The Fan (13 page)

Val laughed. That surprised Bobby. Wald turned to Roger. “So it’s an estate sale.”

“Something like that.” Roger unfastened one of the buttons on the cuff of his double-breasted jacket, fastened it again.

“Something like that.” Wald looked at Bobby and Val standing by the edge of the empty pool. “Well? You like it?”

“I do,” said Val.

“We’d have to talk,” said Bobby.

“So talk.”

Bobby and Val walked down toward the sea. The lawn sloped sharply, then leveled out all the way to the beach, flat as a ball field. It was gray under a gray sky. A red sail cut through the water far away, like a shark fin. “Why not?” Val said. “We have to live somewhere. Unless you want me to stay in California. Me and Sean.”

“Why would I want that? I just signed a three-year deal here, for Christ’s sake.”

Val didn’t answer. She and Sean? Bobby tried to picture Sean’s face; the only face that appeared belonged to the other Sean, yellow and drawn on the hospital pillow. That was bad.

She was watching him. “You like it?” Bobby said.

“Don’t you?”

Bobby shrugged. “Isn’t it a bit … too much?”

“The money?”

“The place.”

“Too much in what way?”

Bobby couldn’t put it into words.

“It’s in the best of taste, Bobby,” Val said. “So much … tonier than California.”

“Tonier?”

“You know what I mean. Roger says
Architectural Digest
did a piece on it a few years ago.”

“Who are they?”

Val sighed.

Bobby looked up at the pool. Wald and Roger were both still standing there, talking on cellular phones.

“Why not?” Val said again.

Why not? Bobby had no answer. Besides, there was the whiffle-ball bat: a good sign.

“Okay,” Bobby said. Val leaned across the space between them, kissed him on the cheek. Bobby thought of his Aunt Greta. She’d been a cheerleader too, he recalled.

They walked back up to the pool. Wald and Roger said good-bye into their phones and pocketed them.

“I guess we like it,” said Bobby.

Wald nodded. “Spill it,” he said to Roger.

“Spill it?”

“The number.”

“As I mentioned, they’re asking—”

Wald held up his hand. “We haven’t got time for all the bullshit. Bobby’s got to be at BP in less than an hour. What’ll they take, absolute bottom figure?”

Roger brushed a hand through his beautifully cut hair. “I couldn’t really say with any accuracy. I mean, it’s not my—”

“Knock it off. You’re in the business. What’s your best guess?”

“One three.”

“We’ll go to nine and a quarter. Period. Finito.”

“I don’t really think that’s a realistic—”

“Offer good until midnight tonight. Subject to inspections, etcetera. You and I’ll go draw up the papers, Bobby doesn’t have to hang around for that, then I’ll drop Valerie at the hotel.”

“Chaz?” said Bobby.

“Yes?”

“Can we talk?”

“You’re the boss.”

Bobby walked down toward the sea again, this time with Wald. He couldn’t find the red sail. “Nine and a quarter,” he said. “Can I afford that?”

“Had a look at your contract, Bobby? Hell, yes, you can afford it. What’s more, anything under one one would be a steal for this spread—checked into it before I came over.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I do my job, just like you do yours. If you let me.”

“A steal?”

“On the water, Bobby. That’s what it’s all about for these old-money putzes.”

Bobby looked around. He couldn’t see any other houses. “That’s who lives here—old-money putzes?”

Wald clapped him on the back. “They won’t bother you, Bobby. No one’s going to bother you in a place like this.”

Bobby stared out to sea. Now he spotted the red sail, on the edge of the horizon, a red drop on a gray wall. “Can you see that?”

“See what?”

“The red sail.” Bobby pointed.

Wald squinted. “Don’t see anything.”

“All right,” Bobby said. “Do it.”

“Jawohl.”

Bobby drove himself to the ballpark. It was raining lightly so there was no BP. He sat in the clubhouse, pressed
PLAY
, read the paper, signed balls; all the while avoiding Primo, who sat on his stool, playing Nintendo.

At 12:50 Bobby put on his game shirt, number forty-one. He wasn’t getting used to it. It was like a bad haircut, or too-tight shoes, something that made you look and feel stupid. He shot a glance at Primo, crossing himself in front of his locker, wearing eleven.

At 1:05 they took to the field. Primo went three for three with a walk. Bobby forced him at second twice, grounding into two double plays. He also flied out and struck out. Ofer. They lost in the rain, three-zip.

After, there was a girl waiting outside the players’ lot. Bobby didn’t catch her name; maybe she didn’t mention it. He took her to a hotel, not his, and banged her pitilessly.

“Oh, Bobby, I’ve never felt like this, ever.”

“What do you mean?”

“The orgasm you gave me. It was just so …”

Later, he returned alone to his own hotel, entered the suite. Val wasn’t there. Bobby lay in the Jacuzzi, drinking a beer. Relaxing. He counted the rings holding up the shower curtain. Eleven. He stopped relaxing.

Bobby got out of the Jacuzzi, went to bed. He awoke in the night, feeling someone beside him. He forgot where he
was, thought it was the girl from the players’ lot, started getting hard.

“Bobby?”

It was Val.

“What?”

“It’s done.”

“What is?”

“The house. Nine and a half. Chaz is amazing. We can move in next week.”

Bobby didn’t say anything. Val reached for him. They hadn’t had sex in a long time. They had it now. Nothing special. Val had that great body, much nicer than the parking-lot girl’s, but in bed she was nothing special.

After, they lay side by side, not quite touching. “Things are working out, aren’t they?” Val said. “Wait till Sean gets a load of that space station.”

Bobby wondered what had become of the unidentified object, zooming in at sixteen thousand miles per hour. Then he tried to picture Sean’s face, and again got the other Sean, wide-eyed on his pillow. He went back to sleep.

Bobby woke up once during the night. He couldn’t remember where he’d put the lucky whiffle-ball bat.

“—as in the case of John Paciorek, to give you a for-instance.”

“You don’t mean Tom?”

“I said what I meant, Bernie. John Paciorek. September 29, 1963. First major-league game. Houston Colt .45s.”

“Remember that uniform, Jewel? A collector’s item now.”

“Before my time, Bernie, as you know. Back to Paciorek, John. First game in the bigs. Goes three for three with three ribbies and four runs scored against the Mets, and never plays again. Never plays again, Bernie. True story. What do you think it means?”

“Beats me, Jewel.”

“That baseball’s like a European movie, Bernie. That’s what it means.”

“European movies aren’t exactly my forte, Jewel. I can’t even think of any off hand, except maybe
The Crying Game.
”

“That’s close enough.”

April 9, second Wednesday of the month. 7:59. Ding. Fifth floor: linoleum still sticky, Prime National Mortgage still vacant. Gil: all showered and shaved, decked out in a clean shirt and a sober suit fresh out of dry-cleaner’s plastic carrying his order book and sample case and a jumbo takeout black coffee; and on time. He also had a new tie—red and black, nothing like his old lucky one—and a plan for breaking the Everest news gently, even with an optimistic spin. He now knew, at last, that yellow was a lousy color for a tie. Red and black, so much better: stand-up, optimistic, take no prisoners. The face of the rep is an optimistic face—he’d read that in a memo from Cincinnati—and wasn’t the tie the face of the suit? He liked that idea, would have to try it out on someone—Lenore? Ellen? Gil couldn’t think of the right person. He put on a sunny smile to go with his crisp clean freshness. The thrower felt light and warm against his leg.

“Morning, Bridgid. How’s Figgy doing with the fishing-rod thing?”

Bridgid didn’t look up from her keyboard. “It’s over.”

“Probably just as well. Once a city boy, always a city boy, right?”

Now she glanced at him, then quickly turned away. “Right.”

But if the fishing-rod thing was over, where were the fifty bucks going to come from? Gil, staying optimistic, pushed the
thought from his mind and opened the conference-room door. Garrity and the eleven other Northeast reps were already sitting around the table. Twelve, actually: the eight veterans, plus the three brought in by O’Meara last month, plus one more: Figgy. He was passing Lifesavers to Verrucci, the new rep from Texas. Garrity saw Gil, held up his index finger, hurried to the door.

“Got a second?”

“If you do,” said Gil. “It’s eight o’clock.”

Garrity backed him into the hall, closing the door with Gil halfway through a recount. They went down the hall, into Garrity’s office. “Sit down, Gil,” Garrity said, indicating the couch that he had brought in after his divorce a few years ago. Much too soft and homey for an office couch: Gil had never seen anyone using it.

He sat, sinking down too deep for comfort. Garrity perched on a corner of his desk. His pant leg slid up, revealing his shiny, pink, hairless shin: an old man’s leg. Gil’s father wouldn’t have been much older than Garrity, if he’d lived.

“Figgy’s back?” Gil said.

“Nothing I could do about it,” Garrity said. “Cincinnati.”

Garrity’s attitude surprised him. “Figgy’s not so bad.”

“Nice of you to say so,” Garrity said, “under the circumstances.”

Circumstances? Did Garrity somehow know about the fifty? It wasn’t that big a deal. “What do you mean?”

Garrity took a deep breath, blew it out through pursed lips. “Gil,” he said.

“What?”

“Do I have to spell it out?”

“Spell what out?”

“O’Meara’s been on the phone with the Everest people.” Garrity waited for Gil to say something. Gil, trying to remember the spin plan, trying to stay optimistic, was quiet. Garrity continued, “The long and the short of it, and I wish to God it wasn’t me having to say this, is that you’re—”

Gil found his voice. “I can explain all about the Everest thing.” But not sitting down on this stupid couch with my
knees in the air. Gil rose. He had the order book, sample case, and jumbo black coffee in his hands. Too much: the coffee spilled, mostly on his pants, some on the couch. Scalding pain, but he ignored it. He also ignored the fact that for the second day in a row, he’d ruined his clean crisp freshness, wet himself. This realization was harder to ignore than the pain; it made him want to rip his clothes off, to go into a frenzy. Instead he found himself talking a mile a minute. “I can explain the Everest reconfiguration. First of all, I don’t know what you heard from O’Meara, or what Everest told him, except it couldn’t have been Chuckie, he’s in Chicago, but I can promise you it’s not nearly as bad as it—”

Garrity was shaking his head. “Save it, Gil. The word’s come down from Cincinnati.”

“What word?”

“Aw, Gil, don’t make me. The word that you’re … you know.”

“That I’m what?” He took a step closer to Garrity, loomed over him.

Garrity’s face hardened. “I’ll need your order book, Gil. And your sample case. Outstanding commission checks will be forwarded.”

“That I’m what? That I’m what? That I’m what?”

Garrity didn’t answer, although Gil’s face was now inches from his own.

Gil still had the order book and sample case in his hands. He pictured himself raising them high and bringing them down on Garrity’s head, even felt the beginning of the rush of hot pleasure that would accompany the act. But he didn’t do it. He just let go, dropping them on the floor.

Garrity didn’t move, didn’t raise his voice. “You’ve got to get your life under control, boyo. As an old friend of your father I’m saying that.”

Gil glanced down at that pink leg. He could probably snap it in two with his bare hands. Would Garrity raise his voice then? Again he felt an incipient wave of hot pleasure, glimpsed a jumbled future of confused possibilities, disturbing and exciting; and again stifled the act. “As an old friend
you keep your mouth shut about my father,” he said. “He started this business.”

Garrity shook his head. “Your father made beautiful knives. Cincinnati made it a business.”

“By ripping him off.”

“He was happy with the deal at the time.”

“He was dying at the time, you stupid shit.”

“He wasn’t a businessman, Gil. Bottom line.”

It hit Gil then for some reason, the Figgy part. “You gave Figgy my area?”

“Not me personally. O’Meara.”

Gil spun away, bursting out of Garrity’s office, down the hall, to Bridgid’s desk. She was bent over the keyboard, glasses slipped down to the end of her nose.

“How many dicks did you have to suck to get Figgy back on the payroll?” he said.

Her head jerked up, eyes widening.

“Garrity, O’Meara, who else?”

Bridgid’s face went red, just like a swelling dick, in fact: guilty as charged, he thought. Then she burst into tears. But he got no pleasure out of that; too easy, like pressing a button. Gil needed action.

He started for the conference room. A man in a windbreaker rose from one of the waiting-room chairs and stepped into his path, not quite blocking it.

“Mr. Renard?” he said with a smile.

“Yeah?”

“Have a nice day.” He handed Gil a long white envelope and left the office.

Stuffing it in his pocket, Gil strode to the conference room, banged the door open. In a moment he took in the essentials of a boisterous scene: the reps’ mouths open wide in laughter, all eyes on Figgy; Figgy balancing a wavering tower of cherry Lifesavers on his nose.

Then came silence, except for the Lifesavers skittering across the floor, and all eyes were on him. Gil had no plan; he wanted action, that was all. He walked around the table to Figgy. Figgy got out of his chair, backing up a little. Gil
smiled—smiling was a simple baring of teeth, right?—and held out his hand. Reluctantly, as though fearing a bone crusher, or some other trick, Figgy extended his; but he couldn’t refuse—he was a rep. They shook, Gil hardly squeezing at all, just smiling this new smile he couldn’t remember smiling before, but that seemed so right.