by Justin Scott
“I’m getting the impression you didn’t get along.”
“I can’t stand fakers.” He looked into his glass again. “Jesus, how did we get started on Ron?”
“Tell me something?”
“What?” he asked warily, but I had shifted gears, reckoning I had drawn his personal well dry for a while.
“If you’re right about the productivity bind, what’s your plan?”
Long grinned. I knew he had a plan. It went with the philosophy. “Volume. Build simple stuff you can sell to everybody in such volume that you have to hire more people to handle it.”
“Personal electronics?” I ventured, borrowing the phrase from Rita, on the assumption this was the basic Long family line.
“Exactly. Personal electronics. Single phone numbers for every person on the planet. Pocket computers. Digital tape. And a virtual-reality game in every rec room in the country. That’s four highly marketable items off the top of my head. We’re testing others I can’t talk about. I’m going to sell them to every man, woman, and child in America. And then to every citizen in the rest of the world.”
“What about the Japanese?”
Long grinned happily. “They can buy ’em too.”
Again I said, “Good luck.”
Rita hurried in with high color in her cheeks. I couldn’t tell whether she was flushed from cooking or had overheard Jack’s low opinion of Ron. “Dinner,” she said. “In the dining room.”
“Christ I’m hungry,” said Long. “I’ll open some more wine. You want another of those, Ben?”
I told him wine would be fine and followed Rita into the cavernous dining room, where beneath the silver chandelier stood a card table set for three. A linen cloth draped halfway down its spindly legs. The silverware was sterling; the fresh wineglasses crystal; and the china, Pottery Barn. I glanced over at the lonesome Empire sideboard, and it seemed to glower back disapprovingly.
“Light the candles, Jack,” said Rita, racing out as he blundered in with the wine. I approached the table, wondering where to sit, and found place cards written in a clean, Gothic hand.
Jack poured the wine. He noticed me eyeing the label and said, “California. I bought a little vineyard next door to Josh Jensen’s.”
“That sounds like a wonderful thing to own.”
“The candles?” the cry repeated from the kitchen.
“You got a match?”
“No.”
He went in search of matches for the candles and I stood there alone—me and the sideboard, which I was feeling affection for. It looked like Newbury’s venerable school principal, who taught his students to spell the homophonous title by reminding them that he was their pal.
Rita pushed through the swinging door, deliciously backside first, carrying a huge platter.
I lunged to help.
“Thanks, I’m all right. Where the hell’s Jack?”
“Looking for matches.”
“Jesus Christ.” She hesitated, considering the distance of the sideboard from the card table.
I said, “Why not on the table, since there’s only three of us? Here, I’ll just move the flowers a hair and…Right.”
She put it down, stood back tentatively, and wiped her brow. She had perfect ears, with a fat diamond stud in each. “What do you think?”
“Beautiful.”
“Really?”
Whether she could cook was still an open question, but she was an artist and had arranged the chicken breasts, baked potatoes, and string beans in a parkland of parsley.
“I just remembered, I owe you for the groceries.”
“Rita, chicken doesn’t last.”
“Don’t worry, I used yours to experiment.”
Jack came back with the matches, complaining, “I can’t find a goddamned thing in this house.” He lit the candles and finally noticed the platter.
“Jesus, hon. You did that?”
“No, Federal Express from Fraser-Morris.”
“Looks great.”
Rita sat down. Jack and I took our places.
So far, I had learned a very few facts: Jack disliked Ron; Jack and Rita, whose marriage of nine years resembled one of thirty with its practiced wrangling, had called some sort of blind-eye truce; Jack said he thought a poacher had accidentally shot Ron; he claimed he was worried Rita wouldn’t get a fair trial. What else did I know? Rita was a hell of an actress. Jack was very nervous. Edgy myself, I proposed a stupid toast:
“Confusion to the state’s attorney.”
It went down big. Rita’s eyes darkened. Jack’s narrowed. I amended it to “Cheers” and we drank and fell on the chicken, which was cooked rare.
Rita watched me chew.
I said, “I think I’m familiar with this recipe. You’ve got a nice touch with herbs.”
“The builder gave us a spice rack,” Jack explained, then, a bite later, “This is really good, hon.”
“Thanks, hon. Ben, did you say you cook?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think these same spices would work with veal?”
“Ground veal,” I replied, and got a secret smile. I ate around the red parts, thinking how much fun flirting with Rita Long would be if poor Ron hadn’t lived and died.
Jack burned his mouth on his potato. She had microwaved them, and the skins were as crisp as wet Xerox paper. The green beans, however, crackled admirably. I complimented Rita on them. She credited the Gierasch farm stand on 361.
“Jack, pour Ben some more wine.”
I covered my glass. “Driving.” Jack had quietly switched from wine—which he occasionally touched to his lips for appearance sake—to water. Now and then his gaze would alight inquiringly on me. He was wary, maybe even rethinking what I was doing in his home.
“How long you going to stay in the real estate business?”
“Oh, I think I’m in it for the duration.”
“You could have a problem.”
“How so?”
“It’s possible homeowning patterns are changing. We might go back to a situation like England used to have, where people live in the same house their entire life.”
“I hope not. But even so, people still marry and die. There’ll always be some market.”
“But a lot less real estate agents.”
“The newer ones could have some problems,” I agreed, drawing a smile from Rita. I was sorely tempted to say, Look, Jack, Rita and I will wash up. Why don’t you go to New York?
“Did you ever think of getting a job?” Jack asked.
He made it sound more like an insult than my third genuine job offer that week. I suppose I was a little touchy on the career subject, which cropped up nights I couldn’t sleep and days my bank statement arrived. But his superior tone did not inspire me to admit that occasionally I did long to get back in the action.
“No,” I answered. “My business keeps me busy.”
“I’m told you used to be some sort of genius at structuring debt. I’m always looking at new acquisitions—I say buy it before it buys you—I could use a man with that talent.”
I pretended to give this absurdity my full interest, before replying, “Keep in mind, Jack, when I worked on Wall Street, debt was the goal. I doubt that’s your position these days.”
“Talent is talent. You telling me you’re too old to adapt?”
“I have adapted.”
“What are you, thirty?” Jack scoffed.
“Thank you. Thirty-five.”
“That’s not too old to change.”
“Ben is saying he’s already changed,” Rita interrupted. “He’s gone from Wall Street to…Main Street. Haven’t you, Ben?”
“Right. If you’re offering me a job, Jack, I’m flattered. Very flattered. And I’m grateful, particularly if you assume I’m in desperate straits. But I’m not interested in that sort of work anymore.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
&n
bsp; “Mainly, it doesn’t go anywhere.” I looked across the table at Rita, who gave me a noncommittal smile. Jack, however, laughed.
“You’re too young for forty-something angst.”
“No I’m not. Wheeling numbers is for the young and dumb. Pass the time, make a ton of money.”
“You’ve got plenty of time on your hands not selling houses and damned little money from what I can see.”
“Jack, shut up,” said Rita. “That’s no way to talk to a guest.”
“Relax, hon. Ben and I understand each other. Don’t we, Ben?” Fully on the attack now, he hunched over the table, probing for any ambivalence he could turn against me.
“You probably understand me better than I understand you. What do you want to be, Jack?”
“Nothing I’d waste time thinking about. I just do it.”
“Why bother? Aren’t you rich enough already? Why not bank it, move full time to Newbury, and grow flowers Rita could paint? What are you trying to prove? You going to beat your father again?” No way to talk to a host I barely knew, but he’d set the tone. Nor did he seem to mind.
“The fight’s not over, man. That’s all I’ll say. Look, Ben, I’m offering to put you back in the game. You got a ban on you? I’ll get it lifted.”
I wondered whether he had guessed I was working for Rita and was trying to buy me off. Rita seemed to wonder too. She looked a little worried that I’d succumb to visions of Bentley convertibles, fast women, and Sutton Place digs, so I said, “I’m a country boy, Jack, back home where he belongs.”
“Country boy my ass! I know a player when I see one. Guys like you don’t sell houses, you sell towns.”
“Not anymore. At least when I sell a house it’s the beginning of something. I’ve enhanced the house. When I ran takeovers, people got fired.”
“They should have been. Goddamned bloated payrolls were killing us.”
“We used to tell ourselves that at the celebration dinner—improving efficiency, raising productivity, streamlining.”
“Somebody had to do it.”
“Somebody else. I don’t want to play God anymore.”
Jack snickered. “Sanctimonious bullshit, Ben. Sounds to me like the U.S. Attorney turned your head.”
“Jack!” Rita protested. “Apologize. Or I’m leaving the room.”
“I apologize. Okay, Rita? I apologized.”
“Ben? All right?”
I should have excused myself and gone home before it turned ugly, but I saw real alarm on Rita’s face.
“No problem.”
Jack said, “Just because I apologized doesn’t mean I believe you. Nothing’s that simple.”
He was right, of course, but I could not abandon Rita, so I tried to smooth it over: “I’ll tell you a story, Jack. This happened long before the U.S. Attorney came down on me.…Leaving Chanterelle, late one night. Way downtown? Dark, empty streets. I put the client I’m about to gut into his limousine, and after he’s gone I discover I’m locked out of mine. My driver’s stuck inside, can’t get the doors and windows open, dead battery or an electrical short or some damned thing. Anyway, I’m locked out, and this old black beggar comes along and corners me with a paper cup.”
“The yuppie nightmare,” Jack chuckled.
“Poor guy looked like he hadn’t slept indoors since the Korean War. So I peeled off a fifty.”
“Generous.”
“I’d just tipped a wealthy sommelier a hundred.”
“Did the old guy thank you?”
“No. He just took the money and leaned in closer. My driver’s banging on the windows, like he’s the one with the problem. The old man asks me, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with capitalism?”
“This was some months before the crash, and I could not for the life of me think of anything wrong with capitalism.”
“Other than shoddy limousines.”
“Other than shoddy limousines. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘fill me in.’
“He said, ‘Capitalism runs just fine at eighty percent.’
“I felt like he’d dropped a paperweight on my head from the top of the World Trade Center. I had never thought of it that way before. Then he explained, ‘You boys do real fine at eighty percent, so long as you can pay enough cops to keep the rest of us out of your houses.’”
“Old guy should publish a newsletter,” said Jack.
“Yes, well, I was his first convert. That was the night I lost my taste for playing with numbers.”
“You know what I’m hearing?” asked Jack. “I’m hearing you lost your money in the crash and got religion.”
“No. I got rich in the crash. Morning after the old beggar, I moved all my ill-gotten assets into bonds.”
Jack Long stopped sneering abruptly. “You did?”
“Followed my gut. Made out like a bandit.”
Jack looked at his wife. “You see why I want this guy on my side?”
Rita said, “I’d hire the old man with the cup.”
Jack laughed. “Don’t say no, now, Ben. Keep my offer in mind. Hey sweetheart, what’s for dessert?”
“Sweetheart” reported there was Oreo ice cream, or lemon ice for anyone concerned about his weight. I had Oreo, and we withdrew to the drawing room, where Jack lit a smokey fire.
“Could I ask you something, Jack?”
“Nothing’s stopped you so far. Shoot.”
“I saw your picture in the paper. What’s it like meeting the President?”
“Less expensive than it used to be under the Republicans. With Bush, grip and grin cost seventy-five thousand bucks to the re-election campaign. This was much more…democratic.”
“You don’t really meet?”
“He shakes your hand, speaks your name, gives you a big hug. This is a warm, huggy guy. You could walk away thinking he knew his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Does he?”
“I frankly don’t know. Back with Bush you knew right away you were dealing with an idiot, because while you tried to explain to him that he was the leader, he was rattling away about the rotten economy as if his gang hadn’t been in charge for the last twelve years. This guy’s smart, and he listens. Very smart. Look at the way he’s end-run the White House press. Maybe he listens too much, but I’ll withhold judgment. And he’s tough. Comes out of bare-knuckle politics. I like his wife. Major asset. What worries me is whether he can rise above the people helping him. They’re very young. They’re ignorant of the past—which might not be terrible. But that young, that close to power, how soon before they believe their own bullshit?”
Jack snatched up his wineglass and emptied it. “You should have seen his ‘inner circle’ that night. One of them did the Larry King show. King massacred the puppy, but they sat there telling him what a great job he’d done on King. Total fantasy.”
“What does it cost to meet the ‘inner circle’?”
“A whiff of cordite.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Jack was a war hero,” explained Rita. “That always goes down big with the Beltway crowd, no matter who’s in office.”
“I was not. I was young and dumb.” He saw me waiting expectantly and laughed. “I joined the Marines when I left home. Went to ’Nam, very early on. Two tours and I was back in the world by ’64.”
“He won a Silver Star,” Rita said with genuine admiration.
“Yeah, right.” Jack shrugged.
“Tell him how, Jack,” Rita prompted. Her eyes sparkled, and she leaned closer to touch his arm.
I felt a stab of jealousy at this unexpected insight into the early, better days of their marriage. Regardless of how things had turned out, they had once been hot for each other.
I chalked it up to the aphrodisiac charms of an older man’s money, power, and “whiffs of cordite” for an impressionable young woman of twenty.
“Ben doesn’t want to hear this,” Jack scoffed. “It was practically before he was bor
n.”
“I do. I do.”
He looked at his empty glass a moment. “I’d trained as a helicopter mechanic. Back in those early days, we could not afford to waste anything. So when we had a chopper down with a blown engine, I jumped in with some parts, installed them, and flew the thing out.”
“In,” I gathered, meant in the Viet Cong’s jungle. I was impressed and said so.
“You do what you have to do.” Jack shrugged again. “Before they do it to you.”
“Did you have any backup?”
“Forty-five automatic. Brandy?”
“No, I got to drive.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Rita.
“I need my license.”
“No, no, no. Stay the night.”
“Sleep here,” Jack echoed. “We got an extra bedroom furnished upstairs. No one’s using it, now. Right, Rita?”
“Stay. Jack, pour Ben some brandy. I’ll have some too.”
“You’ve twisted my arm.”
Jack opened a cute little Chinese lacquered cabinet in the corner, came up with three balloon snifters, and cracked a brand new bottle of sixty-year-old Napoleon. He splashed generously into each, handed a smiling Rita hers, passed me mine, and raised his. “Welcome, Ben. Hope you’re enjoying yourself.”
“Very much.” Jack was starting to confuse me. I had enjoyed his take on administrations past and present, and I wondered what else we had in common in our respective world views—he out there on the cutting edge, me snugged up in front of a fire with The Manchester Guardian Weekly for facts and moral position, the Economist for reality, the New York Observer for uplifting gossip, the New York Times for kindling, and the Newbury Clarion for moving violations.
Jack told funny President Bush and Reagan stories for a couple of rounds, and even a howler about our new Democrat—funny if it were someone else’s country—and when he got up to pour a third time, I said, “You amaze me, Jack. You sound like a liberal.”
“The hell I am.”
“Jack has a short fuse when it comes to idiots, don’t you, dear?”
He tossed her a black look and drank. Rita looked at me and gave me a little nod, which I read as saying, Push that button harder. The glint fired in her eyes by Jack’s war story had long faded, and she was regarding him again with veiled contempt, which made me inordinately happy.