Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (26 page)

Magellan raised his wine glass and said, “To a week of fun and friendship. And to Deming, Stark and Williams for a hell of a job this past year!”

“To Deming, Stark and Williams,” echoed the rest of the table, and all downed a mouthful of the wonderfully woody Chardonnay. Mel Tormé had moved on to “Mountain Greenery,” and platters of food began making their way around the table.

Magellan was seated on Yolanda’s left, and insisted on scooping her a heaping helping of potato salad. “Oh, Mr. Magellan,” she protested, trying to cover her plate with her hands, “thank you, but I will never eat so much!”

“Call be Babcock, and don’t be silly,” he said. “I made it myself! You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you?”

She seemed to be considering that option, so Lionel gave her a little kick under the table and she yelped, “
No!
No, of course not. I will eat what I can.”

“Isn’t it horrible how we girls have to starve ourselves to stay thin and beautiful?” Wilma said, a completely unsympathetic smile on her face. “And for what? So men can paw and drool over us like we’re cheap floozies? I wonder why any of us put up with it!” She turned her grin on Yolanda, and it looked like she was baring fangs.

Yolanda merely smiled back and took a bite of the potato salad. “Oh, it is
very
good!” She said. “Is there garlic in it? I love garlic!”

Magellan swelled up like a tire and beamed at her. “Just one clove! But I chopped it very, very fine. Do you really like it?”

She was chewing now, and so resorted to nodding her head enthusiastically.

“Well,
I
can’t eat it,” Becca said, pushing away the platter. “When I was pregnant with my second, Hacky’s sister and her godawful brood came to stay for a week and she
insisted
on cooking for us so I could stay off my feet. Everything she made was just loaded with garlic. And it was the dog days of summer, so of course the next day everyone would be sweating and at high noon I swear to God you’d take a whiff and think you had all of Sicily over for a visit. Put me off garlic for the rest of my days.”

“Becca,”
said Perlman in a warning tone.

“What?” She pressed her hand to her breast. “Am I lying? Is any of this not the truth?”

“It’s just one clove,” said Magellan a little plaintively.

“It’s very good for you, too,” said Peg, making up for Becca’s abstinence by taking a double portion. “Helps you live longer. Good for the blood. Unclots your arteries. Give you good skin tone.”

“Well, this little lady doesn’t need it, then,” said her husband with an almost juvenile leer at Yolanda. “Already got about the most perfect skin
I’ve
ever seen.”

Peg’s face visibly darkened, but Yolanda smiled creamily and said, “How sweet. Thank you.” Then she had a bite of the chopped green salad and said to Wilma, “What delicious dressing, too!”

But Wilma was far too wily to fall for this transparent ploy to win her favor. “Oh,” she said, “but it’s oil-based, and has cheese shavings in it, and bacon bits — all things I’m sure you’ve crossed off
your
diet, dear, or you wouldn’t look so fetchingly
svelte
.” She said the word like an accusation; she might as easily have said
wanton
, or
whorish
.

Lionel felt his face flush. He’d really begun to resent the way Wilma kept picking on Yolanda. “Nonsense,” he said heartily. “Yolanda practically
lives
on red meat and butter. If she goes a day without a steak, she goes through goddamn withdrawal.”

Yolanda looked at him as though he’d gone mad.

“A girl after my own heart!” Magellan said, and he dared to place his enormous, hot hand on her slim, naked shoulder. “I’ll have to grill us up a couple juicy fat ones later in the week!” He caught sight of Wilma’s laser-cannon stare and quickly withdrew his hand.

Perlman was staring at Yolanda now, spinning the stem of his wine glass between his thumb and forefinger. One of his eyebrows arched. “You know, you look familiar,” he said, his perpetual air of menace reasserting itself for the first time since meeting her. “I’m certain we’ve met. What is it you do, Yolanda?”

“I work in a science-fiction bookstore,” she said, a little hesitantly.

“Why, we have an entrepreneur at our table!” said Wilma, deliberately misinterpreting her. She clapped her hands and said, “Oh, I find that
fascinating
. Tell us, is it difficult to get a small business started these days?”

Yolanda, oblivious to the fact that she was being tweaked, shook her head. “I do not
own
the store, I just work there.”

She pretended to be surprised. “Oh, silly of me! I must have misheard you. You’re a clerk, then? Very interesting, I’m
sure
.”

“Oh, yes it is,” said Yolanda with disarming sincerity. “You have no idea, the interesting kinds of people our store attracts. Some of them are quite brilliant, but in a very intense way; some are almost paranoid. A few even
frighten
me a little.”

“Lunatics, is what I’d call them,” said Becca. She gave up shoving her chicken leg around her plate and began to feast on a much more appetizing morsel. “My hairdresser, Velma? Her boy Eric got involved in this ‘sci-fi’ thing. Always going off to a friend’s house to play something called Viziers and Vampires, where he’d spend hours — I’m serious,
hours
 — pretending he was a sci-fi character and that this game board was an actual real
place
and whatever happened on it, happened to
him
. Used to get so worked up he didn’t know
what
real life was all about anymore. One night he came home upset — told Velma some other player had put a ‘curse’ on his character. And then he went upstairs and blew his brains out. Velma went a little nuts; she was out
six weeks
. And even after she came back, on two occasions she singed my temple with a curling iron, which need I say had
never
happened before. So I had to find someone new. I heard she got fired a few months later.”

There was an awkward silence after this. Then Peg cleared her throat and said, “Too much imagination is unhealthy. People like that ought to get out more. Fresh air, that’s the ticket.
Gardening.
” She wiped the corners of her mouth and then refolded the napkin into a perfect triangle and centered it exactly on her lap.

“I could
swear
I know you from somewhere,” Perlman said again, like an SS officer about to pierce the identity of an Allied spy. He turned his head and squinted at Yolanda, as though that might help him place her. “Never worked in advertising?”

She shook her head.

“For a film editor? Recording studio?”

“No to both,” she said, laughing nervously. “Someone who looks like me, perhaps.”

“
Two
of you, in the same universe?” he said with a laugh. “That’d be enough to get
me
to believe in God.”

Becca shot him a glance that he reacted to almost physically; Lionel thought his chair might topple back.

“I read a lot of science fiction when I was a teenager,” said Magellan. “You know Isaac Asimov? Arthur C. Clarke? Ray Bradbury?”

“Oh, very well indeed,” she said, and they began spouting the arcana of their common genre, leaving the others no point of entry, until tempers had somewhat cooled.

After the meal, Magellan and Wilma cleared away the dishes, and despite their commands that everyone remain seated, Peg, who couldn’t stand to witness a clean-up operation in which she had no part, leapt to her feet and helped them, which of course obliged Becca grudgingly to do the same. Yolanda excused herself and went to the bathroom.

Lionel, Perlman, and Deming stayed seated at the table, finishing the last of the wine and placing their hands over their bulging bellies. After a few moments of listening to the commotion in the kitchen, which completely drowned out Mel Tormé, Deming said, “Lionel, long as we’ve got a moment alone here, Hack and I would like a word with you.”

His heart quickened. “Oh?”

Deming nodded. “You’ve been with the agency for a few years now, and you’ve done a great job. Maybe you’ve had some reverses that weren’t your fault — I mean, no one blames you for Romeo Springs — and maybe you haven’t brought in any new accounts, but All-Pro’s still our biggest client, and I know for a
fact
, Lionel, that other agencies have tried to woo them away from us.”

He licked his lips nervously. He had no idea where this was headed. “I’d heard rumors,” he said.

Deming and Perlman both nodded. Then Deming continued, “But you’ve kept Magellan happy through it all. Not just happy, but — hell,
look
at us, here. The guy treats us like fucking
fami
—”

“Get the salad bowl, will you, dear?” said Wilma to Peg as the two women returned to the table. Wilma grabbed the heavy wooden cutting board that had held the chicken and now mournfully hosted its carcass, and started back to the kitchen with it. “Just be careful,” she said as she and Peg rounded the corner. “It has a lot of sentimental value. It’s the first thing Baba and I bought together when we got this place, not long after we met, and it’s the first thing we ever picked out togeth—” A shattering crash ended the reverie. A long pause … then, “Never mind, dear, it wasn’t
terribly
expensive.”

Deming rolled his eyes and turned back to Lionel. “Anyway, what we’re saying is, we’re considering you for partnership.”

Lionel’s heart almost kicked-boxed its way out of his chest. “You’re kidding.”

Perlman shook his suntanned head and, for once, seemed borderline benevolent. “Gary Stark’s dead,” he said, “Don Williams is dead, so Julie and I are all that’s left. And, I mean, we’re not
old
or anything, but we want to ensure the future of the agency. And you’re the only one who seems to care enough to keep the place going.”

“Thank you,” he said, dumbfounded. “And I do. But … certainly Carlton …”

“Wenck?” Deming wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Too much of a hotshot. No
loyalty
. Someone comes along tomorrow and offers him an extra fifteen grand, he’s
gone
. You think we don’t know that? Plus, he’s just not partnership material. That whole business with Gloria … now, I don’t hold it against him, not really — not as an employer, anyway — but can you imagine a
partner
behaving like that?”

“Not to mention,” said Perlman, leaning in close, “the guy risked his reputation for a couple rolls in the hay with
Gloria Gimbek
.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I mean, come
on
. I’m gonna screw around with a married coworker, she’d better at least be a
primo
piece of ass.”

“That’s another thing,” said Deming with a smirk. “Your taste in talent in
way
better than his. First Tracy, now this hot little señorita …”

As if on cue, Yolanda returned from the house looking radiant and happy. “Did I miss anything?” she asked, resuming her seat.

Lionel, stricken dumb by sheer joy, could only look at her with his jaw hanging open. Then Wilma reappeared at the glass door, a dishtowel in her hands; she looked straight at Yolanda with a smile that could’ve sheeted the lake beyond with ice, and with a completely unconvincing air of good cheer said, “Is the noise in the kitchen too loud? None of us ladies wants to disturb you men’s conversation with all our banging around doing women’s work.”

Yolanda shot Lionel an amused glance, then got to her feet and said, “You must let me help.”

“No, no,” said Wilma; then without missing a beat, “Well, if you
insist
.”

“Not a goddamn thing to buy in this town,” Becca snarled into Peg’s ear. She glanced back at Lionel, who was a few paces behind her. He looked into a window and pretended to have heard nothing. Satisfied, she continued: “All these barns filled with crap any decent person would’ve thrown out in 1970. Is
this
what we have to look forward to all week?”

“Of course, it’s all very
tidy
,” Peg said, trying to give the town the benefit of the doubt. It was a warm day, and her face was more florid than usual. She shifted her Volkswagen-size purse to her other arm. “But we haven’t passed anyplace to eat yet. I’m beginning to think people in these parts don’t touch anything that hasn’t been glazed with sugar or fried in lard.”

They were on the outskirts of town, along a rural route dotted with farmhouses trumpeting antiques for sale. At Wilma’s urging, they’d parked at one such place, an enormous barn with a door barely hanging by its rusted hinges; it was crammed to the rafters with rickety furniture, ancient dolls, tin advertising signs, yellowing china, and an entire wall of brittle player-piano rolls. The accumulation of so much useless history made Lionel’s head ache. He told Yolanda he’d wait outside.

Peg and Becca, whose nouveau riche sensibilities wouldn’t allow them to purchase anything that hadn’t been manufactured in the past year and subsequently sold at full retail, were completely disenchanted with the outing. The only reason they’d agreed to it was that their husbands had refused to lend them their cars, effectively stranding them at the cabin. So when Lionel and Yolanda had decided to drive into town on an exploratory mission, the women — Wilma included — put aside their dislike of Yolanda and jumped at the chance to come along. They’d squeezed themselves into Lionel’s not extraordinarily capacious Celica, and left Magellan, Perlman, and Deming to fish off the pier in peace.

At first, Lionel had thought he’d made a mistake, agreeing to squire the women around town when he might stay at the cabin with the menfolk, on whose good opinion his future depended. But before he could change his mind, Magellan took him aside, winked at him, and said, “Thanks for getting the magpies out of our hair, buddy. I know you and your girl must’ve wanted to be alone, but trust me, we’ll make it up to you later.” He paused. “And listen, long as you’re in town, you mind picking up my son at the bus stop at twelve-thirty? You’ll recognize him — looks like me. A real hunk.” He laughed. “Only blond, green eyes. Probably carrying a big suitcase with a Notre Dame sticker on it.”

Lionel had agreed; what else could he do? He checked his watch now; it was close to noon. He turned with impatience toward the entrance to the barn, just in time to see Yolanda and Wilma exit from opposite sides. Yolanda was carrying a mottled, decrepit rocking chair, and Wilma had her arms around an enormous picture frame with chipped gilt over its surface. He dashed over to them.

“Oh, my,” Wilma was saying to Yolanda when he reached them. “Have you bought that, dear?”

“Yes,” she replied, lowering the chair and wiping her dusty hands on her cut-offs. “I thought I would strip it and refinish it for my living room.”

“So clever of you,” Wilma cooed. “But, what a
pickle
that puts us in. You see,
I
just bought this
frame
, and I very much doubt Lionel’s trunk will hold
both
.”

Yolanda looked at her blankly, as if unable to comprehend what she was getting at.

“I’ll tell you what,” Wilma continued, patting the frame, “I’ll just take this back and ask them to hold it for me until I can come back and get it. I’m
certain
I can convince Baba to drive me here sometime during the week. And if not … well, I’m sure I’ll think of
something
.” She grinned ferociously.

“No, no,” Lionel said, and he grabbed the chair from Yolanda, who for a moment resisted letting him have it. “We’ve already planned to come back during the week ourselves, so I’ll just have them hold
our
find instead.” He looked at Yolanda, wordlessly imploring her to understand “We can pick it up tomorrow or the next day.”

“We are coming back?” she asked.

“Yes. Remember? I
told
you.”
Come on, Yolanda, get with the program!

All at once her face lit up. “Oh,” she said. “
Yes.
When we come
back
. Of, course, yes. We can get my rocking chair then.”

“You’re sure?” said Wilma with an uncanny imitation of sincerity. “I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“I am quite sure,” said Yolanda, nodding.

“Well, then, thank you, dear,” she said, smiling coolly. She headed towards Lionel’s car.

Lionel rushed the chair back into the barn. The geriatric proprietor took six full minutes to prepare a label for it. He had Lionel repeat Yolanda’s name three times as he inscribed the tag, and yet when he affixed it to the chair Lionel saw that it read HOLD FOR ROLAND A. REYNOSO. He didn’t even bother to correct him, but raced back to the car and found the four women waiting in varying degrees of impatience. He unlocked the doors and they piled in.

“Guess we should head back to town now,” he said. “See if we can grab a bite to eat somewhere, and wait for David Magellan’s bus.”

“Oh, we’re picking up David, as well?” Wilma said, feigning delight. “Baba didn’t tell me! He must’ve wanted it to be a surprise.”

Lionel started the car. “He asked me on my way out the door.”

“Well,” she said with a clattering, phony laugh, “won’t we all be
snug
! Good thing us girls are all so slender!”

Becca was so upset by this news that she refused to speak. She clutched her purse in her lap and looked out the car window, her head rigid and her lips white. Peg, seated in the middle with her elbows pressed into her sides, went through her purse with great difficulty. “That greasy breakfast is really talking back to me,” she said, shaking her head. “And these bumpy roads are no help, I tell you —
ah
!” She produced a packet of Aspergum and popped a piece into her mouth.

Lionel shifted into drive, steered the unhealthily heavy Celica onto the road, and made for the center of town. The cool of the morning long since ebbed, and the pavement gave off waves of heat. He could feel his shirt stick to his back.

A short while later he was following the women up the quaint streets of the business district, with Wilma pointing out the various dining spots and judging them based on the shade of green Peg turned when she described each menu. Lionel took the opportunity to survey the other people on the street. Many were immediately recognizable as seasonal visitors; their clothes were too cute, their sunglasses too expensive, their attitudes too happy-go-lucky. The town natives seemed to regard them begrudgingly, as a necessary evil. He wondered what they thought when they got an eyeful of
his
group: three middle-aged
Town & Country
wannabe’s, a young Latin beauty with a music-video saunter, and a hapless male wandering behind them in a Lloyd Llewellyn t-shirt.

Eventually they found a small diner whose menu boasted both leek soup and assorted sherberts, which Peg decided she might actually survive, so they entered and requested a table. Lionel, aware of the time, tried to hurry them through ordering so that they could meet David at the appointed time; but Wilma, apparently miffed that she hadn’t been consulted about this addition to the schedule, made a point of reading through the entire menu aloud and commenting on how good each item sounded before consenting to choose one. As a result, Lionel’s patty melt and fries had only just arrived when the minute hand of his watch slipped into alignment with the faux brass VI on the perimeter.

“Jesus,”
he muttered in frustration. Wishing that Wilma might choke on her tuna salad, he wolfed down half his sandwich, gulped down his Diet Coke, and dumped his fries into a napkin, which he carried out with him. “Gotta run across town to pick up David,” he said as he rose from his chair. “Take your time with lunch; I should be back in ten minutes or so.” He lowered his head and whispered to Yolanda, “Take care of my share, ‘kay? I’ll pay you back later.”

She nodded, but her wide-eyed expression said,
Don’t leave me alone with this murderous coven.

The bus stop was both near enough and far enough to cause him to stop and consider whether to walk or drive.
Hell with it,
he thought;
I’ll walk. It’ll take longer, but let Wilma sit and stew for a while. Do her some good.

He’d only glanced at the bus stop on his way into town and so got lost twice trying to find it again; but he refused to panic. He’d just finished his fries and deposited the greasy napkin in a trash can when he spotted a tall, blond stranger walking his way, past the post office, carrying a suitcase with a Notre Dame sticker on it.

Well, that could only be one person. And when Lionel took a closer look at him, he felt the top of his head spin like a top.

David Magellan was flat-out
beautiful
.

Hair the color and texture of flax; eyes as startlingly green as a suburban lawn during a rainstorm; chin with a cleft deep enough to hold a bookmark. Lionel reeled; he had to warn himself to be careful. This was, unexpectedly, the figure of his most venerable fantasy: the sexy seminarian — the gorgeous Jesuit. It was an absolute shock to be confronted with him here, now; he’d naturally presumed David would look like his father.

His father! That was the danger. This was his client’s son. And even if he weren’t, he probably wouldn’t relish being the object of someone’s sudden homosexual crush.

As all of this was gusting through Lionel’s head, David’s approach narrowed, and he seemed openly perplexed by the way this stranger was staring at him. Lionel had to shake himself out of his stupor. “David Magellan?” he asked.

David turned; the veins in his neck, blue beneath translucent skin, made him look ascetic and irresistible. “Yes?” he said. Ah — a high-pitched voice. He wasn’t
perfect
, then. Lionel was almost relieved.

He extended his hand. “I’m Lionel Frank. One of your dad’s guests this week. I’m in town with some of the others and he asked you to pick me up.” He shook his head. “Asked
me
to pick
you
up.” He giggled nervously.

“Oh,” said David. He looked at his shoes and sighed, as if he’d expected something like this. Lionel realized that this man was in the midst of a personal crisis, and had probably been hoping to have a few minutes alone with his father before getting to the house. Instead, his father had sent Lionel. He looked up again. “You’re kind of late. I thought maybe Dad had forgotten me. I was walking into town to see if I could get a cab.”

“Oh, I’ve got my car,” said Lionel a little too eagerly.

David hefted his suitcase into his other hand and said, “Great.” He looked around a little bewilderedly. “Where … where is it?”

Lionel winced. “Uh … well, it’s at the restaurant where the others are all having lunch. It’s a little bit of a hike.” David rolled his eyes and Lionel blurted, “See, I saw the bus stop on the way into town and I guess because I was driving I didn’t realize how much farther it would be to walk from the center of town. Here,” he said, reaching for the suitcase, “let me carry that.”

“It’s okay,” said David as he resumed walking.

“No, seriously, it’s the least I can do.” He trotted after him, reaching for the suitcase.

David ignored him and just kept going. Lionel gave up and trudged along beside him, his head hanging low.

It was blisteringly hot now, and that, added to Lionel’s acute embarrassment, was enough to shift his sweat glands into overdrive. As he accompanied the searingly handsome David in awful silence, he kept wiping his forehead with his arm, then blotting his arm against his shirt, till he happened to glance down and notice he’d made an ugly damp spot over his stomach.

David stopped at a corner next to a gas station. “Where do we go from here?”

“Left,” Lionel said, grateful to have the silence broken. As they rounded the corner, he said, “You’ve never been here?”

David shook his head. “Been invited plenty of times, but it’s really Dad and Wilma’s place, and I’m kind of loyal to my mom. She doesn’t know I’m here now. It’d really hurt her, and she’s been hurt enough.”

Lionel didn’t know what to say to this, so he put his hands in his pocket and said nothing.

“I’m sure my dad’s told you I’ve just left the priesthood,” David said, almost accusingly.

Lionel wasn’t about to reveal his million-dollar client’s indiscretion to his son, no matter how eye-blisteringly beautiful he was, so he grunted noncommittally and looked away.

“It’s okay,” David said, shifting his suitcase again. “I didn’t ask him to keep it secret. Not that he would’ve if I had.”

“Hey, it’s your business.”

“That’s right, it’s my business.” As soon as he said this, a guilty look flashed across his face, and he added, “Sorry, this has nothing to do with you. I shouldn’t treat you like you’re some kind of adversary. I don’t even know you.”

“Well,” said Lionel with absurd joviality, “you will soon enough!” When David looked mystified and somewhat alarmed by this, he explained, “Pretty close quarters up at the cabin, and all.”

“Great,” said David. Lionel never knew so much derisive sarcasm could drip from a single syllable.

If only I could stop looking at him,
Lionel thought.
But those cheekbones! How did a simian thug like Babcock Magellan ever produce anything as sublime as this?

They walked another block until Lionel couldn’t bear the silence any longer, and was about to comment uselessly on how close the restaurant now was, when they rounded yet another corner and ended up directly in the path of someone carrying an ice-cream cone.

“Sorry,” said Lionel, and as he stepped aside he happened to glance up and was struck by a thunderbolt of recognition.
“Kevin?”
he exclaimed.