore my rational brain and keep the accelerator on the floor.
A green exit sign for Center Moriches flashed by. I eased back on the throttle until the speedometer needle came off the peg and started to move counterclockwise. A white step van appeared in the right lane. I gave him as wide a berth as I could in case he hadn’t seen me and accidentally drifted into my lane. It must have been frightening to have a gray-brown ’67 Grand Prix roar by your door at 120 miles an hour. It was frightening for me to see how quickly he dropped back in my rearview. I eased up more on the accelerator, watching the speedometer mark the drop in tens—100, to 90, to 80. The Center Moriches exit ramp was suddenly there, so I had to downshift while applying steady pressure to the brakes, the most easily taxed system onboard the Grand Prix, given its extravagance of heavy-gauge sheet metal, the kind Ivor could sell to Honda to remake into a fleet of Civics.
I was almost within legal limits when I took the bend of the exit ramp. The smell of partially o
xidized fuel wafted up behind me as I slowed to a halt, but I expected that from the inefficiency of rapid deceleration. At the stop sign I checked all the gauges, including oil and water temp, which looked normal. I shifted into first, pushed the buttons to lower the windows and lit a cigarette.
“Beverly Hillbillies indeed,” I said aloud, feeling warmly about my preposterous car, the most puzzling legacy from my father, and the only one not encumbered by complex and hopelessly entangled associations.
—
I reached the tip of Oak Point as the last of the sunset had collapsed into a thin pink strip along the horizon. When I stopped at the mailbox Eddie came zinging over from Amanda’s house, barking and spinning around in circles. He seemed honestly glad to see me, or maybe was just hedging his bets.
After filling my aluminum cocktail tumbler with Absolut and crushed ice, I shook off the wrinkled khakis and oxford-cloth-shirt and went directly to the outdoor shower. There was a lot of day to wash off. It took half the tumbler and most of the hot water to even start the job. I could pound nails and set roof rafters for twelve hours and not be half as tired. It’s the mental fatigue that gets you, that clogs up the neural pathways and packs cotton behind your eyes. Proving empirically that the worst of weariness is a state of mind.
I put on a pair of clean blue jeans and a cotton shirt so threadbare you could hole it with a puff of breath and called Amanda on my rotary dial phone.
“You’re back.”
“How’d you like to come over and rot with me in the Adirondacks?”
“An original idea.”
“An invitation. Direct and unambiguous.”
“I have wine and a bowl of cherries.”
“I’ll be in the front yard. If I’m asleep when you get there, don’t hit me on the head.”
Walking barefoot across the lawn, cool and wet from the evening mist rolling in off the bay, I started feeling better. The half tumbler of vodka had done its part, but the greater salve was being back in the company of the Little Peconic, back from those other places that weren’t livable for me anymore. As it often does, the prevailing south-southwesterly had shifted all the way west, kicking up a short chop and fluttering the emerging white petals on the grandiflora. It was a dryer wind, for reasons unknown. I wished I knew more about the underlying forces that controlled the breeze crisscrossing the bay every day, or how the patterns of the prevailing winds changed with the seasons. But not that much. It was enough to keep track and stay alert for anomalies, or simply mark the familiar shifts, gusts and lulls.
“Big day, I take it,” said Amanda, dropping down into the other Adirondack. Also barefoot, she wore a dress with a loud tropical print that looked two sizes too big for her. Her hair was wet, like mine, as if she’d also just taken a shower. She’d brushed it straight back so I could see the full shape of her face in the fading twilight, her prominent cheekbones and green eyes and the reddish brown of her skin, the color of a glass of fine cognac.
“It’s nice to see you,” I said.
She looked surprised.
“You, too. What’s the occasion?”
“For what?”
“Such friendliness.”
“I’m always nice.”
“No, you’re not. Not in the ordinary way.”
“I’m not?”
“Unless you’re avoiding. Is that what you’re doing? You don’t want to talk about the day”
“I don’t. Not now. I need time to think a little. But it’s still nice to see you.”
“Okay.”
We sat quietly sipping our drinks and watching the evening descend into darkness, with the moon taking over, dipping the tips of the little bay waves in light blue iridescence.
“Say, Amanda.”
“Yes, Sam.”
“If you ever catch me expressing anything like willful pride in my ability to perceive reality, to extract the true thing even when it’s cleverly hidden from view, I want you to remind me of today”
“I will if you tell me what happened.”
“What is it, July 30? Just say to me, ‘remember July 30.’”
“So this isn’t avoidance. It’s humility.”
“That’s right. Maybe with a little awe mixed in.”
“Okay You’re humbled and awestruck. While you’re at it, tag on abstruse.”
I was able to deflect further questions by suggesting we go skinny-dipping.
“Your hair’s already wet,” I said, getting up and jumping down off the breakwater, unbuttoning my shirt and waving for her to join me.
“Is it dark enough?” she asked, as she sat down on the top of the breakwater before sliding off into the sand.
“Nobody on the point but you and me. Might as well own the whole world.”
Since the wind was coming out of the west I knew the water would be warm. I had a theory that the wind scooped up the sun-warmed water from the surface of the shallow Great Peconic, then slid it over here, where it was captured and pooled against Jessup’s Neck. A ridiculous notion, I’m sure, but I didn’t care. There was nobody around to tell me it wasn’t true. There was only Amanda, slender and supple, laughing naked in my arms after we’d dashed across the painfully knobby pebble beach and dove recklessly into the water, breaking through the surface into the fresh moonlight. Humbled, or awed, or simply grateful and surprised, it was easy at that moment to let all forms of thought dissolve into the sacred waters of the Little Peconic Bay, carrying away my manifold fears and indecisions, my uncertainties and confusion.
There’d be time enough to gather all that up again tomorrow.
TWENTY-SIX
LIKE JONATHAN ELDRIDGE’S,Gabe Szwit’s office was above a storefront. The only difference being the view, which for Gabe included the east end of Main Street and halfway down Job’s Lane in Southampton Village. And the store was a little different, since it sold $10,000-a-whack couture instead of $3.95 meatball grinders, unless you wanted a salad, which would add another $1.85.
It was early and few people were on the street. The shops wouldn’t open until about ten, so the sidewalks were mostly given over to early risers grabbing the Times at the cheese place, or couples walking their his-and-hers dogs down to the corner for breakfast and coffee. The light was diffused by the morning mist, and the angle of the sun as it tried to clear the trees and rooftops of the shops, offices and restaurants that lined the street.
As far as I could tell, you reached the office by an outside run of stairs at the back of the building, which also had a small private parking lot. I had to assume Gabe would come in this way, though I didn’t know for sure, or even if he would show up for work that day. For all I knew, he only worked every other day. Or just kept the office for show, while spending the days cruising in his Jag and hanging out with grief-stricken widows.
I had the biggest size cup of coffee you could get from the place on the corner, and a fresh pack of cigarettes. WLIU promised to play jazz all morning, and the Grand Prix was the closest thing you could have to a rolling living room, so the wait didn’t promise to be that hard.
Still, after about three hours I was ready for Gabe to make an appearance. I could usually busy myself noodling out construction plans for the addition, or writing postcards to Allison, or casting about for ways to divert my mind from the litany of worries and regrets it would chew on if left to its own devices. It gets harder when all you’re looking at is the back end of a building, a Dumpster and a flight of rickety wooden stairs.
I gave myself to twelve noon, which is about the time Gabe pulled his Jag into the reserved parking lot, got out and locked the car, then plodded up the stairs, wearing a tan summer suit, his attaché held to his chest like a heavy bag of groceries. I waited until he was through the door at the top of the stairs before following him. The door had a translucent pane of glass in the top panel. It let in light, but you couldn’t see through it. I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. I recognized the door hardware—you could open it with a key, and it would
still lock behind you. Made sense for Gabe Szwit.
I bumped the door with my shoulder to test its mettle. Its mettle was more than up to the task, so I went back down to the Grand Prix and got my little three-pound sledge and a cat’s paw that had a hardened wedge at the other end. I wrapped a piece of terry cloth around the cat’s paw, stuck the wedge in the door next to the doorknob and gave it a hearty smack.
The door gave it up on the second hit, swinging into a dark passageway that led to another door with a translucent panel. As I walked down the hall the inside door swung open and Gabe was standing there, his suit coat off and mouth agape.
“Oh dear God,” he said, looking at the sledge in my hand.
I came at him quickly, holding the hammer at eye level.
“Shut up and get back in there.”
He almost leaped back into the office as I followed him, shutting the door and throwing the deadbolt. We were in a tiny waiting room and Gabe was trying to punch a number into a black office phone that was on a side table next to a stack of Fortune magazines. I swung my right arm and brought the sledge straight down into the middle of the phone. Gabe made some kind of groaning animal sound in his throat and cringed back against the wall, staring stupidly at the phone receiver in his hand, now dangling a disconnected cord. I used the hammer to wave him through the next door.
“Come on, keep going.”
He went through and I followed him. It was a standard lawyer’s office—sturdy walnut-veneered desk in the center of the room, shelves lined with law books, expensive carpet, Currier & Ives prints on the wall and the faint smell of cigars. There were two Hitchcock chairs in front of the desk with the seal of his alma mater, Boston University, stamped on the backrests. A desktop computer was on a work surface perpendicular to the desk, and a large credenza lined the wall behind, the surface of which was decorated with a pair of small aquariums. To the left, under a large bay window, was a red chesterfield. I pointed to it.
“Sit over there.”
