There was a brief pause, and when she spoke again anger had been replaced by cynicism. “A little rebellion, eh? A sop to your self-respect Okay, Art, you showed me how manly and independent you are.”
“I don’t want to be independent,” I said. “When do we get married?”
“What’s your hurry?”
“No hurry, I just want to know when.”
“Some time after Labor Day,” she said.
“After Labor Day?” Impossible. I could keep Bart in California four or five days, maybe even a week, but no more than that. After Labor Day? Two weeks, maybe longer? No way.
Then, making it worse, Liz added, “We have till the end of the year, so why rush? Besides, we ought to wait till your brother gets back.”
“Bart? Back from where?”
“Los Angeles. He left this morning, some old girl friend tried to kill herself.”
“Old girl friend!” I expressed outrage. “What do I care about old girl friends?”
“You asked,” she pointed out.
“Why that dirty son of a bitch!” I yelled. “He’s supposed to be my partner, he’s supposed to help me in this goddamn expansion, he hasn’t been around the goddamn office all week, and now he’s in California? The son of a bitch, I’ll throw him out of the company, I swear to Christ”
“You do that” She didn’t sound very interested. “You want to come to the Island with me tomorrow?”
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ll take you out to dinner tonight. That is, if you don’t have to stay up with a sick housewife.”
“I’ll come to your place around seven.”
“Good.”
“About our wedding date, I’ve always—”
“Don’t push it, lover,” she said, and hung up.
Damn.
VOLPINEX SAID, “I’VE never had much of a sense of humor, myself.”
“You surprise me,” I said.
We were having lunch at a snowy table by a tall arched window. This dining room on the third floor of the club, hushed and half full, overlooked Park Avenue swarming with taxis. A new office building across the way, a dull slab gridwork of glass and chrome, formed a great segmented mirror in which I could see Volpinex’s club reflected like a dream of the landmarks commission: Victorian brownstone elegance shimmering on a surface of functional blah. I had waved my hand near the window early in the meal, hoping to see myself across the way, but the reflection didn’t offer that much detail.
“I’ve always thought of comedy,” Volpinex went on, “as a mark of unreliability. A fellow in my fraternity was always telling jokes, and then he hanged himself.”
“I won’t do that,” I promised.
He brooded at me. “No, I don’t suppose you will.”
“Chilly in here,” I said, and buttered a roll with a cold silver knife.
Volpinex always surprised me; in memory he tended to become older and fatter, but in life he was invariably a slender healdiy thirty-year-old. My contemporary, in fact, and about my size, but probably in better physical shape: a karate expert, for instance. Born of Count Dracula, out of a White House aide. It was his humorlessness, the determined flatness and bullshit of his speech, that made him seem fat and fifty.
Speaking out of that train of thought, I said, “Comedy keeps people young.”
“In the sense that it’s childish, yes.”
“Besides,” I said, “I’ve always heard that comedy is what separates us from the animals.”
“Parrots tell jokes,” Volpinex said, “and hyenas laugh.”
“What do you think separates us from the animals?”
“Nothing,” he said, and the conversation paused while the waiter brought Volpinex’s oysters, my mussels, and our half bottle of Chablis. The tasting ritual was accomplished with deep and solemn pleasure on all sides, and the waiter went away. Volpinex said, “I do, however, appreciate that humor can be a salable commodity.”
“Anything can be sold,” I said.
He gave me a thin glinting smile. “Including yourself, for instance.”
“There’s always the possibility,” I suggested, “that I signed the contract not because I love money but because I love Liz.”
“I suppose that’s a joke,” he said, his smile fading. “You’ve never been audited,” he said, dipped an oyster in the blood red sauce, and ate.
I squinted at him. “Say again?”
“By Internal Revenue,” he explained. “They’ve never audited your tax returns.”
“They’d need a microscope.”
“You strike me,” he said, “as the sort of person who would commit fraud for the sheer pleasure of it Claim your dog as a dependent, that sort of thing. A tax audit might very well finish with you in Danbury.”
He meant the Federal prison there. In true Volpinexish language, the Feds call it a Correctional Facility. I said, “What are you getting at? Free legal advice?”
“Should you marry Elizabeth Kerner,” he said, “your economic position would alter significantly. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the IRS then took an interest in you.”
I ate a mussel. I drank a bit of Chablis. I said, “Did you really get me here to make stupid threats?”
“Threats? We’re merely discussing possibilities.”
“No, we’re not. We’re discussing fantasies in your head. You’re telling me you have friends at Internal Revenue, and they’ll lean on me if I don’t get away from Liz.”
Nothing changed in his cold dark face; I got a sudden whiff of hair oil. “The comedic mind is often paranoid,” he said, and sipped at his wine. “I’ve noticed that before.”
This echo of a comment I’d made to Linda Ann Margolies startled me; had she been a setup, working for Volpinex? No, that was paranoia. Volpinex had no need to infiltrate me with Mata Haris. I said, “I’m going to marry Liz. There’s nothing to talk about”
“According to your ex-wife,” he said quietly, “comedians make unsatisfactory husbands.”
I ate my last mussel I drained my wineglass, and a silent waiter at once refilled it and withdrew. I said, “Look, Volpinex, whatever dirt you could find on me you’ve already showed to Liz, and she brushed it off. The income tax threat doesn’t scare me because once I’m married to Liz I’ll use her accountants to defend myself.” I gave him the tightest grin I had in stock, and said, “I’m coming into the family, sweetheart, so just relax and enjoy it.”
He couldn’t answer at once. Our appetizer plates were being removed, a half bottle of Medoc was being tasted and approved, and our entrees were being delivered; lamb chops for him, rare sirloin for me. I finished my white wine while all this was going on, started in on my steak, and Volpinex said, “You have just touched on my real objection to you. And to your brother. Family. Who are you people, where do you come from? You are barbarians at the gates, and it is my duty to repel you.”
Could he possibly believe all that? But the humorless man makes no distinction between truth and falsehood; words to him are simply tools, effective or not effective. I said, “What about you, Volpinex? That’s no fine old Point O’ Woods name you carry around. What cave do you come out of?”
“While my ancestors enjoyed the Mediterranean breeze,” he told me, “yours were chained to the oars. Civilization has declined since then.”
I cut meat. “You don’t expect me to pull my forelock and shuffle out of your life,” I said. “So what’s the point?”
“I want you to understand my antipathy,” he said. “You have labored under the belief that we are a pair of opportunists together, that I am somehow similar to you.”
“You’re different, all right,” I said. “I know when I’m kidding.”
“You don’t think I’m serious about family?”
“Liz’s mother had the family connections,” I said. “But old man Kerner was a lumberjack out of Canada, with no more family than a hooker in front of the Americana Hotel. He had the one thing better than a family tree—a m
oney tree.”
“You have neither.”
“They’re on order,” I said.
He studied me, saying nothing, and for a while we both merely ate. Every time I glanced at him he was still brooding at me, watching me like a highway engineer looking at a mountain. Tunnel away, bastard, this mountain is here to stay.
Finally he said, “Let’s discuss this from a different angle.”
“It’s your turf,” I said.
“You are not quite the standard fortune hunter,” he said, “some money-mad chauffeur out to make a quick killing. You are better than that, more educated, more intelligent, more talented.”
I put my fork down and stared at him. “Now you’re trying to sell me an encyclopedia.”
He ignored that, saying, “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit you enjoy the life you already have: the freedom, some sense of adventure and experiment, the opportunity to employ your talent.”
“And the bill collectors,” I said. “They’re my favorites.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “The money Elizabeth offered you has gone to your head, and why not? It’s a lot of money. But it isn’t what you really want.”
“What I really want is a fire engine and a set of soldiers.”
“What you really want,” he told me, “is the life you’re living now, but with a somewhat firmer economic cushion.”
“Like two thousand a month.”
“No,” he said. “Earned money. The product of your own labor.”
“As a psychiatrist,” I told him, “you make a great stand-up comedian.”
He plowed ahead; he was thin, but he talked fat. “I have clients,” he said, “with available venture capital. You own a business with rather strong potential. A larger and more diverse line, national distribution of your product, and you could be quite well off. I believe I could authorize an investment of, oh, say, thirty thousand dollars.”
“You really are something, Volpinex,” I said. “First threats, then bribery.” And I couldn’t help wondering how he’d narrowed it down to just that figure.
“I had already assumed,” he said, “that you would choose the worst possible interpretation of that offer. Nevertheless, it still stands.”
“And nevertheless, I’m still going to marry Liz. Give it up, Volpinex. Nothing is going to keep that marriage from taking place.” I saw no point in mentioning that Folksy Cards would never survive expansion, or that thirty thousand dollars was fifteen months pay from Liz. What did I need with his venture capital? I had a couple ventures of my own going.
His look was now as cold as the air conditioning. “I had hoped we could find an accommodation,” he said.
So he’d shot his last bolt, finally. “I tell you what,” I suggested. “Try the routine on Bart. He might go for thirty thousand dollars. Or Betty might be more impressed by scandal than Liz.”
His expression clouded. “Your brother has lived a much cleaner life than you have,” he said, and I could hear a certain frustration in his voice.
Of course. A standard background check covers only two areas—credit and police blotter. Bart would come up blank on both, and the conclusion to be drawn was not that Bart Dodge had in fact no real-world existence, but that Bart Dodge was a very clean-living guy. It is, as they say, very difficult to prove a negative.
“Bart always has been a boy scout,” I said, and drank some of the Médoc. It was delicious.
AFTER LUNCH, VOLPINEX invited me to play squash. “I’ve never played,” I said.
“You’ll pick it up. Come along, I’ll lend you a sweat suit.”
Squash turned out to be a game combining the worst qualities of tennis and handball. In a bare higb-ceilinged room the two of us stood in our sweat suits facing the same wall, holding the kid brothers of tennis rackets in our hands. A small hard rubber ball was to be hit against that wall with this racket by player number one. Player number two was to hit it on the rebound, and player number one on that rebound, and so on.
What the game consists of mostly is running back and forth in an empty room, occasionally crashing into a side wall. I understand the upper class is nuts over it.
Volpinex told me the rules of the game, and I began to understand its appeal for a certain kind of intellect, since it’s about as complicated as fifty-two-pickup. “I see,” I said. “I hit then you hit then I hit then you hit.”
“That’s right,” he said, bounced the ball, and whammed it with his racket at the opposite wall. It hit, and caromed back on a beeline for my head. I flung myself away to the right, heard the fwizzzzz of its passage, and turned to see it thud into the opposite wall and head back my way again.
But with less determination. It bounced before it reached me, and only hurt my hand moderately when I caught it. A rather hard little rubber ball. I said, “This thing goes pretty fast, huh?”
“Good players in a fast game,” he told me, “will get rebounds up to a hundred miles an hour.”
“Wouldn’t do a fellow’s forehead much good,” I suggested.
He offered me his thin smile. “You do have to keep out of the way,” he said. “Go ahead and try it.”
All right, bastard. I’m fairly good at pool, I should be able to work out the angle between where I was standing and that creep’s nose. I chose a spot on the far wall, bounced the little ball, and swung as hard as I could.
The ball went some damn place. It hit the wall, but nowhere near the spot I’d chosen, and it came back out at an angle that had nothing to do with Volpinex’s nose.
And Volpinex was off like a mechanical rabbit. He shot past me, flung himself in front of the richocheting ball, swung his racket, sliced the ball on the fly, and here the damn thing came again. Off the wall and straight for my left eye, faster than ever.
“Jesus!” I shouted, and practically fell on my ass scampering out of the way. The ball whizzed by, and I turned to speak severely to Volpinex, only to see him running again, at an angle across the floor, racket at the ready.
What in hell was all this? Whump went the racket against the ball, and here came the ball, a buzzing little V-2 rocket aimed at the London of my stomach. By screeching to a halt and sucking in my gut I gave the little devil room to fly, but it was gone so fast, and coming back again from the wall so soon, that I didn’t have time to do anything else but duck again, reeling away toward the side wall, off balance to the front, running like mad to try to get my body back under my head.
Whump I heard behind me, and thock as the little round bastard shot off the wall again. I didn’t even look for it; I just hit the wall and shoved myself backward hard. As quick as a subliminal message on a movie screen, the ball came spinning in from the comer of my right eye, zzethuzzed off the wall in front of me, and rocketed away somewhere to my left.
I followed it, running for my life. Volpinex was loping to intersect the damn thing. He was swinging; I was veering to my left because that was where I’d guessed he would go next. Ying, went the ball, very loud, as it brush-burned my right earlobe. I was running as though a husband had come home unexpectedly, and I was watching Volpinex’s eyes. Let him watch the ball.
It was coming in behind me, I knew that, and he was coming in from the front. At what I judged to be the last second, I launched myself across Volpinex’s path, leaping out low and straight, parallel to the floor, as though I were making a flat dive into a swimming pool. I caught him at shin level, me in hurtling motion and him in a flat-out dash, and the two of us went tumbling about on the floor like planes colliding above the clouds.
I rolled and rolled, until I was away from all those extra legs and rackets, and then lunged staggering to my feet, gasping for breath and staring all around for that goddamn rotten ball.
There it was, on yet another ricochet. But its speed was lessening now, it was bouncing across the floor in long innocent skips, as though it wouldn’t hurt a fly. Running diagonally after it, I snapped it out of the air, clutched it in both my hands, and let my momentum ca
rry me on to the nearest wall, which I thudded into like a mail sack.
For a minute I just stayed there, leaning forward into the wall, my hands clutching the ball protectively at my middle. My throat was painfully raw from gasping, my right side felt as though I’d broken my ribs against that murderous bastard’s shins, my left side had a crick in it from all that running, my legs were trembling, my earlobe burned, and generally speaking I was a mess.
“Had enough for today?”
I rolled till I was sideways against the wall and could see Volpinex standing there, smiling at me. He wasn’t even out of breath, the bastard. And I had no doubt he really was some sort of karate genius. I panted at him.
“Perhaps it’s too fast a game for you,” he said. He patted the racket into his other palm: plong, plong. “You don’t want to get into games that are too fast for you,” he said. “You should get out of such games, as a safety precaution.” And he turned and walked away, across the room and through the little door on the far side and out of sight.
Oh, I had a lot to say to him, it was just I didn’t seem capable of speech yet. So I just hung against the wall, going hee-haw through my open mouth, and glared daggers at that closed door. None of them stuck.
AND THEN I WROTE, “THE front of the card shows a yawning grave. Inside, the card says, ‘Drop in any time.’ ”
That was at three o’clock, back in my office, shortly before Bart called Betty from L.A. Sucrets had eased my throat, Excedrin had dulled my aches and pains, and Mediquik had stunned my stinging earlobe. My ribs appeared to be intact, though there were spreading bruises on my right side, and I was seated in relative calm at my desk. After phoning the Daily News to reassure myself that Bart’s flight hadn’t crashed or been hijacked, I dialed Betty’s number.
“Kainair reseedonce.”
“Hi, Nikki, this is Bart.” I shouted a bit, like someone calling long distance. “Is Betty there?”
“Hold on one moment, pleeze.”
So I held on one moment, massaging my sore ribs. Get even with Volpinex, I have to get even with Volpinex.
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