John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“It’s all like one big happy family.”

“What? Oh, yes. Exactly. There are a few who don’t... participate very much, but we don’t have any of the wrong sort.”

“This old darling-type fellow, this Gus somebody, you figure he’d sell me a hunk of land?”

She seemed startled. “Well... the best pieces are gone and it’s really gotten terribly dear. The last piece sold, to a perfectly darling couple named Crown, well, it went at a hundred and sixty a foot, Gulf to bay, so they had to pay thirty-two thousand for their two hundred feet, and they’re going to start to build soon.”

“I wouldn’t need so much, Marg. Just to park a trailer on.”

“A trailer!”

“We call them mobile homes now. It sounds more deluxe.”

“You couldn’t do that! This is all zoned A-1 residential. My goodness, you’d never... you’re joking, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m pulling your leg, Marg. Actually I’m loaded.”

“What?”

“Loaded. Up to here in money.”

“Really?”

“What you call nouveau riche . I’m a diamond in the rough. Heart of gold. I really come on for dogs and kids. I’d be an asset to the Key.”

She had become very uncertain. “Are you really thinking of staying here?”

“I’m looking around, kiddo. Put it that way. Of course, I move into a place like this, I’d change my name to Rodens.”

“Are you being rude?”

“I don’t want to make you sore. I figure you could tip me off on something good down here to get into. Or that Charlie of yours could. Got to put money to work, you know.”

“Did you... sell your newspaper?”

“I never owned one. No, it was like this, Marg. My old man was a real slob. Ran a sheet metal shop in Buffalo, New York. He was so dumb and crude and ignorant people couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t. I never saw him one time since I was sixteen. But he had one hobby. He bought little chunks of stock and put them away. I never knew about that. Not until he died. Crazy stocks like Polaroid and Electric Boat and Reynolds Metals. The timing is interesting. Last October my wife gets a diagnosis of cancer, one of the fast hopeless kinds. By the end of November I am entirely out of money. By middle December the lawyers in Buffalo find me, ten days after the old man is buried, and suddenly I’m worth a few hundred thousand bucks. I could draw against it right away, but I didn’t get it all until two weeks after my wife died. Now my kids are in Melford School in Vermont, and I’m loaded, kiddo.”

She stared at him. He noted that her hand shook a little when she hoisted the drink to her mouth.

She got up and said, “I hope you’ll have a very nice visit here, Mr. Rodenska.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Laybourne.”

She started to turn away and then turned back with a small and social laugh, and a special gleam of malice. “You’d better be careful about putting any of your great wealth in Troy’s project. My Charlie would tell you the same thing.”

She walked away. Rodenska forked up the last piece of cucumber and spoke to himself sharply. Down, boy. You’re too shaky to play games. Even with a target like that.

At one point he had felt close to tears. With no reason. Not about Buttons. Tears, maybe, from a kind of helpless frustration at finding himself mauling the woman without cause. She couldn’t help what she was. Of the two of them, he had been the vicious one. (Except for that crack about Troy.) She was merely empty, in a way that seemed to comfort her. He had been writing dirty words on the sidewalk, out of a kind of compulsion. As if, when Buttons had died, patience had died with her. The world was crummy, and they came at you from all angles lately. Have to watch it.

He changed the subject by focusing his specialized attention on a couple by the pool — a man, dry and brown as a corpse left too long in the sun, sitting angularly on a poolside cushion talking privately to a rounded blonde in a pink suit who lay on a chaise longue with her face upturned toward the sun. He soon realized they were quarreling, slowly, quietly, viciously, with long silences between the unforgivable things they were saying to each other. He did not change expression and barely moved his lips when he spoke to her. When she answered her face would change. She had prettiness, marred by too small a mouth and a piggy little nose. She looked spoiled, petulant, bored and bitter when she answered him. The lines would go away when she again composed her face for the beat of the sun.

Married, he decided. And he’s twenty years older, and it’s probably a second one, and he was so charged up about those tits he didn’t stop to think of what they’d find to do outside of bed, and now she’s started fooling around a little, and he can’t prove anything but he’s suspicious as hell. She was twenty-five when she married him and now she’s thirty — five years older and fifteen pounds heavier — and afraid he’s going to live forever.

The last outpost of gracious living. But informal.

He went over to the bar and found gin and collins mix and made himself a tall strong drink.

As he started to turn away from the bar Troy said, “Party pooper.”

Mike turned and looked up at the taller man. Troy had grown a lot heavier in five years. The hair was thin and blond-gray. There were dark pouches under his eyes.

“I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Don’t kid me. I wasn’t missed.”

Troy started to build himself an old-fashioned. “I should have folded when you did. How are you coming along?”

“Adequate. I just ate like a pig.”

“Mary says you were swimming early.”

“You know how it is with us athletes. What the hell does the ‘D’ stand for?”

“What? Oh, ‘D’ for ‘Dexter.’ ”

“Dexter Troy Jamison. My, my!”

“Looks juicy on that blue mailbox, doesn’t it?”

“Real rich. I’ll call you Dex, like I was a friend.”

“Try it. One time.”

They took their drinks over and sat on a bench on the far side of the pool.

“The Sunday routine,” Troy said. “If I recover fast enough maybe we’ll take the boat out, but probably no. There’ll be a group on the beach. There’ll be some ways you can lose money. Or you can play tennis at the Laybournes’ or the Key Club. Or just drink.”

“I won’t be playing tennis at the Laybournes’.”

“No?”

“Marg Laybourne tried to work me over. But she wasn’t used to a counterpuncher.”

“Same old Mike. Same old war against the phonies. Surprised you bothered with her.”

“So am I. It was too easy. No challenge.”

“In a little while I’m going to see if I can make it all the way to the Gulf.”

“Say, are you used to a counterpuncher, old Troy?”

“Am I a phony?”

“How can I tell?”

“What do you mean by that, Mike?”

“Let me put it this way. I got here Monday. You got a fine place. And, let me add, a dandy wife. I like Mary. But I get the polite, gracious, impersonal routine from you, boy. I’m maybe somebody you met in a club car and invited down here to this last outpost of gracious living. We met seventeen years ago, Troy. Remember me? Chrissake, I don’t want hugs and kisses, but I don’t like you being on guard.”

“On guard?”

“That’s the impression you give. Damn if it isn’t. Are you self-conscious about all this? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? And you were on your way to making it one way, and you goofed yourself out of that, so you married it. All right. I’ve got nothing against you marrying it.”

“That’s nice to know. I needed your approval.”

“Get nasty. At least it’s a change.”

“It’s been five years. People change.”

“Not this much.”