Fat Jack was on the phone. I could tell by his voice he had big bad news for me.
First I asked him if he had shut off the air conditioner, which he had, not to save money, but as punishment.
“It’s ninety-five degrees up here and my girls are melting.”
The walls were sweating, the floors were buckling and the phones were beginning to soak.
“Let them get me leads for my starving men and I’ll turn it back on.”
“You shut the air off for that?”
“I can’t afford the air your girls are costing me, Eli. Air costs money.”
“Air?”
But true, air costs money. Breathing is expensive.
“The accountant was just here. Harry Himself is on my back. He’s thinking of bringing in an efficiency expert to take inventory of people like you.”
Life, breath by breath, pound for pound, is measured on the scales of finance.
“That wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
“No, but it might be the end of your job.”
“That still wouldn’t be the end of the world. Listen Fat Jack, turn the air back on or I’m coming down.”
I heard him regaling and then I heard the air click back on.
“Happy now?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s about to get hotter for you, Eli.”
“I’m not in a good mood today, Fat Jack.”
“Oh, so I guess you don’t care that a silver Jaguar just pulled up in front of the showroom. My, my. I wonder whose car that could be!”
Of course it was Stephanie’s.
“Getting hotter, Eli?”
So he wasn’t kidding after all? Can it be? No, I refused to get snared in. Ever since it sort of ended with us – her going off to California – Fat Jack had me running to the windows and to the phones at least once a week to chase after a phantom Stephanie, so that by now I was immune to the trick, practically. He loved to play tricks, Fat Jack did, and he also loved Stephanie, in a brotherly way, and had worked very hard, in his clumsy manner, to bring us together, and now that we were apart he blamed the whole thing on me, frequently saying, “Stephanie Eatons don’t grow on trees.”
Which I already knew.
“That could have been you in that Jaguar,” he said, “and everything that goes with it – and I mean everything. She could have BOUGHT you Broadway.”
True.
“I know you’re pulling my leg.”
“Oh yeah? Look out the window. I told you she was coming. Go on, you yutz.”
“You want leads? Let me get back to work.”
“You mean back to sleep.”
“Up here it’s the same thing.”
“Eli, you really blew it with her. You could have been a KING.”
“Goodbye.”
“What a waste!”
“Goodbye.”
“I ought to come up there and slap you around.”
“Goodbye.”
“Here she comes now. God she’s gorgeous. A yutz like you doesn’t deserve this.”
“Goodbye.”
“I’ll send her up soon as I’m done talking to her. I’m gonna tell her how sick you’ve been since she left.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“You mean you believe she’s here?”
“No,” I said.
“Goodbye,” and he hung up.
“You two,” Mona said. “You’re like a couple of kids.”
“He says Stephanie’s here.”
“Is she?”
“Of course not.”
Of course I wasn’t about to look out the window, either.