Two Much! (4 page)

“Charlie, you know how bad the greeting card business is in the summer. Don't act as though I'm not your friend, buddy, you've cashed my checks before.”

“Some of them,” he said. “And some of them I used to fix bicycle tires.”

“That's good, Charlie, that's very funny. Listen, I'm looking at my checkbook right now, and—”

“The bank repossessed mine,” he said.

“Charlie, you're really in top form today. You ought to write this stuff down.”

“I'll tell you what I'm writing down. Never trust a dirty son of a bitch.”

“That's a good rule, Charlie. Listen, to be serious for a minute, I can't pay you the whole thing right now, but I can send you a check for, uh, fifty bucks.”

“A hundred,” he said. “And don't send it, I'll come down for it”

“Sixty is the absolute best I can do,” I said. “I have the landlord breathing down my neck.”

“Eighty.”

“Charlie, you can't get blood from a stone.”

“I can get blood from
you
, Art Eighty.”

“Oh, very well. Seventy-five. But I don't know what I'll tell the landlord.”

“You'll think of something. I'll be there in an hour.”

“No violence, Charlie, okay? Fun's fun, okay?”

“I'll be as good as the check,” he said ominously.

“Listen,” I said, “on the trip down, be thinking about this one. ‘Get well soon—my doctor says you have it too.'”

“Have what?”

“Don't worry about it Charlie. What we want is a girl, like a nice cross between a nurse and a hooker, okay?”

“You're a complete birdbrain, Art, you know that?”

“I have faith in you, Charlie,” I said, and hung up, and went out to say to Gloria, “Now, how do you suppose Charlie got my home address?”

“Probably from your sister.”

“That's a wonderful theory,” I said, “only slightly hampered by the fact they don't know each other.”

“Charlie was here yesterday when she called,” Gloria said. “He's paranoid, he thought it was you on the phone, he grabbed it out of my hand and they had a nice long chat.”

“Goody,” I said. “Get her on the phone, will you?”

“Sure.”

I went back to my office and made out Charlie's check. Seventy? No, I'd better not fool around; he'd sounded truly annoyed. If only all these people would remain calm until Thanksgiving; but they never do.

Buzz. “Your sister.”

“Fine.” I pushed the button. “Doris?”

“My goodness, you returned a phone call. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I think of myself as an only child,” I said.

“That's your trouble, Art; you think of yourself all the time. Think about somebody else once in a while and—”

“The reason I'm calling,” I said, “is to tell you I understand you had a nice chat with Charlie Hillerman yesterday.”

“Who? Oh, that artist man in your office.”

“That's the one. And Doris, I just wanted to say, if you ever give anybody my home address again, I will come personally over there to Red Bank and cut your vocal cords.”

“Oh, that got to you, huh?”

“This is very serious, Doris. There are all kinds of wrong-headed people wandering loose in New York; you can't be too careful.”

“If you'd behave decently to people, you wouldn't have to be afraid of them.”

“What a wonderful concept. In the meantime, keep your mouth shut about my address.”

“I will, if you'll answer my calls.”

“I'm answering. I suppose it's Duane and the child support money again.”

“I just can't talk to him, Art,” she said. “If I even call him on the phone, he rants and raves so much it terrifies me.”

A perfectly natural reaction, it seemed to me. “If you'd behave decently to people, Doris,” I said, “you wouldn't have to be afraid of them.”

“Oh, you think you're so smart. All I want you to do is call him and tell him this time I really will have him arrested and put away in prison for ever and ever. Really really really.”

“Uh huh. I'll call him tonight”

“Don't forget.”

“Of course not. I'm making a note of it now.”

“And I'm sorry I gave out your address.”

“Good. I hope I'm not. I have to hang up now, the other phone is ringing.”

I hung up, and shook my head. The idea of me phoning Duane Cludder and ordering him to pay my sister her back child-support money was absurd on the face of it. Casting it from my mind, I turned to the accumulated mail stacked on my desk by Gloria, and waded through another sea of pettiness and cheap threats. And also a statement from my distributor, full of numbers out of some sort of accountants' fantasyland and accompanied by ah insultingly tiny check. I buzzed Gloria. “Get me All-Boro.”

“And two Excedrin?”

“Naturally.”

The rest of the mail slid smoothly across my desk and into the wastebasket, except my Master Charge statement, which went into the center drawer of the desk. As I put it in, my eyes lit on my former glasses, worn until three years ago, when I'd purchased my contact lenses I visualized myself putting them on, saying to Charlie Hillerman, “You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would you?”

Buzz. “All-Boro.”

“Right.” I pushed the button. “Hello?”

“All-Boro Distributing. Who's calling, please?” It was the regular receptionist; I recognized her rotund voice.

“This is Those Wonderful Folks,” I said. “Put that cheap filthy kike bastard on the line.”

“One moment, please.”

While I waited, Gloria came in with the Excedrin and the paper cup of water. I downed them, she went away, and Gossmann came on the line, “Hello, Art? Anything wrong, boy?”

“Not a bit of it,” I said. “I was just noticing some pretty heavy returns on this statement you sent me.”

“It's been a tough year, Art. Looks like people are moving away from obscenity.”

“According to this statement,” I said, “virtually my entire year's output has been returned from the retailers.”

“We'll send them out again in the fall” he said. “Maybe tastes will change again.”

“I sure hope so. In the meantime, I don't know, call it nostalgia, I thought I'd come visit my stuff.”

“You what?”

“I thought I'd trot out to your warehouse this afternoon,” I said, “and look at all my cards sitting there.”

“Oh, you don't want to do that,” he said.

“Just a little trip down Memory Lane,” I said.

“It's a mess out there right now, Art. We're doing inventory.”

“In August?”

“Sure, it's a slow time of year.”

“Well, inventory's just counting, isn't it? I'll come help count. I'll count all my cards.”

“Art, you'll just depress yourself. Besides, I think we're gonna send some out again this afternoon. They're probably loading on the trucks right now.”

“Fast action, Joe,” I said.

“Well, we got your best interests at heart.”

“I'm glad. And I've got some other fast action you can do for me.”

“Anything, Art.”

“A revised statement,” I said, “and another check, on my desk by next Wednesday. Or I go to the Queens D.A.” He and I both knew that, since All-Boro's primary product was pornographic magazines and dirty books, the Queens D.A. would just love an excuse to subpoena the company's records.

“Aw, now, Art,” he said. “We don't have to get nasty with each other.”

“We don't? Next Wednesday, you unutterable prick.”

I hung up, and looked around my desk. Time was fleeting. Not only would Charlie be here soon, a visitation I was looking forward to missing, but if I didn't manage to get out of town and grab an earlier ferry than Ralph, Candy was likely to have a relapse.

The Christmas card. I needed a Christian; how about Cal Knox? I didn't owe him any money at the moment. I called him, he loved the idea, and that was that. Anything to take to the island with me? I opened desk drawers, and once again noticed yesteryear's spectacles. Another thought occurred to me, a different usage than protection from Charlie Hillerman. I chuckled at the silliness of the idea, and put the glasses in my attaché case.

I
N THE NEWSPAPER LIBRARY
on West Forty-third Street I read:

ALBERT AND ELIZABETH KERNER
DEAD IN FREAK ACCIDENT

Albert J. Kerner, prominent manufacturer and financier who was chairman of the board of Laurentian Lumber Mills, world's third largest supplier of wood and wood products, and his wife Elizabeth Margaret Kerner, the former Elizabeth Margaret Grahame, both died yesterday in a freak automobile accident in this city. Mr. Kerner was 57 and his wife 53, and they lived here.

Mr. Kerner, well known in Wall Street and social circles, inherited much of the family's company holdings, but in recent years had engaged in expansion, leading to the acquisition of several other firms, including a television station in Indiana.

The couple are survived by their daughters Elizabeth and Elisabeth.

Hmmmmmm.

“Y
OU MUST BE BETTY
,”
I
said, though I knew better.

“Not on your life,” Liz said. “But I suppose you're Bart. Come on in.”

I stumbled slightly on the threshold. Damn glasses, how does anybody see with them? All my perceptions were just slightly off; objects I looked at were either a bit too close or a bit top far away, or in any event slightly distorted. It was like living in a Dali painting.

“Watch your step,” Liz said.

She led me into the living room. Without its party it seemed cozier, with comfortable chairs grouped around a stone fireplace. Portraits on the walls were undoubtedly Mom and Pop; he looked like the sort of fellow who makes illegal campaign contributions, and she looked like a Grahame.

I
have never been in this house before
, I reminded myself, and said, “Nice place you have here.”

“Sorry,” she said, “we already got a buyer.”

“Oh, yes. Art told me you're selling.”

She gave me a sardonic look; I wasn't being any fun. “I'll tell Betty you're here,” she said, and left before I could thank her.

What was happening to me? I paced around the room, frowning inside my glasses. Usually I'm fairly good at casual chitchat, but just now I'd done a very good imitation of that entire party from the other night All I do is put on spectacles and I suddenly become a baby Frazier; why?

I suppose partly it was the physical unease caused by the glasses themselves. If you're constantly afraid you might lean just a bit too far to the left and do half a cartwheel you really can't devote full attention to bon mots. And also there's a certain tension involved in facing a girl you've recently screwed in the upstairs closet and convincing her she's never met you before.

Well, probably it was all to the good. I hadn't thought in terms of a personality change when I'd decided to have a go at being Bart, but why not? It could only reinforce the physical changes I'd wrought.

An oval mirror in an ornate frame hung on the wall near the dining room arch, and in it I studied again the new face I'd made for myself. The glasses made me seem more serious, perhaps a bit older, and I'd combed my hair straight back to reveal the receding hairline I usually camouflage. I am thirty now, and for the last year the hair has been retreating from my temples like the tide going out. Never to come in again, unfortunately.

“Well, hello.”

I turned around, and Betty had entered, wearing the same white dress and the same hostess smile as the other night. “Now,” I said, “
you
must be Betty.”

“Why, you don't look like your brother at all,” she said, and through the artificial smile it seemed to me I detected disappointment.