George Higgins - The rat on fire

Max reminded Jerry Fein that he, Max, had been through his own divorce action four and a half years ago and he was just then getting back on his feet both financially and emotionally and he did not have any interest whatsoever in going through Gloria’s divorce with her. He said he would still, like to know when Jerry Fein was finally going to do the right thing by his old friend, Max, and start insuring all his profitable real estate with Max so that Max would have a little help from his old friend Jerry in the course of getting back on his feet again, both financially and emotionally.

Jerry Fein said, “Max, you are in business in a nice suburb, and when somebody says to you that he has some real estate that he rents out, you automatically think it is something where Jewish widow ladies go and sit out by the swimming pool on nice days like this and schmoos a little.

“The trouble with what you think, Max,” Jerry Fein said, “is that it is not true in my case and you should be very happy and grateful to me that you do not have the business of insuring the property that I got in Boston, because if I ever gave you that business you would not be able to play golf even in the dark. Because the people who live in my buildings are not nice and they do not pay their rent and they are always doing something to those buildings that every so often costs more to fix than the five-hundred-dollar deductible which is the most policy that anybody is willing to write for me even though I do pay a fortune for it. And I would therefore be calling you up all the time and bothering Gloria and distracting her from all the fun she is having with her divorce, all right?

“As for secretaries,” Jerry Fein said, “let me give you the benefit of a secret which I learned a long time ago, and that is when they have got something on their minds that is such that they cannot concentrate on anything else at the same time, the sensible thing to do is say to them like I did to Lois Reynolds last night when she was howling about this Winnebago she wants to get for her husband and does not seem to be able to so that she is on the telephone all day about it and is not getting any work done, that the sensible thing to do is to say to Lois like I did last night, ‘All right. You will take tomorrow off and go and settle this matter once and for all, and have a nice time at it, so that when you come back day after tomorrow, you will have finished your business and you will be in a much better mood.’

“Then she will say,” Fein said, “that she cannot possibly do this because it will leave you, which is me, all alone with nobody to answer the phone and when she comes back tomorrow I will have spent the whole day answering my phone and talking to people that I refuse under all circumstances to talk to when she is there and answering the phone, and consequently she will come in tomorrow and have to put up with me in a worse mood than she was in yesterday, because she knows how I get when she’s been out sick or we don’t happen to take the same lunch hour or something.

“I tell her,” Fein said, “that this is not going to be the case. This is because it is summer and I have not had any vacation to speak of and the business’s been going pretty good and I am going to reward myself with a day on the links so that I will not be there today either and the goddamned phone can ring its ass off if it wants without bothering me at all. Besides, I am spending all of my waking hours worrying about whether Mabel and the Golden Throats have got them breaking down the doors at Simmy’s in Taunton. And also whether Foxy Flaherty is satisfied in Lowell with the fine comic routines of Happy Morris, the Poor Man’s Zero Mostel, who has been known to do the same thing in his dressing room at intermission as the customers are doing at the bar out front. Only he does as much of it in twenty minutes or a half an hour as all of them together do all evening, so he sometimes has trouble making the second show and more than once has missed the third show entirely or else done the material he is supposed to save for the reunions they have when some guy gets back to the old neighbourhood after he finishes doing twenty years for armed robbery, if you get my meaning.

“All day every day I worry about such things, and today I decide that I am going to worry about whether I can finally get a par on the eighth and maybe hold myself down to a double bogey on the fifteenth, because I have worked hard and I have earned it, and that is what I did all day. See? That way, nobody has to worry about the phone, because Lois is off buying Winnebagos and I am off playing golf and except for you and the guy that serves the breakfast and the guy that serves the drinks and the lunch and the kid that brought me this drink and the one I had before that, the only person in the world besides Lois who knows where I am is Ralphie, my caddy, that I spent the whole day with having a nice conversation about the economy and gasoline and whether I should use a seven iron or a five iron on a particular approach shot. I like Ralphie. He is a fine young boy and he does not hesitate to say when he thinks you are not maybe using enough club. I tipped him ten bucks.”

“I only tip him three,” Max said.

“That is not wise,” Fein said. “Ralphie is an ambitious boy and he wants to go to medical school when he finishes college. If you only tip him three bucks, he will not remember you in the same favourable light that he remembers me, and he will not tell you when he thinks you are not using the right club. Whereas Ralphie is very fond of his old buddy, Jerry Fein, and is always glad to see me when I come here, and turns down people like Max Winchell so he can caddy for me and I will slip him ten at the end even though it is against the rules. Ralphie remembers Jerry Fein very well, and it is worth ten bucks for his help and assistance in putting together a decent round of golf.”

“What’d you shoot?” Winchell said.

“One-oh-three, this morning,” Fein said. “One-oh-five this after. But I had a very relaxing day with Ralphie, and it was very good to get away from the office and the telephone for a change. I enjoyed it.”

Fein got home just after seven-thirty. Pauline Fein was waiting for him in the living room. She rose up from the turquoise couch with the gold-finish trim as soon as he opened the white panelled door. She stood on the yellow shag rug in her bare feet and her cover-up that she put on the minute she emerged from her nude swim in the pool secluded in the back yard.

“Jerry,” she said, “the police are on the way.”

“The police,” he said. “Would you mind telling me why the police are coming? What’d they do, get a kid to climb the fence so they could tell you had any clothes on in the pool? You got a perfect right to swim naked in your own back yard. I told you that before. You want to swim bare-ass, swim bare-ass. They can’t do anything about that.”

“I didn’t know where you were,” she said.

“That’s not police business either,” he said. “I changed my mind, going down the street. I gave Lois the day off today when we left the office last night, she’s tryin’ to get this camper for her husband and it’s been drivin’ her nuts. So and all right, and then it occurs to me, if Lois isn’t going to be in, I’m going to end up spending the whole day answering the goddamned telephone. And I am therefore not going to get a chance to do any of my own work. And besides, why should I? I work hard all the time. I deserve a day off to play golf for once during the week when it isn’t crowded and you don’t have to stand in line, every tee.”

“I didn’t know where you were,” she said again.

“Last night,” Fein said, “last night you told me, when we went to bed, you were working at the thrift shop this morning and then you and Stephanie were having lunch at the Colonnade. I didn’t want to wake you up, I got to the club, and by the time I figured you’d be up, I was on the third tee. I wasn’t going to go back to the clubhouse then to call you, and besides, if I’d had’ve you’d’ve gone to the thrift shop by the time I got to the clubhouse phone. And when I finished the first round and I was having lunch, you were having lunch.”