He thought of two men who would be likely to have quite a bit of cash over a Sunday. One was a small-time gambler who played poker every Saturday night in the back of a Chinese herb shop. The gambler lived with his sister who didn’t approve of gambling. She took his winnings, when she could find them, and gave them to the church and to relatives. She had become so skillful at finding his hiding places that the gambler was occasionally compelled to leave his money with George over the weekend.
The other man was a fisherman called Mix. He was the co-owner of a small Monterey fishing boat that went out to the islands for two or three days at a time. He’d been bringing in eleven or twelve hundred pounds of lobsters from every trip. George had seen him yesterday morning on the way to Vasco’s fish market to settle up his accounts for the past two weeks. He figured that Mix, after deducting expenses, should have around five hundred dollars as his share. Like a lot of other fishermen Mix hated to put his money in the bank right away. He liked to keep it around and look at it, though sometimes, if he was afraid he was going out to get stewed, he gave George some of his money to keep for him. The rest he went out and spent. As soon as he had two or three drinks, Mix suffered an acute attack of generosity. He bought presents for all his relatives back in Missouri, and shipped them off, live turtles, chocolates, clothes, toys, souvenirs of Channel City. He picked up all kinds of people in bars and bought them drinks and promised them free lobsters. Once he bought up all the papers a newsboy was selling and sent the boy home. The newspapers were heavy to carry, so Mix gave them away to various people. He’d brought a gift to George once, a second-hand set of the Harvard Classics. They were the only books George owned.
When Mix was stone broke he returned to his boat to sleep, and the next morning he would get the rest of his money from George and put it in the bank. George didn’t like to throw anything away, so he had a whole drawerful of receipts that Mix had returned to him when George handed back the money. Received from Mix Jorgen, to be held in trust until Monday, the sum of Two Hundred Dollars, signed, George Anderson. Mix Jorgen gave me $175.50 to keep for him, signed, George Anderson.
George put the forty-seven dollars back in his wallet. He felt suddenly very annoyed with Hazel, not because she’d asked him to do her a favor, but because she shared his own weakness. She was always getting involved with people. He didn’t like the sound of the five hundred dollar deal. He and Hazel could easily be left holding the bag.
He got the car out of the garage and drove down to the wharf to find Mix.
George left his car in the small parking lot beside the Beachcomber. He didn’t like to take it beyond this point, because further on some of the holes in the planking had had been covered up by thick pieces of board nailed to the planking. When one of the fish trucks hit these boards it bounced in the air, making the whole dock shudder. George preferred to walk.
The wharf was fairly quiet. The amateur fishermen were already lined up at the edge, beside the signs: “No Fishing.” “Absolutely No Fishing.” “No Fishing Beyond This Point.” As George walked on, the fish odors became stronger. A pile of empty abalone shells lay stinking in the sun. The conveyor machines, silvered with scales, smelled of dried fish blood. A young Mexican girl, all dressed up in a tight flowered crepe dress, was tying on some bait which she kept in an abalone shell. The bait was gray and black and it smelled worse than anything George had ever smelled. A small lobster boat was tied up alongside, waiting to unload. The lobsters trailed along behind the boat in crates made of laths.
He found Mix sitting against the wall of the warehouse, smoking a pipe and reading a magazine. He was a man about forty, a Middle Westerner who hadn’t seen the ocean until the war. Although he’d been a fisherman now for two years, he was still self-conscious about it. When he was not on his boat he spent hours hanging around the wharf, trying to get over the feeling that he was an impostor. He wore rubber boots, a cowboy hat, a corduroy shirt and dirty army pants.
“Improving your mind?” George said.
Mix threw down the magazine and yawned. “Habit. I started reading in the army and I can’t get over it. It’s a disease, like.”
“How’s business?”
“Hell, fishing’s no business, it’s a bum’s game. For the little guys like me, anyhow. Look.” He held out his hands. They were covered with scars and scabs and cuts. One of the cuts looked infected. “Fish poisoning. Listen, George, you take a good look at these hands and figger you’re lucky to be in a white-collar racket. Sweet Jesus, the way I work! And for what? Thirty-five cents a pound for lobster from Vasco when I could be getting forty-five at San Pedro. People like you, George, you think fishing is just sitting around sailing over the ocean blue. Sweet Jesus, if I was a sensible guy I’d go back in the army so I could do my reading by electric lights again and my pay’d come in regular instead of in fits and starts, and I wouldn’t have nothing to do with octopuses. Those things, Jesus, they get me. They get in the pots, see, and I have to gaff them. The other day one of them got me on the arm with one of his suckers. I nearly died,” he said solemnly. “I wouldn’t tell this to everybody, but when that thing got onto my arm I nearly died.”
He tapped the ashes out of his pipe for emphasis. “Eels too, I don’t like. Lobsters, now there’s something pretty about lobsters. You take a big fifteen-pound bull and watch him flopping around, he looks kinda noble. No sneaking suckers on him, by God.”
“What was the take yesterday?” George said.
“Not so good. I figure this way, somebody’s been robbing our pots, and it ain’t just starfish and eels and octopuses, it’s human. So help me Jesus, if I ever catch them I’ll use the gaff on them. Last time we only brought in eight hundred pounds.”
“Did you settle up with Vasco yesterday?”
“Sure.”
“How much?”
“Jesus, I don’t ask you how much you—”
“I need some cash until tomorrow.”
“We may be going out tomorrow.”
“Don’t kid me,” George said. “You wouldn’t go out without putting the money in the bank and by the time the bank’s open you’ll have your money back, Boy Scout’s honor.”
“I used to be a Boy Scout,” Mix said reminiscently. “Back in St. Louis. The pride of Troop Twenty-Two, and look at me now. I haven’t had a bath in a month. I wash, sure, but washing’s not like having a hot bath. Maybe some day I’ll get me a nice little apartment in town with a bathroom and a kitchen with a refrigerator, cook myself some decent meals for a change. Like this morning, you know what Pete and I had for breakfast? We figured on bacon and eggs, see, with toast. We bring out the bacon and it’s moldy. No butter, no lard. The bread don’t look so good and the eggs are getting kinda old. So Pete cooks them anyway, scrambles them in Dago red to hide the flavor. Sweet Jesus, it’s a wonder my stomach ain’t rotting away.”
“How do you know it’s not?” George said.
“I’m feeling pretty good. I feel pretty good all over except my hand is sore.” He pulled up his shirt and unfastened the money belt he wore around his middle. “How much do you want?”
“Four hundred and fifty-three dollars.”
“I’ll see if I got that much.”
He counted his money, while George watched him, amused. Mix knew down to a cent how much money he had in the belt. When he wasn’t drinking he was inclined to be careful of money, and George knew that Mix, like a lot of other fishermen around the dock who looked like bums, had a very pretty bank balance.
“Yeah,” Mix said. “Yeah, I think I got that much.”
“You know damn well you have.”
“I have to be sure, don’t I? Here. That’s four fifty-seven. Now you give me an I. O. U.”
George wrote an I. O. U. on the back of an envelope. Mix folded the envelope and put it in his money belt with the air of a man w
ho has made a very bad bargain.
“You’ll have it back tomorrow,” George said. “On the honor of Troop Twenty-Two.”
He showed signs of wanting to leave, but Mix pretended not to notice. Mix was in a conversational mood. Often when he was alone on the boat or at one of the fishing camps over in the islands, he planned conversations. He seldom had a chance to use them because the right situation never turned up and it was hard finding a good listener.
“With me,” Mix said, “with me money is a very personal thing. I’m not tight, don’t get that idea.”
“God forbid.”
“No sir. It’s like this. When you make money the hard way like I do, you get kinda interested in what happens to it. I mean, you own it, see, you hold it in your hands maybe a couple of days and then off it goes. Maybe you put it in the bank or lend it to somebody or spend it. No matter what, you have a real personal interest in what happens to it because it belongs to you. For example, if I put a hundred dollars in the bank I like to think of all those bills working and accumulating interest, bringing home the bacon to Poppa. It’s almost like they were kids I was sending out into the world. See what I mean, George?”
“I think so.”
“It don’t sound nuts to you?”
“No.” George patted the pocket containing his wallet. “These kids of yours are going on a trip.”
Mix was pleased.
“Yeah? Where?”
“Missouri.”
“Missouri? Well, I’ll be goddamned, that’s where I come from, St. Louis. Going on an airplane, even?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned.” Mix shook his head. “How’s that for a coincidence, me coming from Missouri and my money going to Missouri. On a plane, too. I never been on a plane.”
“I’ve gotta shove off now, Mix.”
“What’s your hurry?”
“Well, the plane’s leaving pretty soon and the kids here don’t want to miss it. They’re raising hell in my pocket.”
Mix threw back his head and roared. As soon as George left Mix tried to tell a couple of dockhands about the joke, but even though he explained it right from the beginning and told them how funny it was, they didn’t laugh.
George walked carefully across the wharf toward the Beachcomber. The money in his pocket felt heavy and he had half a notion to give it back to Mix, but he couldn’t think of any logical explanation to offer Hazel: Listen, Hazel, I’ve got a funny feeling about this money, we shouldn’t mess with it, I’ve got a hunch . . .
Although it was not yet nine o’clock the Beachcomber was open and Willie was behind the bar straining a martini for the lone customer, an elderly man wearing rimless spectacles and a wrinkled tuxedo.
Neither Willie nor the man paid any attention to George. They were both intent on the work in progress like alchemists about to test the results of a new formula.
“Here you are,” Willie said. “Very dry, like you asked for, Judge.”
“I did not say very dry. My exact words were very, very dry. Subtle difference there, lad.”
“Yes sir, but a martini can only get so dry. When it gets drier, it’s straight gin.”
“Mere rhetoric. A splitting of the hair of the dog that bit me.” Judge Bowridge laughed softly to himself. “You forgot the olives, lad. Three, if you please, on the side.”
“Yes sir.”
“One should never drink without eating. I learned that at my mother’s knee. Anton, she said, Anton, promise me by your dear dead father’s mustache, that you will never drink a martini without olives on the side. I have never violated that sacred trust.”
He picked up the first olive, slipped it off the toothpick and swallowed it whole like an aspirin. It made a little squeaking noise as it passed down his throat.
“Delicious,” he said.
Willie went down to the other end of the counter where George was changing into his white coat. He meant to say something unpleasant and cutting to George for running out on the business the night before but he was afraid to. Instead, he glanced back sourly at Bowridge. “He was sitting on the steps outside when I opened up. I had to let him in.”
“How’d he get here?”
“God knows. His car’s not around.”
“I’ll take care of him.” George took Willie’s place behind the bar. “Good morning, Judge.”
“Oh, there you are, Anderson. I was inquiring after your health just a moment ago. Willie informs me you keep well.”
“Well enough.”
“I am delighted to hear it. There are altogether too many half-dead people running around these days.”
“You been up all night, Judge?”
Bowridge took off his spectacles and rubbed them thoughtfully on his coat sleeve. “Now that you mention it, I don’t seem to recall going to bed. I was at a party.”
“The party still going on?”
“Oh, no, no, no. It wasn’t that type of party. It was, frankly, a lugubrious affair. Weak drinks and dull women. Bad combination. I tried to help matters by singing a few songs. Do you happen to know ‘Chewy Chewy’?”
“Not offhand.”
“A very spirited number. Like this.” He snapped his fingers in time to an invisible orchestra. “Gordon Foster and I perfected a duet. You know Foster.”
“Not personally. Hazel’s mentioned him to me.”
“An interesting fellow. Fine tenor voice, but unable to hold his liquor. The trouble with Foster is that he doesn’t eat when he drinks.” As if to set a good example, Bowridge swallowed the remaining two olives, pits and all, as he had the first. “How is Hazel?”
“Fine. I expect her here any minute.”
“Ah. In what capacity?”
“Not what you’re thinking,” George said dryly.
“I’ve been acquainted with Hazel for a great many years.”
“I know that.”
“She’s a remarkable woman.”
“I know that, too.”
“Frankly, Anderson—you don’t mind if I speak frankly?”
“No.”
“Well then, frankly, I never wanted to sign those divorce papers, Anderson, no, I did not. Oh, I signed them all right, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept putting it off until it was time to go home. My secretary said, you haven’t signed these papers yet, and I said, goddamn it, I won’t sign them, there’s no reason on earth why these two people shouldn’t stay married. And she said, you should have thought of that while court was in session, the case is over. And so it was. I signed the papers.”
George turned away, looking stubborn and a little resentful. “It was Hazel’s idea, not mine.”
“So it would seem.”
“So it was,” George said stiffly. “You want to know what happened?—the real thing, I mean, not what Hazel’s lawyer said in court.”
“I would be very interested.”
“Well, I was late getting home one Saturday night and Hazel was waiting up for me in the front room. I was just sitting there having a beer and some potato chips and telling her a few odd things that happened during the day, and suddenly she got up, walked over to me and said, ‘I’m getting damn good and tired of your boyish blubberings.’ Just like that. Out of a blue sky.”
“A most provocative remark. What did you do?”
“Finished my beer and potato chips and went to bed. What else? She was spoiling for a fight.”
“She may simply have wanted your attention.”
“She wanted a divorce, she got it,” George said. “Let’s forget it.”
“As you wish.” Bowridge finished his martini and pushed the empty glass toward George. “One more, very, very dry. And do not look at me askance. De gustibus non disputandum. De mortuis nil
nisi bonum.”
“Maybe I’d better call you a cab.”
“You may call me a whole fleet of cabs if you like,” Bowridge said graciously. “It’s only fair to warn you, however, that I have no intention of leaving. I must wait for Hazel. Besides, I like it here. The sea air is very bracing. It makes me feel alive and nimble.”
He inhaled deeply and extravagantly, opening his mouth wide to receive the bracing air. But his ageing lungs were not accustomed to such largess; he began to cough, pressing both hands against his chest as if to ease its troubles. His face looked pale and withdrawn and he seemed suddenly to have lost interest in George and the martini and the bracing air, in everything but himself. The judge was as ignorant of his body as he was aware of his mind, and this periodic rebellion inside his chest mystified and frightened him. If the day was warm and bright, and his calendar easy, he jeered at the cough, it was nothing. But on a day with a crowded calendar and pellets of rain exploding on the tiled roof of the courtroom so violently he could hardly hear what was going on inside, the cough was death, it had come like the bailiff to take him away, and away he would go, down long corridors to a dark and single cell.
“Devilish thing—don’t know what—causes it—maybe —the olives—did the olives—have pits?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it then—the pits have—lodged somewhere—devilish—damn.”
He coughed for a full minute, and when he had finished he took off his spectacles, wiped the moisture out of his eyes with a handkerchief. His chest was a little sore and his throat raw, but, having convinced himself that the cause was nothing more serious than an unfortunate lodging of olive pits, he felt quite cheerful again; the bailiff and the dark cell were years and miles away, the cough was nothing, the pits, wherever they were, would dissolve. A very dry martini would no doubt assist in their dissolution.
Wives and Lovers Page 20