Pike's Folly (4 page)

“Mr. Pike,” he managed, letting go of his hand. “It's an honor.”

“I'm not staying,” Pike explained, primarily for Allison's sake. “I just stopped by to drop off a bottle of something.”

Politely, not wanting to make a big deal about it, Gregg protested, “No, Nate, I've already told you. We've got plenty of food.”

“Oh, no, no. I don't want to ruin your Thanksgiving.”

“You're not ruining anything.” Gregg smiled, showing his teeth. Allison sometimes wondered how her father appeared to other men. Was he attractive? The idea freaked her out a little.

Turning to her, Gregg asked, “Allison, what would you and Heath like to drink?”

She answered coldly, “We'll help ourselves,” and hurried off to the kitchen, where she waited for Heath to catch up. “God,” she hissed, “I cannot
believe
he actually wants Nathaniel Pike to stay for dinner. Maybe we can sneak out early.”

Heath still felt dazed from shaking Pike's hand. “I didn't know your father and Mr. Pike were friends.”

“My father doesn't have any friends.” Struggling with the corkscrew, she tried to open a bottle of Chardonnay. “Pike's been scamming off of my family for years. He used to hang out with my mom when I was little. He had her going on some lie about needing money to make a movie. I'm sure they probably fucked.” The cork came out with a pop, and she poured them two brimming glasses, emptying most of the bottle. “The dude's completely bonkers,” she said, “and he's a total perv.”

When they returned from the kitchen, Pike asked, “Heath, what do you do?”

Embarrassed, Heath sat down, and Allison dropped into his lap. “I'm an independent filmmaker,” he said.

“Heath has every film that's ever been made on videotape,” she added.

He gave her a secret, disapproving look. Meeting Pike for the first time, he wanted to present himself on his own terms, without her girlfriendy interjections.

Smiling broadly, Pike said, “I used to produce movies—a long time ago. I tell you, that's a hell of a business.”

“Didn't you do
Emmanuelle on Taboo Island
?” Heath asked. Some other titles then came back to him:
The Succubus. Fatal
Warning II.
A whole video library's worth of glorious junk.

Pike looked pleased. “Not guilty. I made a cannibal flick with Laura Gemser, though, if that's what you're thinking about.”

Heath told himself to quit fawning. “I'm writing a screenplay right now,” he said. “It's sort of an homage to counterculture exploitation films like
Trash
and
Easy Rider.
”

“It's a spoof?”

“No, not a spoof, although . . . I could
make
it a spoof.”

“Something like a
funny
version of
Easy Rider.
But deliberately bad.” Pike had a swallow of his drink. “That'd be interesting.”

Gregg perked up. “Maybe you could get Mr. Pike to produce it for you, Heath.”

Hearing his voice—bright and well intentioned—Allison felt a surge of love for her father.

“Oh, I don't think I'm quite ready for that,” Heath demurred. Of the three, it seemed to him that only Pike was taking him seriously.

“I'll tell you an idea I once had,” Pike said and helped himself to a brimming handful of mixed nuts. “Now, maybe you can do something with this. It's called
Boring Movie.
And the gag is, the whole film's tedious and dull for an hour and a half, then it's over.”

“I see,” Heath said, not following.

“A deliberately boring movie.”

“But how would you—”

“You wouldn't! Don't play it for laughs. That would spoil the gag.”

“That's stupid,” Allison snapped. “What's the point in making a movie if it's just a waste of people's time?”

“But that's what's great about it!” Pike's voice rose to an indecorous level. “Your generation always takes things too literally, Allison. When Gregg and I were your age—well, maybe not Gregg, but . . .”

Allison glared, defending her father by ignoring the joke.

“We knew how to have
fun.
Look at history. The only things worth doing are pointless things. Because if there's a
point
? Then that's all there is to it. ‘And now
this
movie is going to show you how to comb your hair and be a good little American.' No!” Waving both hands, he nearly sloshed his drink onto the carpet. “I want a movie where the screen is blue for three hours.”

Doing his best, Heath offered, “Kind of like a post-Warhol—”

“I want to read a book and be able to say, ‘Now what the fuck was that?' when I get to the end of it. I want to have my expectations underwhelmed. I want to leave the theater dissatisfied.”

Pike's bluster, his hyperbole and whiz-bang hand gestures left little room for discussion, but Gregg tried anyway. “There must be a way to tie it in with something else,” he said, “because if you think about it, maybe the
film's
not really boring, maybe it's just that our attention spans are so—”

“No!” Pike slammed down his glass. “See, you're ruining it by talking about it too much. Everything beautiful has been ruined by critics and academics. It's not enough that something just
is.
It's got to mean something, too.”

Heath nodded in appreciation; these were all points he'd made before, to college friends, to girls he was trying to impress.

Changing the subject, Pike asked Allison, “So, what have you been doing with yourself lately?”

She glanced at her father, then said, “Looking for a job, I guess.”

“Why don't you work for your old man?” he suggested. “Hell,
I'd
hire you.”

She briskly discarded the idea. “I think I'd rather work for my father, Mr. Pike, but thanks. Actually, I'm considering taking the year off.”

Turning to Gregg, Pike asked, “What do you think of that?”

“Whatever she wants is fine with me,” Gregg said. “I won't pressure her. Just as long as she gives something back to her community. That's what this family has done for generations, and when I go, Allison will be there to take my place.”

Warmed by the alcohol, she reached for her boyfriend's hand. “We both will.”

The whole room turned toward Heath, who, ever since sitting down, had become gradually more self-conscious about Allison's being in his lap. “I guess I'll try,” he said, staring at her fingers interlocked with his own.

Pike came to the rescue. “You're scaring the kid, Gregg. Surely he doesn't want to go to fund-raisers for the rest of his life.”

“Heath doesn't mind fund-raisers,” Allison maintained.

Heath considered what to say for himself, then decided. “It depends what it's for.”

That settled, Pike reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. “I should take you with me when I go up to New Hampshire next month, Heath. I'd like to shoot a little documentary before I get to work on that mountain. Have you got a decent camera?” Before Heath could answer, Pike handed him the card. “I'll buy you one. Nothing fancy—maybe a Beta-cam SP. All of my old shit's out of date.”

Allison snatched the card away. “I don't like this,” she said.

Pike smiled. “But Allison, this is a great opportunity for him. Besides, don't you want to see what I'm doing up there?”

The smug look on his face infuriated her. “Not really. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's disgusting. You're not proving anything to anyone, you know. So you've got a lot of money, so what? So do we. At least we give our money to people who deserve it.”

“Don't be so certain about that. There's more than one way to spend a dollar. Me, I prefer to spend it on myself.”

“Whatever.” Shaken up, she got to her feet. “This wine isn't any good. I'm gonna open another bottle. Heath?”

Reluctantly, Heath followed Allison out of the room. With his daughter gone, Gregg saw fit to help himself to another splash of Scotch. He offered the bottle to Pike, who grunted and said, “Just a swig. I'm due at Mediterraneo in under an hour.”

Pouring, Gregg felt compelled to fill Pike's glass all the way to the top. He didn't know why, but he wanted to get him drunk. “I don't see where you get the money to do these things,” he said, thinking of the land Pike had recently acquired in New Hampshire.

Pike laughed. “Now, Gregg, don't go lecturing me about money. You're not exactly frugal yourself.”

Gregg nodded judiciously. There was truth to this: whatever stunt Nathaniel pulled, however wasteful or eccentric, Gregg countered it with a very public act of generosity. He thrived on the idea that, in the twenty-plus years that they'd known each other, he was undeniably, unambiguously, on the side of the right. Inside, however, another Gregg Reese, the one who sometimes found his own family history too much to bear, watched with envy as Pike spent millions on unworthy causes, getting away with things that would've sunk the Reeses.

“You're lucky, Nate,” he said. “You're all alone in the world. No expectations, no dynasty to uphold. No mother looking constantly over your shoulder.”

This last was a topic of great amusement to Pike, who'd endured Keeny Reese's wrath from the time they first met. With Gregg's mother now well advanced in years and suffering from a variety of ailments, he preferred to think of her in a more forgiving light. He'd be around a lot longer than she would. “Don't take it out on your family,” he said. “You've got a great kid, which is a blessing.”

“Allison isn't the problem. It's people like Celia Shriver and those other old biddies who keep soaking me for charitable donations. On top of which, I'm getting taxed up the ass.” Anticipating Pike's response, he added, “I'm not like you, Nate. I'm sure you know all the loopholes, all the ways to get out of doing your part—I mean, no offense.”

Pike shrugged.
Oh, none taken.
“You need a quick shot of cash? I can give you a hand, buddy.”

“Forget it,” Gregg snapped. “I'll be fine as long as this referendum goes through. I've got a solid budget until the end of next year, but that's when things get sketchy. Everything that's going to trickle down has trickled down already.”

“Thus the Allison Fund.”

“Yep.” This was a referendum Gregg had proposed along with a few of his friends in the Rhode Island General Assembly. If approved, many of the charitable organizations supported by the Reese Foundation would receive their hefty subsidies from the state. Gregg didn't like talking about it. The fact that he'd done such a bad job of managing his finances—oh, no one would come right out and say it, of course, but he knew what they were thinking—filled him with a shame that was second only to the other shame in his life, the one that couldn't be named.

“I'm getting screwed on all sides,” he said. “My mom's idea of what a dollar's worth is about twenty years out of date. I feel like I don't have anyone who I can talk to about this. Allison's too young—she doesn't get it. It's not her fault, it's mine. I never
taught
her anything.”

Pike rose and, with a sigh of departure, chugged back the rest of his drink. He could take only so much of listening to Gregg before his thoughts began to wander.

Before leaving, he told Gregg, “You need to stop worrying so much about the Reese Foundation. It's all a lot of self-righteous bull, anyway. Every fortune—
especially
yours—has an evil source. Decades and generations won't change that. You might not be aware of this, Gregg, because you're too far from the source.” He gritted his teeth. “But I made my own fortune. I
am
the evil source.”

Gregg wondered what comfort he was supposed to take from this. Even after so many years, it still wasn't clear to him whether Pike really had his best interests at heart.

At the front door, Gregg thanked Pike for coming by. The weather had turned gray and blustery, with a patch of blue sky where the good weather had pushed off to the north.

“If you're interested in joining me,” Pike said, “I'll be in Concord over the holidays. I know a woman who runs a ski lodge in North Conway. You'll like this gal—Sarah Cranberry. The Cranberrys are another old New England family, although,” he laughed, unlocking his car door, “that's where the similarity ends.”

Gregg stepped off the porch, trying to ignore the autumn wind circling around his ankles. “Okay, I'll think about it. Maybe I'll come up for a few days. But only to look around. I'll go shopping at the outlets while you're doing your business.”

They shook hands. Glancing away, Pike spotted Allison in the kitchen window, her face partially blocked by a low swooping drape. Fleetingly, he wished he'd been more polite when he'd had the chance. Ah, well, dinner, some drinks, some talk, the comforting delight of good service in a five-star restaurant. “I'll give you a call,” he said, then, forcing himself: “Tell Allison I'm sorry if I upset her.”

Gregg didn't know what to say, so he just watched Pike climb into the car and speed away. The wind returned, this time with an infusion of cold rain. Looking back at his house, he saw a black stream of smoke lose its shape and disperse over the chimney. Chilled and wet, he hurried inside and shut the door.

Heath and Allison were still in the kitchen, rooting through the refrigerator and setting out half-eaten wedges of cheese. Allison skipped across the room and threw her arms around her father. For the first time, he could smell her perfume, a subtle hint of something tasteful and expensive.

“We found these mulling spices in the cupboard,” she said. “We're going to make glogg after dinner.”

He kissed her again. “You'll have to drink it by yourself. I can't handle that stuff anymore.”