Everything about his current life seemed tentative. He was spending more than he earned. In addition, he was not at all sure he was cut out to be a venture capitalist. The pace at Gland, Hollings seemed painfully slow. A new fund was being assembled, thirty million dollars, from a group of investors including insurance companies, corporate pension funds, a few individuals. The total was almost twice that of the firm’s previous capital pool, now fully invested. The formation of the new fund had put all the current projects on hold—including Owen’s recommendation that they invest in the freight forwarding company and as yet uncompleted studies of the desktop publisher and two other ventures. In the three months he had been there very little of substance seemed to have transpired at Gland, Hollings. He received his salary check. He had health insurance again. Perhaps he should stop worrying.
In contrast, his personal life was crammed with incident; pleasure, pain, and upheaval. Not his least concern was that he needed a new suit. Not only had Demi characterized his best suit as a joke, but now his trousers no longer hung on his flanks as they had throughout his life. Owen stood up, balancing his cup and saucer. His pants seemed suspended on a bulge at his midsection. He looked down at the roll of shirtfront that stuck out over his belt. God damn, I’m getting fat, he thought with pride. I’m in love and I’m getting fat! Life can’t be all bad.
“May I join you?” The person Owen had noticed at the other side of the dining room stood in the doorway cradling a pony of brandy. Without waiting for permission he sat in the chair opposite. “Are you a member?”
Owen sat down as well. “Yes. I’m Owen Lawrence.” He looked the question at his companion.
“A guest. Just staying for one more day. Then heading back to the lefthand coast.”
“Enjoying your stay?” Owen felt the proprietary urge to make the guest welcome.
“It’s quite different than I imagined,” he waved his glass in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room, the club, the dark city on the other side of The Window, “Boston, I mean.”
“Really? I’m not a native myself. I’d be interested in hearing your impressions.” Is this me talking, Owen wondered.
“Well, perhaps you will. Where are you from?”
“New Mexico, originally.”
“How long have you been a member? You look younger than most of the others.”
“About three months. I’m what they refer to as new blood.”
“Not to your face, I hope. How do you feel about this business of admitting women as members?”
Owen started to reply then shut his mouth. “You’re the journalist.”
“I confess I am. Leonard Lapstrake.” They leaned forward and shook hands, Owen with some slight hesitation. The other man’s grip was surprisingly strong. “I’m afraid I’ve ruffled some feathers.”
“Especially about the seafood. The local lobsters are from Maine, not Canada.”
“Just so long as they’re not from Nahant or Winthrop. There are plenty of pots still out there in the shit, so I’m told.”
“You’ve learned a lot about Boston in a short time.”
Lapstrake took a sip of his Rémy. “I think I may have been a little more negative than I intended. Or even than circumstances warrant. I was in a vile mood when I arrived.”
“Do famous columnists let their moods influence their writing?”
“Of course. That’s what we’re paid for.”
“Tough on your subject matter if you get up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Absolutely. Life is not fair. Neither is journalism.”
“So much for ‘all the news that’s fit to print.’”
“Even that is not fair. Most papers, including mine, modify the phrase to ‘all the news that fits, we print.’”
“What about television?”
“Television has nothing to do with news. Sometimes it does a good job of recording visual events. The rest is entertainment.”
“And what do you call what you do?”
“Touché. I’m a talk show for people who can read. God knows there are few enough left. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“Would you like another? I’ll join you.” Owen rang the bell on the wall beside the black leather chair. He found he wanted to talk about it. “It’s hard for me to sort the membership thing out. I’d hate to see the Club change much. I enjoy it a lot. It’s been a lifesaver to me, as a matter of fact. But I can’t see why it wouldn’t be just as pleasant a place with women as members. There are wives and daughters and female guests here all the time. No one minds that. It’s membership, not their presence, that is the sticking point.”
“What do you enjoy about the Club?”
“It’s funny, I was just thinking about that. This chair, for one thing. Sitting in front of this window.” He gripped the leather arms and leaned back. “I decided it fulfills a teenage fantasy. I can sit here by the window and pretend I am a Boston clubman.” The lanky frame leaned forward and he stuck out his jaw in a reasonable imitation of Walter Junior.
“But you are a Boston clubman.”
“I suppose in a technical sense I am, but I don’t feel like one. I feel like a kid pretending to be one.”
“What else do you enjoy? Besides your chair fantasy, I mean.”
“The food. It keeps me alive. More than that in fact. I live alone now. I never could cook. The restaurants around here are expensive. For the first time in my life, I look forward to dinner. Did you try the curry?”
“I had the sweetbreads. Quite good. Have you ever been to San Francisco?”
“There are a lot of places I haven’t been.”
“So, the fantasy of the clubman, the food, and …?”
“The conversation. The companionship. I suppose some of these men may look a little ridiculous to you …”
“Major Hoople does come to mind.”
“But by and large they are good, sincere, well-meaning …”
“I notice you don’t include hard-working.”
“Some of them have worked hard at some point in their lives.”
“Or brilliant.”
“Not brilliant, perhaps, but the conversation is several cuts above the Harvard Faculty Club. Let alone MIT,” he added.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been both places. We could probably add the newsroom at the Clarion.”
Lapstrake shuddered slightly, sniffed his cognac and took a bite. “Well, you make a good case. Why is it you seem to be in the minority?”
“I’m not sure. Some of the members feel very strongly about the whole mess. It is a mess, and it’s getting worse. Some are not so adamant, but they resent being forced to change by an outsider. The rest don’t say much on the subject, but if it comes to a vote … I don’t know.”
“And this outsider, the Wicked Witch of the East?”
“What about her?”
“What indeed? What’s her motivation in all this?”
“I assume she feels it is her duty.”
Lapstrake smiled. “Do your fellow members share that particular fantasy?”
“No, they don’t. It’s become very polarized. But they don’t know her.” He bit his tongue.
“And you do?”
“I’ve met her.”
Lapstrake rose. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Owen, but I think I shall be off to my hotel.”
They shook hands again. “I thought you were staying with us,” said the Boston clubman.
“No. There was a problem with the room. I’ve moved down the street to the Ritz. But I have been dropping in here once or twice each day. Call me and we’ll have a drink tomorrow. Suite 14A.”
A nice man. I think they misjudged him, Owen reflected, as he watched the short figure descend the steps and disappear from the screen of The Window.
I think I’ll stay a little longer, Lapstrake thought as he walked down the Sunny Side in the dark. He sniffed the woodsmoke of the first winter fires drifting down from the chi
mneypots. Maybe the Boston cowboy is worth another day.
Chapter 17
Newbury Street radiated self-satisfied evening energy. Galleries splashed pools of color on the sidewalk. Couples strolled perusing Banana Republic, Carroll Reed, Betsy, Esprit. Italian windows sported excitingly ugly clothes. Singles walked more quickly, ignoring windows, heading for DeLuca’s Market, a restaurant, the hardware store before it closed. Owen enjoyed Newbury Street in the evening. Except for the scruffy chaos of Harvard Square he had little experience of cities at night. The infrequent forays into Boston with Abbie from Weston had been carefully plotted excursions from the parking garage to the Shubert or the Pops or a movie theater and return. She had worried, hence he had worried, about being mugged. It was well known in the suburban towns that Boston was an international capital of crime and violence. Most suburbanites had at one time or another driven down the mean streets of the old Combat Zone as they escaped the city. Weston hearts raced at the thought of the sickening depravity that existed behind those dark doors and neon windows.
Owen and Abbie had known no one who actually lived in Boston. When friends or neighbors left Weston they moved to the Cape or to Maine, not to the city. If they were transferred they seemed to fall off the edge of the earth never to be heard from again. A tickle of guilt at being alone in the city at night in the midst of yuppie tumult increased Owen’s pleasure. Occasionally, he wondered if he would ever grow out of adolescence. Occasionally, particularly of late, he wondered if it made any difference.
Tasha was pulling tonight, head down, the leash weighted like an iron pipe. Owen carried a plastic sack of largely liquid groceries from DeLuca’s: orange juice, milk, a bottle of soap, a plastic jug of carbonated chemicals with an avowed lemon taste, a package of English muffins neither English nor muffin, six cans of Alpo Beef Chunks, and four cardboard packets of assorted food scraps intended to be heated in a microwave oven. Owen did not have a microwave but assumed the oven of his small Roper gas range would suffice. He had not experimented with these products but his club bill delivered in yesterday’s post had encouraged him to learn to cook. It had occurred to him, as he set his selection in front of the cash register, that the Alpo might contain more food value than anything else he had chosen.
Tasha parted oncoming traffic with her nose, stopping every twenty feet or so to investigate a shrub or the stairs to the converted basement shops known on Newbury Street as digouts. As they passed the most elegant digout, Davio’s, Owen glimpsed napery, silver, crystal, and Demi with her back to him. Before he could be sure or, more important, see her companion, Tasha pulled him along, the tension between man and dog increasing to the breaking point. Shit, he said, not quite out loud as he looked over his shoulder. Perhaps it was out loud since two young women jogging in sweat suits advertising a footrace in benefit of a popular disease turned to glare at him. The combination of the heavy bag and the relentless dog prevented him from stopping and returning to Davio’s. “Shit,” he said again, quite audibly.
Of course Demi had other dates. She must have lots of men calling her, inviting her to dinner. But why did they have to come to his neighborhood? There were plenty of good restaurants downtown, in the North End, in Cambridge. Why didn’t he take her to Michela’s? Then Owen wouldn’t have to know about it. He pulled Tasha to a stop with the thought of turning around, when a brown rat streaked out of the shrubbery decorating a newly completed digout. Owen had only an instant to set his feet. Tasha hit the end of the leash and the choke chain cut into her thick ruff. The rat disappeared down the sidewalk causing a ripple of small shrieks. The two of them stood for a moment both on their hind legs, Tasha’s forepaws waving in air, pointing at the target. Then they turned right down the dark block of Gloucester, away from the music of Newbury Street, such as it was.
He did not hear them coming. The street was quiet but the noise of the bicycle tires was overlaid by city hum. One hit him on the right side and sent the bag of groceries flying into an orange BMW parked at the curb. The other came by him on the left, applied the brakes, and in a stylish kickout flipped the back wheel of his mountain bike around and blocked the sidewalk. Owen went down to his knees and felt his trousers tear on the cement. Now I have to get a new suit, he thought. There was no one else on the block.
Parked cars screened them from the traffic that hurried by, windows closed against the chill. Tasha barked once and stood still, her tail waving. “Gimme your plastic, man,” said the tall one blocking the sidewalk. He wore bleached jeans and a leather jacket that said Flying Tigers on the front and had the Chinese Nationalist flag on the back. He straddled the bike easily, hightops planted on either side, a knife held between two fingers of his right hand.
The short one leaned his bike against the BMW and smiled. “Nice dog, mista. What’s he name?” Owen did not answer. His knees hurt and his right shoulder was numb.
“Gimme the wallet, man, or I cut you. Got a Rolex? Gimme that, too.” He looked at the short one. “Git it.”
Owen felt hands in his pockets. The short one pulled up the sleeve of his coat and snorted. “Just a shit Timex. How much your dog cost, mista?” he asked politely.
“You can have her,” said Owen hoarsely. He crawled forward and unsnapped the leash, the end of which he still held in his hand.
“Thanks, mista,” said the short one. Owen fumbled in the plastic bag of groceries. Dishwashing soap, no. Sprite, no. Milk, no. Alpo. He withdrew a large can of Alpo Beef Chunks and threw it at the head of the tall one, who dodged it easily and laughed. It smashed the windshield of a Mercedes parked behind the BMW.
“Hey, shithead,” said the tall one, “you bust that guy’s window. I’m gon call a cop.” He leaned over and looked inside the car. “Git the radio.”
“It’s gone. They took it out. Prolly in the trunk.”
“Let’s go. So long, shithead.”
Owen staggered to his feet and put his shoe through the spokes of the mountain bike leaning against the BMW. They were beautiful bikes. About four hundred dollars apiece, Owen guessed, short straight handlebars with thick grips, wide knobby tires, lots of gears. Who was she with, he wondered.
“Hey, mothafucka, get away from my bike.” The short one grabbed the handlebars and heaved. Owen fell again, his foot stuck in the front wheel. The tall one whipped his bike around and was gone in a flash of chrome. Tasha waved her curly tail.
“Go,” said Owen. The dog shot away into the darkness of the street under the trees.
“Doan fuck with my bike, sucka,” said the short one, adopting a more belligerent tone. Owen decided he was about fourteen years old as he reached for another can of Alpo. His foot hurt now almost as much as his knees and his shoulder. As the boy jerked the bike Owen hit him in the knee with the edge of the can. He fell down next to Owen and his face began to work. Owen struggled upright again and extricated his loafer from the spokes of the bike. Then he bent down and grabbed the short one by the belt. He held his skinny butt aloft while he went through his pockets, producing his own wallet, another wallet of expensive pigskin, a gold chain, several keys and a wristwatch which may or may not have been a Rolex. Owen dropped him and heard him yell as his kneecap hit the pavement. Unsnapping a black U-lock from the frame of the bike, Owen tried the keys until he found one that unlocked it. Then he dragged the bike to a parking meter and shackled the frame to the meter post. Three notes, each in a different hand, begged the metermaid to notice that the meter was inoperative. The car beside it bore a Day-Glo orange ticket tucked under the nearside wiper. He limped back to the short one, who was curled up on the sidewalk watching. Owen showed him the key. The liquid eyes locked on his. He held the key above a sewer grate. He dropped the key. Then he retrieved his grocery bag and hobbled up the street to the commotion on the corner.
The other bike was sprawled half under a mailbox. Tasha had selected the right leg of the tall one’s jeans and locked immutable teeth just above the hightops. She had no flesh but enough denim to pull h
er prey down. Now she was braced, head flat, legs outspread, while he tried to tear himself away from her. The black eyes watched his spasms impassively. Several young people surveyed the scene with interest. An old lady threatened the dog with her umbrella.
“Don’t,” said Owen. A Jaguar stopped at the light. The right front window whispered down and the driver leaned across the leather seat. “What’s the trouble?”
“Call the police for me.”
“Sorry, I’m on a call and I’ve got a call waiting.” The light changed and he disappeared.
A cab pulled up and a man emerged, hurrying with his briefcase away from involvement. Owen leaned inside the cab. “Can you call the police on your radio?”
“Sure. I’ll get the dispatch. Whaddaya got?”
“A couple of kids with a bunch of wallets.”
“Lorraine, call nine one one and ask ’em put a blue and white on the corner Gloucester, Comm Ave. We gotta couple bushwhackers here. No, this is a good one. Some guy nailed ’em with his dog. Like a big white wuff. Yeah, it’s eatin wunna the kids right now. Tell them get their ass in gear or there won’t be nothin left but scraps.”
The Last Bastion Page 10