SAN MARTIN, CALIFORNIA, 29 April 1971—Bobby’s stomach bounced. The stairs were higher than he remembered. Josh loped lazily as if taunting him, Get the lead out, lard-butt. Five eleven, 208 pounds—thirty pounds heavier than at induction, sixty pounds more than when he’d DEROSed, sixty pounds in twenty-three months—208 on his twenty-fifth birthday and much of it heaving and dropping with each step and him thinking, vaguely, maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of Victoria, and, I don’t want to be seen by her looking like this, and how did I get so fat in the first place? Blump-blump-blump. Jiggly belly bounce.
Halfway up the stairs beside the lower dam he stopped, bent at the waist, panting. The morning was warm, the sun strong for not-yet-May. He could feel its rays penetrating his neck and shoulders. Josh crested the stairs, vanished. How quickly things had happened in the last six months. He’d barely taken a moment to reflect, had done little but work, eat, drink a few bottles of beer with each late dinner, then sleep, in bed, with Red facing her side of the room, he his. Nationally the economy was still slow but locally it was spurting. Locally there was money, a seemingly endless supply if one knew how to tap it, accelerating development, expansion, growth. Unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies were also high, yet those that had, spent. At Great Homes Realty sales were breaking records. Robert Janos Wapinski was making money.
He stared at the crest, glanced at the dry chutes, turned, looked down to the small lot, out to downtown where Bennett, Bennett and Bennett had broken ground for their new financial headquarters, a proposed eight-story edifice taking up the entire Miwok Road block between Second and Third streets, displacing Rheem’s Auto Parts and Fonari’s Deli and the half-dozen one- to three-bedroom flats above. Already BB&B’s steel work was at four stories and higher than any other structure in town, appearing to Bobby, with the morning sun on the far side, dull brown, even black. He thought of Dorsey. Crazy Ty Dorsey was trying to get his piece of the pie, too. Bobby had not seen him, had not talked to him since the day he’d left Bobby’s home on Deepwoods. But he’d heard dribs and drabs about him and had received one note without return address.
“It promises to be a colder winter than expected,” Ty had written.
I’ve got no plans right now as our real estate partnership proved to be but a pleasant mirage and my money is limited. I’ll be checking out the city for work suited to an ex-boonie rat.
I keep wondering why my insides twist up when I think of our splitting. Our attachment is shallow so there shouldn’t be no twisting. I’ve split from people I was with a lot longer. But captain, I guess my hopes was more embedded in our friendship then in any of those others. Tell Red I’m sorry if I messed up the house. I appreciate her helping me like she did. And you, captain, my thanks to you too. You helped me set my sights on a target I wouldn’t of even seen. Just being with you, captain, watching you think, watching you move, just like in the jungle—you know what I’m saying. I’m going to strive to be like you. Except for where you make people think they can’t measure up.
Peter Wilcox had let it slip—through Gloria Spencer, to Bobby—that Ty had purchased a piece of income property in San Martin’s old Riverside subdivision, using Peter and his creative financing, as agent both for purchasing and for finding tenants. Ty himself was living in a fleabag boarding hotel down on The Embarcadero in San Francisco.
Bobby began again. His thighs felt leaden. He paused, tried to whistle for Josh but was breathing too hard to control the sound. He pushed on to the top, crested, walked, attempting to catch his breath, barely seeing the water of The Res, barely noting the trees, seeing little except the short stretch of path directly before him. As his breathing settled he looked up, imagined again he was running with Victoria, imagined they took a side trail like Gold Mine out a dozen meters and into a glade. The thought was pleasant.
Bobby began jogging again. He did not move quickly but plodded, pounded like a ponderous stamping machine punching out cheap imprints of his heel bones. The sun seemed to intensify. Sweat, which had been seeping from his pores even before he’d hit the stairs, now cascaded from his brow, from his fat roll and love handles, streamed down his face, down his sides, soaking his old gray sweatshirt. Over his belly the cotton was black with sweat. Drive on! It had taken him an entire month to decide to begin exercising, he wasn’t going to quit before he reached the Upper Res and hippie camp. Aw, fuck it! He stopped the jog, walked, tried to catch his breath, placed his right hand on his chest over his heart, felt his ticker banging, felt the surges in his neck.
For four months he had bitten the bullet, kept an even keel, walked the straight and narrow—except on the Somner transaction where the financing had been a work of Mickey Mouse art worthy of Peter Wilcox at his best. With the sweat flowed irritability, bitchiness. Every fucking fiscal step forward was wiped away by Red’s habitual need to shop. Every cushion was whisked away. Not a single pleasure was permitted to ripen, to age before instant-gratification picking. Fuck it! He didn’t want to think about it. Jog, he ordered himself, jog to the upper steps.
From behind him turmoil erupted; Josh chasing a rabbit, the animals hurtling past him. He tried to speed up. Where at first he had not even seen his surroundings, now elements pulsated at him. Wooden stakes with red or blue numbered tops seemed to leap out. What are they going to build? he thought. Wish I could design it. He recalled an article in the paper suggesting a municipal golf course for those who didn’t belong to the country club. Green fees, the article suggested, would make it self-sustaining “as long as the cost of land acquisition and development isn’t capitalized.”
“Hm. And I’d be a millionaire,” Coleman had quipped at an office meeting, “if I could keep all my income and somebody else paid my bills.”
Bobby had wanted to add, I’d be rich if Red didn’t ... but he’d censored himself.
He passed the cascades and switchbacks of the upper San Antonio Creek, reached the base of the next staircase. On the first step he saw a bit of fur, on the second a few drops of blood, on the third more fur. He squatted, pinched a small clump between thumb and forefinger. His eyes narrowed. The fur evoked not Josh’s triumph but a poster he’d seen a month after—he did not know exactly, had kept an even keel, hadn’t made waves—a photograph showing the tips of an adult’s fingers holding two teeny legs, the bottom of two teeny feet with ten perfect toes facing out. The cutline read: 10 WEEKS: The structure of the human body is completely formed.
Bobby flicked the fur from his fingers, wiped his fingertips on his sweat-soaked shirt. His quadriceps quivered. He whistled for Josh, lost his breath. Josh bumped him from behind. Bobby jerked. The dog too was panting. Bobby stroked his head. He couldn’t tell if Josh had caught the rabbit.
“C’mon ... Little Bro.” Bobby puffed. “Let’s go ... back. We’ll ... try again ... later.”
As they walked back thoughts leached from data banks to consciousness. Trapped. In his thoughts he spoke to Josh. Trapped, Little Brother. I wonder if she feels it too. I wonder if she’s trapped ... or screwing around.... Even in his mind he couldn’t admit to that. She’d written their wedding vows, designed and defined their relationship. “Robert, in entering with Beatrice into this marriage, will you honor the commitment to a new reality of joint decision? Will you respect Beatrice for who she is, and nurture her growth as she becomes the woman she wishes to be? Will you be faithful to her through changing climes, and trust her faithfulness to you?”
Trust? Joint decisions? How he craved a loving wife. How badly he wanted her to grow beyond her personal problems. How had he ended up with a woman with so many hang-ups she was incapable of being loving? Trapped. As much as if he were physically restrained by wires, by slow-hardening concrete, by thick layers of fat. Nothing more than a meal ticket!
By the time they were back to the shore of the Lower Res, Bobby’s heart rate had settled down and he’d caught his breath. His thoughts changed and the ones of Red, of their wedding and home life, vanished. He thought instead of Mill Creek Falls, of High Meadow, of Grandpa—thank God he’s got that lady and her husband and all that maple syrup, ha!; of Brian and Cheryl, whose child was due in six weeks; of Stacy, Miriam, Joanne. He could never go home again, never, not after what he’d done.
He reached the steps beside the lower dam, plunked down the first, second, third, fourth.
“Hi.” She startled him. She was powering up the stairs, looking fresh, strong. “Wondered when I’d see you here,” Victoria said.
“Oh, hi.”
“Can’t stop.” She passed him. “Maybe see you next time,” she called back, crested to the trail, vanished.
“Yeah,” he called. He tightened his stomach muscles, sucked in as much as possible, jogged down, his stomach heaving and dropping.
“That’s bullshit.”
They had been arguing for more than an hour, though most of the time they’d simply stewed in silence in separate rooms, Bobby in the den with the new desk and file cabinet Red had purchased and had had delivered for his birthday, and Red in the kitchen listening to KGO until Bobby came in to refill his coffee cup and she’d exited through the dining area, gone into the living room and plunked down on the sofa with an issue of Glamour.
He did not recall the exact onset. He’d been in the den, paying bills, fantasizing about Victoria. He’d only run that once, had let six days pass, had told himself on six consecutive mornings he’d go tomorrow—but he hadn’t. His fantasy jumped from Victoria to Red. “You never ask me to make love anymore,” she said to him within his mind. “I’ve given up trying,” he responded. “Why?” “Do you read the comics?” he asked. He was melancholy, maybe pathetic. “The comics?” “Peanuts,” his inner voice said. “You know, Charlie Brown. Every fall, every football season, Lucy holds the ball for Charlie Brown. Every year ol’ Chuck runs to kick it and every year just as he’s about to connect Lucy pulls back. Well, I feel like Charlie Brown. But not anymore. I’m not going to try anymore. If you’re interested, you instigate it.” Could he say that? Could he actually lead her through that exchange? Their sexual relationship wasn’t just flagging. It was dead. She didn’t seem to care. Could he get her, he’d thought, to ask the first question? Or would the hiatus build its own momentum, have its own life. She never initiated sex. It was not her role, not her responsibility. He felt unloved, rejected.
He opened the last of the bills, prioritized them, totaled their debt, their minimum due, reread the offers for new cards, more credit. “What crap,” he blurted aloud.
“What is it?” Red had been in the hall.
“These credit companies! What a scam. Did you see this pitch from that new store at North Bay?”
“You mean Empress House?”
“Yeah. What crap.”
“They carry a very high quality line of merchandise,” Red said. “I applied at the store.”
“Oh geez. Don’t you have enough ... Damn it! Look at this!” Bobby grabbed the stack of bills, pulled out the BankAmericard statement, the I. Magnin statement, the Emporium, Roos Atkins, Hastings of S.F., and Saks Fifth Avenue statements ... “‘Women’s bras and girdles,’” he read aloud, “‘is ninety-one twenty-six! Petite sizes: one hundred forty-two fifty! Cosmetics: forty-three fifty-eight!’ Look at this one. ‘Custom file cabinets—three hundred sixty-seven ...’”
“Humph!” Red made a face. “It’s my money. I earn it. Nobody’s going to tell me how to spend it!”
“That’s not the point.” Bobby’s ire rose more quickly than he could ever remember. He was on the verge of leaping at her.
“And that file cabinet was for you!” Red stood in the doorway, feet shoulder width apart, hands on hips, leaning forward at the waist, all ninety-five pounds of her ready to tackle him.
He gritted his teeth, paced his words. “The point is we can’t spend more than we take in. The interest on these cards alone—”
“Well, escuuuuussse me! I’ll have them come for the desk tomorrow.”
“Geez. Let me finish.”
“Humph!”
“We make just so much. If you want something, let’s make the money first—”
“Fuck you!”
Bobby almost fell from his chair. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or lash out.
“Fuck you,” Red repeated. “I’ll open my own accounts. Pay my own bills.”
Bobby stared at her. Then he quietly said, “Okay.”
“Good.” Red straightened up.
“I’ll pay the mortgage and utilities, okay?”
“And your car.”
“And my car. You pay groceries, your car, your charge cards.”
“Fine. But you buy your own clothes.”
“Sure. You got it. What about medical ...”
“You’re covered under my People’s Life policy. Don’t you remember?”
“Right.”
“See! I’m good for something.” She turned away.
The freeze continued through dinner, through her watching TV, folding clothes, ironing; through his finishing with the bills, checking oil and radiator levels and tire pressures on the cars. It thawed slightly at bedtime. Neither apologized. Bobby showered, grabbed his fat rolls, felt disgusted with himself. Red was already in bed, reading.
“If we sold this place,” Red said sweetly, “would we have enough for a down payment ...”
“Did you see something?”
“You know the house on the cul-de-sac that backs to the country club?”
“Lead End?”
“No. Farther in.”
“Tin Pan Alley?”
“Yes.”
“The Everest Realty listing?”
“I think so. I was just thinking ...”
“We couldn’t afford it right now.”
“What if I asked my father for—”
“I don’t like this idea.”
“It was just a thought.”
“Someday.”
“Good night.” Red turned off the bedside lamp, lay back.
“Good night,” Bobby said quietly. He lay down wishing he could love this woman but certain he’d be rejected if he tried—especially after their money talk.
“Oh,” Red said. She did not turn toward him. “Did I tell you? Richard and Kathleen are getting a divorce.”
“The Townsmarks?”
“Um-hum.”
San Francisco, mid-May 1971—He had seen her before though she had probably not seen him, not noticed him. He stood in the aisle, as he usually did, stood hanging on to the overhead chrome bar as the bus turned from Van Ness Avenue onto Broadway. She sat in front—sat always in the same sideways seat behind the driver. He did not know where she got on but he thought it must be at the very start of the run for her always to get the same seat. Neither did he know where she got off because he got off first. But every workday for three weeks, since he’d started the route, he’d seen her, long straight hair, long straight body, bony knees, long fingers, gaunt facial features as if she’d been starving herself—a woman in her midthirties, tired, alone, white. The bus stopped. People shuffled. Ty moved forward. He wanted to be closer to her, wanted to let his eyes penetrate her, take her in, bony knees, straight body, all. He liked her hair, long, dull blond, straight, clean, falling indifferently to the green vinyl seatback, dropping in ribbons to her shoulders, down her chest to her waist. He was neat, clean, professional in appearance among the throng of denim-clad mods and working-class stiffs. Again the bus stopped. People shuffled. He moved closer. She pulled her long narrow feet back against the seat base, momentarily glanced back, then turned forward, faced forward though she sat in the sideways seat. For two weeks he’d meant to check out her face as he boarded. Every time, with people shoving, shuffling on-off, with him trying to situate amid the crowd of straphangers, he’d missed. Now he saw her eyes. They were light blue, lighter than he’d ever seen, the color of rinse water from a watercolor brush dipped but once. Again the shuffle. Again he moved up. He held his left arm cocked at the elbow, his hand by the bottom of the lapel of his suit jacket, his little finger with a fourteen-carat gold and 0.6 carat diamond pinky ring twitching, trying to catch her attention. His eyes were intense upon her, upon her hair, her thin face, her bony knees. He wanted to speak to her, determined that today he would at least nod, get her to acknowledge him. Again the shuffle. One stop to his. He stood less than three feet from her, his eyes burning, his pinky twitching. The bus lurched. He rocked back. From behind someone hit his back with a forearm. Ty turned. “Ah, excuse me.” He thought he’d maybe knocked the person behind him when the bus had lurched. A white man, maybe thirty, glared at him. The man was shorter than Ty, stockier, dressed in an Oakland Raiders warm-up jacket. Ty turned forward. Gazed at the thin blonde. They came to his stop. She did not glance at him, did not acknowledge his nod as he moved past. He stepped down, grasped the handrail, stretched to take the long step to the curb. “Uuuff!” A shove from behind toppled him. The white man, before a dozen people, fell on him, whispered, “Stay away from her,” stood, backed apologetically, offered Ty his hand, loudly, seemingly horrified by his fall on Ty, roared, “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. You okay, buddy? I’m really ...”
Ty held up his hands. With quiet dignity he said, “I’m fine.”
He rose, brushed himself off, walked up Davis Street to Vallejo, then to The Embarcadero. The hotel was mold-blackened brick. He entered. The lobby was small, the front desk a counter no more than six feet long. Ty did not look at the concierge, a young lithe white man in a spotless sleeveless undershirt. Ty walked tall, stiff, to the stairs. Very properly he climbed with minimal upper-body movement. The concierge watched him until he made the twist to the second flight.
The stairs narrowed. He climbed to the fourth floor, walked past half a dozen prune-juice brown doors, unlocked his own. Most of the guests were long-term residents, the hotel more a rooming house than a wayfarer’s inn. Ty entered, relocked the door, threw the deadbolts, placed four empty bottles on the floor against the stile—an alarm to scare off intruders. The room was small, perhaps eight by ten. To one side was a twin bed, to the other a wooden three-drawer dresser. Against the far wall, beside a narrow window opening to an interior light shaft, stood a two-door sheet-metal locker. The walls were beige, the floor beige, the locker beige. The room was clean—the bed made, the sheets starched—all neat and clean yet dim and dingy. Four books were propped on the dresser. One was on real estate finance; one a guide, How to Sell Anything; one on expanding one’s vocabulary; one on speech and diction.
Ty surveyed the room. He was satisfied. Everything he needed was here. He was ready. Able. Raring to go, to advance. Very carefully he removed his suit, inspected it for damage from the bus incident. Hell with that broad, he thought. I don’t need the hassle. There was a small tear at the right knee. Tomorrow he’d take it to Li Wong’s in Chinatown, have Mr. Li stitch, clean and press it. He removed his tie and shirt, hung them in the locker. Removed his ring, gently laid it in the small wooden jewelry box beside his wedding band. In only his underwear and socks he sat quietly on the bed, listened, intent on absorbing the activity of the building. Dropping through the light shaft were sixteen-inch pipes—garbage chutes. From the upper floors came the accelerating Doppler of descending waste. From the central bathrooms came the clang and flush of old pipes and fixtures. Through the walls came muted conversations, the soft lilt of music played at volumes that respected other residents’ right to privacy.
Ty slid from the bed to the floor, lifted the thin mattress, worked his hand into a pocket he’d cut and sewn his first night. His hand seized a folded kit bag he’d made from one of the hotel towels. Ty laid the mattress back, unfolded the kit on the neatly made bed, removed the contents. There was $4,000 in cash. He’d sold “his” hot Caddy, the fake plates and forged registration, on the black market—to increase his stake money. He’d added a few dollars from his job as a delivery-service runner (the only one to wear a suit—he’d tell surprised secretaries, attorneys, businessmen, that several of his runners had called in sick so he, the proprietor, had come himself). Had added a few dollars from side deals. With the cash was a letter he’d begun writing to his brother Randall, plus two vials.
Methodically Ty opened the pages. “Ran-Ran,” he’d written, “times are a little tough but I’m getting my stuff together, eeking out an existence. I don’t need much. Don’t eat much. If I had a little more money I’d be able to live in a better neighborhood but I’m okay. Have you seen my wife or baby?”
He hadn’t written further.
Ty rose, went to the locker, removed a pack of Kools. He moved back to the floor beside the bed, took two cigarettes from the pack, gently rolled first one, then the other, between thumb and forefinger, loosening and unpacking the tobacco from the thin paper tubes, letting the tobacco pile up on the letter to Randall. Then he opened a vial of skag. He’d purchased one in Hunter’s Point for $42; had cut it fifty-fifty with quinine, had a dude on Haight Street lined up to buy one vial for $45. Now he sprinkled just a portion of the heroin from his vial onto the tobacco. Carefully he stirred, coating the dry shreds with the soft powder. Then he repacked the cigarettes, carefully tamping in the tobacco, carefully cleaning the paper of every remnant. Ty repacked the kit, raised the mattress, replaced the contents in the secret slit. Now he smiled, lit the first Kool, inhaled deeply, relaxed. He was so careful, so controlled, he knew, just knew, he could handle it. He inhaled the thin blue line of smoke rising from the tip. He felt pleased. Two years earlier he’d been sliding on the muck of Hamburger Hill, getting his ass shot. One year earlier he’d been at Prek Drang, Cambodia, being eaten by mosquitoes, scared shitless, unable to eat or sleep, stepping into a punji pit. Man, Ty thought, I owe this to myself. I missed the fun but I ain’t ... No, Man. Talk right. Words are important. I am not going to miss it now. One skag-arette made him mellow, not particularly high. Just nice. Ah, but a little H. A little heroin. What a lovely word. What a strange, beautiful word. There, inside it, was hero. He smiled, felt warm. He’d been a hero. He’d always wanted to have the hero within.
“Mr. Dunmore,” said Peter Wilcox, “this is Ty Dorsey. He’s the man I was telling you about.”
Ty took in all of Lloyd Dunmore’s demeanor as he produced his business card, handed it to Dunmore with his left hand, his pinky flashing the gold-and-diamond ring. Ty smiled, extended his hand, which Dunmore grabbed robustly and held as he read Ty’s card aloud:
“Mr. Dorsey, it’s my pleasure to meet you,” Dunmore said. He was an older man, late fifties, heavyset but hard. “I was telling Peter—I’m going to be very frank with you—I didn’t understand all this civil rights stuff when it started and I don’t understand it all now. I’m a Christian, Mr. Dorsey. I don’t care if you’re black or white or green. But the government cares and I do understand how maybe society has been structured to keep coloreds out. But I don’t care about your color. If you can do the job, if we can work together, that’s all I want.”
“And Mr. Dunmore,” Ty said respectfully, “I don’t care about your color either. If you can do the job, and Peter’s told me of your track record, that’s what I’m concerned with. The bottom line. Hey,” Ty winked, “ya gotta eat. Ya gotta make money.”
Dunmore looked up at Ty, then to Wilcox. “Peter,” he said, “I think I’m going to like this boy.”
For an hour they talked, hammered out the details. “Then it’s set,” Dunmore finally said. “You put up three thousand, take the property in your name. I’ll put up twenty-seven thousand plus closing costs. In two years we’ll sell it. You get your ten percent plus twenty percent of the appreciation minus my carrying costs and the costs of repairs.” Ty nodded his agreement. “Stay with me, son,” Lloyd Dunmore said. “You get me off the hook on this red-lining charge and I’ll send some people your way. I just have the feeling Tyrolian Finance Corp. is maybe a little undercapitalized.”
“Maybe a little, Mr. Dunmore.” Ty leaned back, took a pack of Kools from his pocket. “Maybe a little,” Ty repeated, “but it’s moving in the right direction.” He stood. “By the way,” he said, “when do I see the property?”
“Anytime,” Peter said. “Anytime.”
Neither Peter Wilcox nor Lloyd Dunmore showed. Instead, as a favor to Peter, Lisa Fonari sat in her Capri convertible before the sprawling nineteenth-century Victorian so far out Miwok Road as to be through the pass between North and South peaks, beyond the fields and pastures and low woodland and back into a tight canyon where redwoods grew from the bottom and Miwok Road—here barely a lane wide—twisted and turned between the trunks. The sun was high and strong, the air still. Lisa had parked in a filtered shaft of light, her face tilted up. Birds chirped. Squirrels scurried. She lounged, glanced at her watch, squinched her mouth, huffed to herself, feeling used, laid back to soak up more sun—waiting, attempting to be patient, growing more and more antsy with each passing second, finally thinking, Screw Wilcox! Let him wait for his own clients. I don’t see why Bobby couldn’t know! She huffed again, gathered herself in, grasped the steering wheel, turned the ignition key, began to leave.
A late-model Chrysler sauntering up the canyon blocked her retreat. “Hello.” Ty leaned from the window, waved. “Sorry if I’m late. You’re Lisa, aren’t you?”
She backed up, reparked. He followed her, parked grill-to-grill with her Capri. “You’re Wapinski’s friend, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Ty smiled broadly, displayed himself before her, before this lovely woman, he in his finery, his expensive if rented car, his muscular six-one frame. They stood downhill from the Victorian. The stairs and walkway were stone, laid perhaps eighty years earlier, not once repaired in all that time. “So this is it, huh?”
“That’s it.” Lisa shrugged. “How come you’re using Wilcox,” she asked, brash, forward, “instead of Bob?”
Ty looked down at her, didn’t answer. “Are you going to take me through?”
Lisa flipped a hand up the walk. Some stones had separated leaving large gaps; some had slipped one atop another; some had slid sideways out of line. The huge veranda matched the stone entry, corners sagging, boards askew, base so eaten by powder-post beetles that crossing to the door was hazardous.
“This is it, huh?” Ty repeated.
“This is it,” Lisa answered again. “She’s got six apartments inside, and the toolshed out back has its own bath and is rented out to a student from College of Marin. How come you’re not using Wapinski?”
Again Ty eyed her. Then he said, “I don’t think he wanted me to buy anything.”
Lisa smirked, thought, I wouldn’t sell this place to a friend either; but for once she held her comment.
“This is a dump,” Ty said. They passed from one room to the next, through makeshift doorways, jerry-rigged halls. The floors tilted as much as those in a fun house, creaked as if splintering under their weight. They climbed the stairs. The banister and balusters were ornate, carved, turned, and built-up, but many of the joints had slipped and even under dozens of layers of paint the gaps were wide. The separate rooms, “apartments,” were without exception messy and filthy. Every tenant was a student or ex-student. Walls had been papered with rock-concert posters or sprayed with fluorescent paint. Windows were covered with sheets or not covered at all. In one room the tenant had half a dozen photos of herself, naked, with half a dozen different partners.
“What are you going to do with it?” Lisa asked.
“With what?” Ty was nauseated. The building that he’d just sunk most of his money into was worse than anything he’d seen in Coal Hill, dirtier than most of the refugee hootches he’d seen in Viet Nam. Yet in every apartment he saw expensive items: stereos, radios, cameras, make-up mirrors, lava lamps, leather pants and jackets, musical instruments, bicycles. All the good items were covered with dirt, stained, thrown in heaps with unwashed clothes, sitting on counters with week-, month-old pots and pans and pizza boxes.
“With this place!” Lisa snapped. “You know the units are illegal. This is single-family zoning out—”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Do you know what you’ve bought?”
“I can see.” They moved outside, strode to the toolshed where Ty looked in, gagged, almost fell through the floor where it had rotted out and where the tenant had lifted a covering strip of plywood so as to use the hole as a garbage chute even though the ground was but two feet below and there was no place for the garbage to chute to.
“Maybe he didn’t show it to you because he didn’t think it was worth it.” Lisa was angry. Her time was being wasted, and she felt her favor was part of an overall sham she hadn’t been told about.
“Maybe he jus don’t believe in me.” Ty too was angry. He needed to justify himself, needed this woman to know that he knew what he was doing, to know he hadn’t been taken, to know he was on the move, advancing. “Look there,” Ty said indicating nothing particular but gesturing toward the house. “Right now she’s making $720 each month. That’ll carry it. More than carry it. And I’ve got a silent partner. In a year we’ll gut it; restore it. This place is going to be a mansion. It’s going to be worth a quarter million dollars. You watch. You’ll see.”
Tuesday, 15 June 1971—He had been winning but now was no longer winning. He was anxious. He did not let it show. Instead he joked, continued to work methodically, drew on his every reserve of patience. His last three transactions had fallen apart in escrow. He had not closed a deal since mid-April. There had been no commissions. He had no sales in escrow, no imminent prospects. The market spurt had soured and the entire office staff was in a slump. And now these reports: one more load of shit dumped on his head, one more load to carry through the day.
Dan Coleman poked his head through the door of the conference room, saw Wapinski with the morning paper, cleared his throat. “Hi.” Wap looked up. “What’s happening?” Coleman said.
“Hey,” Bobby answered. “Didja hear the one about the landlord with two vices?” Coleman began chuckling even before Wapinski delivered the punch line. “He became the lessor of two evils.”
Again Coleman laughed. Then he said, “You get to the local yet?”
“No,” Bobby answered.
“I’ll wait till you read it.”
“Read what? There’s all this stuff ...” He paused, turned back to the front page, read the four-line headline aloud. “‘Viet Nam Archives—I: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Role in Indochina.’ Did you read this?”
“I only glanced at it. Probably read it later. That’s yesterday’s, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Listen to this. ‘A vast study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South and an ultimate frustration with this effort—’”
“Yeah,” Coleman interrupted him. “Talk about a sense of commitment, have you met Olivia yet?”
“Who?”
Coleman patted his hand on the air signaling Wapinski to keep it down. “Olivia,” he whispered. “Twenty-seven. I don’t know where Peter finds em. Goddamn, Man, another knockout. Between staring at Sharon and ogling Olivia, I’m never goina get anything done down here.”
“Well”—Bobby stood—“tell me.” For a minute they stood in the doorway peering into the hall, looking like two shy high-school sophomores hoping to catch a glimpse of the senior cheerleaders, Coleman sighing, offering to help Bobby train Olivia.
They realized how silly they were being, chuckled at themselves. Coleman said, “Read the part on The Res. Today’s paper. We’ll talk after the meeting.”
“Good.”
“Why’s it Tuesday this week, anyway?”
“Ah, Peter’s got business in Santa Rosa tomorrow.”
“New office?”
“Hasn’t told me.” Coleman left. Slyly Bobby gazed forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new agent.
An hour later all of the salespeople were seated about the table in the conference room. They’d completed old business, new business, introductions to Olivia Taft, Peter’s bottom-line talk. “I expect people to deliver, to produce, to keep their commitments. Maybe that’s hard but I’m not doing anybody a favor here by letting you work if you’re not making money. That’s the bottom line....”
Peter turned the meeting over to Bobby, left for an appointment.
The salespeople began chatting. Al went to the kitchenette for more coffee; Jane Boswell passed around a tray of homemade tea cakes. Bobby turned, waiting for Al, attempting to let his gaze pass nonchalantly over Olivia. He raised his eyes to Sharon, glanced to the other women, trying to hide that he knew they knew he was ogling the new saleswoman.
Olivia Taft was beautiful, another beautiful woman in an office blessed with well-dressed, good-looking women. She had all the perfect visual qualities of Sharon, the best of Jane and of Lisa—yet she looked nothing at all like any of them. Her hair was dark, yet her skin was light, almost ashen—winter colors that she accentuated with black eyeliner, crimson lipstick, a white dress with a high-contrast pattern of small navy roses. Her eyes were blue, her earrings, bracelets, sandals silver.
Bobby’s heart thumped. Somehow, to him, in contrast to his personal life, it did not seem fair. “Respect,” he said quietly. Al Bartecchi poured coffee. “Respect for your clients, for people in general.”
Lisa clicked her tongue, her eyes flashed to the ceiling. Bobby glanced at her. “Only kidding.” She smiled sheepishly. But she was not kidding and everyone knew it, tolerating her as she tolerated Bobby’s pontifications.
“There are three sayings that irritate me in this business and I’m going to ask you to refrain from using them in this office.”
“Is this from Hal and Sal?” Liza Caldicott interrupted.
“No.” Bobby was terse. “It’s from me.”
“Then we don’t ...” Liza began.
“They’re not orders,” Bobby said.
“Then ...” Liza began again.
“Perhaps we should listen first,” Olivia said firmly. Her tone was sweet but she did not smile either with her mouth or her eyes.
“So say it.” Liza fell against the back of her chair, crossed her arms.
“‘Buyers are liars; sellers are story tellers.’” Bobby delivered the real estate salesman’s axiom. “Don’t say it. Don’t think it. It separates you from your clients. And ‘Lookie-loos,’ as a label for potential purchasers, ‘nosy neighbors’ or not ... that’s a slur. The one I dislike most—please, do not refer to a property owner who’s attempting to market his own property as a ‘Friz-bo.’ Do you know the general public rates real estate agents next to used car salesmen? That disrespect and distrust may simply be a reaction to the disrespect the average agent shows the general public. Let’s not do it.”
Without further discussion, without comment, the meeting broke. Only Dan Coleman remained. With his notes he had Tuesday’s paper. “You read it yet?”
“The Pentagon ...”
“The local. Today’s. Look here. Eight hundred and seventy-six units.”
“Eight hundred? Whoa!”
“Up at The Res. It’s already approved. Last night. Some developer from San Diego. God those fuckin idiots want to fuck up northern California just like they’ve done down there.”
“Eight hundred!” Bobby repeated. He took the paper from Dan, laid it open on the conference table. There was a schematic of proposed streets, lots and improvements.
“Eight seventy-six,” Coleman reiterated. “All single family but clustered. Eights, tens, and twelves mostly. It’s a great plan. But great or not, it’s going to ruin The Res. They’re goina take the entire north side half a mile up the upper creek.”
“Hm. Extending Aaron Road ... Fuck up the fishin, huh?”
“Fuck up a lot more than that. You said something about this last year. I ... geez! I really didn’t think it’d happen. And I don’t think they’ve projected out the figures.”
“Who’s doin ... MacMulqueen Corp.”
“Not the developer,” Dan said. “The town. Figure it out. Nine hundred houses, four people per, thirty-six hundred people, eighteen hundred kids, eighteen hundred more cars. We’ll need a new elementary school. They’ll have to add more lights down The Strip, maybe widen it. Probably widen Aaron Road. Maybe need a new fire station. A few more cops. Cry’n out loud, Man. I grew up here! You didn’t know the town ... You know my mother’s house on Third? When I was five I used to walk from there across Miwok. You take your life in your hands now. There used to be fields ... filled, I mean filled, with jack rabbits and snakes. You name it. The creek down here used to have fish, turtles, muskrats. We used to catch the biggest snapping turtles ... Geez! In the spring these old snappers would come out, come all the way up to lay their eggs. Even they’d cross Miwok....”
“You show this to Peter?”
“He knows.”
“What’d he say?”
“What’s he always say? ‘People’ve got to live someplace.’”
“And, ‘And life goes on.’ Right?” Bobby said. Dan clammed up, glanced at Bobby, then away. “Right?” Bobby repeated.
“I grew up here,” Dan muttered. “It’s becoming a goddamn city. That’s the last ... aw, fuck it.” Dan walked out.
Bobby didn’t go after him. Instead he reread the article, noted on his pad the names of the MacMulqueen attorneys and executives. He closed the paper, stared at the front-page headline:
No One Really Foresaw
Pentagon Papers—II
... The Phase I deployment of American troops, which was now (Nov ’65) nearing its 175,000-man goal, had apparently stopped deterioration in the military situation.
But at the same time, the narrative relates, the enemy had unexpectedly built up ... 48,550 Communist combat troops in South Vietnam in July 1965 ... by ... November ... 63,550....
The Pentagon study says that the carefully calculated American strategy, with its plan for the number of American troops required to win, did not take escalatory reactions into account.
One more article to cut and store and read when work wasn’t so pressing and Red wasn’t so ... He didn’t finish the thought but flipped the paper over to fold it and give it back to Dan. On the back was a full-page ad for women’s stockings—a fly-away skirt, one fantastic set of legs, surrounding print. Immediately Stacy Carter flashed to his mind. He folded the sections, folded the paper again, huffed, looked down at the date. Only now did he realize it was his anniversary, two years from the day he returned to Mill Creek Falls, to Miriam, to Stacy’s “I want you to meet my fiancé.”
Wapinski put a hand to his forehead. He did not want to think back to all that shit. He did not want even to think back to last night, back to his breaking down, his caressing Red’s shoulders in bed, her immediate tensing at his touch, her silent rigidness as he rolled away.
All day people came and went. All day he was vague, preoccupied. At six thirty Olivia brought him a young couple who’d been sent to her by a friend of her mother’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Klemenchich ...” (Olivia, Bobby thought. He liked the way the word felt in his mouth.), “this is Mr. Wapinski, our office manager.”
“Bob,” Bobby said. “Please call me Bob. And I’m just the assistant manager.”
“I’m Rod and this is my wife, Estelle.” Rod was big, burly with a full beard and thick uncombed hair. Estelle was dressed in a nurse’s uniform, white shoes, stockings, jumper. They exchanged handshakes, pleasantries. Bobby looked to Olivia for an introduction to their housing needs, but none came. Rod wasted no time. “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. He whipped out a five-by-eight-inch green sheet of paper. “Is this worth squat?”
Bobby glanced at the VA Certificate of Eligibility, noted the issue date—Nov. 28, 1970: the Branch of Service—Army: the Entitlement—PL 358. He nodded, thought to ask Rod about his service, tell him he too was a vet, but he let the urge pass. “With a quarter,” Bobby said, “it’ll get ya a cup of coffee.”
“See!” Rod blurted at Estelle.
“Well, at least we tried,” she shot back quietly.
Rod began to rise.
“Wait a minute,” Bobby said. Rod paused halfway up. “You want to buy a house?”
Estelle was firm. “Yes.”
“Down payment?” Bobby said.
“Squat.” Rod collapsed back into the seat, humiliated, angry, looking away from the other three.
“That’s why we thought we could buy through the veterans’ program. My sister and her husband bought a veteran home in Texas last year and I had a patient who said he bought one in San Leandro....”
“They’re more common in the East Bay,” Bobby said. “But they’re pretty hard here. North Bay sellers just aren’t accustomed to paying points and putting up with the delays and restrictions. But there’s other ways.”
“I don’t want to live in a dump.” Rod turned, challenging, looking as if he were about to punch out the fat blond boy in the suit across from him.
Bobby smiled. “I’m not talking a dump. What do you do?”
“Duct work.”
“Heating and air conditioning,” Estelle expanded. “Rod’s a private contractor.”
“Good,” Bobby said.
“I can’t stand bosses,” Rod said simultaneously.
“File taxes?” Bobby asked.
“No,” Rod said angrily. “I’m fuckin Al Capone.”
“Oooofff!” Estelle ground her teeth, twisted in her chair. “Can’t you even once control your mouth!” To Bobby she said, “Yes, he files. I file for him. He had a profit last year, on the Schedule C, of thirteen thousand four hundred something.”
“Four fifty-six,” Rod added. “I’m not a bum. I just sunk it all back into a pickup with a utility body. And into my shop.”
“I make eighty-five hundred—” Estelle began.
“Eighty-six,” Rod corrected.
Bobby took out a form entitled Buyer’s Profile; pushed his pen quickly; asked a few questions about debts, loan payments; scribbled a few notes. “Any kids?”
“No.”
“Expecting any?”
“Fuck you.”
“Rod! Please!! No, we’re not.”
“Present rent?”
“Two hundred seventy-five.”
Bobby mumbled loud enough for Olivia, Estelle, and Rod to hear “... twenty-two divided by three point five ... this is just ballpark—” he flipped to the amortization table, “fifty-seven, fifty-eight thousand dollars ... You could buy one hell of a house.”
“But not VA, huh?”
“We could try, but—” Bobby slapped the desktop, got loud. “Before you clam up, hear me!” That got Rod’s attention. Bobby continued. “The market right now, for sellers, is slow. You won’t believe some of the financing owners are offering. You qualify for a decent size loan. I could put you in a house, very comfortably, let’s say with an eighty percent, forty-thousand-dollar first mortgage—that’s about two eighty a month—get the owner to carry a second for the rest—ten thousand at ten percent, fifteen-year schedule, ah, about one ten monthly. All due and payable in say five years.”
“Three ninety,” Rod stammered. “I’m comfortable with—”
“Wait a minute.” Bobby worked the figures quickly, “... reduce your taxable income by ninety-five ... Do you have, let’s say three thousand for closing and a little cushion?” Bobby asked.
“Gotta be a catch someplace,” Rod snickered.
Estelle’s face fell. “Not really,” she said.
“That’s okay,” Bobby said. “We can work around that, too. Try and put some money away. Borrow some from your folks. Put it in an account in your name. Just something to show the bank loan committee. I know the appraiser. I can get him to up his appraisal enough to cover the closing costs. But you’ve got to make yourselves look good on paper.”
“Is that legal?” Rod asked. Though his eyes betrayed disdain, his manner had softened.
“Borderline,” Bobby said. “I don’t much like bosses either.” Rod chuckled knowingly. “The trick here is to find a house you like with a seller willing and able to carry the second and work with us. But there’s more out there than you might think.”
After the Klemenchichs left, Olivia came back to Bobby, thanked him profusely, then took his hands, tenderly kissed him on the lips, twice. “You look like you needed that,” she said sweetly. She did not smile but turned, walked toward the door, turned back, her eyes meeting his. “See you tomorrow.”
The evening was cool, misty, typical San Francisco July weather—winds gusting in from the Pacific, thrashing Dutch and Murphy windmills, lifting the scent from the Buffalo Paddock, dipping and churning, buffeting the Portals of the Past, becoming a breeze to the lee of Strawberry Hill, aromas mixing with rose essence from the Japanese Tea Garden and music from the Golden Gate Park Band Concourse. He had come to escape The Embarcadero, the dark halls of the residence hotel, the dim lobby, the concierge’s watchful, desiring eye. He had come to ponder, to assess, to plan. The big Victorian fixer-upper at the end of Miwok Road was now in his name. So too the small two-bedroom house in Riverside—that one without covert contracts. But Ty Dorsey was nearly broke. The purchases and unseen fees had taken all his capital. He had barely enough money for the seven-dollar per week rent, or for an occasional peroshki from the Russian kiosk just south of Kezar Stadium and the park. The kiosk was closing, the merchant lowering the shutters, locking them to the narrow grease-splattered counters. Ty’s stomach gurgled. His tongue rolled in his mouth coaxing the heavy flow of saliva back to be swallowed, unused. He walked on, following South Drive to the Baseball Meadows, trying to walk gently so as not to wear out his shoes, trying to think of a new way to make money, big money for more property, thinking of dope, grass, hashish, heroin, thinking it was not enough money and when was Lloyd Dunmore going to send him someone with cash to invest as he had promised.
She had driven up from Palo Alto or Menlo Park or Atherton. The car belonged to her father whom she despised because he worked and earned and was serious and could afford the Oldsmobile which used precious fuels and polluted the air and was a symbol to her of their bourgeois decadence which she despised as much as she despised the car and her father and, she said the words as she searched his face for acceptance, “racial intolerance.”
He was tall, strong, black. She was hefty, of medium height, white. He was impeccably groomed: his shirt, trousers, shoes meticulously worn. She bordered on slovenly, her dungarees worn at the knee, ripped at the ass; her tank top stained, loose, a shoulder strap falling, exposing the plump upper skin of a tanned, braless tit.
She was starry-eyed, yet serious. She wanted to give herself to him, had come to the city to give herself to a black man, on a blanket that she’d brought, under the exotic trees of Strybing Arboretum. Her love was free. Her body was a political statement. The act, in some small way, was repayment for what her father, and all her white forefathers, had done to the Africans, repayment for dislocation, enslavement, carpetbaggers, segregated lunch counters, George Wallace, J. Edgar Hoover, the KKK and the FBI.
He was not starry-eyed but horny. He had not been with a woman in a long time. They cost money. They’d have to wait. But she was free. He didn’t have to buy her a drink, dinner. Indeed, she’d offered, during intercourse, to take him to a restaurant! She was passive, detached as he worked away. He liked her hair, long, straight, spreading like rays, like a halo on the blanket under the trees in Golden Gate Park on an evening in mid-July 1971. Afterward he wanted to wash, talk a little, maybe make a date to do it again. She just wanted to leave—like someone coming into court to pay a parking ticket, “You got my payment, now let me out of here!”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Ty said. He felt bewildered.
She carried the blanket, paced steadily toward her father’s Oldsmobile, barely glanced back.
“Wait a minute,” Ty called louder. He jammed his shirttails into his trousers, jogged toward her. “Hey, I—” She opened the trunk, tossed in the blanket, slammed the lid. Her breasts bobbled. He caught up to her. “Hey, I don’t even know your name.”
“Names are meaningless,” she said. She opened the driver’s door.
“Come on, Lady.” Ty smiled, attempted to be charming even as he rushed to intercept her fleeing. “You know, you’ve got a lovely shaped face. I’d like—” She got in, slammed the door. He placed his hands on top of the half-opened window, clicked his pinky ring against the glass. “Aw, don’t just split.”
“I have to go.”
“My name’s Ty. Ty Dorsey. Let me give you my card. I’m a financial—”
“No.” She said the word sharp, loud. “Don’t tell me. That’s not what this is—”
“Oh, for God’s—”
She started the car. He held the window. She began to roll it up. “Maybe another time, Mr. Black,” she said, or at least he thought he heard her say.
He withdrew his right hand, she shifted into drive, rolled forward.
“Hey! Stop!” He screamed. He ran. His left hand was stuck in the window. He ran trying to extricate his fingers. “STOP!” She gunned the engine. The Oldsmobile’s suspension compressed, the car leaped forward. Ty stumbled, his left arm jerked, his shoulder, elbow stretched straight. Then the car was gone and there was terrible pain in his wrist and the back of his hand and he grasped his left hand with his right. He was on his knees on South Drive in Golden Gate Park, cradling his left hand to his stomach, afraid to look, afraid, finally opening his right, seeing blood, knowing it was staining his trousers, his shirt, seeing fingers, sighing with relief, turning his hand to see the cut, seeing the bone, the last socket, the pinky and ring gone.
The pain in his hand, his entire arm, up through his shoulder to his neck, was incredible. For three days he’d suffered in his room, alone, afraid. He had no insurance, no money, none for doctors, none for emergency rooms, none for someone who might ask who he was, or had been. He smoked a skag-arette, another, another. There was money for that—not a lot, enough to let this one pleasure pay for itself. He smoked, lay on the bed, thrashed back and forth, angry at the pain, the loss of the pinky, the ring. The fat fag upstairs, that’s how he always thought of him, the fat fag, he’d been there the evening Ty had returned, Ty’s hand wrapped in toilet paper and paper towels from a gas station rest room, had seen the blood on Ty’s shirt and trousers and shoes and had helped him upstairs to his sixth-floor apartment, a real apartment with kitchenette and its own bath, where they’d unwrapped the paper towels and toilet paper and Ty babbled uncontrollably, unstoppable, exactly what had happened, right down to the carats of the ring and he bet that the bitch wouldn’t even try to return it to him, but had probably thrown ring and finger out on Nineteenth Avenue and was too dumb to stop. The fat fag had washed the wound then rolled Ty’s good right arm over, tied off, slapped up a vein and shot in a speedball that almost knocked Ty to the floor as it blew the top of his head off, the IV heroin kicking in a hundred times stronger than anything Ty had ever done in his life.
The next day, before dawn, he’d been awakened by the pain, waking in only his underwear on the fat fag’s sofa, as horrified by what might have transpired while he was in la-la-land as he was by the stabbing, pulsing realization that his finger had been ripped off. He’d stumbled out, nauseated, scared, stumbled to the stairs, descended the two flights, retched dry bile heaves, only then realizing he didn’t have his pants, his keys, wincing, climbing back, knocking for the fat fag, begging for his clothes, the man so sweet, so concerned, begging him to come back in, to let himself be taken care of until Ty became ornery, then enraged, and the man gave him his clothes and tried to help him but Ty shrugged him off and the man followed him a cautious three or four paces back until Ty opened his own door and slammed it. For three days he suffered, alone, afraid, smoking all the dope he’d bought for resale, ingesting nothing but Coca-Cola from the glass bottles he’d purchased to use as additional alarm bottles at the door-stile if and when he ever drank the contents.
“He’s going to China.”
“Who’s going to China?”
“Nixon.”
“Nixon’s going to China?!”
“Don’t you listen to the news? It was on the news last night.”
“I—I didn’t watch it.”
“The paper?”
“Haven’t read it yet.”
“Bobby!” Sharon began to laugh, not cruelly, not with the least bit of reproach, but with mirth and amusement. “You know, this is really a big story.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, it is. He said he’s going to seek normalized relations.”
“Who?”
“Nixon.” Sharon smiled, shook her head. “I think it might mean the end of the war.”
“Oh.” Bobby screwed up his eyes, his nose, pursed his mouth, knowing it would make Sharon laugh again. “Really?”
“Oh.” Sharon jabbed him on the shoulder. “You knew it all the time. Stop pulling my leg.” Bobby glanced down at Sharon’s legs. She was wearing pants. Still she fidgeted playfully. “I bet I do know something you haven’t heard,” she said.
“What’s that?” His mind had not assimilated, processed, projected anything about the China news which he had not previously heard.
Sharon moved closer. “That big turkey that Peter listed and sold ...” Her voice was conspiratorial.
“You mean the Victorian way out on Miwok?”
Sharon moved even closer. “Um-hmm.” She whispered, “The town’s seeking an injunction against the new owner.”
“Why?” Bobby had not heard this either.
“They were fixing it up ...” Sharon began.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “It certainly needed it.”
“... but they were also expanding it and keeping the apartments. I think Peter made a deal with the building inspector that it could be fixed but the inspector said okay only if they stayed within the existing foundation. Lisa says they pushed out the back about twenty feet for four more units.”
“That’s zoned single-family ...”
“Hm-hmm.”
“I bet they get away with it.”
“I don’t know.”
Bobby didn’t answer. He looked Sharon up and down, looked away. He wanted to compliment her, wanted to tell her how much he admired her, her smile, her pleasant approach to life. He fantasized about her on and off, but had always remained perfectly proper. In some fantasies she had left her boyfriend, Red had been killed in an auto accident—something very clean and very sad—and an appropriate amount of time had passed. They were in the office, alone, exactly as they were now.
“Anyway,” Sharon caught his wandering mind, “I think if you get the listing on that old Third Street duplex, I’ve got an investor who’d be interested.”
“What perfume are you wearing?”
“Hmm?” Her whole face lit.
“Ah ... it ... it’s really nice.”
“It’s just Chanel,” she said. “Nothing fancy.”
“It’s really nice,” he repeated.
“Thank you,” Sharon said. Then she laughed and smiled. “You’re losing weight, aren’t you?”
“A little,” Bobby said. “I can’t believe how fat I’ve gotten. I’ve never been fat.”
“You’re not fat.”
“Fatter than I should be. But I’ve cut out drinking beer with dinner. I think it’s the beer doing it.”
In August the Klemenchichs got their house. The widow, Mrs. Watercross, was delighted. Bobby had listed her property for three thousand dollars more than he (and she, too, after seeing the comparable sales list Bobby had prepared) believed was top dollar. Then that lovely young woman had brought her a full-price offer with a thirty-day close. Together, Bobby and Olivia Taft showed Mrs. Watercross how she could have the best of both immediate cash plus income. Mrs. Watercross adored Estelle Klemenchich. She was happy that Estelle was thinking of raising a family in the same house that she herself had raised her own children. Bobby too was thrilled. The commission broke his dry spell. He was back on track. He had money in his pocket. And luck upon luck, he’d just “made” another ten at North Bay Mall, “the easiest ten bucks I ever made” is how Al Bartecchi quoted him when Al told Dan Coleman later that afternoon.
“Naw,” Dan had said. “Wapinski wouldn’t do that.”
“That’s what he told me.” Al flipped a dispirited hand, grunted.
“He didn’t say anything?!”
“Nope.” Al was disappointed. His feelings infected Dan.
“You mean he knew the store undercharged him and he—”
“He was bragging about it.”
“Maybe he’s been around Peter too long.”
“Maybe. I mean he was really happy.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“Nothing at first.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, Jane was there. She likes him, you know.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing. But I don’t think she liked that either. When she left I asked him.”
“Same as you did with Peter that time?”
“Yeah. I said, ‘Bob, what did you just sell for that ten dollars?’ He looked at me kind of puzzled. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Yes you did,’ I said. I said, ‘You sold your honesty for ten bucks. Isn’t it worth more than that?’”
“What’d he say?”
“You know. What could he say? I pressed him though. I said, ‘Didn’t you just sell your integrity for ten bucks?’ He said, ‘It was Sears! They were probably overcharging me anyway.’ I said, ‘Probably. But that’s not the point. What they do to themselves doesn’t concern me. What you do to yourself ...’ He said, ‘Aw, cut the crap. It was a lousy ten bucks,’ I just dropped it.”
“Well, let it work on his head,” Coleman said.
Al chuckled. “Just like you did it to me.”
Bobby hated the summer nights of 1971, hated going home, avoided the Deepwoods house like hemophiliacs avoid razors. But he did not know what to do. Occasionally he entered additional thoughts into his journal.
4 July: In the whole time we’ve been together, I’ve never asked her to do anything because whenever I have she resents it.
17 July: If I look at Red as a woman she thinks I’m lewd and disgusting. If I don’t look at her as a woman she thinks I don’t love her.
3 Aug: What I say I want for her, I want for everyone, and I want it badly for her and me. This world is going nuts. There’s got to be a better way.
14 Aug: I want to leave her. I don’t love her. I do love her but she doesn’t love me. I love her but I don’t need her. She doesn’t want to be married. Cramps her style. She can’t fuck around. She doesn’t really want me. Not how I want to be wanted.
I bully her. Tell her she’s not doing it right. Shoddy. Half-ass. Never finishes anything. Richard Townsmark has been transferred to L.A. Without him, she’s in trouble at work for not following through. I love her but I can’t live with her like this. If she gets fired ...
Occasionally he called home. “Happy Birthday, Granpa.”
“Bob. Where are you calling from?”
“My office. Did I wake you?”
“Nope. Jus watching the news. Australia and New Zealand say they’re goina withdraw all their soldiers from Viet Nam by year’s end. You’re workin late, eh?”
“It’s, ah, only eight ten. How are you?”
“I’m doin jus fine. My friend Tony’s not, though.”
“Tony? Who’s Tony?”
“Linda’s husband.”
“Oh! You mean your housekeeper ... with the two babies?”
“Yep. Cept the babies are toddlin all over the place now. How you doin?”
“Fine. Great. I’m sorry I don’t call more often. I’m making good money though. I can afford to call more if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. You could write, too. Stamp’s only eight cent. Eleven cent air mail.”
“Well, I can afford the calls now. Really. I’m sorry I haven’t called more. How are you doing?”
“Good. I get a crick in my hip. Sometime it jus gives out but mostly it’s okay. When Tony’s here he helps. He turned and planted the fields and was doin the barn roof but ... Ah, well.”
“Um.”
“How’s that little lady a yours doin?”
“She’s fine. She might be changing jobs again.”
“You two goina come back for that celebration I promised?”
“Not quite yet, but ...”
“Maybe Thanksgiving? Like you did last year.”
“Maybe. We’ll have to talk about it.”
“Hard to leave all that sunshine, eh?”
“Oh, it’s not that. As a matter of fact, sometimes I think I should just pick up and leave.”
“How come?”
“You know. There’s a certain craziness to this place. Like up at The Res, the local lake. It was all pristine forest and watershed. Then some developer bought it and got permission to put in a subdivision. Wouldn’ta been so bad if he did it like the plans said but instead they just clear cut everything. I called them, tried to get an exclusive right to market their units but they’ve got their own sales division. Sometimes I wish ... Sometimes I wish I could design a community where this stuff doesn’t happen.”
“You can,” Pewel Wapinski said. “But you have to start with yourself. It’ll come. That was a nice card you sent to Cheryl. Yer brother’s been smilin like the cat who got the canary for the whole past month.”
“Why’d they call him Anton? That’s kind of an odd name, isn’t it?”
“Brian said it was Cheryl’s idea. She heard it on a soap opera she was watchin before he was born and she fell in love with it.”
“Yeah, but Anton! Don’t they think kids’ll make fun of him when he starts school?”
“Maybe. Maybe less than if he were named Pewel. Then he’d really have to fight.”
“Oh, ah ...” Aside, “One second.” Then back to the phone, “Granpa, I’ve got a client just walked in. I’ll call next week. Happy Birthday, again.”
Bobby hung up. Olivia rested her buttocks on his desk, her stockinged legs, feet together, slanting down beside his chair. “Granpa?” Olivia teased.
Bobby chuckled self-deprecatingly. “My grandfather. He’s eighty-two today. I didn’t know anyone else was in the office.”
“Just me,” Olivia said. She lifted one foot and crossed it over her other. Her calf muscle bulged. The ceiling fluorescents glowed ambient but the curve of the bulge still formed an accent shadow that caught his eye. “I heard from Estelle, today,” Olivia said. She did not smile but looked sad, serious.
“Klemenchich?” Bobby said.
“Uh-huh. Rod had an accident last Friday.”
“Oh.” Bobby could barely think with Olivia next to him like that. “Is he okay?”
“It’s not life threatening,” Olivia said. She uncrossed her legs, put her weight on the one that had been on top, lifted and pointed the other foot, stretching the ankle, rolling it slightly.
“They still like the house ...”
“Oh. Estelle loves it. But Rod ... I guess he slipped with a large sheet of metal. Estelle said it split his right palm right to the bones. Almost cut his hand off.”
“Ow!” Bobby squirmed in his seat, almost could feel the metal slicing his hand. He twisted toward Olivia.
“Estelle said he had to have major surgery to reattach the tendons or something and that he might not be able to use it for an entire year. She said he might not ever get the use of his fingers back because of nerve damage.”
“Oh! The poor guy. He’s got insurance though, right?”
“She’s got major med that covers him. And there’s workman’s comp. But they don’t think they can keep the house. Could we sell it for them for three thousand more—”
“Three—!”
“To cover the cost of selling—”
“We already boosted the cost.”
“I know.”
“They’ve only been in there, what, a month?”
“That’s what I told her.”
“I don’t know. In this market ... we could try, but ...”
“It’s okay, Bobby,” Olivia said. She slid closer. He had one hand on his desk by her hip, the other at the back of his chair, opening himself to her. He leaned back slightly, looked to her face. Slowly she bent, put a hand to his face, kissed his lips. For a moment they remained close, still, their hands met, softly pulled, they kissed again, gently, softly. “I—” Olivia began, stuttered, “I don’t want you to do anything to upset your wife.”
“She—” Bobby also stuttered, but then blurted, “she doesn’t care.”
“She doesn’t?” Olivia’s tone was sad, empathetic.
“No,” Bobby said. “She ... we don’t have very much of a relationship.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s—it’s all kinda for show.”
“My marriage was like that too.”
“That’s why you divorced.”
“Um-hmm.” They kissed again. Olivia slid further along the desk edge until she was in front of him. He stood, kissed her again, again softly, gently, their bodies barely in contact. “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Olivia said. “At least not until you settle things with your wife.”
Confusion continued to reign. Nothing was right. The world was out of kilter and Bobby was perpendicular to the slant, knew he was tilting, knew he’d fall. Half of him didn’t give a fucking flying leap. Half of him dreamed on, worried on, bemoaned his lot, his fate. He loved his job, he detested it. It was exciting—the hunt, the tactics of list and sell—but he was not interested, not committed. It was for show. Each time he thought of quitting he’d told himself he would again become engrossed in this business when the commissions became larger. But the opposite was true. He worked for his commissions, worked hard, but whenever he had enough to pay his bills he slacked off. On the drive home he thought of Olivia, of Sharon, of Jane. Even of Lisa Fonari. He thought maybe he wouldn’t even go to the office if it wasn’t a matter of seeing them. What in hell he was doing with Olivia he didn’t know but it was exciting and pleasant and thrilling and everything he could want it to be and everything it wasn’t anymore with Red. And yet he knew that he’d rather be with Sharon. Or Victoria. Or Stacy. Aloud he said, “For ten bucks I would sell my integrity if I could undo ...”
Red’s pistachio Pinto was in the driveway. Josh was lying on the small porch, alert, ears up, smiling that happy Pennsylvania Husk-perd smile, his coat glistening in the porch light. Bobby’s mind flipped as if he’d not seen him in a long time, not seen him for what he was—not just a dog, not just a faithful friend who could at times be ignored, not even just a symbol of nature, but Bobby’s attachment to the world beyond himself, beyond the limits of human concerns, beyond money and bills and shelter and governments and self-promotion.
Bobby opened the car door, reached to gather his books, decided to leave them on the seat. Josh nudged him. He turned, still behind the steering wheel, massaged the dog’s ears. Josh groaned.
“Ya know, Little Brother,” Bobby whispered, “I’ve got a dream. I’ve got this dream of a community where you and I live, where people design and build in harmony with guys like you, ol’ buddy. Aw, I’m just getting stupid, Josh. C’mon. Let’s go in.”
Red was watching TV. She did not look up when Bobby came in, didn’t budge until Josh stepped with his front paws onto the living room carpet. Then she clapped her hands twice, glared. Josh backed up, lay down on the mat in the small foyer, his back to the living room, his legs stretched and straight as if rigor mortis had set in, his back and neck arched so he was watching Bobby and Red and the TV.
“What are ya watchin?”
“Ssssh.”
“Is it almost over?”
“SSssshH!”
Bobby walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, grabbed a can of beer. But he put it back. Instead he grabbed a glass, ran the tap, drank water. He went to the bedroom, to the closet, pulled out the Saucony running shoes he’d bought but had never used, decided—Tomorrow, I’m really going to start. Red came in.
“Good show?” Bobby asked.
“So-so,” Red answered.
“What was it?”
“Oh, it’s too complicated to go into. It was pretty good though. You smell like perfume.”
Bobby turned his head, sniffed his shoulder. “I do!?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm! I don’t know ... Oh. Maybe it’s from Olivia. She got a new listing and was so excited she hugged everybody in the office. I was on the phone with Granpa. Today was his birthday, you know. She came around hugging everybody.”
“Um.”
“Red.”
“Um.”
“I’ve been thinking ...”
“Um.”
“Maybe we should look for a different place.”
“A new house like the one on Tin Pan Alley? I’d love that. This is such a dump.”
“I was thinking ...”
“We could put in the offer they have to leave the dining room set. It’s absolutely perfect in that room.”
“No. I mean, I was thinking someplace else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where. Someplace that’s got more of a sense of community. Someplace that’s not so damn expensive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, like if we helped develop a community.”
“You’re not talking Pennsylvania!”
“No. Not necessarily.”
“If you go back to Pennsylvania, I won’t go back with you.”
“You won’t ... What the hell’s that suppose to mean?”
“I mean I won’t go back there. I hated it there, and if you go back, I’m not going.”
“What are you saying?” His voice spiked angrily. “You’d leave me?!”
Red backed up, sat on the bed. She eyed him warily. “I won’t go back. If you go back, you go back on your own.”
“Well, what if I do want to go back?”
“Go back then!” Her voice was hard, not loud. “Take Olivia with you. Don’t you think I know?!”
“Know?”
“Cheater! Don’t you think I know!” It was no longer a question.
“I haven’t cheated on you. I’ve never cheated on you.” Now his index finger, hand, arm were jabbing the air, pointing at her face, eyes, knocking her glare down. “Even though you’ve given me every reason to cheat,” he said loud, angry, “I haven’t.”
“I still won’t go back with you.”
“So what’s that mean? You want a divorce!” Bobby was livid, feeling self-righteous, abused, more attacked than attacking. Red did not utter a sound. She sat there on the bed, now more passive, eyes down, shoulders curled in. She sat there a victim, incriminating him with her victimization. “Well, fuck you,” he roared. Her silence angered him more than any words. “Fuck you. You want a divorce, you can have a divorce. There. Ha!” He stomped. Slammed the door. The entire wall shook.
Still she said nothing. Still she sat there, looking to him as if she weren’t a part, weren’t a cause, as if she thought she were totally innocent, as if she were the one who’d been abused, who’d suffered through their togetherness. He snorted, still seething yet closer to control. She looked at him. Mumbled something.
“What!?”
“We never should have gotten married,” Red said. Again she hung her head. Again he snorted.
Then he went to the phone, dialed, almost as if he were being guided by an outside force, almost without conscious will, as if in a dream:
“Hello.”
“Hi, Brian.”
“Huh?”
“Oh. Did I wake you?”
“Who ...”
“It’s Rob. I forgot about the time difference.”
“Robbie. Geez. It’s two o’clock or some ... You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry if I woke you. But I wanted you to know. Red and I are getting a divorce.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I’ll call ya tomorrow. Don’t tell Granpa, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Or Miriam.”