by Robert Stone
She laughed solicitously. “In the film, Harry.”
Thorne curled his lip and stepped aside. Easing past him, Strickland inspected the room. It was enormous and high-ceilinged, obviously the renovation of one of the mansion’s ceremonial chambers. There were fine windows over the river, well-placed watercolors, and Navaho rugs on the hardwood floor. There were sunny boat photographs and Acoma pottery on the blond shelves along each wall.
The office’s working desk was off to one side, as though put there out of indifference to the room’s prodigality. It was a small desk of indeterminate wood, cluttered and mean, like that of a bureaucrat or petty accountant. Beside it, Strickland formed his very first organized impression of the Hylan Corporation: as a feverish, unhappy place, missing its master. Business might be bad. He began to walk up and down, wondering how the room might be photographed.
“Have you had the chance to see any of Mr. Strickland’s films yet?” Joyce was asking Harry Thorne. “Shall we set one up for you?”
Harry watched Strickland’s pacing with an air of impatience and declined to be helpful.
“No,” he said. “Not for me.”
Strickland turned to him.
“Too bad your Mr. Hylan couldn’t make it, Mr. Thorne. It would have moved things along. It would have been constructive, if you know what I mean. I would have liked to talk t . . to . . .”
Thorne watched without sympathy as Strickland fought to complete his sentence.
“We would have liked to talk to him too,” Thorne said finally. “But he didn’t have any time for us today either.” He turned to Joyce Manning. “Did he, Joyce?”
The secretary laughed airily.
“Now that I’m here,” Strickland asked, “what have you got for me?”
“How about lunch?” Joyce Manning asked. Thorne looked at his watch.
“I don’t eat lunch,” Strickland said. He kept smiling. “I’m here to work.”
“Show him the sailing stuff,” Thorne suggested. “Show him the boat. Before you go, ask Mr. Livingston to come see me.”
About a dozen men and women stood silently outside Hylan’s office as Strickland and Joyce Manning emerged. Strickland thought they looked like gloomy corporate officers. The corporate dimension might be interesting, he thought, looking them over. Ten men, two women. Puffy faces, nice clothes.
Following Mrs. Manning down to the boathouse on the river, he saw cloud shadows play on the broad lawns, just the way they were supposed to.
Back in the main building, Harry Thorne was watching his executives file into Matty Hylan’s office. His man Livingston was at his side—red-faced, sweaty, as full of humor as Thorne was dry.
“Step right up,” Thorne told them, acting the showman. There were a few sad smiles.
“What a bunch of zombies,” Thorne said. “Eh, Livingston?”
Livingston sighed.
“We go on from here,” Harry Thorne announced when they were lined up in the office. “We’re all existentialists here. We go forward.” He pointed the way ahead with an extended arm and an arched wrist, like a lineman claiming possession of a fumbled football. “We’re mobile. We’re moving. We’re going ahead.”
A few throats were cleared. There was slight scattered applause.
“As you will soon see,” Harry went on, “I have informed the press that we are very much in business and we expect things to stabilize. As I have informed the press, so I will inform the board. Tomorrow.”
A deeper silence followed mention of the board.
“Questions?” Harry asked.
Questions seemed to hover. None were asked.
“We expect the board’s support,” Harry said in answer. “We have been led to believe we will have the board’s support. Questions?”
“Where’s Matty?” asked a voice from the crowd. A prankster disguising his voice. A couple of people turned to see who it was.
“Somewhere warm,” Harry said. “With a broad.” A moment later he said, “I apologize to the women for that remark. A function of age. Sorry.”
There was nervous laughter, dental hisses, faint groans.
“What’s the official story?” a younger woman asked.
“Private family considerations,” he said, enunciating carefully. “Personal matters of no interest to the public.”
He drew himself up and addressed the room.
“I understand your concerns,” Thorne said to his executives. “I’m sure they’re the same as mine. The first is—pardon the expression—criminal liability. The other is how solvent are our component organizations. Who can tell me something I don’t know?”
He looked about the room.
“No one? Good. Then everyone go have lunch in the dining room. Everyone except the legal department. If you want a hot tip on the market I suggest you buy Hylan. It’s seriously undervalued.”
There was more dutiful laughter. People filed out until only Thorne, Livingston and the two lawyers remained.
“How’s it look?” Thorne asked them.
“Matty’s gone, all right,” one of the lawyers said. “He hasn’t sent any postcards.”
“What about foul play?” Mr. Livingston asked. “Given some of his—”
“Forget it,” Thorne said, interrupting.
“Why, Harry?”
“Because,” Thorne said, “he’s not the type.”
They pondered.
“I talked to my daughter,” the second lawyer said. “She’s heard that the Southern District of New York is working on an indictment. She understands it only names Matty.”
“I’m sure that little prick would like to go to trial before the election,” Thorne said. “Just Matty?”
“That’s what she tells me, Harry.”
“The building groups in the South are going under,” Thorne said. “I happen to think we can survive that. But I also think we’ll have criminal proceedings there and I don’t know who they’ll pin it on. Maybe Hillsborough Group as such, maybe Matty, maybe us. Corporately.”
“Hillsborough’s numbers there are deceptive,” the second lawyer said.
Harry laughed ill-humoredly. “Fuckin’ right, they are. Anyway, it’ll be in federal court in Winston-Salem. I wish we could fight the whole war down there.”
“The bank is the biggest problem,” the other lawyer said. “That’s the second circuit in Connecticut. They’ll have a ball with that bank.”
“The bank,” Thorne said bitterly.
There was a reflective silence.
“Well, let’s get a bankruptcy package together for Hillsborough,” Thorne said. “See if we can break a few hearts.”
He saw that the others were still looking at him expectantly.
“What can I say?” he asked them. “He fell in love with the game. He became the victim of his own abilities. It happens. It happens to the best and it happens to the rest—that’s what they say at Suffolk Downs. Suffolk Downs is a racetrack,” he informed the group. “In Boston.”
“Wonder where he is,” said the first lawyer.
“I told you,” Harry said. “Somewhere warm with a broad. I put my foot in my mouth.”
“Probably on his boat,” said the man who had commented on Hillsborough’s numbers.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked. “We got all his boats. Down on the river. And his big race that we’re paying for. You know who that guy was—the guy that was in here with Joyce? Some asshole he hired to make a movie about the race.”
“Matty’s going to have to bear a lot of the responsibility for this,” the second lawyer said.
Thorne turned to him. “A lot? You see that he bears it all, counselor. All of it.”
The lawyers left. Livingston and Thorne stood together by the window, looking toward the river.
“Are you letting this movie thing go ahead?” Livingston asked.
“I don’t want to cancel any of these Matty Hylan projects until I have to. Appearance of normalcy. When the time comes we’ll pay
him off.”
“If you ask me,” Livingston said, “we should tear down that boathouse. When this is over you’ll probably want to.”
“We won’t tear it down,” Thorne said. “We’ll put a Turkish bath in there.”
In the well-appointed club room of the boathouse, Strickland sat in a leather chair while Joyce Manning had an actual Filipino steward bring him coffee.
“Do you sail?” she asked.
“No,” Strickland said. “But I can row.”
While Joyce read yachting magazines, Strickland drank his coffee and watched various visual celebrations Hylan had commissioned of himself. Many of them featured him as skipper of his International Cup entry—studies of him at the helm in every weather, tight-lipped, osprey-eyed and born to win. There were shots of his wholesome young crew, cheering, dapping and throwing high-signs, while stirring anthems of an inspirational, competitive sort swelled on the sound track.
“Am I allowed to use any of this?” Strickland asked Joyce.
“You betcha.”
Then there were talk-show appearances, news interviews and a couple of corporate cheerleading sessions. Contrary to what he had read, Hylan at close quarters appeared touchy, ill-spoken and smirking. After a while Joyce came up to watch.
“None of this does justice to the man himself,” she said.
They watched an excess of Matty Hylan’s seagoing home movies—tossing decks, towering waves, telltales taut against the billowing sails.
“O.K.,” Strickland said finally. “I g . . get the idea.”
She took him for a walk along the riverside dock, where a number of boats were tied up under tarpaulins, and through the boathouse itself, which had two vacant slips partly enclosed. The structure smelled of caulking and dank river water. Their footsteps echoed. Liquid shadows played on the walls.
“What if he doesn’t win?” Strickland asked.
“He expects to win,” Joyce said. “But I think he’ll settle for being seen as a lone competitor.”
They walked back over the lawns.
“The lone competitor,” Strickland mused aloud. “Hylan agonistes.”
“Man against the sea,” Joyce said. “Be serious.”
Strickland decided it might be amusing to see more of Joyce Manning.
En route to the parkway, Strickland pulled over and looked down at the Hylan headquarters. Dusk had come to the valley in which it stood. The last light played on the bare trees at the summit of the Plattsweg. The broad plane of the river reflected the darkening sky. Lights burned in Shadows’ leaded windows.
From where Strickland stood, the absurd building with its turrets looked tortured and desolate. You could see the desperation that informed it. Its shape, he thought, must reflect the unhappy lives of those who had built it—the grafting financier, his exquisitely embittered lady. In spite of their fortune, two of their children had died there. Everything was overbusy, overdone, grasping, hysterical. It was a place without rest.
About to turn away, he saw a line of cars drawn up at the light at the corner of route 9, waiting to turn north, away from the city. Mrs. Manning was driving one of them. She put her window down.
“Isn’t it great?” she called. “It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.”
“How about that,” Strickland said.
“How do you like the project?” she shouted, shifting into gear. “Think you’ll take it on?”
“It does look like fun,” Strickland told her.
7
WALKING to the gate for the morning Times, Anne found the previous day’s snow disappearing from the lawn. Though it was still a few minutes before sunrise, the air was gentle and earth-scented. She picked up the paper and stood for a moment, looking toward the light that was breaking over the Sound.
Back in the kitchen, she heard him stirring upstairs, accompanying himself with a tuneless whistling that she knew was a measure of his unease. On some days he would seem driven by a kind of shadow energy, working at home for hours over dummy sheets and manuals with a stolid absorption she found impenetrable. Others he passed aimlessly, ending up in a book or listening to music. Sometimes he would quickly, almost suddenly, fall asleep in a chair. He was wakeful at night.
Over the long weeks of winter, Anne had come to realize how little her husband had bothered to make their house really his own. It was extraordinary, she thought, after so many years. His meandering presence there seemed vaguely awkward, as though he were continually about to apologize for being in the wrong room.
The Times’s front page was all White House intrigue and child murder; she decided, for that morning at least, the news was more than she could bear. In the Living section she found the tidings of a good-humored and sophisticated world that seemed altogether unavailable.
“Owen,” she called up to him. “Can I make you something?”
“No thanks,” he said after a moment.
“You will eat something, won’t you?”
“Sure,” he said.
Then she had to dress for work, rushing for the eight-twenty train to Grand Central. Her work required her presence in Manhattan at least three times a week. Headed for the back door, she saw him at the kitchen table, hunched over a cup of black coffee. She could not bring herself to simply pass.
“Going to the shop?” she asked.
He looked up at her so forlornly that she wanted to cry. There was no time.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “I have to go!”
“Go,” he said. He made a fist and shook it in mock encouragement. “Go, go.”
“Owen,” she said. “Buck up, old sport.”
He looked at her again and got to his feet and put a hand on her cheek.
On the train, she worried about the money. At home she forced herself not to mention the subject but it caused her considerable anxiety. They had succeeded in meeting the margin calls, cashing in some retirement accounts and some of their best investments. They had saved the house on Steadman’s Island by refinancing it. A considerable debt remained to them.
One of the specters haunting Altan Marine was the state of its parent company, the Hylan Corporation. Creditors were pressing Hylan, which had owned Altan for over ten years. Its colorful and mysterious chief executive officer, Matty Hylan, was unavailable to the press. At the Altan branch, some scattered panic selling generated commissions to provide for the short run. Most owners with boats to sell could afford to wait for spring. A few salesmen were let go. Owen, the company scribe, had a fairly secure position. Nevertheless, making her way through the crowds under the starry vault of the terminal, Anne decided to call her father.
Most of Underway magazine’s staff worked from home so there were only a few people in the office most days. That Wednesday she found John Magowan, the elderly editor, and a young woman from Kelly Girl who was filling in while the regular secretary went sailing in the Gulf of California.
“In again?” old Magowan asked her. “I hope you won’t be asking for a raise.”
Putting on a faint smile required all the goodwill she could bring to bear on the subject.
“We’re doing some work around the house,” she told him. It was true that she had been coming into the city more often, avoiding Owen’s moods.
“How’s your husband?” asked Magowan. The astuteness of senility, Anne thought. “Still with Altan?”
“That’s right,” she said.
She spent part of the morning proofing the newsletter section of the book and then made a start on an article. In it, she tried to re-create a passage she and Owen had made years before between Cape Sable and Mount Desert Island. It had been a frightening trip; they had been fogbound and becalmed in the path of the Yarmouth ferry. Running on an outboard, they had listened to the big boat sounding off in the dark, coming closer and closer until its lighted galleries slipped by them like a dream and vanished again. That night, as Anne remembered it, they had been good sailors together. Eventually she gave up on the story. The ch
ummy gallantry with which she sought to infuse it was unavailable that morning.
At lunchtime, she went out for a container of yogurt. The springlike weather lured her down to the river, through Greenwich Village streets where she had grown up. Until she went away to school, her family had lived in a three-story red brick house on Bedford Street.
Before going back to the office she walked a few blocks of West Street, letting herself be dazzled by the sun on the water. A couple of worn female prostitutes were lounging against a warehouse at the foot of Morton Street but the day had brought out a lunchtime crowd that made the waterfront strip feel manageable. It annoyed Anne to feel like a suburbanite in her own childhood streets. Decades before her father had bought his town house, some of her people had carried hooks on the Village piers.
Back at the office, she felt flighty and bestirred by the soft city air. It had also occurred to her that she had been postponing the call to her father’s office. The prospect of asking him for money—which was what it all came down to—filled her with shame and anxiety. For a while she stalled, fiddling with the wooden leads of her attempt at the Cape Sable crossing story. Finally, after four, she put the call through. It was Margaret’s tuition that was on her mind and that, she decided, was what she would explain to him.
Antoinette Lamattina, who had been her father’s private secretary since Anne was a child, answered at his office.
“Anne, honey!” Antoinette cooed. “He’ll be so happy to hear you!”
She had not spoken to her father on the phone for several months. They had not met for over a year.
“You’re in a spot,” her father informed her when they were connected.
“It could be worse,” she told him.
“Why don’t you let me go over your accounts?”
She sat with her hand shading her eyes, staring down at her desk.
“You know,” she said, “I am hating every goddam minute of this.”
“You never call,” he said. “I never see the Kid.” It was his fond name for Maggie.
“Can you blame me, Dad? I don’t want to hear the riot act. Look,” she said, “I’m concerned about Maggie’s tuition. Our public schools up there are not great.”