Hob Broun - Odditorium

“Where were you born?”

“Flint, Michigan. That’s up north.”

“We have been in the States. Did he tell you?”

“Not that I recall.”

“It depressed me. A crumbling empire, you know? And the people are so insecure. So desperate for heroes, don’t you think?”

“Not desperate.” Christo rolled onto his side. “Just fickle.”

“Everything is treated like a pair of shoes.” Inge was flushed with vehemence. “What life is there for artists? You see all the musicians who must go abroad for appreciation while the people worship athletes and television stars.”

Right. Next, Christo supposed, she’ll be asking me if Malcolm X was murdered by the oil companies. “We need a lot of tranquilizing, that’s all. Nothing special.”

Inge squinted at him, stretched out her legs. “Do you mind?” Already her feet were wedged up against his thigh. “I have poor circulation and they get so very cold.”

They were clammy, too, pressing under him and up, digging in like a couple of baby fists. He looked at sea-green veins distinct along her ankle, then into her steady eyes.

“I think in America you must be a beggar or a king and nothing in between,” Inge said, and tiptoed up to the fork in his legs.

“That must be why I left.”

The laundry soap smell was hypnotic, a rhinal drug like the perfume dumped into department-store ventilation systems. Without the least hint of anything on her face, she massaged the root behind his balls with an icy big toe. The most artless pass ever thrown at him, but they were both breathing hard. Crazy situation, ferociously dreamy, brainless, but under wraps somehow. Strangers when we meet. He noticed a saliva bubble in a crevice between her teeth.

“We must stop.” She flipped her bangs, looked away.

Hearing footsteps, Christo rolled over to hide his erection.

A bad morning, Christo faltering out of hermetic sleep and into the shower, rolling his clogged head under the spray until the hot water ran out. Tomas seemed edgy as they walked to the shop, glancing over his shoulder and nibbling the end of his tongue. The paint was dry on the Rover and Abdel, who’d been up all night, had gauze bandages wrapped around one hand. Tomas told him he could take the rest of the day off.

“No hard feelings?” Christo said.

“No feelings, none.” Tomas drew a flat line in the air with his pipe. “I close the book on this thing and then no more. You tell New York what I say. No more.”

“Well, thanks for the dinner. Next time you and Inge will have to come over to my place.”

Christo drove along the waterfront checking pier numbers. The Sombra , a freighter under Liberian registry, was a sorry-looking item, algae blots along the waterline, its red stacks barred with soot. White sunlight gave it the complexion of a disaster ship. Christo imagined a Taiwanese mate gone berserk with a fire axe, alone by morning on a rudderless vessel lost in the garbage currents. Oh well. Maktub , as they say hereabouts. It was out of his hands.

He signed clearance papers, a stack of traveler’s checks. Then, on his way to find a cab to the airport, he let loose his rabbit’s foot and watched it fall, an offering to the sea.

Pierce at the wheel of the Packard was a jolly welcome-wagoneer, rocking from side to side as he hummed selections from On the Town . He’d been a few hours late picking Christo up at the terminal, but presumably had needed the extra time to deck out in the belted camel’s-hair coat, pinstripe three-piecer, taupe gloves, to grab the feel of this event and then describe it in clothes.

“So our ship comes in on the sixteenth and everything is everything. I never doubted your aptitude, jazzbo, not for a second.”

He announced they were bound for Pine Hill, Connecticut, and the Milbank family retreat. It was a proclamation rather than an invitation and Christo chafed at his lack of choice. Back behind the lines, mission accomplished, and still he was following orders. There they were, bombing up the Taconic Parkway with the top down and the threat of snow in the air. They sipped warmth from a pewter hipflask while naked trees whipped by in stripes of gray and brown, a frugal winter plaid.

Minutes from the state line, a police cruiser came up alongside and ran even with them, door handle to door handle. Every few seconds the bruiser inside would turn and stare at them out of his dark eyeholes.

“Fucking yokel,” Pierce said. “I should put him away. Done one twenty in this thing against a headwind.”

“No special effects.” Christo touched his arm. “Please.”

It was just the sort of challenge Pierce would hand himself, one more small stone in the legend he was building. But he just smiled and waved, hissing through his teeth, “Your mother’s head in a plastic bag, Nazi.”

The cruiser peeled back, U-turned across marshy median grass.

By the time Pierce turned onto the gravel drive that led through dark and aromatic woods to the house (erected in 1909 by his great-grandfather with the proceeds from a cotton mill and two tuberculosis sanatoria in the Adirondacks), snow had begun to fall. He coasted around the last curve, leaned back and let woolly flakes melt on his face. With its exposed rafter ends, incised shutters and jigsawed eaves, the house looked like a huge chocolate cuckoo clock.

“Like going back in time, isn’t it?” Pierce surveyed his patrimony from the running board. “To the golden age of the robber barons.”

Inside, Christo stared at his reflection in the dusty glass bell sheltering a stuffed canary while Pierce chased around turning on lights and thermostats. The furnace kicked on, blowing musty fumes, and Christo said he needed some coffee. Badly.

Improbably shiny copper pans and utensils hung from the kitchen beams. Pierce filled the kettle and got French roast beans out of the freezer. The coffee maker took paper filters but none could be found, so Pierce substituted a scarf that had belonged to his grandmother. The resultant brew had a faintly iridescent surface. Christo lifted his cup, blew, sipped.

“Mmmm.” He smacked his lips. “Tastes like old neck.”

It was in an upstairs corner room, at a slate billiard table with mother-of-pearl inlay and ball-and-claw feet, that Pierce and Christo convened to discuss the Morocco operation. They puffed stale cigars and played Chicago rotation by the light of frosted candleflame bulbs.

“Give me your assessment on quality,” Pierce said, lining up a knotty three-ball combination.

“Devastating. Couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”

“You brought a sample?”

“Fuck no. I went out of there clean, baby. An investment like that, I wasn’t going to get popped at the airport for a couple of measly ounces.”

“That’s not like you.”

“Maybe not. You’re disappointed I didn’t screw up?”

“Hey, you’re my hot prospect, my rookie phee-nom. Would I let you fall short?”

Christo flubbed a delicate onion slice on the ten ball. “Not so far.”

“You’re sitting right smack on top of the biggest score of your life, so cheer the hell up. Show a little faith in yourself.”

“Tell it to the Swede.”

“What about him?”

“We were what you call incompatible.”

“Really?” Pierce appraised the end of his cigar, began to pace. “Maybe it figures. The man has the battle stars and he’s been through some hard campaigns. But I have to say I didn’t fill you in all the way on Tommy Ulrich before you left.”

“Let’s have it.”

“I heard — from a highly impeachable source, mind you — that he had a breakdown three years ago, burned out some circuits.”

“Shit.” Christo flung cue chalk across the room. “So you sent me over there without a map.”