JR (29 page)

—You think maybe we ought to stop in there again? He nodded over her head to the lighted windows where streak mounted streak down clapboards and glass from the gutter dangling at the corner of the house and branches thrashed where the trees rode high losing sight of each other as though readying to hurl their fruit in all directions and make a real night of it, one to emerge from with old wounds reopened and new ones inviting attention. —Or just to tell them goodnight… ? but he was already holding opened for her the door of the car, and nothing turned her to look out or back as their lights caught the opening in the hedge, and then moved through it.

She leaned forward to turn on the radio, fleeing one wad of sound for another there as he swung the curve past the pepperidge tree. — Uh? She'd snapped the radio off. —I kind of liked that, he said as she rested back with that aspirate sigh leaving no sound but the regular

rhythm of the windshield wipers. Passing the firehouse he began to hum and, passing the dark cavity of the Marine Memorial Plaza, she turned the radio on and sat back abandoning it to a novelty group playing Phil the Fluter's Ball with vocal accompaniment that could only be described as suitable.

—Kind of hated to go off and leave him like that… they stopped for a light, —the way he was acting, you think he'll be all right? The car moved ahead. —Stella?

—What is it.

—I said do you think Edward will be all right.

—Whatever all right means.

—Well does he always go around with his necktie tied out over his neck and his hair like that? and his shirttail out under his jacket in the back? Just seeing his face, the look on it …

—I'm sure you'd have a look on your face if we came home and found the place ransacked.

—That isn't just what I meant though, he …

—You're driving too fast with this rain.

—It was you that was in such a hurry.

—I just, I thought we should leave.

—Do you think he's going to press a claim? to your father's estate I mean.

—If you force him to.

—Me? Why would I want to do that?

—Just by going on about it the way you do.

—Well hell Stella what am I supposed to do then, it's all got to be settled he could just as well give you that waiver even if he wants to claim your father for his instead of James like you said he …

—That's not what I said. Can't we go more slowly?

—All right, but you said…

—I said maybe Edward's suddenly afraid he's not Uncle James' son. There's quite a difference.

—Why. What's James got to leave him? The car slowed somewhat. — Stella? What's…

—I heard you! You just can't understand anything you can't get your hands on, anything you can't feel or see or, or count…

—Well I just meant…

—Be careful… !

—It's all right I saw him coming, the way they build these little foreign cars they don't give you room to move your…

—Obviously it wasn't built for someone your size I don't know why you insisted on buying it, but you can't drive so fast on these wet roads.

—It's all right, he said, —I saw him coming… and he leaned forward and turned the radio off, and stayed that way, leaning forward over the wheel as though searching for landfall on a horizon far out ahead.

—Why hell, I'm just trying to hold things together here, everything

your father and I built up there. All this time every penny's gone right back into the business so there's just no cash, there's no excess cash around to pay off these death taxes and they come in, the tax people come right in and take their bite before anybody else even gets to taste, you see what I mean? There's two, three million dollars tied up here, maybe closer to four altogether but there's no way to know what value the tax people will put on your father's forty-five percent

because it's a family company and the shares have never been traded. They can just get some shyster appointed to administrate forcing us to go public and sell shares to raise cash for these taxes, they all end up with a nice cut and we end up with a crowd of stockholders squabbling for dividends and bankers who know as much about punch cards and continuous forms as a hog does about holy water in there telling us …

—Yes, all right.

—You see what I mean? And we've already borrowed against assets, we borrowed for that last big expansion and now the tax people are even trying to deny us interest on that loan as a deduction like we been taking it the last six years, can you beat that? And they're trying to force us to settle that claim right now, too, can you beat that?

—No.

—What?

—I can't beat it, no. I can't even understand it. I simply wish we could stop constantly talking about it.

—Stella how can we just not talk about it if you're going to be the administrator? You come right down to it after all, it hasn't been too bad to you.

—What are you talking about.

—Just these concerts and benefits of yours and these artists and people you collect…

—What people do I collect.

—Just these artists and these musicians and…

—But who.

—Well you take this Reuben we were talking about, he …

—If you could simply see something more there than, what was it you said, a little sissified…

—I didn't mean anything Stella I just, I said there was people that might think he was kind of effeminate, he seemed like a nice enough little fellow that time you introduced me. But I just mean you add up these concerts and benefits and like this hundred dollar a plate dinner you've got tonight for this art museum, you add it all up and…

—I thought you added it all up and took it off taxes and were just delighted.

—Well all right Stella, all right. It's just…

—What.

—I guess nothing.

She turned on the radio and hardly searching found something of Delius that lasted all the way until, about to be identified, it silenced as

they entered the tunnel.

—What time is your dinner? he said as they emerged. —You want me to drop you off somewhere?

—Home.

—You have time to go home first? I could…

—Just home.

Lights approaching, passing, splashing wet surfaces in reflections suborned the reality of streets and distance. —Can't hardly see where you're going, he said never stopping, scarcely slowing until out of thousands, of hundreds, tens of brownstone steps, brownstone entrances, he drew up at one. —You're in a hurry you go ahead up, I'll park the car. You got your key? He reached across to open her door. — Watch where you step. He reached across to close her door. —You want to take your book?

—What?

—This Wagner Man and Artist, it's been in the car…

—All right, give it to me… and, watching where she stepped, she sought the entrance, head down until she reached it, fumbling for keys and then among them for one to fit the door, shaking them out under the light at the mailboxes, turning and saying suddenly —Oh! The man standing beside her wore the kind of small-billed cap with earmuffs tied over the top that boys wear, and one hand raised more in restraint than threat he put a shopping bag down with the other and straightened up, his clothes already open at the front scarcely demanding her attention there, pressed closer as her key trembled at the lock that moment wet down the side of her skirt and stockings, turned it and the door opened, tracking a wet print across the small lobby without a look back to rise in the empty elevator swallowing a sound in her throat and repeat the ritual of the keys, cross carpeting silently to light a single lamp and drop her bag and her book in a chair, into the bathroom hands fighting the zipper open at the back of her neck, stepping out of her shoes and pausing about to draw that gray dress up over her head, and then forcing it down over her shoulders rending a seam, her slip likewise, turning water on in the basin as she sat to strip off her stockings and drop them in with the slip, leaning naked over to turn on the bath and then holding there to the tub, coming back up, finally, with a towel she held up to her into the

bedroom where the light caught her from behind as she reached to get a robe and then, more slowly, sat down. The telephone rang beside the bed. It rang again, and she sat, one hand covering her eyes, until it stopped ringing.

—Stella… ? Stella, you left the front door here open. Left your keys right in the door. She got up and went back into the bathroom. —Who was that on the phone?

—Wrong number, she called over the sound of the tumbling water, and closed the door.

She came out holding her robe closed lighting lamps barely

brightening the living room under their opaque shades, down a corridor to the kitchen where he'd hung his jacket over a chair and had out a box of eggs. —You're not ready yet?

—I'm not going anywhere.

—But the, you already got the ticket didn't you? It ought to be quite a meal for…

—I'm not hungry.

—Oh. He looked back to what he was doing. —I didn't mean anything against you going to these benefits and something like this dinner tonight Stella … he cracked an egg on the edge of a bowl, and she watched him scrape out the shell. —You sure you don't want to go?

—I just want some milk, she said reaching to a high shelf for a glass, turning him for that moment to look into the gape of her robe.

—I was going to have some eggs, can I fix you some? It's no hundred- dollar dinner maybe, but…

—I'm going to bed, she said waiting to pour milk, watching him unwrap a stick of butter and scrape the flecks of it that remained on the paper into a pan.

—You're not going to sleep right off are you?

—I'm going to take a pill, she said, and he turned to look down the line of her that took shape in the robe as she took her glass and left him staring there a moment longer. Moving more slowly he put his pan off the stove, got out ice and a glass and poured it half filled with bourbon. He sipped it and then suddenly came out through the living room for the hall, tapped on the door. —Stella… ?

Her robe lay in a heap on the foot of her bed and he sat on the edge of his, —I just had a good idea Stella, he rattled the ice in his glass at her back. —If I got Edward and your aunts there in for a tour of the place, take them around the plant and give them a real look at the whole operation, I'll bet they've never even…

—Why, she said without turning from the book she sheltered.

—Why? To show them their stake in the General Roll Company is something pretty impressive, more than just a few pieces of paper that say they own, what do they own with James about thirty-five out of that original hundred shares?

—It would… she cleared her throat. —It would be ridiculous.

—What? Well but why, if they really saw what they've got there they might not be so ready to see a lot of outsiders coming in and…

—Simply getting them in to a desolate place like Astoria, it wouldn't impress them they'd be horrified.

—Well but … he stood up rattling the ice in his glass as he raised it.

—Wait, you come to think of it now they must have nearer thirty, maybe twenty-seven shares altogether, that Jack Gibbs he took five shares with him when he quit didn't he?

—Took? And she did half turn, more to pull the blanket back to her shoulder as his weight sank the edge of the bed.

—I don't mean to sound like he stole it Stella, your father wanted to give it to him for all the help he'd been with those ideas he had I went right along with it, but that was just the thing with him you know?

How he'd work out some crackerjack idea right to the point you could do something with it then he'd just leave it there, like it wasn't worth just getting down and doing it… he brought the glass down shaking nothing but ice in it. —A while after he left there I'd look in book stores when I passed one to see if there was a book with his name on it, he said that's what he was doing writing a book. If you ever heard him talk about these ideas he had about random patterns and mechanizing you name it
but
if he ever wrote that book, I sure never saw it… he rattled the ice again staring into the glass. —I used to think he must be the smartest man I ever met, why he'd…

—He probably was. Is that what you came in to tell me?

—Well no Stella I just got off on it talking about those five shares, you figure if these death taxes take maybe up toward half this forty- five percent of the company your father had that leaves maybe twenty- five coming to you, with my twenty-three we're still on top of things and if anything comes out of this old lawsuit that just came back to life with that jukebox company there's no telling where it will take us. You see but now if you have to split what comes down from your father with Edward there and he takes up with what your aunts and your Uncle James hold, well that could give them a maybe four percent margin for control so where these five shares that Jack Gibbs had fit in that could turn the whole, Stella… ?

—What is it.

—I just wasn't sure you were listening to me Stella, I mean I thought going out there to see them like we just did we'd at least get a clearer line on things even if we didn't dig up these papers but your aunts, I just couldn't get across to them, your Aunt Anne there talking about somebody called the young planter whose father was an undertaker part of the time I don't think they even knew who I was. And Edward there, I can see how he'd be that upset coming into the place like he did but standing up there singing like that, talking about going into the shoe business someplace nobody's heard of… he swirled the ice in the glass, drank off" the bit of water to rattle it again. —Stella? I mean I just don't know what you meant saying maybe he's suddenly scared James isn't his father, did he say if …

—I just mean he's a rather selfish boy, that's all.

—Yes well that's what I mean he certainly looks like he can use the money, that's…

—Well it's not what I mean! her sudden turn lost her the sheet from her shoulders, —he's a boy with a lot of romantic ideas about himself and everything else I tried to help him get rid of that's all, now please…

—Well but Stel…

—And please stop calling me Stella! she pulled the sheet up as