The Man in the Tree (22 page)

"Mrs. Hartz; I can just as well get a taxi -- "
"It would take half an hour to get out here. Where are you living,
in town?"
"No, on the beach, at Indian Rocks."
"Well, that's a forty-dollar fare. Relax, Pongo can do it -- he likes
to drive."
Margaret was waiting at the kitchen door when the Lincoln pulled up,
looking dustier than ever. Pongo grinned at her around his cigar when
she got in. "Make out okay?"
"I got the job."
"All right." The gate opened for them and they wheeled onto the long
dusty road. "Surprised when you met the boss?"
She smiled. "Yes."
He glanced at her to see her expression. "He's not a bad guy to work for."
"Have you known him long?" she asked.
"Ten years, on Sea Sprite. She's decommissioned now, over in Tampa. Needs
new rigging and some work on the engines. We went all over the world in
her. Australia, India, Japan, everywhere. He says he's all done cruising
now. Maybe he is."
Pongo let her out at the entrance to the cottages and asked what time
she wanted to be picked up in the morning.
"Mrs. Hartz said she'd like me to start around ten, but please don't
come. Honestly. I'm going to rent a car -- you have so much to do
already."
"Aw, that's all right," he said, but she could tell he was pleased.
Chapter Eighteen
When she arrived at the house the next morning, she found the gate
open. Up by the kitchen door three black women in maids' uniforms
were getting into a station wagon, and beyond that was a huge delivery
van. Margaret pulled over to make room for the station wagon; the driver,
a black man, gave her an expressionless glance as he drove past.
She parked her rented Mazda in the garage; Pongo's Lincoln was not there,
but there were two other cars, a black Mercedes and a green BMW station
wagon, plus a vast cream-colored motor home.
At the back of the house, two men in blue work clothes were carrying a
crate from the moving van through an open doorway. A metallic screech
came from somewhere inside, then another. She peered in and saw Anderson,
bare-chested as before, surrounded by crates, with a wrecking bar in
his hand. He waved when he saw her. "Margaret, I've got my hands full
this morning. If you can go on and get started by yourself, I'll be able
to talk to you later."
"That'll be fine," she said, and retreated around the corner to the
kitchen door.
Irma Hartz covered the telephone mouthpiece with her hand when Margaret
went in. "Can't talk now," she said. "Go on in, honey, and if you have
any problems, punch number five on the intercom." As Margaret left,
she was saying in a steady voice, "I understand all that, Mr. Galloway,
but Mr. Anderson prefers to handle his business affairs through an agent."
Margaret put her bag on the desk and sat down. The intercom on the wall
had a great many buttons. There was a whisper of air conditioning; she
felt the sweat drying on her forearms.
The disk was still in the machine. She rolled paper and carbons into
the typewriter and began the first letter. Like the one she had typed
yesterday, it was an order for items from a catalog, and so was the
next. The third was a personal letter to someone named Justin, full of
names she was not sure how to spell. She looked them all up in the rotary
file, found only one. The fourth was a business letter about investments,
and that was all. She turned the disk over, but got nothing but a hiss.
In the basket behind the dictation machine there was a disorderly stack
of papers. Margaret lifted them out and began to sort them. There was a
click from the intercom, and Mrs. Hartz's voice said, "Maggie, everything
okay?"
"Yes," she answered, startled. "Good," said the voice, and the intercom
clicked off.
The file folders in the drawers were neatly labeled, but there did not
seem to be files for about a third of the letters she had. She filed
what she could, put the others aside, and began to make a list of the
file headings. She was typing it when the intercom clicked again and
Mrs. Hartz's voice said, "Lunch in fifteen minutes, Maggie. In the
kitchen."
"All right, thank you." She looked at her watch; it was a quarter after
twelve. She finished the list, combed her hair, and put the finished
letters into a folder.
Mrs. Hartz was sitting at the kitchen table; Pongo was doing something
at the counter beside the stove. "Sit here, honey," said Mrs. Hartz. "Do
you like this kitchen?"
"It's beautiful," said Margaret, and in fact, whether it was because the
table was set with napkins and china, or because she had got the job
and felt she was not quite a stranger here any longer, the room had a
quiet beauty that she had not noticed before. The floor was red Spanish
tile with a dull sheen, the walls cream-colored; black hand-hewn beams
supported the ceiling. Copper and iron pots hung on either side of the
stoves -- two of them, side by side, each bigger than any kitchen range
Margaret had ever seen before. Gadgets were lined up at one end of the
counter -- a Cuisinart, an espresso machine, two little convection ovens,
and others that she did not recognize.
"I always wanted a
big
kitchen," said Irma Hartz. "It you knew how
many meals I've cooked in the back of a trailer."
"Not enough cabinets," said Pongo. He put a little pastry shell filled
with something pink at each place, sat down, and picked up his fork.
"Mm, this is great," said Irma with her mouth full. "What's in it?"
Margaret tried a bite; it was shrimp in some kind of sauce, meltingly
delicious; the pastry was light as air.
"Shrimp," said Pongo, "truffles, shrimp butter." He swallowed a mouthful
and looked meditative. "Could use more tarragon."
Gene Anderson came in quietly and sat down at the end of the table. He was
wearing a short-sleeved white cotton shirt and white trousers. The plate
and silverware in front of him looked of ordinary size until Margaret
compared them with the others, and then she saw that they were a third
again as large; the heavy silver knife was almost a foot long.
Pongo, who had got up when Anderson came in, put down a much bigger pastry
in front of him. He poured wine from a chilled bottle and slipped away
again; in a moment Margaret heard the sizzle of meat on the grill.
Anderson had already finished half his pastry. "Maggie, did you have any
problems?" He pointed with his fork to the folder beside her on the table.
"Yes, a few. There's one letter that has names in it I'm not sure how
to spell. I typed it anyhow, and I thought you could look it over -- "
"Okay, let's do that right after lunch."
Pongo was up again, turning the meat on the grill, then collecting their
plates. He put fresh ones down, went to the oven and came back with a
steaming platter. "Red snapper," he said. "Irma, you want to serve it?"
The fish, of a kind unfamiliar to Margaret, had a delicate flavor of
garlic and thyme. "Mr. Richards, where did you learn to cook like this?"
"Here and there," said Pongo. "Mostly there," He was up again, bringing
an enormous steak from the grill.
"He's a sea cook," said Irma. "Call him Pongo, or he'll think you're
mad at him."
"Wait till you see what he can do when he makes an effort," said
Anderson. "Who'd like some of this steak?"
No one replied; Anderson put the steak on his plate and proceeded to
cut it up and eat it. Margaret tried not to watch him, but she could not
help being fascinated by the unhurried way he made the food disappear. He
forked up a bleeding chunk, his strong jaws chewed it, and he was ready
for another. When the steak was gone, he took a helping of fish and
ate that.
"Sit still, Pongo, I'll bring the dessert," said Irma. She took their
plates, brought a cool green mousse, and served coffee. Anderson's mousse
was the same size as the others; he ate it in two bites and said,"
Let's see that letter, Maggie."
She brought it to him and handed him a pencil from the counter; it
looked like a dance-card pencil in his fingers. "This is all right,"
he said, "this is wrong, and this one." He crossed out two names and
corrected them.
A bell sounded; Irma swiveled her chair to the intercom panel, glanced
at the screen. "Expecting anybody?" she said to the room. No one replied.
"Yes, can I help you?" she said to the microphone. In the screen,
Margaret could see a man in the open window of a car. A voice said,
"Ma'am, I'm J. A. Coburn, of Smith and Barrows, here to see Mr. Anderson."
"Mr. Anderson doesn't see anybody without an appointment."
"Well, ma'am, I did write asking for an appointment, but unfortunately
I didn't get an answer, so I just figured -- "
"I'm sorry your letter wasn't answered. If you'll just go home and be
patient, we'll take care of that as soon as we can." She turned off
the microphone.
"Was there anything from him in that stack?" she asked Margaret.
"No."
"This whole county is full of people that would just love to sell Gene
something. We try to stay out of sight, but you can't hide a place like
this. People will talk. There's the builder and all the contractors,
the cleaning women, the lawyers -- "
"Irma, try to keep that damn gate closed, too, will you?" Anderson's hand
was clenched around his napkin. "I know it's hard, when people are going
in and out, but I hate to think somebody could just walk in here."
"Yes, sir," said Irma, in a tone nicely balanced between respect and
irony.
Anderson got up. "See you all later." He walked out.
Pongo asked, "More coffee?"
Margaret took the misspelled letter back to her office and retyped
it. When she was finished, she put the new copy in the folder with the
other letters and carried it back to the kitchen. Irma was at the table
as usual; Pongo was banging pots in the sink.
"Irma, I forgot to ask you where to put these letters when I'm done --
back in the office?"
"Oh. I never told you, did I. Come on, I might as well give you the
fifty-cent tour while I'm at it. Pongo, you going to be here for a while?"
"Sure, go ahead."
In the hallway, Irma gestured toward the stairway with its wrought-iron
railing that led up to the back of the house. "Here's where you go
upstairs, if you don't like ramps. It brings you out on the balcony up
there, but we'll go the other way." They walked through the living room
to the corridor and passed Margaret's office. Irma opened the next door.
"Library."
It was a big room paneled in walnut, with a fireplace, a long table
in the center with a few stacks of books on it, and empty shelves all
around. "Books haven't come yet," Irma said. "
That
'll be a job." She
closed the door. "The rest of these rooms down here are empty."
Next came a ramp, like the one in the living room but much narrower. As
they started up, Margaret was thinking with respect of the architect who
had designed this house. He had had an impossible problem and had solved
it beautifully: the sunken areas in the kitchen and living room that made
it possible for Anderson to talk face to face with normal people; the
ramps, because he couldn't use an ordinary staircase. To Anderson, she
thought, this must be like living in a house built partly for dolls.
"Munchkins," she said aloud.
"What?"
"I was just thinking. The Munchkins -- you know, the little people in
'The Wizard of Oz.'"
"Oh."
The door at the end of the balcony opened onto a study. All the furniture
here was scaled to Anderson's dimensions, the desk, drawing table, couch,
chairs, coffee table. The room was almost as big as the kitchen, but it
looked much smaller because of the ramp that rose around two sides.
"This part is all Gene's," said Irma. "This is his study, or den, or
whatever you want to call it, and in there is his sitting room." Through
the open doorway Margaret could see a huge cushioned Morris chair with a
shelf on either side, on which books and papers were stacked, and a sort
of tilted lapboard on a swivel which held an open dictionary. "What he
likes is for you to come when he's not here, put the letters on the desk
for him to sign, pick up anything in his out basket. When he's here, he
hates to be disturbed, so always make sure before you go up. You can go
in the sitting room, too, if you have a reason. Up there is his bedroom,
and that's out of bounds. He even cleans it himself."
"That sounds awfully lonely," Margaret said after a moment.
"Maybe so." Irma led her back to the balcony and through a doorway into
a long passage that ran the width of the house. "Most of these rooms are
empty," she said. "Here's mine. Come in and sit down awhile -- Pongo will
mind the store."
They were in a cheerful living room with floral covers on the furniture,
flowers in a vase, a huge TV screen. In one corner, over a little desk,
was a duplicate of the intercom system in the kitchen. "Excuse me a
minute," Irma said. She went to the intercom, pushed a putton. "Pongo ?"
"Yeah."
"We're in my room. If you want to go somewhere before we get back,
push the slave button."
"Okay."
Irma sat down opposite Margaret and put her feet up on a hassock. "Now let's
talk," she said. "Anything you're wondering about -- any questions?"
"I don't understand why he doesn't hire more people. You work so hard,
and Pongo -- does he do all the cooking?"
"And the marketing, and goes to the post office every day, and so on. I
know what you're saying. Gene could have a staff of servants in here,
security guards and all that, but he can't bear having anybody around
that he doesn't know. He's spooky about intruders -- you saw that. There
isn't even a fire escape to his apartment up there. Building code says
you have to have one, so he had it built, waited till after inspection,
then tore it down and hauled it away."
"Doesn't he have any family, or friends, I mean besides you and Pongo?"
"He knows a few people here. He was out of the country for twenty years;
when he got back he put a little ad in 'Amusement Business,' but I was
the only one that answered it. All the people he used to know in the
carnival are dead and gone, or else scattered who knows where."
"You were in the carnival?"
"Carnival, and then in the circus. My husband and I had a juggling act --
the Amazing Raimondis. Ray left me a little money when he died. I didn't
have anything else to do, so I came down here to work for Gene."