Robert Stone - Fun With Problems

"Shame on you," Margaret said. "And take off that stupid hat."

It was close to noon when they arrived in Calverton and parked on the road a few yards up from the Bowers' house. Margaret looked as chic as a middle-aged woman in white coveralls ever could, but she was annoyed at the delays.

"Check it out."

Slash started out of the truck.

"Not you," Margaret told him. "Cordy."

Cordy returned to say that the coast was clear.

"No system?" Slash asked.

Margaret laughed bitterly, snorted. "He didn't set it. People like him often don't."

They drove up to the house.

"Even if they'd set the system," said Donny, "I coulda disarmed it."

"Yes, you're wonderful, Slash," Margaret said. She addressed him as Slash only to torment him. "Now check the weathervane." She indicated the metal instrument on the roof. It had the form of a killer whale and was handsomely wrought.

"Nice," said Donny.

"Nice. So can you?"

"Sort of a hassle. But yeah." He turned and looked down the wooded driveway behind them. "Think it's cool?" From somewhere in the middle distance they heard the whine of a chain saw. Someone cutting firewood. Cordelia, without her bomber jacket or tweed cap, was jumping up and down out of high spirits and to keep warm.

"Let it go," Margaret told him. "Maybe we can take it when we're weathervane shopping. Open the door, please."

"Deadbolt?"

"He didn't use two keys."

Slash tried and failed to open the door with a credit card. Then he applied the Halligan bar his cousins had stolen from a West Virginia state police car. The door, lopsidedly, fell open.

"Open fuckin' sesame! Perfecto Garcia!"

Margaret brushed past him and the couple followed her. Inside, they put on their rubber gloves and took up items as Margaret directed. As she watched through a window, they carried furniture and bric-a-brac outside and stashed it in the rental truck on padded mover's quilts.

" Doucement, " Margaret advised them. "Gently."

After their exertions her two assistants both began to tremble with cold and the drug.

"Let's go," Cordelia whined. She had begun jumping again, in the Bowers' living room, and was working herself into a state. "Let's go before some asshole comes. Like joggers or…"

Donny, annoyed, grabbed her arm to hush her and discourage her bouncing. Cold as it was, they watched Margaret unbutton her leather coat and take a pearl-handled straight razor from one of the pockets and hasten into the bathroom. Very shortly she emerged. Her face was contorted with what appeared to be rage.

"Let's go, Slash," Cordelia said, pulling him toward the door.

They stood just outside the crippled, half-open door. They could hear Margaret screaming inside, the smash of glass and crockery, the rending of cloth.

"What?" he demanded. "What the fuck?"

"You've never seen her do this before? This is like her signature mode." She moved from the door with an expression of pity and distaste. "Oh, Jesus, I hate it."

"Does what? What's she doing?"

"You'll find out."

Slash stepped inside and came out again.

"Jeez," he said, "she's cuttin' it up pretty good. She's wired. Bad."

Cordelia shook her head and sighed impatiently.

"Yeah, she's like loot and pillage."

He and Cordelia stood shivering, watching the driveway, until Margaret appeared. She looked quite composed, if a little unsteady and breathing audibly. Donny and Cordelia said nothing.

"Okay," Margaret said. " Tout finis. Let's roll."

They had driven the truck only a few miles along the highway when Donny saw a flashing bluey in his rearview mirror. A startling burst of siren rose and fell. Cordelia, crouching behind the seats, cursed and moaned.

"What?" Donny asked Margaret.

"Were you speeding?"

"No way."

"Well, pull over." She turned back to Cordelia. "Relax, dear. We'll survive."

The cruiser that had pulled them over belonged to the town cops. There was only one of them, quite a young man. He wore cheap sunglasses, so Margaret could not be sure how stupid he was.

"I only wear handcuffs when I'm being fucked," Margaret whispered. She was joking to encourage them. The cop got out and stood just to the rear of the driver's side door, looking in at Cordelia.

"License and registration," he told Donny. Donny had a forged but well-made Virginia driver's license. The cop gave them all the once-over and stepped back and away to read the documents. He did not return them. From her side, Margaret leaned across Slash to address the young policeman.

"A problem, officer?"

He looked at her without apparent expression.

"Where you all coming from?"

"From Princeton, New Jersey," Margaret declared. "Actually, we're on our way home."

"Where to?"

"Across the bay. I have a house in Fredericksburg."

"What about you, sir?" the cop asked Slash.

"Little Creek, Virginia. See, we're driving her. Moving some furniture." He was blinking stupidly in all directions. Margaret gave him an elbow.

"Didn't take Ninety-five?"

"Thirteen is so much more pleasant," said Margaret. "Sometimes faster, too."

The cop turned on Cordelia in her lair behind the seats.

"That true?"

"Yes, it is," Cordelia answered, sounding like her mother.

"This lady your mom?"

"Yes, she is."

"You family too?" the officer asked Donny.

"No," Donny said. He showed the officer his top-of-the-line smile. "Hired help."

"That right?" he asked the ladies.

"Well, yes," Margaret answered a bit impatiently. After a moment the officer handed Donny the registration and license.

"Have a nice day, ma'am." He took a last glance at Donny Slash. "Drive carefully, sir."

When the cop had vanished from sight, Donny and Cordelia whooped with joy.

"Oh, Moms! You're like so great!" She was, in the end, her mother's greatest admirer.

"Hey, Slim," Donny yelled. "You're awesome, man."

He took one hand off the wheel to offer Margaret a high-five. She condescended to return it.

"Everybody loves you when you're somebody else," she explained.

ON A VERY FOGGY late-autumn morning, a man named Eric Floss was wandering the quaint streets of a preserved Connecticut whaling town. He found himself walking scrubbed brick sidewalks that fronted the marble steps of exquisite Federal-style houses. Old ironwork bordered gardens grown with lilac bushes and hedged in boxwood. There were warmly lighted shops soon to open for the sale of antique ornamental pieces and vintage furniture. One place had antique willow-patterned china from the ginseng trade. Most of the windows, though, offered midlevel, tourist-standard marine studies. There was scrimshaw from the lathes of the Philippines and here and there some genuine old pieces, crude but authentic. A few shops had rows of jade and amber jewelry for sale and the odd lissome ivory apsara.

Floss had come to the town because it was where a ferry crossed many times a day to Steadman's Island, the only habitable point on a reef of rocky islands, a low-key resort where large holdings and a paucity of space and fresh water had made summering expensive and restricted. One section of Steadman's Island was called Heron's Neck, the site of the island's largest and most ornate summer cottage. The big houses were all called cottages.

It had become generally known that the owner of Heron's Neck, a friend of the Secretary of Defense, had made the place available to his friend for a few days. The Secretary liked to summon his political retainers to remote and inconvenient meeting sites to inform them of his wishes, and the island had become a favorite. That fall week he had called a conference to sic the dogs of his department on some of their opposite numbers in other government agencies.