At End of Day (44 page)

“Well, why’d he call here?” Stoat said dully. He had his left hand pressed to his forehead. He lifted the hand away. “Arthur’s not here. They come here together, one car—so it draws less
attention from the neighbors. Arthur said that: ’less cars in front, fullah shady characters, looks like a Mafia sitdown.’ Nick should know that;
he
isn’t here.” He coughed. “Whyncha bring in a couple more beers, while you’re at it?”

Farrier returned to the refrigerator and took out two more bottles of Harpoon. He opened them on the counter and headed toward the living room. “Probably just the first thing that came into his head,” he said. “You know how it is, you get frustrated. He called Arthur at home and no one answered there, so then what’s the next thing he can do, he wants to find out where McKeach is?”

He put the bottles on the coffee table. Stoat immediately picked one up and poured it into his glass. “No McKeach cell phone,” Farrier said, sitting down on the couch, “call him up in his car or his own jacket pocket. ‘Too easy to eavesdrop,’ is what he says. ‘Any kid with a scanner could do it.’ Guy’s
paranoid
on the whole subject. He’ll have nothing to do with the things. He won’t even let
Nick
, or any their people, have one of those things in their car.”

“I should probably turn off the heat under that stewpot,” Stoat said, putting his glass and the bottle on the coffee table as he got up. He headed for the kitchen. “Had it on simmer since before you got here, but enough’s enough. Stay hot for a while anyway. It gets cold, they’re really late, I’ll just heat it up again. Won’t take long.”

“Good idea,” Farrier said. “Better’n having the sauce turn to red library paste.”

“It’s still surprising, though,” Stoat said from the kitchen, “that Arthur won’t use them at
all.
Think as conscious as he is of security, he’d
want
people be able to reach him. Tip him off, something went wrong.”

“Oh, but that’s exactly what he’s
afraid
of,” Farrier said. “If
they had it for that they’d use it for
other
things and then they’d get him in trouble. ‘Might use the damned thing to call me, I dunno I’m on it; I listen. Then I talk and he listens to me. Cops tapin’ him? Cops’re tapin’ me too. They get him, he is stupid? Can’t help that. They get
me
, even though I’m smart’n careful, ’cause
he’s
stupid? I don’t like that. And I
can
help it. Catch anybody usin’ one of those things to call me, I’ll find out where he is and go and shove his fuckin’ cell phone up his fuckin’
ass.

“ ‘
Yeah
, they’re convenient—that’s why they’re so dangerous. You get so you’re always thinkin’, “Ah, whatsa risk, there’re
thousands
of calls every minute. What’re the odds they get me? They’re not gonna catch me, I use this thing once—they don’t even know where I am. And if they did, they did tap onna mine, what possible good could it do them? It’s not like I’m sayin’, ‘Let’s talk about business,’ when McKeach picks up the phone. And even if they did luck out, wouldn’t do them any good—they wouldn’t know what we’re talkin’. Nah, know what you do? You worry too much. It could only happen, a fluke.” ’ ”

Stoat, massaging his forehead again, used his right hand to lift the glass and drink some beer.

“ ‘So they get overconfident, you know?’ ” Farrier said. “ ‘But what they forget is that flukes do happen—now and then even dumb cops catch a break, and I personally don’t feature goin’ to jail on no fuckin’
fluke.
’ ”

Stoat sat down in the chair.

Farrier shrugged. “What can I tell him? He’s right. But tonight the result is, Nick’s lookin’ for him. He calls him at home and he can’t find him there; where the hell else can he call him? Nowhere else; there’s no other number. You know how it is, dunno what’s goin’ on, you got to do something, so what do you do? Call someone else, is what you do. Where else can Nick call? He calls here.” He drank, leaving his glass half full.

“I suppose,” Stoat said, flopping his left hand onto the arm of the chair. “What the hell do I know about anything anyway; why anyone does what they do? My wife’s gone to Memphis, to her first husband’s funeral.” He imitated Lily’s voice.

“V
ERY
WELL
,
TOO
, I
THOUGHT
,” Farrier said to Cheri later; “I think you would’ve had to agree. Not quite as
mean
as the take you do on her, but his version had
spite
; really captured her whine—” ‘I jes’
thank
it’s ma
place
, to be
there.
’ ”

“I
THOUGHT
HER
PLACE
WAS
TO
be where
I
am,” Stoat said. “
I
am her husband now.” He drank some beer.

“Well Jesus, Darren,” Farrier said, “I mean, she wouldn’t argue you that. She’s probably just got some female-solidarity idea in her head—if all the others’re gonna be there, and she isn’t, they will’ve made her look bad.” He picked up his glass and drank beer. “Like she didn’t love him as much as they did—she was just after his money, and once she’d gotten all she could, had no more use for the guy.”

“Then they’d be right,” Stoat said sorrowfully. “That
is
why she married him, and it’s why she’s gone back now. The old boy still had
years
of income due him, well into the next century—from the deal when he sold all his funeral homes. She thinks he might’ve left it to his ex-wives, but only the ones who show up at his funeral, and that’s why he had his lawyer call. Put all of them on notice.”

Farrier chuckled. “That likely?” he said.

Stoat shrugged. “It could be. She got him to marry her, after all—must have some idea what made him tick—if
tick
’s the right word, for what she allowed him to do. Money’s what makes
her
tick. Money’s the reason she does everything, everything that Lily does.”

“
Welll
,” Farrier said, “I know she talks a lot about it, money. But look at what she
does
—her field is stocks and bonds. She’s only talking about what her work is, same way’s we talk about the Mob.”

“
Nuts
,” Stoat said forcefully. “Not the same thing. You didn’t marry Cheri because you thought if you did you’d have a better shot at the Mob. You married her because you loved each other, or lusted each other—something. Same reason why I married Lily—I was lonely; I was horny, and I wanted to spend my life with her. But
she
married
me
for my money.” He finished his beer and began refilling his glass from Farrier’s second bottle.

“Not sayin’ I was a great catch. I didn’t have anywhere near as
much
money as she would’ve liked, but she’s shrewd. Crafty. Her
assets
were gettin’ stale. She knew that Miss Memphis year of hers was gettin’ further ’n’ further behind her, while
her
behind was becomin’ bit
bigger.
An’ besides, she’d already cashed in on the act once, when she married the rich undertaker.

“Now don’t get me wrong. Lily’s still a fine-lookin’ woman, as she was when she married me—best-lookin’ one ever glanced
my
way. But like they say about expensive cars you can get for a price, she’d been ‘previously registered,’ and that’s the
reason
I’s able to … get her.” He drank some beer and reflected.

He nodded. “Rich man in the market for a beauty-queen trophy wife, he’s lookin’ for one steppin’ fresh off the runway, slip-pin’ out her little swimsuit right into his bed. Not an eighty-two, eighty-three model. And she knew it, too, better’n I did. By the time I met her, she was lookin’ to settle. I may not’ve been quite what she’d had in mind, but I was the best deal in sight.

“A good secure job, a good pension plan, too. Plus I did have
some
money at least. Never’d made what you’d call major dough, but I never spent any either. I’d never been married; never had to pay alimony, child support. I’d never
had
any kids to support,
braces and tuitions to pay for. And I hadn’t been like you, going off with the guys, even though you were married, doin’ glamorous things that cost money.” He paused, looking at Farrier speculatively. “
You
probably had a Harley,” he said. He drank some beer.

Farrier grinned. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Always wanted one, though, and I would’ve, I guess, dough hadn’t gone in the divorce.” He sipped his beer.

“Uh huh,” Stoat said. “Well, all the same. Scuba diving and skiing, all of that
guy
stuff; I never did any of it.

“I did used to play tennis,” he chuckled bitterly. “Back when I lived in Alexandria, before I moved to Foggy Bottom—cut down the
commute
, put more time in on the
job
—two evenings a week, and three sets on Sunday mornings. Me and another young single guy; he was an economist, had his Ph.D., Indiana, worked for Agriculture, and he had no social life either. Then. We weren’t very good tennis players, but in a way
that
was good—meant we could really compete.” He drank.

He glanced at Farrier and smiled. “Rick also cooked, for the same reason I did—it was that or starvation; so we competed in cookery too. It was nice. The complex we lived in had six lighted courts and four more in a bubble. But for some reason,
careers
, probably, not many who lived in it played. Never a problem, getting a court. So we could play nights, if it rained or was windy, anything like that. And then after we showered, make something for dinner, or on Sundays, for brunch. Unless we went over to Georgetown, to Clyde’s, that was
the
place to be then. ‘Alla broads go to Clyde’s’—it was true, too, good-lookin’ women, though fat lot of good that did us. But we’d watch the Redskins game there and have brunch. With so many other people you could hardly move. But it was nice.” He nodded, musing. He drank a swallow of beer. “Yeah, very nice.”

Then he put the smile away and looked at Farrier with something
close to scorn. “You’re now thinking, of course, ‘Uh
huh
, oh
yeah
, I can imagine: a couple of
fairies
, swappin’ their
recipes
after their
tennis
, swappin’
spits
after dessert.’ ”

Farrier prepared to reply but Stoat’s expression dissuaded him.

“I’m sure that’s the first thought that most people had, if they saw us together more than once. So was Rick. We used to joke about it … but it really wasn’t funny. Our real reaction was ‘fuck ’em,’ but that’s not a viable way to respond to people even if they do look at you funny. Not if they live in the same building with you. Next thing you know they’ll be stealing your newspapers, deflating your tires. Spray-painting
fag
on your windshield.” He drank.

He took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I dunno—might’ve been better, we’d been queer. Might’ve been happier if they’d been right. But they weren’t—we were just friends. All we had in common besides tennis and pretentious cooking was hard work and ambition. Nothing sexual between us.

“Rick’s hard work paid off before mine did. He got promoted and reassigned to run a new section. Met a woman there he
sort of
liked. She in turn
sort of
liked him. Only natural—just by looking at her you could tell she was female, without any question, but other than that she was
sort of
like both of us. Just the same as us, really, another member in good standing of the wallpaper people; we seem to fit most rooms all right, without ever really standing out in any of them. Beige lives.

“The kind of people,” he said, smiling crookedly at Farrier, “that people like you, all you hotshots—when you see us for the tenth time we
sort of
bother you. You seem to remember meeting us, somewhere, but where, when or why it was, you can’t quite recall. It’s very irritating.” He drank some beer, then emptied Farrier’s Harpoon into his glass.

Farrier returned his gaze but said nothing.

“W
HAT
’
M
I
GONNA
SAY
?”
HE
SAID
to Cheri later. “In the first place, I don’t want to make the guy feel bad. Like you said, I want him to feel good. And if I’d wanted to see him torn down, made into a total zero, how could I’ve improved on his own work? He was doing a great job himself. I couldn’t’ve made him feel worse. So I didn’t say anything, and after he’d stared at me for a while, just resenting the hell out of me, you could feel it, he got up and went into the kitchen again. I wasn’t sure this was such a great idea, he was drinking them so fast, but he seemed steady enough—he fetched
us
a couple more beers.”

“E
LLEN
BLENDED
IN
JUST
LIKE
we
blended in, and pretty soon she’d blended all the way into Rick’s apartment, living with him. And why not? They were meant for each other. And guess what? She played tennis too, also not very well. They were nice to me about it—people like us always are, nice to others. They didn’t want to make me to feel bad, and I didn’t want to make them feel bad, by
acting
like they’d made
me
feel bad. People like us have very complicated lives. So for a while the three of us played and had meals together. All spring, in fact, well into June, but I can tell you, it was forced. Now instead of Rick playing tennis with me, and my having dinner with Rick,
they
were inviting me to play tennis, and I was having
them
over for dinner.

“What
Rick and I
had done had been fun because it was effortless—just by being ourselves we furnished the entertainment in each other’s lives. Rick said, ‘We’re each other’s videos.’ Whereas what
Rick and Ellen
were now doing was very self-conscious. It
did
require effort, a great deal of effort, on their part, making room in their life for me, and that was the end of the fun. Three really isn’t much of a crowd, but it seems like one because it never works—not very well, very long.