Ragged Company (19 page)

“Anywhere,” she said. “But I think we should get everybody settled somewhere and then we can get to it. Can you give them a quick interview now?”

“Alone?”

“No. Mr. Merton said he’d help. Good old legal obliqueness always makes good copy. Remember?” She laughed.

“I remember. Okay.”

I turned to my friends.

“I’ll do this thing with them,” I said. “I’ll make it fast. Then we’ll go with James. I don’t know what his plan is but we’ll get this out of the way first and then we’re gone.”

“Fast, eh, Rock?” Digger said.

“Yes.”

I followed Margo to the door. Before I entered the media room I looked back. They sat there close together with Amelia in the middle, passing the bottle back and forth and smoking. It hadn’t been a stellar meet-the-press situation but it was over now. They no longer had to perform for anyone. They no longer had to speak unless they chose to, and I was strangely ready to act as a buffer on their behalf. I wouldn’t let them be insulted or belittled. They had become elite. They had become the envied minority. They’d
become visible, and I wouldn’t desert them now. I couldn’t desert them now. Amelia looked at me and grinned. I gave a small wave and stepped through the door.

“Ready?” Margo asked.

“No,” I said. “But let’s fucking do ’er.”

She laughed and squeezed my arm.

I
DIDN’T KNOW
what the Christ to do. It’d been some long time since I was in a place where I didn’t know the next move. You live that way. You have to know the next move or you’re hamstrung and lost, and out on the street you can’t ever afford to be lost. But there I was sitting in that small room waiting for Granite and James to finish with the media and I was plum lost. And it scared me. None of us were comfortable. The free liquor helped but it didn’t do the whole deal, and I found myself wishing that it would. Liquor usually shut the lights out and deafened me, and I coulda used that right then. But all it did was stop me from shaking. I guess that was enough.

It didn’t take long, like Granite said, and we were gone, back in the car, and headed for the bank in the same building as James’s office. He had the cheque in his briefcase. It felt better then. Better because of the feel of the four of us together and on the street. No one said very much. Everyone was out of sorts after the prize ceremony, and even Granite and James, who’d done this sorta thing before, were winded and spent and looking like they should dive into the bar too. We got to the bank and followed James inside, where we were directed to the manager’s office. The sign on the door said
HARRIET PETERS
and she turned out to be a friendly looking woman in a pearl grey suit and high heels.

“Welcome,” she said and shook all our hands.

We sat in leather chairs while James signed papers and chatted with Harriet. We rounders just looked around. No one spoke. I could feel myself getting edgier and edgier. Finally, they finished
their business and the papers were arranged on a table at the side of Harriet’s desk.

“Well,” she said in voice that reminded me of a schoolteacher I once had. “You’re all likely very anxious to get this fussing over with. Mr. Merton and I have papers for you to sign along with some papers that the bank needs in order to activate your accounts. Once that’s done, it’s official. You are millionaires.”

We all worked our way through the forms, just scribbling our names where the Xs were, wanting to get the fuss over with like she said. Granite helped Dick, who gripped the pen in his fist and scrawled letters like a child across the narrow space provided for signatures. When we were finished and the papers were in a pile on Harriet’s desk, she smiled.

“I’m your bank manager now,” she said. “Any time you need help with anything you ask for me and I’ll gladly sort it out for you. I’ve pre-approved credit cards for you. You signed for those already and Mr. Merton will advise you when they are ready. Likely in about two weeks.”

“Credit cards?” Dick asked.

“Yes,” Harriet said. “They’re what you use instead of cash.”

“Like empties?”

Harriet looked perplexed.

“No, Dick,” James said, reaching into his wallet and pulling out a gold plastic card. “You get one of these and whenever you want to buy something you give the people this and you just sign for whatever you want.”

“Free?”

James laughed. “No. It only feels like it.”

“Wow,” Dick said. “Now I don’t gotta mooch for money when I got none.”

“Not only that, Mr. Dumont, but the bank provides you with other cards that allow you to buy things without having money on you at all,” Harriet said, gleaning the necessity for explanations. “You just present the card, punch in your secret code numbers, and the money is automatically taken out of your account.”

“Secret code numbers? Wow,” Dick said. “Let’s go do that.”

“Okay,” Harriet said and led the way to the main banking room. “This area is called private banking and it’s for our larger account holders. Any time you come in, you just come here and we’ll take really good care of you. This way, please.”

For the next while we were busy getting the bank cards sorted out and punching our numbers into a small machine to activate them. Harriet told us that we had no pre-set limit, meaning we could take out and spend as much as we wanted every day. Digger and I just looked at each other blankly when she said that. We were introduced to the four tellers who worked in our area and though they had a moment or two of shock at seeing us there, they relaxed and became quite charming once they heard we’d won the lottery. It wasn’t long before we were finished.

“So how much would you like today?” Harriet asked.

“What?” Digger replied.

“How much of your money would you like? What do you think you need for today?”

We all looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

“Lemme get this straight, lady,” Digger said. “Now that we’re all set up here we can just ask for however much we want and we can have it right away?”

“Yes, Mr. Haskett. It’s your money. You can have as much as you want.”

“Jesus. I like that. How about a hundred?”

“A hundred is fine, sir,” she said.

“Sir? I get a yard just like that and a ‘sir’? I like this already,” Digger said, and headed for a teller.

“I could have a hundred, too?” Dick asked.

“Yes,” Harriet said, and Dick dashed off after Digger.

Amelia and I just stood there.

“You can have what you want. You know that, don’t you?” Granite asked.

“I know,” she said. “I just don’t know what that is right now.”

“Me neither,” I said. “I just want to get out of here.”

Granite nodded. “Yes. Well, we need to stop at James’s office first. He wants to make sure you’re taken care of and then we can
head out. It won’t be long. Are you sure you don’t want to go over and get some of your money?”

“Not right now,” Amelia said.

Digger meandered over with a big grin on his face and we headed up to James’s office. When we got there, Margo Keane was waiting for us. She was all smiles and made sure she talked to each of us for a moment while we sat down.

“Margo’s here to help Amelia,” James explained. “Hanging around with you three guys must be tough on a girl, and Margo’s taking some time off to travel around with her to help her get settled.”

“Well, thank you,” Amelia said. “It will be good to have a woman to talk to.”

“I’m glad to help,” Margo said. “What Digger said at the media scrum really touched me. I can imagine how I would feel if I was suddenly thrust into a world I had no idea how to negotiate. We’ll get you settled in no time.”

“Granite, since you know the boys already, I want to ask you if you’d mind travelling around with them a while longer and making sure they adjust smoothly?” James asked.

“I don’t mind at all,” Granite said. “In fact, I was just starting to think that I’d like to spend more time with them now. What Digger said was important. It’s a whole new world and everybody needs a guide now and then.”

“Well, we’re agreed then. Margo and Granite will be your chaperones, for lack of a better word, and I will manage the accounts and finances. I’ll only ask that if there are going to be major purchases that you talk to me first. Investments we can discuss with people I know. That’s a good idea to look at, but I think we’d best look at getting the basics covered first.”

“The basics?” I asked.

“Yes,” James said, leaning back in his big leather chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. “I don’t mean to scare you or to make you feel demeaned at all. But your life is different now. It’s just different. It’s as big a change as any human being can make. Bigger than any other lottery winner has had to make, because up
to now everyone who’s won has had an established life before they won. They’ve had things. They’ve owned things. They’ve belonged somewhere. They’ve had homes. But you’re all starting from less than zero and it means that everything, everything that happens from now on, is going to be absolutely new territory, and I don’t want to see you swamped by all of that. That’s why Margo’s here and that’s why Granite’s agreed to help too.

“When I say the basics I mean you all could use a good wash. Then you could use a good selection of clothes. You need a place to operate from, a place to settle for now, a place to live until we can find you the kind of accommodations you’d like. A good friend of mine is the manager of the Sutton Plaza. I apprised him of your situation and he’s agreed to give you suites there. The bills will come to me. I want you to go there. I want you to get settled. Then I want you and your chaperones to go shopping. Get whatever you want. Whatever makes you feel good.

“Please don’t think I’m telling you what to do or that I’m trying to control your lives. I’m not. It’s just that Digger told the truth over there this morning. You’re being thrust into a strange new world and someone needs to help you make decisions. Good decisions. Good choices, because there are a lot of wolves in the woods, my friends, and they’re all going to be after you now. I’m just making sure they don’t get you.”

“How much?” Digger asked. “You one of the friggin’ wolves there, James?”

James stood up and looked Digger square in the face. “No. I’m not. I’m a Square John, Digger. A friggin’ Square John. But I’m a Square John that had to work his ass off to get here. I didn’t have my fucking ticket punched for me. I worked my way up here from a start that’s not all that far from yours. I’ve been poor. I know what money can do. Am I one of the wolves? Fuck, no. I’m just someone trying to get by the best he can. It won’t cost you an arm and a leg for me to help you. But it will cost you. That’s how the world works.”

“Okay,” Digger said. “Works for me.”

“This is nice,” Amelia said quietly.

“What’s nice?” Granite asked.

“This. All of this. There used to be one lonely rounder walking around out there. Then, one by one we came together. We were two, then we were three, then we were four. Making it while we were on the street was easier because there were more of us. I thought that four was a magic number. It felt right. Then last winter we found the movies and we found Granite and we were five. It got easier. Five felt right. Now, because of that ticket we have James and Margo and we’re seven. Seven. It’s quite a little company we’ve become, don’t you think?”

I thought about that on the way down in the elevator. My life had become bigger than I’d intended. Back a few years, I’d convinced myself that alone was better, that I deserved that. There wasn’t anyone left for me. Then Amelia came up to me in the park and offered me a drink when I really needed one and the world became bigger. Not bigger in any major kind of way, just more to think about. For years it felt good moving around the city as one of four. Being known in a small way. Being recognized when I appeared somewhere. Then the movies happened and Granite happened and the horizon flattened out and spread wide. The movies brought me the world. A big, bright, shining world that felt good as long as it stayed on the screen where it belonged. Now this. This.

We stepped into the flow of the street and I really just wanted to walk away. Just hightail it around the corner, down the alley, and back to the small, shrunken world where everything was known, where there was nothing new to wonder about and fear. But I was still one of four and I thought they’d need me. Funny. I hadn’t been needed in a long time and it was that more than the money that got me into that car.

I
HAD ME
a good drink from the bottle in the car while we drove through the city. Geez. It felt nice an’ warm an’ thick. Different than I drunk before. I figured the hundred in my
pocket could buy me some of that ’cept I didn’t know what it was called. Timber would know. He always knew stuff like that an’ I’d just ask him later on accounta he never minded at all whatever kinda questions I’d ask him. It felt good in there. There was six of us now an’ the lady Margo was pretty an’ nice an’ she smelled like a big bunch of flowers when she leaned in to talk to me. I didn’t mind bein’ in the car. Long as my friends was around I didn’t mind doing nothin’. All the talk about livin’ in a whole new world didn’t bother me so much on accounta when we went to the movies we was in a whole new world an’ it kinda turned out okay. So I just sat back an’ let myself be with my friends.

We pulled up in front of a big hotel. There was a long red carpet leading up the stairs to some big double doors an’ two guys in uniforms an’ real shiny shoes waiting outside. They moved over real quick when the car stopped. Granite got out first when they opened the door an’ Margo went out next.

“Good afternoon, sir. Ma’am,” the younger guy said, an’ for a minute I thought he was gonna salute like in the movies when they say
sir.
“Welcome to the Sutton.”

He was all smiles when he turned to the door again, an’ then Digger stepped out. The guy blinked real hard an’ moved his head back a few inches. Then Timber stepped out an’ the guy moved back a step. When One For The Dead got out, he almost fell over an’ then I climbed out an’ I thought he was gonna faint.