Eccentric Circles

by Larry Duberstein

  Then he saw on the sheet that the defendant was his own age precisely, forty-two, and Pollard knew. He could not verify it anywhere in this slim depressing file but he knew that this troublous Busby would turn out to be the other one, too, with the weak wrist shot and A-plus in chemistry. A long-faced, sweet-natured joker. A friend! How this could be so, this vast unspeakable change in their relative circumstances, Pollard could not begin to guess. He had heard nothing of Ken Busby in twenty-five years.

  Quarter past two: maybe he wouldn’t come. Pollard walked the room, wishing for the five hundredth time that the damned windows opened. And for the five hundredth time he was sorely tempted to fenestrate the space informally, by firing the J. F. K. paperweight through one of the tall plateglass panels. Of course he refrained. Sandra’s face appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Busby to see you,” she said.

  Ken Busby was not the least bit surprised by Pollard, but then there was nothing surprising about Polly. He was right where you expected him to be. Busby was pleased at their reunion, showed no embarrassment regarding the circumstances. He was hale-fellow-well-met at the door and legs akimbo at the desk, accepting a cigar with natural ease and puffing it with considerable pageantry.

  He was, of course, not entirely sober, yet he was no stumblebum either. He had wit and poise and the same old impish grin, curling up past two overprominent front teeth. He had exactly what he used to have, likability. Pollard was at a loss to begin. It seemed downright gauche to raise the legal agenda, or even to say most simply, How in the world …? Kenny’s comfortable demeanor made such directness out of the question socially and when Pollard did finally manage a gambit (“Let’s start with some background, shall we?”) he just grinned and waited.

  “Twice before for trespass. Any particulars I should know about?” By which he meant, Please Lord, let there be particulars, let this prove to be a big mistake.

  “Only that it oughtn’t be a crime. I mean, really, Poll. All those large warm spaces and no one using them?”

  “I take your point, legalities aside. But legalities are what we are facing here.”

  “And legalities are your stock in trade, hey?” Kenny wore a teasing grin, but Pollard was obliged to keep this part earnest:

  “Forget the law, then. Call it reality—”

  “Okay! In reality, then—reality as Hegel would have it—I was poor and I was cold, on those occasions and more than a few others. And between yourself and mine, compadre, I may have also been moderately sloshed.”

  “But there’s worse. Assault on a bag lady? Stealing watches by the pound?”

  “In those days I was bound more by time.”

  “The hell. You sold them.”

  “Time is money,” shrugged Busby.

  “The bag lady?”

  “Bad. Dumb. I was a slob. But Poll, this was not assault. If this was assault then so is a simple handshake. I took the dear lady’s arm for a sec, that’s all—gentle and kind of friendly, if you want a second opinion.”

  “God knows it may have been. The problem is that after a while the record takes on a life of its own—”

  “But there is no problem, amigo. They send me upstate for thirty days, maybe sixty, all the better. The way I had it figured I’d go in right after the New Year and be inside for the really tough weather. I’ve got paperwork to catch up on anyway.”

  “You want in?”

  “Let’s say I am willing to pay my debt to society. But I gotta tell you, Poll, this system of yours could use a spot of oil. The way things stand now, I’ll be lucky to get inside before March. Who needs that?”

  “You don’t care about a defense? Just going through the motions here?” Pollard never liked it when a freebooter failed to appreciate the act of charitas. It was far from unusual, but it always brought the taste of early grapefruit to his face, the sour surprise of betrayal.

  “Yes and no. When I saw it was you, I welcomed the chance—hell, the privilege. And it is wonderful to see you after all these years. I mean that.”

  “I think you might. I’d be glad to see you too—I am glad, though I admit the situation tossed me back a few yards.”

  “Hey, don’t let it get you down, Poll.”

  “But how can I help out? I don’t suppose you’d take money?”

  “Why not? Nothing wrong with money.”

  Pollard shook his head as much in admiration as amazement. If this was acting, it was worth an award. Kenny showed no sense of shame. It was as though all life’s vagaries, and chiefly its disappointments, were a source of secret amusement, just so many wry moments; or as if the two of them embraced, and were casually batting around divergent but equally sound sociological perspectives. Yet Kenny was a vagrant. His hair was a wig of string and grease, his clothing soiled, frayed and ill-fitting, his uncut fingernails had trapped half the grime of lower Manhattan. He was habituated to lounging in prison. What could one say to him, knowing any sermon would be cleverly deflected or cavalierly dismissed?

  “Say I give you a couple hundred bucks. Will you get yourself some decent clothes and a haircut?”

  “The clothes, for sure. Boy, a good coat would be a lovely thing to own right now. But I better level with you on the haircut, I can’t see blowing money there.”

  “When was the last time you worked, Kenny?”

  “Got a job right now. I can always get work when I need it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “A rooming house, near the port. Just a sweep-up job, you know. Change a light bulb. Pin money.”

  “I thought you’d gone to college—”

  “Two years. Got out after two.”

  “You quit?”

  “More or less. See, I had a little drinking problem when I was younger.”

  Busby began to laugh, chuckling softly at first, then tossing his head back in gales of laughter until he choked a bit on the cigar smoke and tears came from the corners of his eyes. He shook his head back and forth gently, settling himself down, brushing gray ash from his lap.

  Pollard tried to think, but only vague ideas, more like images, played across his mind. Images of Ken Busby’s Manhattan, flophouses, benches, phonebooths to piss in; of his own Manhattan, theatres, heated taxis, flowers for Marya at forty dollars a dozen. Images from the past, the one they had shared—a suburban paradise of soft lawns and long clean beaches—and the one they had not shared, for now he recalled that unlike the others in their bunch, Kenny’s family had no soft lawn, no two-car garage. In a town of sitdown mowers, they rented an apartment above a variety store. He had never been inside.

  And Kenny had not connected with girls. That was why they had drifted apart the last two years of high school. That was the precise word for it, too: it had never been a question of success or failure, there had simply been no connection. Looking at Kenny, it was possible to believe the connection had never been made, that there was a void.

  But what now? Call it a pleasant surprise, a smoke and hello, and let it go at that? Should he try to talk Kenny into fighting the charge? If so, to what end? What could he propose that would make a dismissal meaningful? Pollard tried to think. Was help called for here, was it wanted; was it even a possibility?

  “Why not come to dinner next week?” he heard himself saying.

  Pollard wondered what Marya would and would not do—he had told her the whole story, of course. Normally, for company, she would invest heavily in her hair and come out worrying it was not quite right. Would she invest and worry with Busby coming? He would be curious to see. Would she trot out Granny’s silver service and the bone china? Which way would he do it himself? “Can you take Mr. Busby’s call?” said Sandra’s voice.

  “Ken, how are you?”

  “Fine, Polly, but listen. I don’t know about tonight.”

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “Nothing, nothing. It’s just I don’t like taking advantage. I mean, you’ve been an ace, Poll, a true democrat, but you don’t have to save me. It isn’t necessary,
really it isn’t.”

  “Come all the same,” said Pollard, relieved. “I’ll be sure and have your favorite wine—Port Rancid ’86, is it?”

  “Shee, Port Rancid’s a bit rich for my thin blood. How’s about Fruity Surprise instead?”

  “Fruity Surprise it is. That’ll call for beef?”

  “Sure. Either that or seafood—though knuckle soup is okay too. You’re serious, Poll, I can’t get over that.”

  “Just come and eat, Kenny, it’s no big deal. Marya is awful about last-minute cancellations.”

  “You could drag some other bum in off the street to replace me.”

  “Nonsense. We don’t get such a good class of bums in our neighborhood. The kind that could pull down an Aplus from Howison in chemistry.”

  “Jeez, what a memory. No wonder you’re sitting on top of the world. All right I’ll be there. But let me at least bring the vino, like a proper houseguest.”

  Kenny came not quite scrubbed. He was almost presentable. Had he been a sculptor or a minor symbolist poet his appearance would have been about right, for the clothes were well chosen: a charcoal suit from Barney’s over a blue oxford-cloth shirt loose at the neck and a decent polo coat, used but not ill-used.

  Problems arose at the extremities. Busby’s shoes tumbled from his cuffs like two footballs from Jim Thorpe’s day and his hands were assertively dirty, as though instead of washing he had taken some pains to ply them with grime. His stiff uncut hair was sown with dandruff and his most recent shave had been timed such that he looked disagreeably smudged, neither bearded nor smooth.

  Marya was fine; she scarcely blinked. (She had not done her hair, or had done it the way Pollard liked best—washed, brushed, and pinned up simply.) The boys were true democrats like their father and moreover were disburdened to find the mystery guest pleasant and funny. They were prepared to compensate, or to romanticize him, but liking him removed any difficulty from the democratic position.

  He had not brought Fruity Surprise, producing instead two bottles of a good Pouilly-Fuissé in string bags. The trouble here was that he drained one bottle and was past the neck of number two before either of the Pollards had disposed of a small initial dose. Busby would fill his glass to the brim, like a child pouring Coca-Cola at a barbecue, then toss it off the same way.

  Inevitably there were consequences to this, though not right away. Busby could absorb a good deal without effect and a deal more with largely positive results. He passed through a phase where he was as bright and charming as if he’d been a famous poet after all, quoting from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and referencing the work of an obscure Swiss filmmaker Marya admired. Busby had brains, of course, and had clearly engaged them, even as he was tumbling to the bottom of the social order.

  But as Pollard noted that the transfer of wine was now complete—the bottles emptied, Busby filled—he noted too that his friend had entered a new phase. He slumped, hiccoughed, scratched himself absently; something in his tone made the boys draw back. He looked unpredictable, for lack of a better word, and in that sense slightly dangerous. Not physically (for Richard, the older of the two at twelve, probably outweighed him) but metaphysically.

  “More and more,” said Kenny, claiming to cite the poet John Berryman, and rowing the air dramatically with his arms, “the world is becoming a place I do not prefer to be.”

  Of course there could be no response to this, so, turning to Marya, he responded himself: “More and more, Mrs. Pretty Pollard, this room is becoming a place I do not prefer to be. Which way to the latrine?”

  Marya had colored twice, first the remark and then the joke he turned it into. “Get him out, Paul,” she said now. “Before he gets any worse.”

  “How much worse can he get? The wine is gone.”

  “Yes and in a minute he’ll be eyeing the liquor closet and quoting Shakespeare on conviviality.”

  Pollard laughed. When Ken returned, half unzipped and weaving uncertainly, the boys clearly wished someone would send them to their rooms on some pretext. Pollard saw this, but couldn’t come up with the pretext. Meanwhile Busby put an arm around Stephen and drew him close. “Flaubert,” he murmured, “speaks somewhere of the lemon trees at Jaffa. Do you know the passage?”

  Four Pollards fell mute before this astonishingly mixed display of erudition and crudity, as Busby went on: “That print reminded me of the Flaubert, Poll, the one of the orchard. The lemon trees are fragrant, he says, and if you stand in just the right spot you can smell their delicious fragrance and at the same time inhale the aroma of corpses rotting nearby. Something, hey?”

  Richard and Stephen took French leave of Flaubert now, literally twisting free and bolting down the hall without benefit of text or pretext. On the lam. Marya sat riveted to the first remark, about the Bonnard print, which happened to be hanging not in the bathroom but above their bed. What had this man been doing in her bedroom? Pollard just smiled and looked Kenny in the eye, for Kenny was playing a little game here, a perverse little game to which Attorney Paul Pollard was no stranger.

  “Do you know the passage?” Ken repeated, to break the lengthening quiet.

  “Why don’t we eat now?” Pollard said.

  “Yes. I hope you care for roast chicken, Mr. Busby,” said Marya brightly, blinking twice but quite composed, her husband thought with some pride.

  Busby did indeed care for roast chicken and had gone back to work at being sociable while under its influence. He left off with lofty quotation and they exchanged light stories about Abingdon, the old home town. Sitting down to coffee, they glossed over the missing decades with anecdotes and came around to “the case,” as Pollard called it. Kenny thought that an overglorification, but was pliant and agreeable to fighting the thing in court if Poll felt strongly.

  The evening ended well. Kenny left, they cleaned up together, then Pollard took a brandy in to sip with the late newscast. He was in very good spirits until Marya came flying back from the bedroom with news of her own: two gold watches gone, along with a diamond ring worth two thousand dollars.

  “Damn,” said Pollard.

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “No, hon, wait. I’d like to wait on that.”

  “You think he’ll bring them back?”

  “You’re sure about this? The things were there—?”

  “Yes I’m sure. And so are you, Paul.”

  “Damn!”

  “Help me understand this, Paul—you are going to let that guy take you to the cleaners?”

  Pollard refused the bait. He did not understand, either, but he did not feel he had been taken to the cleaners. How could he explain to his wife that Kenny was only playing a game and that he therefore was playing it too? That it intrigued him. Calling in the police did not fit the rules of this game as he perceived them; on the contrary, it constituted defeat, precisely.

  “It’s guilt. Your freefloating pro bono guilt. But don’t you see, hon, that this releases you from it? You tried to help him and the man stole. Stole from you.”

  “Why, though? I mean if it was guilt, as you say, why would his stealing change anything? He’s already stolen in the past—that’s part of the guilty concern to begin with, no?”

  “Yes, but now he steals from you personally.”

  “Bites the hand that feeds him roast chicken?”

  “Paul, he is a criminal. You have to face that. If you don’t or can’t, then he’s simply played you for a fool.”

  Pollard drew a breath, and tried to hide his regret that Marya’s was the logic of castigation: concur or be diminished. “I’m afraid,” he said with a gentle smile, “he’s accomplished that either way. I defend him in one case while prosecuting him in another? Admit he has good field position.”

  “Paul. The man takes a bundle from you as a handout, then walks in here and takes more. Frightens your children. You can drop the silly case. Keeping that one out of jail might be a full-time job—and you said yourself he doesn’t even want to be kept out.”


  “Right, but what does he want? That’s the part that interests me. That’s the piece I need.”

  “He wants to hurt you, that’s what he wants. To destroy you, if he can manage it.”

  “But isn’t it himself that he’s destroying?”

  “Oh sure, he’s already accomplished that. Now he’d like to take a few fat cats down with him. This is a bitter, failed man, Paul. How does the fact you knew him twenty-five years ago change anything? Everyone knew someone twenty-five years ago. Someone knew Adolf Hitler when he was a kid. Someone knew the guy who shot the Pope.”

  Pollard could understand her excitement. It wasn’t the jewelry, it was her anger at being invaded; angrier still because he was not angry. Still, he was not. This was no time to bring in the police or the insurance people. Pollard knew that Ken Busby would come breezing in to the office for their Tuesday appointment and they would hash it out together then.

  Really it was as though they had been playing poker and Kenny had taken the first big pot. It wasn’t the pile of chips that mattered, but rather the way the cards were played; because he was apparently quantifiable to Busby, while Busby remained unknown to him.

  Pollard had rehearsed the talk till he had it well-honed as a one-act play. Kenny, however, did not appear on Tuesday, nor did he appear or communicate thereafter. In fact he jumped bail, such as it was, skipped out on the court date, and went underground, which meant nothing more than a reversion to form. Pollard poked around, but found it tricky going; the address Ken had supplied, for example, was a vacant lot, a razed block. And while he did locate a number of people who recognized Kenny’s picture, and more or less knew him, they knew him by a variety of names and none had seen him in years. Or so they said. Had Kenny put in the fix? At least three “friends” assured him Busby had shifted his base of operations to the warmth of Miami years ago and was most likely down there now.