T. Boyle - Budding Prospects

“Hey,” Gesh was saying, “did you see this?” Phil got up to join him and whistle in appreciation; I laughed. He was standing over one of Vogelsang’s taxidermic triumphs, a pair of bobcats doing the lindy, claws entwined, knees bent, heads thrown back in Dionysian ecstasy. Beside them, a cakewalking salmon leaped into a lampshade, the soft-white bulb protruding from its mouth like an egg in a comedy routine.

Gesh was trying his index finger against the incisor of one of the bobcats when the kitchen door heaved open and Vogelsang burst into the room, grinning wide. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, pumping my hand, clapping Phil on the back, and hesitating ever so slightly before reaching for Gesh’s hand. Vogelsang had discarded the white hat and apron, and was wearing a T-shirt that announced: I’M OK, YOU’RE OK. There was a moment of confusion over the handshake — Vogelsang coming straight on for the businessman’s handclasp, Gesh cocking his wrist for the soul shake — and then Vogelsang was asking us what we’d like, cocktail, beer, pot, sherry, mulled cider, a nice dry not-too-tart zinfandel he’d come across at a little vineyard in Sonoma County?

Gesh asked him what kind of beer he had and Vogelsang listed six or seven imported brands. “Yeah, that sounds good,” Gesh said, sinking into the sofa and raising a work boot to the coffee table, “beer.”

Vogelsang was a little edgy — I could tell by his diction, which got ever more precise, sprinkled with “I shall”s and “pardon me”s, as if he were trying out for the role of Prince Charles in a made-for-TV movie of the future monarch’s lovelife. He was out of the room and back in an instant with our drinks — Phil and I had asked for scotch — and a tray of antipasto. “We’re having Italian tonight,” he said. “I hope you fellows don’t mind. I make my own pasta, and I’ve been simmering the sauce since I turned out this morning.”

I couldn’t help grinning: he was amazing. Entrepreneur, culturato, expert mechanic, carpenter and electrician, collector non-pareil — and gourmet chef to boot. We murmured our assent, the congenial guests. “Sounds great,” Phil said.

There was a silence. Vogelsang was twisting a wineglass in his hands. Perched on the arm of the sofa, he looked like a bird of prey, his nose hooked like an accipiter’s, the blond hair cropped close as feathers. Phil and Gesh were sunk into the couch like cephalopods washed up on the beach. Vogelsang’s tone was different now, terser, more businesslike. “So you fellows know all the details, correct?” He looked at me. I nodded.

Gesh stirred and pushed himself up with a grunt, as if it required a herculean effort, took a long swallow of beer, and then looked Vogelsang in the eye. “No,” he said, something obstinate and combative creeping into his voice, “why don’t you tell us about it?”

For the past week and a half Phil had been occupying the spare bedroom at Fair Oaks, and Gesh had been sleeping on the couch in the living room. It had taken them a single day to wrap up their affairs in Tahoe (Phil phoned the Tahoe Teriyaki, shouted “I quit” at the bewildered busboy who picked up the phone and then hung up, having forgotten to identify himself; Gesh simply failed to show up for his bartending job). The Cadillac was chalked up as a loss, the girl on the couch — her name was Nelda — was given responsibility for the chalet/cabin/condo/duplex, the landlord was berated and abused via telephone, and close friends were lied to (the official story was that Phil and Gesh were moving to San Francisco to work with me in the remodeling trade). It was rumored that Crazy Eddie’s mother was wiring bail money, so Phil felt he could rest easy on that score, and he closed out his bank account with a check for $32.14. “Well,” he said with a grin after he’d hung up on the landlord, “the only thing now is to pack up all of this shit,” gesturing at the mounds of arcane artifacts that littered the floor like the leavings of an aboriginal tribe, “and hit the road.”

We strapped Phil’s skis to the top of the Toyota, along with three or four cardboard boxes of key belongings and priceless mementoes, like the lacquered conch shell he’d brought back from Miami Beach and the history reports he’d been saving since the ninth grade. He lashed his mattress to the boxes, which were in turn lashed to the skis, which were fixed to the Toyota’s roof by means of a frayed bit of clothesline snaked through the windows and granny-knotted at the level of the driver’s forehead. His record collection, acetylene torch, and guitar took up the entire back seat. Gesh was easier. His worldly possessions amounted to two Safeway bags stuffed with odd bits of clothing — chiefly dirty underwear, judging from the top layer — and a box of paperback books.

When we had it all together it was nearly dark. The mattress-it was a new king-sized sleep-eze deluxe special model and Phil couldn’t bring himself to part with it — sagged over the rear window and mushroomed out from the top of the car like a pulpy carapace. I asked Phil if he was sure the rope would hold. “This?” he said, cinching a limp strand of clothesline to the radio antenna. “Are you kidding? You could take this thing through a hurricane and then drive coast to coast and back again.” He patted the mattress. “No: this baby isn’t going anywhere.”

As we were crossing the Bay Bridge four and a half hours later, a sudden gust lifted the mattress off the roof and deposited it beneath the wheels of a semi loaded with ball bearings. When it broke loose it took a box of mementoes with it, slamming at the roof of the car like an angry fist and then tearing back with a heart-seizing rumble and a rush of wind. “What was that?” Phil gasped, jerking awake.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to account for the sudden visibility through the rear window. “I think we lost something.”

Gesh’s voice was flat and emotionless. He could have been a radio commentator noting a minuscule change in hog futures. “Your mattress,” he said.

We stopped in the inside lane. Trucks shrieked by with a suck of wind, tires hissed like death, the hair beat crazily at our heads. I could barely catch my breath, each truck tearing the oxygen from my lungs like an explosion. The mattress had already been flattened along three-quarters of its length. Phil made several feints to rush out and nab it, but the traffic was mindless. Sixty miles an hour: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The bridge swayed with the thunder of the big semis. There was a stink of diesel fuel, gull shit, the dead man’s tide. We shrugged our shoulders and eased back into the car.

For the next nine days we divided our time equally between making preparations for our move to the country (Phil purchased an imitation Swiss Army knife with a corkscrew the size of an auger, Gesh washed his underwear, and I bought six snakebite kits) and deliberating over how we would spend our respective shares of the profits accruing from the summer camp. Gesh was going to reserve the first ten thousand of his $166,666.66 for a blowout at the carnival in Rio, then invest the balance in a thirty-five-foot sloop and cruise the Caribbean with dusky-skinned women, eating lobster and pompano. Phil was going to pay off his debts and maybe open another restaurant — a New Orleans-style fish house with a tile floor, teak booths and big lazy overhead fans. I was worried about taxes. I figured I could buy another neglected Victorian and clandestinely pump cash into it while simultaneously writing off the cost of labor and materials. At any rate, we all agreed that we were sick to death of scrambling for a living and that here was our chance to set ourselves up for life.

“I’m tired of busting my ass for somebody else,” Phil said, as if he’d been accused of liking it, “and then being so depressed I’ve got to spend every nickel I make on cocktails and tranquilizers.”