Sneaky People: A Novel (17 page)

Already steaming, though the jacket yet lay on the bed, he got a white shirt from the dresser. Naked to the waist, he avoided the sight of himself in the mirror because he could not spare the time to tense his muscles, in the absence of which effort he would see more scrawniness than the wiry character kindly ascribed to his body by Hauser.

Shirt on, Ralph went into the hallway and took the four steps that brought him to the door of his parents’ room. He was about to enter when he saw his father leaning in profile at the bed to insert an object under the pillow. The chenille spread was pulled back in the interests of this chore.

His father was naked. His sex organs, at which Ralph scrupulously avoided looking, were the largest he had ever seen on a man, the testicles like oranges and a banana-sized penis, sprouting from a thick black hedge. But then Ralph had no vast experience of adult male pudenda.

He withdrew instantly, silently, without detection, and made it back to his own room, where he imposed a ban on further speculations on his father’s genitals and remembered his identification of the object placed under the pillow: a gun. Many householders kept one. Damn good thing to have at hand if a nigger broke in, as Hauser always said; or any kind of burglar, cheap punk, or maniac, as Ralph added. Hauser said yeah, but not to use on Peeping Toms or he’d get himself killed one of these days.

He sat upon his bed and waited while the shower roared. Before going to Bigelow’s he had washed his own armpits and applied Mum. He sniffed: it was still holding. Sometime after his father had crossed the hall from the bathroom, Ralph tried again, this time with slapping shoe soles, giving plenty of warning.

When he reached the door of his parents’ bedroom, his father, in shirt and trousers, was tying his tie in the mirror. When this was done Buddy took from the dressertop a golden pin and fastened it to connect the halves of his round-point collar. His shirt was made of oxford cloth, and his trousers were navy-blue, with gray chalk stripes. He was certainly more impressive when clothed; somewhere below and behind the end of his pants pleats his huge genitals were contained in the pouch of his Jockey shorts, which unlike Ralph’s own had been changed.

The mirror image spoke irritably: “Do you know what you’re doing?”

Ralph was scratching his crotch. He stopped abruptly once attention was called. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

Swinging his tie aside, Buddy slid a gold clip onto the edge of his shirt just above a button in the high middle. “One characteristic of a gentleman—the main one, in my humble opinion—is he
always
thinks.” He fed the tie through the loop of the golden chain that swung from the clip. “Whereas a slob
always
has his mind in a fog.”

“That knitted tie is neat,” said Ralph. “Also that collar.”

“Clothes make the man,” said Buddy, dissatisfied with the hang of the little gold chain. He altered the position of the clip, now hidden behind the tie. He stepped to his personal chiffonier, examined his ensemble in the long mirror inside one door, then from the laden tie rack behind the other took a black tie and presented it to Ralph.

Alas, it was not of the knitted type but rather a slimy-feeling, shiny thing of silk. Ralph went to his own room to knot it. On the first few attempts the ends always came out in different lengths, and he did not want to be criticized by the well-dressed man who did everything well.

When they pulled up in front of Leo’s house, Ralph assumed the idea was to pick up the car salesman and go together to the funeral home. But Buddy cut the engine and stared at Ralph in the rear-vision mirror.

“Leo’s mom is laid out in the living room, Ralph, on the davenport. That might strike you as weird, but if so, don’t laugh. If you feel a grin coming on and you just can’t hold it, slip out to the bathroom or the porch or something.”

Naomi snickered under her veil and said: “Oh, dear.”

“I think that’s good advice?” Buddy responded in a kind of false question.

“Very good, indeed,” she hastened to say. “But it never would have occurred to me, and now I may not be able to think of anything else but
not
laughing, or else I’ll laugh.” She giggled again.

“I was talking to Ralph,” said Buddy in a controlled way, and climbed out.

Naomi and Ralph followed him up the walk, Ralph surveying the lawn with a professional eye. Fired from Bigelow’s, he would be back to grass for another month, then leaves, then snow and coal, and then another spring. Life had an inexorable quality about it, and ended with inevitable death. Sweating in the suit jacket and with this sudden tragic sense of life, he mounted the porch behind the slender black figure of his living mother, en route to view the body of Leo’s dead one.

As his father opened the house door, Ralph saw the screen-door had been removed too early for the season and left leaning against the side railing of the porch. The entrance hall of this house, which he had never before penetrated, was stranger yet: utterly empty of furnishings, not even a hatrack or umbrella stand.

His father was now walking tiptoe towards a closed door. His mother had her black-gloved hand to her veil and was making faint asthmatic sounds.

Buddy opened the door and entered first. Endeavoring to suppress her giggle, Naomi stepped aside and motioned Ralph on. He stepped into a room as empty as the vestibule, with one exception: on a davenport lay a dead lady not as old as he had expected. She looked indeed like a former chorus girl.

No one else was there, including Leo. His father ignored the body to stare about in wonderment, then stepped through the archway into the dining room. He soon returned with pursed lips.

“This is fishy.”

“All the while I was cutting the grass,” said Ralph, “I never knew there wasn’t any furniture in here.”

“No wisecracks, Ralph,” Buddy said, collecting himself. He nodded towards the davenport. “Just pay your respects quietly and leave.” He produced his wallet. “Here. Your mother and I are going to have supper out. I know at your age it bores you stiff to sit at a table in a fancy place. Here.” He gave Ralph a dollar. “Live it up in one of your teen-age dumps.”

Ralph was reminded of the two dollars he had been given on Saturday night to present to Bigelow for the broken window. His father was not aware he had subsequently worked briefly for the grocer. He had of course banked the two-dollar bill before meeting Laverne Linda Lorraine. He would repay her for the breakage with the fifty-cent piece. With the dollar he would buy her the maximum assortment of Martha Washington chocolates, in a box like a jewel case of many drawers.

He went near the davenport and looked at Leo’s mother. Under the paint and powder and what appeared to be a wig she was a whole lot older than she had appeared on first glance. She had a small hooked nose like the beak of a parrot, which was accentuated by a little cupid’s bow of lipstick below. Hauser always said if you looked at a dead body for a while you imagined it was breathing. Ralph did not stay long enough for this effect to develop.

Buddy came out of his physical quandary—peering through windows and prowling into the dining room again—and briskly preceded Ralph into the hallway, where Naomi, veil lifted, was wiping her eyes with a hankie. She could not stop giggling.

“Buddy,” she said sotto voce, “you
are
diabolical.”

“I can’t find Leo for the life of me,” he said. “I looked all over down here. He ain’t in the kitchen and I couldn’t see him outside. But you know what? He took all the furniture out there. It’s all over the yard.”

This information quelled Naomi’s laughter. She lowered her handkerchief and said: “How odd.”

“Ain’t it though,” said Buddy. He went along the hall, opening doors. On the first try he got a closet; on the next, the basement steps. He disappeared.

“I’ll look upstairs,” Naomi said towards the spot from which her husband had vanished.

Ralph said, with some anxiety: “I’m supposed to leave.” His mother was depositing the balled handkerchief in her black purse. “Maybe I better stay though and help find Leo.”

Naomi smiled beatifically. “I’m sure there’s some simple explanation for all of this.” She drifted towards the staircase like a dark ghost.

Ralph doubted that there was, but selfishly did not want to be involved. He had done his duty…. Yet had he discharged his
responsibility
, the concept that meant so much to the sainted Laverne? There was a difference. He went back to where the kitchen should have been, found it, saw that it at least was fully furnished, did not find Leo there, and went outside.

As his father had said, the yard was full of furniture, chairs, tables, and floorlamps, all upright and, in fact, in a conscious arrangement, as one could see when his vision recovered from the initial surprise: here, a complete parlor without walls; there, near the cistern, a dining room, its round table covered with a white cloth in the center of which reposed a bowl containing two wax apples, one pear, and one eternally bright-yellow banana, and at either end a white candle in a bronze holder.

When Ralph had come close enough to count the pieces of fruit, he saw Leo sitting on the cistern cover; the man had hitherto been concealed by the high back of a dining-room chair. He wore the rumpled seersucker he was usually seen in at the lot; a black band encircled the left arm just above the elbow.

“Hi, Leo,” said Ralph. “I want you to know I’m sorry.”

Leo smiled in a perfectly normal way. “Ralph, you got a good head on your shoulders. What do you think I should ask for that dining-room set?”

Ralph appraised the table and chairs. “You selling this stuff?”

“You bet,” said Leo, slapping himself on the thighs and rising. “They don’t give funerals away free, you know.”

Buddy emerged from the outside entrance to the cellar, which was the old-fashioned kind under a two-leaved horizontal hatchway.

“Could you use any of this?” Leo asked him eagerly.

Buddy pointed a finger at Leo and said sternly: “Your place is inside.”

Ralph piped up: “He’s selling this stuff.”

Buddy raised his remaining fingers to make a flat hand. “I found that floral arrangement I sent over, down cellar.”

“It’s too big for the Frigidaire,” said Leo. “That’s the coolest place I could think of. Who wants to buy wilted flowers?”

“Say, Leo, did Doc Klingman drop around this afternoon?”

“No, he never—unless I was out here and didn’t hear him knock.” Leo’s eyebrows took wing. “But, say, that’s an idea. He could use some new furniture in his waiting room. And he’s into me for a couple bucks for coming and signing the death certificate.”

Buddy heel-and-toed a complete circuit of the dining table. When finished he noticed Ralph and with one shoulder gave him the high sign to leave. Leo went to the table and re-stacked the wax fruit. Looking at Ralph again, Buddy put his index finger to his temple and traced a circle.

Leo showed Ralph a paraffin apple. “When I was three or four I bit into one of these.” The very one: you could still see the tiny toothmarks.

“Say, Leo,” Buddy said impatiently, “you’ll have to excuse Ralph. He just came to pay his respects, but now he has to take French leave.”

“Say, Ralph,” said Leo, “you run into anybody who wants furniture cheap, I’d be much obliged.”

“You bet, Leo.” Wondering whether Leo was crazy, period, or like-a-fox, Ralph left.

Buddy said: “Look at it this way, Leo. If you don’t sell everything in a hurry it’s liable to rain.” He refused to believe that the man was so far gone as to reject such a modest piece of practical reason.

“Nah,” said Leo, squinting rhetorically at the sky. “Not a chance. Anyway, I got a couple tarps down cellar I can haul out if need be. But these things will go fast when the crowd gets here.” He put back the wax apple he had bitten as a three-year-old.

Buddy said: “If you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t get why you want to peddle this stuff in the first place.”

Leo’s answer was amazingly reasonable. “The only insurance I got is on me, for
her
. Since I made the only income, I didn’t have none on her. So I ain’t got the money to bury her.”

“For Christ’s sake,” said Buddy, “didn’t I tell you I would help out?”

“No,” said Leo, “I never borrowed a penny in my life. The old man took out a loan to buy this house and I’m still paying on it, but that ain’t personal.” He squinted at Buddy under his brushy brow, which in this expression was continuous, not separated above the nose. “You want to buy this furniture though, that’s different.”

Buddy saw the irony: Leo was blackmailing him, but unknowingly.

“How much you want?”

“Anything that’s fair.”

Buddy indulged himself: “What in the fucking hell can I do with two roomfuls of furniture?” But he was already separating, by touch, several bills from the roll of murder money in his pocket.

“I couldn’t say,” said Leo. “I’m just selling.”

“Well, I’ll make you a deal, Leo. I’ll give you fifty bucks for the whole works. But you got to get it out of the yard right now before anybody sees it.”

“Make that seventy-five,” said Leo. “That table’s solid oak, and that chair over there’s genuine horsehide and so’s the ottoman.”