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“It’s great,” I said as convincingly as I could. “I sure do appreciate all you’ve done in here, Jack.”
“Oh, hell, it’s nothing,” he said, but I could see that he was pleased.
“No, I mean it—cleaning up the place and all.”
“Margaret did that,” he said. “All I did was put the arm on Clem for the furniture and stuff.”
“Let’s have a drink,” I said. “Christen the place.”
“Right.” He poured some whiskey in the bottom of two mismatched glasses and we drank. My ears were getting a little hot, and I knew I’d have to ease up a bit or I’d be smashed before the sun went down. It had been a real strange day. It had started at six that morning in a mothball-smelling barracks, and now I’d left all of that for good. Soon I’d be going back to the musty book-smell and the interminable discussions of art and reality and the meaning of truth. This was a kind of never-never land in between. Maybe it was a necessary transition, something real between two unrealities—always assuming, of course, that this was real.
We hauled my duffle bag and my civvies back to the tiny little bedroom and began hanging things up in the little two-by-four closet and stashing them in the battered dresser.
“You gonna buy a set of wheels?” he asked.
“I guess I’d better. Nothing fancy, just good and dependable.”
“Let’s see what we can finagle out of Sloane tonight.”
“Look, Jack,” I said, “I don’t want to cash in on—”
“He can afford it,” Jack interrupted. “You go to one of these two-by-four lots on the Avenue, and they’ll screw you right into the wall. Me and Lou and Sloane will put you into something dependable for under two hundred. It may not look too pure, but it’ll go. I’ll see to it that they don’t fuck over you.”
I shrugged. Why fight a guy when he’s trying to do you a favor? “OK,” I said, “but for a straight deal—I want to pay for what I get.”
“Don’t worry,” Jack said.
“Where’s the big blowout tonight?” I asked him.
“Over at Sloane’s place. Man, wait’ll you see his house. It’s a goddamn mansion.”
“McKlearey going to be there?”
“Oh, sure. Lou’ll show up anywhere there’s free booze.”
“He’s an odd one.”
“Lou’s OK. You just gotta get used to him is all.”
“Well,” I said, depositing my folded duffle bag in the bottom of the closet, “I think that’s about got it.”
“Pretty good little pad, huh?” he said again.
“It’ll work out just fine,” I said. “Hey, you want to run me to a store for a minute? I’d better pick up some supplies. I guess I can’t just run down to the friendly neighborhood mess hall anymore.”
“Not hardly.” He laughed. “But, hell, you could eat over at my place tomorrow.”
“Oh, no. I’m not fit to live with until about noon. Marg and I get along fairly well, and I sure don’t want to mildew the sheets right off the bat.”
“What all you gonna need?”
“Just staples—coffee, beer, aspirin—you know.”
“Get-well stuff.” He laughed again.
We went out and climbed into his car.
“Hadn’t you better let Marg know where we’re going?” I asked him as he backed out into the street.
“Man, it’s sure easy to see you’ve never been married. That’s the first and worst mistake a guy usually makes. You start checkin’ in with the wife, and pretty soon she starts expectin’ you to check in every five minutes. Man, you just go when you want to. It doesn’t take her long to get the point. Then she starts expectin’ you when she sees you.”
The grocery store was large and crowded. It took me quite a while to get everything. I wasn’t familiar with the layout, and it was kind of nice just to mingle with the crowd. Actually, I wound up getting a lot more than I’d intended to. Jack kept coming across things he thought I really ought to have on hand.
“Now you’ll be able to survive for a few days,” he told me as we piled the sacks in the back seat of his car.
We drove back to my trailer, unloaded the groceries, and put the stuff that needed to be kept cold in the noisy little refrig beside the stove. Jack picked up the whiskey bottle, and we drove his car back up to his trailer. We got out and went up to the door. The screen was latched.
“Hey,” Jack yelled, rattling the door, “open the gate.”
Lou got up from the couch, looking a little drowsy and mussed. “Keep your pants on,” he said, unlocking the door.
“Why in hell’d you lock it?” Jack asked him.
“I didn’t lock it,” Lou answered. “I dropped off to sleep.”
“Where’s Marg?”
“I think I just heard her in the can.”
“Marg,” Jack yelled, “what the hell’d you lock the front door for?”
“Was it locked?” Her voice was muffled.
“No, hell, it wasn’t locked. I’m just askin’ because I like the sound of my own voice.”
“I don’t know,” her voice came back. “Maybe it’s getting loose and slipped down by itself.”
He snapped the latch up and down several times. It seemed quite stiff. “It couldn’t have,” he yelled back at her, “it’s tighter’n hell.”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe I latched it myself from force of habit.” The toilet flushed, and she came out. “So why don’t you beat me?”
“I just wanted to know why the door was latched, that’s all.”
“Lou and I were having a mad, passionate affair,” she snapped, “and we didn’t want to be interrupted. Satisfied?”
“Oh,” Jack said, “that’s different. How was it, Lou?”
“Just dandy,” Lou said, laughing uneasily.
“Let’s see now,” Jack said, “am I supposed to shoot you, or her, or both of you?”
“Why not shoot yourself?” Margaret suggested. “That would be the best bet—you have got your insurance all paid up, haven’t you?”
Jack laughed and Margaret seemed to relax.
“Where’d you guys take off to in the car?” she asked me.
“We made a grocery run,” Jack said. “Had to lay in a few essentials for him—you know, beer, aspirin, Alka-Seltzer—staples.”
“We saw you take off,” she said. “We kinda wondered what you were up to.”
“Hey, Alders,” Lou said, “what time are we supposed to be at Sloane’s?”
“Jesus,” Jack said, “you’re right. We better get cranked up. We’ve got to pick up Carter.”
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“Another guy. Works for the city. You’ll like him.”
“We’ll have to stop by a liquor store, too, won’t we?” I said.
“What for? Sloane’s buying.”
“Sloane always buys,” McKlearey said, putting on his shoes. “He’d be insulted if anybody showed up at one of his parties with their own liquor.”
“Sure, Dan,” Jack said. “It’s one of the ways he gets his kicks. When you got as much money as old Calvin’s got, you’ve already bought everything you want for yourself so about the only kick you get out of it is spendin’ it where other guys can watch you.”
“Conspicuous consumption,” I said.
“Sloane’s conspicuous enough, all right,” Jack agreed.
“And he can consume about twice as much as any three other guys in town.” Lou laughed.
“We’ll probably be late,” Jack told Margaret.
“No kidding,” she said dryly.
“Come on, you guys,” Jack said, ignoring her. We went out of the trailer into the slanting late-afternoon sun.
“I’ll take my own car,” McKlearey said. “Why don’t you guys pick up Carter? I’ve got to swing by the car lot for a minute.”
“OK, Lou,” Jack said. “See you at Sloane’s place.” He and I piled into his Plymouth and followed McKlearey on out to the street. I knew that my brother wasn’t stupid. He had to know what was going on with Margaret. Maybe he just didn’t care. I began not to like the feel of the whole situation. I began to wish I’d stayed the hell out of that damned poker game.
5
MIKE Carter and Betty, his wife, lived in a development out by Spanaway Lake, and it took Jack and me about three-quarters of an hour to get there.
We pulled into the driveway of one of those square, boxy houses that looked like every other one on the block. A heavyset guy with black, curly hair came out into the little square block of concrete that served as a front porch.
“Where in hell have you bastards been?” he called as Jack cut the motor.
“Don’t get all worked up,” Jack yelled back as we got out of the car. “This is my brother, Dan.” He turned his face toward me. “That lard-ass up there is Carter—Tacoma’s answer to King Kong.”
Mike glanced around quickly to make sure no one was watching and then gave Jack the finger, “Wie geht’s?” he said to me grinning.
“Es geht mir gut,” I answered, almost without thinking. Then I threw some more at him to see if he really knew any German. “Und wie geht’s Ihnen heute?”
“Mit dieses und jenes,” he said, pointing at his legs and repeating that weary joke that all Germans seem to think is so hysterically funny.
“Es freut mich,” I said dryly.
“How long were you in Germany?” he asked, coming down the steps.
“Eighteen months.”
“Where were you stationed?”
“Kitzingen. Then later in Wertheim.”
“Ach so? Ich war zwei Jahren in München.”
“Die Haupstadt von the Welt? Ganz glücklich!”
Jack chortled gleefully. “See, Mike, I told you he’d be able to sprechen that shit as well as you.”
“He’s been at me all week to talk German to you when he brought you over,” Mike said.
“Man”—Jack laughed—“you two sounded like a couple of real Krauts. Too bad you don’t know any Japanese like I do. Then we could all talk that foreign shit. Bug hell out of Sloane.” Very slowly, mouthing the words with exaggerated care, he spoke a sentence or two in Japanese. “Know what that means?”
“One-two-three-four-five?” Mike asked.
“Come on, man. I said, ‘How are you? Isn’t this a fine day?’” He repeated it in Japanese again.
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” I said, letting him have his small triumph.
He grinned at both of us, obviously very proud of himself. “Hey, Mike, how’s that boat comin’?” he asked. “Is it gonna be ready by duck season?”
“Shit!” Mike snorted. “Come on out back and look at the damn thing.”
We trooped on around to the back of the house. He had a fourteen-foot boat overturned on a pair of sawhorses out by the garage. It was surrounded by a litter of paint-scrapings which powdered the burned-out grass.
“Look at that son of a bitch,” Mike said. “I’ve counted twelve coats of paint already, and I’m still not down to bare wood. It feels pretty spongy in a couple places, too—probably rotten underneath. I’m afraid to take off any more paint—probably all that’s holding it together.”
Jack laughed. “That’s what you get for doin’ business with Thorwaldsen. He slipped you the Royal Swedish Weenie. I could have told you that.”
“That sure won’t do me much good right now,” Mike said gloomily.
We went into the house long enough for me to meet Betty. She was a big, pleasant girl with a sweet face. I liked her, too. Then the three of us went out and piled into Jack’s car. Betty stood on the little porch and waved as we pulled out of the driveway.
