Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“Steak,” Ike said to Walter, preempting Billy. “That’s one. You grill it. No argument about that.”

“Unless you’re a vegetarian,” Walter said.

“That’s no argument,” said Ike. “Vegetarians don’t like steak grilled, fried, or any way, so that’s no argument.”

Walter said, “People who eat vegetables and people who eat steak. They argue all the time.”

“Could be,” said Ike, smoke emerging from just about everywhere. “But that’s an argument about one or the other, not about one. You see? You got nothing in common, you got no argument.”

Walter said, “Ike, every question has at least two answers.”

“Well,” said Ike, “then just answer me this. What you like better, fuckin’ pigs or goats?”

Billy looked up from his catalog. “Ike, you’re crazier every day.”

“Follow me here. Walter? I tell you I like to fuck a goat better. That’s my personal preference. What about you?”

Walter turned to face Ike head on. He made his face as straight as a ruler. “I have never fucked a pig or a goat and don’t plan to. Therefore, I have nothing to say on that.”

“Then we ain’t got no argument. That’s my point exactly.” Ike blew a grand cloud of smoke and waved it toward the outside air.

Billy returned to business, “Walter, one’s fourteen hundred dollars. The other’s two grand.”

“Same size?” asked Walter.

“Yeah.”

“Any other difference between them?”

“Not that I can see.”

“You want to save six hundred bucks?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“Done,” said Billy.

Ike stood and bowed in all directions, basking in his self-appointed victory, then reached inside his shirt pocket to fish out a bent and gnarly butt and hang it from his lower lip, “No argument at all. Why you even got to ask?” He winked at them both and lit the cigarette.

Billy scurried to the register, mumbling something, grabbed the blue chalk, and wrote:

$1400/$2000/No Argument

And he made the chalk squeak extra loud.

Isobel jumped off the ferry in blue shorts and a white cotton top with thin straps. Her open sandals showed ten bright red toenails. She pulled a small black travel case on wheels, and carried a brown coat with a fake fur hem and collar. She spotted Ike across the square. The sign above his head said Billy’s.

She noticed a man lying in the grass in the middle of the square as she crossed. She wondered if he was homeless, or merely tired, or dead as a doornail.

“Hi,” she said to Ike. “I’m Isobel Gitlin.”

It had been a while since a lovely young woman grinned at him that way. He broadened his smile to present his lemon teeth like a row of golden amethysts.

“I’m Ike.” He held out his long, skinny fingers, nicotine-stained, wrinkled by seventy-odd years in the tropical sun. “My very deep and eternal pleasure.” He quickly stood, waving his pink cap above his head like a semaphore.

Ike felt, for an instant, a good deal younger than he was.

“I’m a friend of Walter’s.” Isobel took his hand. “He told me to look for you. He told me I could not miss you.”

“I bet he did too,” said Ike. “You can sit out here with me all day, and I’ll do the best I can. Buy you a drink too. But if you want to see Walter, he is over there.” He waved his hat toward the far end of the bar.

She slung her coat over her wheelie. “I’m sure we’ll have a chance for a drink. I hope so.” Then Isobel made her way through the people packing Billy’s. From what she could see the lunch looked awfully good.

When Walter glimpsed her his face must have changed, because Billy, who was removing his empty Diet Coke bottle, dropped his long, heavy jaw, and said, “Walter?”

“You look great.”

She twirled around for Walter to see. “I changed in St. Thomas.”

“I’m glad to see you, whatever you’re wearing.”

“St. Thomas is not very pretty. Not like I expected.” She hopped onto the barstool beside him, the one where Tom Maloney had been a couple of months before.

“I thought it was supposed to be some kind of paradise. I guess there may be resorts somewhere.”

“On the other side of the island,” said Walter.

“The cab driver told me I was on the wrong side of the island. To me it looks like Brooklyn. No charm at all. Anyway, I’m starving. They don’t feed you on airplanes anymore, do they?”

“Except in first class,” Walter said.

“It was full. I couldn’t get in even at full fare.”

Last night’s sensation returned; she was definitely… different. Unsettled and unsettling. At first, when she turned around for him, she seemed flirtatious. Now, to his disappointment, she was not. She was just nervous.

Isobel ordered a club sandwich and fries. He did too. He watched her gobble it as he picked at his own.

“Anyway, the weather is nice here.” She spoke as she ate.

“How is New York?”

“Miserable. Windy. Cold. Really. Just… fucking… miserable.”

“You ever miss Fiji?”

“A lot. Sometimes. I miss London too. And Paris a little. I’m half French, but I was never French, exactly.”

“How so?”

She went at the sandwich again.

“My mother had this thing about France. I think she really hated it. I bet something terrible happened there but she’s never said what. I like to think it may have involved her mother. Not a very nice woman. I’ll bet that’s why mom went to Fiji. That’s why she was so glad about my father. She was a nurse. She worked in Fiji although she didn’t have to. She’s retired now. We had a house in Paris. I spent some time there when I was little. Americans think the French don’t like them. That is certainly true. But it’s the English they really despise.”

“You always liked London better than Paris?”

“Indeed, sir. I did and still do.” No village sing-song there. She spoke her father’s English.

“And Fiji most of all?”

“Fiji is heaven. The politics are rotten, of course. Where aren’t they? But Walter, the Pacific-it’s blue and clean and endless, not like this dirty shithole Atlantic, filthy and polluted to the bottom. Not here, I mean,” she said, seeing the hurt in his face. “It’s beautiful here. But the North Atlantic doesn’t compare. There’s no better place in the world than Fiji. No fucking better place.”

Her expression changed in mid-sentence. She put her food down.

“I met him.”

“I know. You told me last night.”

She nodded.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

“I will. It’s very complicated. He sent me another letter telling me-”

“Not here. Finish up and let’s go.”

Billy leaned over the bar. He watched Walter and Isobel leave. Then he waved to get Ike’s attention, but Ike only shrugged his shoulders and turned to see the two walk out of sight.

Billy shook his head and picked up a bar rag for which he had no particular use.

When cold weather comes to Connecticut, Grosse Pointe, or Georgetown, some pack up and head for St. John. Having tried it once, they may do so again. If they rent the same house two or three winters in a row, they are very likely to buy, and thus become one kind of local-the kind who maintain a northern home as well. The other locals live on St. John all year. Walter’s Chicago apartment did not disqualify him admission to the second group.

Naturally, Ike belonged to the latter class: not rich like some of the full-time retirees, former snowbirds from here and there. But not by any means poor. He’d always been a worker, an entrepreneur and a saver like everyone in his extended clan. He didn’t care at all what he looked like, but Ike watched his balances closely, with eyes like magnifying glasses.