The Royal Family
Page 6
| 19 |
Tyler’s first thought was to drive on, in order to avoid embarassing his brother. But then he wondered whether John had seen him, or recognized his car; John had an eye for cars, especially cars which had once belonged to John. Unhappy and ashamed, he rolled slowly to a parking spot half a block ahead, locked the doors, and walked back to the apartmentfront, while rain ran down the back of his neck.
Apparently he had done exactly the wrong thing, because John hadn’t seen him. He was now passionately kissing the girl, who of course opened her eyes and, spying Tyler over the back of John’s head, panicked and pulled away. John turned around quickly.
Hello, John, said Tyler.
He knew the girl. Her name was Celia Caro, and she worked for an insurance company in the financial district. John had introduced her once at a miserable party which Tyler had regretted going to. She and Irene had met several times.
So you’re snooping again, said John bitterly.
Tyler dealt with this as he had dealt with the black man’s comment about Irene’s race, by deflecting it. In the years he’d devoted to his job, which did indeed involve snooping, he had learned that this was the best way to prevent truculence from gaining its desired stranglehold. —I just happened to be driving by and I saw you, he said. Wondered if I could buy you a drink. You’re welcome also, Celia.
I have an interview early in the morning, said Celia awkwardly.
All right. How about you, John?
You know what? said Celia. I’m standing here in the rain, and I’m not getting any drier. I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Hank. Goodnight, John.
Goodnight, said Tyler.
John said nothing.
They walked silently around the corner, and John said: Here’s a good place. This Branden’s.
Ah, thought Tyler to himself. So he comes here often.
And how was dinner? said John when they were seated at the bar of this rather ferny and overpriced watering hole—a John kind of place, thought Tyler. Slow, silent, massive fanblades turned like windmills.
Very good, thanks. Sorry you couldn’t make it.
Sorry I couldn’t make it, agreed John with what his brother suspected of being sarcasm, gulping half a Scotch rather savagely. I was wrapping up the Peterson case. You read about it in the papers?
No.
Oh, well, forget it. Somebody got terminated and somebody else is suing.
You’re suing?
Exactly, said John proudly. Tyler relaxed. He had begun to make his brother happy.
But that narrow, immensely powerful mind kept whirring in its narrow track, like a snowmobile circling round and round at rope’s end, grinding deeper into the powder until it finally grazed hardfrozen earth, and John said: Was it to spy on me that you came here? That’s all you do day and night, your filthy spying.
John, I didn’t know you were with Celia, and until now I didn’t know where Celia lives.
And you’re going to fuck me around with Irene, aren’t you? You’re going to tell Irene, aren’t you?
No, I’m not, said Tyler easily. He was so used to humoring people that promising the moon came readily to him. It was a reflex. He did not have to decide whether or not to be bound by that promise until later. Besides, he could not think of any earthly or celestial reason why he ought to make Irene sadder.
Slowly the light faded from those glaring eyes. John trusted him. Tyler finished his beer. He wanted to do something with his hands, so he signalled the bartender for another.
Have you called Mom lately? said John.
Tyler knew that John hoped to catch him out. As a matter of fact, he had telephoned their mother just yesterday, but John would be annoyed not to have that to reproach him for.
Not lately, he lied. How’s she doing?
Fine, said John, stirring his drink. Then he said: I talked to Mom for about five minutes at lunchtime. She’s having chest pains again. She said that you called yesterday, he added triumphantly. I guess you just can’t be straight with people even if it’s more trouble to be crooked.
Oh yes, said Tyler. That’s right. I did call her yesterday. But she didn’t mention her chest pains to me.
Are you saying her condition isn’t serious?
No. I guess I’m saying that she tells you more than she tells me.
(This was another lie. His mother had informed him of her chest pains, but he wanted to flatter John.)
You’re crooked through and through, said John happily.
Tyler was cold and tired rather than angry. He did not want to see his brother again for a long while. But he had been trying sincerely to please him, and he had succeeded. He felt in some strange way needed, hence worthwhile. Then there was Irene. He couldn’t forget Irene.
Rows and rows of inverted glasses crouched upon the shelf before his eyes. They were precious crystalline fruits filled with the light of emptiness. His eyes began to hurt when he stared at them, so he gazed around the barroom and was pleased to discover between the notes of loud but muffled music worshipful young girls and boys, gracious old baldies, starry-eyed men who longed to get into the pants of the women they were buying drinks for, loud-talking boyfriends explaining and explaining, girls out together, shaking their heads at each others’ wit. A drunken blonde was bowing and clutching her crotch as she waited for the women’s room.
And how’s everything at work? he asked, wondering if he were repeating himself.
Fine. We just got a six-million-dollar case but I don’t know how deeply they’ll let me sink my teeth into it. Oh, I guess I told you about it already. The Peterson case . . .
(So he’s a little drunk, Tyler thought.)
And how’s the home life?
Couldn’t be happier, said John, drumming his fingers on the edge of his beer glass. —Irene’s a great gal, terrific gal.
They sat there awhile, and John’s throat jerked, and John said: How about you?
Lucrative.
That’s a switch. You ought to quit while you’re ahead. Get a decent tie; find a respectable job . . .
Tyler ducked his head. —Where’s the best place for ties?
Gaspard’s, said John, his face lighting up again. That’s a hell of a classy place. Even that clod Roland knows enough to go there. But—well, sometime I’ll have to take you to Donatello’s. That’s my little secret. You wouldn’t know a decent tie if it strangled you. But I can run you over there sometime. Actually, Irene has got a pretty good eye. Maybe she—
I guess silk is the thing, Tyler said, a little uncertainly.
At Donatello’s you don’t even wipe your ass with less than a hundred percent handmade silk. But it’s not cheap, I’ll tell you that. Last Christmas Irene bought me one of their Fog City Paisleys, a unique print actually, and though it almost killed me I made her take it right back. Irene was not happy. It one of those nights. But the next day my bonus came, and that’s the tie I’m wearing right now.
Pretty fancy, John. You’re lucky you married someone with such good taste.
She knows what I like, said John complacently. Well, I guess I should be getting back. Celia can run me home.
Okay. Let me just get this barkeep’s attention.
Forget it, said John. I’ve got a running tab here. No, I mean it. You took Irene out tonight. Don’t think I don’t keep track of those things.
| 20 |
Tyler went to a pay phone and checked his messages. Pressing the three digits of his secret code (which he knew from professional experience would not be much of a secret to anyone who cared), he heard the tape rustling backward, and for a moment was certain that Irene was calling him, or maybe Brady, but it was only some unfaithful husband he’d nailed who was threatening pathetically and drunkenly to sue him for invasion of privacy. Tyler had the geek’s home number. Composing himself to be a mouthpiece of friendly warnings, he telephoned, but got no answer, although it was already after eleven. The mistress had left town in a hurry, and he didn’t think that the man wo
uld be staying at her place anymore. Who knows; could he have shot himself? He was a gun collector. That would be convenient, Tyler thought. I hate dealing with these assholes, in or out of court.
He drove down to Larkin Street, photographed a drug deal for his friend Robert the cop, rolled past the parking garage and noted no traffic in or out, an observation which would not thrill Brady (although Brady nonetheless kept a notebook filled with such tabulations as Mamie [from Atlanta], age 28, on 8th betw 38th and 42nd; $20 + $5 for drinks—30 min) but just the same Tyler recorded No traffic in his surveillance report; then, via North Beach (where not far from the sequinlike neon beads of Adam & Eve a crowd of bus-attenders stood outside City Lights, ignoring the delicious books in the window, indifferent even to the black and white paperbacks of Howl stacked up in pyramidal altars to the 1960s), he returned to Union and saw John’s car still parked in front of Celia’s. If he had to guess, they were quarelling, not smooching, because his visit would have left Celia defensive and John simply mean. Not that it was his business. Why didn’t he go back to North Beach? Sometimes he stopped at City Lights to buy an issue of Industrial Photography Quarterly, which proferred tips on espionage, displayed photographs of pistols he couldn’t afford to own, and in its back pages sometimes consented to carry mail-order ads for locator fluid, not the good stuff that he bought with his special I.D. at the film department of Adolph Gasser’s, but stuff that was good enough to cut the good stuff with. He thought about calling Irene just to hear her voice, but that would be wrong. Sometimes zeal accomplishes the opposite of its objectives. He started toward City Lights, but by the time he’d emerged from the Broadway tunnel, whose sparkling yellow walls were that night silhouetted by hooting roller bladers, he’d changed his mind. Back to Polk Street—he remembered when Johnny Love’s was Lord Jim’s, actually not so long ago now. It had begun to drizzle, so that the car ahead was smeared and glowing. Crawling reflections made his own vehicle bubble inside like an aquarium. Hoping that John would be good to Irene when he did come home, he cruised down to the Mission, yawned, and checked out Capp Street where a weary old junkie was breaking in a spring chicken, explaining: Put your leg out, way out, and bend at the knee—that’s right! God, my feet hurt. You know how your toenails hurt when they’re too long? And I hate all this traffic. It’s just too hectic. It’s not calm. Now bend your back leg, too; okay, honey, straighten it out, lock it and wiggle your butt; yeah, show ’em some ass just like the Queen said . . . —but then the two whores saw Tyler’s slow-cruising detectivemobile and he had no more reason to linger, so he stopped at a gas station for unleaded and a stick of cheese-flavored sausage, admired the grand old curvy-cylindered-windowed Victorian houses on South Van Ness, swam past the parking garage, from which two whores were just then emerging (he photographed them and scribbled something down in the DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES line of his surveillance report), wound his way back to Union Street and found John’s car gone. Grimly grinning, he said to himself: Am I my brother’s keeper?
| 21 |
The following morning, when John arrived at the office (in the corner of his eye Irene’s car just beginning to pull away), a new doorman was there. They gazed at one another’s uniforms and passed without speaking; John had never even known the old doorman’s name. In the elevator beside him rode his plump secretary, Joy, whose spectacles goggled at the world from an unbeautiful but serene round face. She’d cut her hair short, and was wearing a blue dress. —Hi, Mr. Tyler, how are you? she began breathlessly; I’m a little harried but I did call him today . . .
Who are you talking about? said John. Say, is my tie straight?
Mr. Brady, she said.
What did he say, Joy?
He got the deposition, and he said to tell you that he’s very satisfied.
John smiled.
The elevator arrived. Pink-cheeked Joy scurried into her little cubicle, of which a cassette player and tapes took up a quarter, and John, passing by, glimpsed the baby seat for when she worked on weekends, the filing cabinet and the two desks crammed end to end. —Good morning, Mr. Rapp, he said.
Morning, John. Congratulations on getting Brady.
Oh, thanks, Mr. Rapp, laughed John, blushing with happiness.
Joy peeked out of her lair, her smile expressing full unity with Mr. Rapp’s mazel tov.
| 22 |
The amber button buzzed on John’s desk phone. Lifting the receiver, he depressed that unnerving crystal of luminescence, and said: What is it now, Joy?
Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer would like to bring you to a private lunch, said Joy’s voice, a little arch at the knowledge that it bore imperious tidings.
When—today?
Mmm hmmm.
What time?
One-thirty.
Okay. Thank you, Joy, he said, hanging up. He made a note on his memo pad: Call Mom tonight. —He e-mailed a memo to Joy to do a search for Brady, Jonas A. on both the LEXIS and NEXIS databases and bring him hard copy. Returning to the Veblen brief he’d been preparing since yesterday, he pecked in three cunning additions to the boilerplate; he thought they’d lure an approving smile to Mr. Rapp’s face if he read them, which Mr. Singer certainly wouldn’t. At one-twenty-five his screen chimed. His stomach ached, and his fingers were feeling sweaty. He went to the men’s room, washed his face, and adjusted his tie.
Boccaccio’s, John? said Mr. Rapp, with a smile that was not the approving one; it was the smile that meant nothing. He had left his blazer in the inner office, as was his custom when not receiving clients, and his starched shirt was as white as the solid left behind after sodium has consummated its marriage with ethanol.
Sure, said John. I’m ready.
He felt that he could not eat anything. He did not know whether he was about to be rewarded or punished, and that uncertainty made him nauseous.
At Boccaccio’s, which was right across the street from a women’s shoe store swarming with golden high heels, black high heels, sandals with double or triple straps, sexy boots, silver snakeskin affairs that came up to the knee, they sat at one of those uncomfortably “intimate” tables so beloved by those office dictators whose hobby it is to gaze into one’s anxious face. He saw that the full partners were planning to order wine. John ordered a beer just to show them that he was his own man. They nodded indulgently.
What do we live for? declaimed old Mr. Singer in his best populist voice. Some fellows live for women. I live to eat. I’m not fat or anything, but I enjoy my food. Barton Rapp, now, there’s a man who lives for his operas and his wine rack.
(John had heard all this before.)
Mr. Singer leaned forward and fixed John with his eyes. —And what do you live for, John? he said.
I live for my work, replied John, trying not to be irritated.
Mr. Rapp frowned and waved a finger. —Not good enough! he said. Everybody works to live, but very few of us—not even full partners, John—can say the reverse. What about your wife? Don’t you live for her?
Let’s leave Irene out of this, said John as his wife’s unlovely face hung before him.
Have it your way, John, said Mr. Singer. Let’s put it like this: What are you about?
John gulped at his beer and tried to smile.
Mr. Rapp tapped his wineglass with a musical sound. —When you ask who a person is, what he’s about, you’re really asking what his fetishes are.
I don’t have any fetishes, Mr. Rapp, just habits. Are you dissatisfied with my work?
A tough guy, purred Mr. Rapp with a loopy smile. We like that. On the contrary, John. You’re doing an excellent job.
I’ve got to take a leak, muttered Mr. Singer to himself. He got up and strode toward the back, his round bald dome accompanying him like something sacred—talk about the Music of the Spheres!
What are your fetishes, Mr. Rapp? said John in his most level voice.
You’ve got guts, John. There’s a fine line between guts and impertinence, and you’ve never crossed that line.
Are you ready to order, gentlemen? said the waiter.
I’m going to have the warm spinach salad with chevre, said Mr. Rapp. And I believe that’s all I’ll have. John?
I’ll take the same, said John. And another beer.
John, John, go ahead and eat! Don’t let me stop you! I’m an old man.
All right, said John. How’s the salmon today?
Excellent, sir, said the waiter. It’s probably the best thing on the menu. That garlic aioli is to die for.
Fine, said John. I’ll take the salmon.
I’d like the terra cotta chicken, please, said Mr. Singer, now returned. And a small green salad. Do you understand that concept? A small green salad.