The Gold Diggers

by Paul Monette

  He couldn’t even speak to say he was sorry. He would have spit blood if he talked right now. He could only flush and look at the ground and hate himself. But Peter wasn’t trying to put him through more than it was worth. He reached across the space between them. He tapped Nick lightly on the breastbone as if he were knocking at a door. They smiled a fraction of an inch. Or not even that. They gave one another a certain look. And though Sam didn’t watch them as he wandered around, he did seem to wait to let them adjust before he went on. Then he stopped walking and stood behind the painting, leaning on the frame like a podium. He was never quite still, even then. He stretched his naked shoulders and flexed the muscles in his chest, his body in constant motion, however slight. It was like watching a horse shiver and twitch.

  “There’s no point telling you the truth about me and Varda,” he said, as if he’d mulled it all over in a quiet corner and finally thrown up his hands. Almost as if he didn’t want to make any friction. “The spic’s told you his version, right? I know it makes things simpler for all of you to see it that way.” He shrugged very deeply like a man lifting weights. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me, anyway. It’s just too bad for you that you’ll never know what Varda was really like. He’s the only guy I ever met who didn’t want to go to heaven.”

  He seemed to be shaking his finger at both of them, trying to smarten them up. In a way, given the time and place, it was the most perplexing thing of all to Nick and Peter, hearing him show off the range of his wisdom and experience. They had his type pegged from their two different angles, and they would have sworn he’d never known anyone “really.” Nick thought:That’s the fiction we’ve put behind us in Crook House, isn’t it, that we have to go after what people are really like? “People are really like everyone else” is how he might have put it to Sam. But they were much better off not dwelling on it. Nick could have shaken his own finger, after all, and told him off with blood on his teeth, but Peter was right. Shut up. Nick took all the strength he needed from seeing that he and Peter knew better. Otherwise, though the side of his face had started swelling up till it would be by morning fat as an apple, he had left in him still the faint trace of a strange desire. He didn’t know why, but now he didn’t want to spoil Sam’s version of the story. It made him feel a little crazy. Maybe the leap of violence, back and forth, had made him remember something delicious that lay between them. He was glad he didn’t have to be alone with Sam and follow it out. For once, he didn’t want to know why.

  “I’m going to let Peter tell you where we are now,” Sam said, very businesslike, as if Peter were his apprentice. Nick turned and saw the contempt in Peter’s eyes. Apparently, he and Sam had had their own little cold war going before he got here. Peter hadn’t started out silent, either.

  “What?” Nick asked. He heard it, but he hoped he’d heard it wrong.

  “I said: He’s planted a case of dynamite.” Then Peter went on, but he was stingy with the details, trying to diminish it. “All through the mine, like a string in a cave. He’s got the end of the fuse in his sleeping bag.”

  “Why?”

  “That I don’t know,” Peter said, an edge of boredom in his voice that must have maddened Sam. “He’s sending me out and keeping you in. I’ve told him everything we know about Varda’s collection. And then about all our money, yours and mine.” He paused and looked at Nick, wondering how he would have done it instead. “It seemed better just to tell the truth.”

  “But why?” Nick asked again, confused by the fact that there seemed to be a plan. He left the question open so Sam could answer, too.

  “All right,” Sam said to Peter, “now get out of here.”

  Nick didn’t have a moment to think. Peter hugged him and kissed his hair, and that brought the tears up again. Which locked his voice at the crucial moment. All he could manage was Peter’s name. The thing he would have said was too complicated, anyway. In the fullness of the hour, he might have implied that he’d solved at last the dream of the cowboy lover. It wasn’t true. It was only that he’d never found himself face to face before with a man he’d broken off with. Five days ago in Santa Monica, he actually felt his temperature drop as he walked away to the car he had no further use for. Before the day was out, Sam was no longer in his system. And that was the way it always was, until now. Before five days were out, he was most likely to be found at the baths when not available by phone. So what he’d like to have gotten across to Peter here was something about the timing of desire. How it didn’t die fast at all. How it lingered and changed its shape. When he stared it in the face again, everything he’d ever felt about Sam came back at once. It was as if he finally understood what he went through in all his furtive, minor loves. There was more to these things than beginning, middle, and end. And though he couldn’t yet put it into words, he knew it meant at the very least that he and Peter were fine. Nothing would ever split them up.

  But whatever the certainties Nick might harbor in his head, Peter was certainly going away right now. He crossed the floor and began to inch his way up the slope of the wall. Nick could tell he’d been down here a while, because he knew where the crevices were, and the footholds. When he could reach it, Peter pulled himself up to the door of the tunnel in one great lift, like a swimmer swooping out of a pool. Considering that he didn’t go in for exercise, he was remarkably fit and agile in a pinch. It was all those sturdy Russian genes, Nick thought, his mind still wandering wide. Peter brushed himself off and turned around and nodded good-bye, and Nick at least was prompt in nodding back. But Peter’s nod was to tell him to watch himself, so it was smart and vivid and heavy with radar. Nick nodded from out of a dream. He was there like a minor relative left on the dock, waving as the ship pulls away to sea.

  “Wait,” Sam said, and Nick looked over at him hopefully. It was only a test, after all, he thought, to see how strong they could be when they said good-bye. Nothing was final. Sam was just in a mood to play. “Take off your clothes,” he said to Peter, and Nick thought: All we have to do is go along, and in a minute he’ll stop. He was sure Sam wanted them making protests and fighting back. All the fun would go out of it if they did what they were told.

  Peter was perfect. He could have stripped like a hustler and given Sam a surly, slit-eyed look. But he did it as if he were standing alone in his closet at home, quickly and matter-of-factly. With one theatrical touch: He flung each thing out in front of him instead of dropping it in a pile. His shirt spread its wings and lilted to the floor. Jingling with keys and pocket change, his pants dropped like a stone. When he’d cast off his underwear, he stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips, waiting impassively for the next turn of the screw.

  “That should slow you down a little,” Sam said in an oddly good-humored voice. “I wouldn’t want you just driving off in Nick’s car. That’s too easy. The cops will still be there, no matter how long it takes.”

  “Is that where you want me to go?” Peter asked. He looked like a statue in a niche in an ancient temple.

  Sam shrugged. “It’s where you’re going,” he said philosophically. “I don’t expect to get everything I want. We’ll be ready when they come.”

  “Be careful,” Peter said gently, in a voice more appropriate to saying it to Nick than Sam. Nick had a shiver of emptiness, in fact, because he needed to hear it so much himself. And Sam seemed genuinely taken aback. Peter meant to tell him he might be in a tighter place than he wanted or thought. He could do whatever he felt like, but he ought to think it through. It wasn’t just a warning. It was as if Peter didn’t want him to fail.

  “Take your shoes, at least,” Sam said. But when he realized they’d have to be picked up off the floor and handed over, he looked at Nick to do it for him. He busied himself behind the painting, not at all ready to pursue any further the tone in Peter’s voice. So Nick in his stockinged feet, sore to the bone, retrieved the two shoes where Peter had thrown them and hobbled across the chamber. Peter stooped and held out his hand,
and Nick reached up twice.

  “How much do I love you?” he whispered, giving over the left shoe.

  “More than I know,” Peter replied with a sly smile. It was an old song and dance that pattered between them when they lay in each other’s arms in the dark. A parody of things they’d said when they started out. “What was the thing you always wanted most?”

  “A sidekick,” Nick said, quick on the cue. He surrendered the other loafer. “A guy to knock around with. Maybe get into a little trouble. How about you?”

  “Someone to be in exile with, of course.” It could have gone on and on, but Peter and Nick weren’t the whispering sort. Peter stood up, stepped into the shoes, winked once, and turned and went. He made his way out of sight, walking heavily, like a caveman. Nick let him go without a pang. They’d got off a better good-bye the second time around, and it made it seem as if they were only temporarily caught going in opposite directions. They knew who they were and where they lived in real life.

  “Well,” Nick asked, stepping up close so the painting stood between them, “now will you tell me why?”

  “It’d be different,” Sam said, “if it was your clothes I’d wanted off.” He was getting amused again, the way he had in the secret room before the roof caved in. “I might get ideas if I saw you naked.”

  “We could use a good idea down here, I think. Any idea. What’s the dynamite for?”

  “To blow things up.”

  “What things?”

  But instead of answering, Sam stood back a bit and spread his arms, like a tumbler just landed on his feet. He meant everything. He doesn’t have a plan at all, Nick thought. It was only pretending. And if he was making it up as he went along, Nick counted one for their side. After all, Nick was a salesman. It was his business to get undecided people to do things they thought were their own idea. And Nick had a secret of his own:There was no way Sam could know the part of him that hated him. Sam had seen him only meek and overly accommodating. The last time they’d met, Nick was still giving away sports cars. So he thought he’d be smart and be full of longing still. Keep Sam’s guard down.

  “The dynamite is here,” Sam said, “to give an edge to things.”

  “Listen. I can give you enough money to get out of here. You know you don’t have much time. I’ve got three hundred on me, and I’ll go wherever you want to give you more.”

  “Wait a minute, Nick.”

  “It doesn’t matter how much. I’ll get it. We can meet in San Francisco.”

  “Wait,” Sam barked. “If we’re going to start bargaining, there’s something I need to do first. Don’t move.”

  And he went to the wall and walked right through it. The yellow light around the lanterns played a trick on the surfaces below. The stone seemed to wave and ripple like curtains drawn at an open window. Sam walked into a shadow that grew and shrank, and he reappeared up on his ledge a couple of seconds later. Nick thought, as he strained to make out what Sam was doing in the upper darkness: A couple of seconds was enough to give some men a proper head start. Two clean leaps and a gymnast’s body swing would have landed Nick on Peter’s ledge, and then he’d be off and running. But Nick had never done much with a couple of seconds. He worked through a state of emergency at his own speed or not at all. Besides, he didn’t want to be chased. He could trust the face-to-face to keep him from getting shot, but he might not survive the role of a moving target in a tunnel. Sam, he realized in the meantime, must know every passage in the mine. Like a house where the last survivor lives surrounded by rooms lit only by daylight.

  Nick could hear the striking of the match. Then the hiss when the fuse took a bite of the flame.

  He shouted “No!” and started to run, and fell. His feet wouldn’t hold him. In a flash he was down to nothing, thrown on his hands and knees, all his scenarios gone. He huddled against the floor. His mind went out like the bit of match that lit the fuse. He’d never been alone at all compared with this, and he knew he would die of it. Just at the moment the dynamite blew, his heart would break. But then, turning it into a joke, the music clicked on again and drowned the sputtering out, and he saw that even his death would be taken away. Why don’t we dance, why don’t we dance? He put his hands against his ears and screamed.

  Sam pulled him to his feet when he ran out of breath. He gripped him by the biceps and laughed in his face. “Are you that scared?” he asked delightedly, as if Nick’s fear were the thing he’d been waiting for all day long. “Easy, baby, easy. It’s slow. Like Peter said, I got a fuse that goes everywhere. I just want to shorten it. It won’t burn all the way down to the powder for maybe an hour. But isn’t it nice to know it’s going?”

  “Let me out. It’s not my fault.”

  “Stop it,” he said, tightening his grip. They could have been just about to dance. “Don’t piss me off, Nick. We’re not the ones who’ll die down here. It’s for cops. We got another way out.”

  “But why?” Nick asked, his blood still racing. They’d gotten a reprieve, but it burned and burned. What did Sam know about dynamite?

  “You keep asking me that,” he said, and he sounded disappointed. Apparently, he’d expected something more from Nick. He pulled away and turned to the painting. Nick slumped down and sat on the television. As he put his head between his knees, it seemed as if Sam were telling it to Rembrandt more than to him. “Today I figured out what’s wrong with everything,” he said, but you couldn’t tell if he was still being funny or not. He spoke entirely in short sentences, and they seemed to Nick entirely unrelated one to another. Nick thought he’d have more to say about Varda’s treasure. “There are all these stories that don’t end right. Like Ben. And Varda and me. Did you know they worked this mine for eighteen years? It’s written on one of the walls like a calendar. Next to it is a map of the whole mine, where they would have dug next and everything. They planned it years ahead. But they stopped. No reason. See what I mean?”

  Ben who? Nick thought. He tried to listen, in case there was a clue to where the explosive device was set. He wasn’t sure he could chase down the fuse, even if Sam let him loose to do it. So listen, he ordered himself. At least find out the reasons, see where they go. It didn’t matter if they didn’t make sense. There wasn’t time.

  “Everything stops,” Sam said, “but there isn’t an ending. You know, I wasn’t sure what I really wanted when I bought the stuff. I thought I’d maybe blow the place up all by myself. Just sit outside and watch the hill cave in. I mean, once I was done with it. I liked the feel of it, all ready to go—one match, s-s-s-s-s-s, ‘Bingo!’ I think I sleep better with a case of dynamite under my pillow.”

  “How long have you been here?” Nick slipped in. Turn it back to a conversation, he warned himself. If he didn’t, five minutes from now he’d have no say at all. He had to hurry him up.

  “Off and on, ten days. With all my stuff, since Wednesday.” Five days. Since they’d met in Santa Monica. “I was planning to sit on Varda’s money here till the heat was off.” He went up close to the painting now. He looked over the damage, putting out a finger to touch the gouges. No emotion. “Now that’s changed,” he said. “It wasn’t the way I thought it would be in Crook House.” No recriminations, either. Evidently, no feeling of having been tricked. Not even enraged at losing all that time. “That’s when I thought of the mine. Because something’s got to have a good ending. It isn’t enough if I just light it and run like hell and watch it go. We got to make it a news event.”

  “But, Sam,” he said, as reasonably as he could, “if you kill a cop, they’ll get you. You’ll be sent up for life. Think, why don’t you. If you didn’t kill Varda, what you’ve done up to now is nothing.” Forgive me Hey, he thought, I have to. But when Sam turned to listen, Nick caught the glint of defiance in his eye. As if a life term had a certain appeal for a tough guy. As if the minor nature of the crimes so far committed were the crux of the problem. On to bigger things.

  “But you’re not listening, Nick. We h
ave a chance to play cowboys and Indians for real.”

  “Grown-ups don’t play.”

  “Is that so?” Sam said, sneering broadly. “What about the guys I work for? What do they do when they’re out on the street getting laid?”

  He laughed without making a sound. Then he tapped the barrel of the gun against his lips as if he were raising a finger to ask for quiet. They sized each other up again. And Nick caught a sudden picture of himself in a long shot. He wanted the part of the priest who coaxes the tragic young man off the ledge. Give yourself up, it’s no go, as the good-hearted clerk tells his punk kid brother. Of course he was playing as much as Sam. He could see he wouldn’t get a lot of moral mileage out of acting superior. Sam had already played with everyone from Crook House, one way or another. And if it came to cowboys, Nick didn’t have a leg to stand on. As Rita would have said, he wrote the book.

  “But why hurt innocent people?” he asked, standing up to face him again, teetering on his swollen feet. The do-unto-others approach.

  “Cops aren’t people,” Sam said idly, bored by the ethics, his mind on something else. Nick, because he hadn’t been on Norma Place the day Sam fled Ben’s house, hadn’t ever seen cops swarm. “You don’t understand—this is a victimless crime, like getting laid. If I wanted to hurt somebody, I’d go for broke. I’d round up everyone I ever did it with and stand them up against a wall.”

  “I thought you liked to work the street.”

  “Oh, I do,” he said, and reached over with the hand without the gun. He unzipped Nick’s fly and did it up again. Neither looked down. “That’s if I was out to hurt people. But I wouldn’t hurt any of God’s creatures. I’m a sucker for living things.”

  “You hurt us,” Nick hastened to remind him. How long now? Six, seven minutes, he guessed. There was a break between two songs just a moment ago, but he couldn’t hear it burning anymore.