Fletch Reflected f-11

by Gregory Mcdonald

“They’re gettin’ healthier.” The woman behind the counter blew her nose. “They’re gettin’ healthier, and I’m gettin’ sicker.”

  “Came out to pick up Doctor Wilson. Got gassed to death.”

  “I heard.” Marie sniffled. “Didn’t know there was such a thing as lethal gas on this place.”

  “In the laboratory,” one of the undertakers said. “In the lab.”

  “What was it?” Marie asked. “The gas, I mean.”

  “Damned if I know. Enough to set fire to the place. Blow it up.”

  “Was that the big noise I heard?”

  “The lab. building blew up.”

  “I guess some thought ol’ Radliegh was in the building when it blew,” the other man from the hearse said. “He wasn’t.”

  “Too bad,” Marie said.

  The store’s fresh produce, Jack realized, clearly was untouched by any beautifying chemicals. Tangerines and oranges were spotted yellow and black; the tomatoes, even in that season, were more yellow and green than red; the bananas more green or black than yellow; the apples yellow and green, none shiny red. The carrots looked like carrots.

  “You got Wilson in the hearse?” Marie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The shelves indeed stocked no canned foods, not even soups or boxes of cereal. There were bags of potato chips, tins of dry mustard, but no ketchup; olives, but no pickles; peanut butter but no marshmallow.

  There was no candy counter.

  “So what did you stop for?” Marie asked. “If we had chawin’ tobacco or beer, which we surely don’t, you know I couldn’t sell it to you any which way.”

  The only toothpaste available had a baking soda base. There were soaps available, but no sprays.

  “I was wonderin’ if I could buy some of your roast beef,” one of the undertakers said.

  “You know I can’t sell it to you, Frank.”

  “I married your sister, Marie.”

  “Thank you, but I can only sell to employees and guests of the estate, Frank. You know that.”

  The jars of instant coffee were all decaffeinated except the acid free Kava. The teas were all herbal.

  “I’m a relative of an employee, Marie,” Frank said: “You.”

  “Doesn’t count.” Marie sneezed.

  “Marie doesn’t count,” Junior said.

  “Frank doesn’t count,” Marie said.

  The only patent medicine available was Bayer’s aspirin. There were shelves and shelves of generic vitamins and herbal goods, fresh, whole, dried cranberry juice concentrated extract tablets, lycopodium, echinacea, et cetera, round containers of protein powders. Printed lists along these shelves described the uses and benefits of each selection offered.

  “Pretend you’re buyin’ it for yourself,” Frank said.

  Marie coughed. “Can’t do that. These walls have ears.”

  White bread was not available in that store.

  “Sure,” Frank said. “We’re allowed on the estate when a body needs pickin’ up, a gassed body, but rules say I can’t go home to a supper of the best beef for a hundred miles around here?”

  “Rules say.” Marie blew her nose. “Employees only.”

  The meat counter offered 91-percent-lean hamburger only, ground beefalo meat, especially lean-looking steaks, other cuts of beef, chops. All the chicken offered was in packets, and was skinless. The prices for these meats were lower than usual. The only fish was pond-bred catfish. There were no sausage, bacon, hot dogs or pressed meats available.

  A telephone rang.

  Marie said, “Hello? … Yes, he’s here. I’ll tell him.” She said, “That was Nancy Dunbar.”

  “The bitch,” Frank said.

  “‘I’ll take care of it,’” Junior mimicked in a falsetto. “‘I’ll take care of every-thing.’”

  He sounded more like a parrot than he did Nancy Dunbar.

  So Jack collected his groceries: lettuce, carrots, celery, 100 percent Real Mayonnaise, a gallon of mixed vegetable juices, oranges, apples, bananas, pumpernickel, mustard, sliced ham, ground beefalo meat, a steak, a small packet of boneless, skinless chicken, 2 percent skim milk, butter, eggs, some cheese. He did not take a bag of potato chips.

  “Marie,” Frank said, “when you croak, who do you suppose is going to come along and carry off your moral demains?”

  “Not you, I hope. You stop on your way back to the shop leavin’ a corpse sweatin’ in the back of your wagon.”

  “None other but me,” Frank said.

  “I’ll outlive you by a hundred years.”

  “Not the way you cough and sneeze. You don’t ever sound like you’ll make it to next payday, Marie, I do declare. How do you go on?”

  “I’m developin’ life-savin’ muscles,” Marie said.

  “For sure, you’re the sickest thing I ever saw in a health store.”

  “Life-savin’ respiratory muscles,” Marie coughed.

  The hardware section of the General Store had the simplest tools neatly arranged, none electrical.

  Jack dropped a blue knapsack into his shopping cart.

  Frank said, “Don’t come to my house Sunday for spaghetti.”

  Marie said, “It’s my sister who invites me. Not you.”

  The men returned to the hearse.

  The magazines arrayed were as genuine as news magazines get, some science fiction but no tabloids, purely gossip, romance, horoscopes or other kinds of comic books. The paperbound books offered were all classics. Even the mysteries were classics.

  Marie said to Jack, “You’re funny, or somethin’, aren’t you?”

  “Sure,” Jack answered.

  She was adding up his bill. “John Funny, or somethin’?”

  “Jack Faoni.”

  “Yeah.” Marie sneezed. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, which held his beefalo burger. “Ms. Dunbar called for you. You’re to report to the tennis courts up by the main house. Ms. Alixis wants to play with you.”

  “Oh, wow,” Jack said. “Who’s Ms. Alixis?”

  “Our movie star. You want to play with a movie star?” She grinned.

  “I have a choice?”

  “Second daughter,” Marie said. “Alixis Radliegh. She was in a movie. Feint at Heart, spelt funny, the French way, or something. In it she wandered around in shorty pajamas singing to something or other in the trees until this hunk named Heathcliff fell out of a tree, nearly beaned her, but he had a broken neck or something so she had to nurse him back to health, if you know what I mean, by singing to him in her cabin by the lake. So they could make beautiful music together. I saw it. It stank.”

  “I must have missed that one.”

  “It stank. It was shown here on the estate. Terrible movie. But we told her how proud we are of her.”

  “This is one of Doctor Radliegh’s daughters? A movie star?” Jack was fitting his groceries into his knapsack.

  Marie sneezed. “You think my sneezin’ will get me anything if I do enough of it in shorty pajamas under a tree?”

  “Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe you’ll be beaned by a hungry undertaker.”

  Marie said, “I knew you were listening.”

  Outside, fitting his new knapsack onto his back, climbing on his bike, Jack noticed a candy bar wrapper next to the curb.

  9

  The short tanned girl with short dark hair wearing a short white tennis skirt watched Jack approach without apparently blinking in the full sunlight. She stood by a net on one of the tennis courts. Three racquets leaned against the net. At her feet was a bag of balls.

  She had just stood by the net, waiting, not practicing her serve or using the backboard. She didn’t even have a racquet in hand.

  “Shana told me about you,” she said. “At lunch.”

  “I’m Jack.”

  “I know.”

  He picked up one of the three racquets. “Are we expecting someone? Playing Canadian doubles?”

  “No. I just thought I’d give you a choice of racquets.”r />
  “Thanks.”

  Coming out of the General Store in the village of Vindemia, Jack had noticed a uniformed security guard using the public pay phone.

  Before going to the tennis courts Jack had bicycled his groceries back to his quarters, stored them in the small refrigerator, small cupboards. He ate a ham sandwich with a glass of milk.

  “Let’s just rally, shall we?” he asked.

  “Okay.” Alixis’ voice was bored, indifferent.

  Watching her across the net playing tennis, Jack saw that Alixis had been beautifully taught. Her legs were excellent, muscular, springy.

  But either she was awfully tired or awfully lazy. Unless his shot bounced within a convenient few steps of her, she ignored it.

  After a few minutes, he asked, “Shall we play a game?”

  “No,” she answered. “Let’s just sit. I’m hot.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat on a bench in the sunlight at the side of the court.

  She said, “This will permit me to tell my father I spent time on the tennis court this afternoon.”

  “Is that required?”

  “Required?” A light breeze blew against her short hair. “You mean, do we have to sign in, punch a clock? Not exactly. But it is well to mention casually our day’s activities in front of my father: time spent swimming, in the gym, on the tennis courts, in the library.”

  “Why?”

  “If we don’t, if he doesn’t think we are obeying his philosophy of daily living, balancing physical and so-called intellectual activity, he just turns colder. Then comes comments regarding our wasting our lives, sarcasm … He lets us know his disapproval.”

  “I heard a cabin on the estate blew up the other day, before I got here.”

  “Yes. My father’s ‘think house.’”

  “How did it happen?”

  “One of his ideas must have caught fire while he wasn’t watching.”

  “Why would the heat be on in the cabin this time of year?”

  “Was it?”

  “And the front axle of his Jeep broke while he was driving it?”

  “It shouldn’t have. That Jeep is almost new.”

  “And Doctor Wilson was gassed to death in the laboratory this afternoon.”

  “Do you suppose it was because he is an Afro-American?”

  “What would that have to do with anything?”

  “Got me.”

  “Why would a physicist have lethal gas in his laboratory anyway?”

  She said, “I doubt he did.”

  Jack hesitated. “The lab. blew up. I was there. We all thought your dad was in the explosion. I mean, dead. Killed by it.”

  Fixing her hair with her fingers, Alixis said: “Oh.”

  “He looked rather heroic walking out of the smoke carrying Doctor Wilson’s body in his arms.”

  “Oh, that’s just Dad,” Alixis said. “Put him in a briar patch, and he’ll just smell of roses.”

  “Does it seem to you someone just might be trying to kill your dad?”

  Alixis shrugged. “I should care?”

  He watched her flat eyes as she yawned. “Don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “He’s your father.”

  “It would be nice not to be so pushed.”

  “‘Pushed’ …”

  “He bothers me a lot about what I’m doing, not doing.”

  “You starred in a movie?”

  “That was finished late last summer.”

  “That must have been fun.”

  “It wasn’t. Hanging around a film set is about the most boring thing you can do. It’s all hurry up and wait.”

  “So you’re an actress. You want to act.”

  “No. All that was my father’s idea as something I should do. It’s very important to him to report to the world what a great success each of his children is.”

  “Maybe it’s important to him that each of his children is fulfilling himself.”

  “‘Himself being him, you mean?”

  “Why would he set up a movie for you to star in if—”

  “I flunked out of Ol’ Miss. What a disgrace. As if I were the only person in the whole world who flunked out of college. I don’t like school. It’s too much work. Always having assignments hanging over your head. I mean, when you don’t do the work, the teachers can get right nasty, as if it’s any of their business. Why should they care if you don’t do your work?”

  “Why, indeed.”

  “So my father decided I should star in a movie. I had played Peter Pan once, in a school play. I wasn’t very good, didn’t like it much, but he insisted I was wonderful. He had this idea for a movie, got someone to write the script, hired a director—three directors, actually, before we were done. The first two quit. Said I wasn’t cooperating. He spent these tons of money, bribed people to put the movie in their theaters, all to distract people from the fact that I hadn’t cared to complete my college assignments. I guess he thought making a movie would turn me on, you know, as if I had a switch somewhere.”

  “Did you at least try to get into it, I mean, get enthusiastic, involved?”

  “How can you get enthusiastic with everybody telling you what to do twelve hours a day? I had to work with a dance coach, singing coach, do things over and over until I was bored out of my mind. Rehearsing didn’t do any good. I was never any better after I practiced something than before. It was all corny anyway. It was almost as bad as a children’s story. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ or something. Well, it came out last April, and everyone trashed it. They knew my father had bought and paid for it. They trashed me, as if it had been something I wanted to do. It wasn’t my idea. I tried to tell them. They said I was the spoiled daughter of a rich man. The money should have been spent any other way, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry. Or to make a good movie with talent that would appreciate the opportunity. I was very embarrassed. I’ve hardly left Vindemia since. See what I mean by always being pushed? Who needs it?”

  “What do you like to do?” Jack asked.

  For the first time a light came into her eyes. She breathed through slightly parted lips. “Sex. I really like sex.” She looked into Jack’s face, at his neck. “You like sex?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, it’s the greatest thing. If you can play at sex, why would you do anything else?” Alixis wet her lips with her tongue. “Why isn’t that enough for anyone? Everything else just takes energy I’m happier spending on sex.”

  The girl was getting warmer.

  “Ah.” Jack stood up. “I guess I better go over and see what needs doing to clean up the gym.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her tanned knees. She swung her legs back and forth from the bench, watching her muscles work.

  Jack swept the clay court and then went around picking up the balls, putting them in their net bag.

  She remained on the bench, watching him, swinging her legs.

  When he returned, Alixis said, “Guess I should go, too. So I can mention I spent some time in the gym this afternoon.”

  •

  “Hey, fatstuff,” Alixis said.

  The young man did not speak. He glanced angrily at his sister.

  He was way overweight, soft-looking. His skin was sallow.

  The four of them came together entering the gym. The two men wore greasy overalls, work boots. They had gotten out of a tow truck.

  “This is my brother Duncan,” Alixis said. “Jack Some one-or-Other.” Duncan looked at Jack’s uniform shorts and did not speak or offer to shake hands.

  Jack had shifted the three tennis racquets to the hand carrying the net bag of tennis balls.

  “The man who helps Duncan waste money on cars,” Alixis drawled. “Alfred?”

  “Albert,” corrected Albert.

  “And on other things. What are you goin’ to do, brother? Surely not exercise.”

  “Take a steam.”

  “No, Duncan.” Alixis sounded genuinely stern.
Jack wondered if Duncan’s eyes were characteristically angry.

  “Duncan,” Alixis said, “you’re full of shit. I can tell. You always are full of shit. Going into a steam room in your condition might kill you.”

  “So?” Duncan opened the door for himself. “Who cares?”

  “You could have a heart attack.” Alixis followed him through the door. “An aneurysm.”

  “Shut up.”

  “If you exercised instead of using that stuff—”

  Duncan turned on his sister. “Shut your damned mouth.”

  “—and then you’ll take more shit later.”

  Followed by Albert, Duncan went through a swing door.

  Alixis said, “I don’t care. Go kill yourself!”

  Jack was looking for someplace to put the tennis equipment. There was a closet door. He opened it. Inside were more tennis equipment, basketballs, a volleyball set… All the equipment appeared new, unused.

  Alixis said, “The boxing-wrestling room has a door on it that locks.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean. We were talking about it.” Jack’s heart raced. “What were we talking about?”

  “Sex.”

  “You and me?”

  “I don’t see anyone else around.”

  “No,” Jack said. “Not now. Maybe later. I have work to do.”

  “You agreed!”

  “I did?”

  “Oh, fuck you!” she said. “Go fuck yourself!”

  “I work here,” Jack said.

  “I don’t think I like you at all, Jack!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “I knew you know that word.”

  Forearms crossed, she walked away from him, through the main glass doors into the sunlight.

  She did have gorgeous legs.

  •

  “I need another six hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” Over the sound of the steam, people are apt to talk louder than they know in a steam room. They think they can’t be heard outside their tiled room through the thick wooden door. “I’ve told the old man that, time and again! Why doesn’t he just give it to me?”

  Jack had checked the equipment in the weight room. No parts needed replacing. Put the free weights in their rack. Vacuumed the rug. The full length, full width mirrors on the walls did not need cleaning. He dry mopped the floor of the basketball court. Vacuumed the whirlpool.