Sneaky People: A Novel (18 page)

Buddy said: “I’ll see you and raise you”—he removed his hand from his pocket and looked at what he held—“twenty-five. I’ll give you a hundred, Leo, if you carry this stuff, lock, stock, and barrel, back in the house where it was.”

A glowering, possibly mad expression developed on Leo’s face. “I don’t keep nothing that ain’t mine, see?”

Buddy cried: “I got it! Stick this stuff in the basement, and tomorrow you call up the Salvation Army.”

“Sure Mike,” said Leo, stoically. “If that’s the way you want it, Buddy.”

But after a moment he went back to sit on the cistern cover, falling into a sort of coma, and Buddy had to haul the furniture to the cellar himself, wheezing and sweating. When it came to the table, he tipped it on its side and rolled it to the opening and let it fall, a leg breaking off and another splintering before it caught at an angle in the doorway below.

Damp of clothing and dirty of hands, he took upstairs the basket of flowers on which the card read: “In loving memory—Buddy and Naomi Sandifer.” Buddy placed the floral arrangement in the room with the late Mrs. Kirsch. There was still no one else there. Leo had probably neglected to send the death notice to the papers. Then again, perhaps it was merely that Leo had no friends.

Buddy was wrong by one. As he left the house, Jack was ascending the stairs, wearing a properly doleful expression and carrying a bunch of weedy flowers, no doubt home-grown, wrapped in a cone of wet newspaper.

He insisted on giving Buddy a shake with an ink-imprinted, damp hand. “The wife couldn’t make it,” said he. “The two-year-old came down with the grippe, vomiting all over the place.” Rolling his eyes, he said: “So maybe you could take a raincheck on that stopping in for coffee.”

Buddy tossed his chin to the side. “Say, Jack, what would you think about coming on with me full time?”

Jack moved his Adam’s apple. “Gee, Mr.—”

Buddy leaned in. “Just between you, me, and the gatepost, Leo’s gone a little batty. He might have to be put away.”

“Oh,” said Jack, “isn’t it just the shock? He’s got a awfully good head on his shoulders.”

“Do me a favor,” Buddy said. “Don’t mention to him what I just mentioned to you.”

Jack quickly widened his eyes in a sissified style. He angled his head knowingly and then asked: “Is that Mrs. Sandifer I saw sitting in the car?”

“Probably,” said Buddy, and went down the steps. He glanced at the Plum house. Grace never got home till well after six, given the hour’s bus ride from downtown. If she was getting cock from somebody, it might run as late as ten, as it did in the old days when he fed it to her. According to her, her old man never even looked at her crossways.

He avoided looking at Naomi, sitting in the car, as he went by way of the trunk to reach the driver’s side. Buddy never used the front route, around the hood, not even when the engine was at rest; he was far too paranoid. Nor did he lie on his stomach in the presence of a woman, displaying an unprotected spine. Even with Laverne this was true.

Naomi could not drive, her only male habit being one he did not practice: smoking. Though the windows were open, front and rear, on this breezeless evening the air inside the car was poison-blue. He fanned the door several times before climbing in.

Naomi’s veil was lowered again, the cigarette going in and out just beneath it.

“Leo’s completely cracked,” Buddy said.

“He always seemed very level-headed to me,” said Naomi.

“Those,” said Buddy, letting out the clutch, “are the type who go to pieces first. Now, take me, I fly off the handle once in a while, I know, but it does take the pressure off.”

Naomi sent some smoke towards him. “Is that true?” she asked. “How odd. I’ve never seen you do that.”

“I guess I don’t always let on,” said Buddy. “I blow up in private.”

Naomi murmured indistinctly behind the veil. With her it was not control but simply a character incapable of any feeling at all.

“You got supper waiting?” He knew better.

“Chipped beef won’t take a minute,” she said. “And I’ll warm a can of limas.”

“I’ll tell you, Nay. We ought to get the taste of that experience out of our mouths. What say we put on the feedbag at Wong’s Gardens?”

In the early years they had dined there on signal occasions like anniversaries, and the day-after-holidays, but when business had got better and Buddy acquired a concomitant taste for roadhouses with cocktail lounges, steaks smothered in mushrooms, and dance bands, Naomi in her dreary way remained enmired in an addiction to chicken chow mein. They had not therefore been to Wong’s for ages. It was an appropriate locus for their last meal together.

Naomi stared at him through her veil. “Well, it
is
an extravagance…”

Once again Buddy wondered, as he had for eons, whether her bland exterior, now concealed altogether, was a mask for corrosive sarcasm. And once again he decided it was not: it was humanly impossible to pose as a drone for so many years. Wong’s special four-course meal, from egg-drop soup to almond cookie or pineapple slice, was priced at thirty-five cents, and Naomi never even glanced at the a la carte, resorting to which anyway you would be hard put to exceed a dollar’s worth of food unless you gluttonized wildly on
both
lobster and squab. Whereas Buddy had never gone anywhere with Laverne without spending a minimum of three bucks for food alone, with more for the drinks. Laverne could run up a dollar tab at a fish-sandwhich take-out place, with extra orders of french fries and cole slaw, a jar of sweet pickles, not to mention several packages of those round cheese crackers stuck together with peanut-butter putty, which she ate in the car going home. Entering a movie, she invariably stopped at the lobby machines and bought fifteen-twenty cents’ worth of chocolates kisses, Milk Duds, and candy-covered licorice pellets.

“Let’s go whole hog for a change,” said Buddy. “We owe it to ourselves.” He shook his head. “The last person I would think It of was leo”

Naomi pushed up her veil and left it there. “I have a confession to make, Buddy.” He felt a slight chill for no special reason beyond his instinctive fear of revelations, even such harmless ones as Naomi was likely to make.

“I never did go in to look at his mother,” said she. “I could see no point in it if he wasn’t there.”

Buddy snorted in relief. “You didn’t miss much.”

Ralph had stopped at the drugstone and bought the box of candy, through alas the super-duper size was not in stock and the largest available was the thirty-nine center, Which however did have a red bow of satin ribbon under tight cellphane.

His route took him past Elmira’s and there, leaning against the outer wall of the high-school hangout, he saw his bicycle. Ralph was enraged at the boldness of the thief. Thrusting the candy box, in its green paper bag, as far as it would go into the cavity below his left shoulder, he prepared to enter the shop and confront the malefactor. Even in his anger he was able to reflect that finding the bike here meant no colored youth had stolen it, given the exclusion of Negroes from Elmara’s this relived him, because he was scared of them.

Just as he reached the door however, Margie emerged.

“God,” she said, “there you are! God, I’ve been looking everyplace for you.”

“Don’t bother me now,” said Ralph. “For pity sake. Just get out of my way when the fur flies.”

Oblivious to his purpose, she continued to block him. “I guess I was stupid. I found your bike laying on the curb over on Myrtle. When you didn’t show up after a long time I figured you forgot it or some kids hooked it and left it there or something, so I took it back to Bigelow’s but they said you didn’t work there any more, so I took it to your house but nobody was home so I came here thinking you might—”

“Oh for Christ sake,” said Ralph, “put a lid on it, will you? I might have known. You damn sap.” She put a hand to her frozen face and backed up. “Why don’t you let me alone? Who asked you, anyway?” He pursued her until her back met the wall. “Lucky I didn’t report it to the cops, or you’d have gone to jail.”

But once again he was relieved, this time of the responsibility to tangle with a boy who would have had to be tough and fearless to flaunt stolen property. The matter of his own possible cowardice in the clinch was now a dead issue. He had but a cowering, wretched girl to condemn, and could do it in perfect conscience.

Ignoble fellow that he was. “Oh, hell,” said he instead, “don’t act like you’re being murdered. Can’t you see I’m kidding?” She peeped through her hands. He made a grotesque grin and pointed to it. “See?” She sniffled. He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. She giggled and wiped her nose on her wrist.

“I knew you had it all the time,” said he.

“I don’t think you did.”

“I didn’t report it, did I?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t intend to argue about it,” Ralph said with fake huffiness. If they continued to stand there, somebody he knew would show up and think she was his girl, and his saintly decency would be rewarded with humiliation.

“Look, I got an appointment.” He put the package in the basket and seized the bike.

Now that she had eluded punishment, she had no shame whatever. “I don’t suppose you could give me a ride?”

“You’re right. The answer is no, nix, nothing doing.”

“I mean, just as far as where you turn off.”

“You know something, Margie? You’ve got an awful lot of gall.” But what could you do with somebody who regarded that as a compliment, grinning proudly?

“All right,” he groaned, nodding at the crossbar. “Climb on. But watch it when we go over the creek. I might throw you in.”

“Better not. I can’t swim.”

“Somehow I knew that,” said Ralph.

“You’d just have to save me.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“But,” said she, settling her bottom on the bar and putting one damp hand over his on the rubber handle grip, “it would make you feel real big.”

Burdened with this threatening knowledge of what she had on him, as well as her physical weight on the bike, and yet with a sense that he was doing the right thing in supporting them both, he shoved off. The effort reminded him immediately that he still wore the heavy suit, from which he had been distracted by his mission since leaving Leo’s house.

Margie leaned forward to stare into the basket, dangerously altering the balance. He had not yet got up enough speed, and the bike veered left.

“Hey, watch it!” he said. “Don’t you even know how to sit on a bike?”

“What’d you get at the drugstore?” she asked. “Wine?” She turned her head and looked over her hunched shoulder. He saw her naked blue eye between cheek and metal spectacle rim. “You’re sure dressed fit to kill, too. Who’s giving the party?”

“Nobody,” said Ralph, sweating so copiously he could hardly see. He hoped the Mum would continue to hold under fire.

“You don’t have to protect my feelings,” said Margie. “Nobody ever invites me, and I’ve got used to it.” Nevertheless she looked desolately down at the turning wheel ahead.

The self-pity made Ralph grimace at her rumpled back. “I don’t go to all that many myself. They aren’t much fun anyway.” He was sincere in this judgment. At spin the bottle, fortune always gave him the dogs; he would for example have got Margie.

“You know when I used to run around with Imogene,” said Margie, “she never even invited me to her parties.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Ralph. In pride he lapsed into Hauser tough-talk. “Her and me never have seen eye to eye. She’s just a little chippie for my money.”

Margie gasped at this. “Gee, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Wasn’t it you who told me she went off with Lester Hauser? She’ll end up pregnant one of these days.”

Margie’s hands stiffened on the bars; she pushed herself back against his chest. “You better let me off right here.”

Ralph stopped pedaling and caught the laden bike with outstretched feet. “With pleasure.”

“I mean…” She still sat there and looked ahead.

“Listen,” said Ralph in patient indignation, “‘pregnant’ isn’t a dirty word, and you know it.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I can’t help if you’re ignorant,” said Ralph. “A cow has ‘teats,’ and a female dog is a ‘bitch.’ Put that in your pipe and smoke it. For God’s sake, that’s the king’s English, and if all the sissies and old maids who run the stupid churches round here read the goddam Bible they would find out all kinds of things, like what the word ‘know’
really
means.” This was one of Ralph’s causes insofar as he had any. He and Hauser often discussed this matter: Horse, though fouler-mouthed, was for once less ardent.

Margie’s hands went through the stringy hair to cover her ears. Ralph decided not to let her off the bike for this stupid reason, though she was making no physical move to go anyway. He started up again, and because she would otherwise have fallen, he caught her in his right arm while managing, with the fine authority of the veteran cyclist, to correct the balances with his corded left wrist. He felt a slender but smooth and vital trunk within the loose cotton dress and then, as compensating for the motion she leaned forward, his hand sliding up, a projection the size, shape, and firmness of a lemon half.