“You’ll never guess who I saw today,” lovingly said Kitty to her husband.
“It’s whom,” said Claudio.
“It was Susan Kelly! She was gorgeous and she was sitting two tables over …”
“Oh yeah? Was she blond or redhead today?”
“What do you mean?”
“Her real name is Georgia Laughman, you know,” said her husband.
Kitty stopped and thought for a moment.
“I suppose you’ve fucked her too,” she sighed in shallow despair. She had long ago thrown in the towel resigning herself to her husband’s escapades of fucking Hollywood starlets.
It was the favourite pastime of moneyed types to shack up with beautiful young girls who weren’t making it otherwise in Hollywood. If you had the money, you could get laid as often as your penis erected. Kitty knew that Claudio, Hank, tight ass David, and Phil, before he went monkey, would often get invited to parties where many young women would be available. With the exception of Phil, the others, Claudio, Hank and David were easy millionaires who were making many more millions than they were investing in showbiz. Now days, it was Claudio and Hank who would hang out together. They took pride in partaking in Hollywood social events such as the various Oscars and Grammys dressed in their tuxedoes. There was nothing that Kitty could do every time she saw Claudio in his tuxedo: he was out to pillage in search of more spoils. On several occasions Claudio had confessed to Kitty of semi-serious affairs with well-known starlets but she knew that he was never in the mood for prolonged serious love affairs. He was simply incapable of deeply loving any woman.
“You know who’s fucking your friend Myrna, don’t you?”
“Claudio, I would never forgive you …”
“No, no. It’s not me. It’s Hank. He fucks her all the time. She goes to him. Even when poor Phil was still married to her, she would sneak around to his restaurant.”
“That doesn’t mean that she was fucking him,” said Kitty.
“Get serious, Kitty. It’s no big deal. Phil probably couldn’t fuck as often as Myrna wanted it,” summed up Claudio.
“I wonder if Sharon knew about it?” said Kitty.
“Now there was a piece of ass I wouldn’t have minded to dip into.”
That was what Kitty best loved about her husband: his raw unaffectedness. He never withheld anything from her, was always up front, and shared all his fantasies with her.
She followed her husband into their bedroom and had sex with him. It was a lazy act and he immediately fell asleep. She was wide awake and bothered by incessant thoughts that spun around the world. Incoherent thoughts that gave way to apprehensive uneasiness whose source she couldn’t identify. She looked at Claudio and he was sleeping like a baby.
You would think that with his background as an orphan in Sicily he would be loaded with neurotic disorders, she thought. He was sleeping deaf to the world. In a strange way she felt pity for him. Pity for the dolt, but he was an honest man. And then she thought: can an ignorant man be an honest man? She thought of her first husband who was not a dolt and who tried to be honest with his feelings but wound up a schizophrenic.
Her mind shifted from pity for Claudio to fear for Milton her once despondent, crazy, now somewhat half-forgotten, first husband. She thought she had put Milt out of her mind but every so often like a zombie he would suddenly arise from the not so happy days of the past and haunt her as if she were to blame for his going nuts. They had met in San Jose State College and it took her three years before she realized that Milt was an emotional blood sucking leech. Not in the sense of taking her for her money but for slowly sucking her happiness out of her, and for sadistically distorting her once happy view of the world.
She looked at her husband Claudio snoring by her side. Totally opposites, she thought.
“He made my every sense of love and friendship foreign to me,” she cried to herself.
Well into their college warped relationship, she learned that Milton was the bastard son of fornicating cousins who had put him up for adoption even before he was born. She tossed and turned in incredible frustration trying to squeeze the thought like a pimple out of her memory, this Milt, who had crept into her life when she was so silly innocent. What a hysterical little girl I must’ve been to have been attracted to a juvenile dwarf like Milt her mind revved up in disgusting thoughts about her first husband whom she now felt nothing but loathing.
She kicked the sheets but no reaction from Claudio who was used to her kicking.
Her mind swirled full of frustration because it was too late to now regret let alone erase that midget’s improbable presence in her mind.
He was a mulatto, she swallowed the thought that surfaced as a revelation. He had dark curly hair and green eyes suggesting of miscegenation and not of fucking blond cousins who probably conveniently made the sacrifice to take the blame and save the family from dissolute embarrassment.
In reality, he was an effeminate little fellow who had thought he had found a cheap cure for all his anxieties in Kitty’s arms. One day, two months before their graduation, he was getting a degree in sociology, she in psychology, young Milton got into a clothes drier in the dorm’s laundry room and had a bro put in a quarter to spin him around. Fortunately, the dorm bro wasn’t as dumb as Milt and after a couple of hot spins he stopped the drier and took Milt out, nose bleeding, broken arm, and face all scratched up. It was then that it became apparent to Kitty that she deserved someone better than Milt. She felt sad for him and sorry for herself but it was too late, she was pregnant with his baby. She married him anyway and soon after had Albert, her one and only son. At the time her best friends never said a word to Kitty about the whole scandalous affair though they all had doubts about Milton being the sufficient man for their Kitty.
They tried counselling and all the various herbal medicines on the market but nothing seemed to put out the fire in Milton’s brain. One day Milton simply dropped out of sight and no one was the worse for it. The friends were all the glad for it; they didn’t have to ostracize Kitty from their group.
Years later, Albert found Milton somewhere in Oregon. Apparently Oregon’s overcast climate jibbed well with Milton’s cloudy personality. He told his son that he was a contented man and had no intention of ever returning to that “cunt that is your mother.”
It was never clear to the friends whether Kitty and Milton had ever divorced, but then, who the hell ever cared about the details?
Chapter Eighteen
Robert Sargent woke up uneasy one morning, looked out of his bedroom window, past his high privacy wall covered with morning glory, and caught sight of the enormity of the universe. His eyes carried him high to the few thin streaks of grey clouds whose underbellies were glowing to a variety of crimson red hues under the flood of sunlight from the fast breaking dawn. His mind gladdened at the morning colors of the fast rising sun still hidden from him beneath his view’s horizon. He saw the morning’s orange rays powerfully reflecting off the fast thinning night’s clouds and he was glad that he was alive. In an act played out in endless repetition, dawn’s soft lights swelled and moved across the heavens giving life to the early day and he wished the moment would never end. Mesmerized by all the morning’s spectacular performance spreading out before his eyes as night gave way to day, he sank into sadness that in his seventy years he foolishly had been too much in a hurry to get to a jailing office that shut out the beauty of the universe now awakening before his eyes. He stood paralyzed before the unfolding scene and realized how recklessly he had spent his few mortal days never stopping to enjoy the natural pleasures that life had to offer. His eyes stayed fixed on the morning’s glowing scene until the streaking clouds began to disperse under the hot rays of the sun. The crimson red gave way to orange and orange gave way to thinning white clouds, the same color as his hair, and it was all happening too fast. Yet it was all so sweet for nature to fre
ely display such wondrous scenes to Robert and to all of God’s creatures to view, if only they stopped to look. After a while, all the white clouds gave way to an azure blue dome above Robert’s head, a spectacular renewal of a promising world that makes young people feel the excitement of bold adventures to come and older people angry that their time is running out.
“It’s going be a beautiful day,” he said loudly to his still asleep wife, recalling an old country saying that you can tell the day from its morning.
What a beautiful sight, he continued, quietly admonishing himself for his pathetic little life that had consumed his years in useless pursuit of money without ever stopping to look up and see the universe rising before his eyes at every dawn. And that heart breaking little slice of the universe that he was now witnessing, almost too late in his aged life, was totally free. He was sad and fell into a slight melancholic depression that he had mortgaged his life chasing the paper trails of Pioneer Bank; that there was so little time left; and he consciously took a deep breath but there was no relief.
“What time is it, dear,” said his still sleepy wife lying next to him.
“It’s so absurd,” he said to his half-awakening wife, “that this amazingly beautiful dawn, this beauty that repeats forever each morning is ours free and we never took the time to say thank you Lord.”
“Give me five more minutes will you dear. I love you,” said his wife.
“I suppose dusk is just as beautiful,” he said to himself more than to his wife.
It was then that Robert Sargent, majority stockholder and CEO of Pioneer Bank, decided to retire from the drudgery that had been his preoccupied moneyed life and to breathe his last few years tuning into the universe that was his, beautiful and free.
At breakfast that morning he was unusually thoughtful. Gone was that determined angry look that would take control of his mind and face, early every morning, and fortify him to do daily battles with his finance competitors across the senseless universe of computer apps and Bloomberg charts. Today his face showed anaemic; it said, ‘I just don’t care’.
“Are you alright, dear,” asked his wife. “You don’t seem the same as other mornings.”
“I’m alright, Helen,” said Robert.
“You look tired, and aren’t you late for work this morning? You’re usually at the office by five. What’s going on this morning?” she said.
He looked at his sweet wife whom he loved very much and sweetly smiled back at her.
It was no use. He could no longer muster any sense of ambition to strengthen his determination to charge ahead and catch up on vapid stock market news on CNBC and CNN.
“Did you see the dawn this morning,” he quietly asked his wife.
Helen Rodgers looked hard at her husband and saw that he was a different man. The only thought that came to her mind was about the chauffeur waiting in the car.
“What do you mean?” she said in her usual reticent manner.
“It was so beautiful; it made me think of our mortality. We have such a brief life in this world, and how sad that, too late, we realize how uselessly we’ve wasted our precious time.”
“That’s been said before, Robert, and it hasn’t been such a waste of time as you might now think. After all, you’ve managed Pioneer Bank into a major international institution that provides work for thousands of people worldwide. You should be proud of that. And not to sound too dumpy, or too greedy, we aren’t hurting for money either. And don’t forget our beautiful daughter Robin who has brought us so much happiness and pleasure in our lives. We have a lot to be thankful, thank God,” said sweet Helen with a smile.
Robert wasn’t listening to the blessings his wife was listing; they really had nothing to do with the thoughts he was feeling that morning.
“The ugliest thing in my view was our privacy wall. Why do people put up such ugly privacy walls?” he said to no one in particular.
“Why don’t you take the day off, Robert? Maybe we could take a walk along the beach - in Corona del Mar, if you like. They say it’s beautiful this time of the year. We could watch the pelicans fly above us. You know those pelicans have been around for millions of years, descendants of dinosaurs, they say.”
It had been the rule in the Sargent household that the master of the house should be addressed with his full given name as opposed to Bob, or God forbid, Bobby. It just wasn’t kosher for a CEO of a major Corporation to be called Bobby. Too late, he now regretted that all these years his lovely wife had referred to him as Robert.
“I haven’t thought things through yet, Helen, but I promise you there will be some changes made very soon to our selfish lives.”
“You’re exaggerating again Robert. I don’t think of my life as having been selfish.”
“How would you like to go on a cruise, Helen? Go on a month long cruise on one of those luxurious cruise ships?”
“That would be nice, dear,” said Helen matter-of-factly.
“Yes, I think I’d like that,” said Robert who then set off for his office.
*
He took his son-in-law, David Calder, Vice President of Human Resources at Pioneer Bank to lunch in a seaside restaurant that specialized in broiled fillet of Chilean bass. David was surprised at his father-in-law’s invitation, a very rare occurrence. More surprising than the invitation to lunch was Mr Sargent’s casual look that day: polo shirt and jeans. Robert was not Apple hi-tech to ditch the suit and tie, so David sensed something new was in the air. Other than the few get-togethers at their home on special occasions, the Sargents pretty much kept to themselves and everybody else out. Partying wasn’t their thing. Because of his French background Robert never felt excited about being fully part of the American social scene though he appeared relaxed and friendly with his fellow corporate Americans. He believed that a banker should be a man of few words, a prerequisite to maintaining respect from his subordinates. This foreign demeanor on Sargent’s part was all too familiar to his all-American son-in-law who had recognized it as a replica of his wife’s dismissive attitude. It didn’t bother David that his in-laws kept him more as an acquaintance formality than as a member of the family. He knew that one way or another great fortune awaited him regardless of the Sargents’ lame people skills. As long as he was captain of Robin’s ship, firmly sailing the waves of her mind’s wilderness, David knew that he would be the last to go down.
Robert Sargent ordered a Grey Goose martini, clean with a twist, and it reminded David of Robin’s tastes. He wanted to smile at the thought but he didn’t. In deference to his father-in-law, and his work supervisor, David ordered a diet coke. Robert approved, looked at his son-in-law, and for the first time saw that he was a handsome man, and that his daughter was lucky to be married to such a good-looking guy. Like the earlier morning’s revelations it dawned on him that he had been socially unkind to David. He had always blamed David for Robin’s inability to get pregnant. He knew of his daughter’s wild and crazy night life, but again, the fault was never with his daughter but with insufficient David. Too late, on this day he saw a different son-in-law and he recalled that David had been in the Peace Corps, a very worthy accomplishment that surely highlighted laudable qualities.
“David, I wish we had done this more often but it’s too late for regrets now.”
David Calder’s summation of his father-in-law of more than twenty years was that Sargent at best was a difficult man to like. His inability to identify with people around him kept him always guarded in the way he spoke and even walked. After a couple of years of being a member of the family, though always at an arm’s length, David began to feel sorry for his father-in-law. Initially he had thought that in time he would have developed some sympathy for Robert except that in Robert’s face he saw reflections of daughter Robin and he badly disliked his wife. David Calder was a delicate and elusive man, shrewd in his calculations of people, qualities that Robert’s
and Robin’s inattentive faces never wished to see.
“Why, Robert? Are you going to commit suicide soon?” said David with a straight face.
He looked into his father-in-law’s face which had turned ashen and realized that poor Robert didn’t deserve that comment meant as a joke.
“Sorry, Robert, I was just kidding.”
“Well, I’m not,” said Mr Sargent, regaining his color. “For years now I’ve known that you and Robin have had a fucked-up marriage. I’ve known that she goes out almost every night and fucks men of different skin colors and you don’t do anything about it.”
David hadn’t seen that one coming. Nonetheless he knew that he had a straight flush in his hands and knew that Sargent would lose whatever hand he was playing. What a dumb-shit, he thought. Why is he telling me all this crap during a business lunch?
“Did you know that she had had a bungled abortion right after you got married?” said a formidable Robert. “And she never got pregnant again?”
David looked at his father-in-law in disgust.
“Yes I did,” he said most calmly. “You probably thought that it was because I wasn’t fucking her.”
“You’re disgusting,” said Robert.
“Anything more?” said a lucid David.
“Had you known that the fetus was a black, probably an Ethiopian?”
“I suspected it, but unlike you, Robert, I didn’t want to know the details.”
“Why did you put up with it?”
“What would you have had me do? Blow her brains out? Besides, in truth, I liked being a Vice President in your bank. I liked the way you generously took good care of me; fed me rich and well, and I had no complaints.”
They looked at each in an empty gesture of manly sizing up. The gig was up; the truth was out: the only thing that bound them was crazy Robin who found sanity in booze and two leftover high school friends.
“I have decided to retire from the Bank. Normally I should make you, my one and only son-in-law married to my one and only daughter, the new CEO of Pioneer Bank. But I don’t like you, David, and I want to separate you from the Bank altogether.”
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