Saul and Patsy (25 page)

At two in the morning, the phone in the hotel room rang. Saul answered. Voltaine, of course, and she wanted to speak to Howie, she said, just a small matter of business, nothing important. Saul passed the receiver over to his brother in the other bed. Howie sat up, alert. He then turned off the light and crawled under his sheet and blanket to talk. His voice, from under the covers, was muffled and laughing and flirtatious and thickly sexual. Well, they were kids, after all, though Howie was only two years younger than Saul himself, the designated adult. Saul went into the bathroom to piss, and when he returned, Howie was still on the phone there under the covers, very quietly attending to business. “Do you want me to leave the room?” Saul asked his brother. Receiving no answer, and knowing he had been heard, he tucked himself back into bed and tried to sleep. He counted sheep in the dark to the background of his brother’s unintelligible rumbling, and he imagined long, dull historical accounts of the Treaty of Versailles to help himself doze off. None of it worked. He went down the names of the states alphabetically, trying to remember each state capital. That didn’t work either, though he did get as far as Helena. His brother talked for what seemed like an hour. In the dark, after hanging up, Howie said only six words: “This sure is a friendly town.”

The next day, no mention was made of the phone call. As far as Saul knew, his brother never saw or heard from Voltaine again.

Where was Patsy? She had been delayed getting her refill of Dorylaeum, it seemed, and now Saul would have to start their dinner. He clomped downstairs, feeling muddy and doomstruck as he always did whenever Patsy arrived home late.

He peered in the refrigerator. Baby food—ground lamb, sweet potatoes, mashed peas, and leftover oatmeal (leftover oatmeal? whose idea was
that
? perhaps Patsy would eat it herself, late at night, watching the paid commercial programming)—resided in recesses of the refrigerator close to a package of hamburger, salad fixings, and a jar of nameless forgotten food cobwebbed with mold. Saul and Patsy were busy parents and sometimes for days or even weeks forgot certain sectors of the refrigerator. Terrible neglected substances, green and gray and almost alive again inside their Tupperware containers, were visible in the back of the lower shelf. He threw the jar, unopened, into the garbage.

Howie still waiting, waiting, waiting in the car . . .

Saul removed the fresh greens and made a salad for Patsy and himself. He contemplated what ingredients they had on hand and decided to make an omelette. Therefore: he opened a bottle of white wine (“the white whine” Patsy sometimes called it, and sometimes called
him
under its influence), helped himself to a glass, and pulled out a mixing bowl from the cupboard and a cutting board for the vegetables. After chopping the onions and the mushrooms and the tomatoes, he dropped them into the bowl, and he—

He couldn’t stand it any longer. Howie’s furious apathy was larger than his own. Saul’s love for his brother couldn’t be much clearer if it were out of the water in the well.

Take care of Howie. He’s very fragile.

Saul washed his hands and put on his shoes before strolling out to Howie’s car. The suspense was killing him. Actually, he adored his brother for no particular reason. His brother being his brother was reason enough. Why should he pretend otherwise? Why should he feign this indifference? If Howie wanted to be indifferent to
him,
to Saul, fine. Howie was his little brother, always had been, even now, multimillionaire though Howie might be, the money couldn’t protect him from everything. Howie required looking after. Everyone did. Of course, Howie liked suspense—a seducer’s trait—and could handle much more of it than Saul could. By the time he had reached the Avenger, Saul was almost running, desperate to hug his brother, desperate to love him again in person.

There, behind the wheel, was Howie, fast asleep, a tiny trail of drool declining from his mouth. Slumbering though he was, Howie had the appearance of a bleary, worn-out man, a former hobbyist-seducer whose charm, through overuse, had faded on him. He had a piteous gray streak in his beard. Saul knocked on the driver’s-side window, and when Howie awoke, he stared at Saul for a moment in nonrecognition, as if in his sleep he had been inoculated with amnesia.

“Howie,” Saul called to his brother through the glass. “Wake up.”

Howie continued to look blankly at Saul.

“Howie!” Saul cried out. “Buddy.
Pal.
It’s Saul. Your brother. What’s going on? Get out of the car! Come inside.”

Howie rolled down the window. Speaking like a man coming back to consciousness after general anesthetic, Howie said, “Hey, Saul. I’ve been driving for seventeen hours straight. I got here, and I thought no one was home.” He smiled wanly. “I guess I fell asleep.”

“Come inside,” Saul repeated. “Please.”

Howie opened the car door. When he tried to stand, his knees appeared to give way before Saul grabbed his elbow, and then his arm, helping him back up. Saul hugged his brother fiercely. Howie gave off a smell of exhaustion and breath mints and fast food. Saul supported him by holding him around the shoulders in a brotherly clasp as they proceeded up the front walkway, through the front door, past the foyer, into the kitchen, where he sat his brother down at the dinette table.

“New house,” Howie said, looking around and shaking his head. “New baby, new furniture, new house. New everything.”

“Yeah,” Saul said. “I guess so. Though Emmy isn’t
that
new. She’s over a year old. And Patsy is pregnant again. You knew that, right?”

“Could I have a glass of water?” Howie asked. “I’m beat.”

“Sure.” After placing the water down in front of Howie, Saul sat beside him and waited while his brother drank. Slowly, his face began to take on its customary qualities, and Howie’s character reappeared in his eyes. “So. Howard. To what do we owe the honor of this visit?” Saul asked.

“I wanted to give you and Patsy and Mary Esther . . . do you call her Mary Esther or Emmy? I’ve heard you say both.”

“Well, Emmy, usually,” Saul said.

“I have an announcement. And I wanted to see my little niece, and you, and Patsy, and the new house, and actually the truth is that I wanted to give you some money.”

“
Give
us? Money? For what? We don’t need any money.” He waited. Perhaps he was being ungracious. “How much money?”

“I’ll tell you later. It’s sort of a bundle. I need to get rid of it. You’d be doing me a favor. By the way, where
is
Patsy?”

“Getting a prescription filled. She’ll be back anytime.” Saul touched his brother’s arm. “It’s so good to see you, Howie.”

“Well, yeah.” Howie twisted his head back and forth, loosening the neck muscles. “You, too.” He gazed toward the ceiling. “That was one long drive. I did like Colorado, the Rocky Mountains, but of course everyone does, though I think those mountains are too
big,
somehow. I like smaller mountains, softer ones, more on the human scale. When I got to Five Oaks, I wasn’t sure I’d find your house, but then I saw some white-haired kids, palely loitering in their front yards, and I thought, ‘This must be where Saul and Patsy live, somewhere around here,’ and I asked, and they directed me to you. Hey. Could you give me some towels? For a shower?”

“Oh, sure,” Saul said. “By the way, how did you like what you saw of our very wonderful city?”

“Five Oaks?” Howie appeared to consider this question, then gave his head a shake. “Five Oaks is the Tübingen of the Midwest, wouldn’t you say?” Saul had forgotten Howie’s habit of rhetorical traps, delivered with a thin smile.

“I might, or I might not.” Saul felt dismayed by how quickly the two of them became quarrelsome. They had skipped the stage when they would both be pleasant and agreeable.

“Those towels, Saul? I’ve got to take a shower.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll go get them.”

Waiting in the kitchen, while the hot water ran in the shower upstairs, Saul thrummed his fingers on the table. He stood up and gazed out the window to see if there were any signs of Patsy. Far in the distance down the subdivision’s main street, out in the semidark, were two bleached-haired kids, two Himmels, yes, palely loitering (that
was
the phrase), bent over a bag of some kind, conferring. Then they straightened up and stared at his house.

During the past few months, the middle school and high school outsiders and losers and dropouts and freaks and disaffiliated and disinclined and unmotivated and semi-destroyed and embittered kids—it was quite a sizable group—had all turned their hair a sickly blond or white and created a semi-secret cult of the undead with Gordy at its center as inspiration and centerpiece, and Sam Cole associated with him for the beauty part. Saul had heard that they considered Gordy to be still among them, apparitional, and all these albino-haired, blank-eyed kids had taken a particular interest in Saul himself as a focus of their undead attention.

There was, Saul had heard, a dispute among the Himmels about himself. Some considered him an enabler, someone who had made Gordy possible. For others, he was the one who had hastened Gordy’s end. In any case, whether as John the Baptist or as Judas, Saul was on their minds.

When Howie finally came downstairs, wearing a clean shirt and fresh trousers and clean socks, Saul hugged him again and in the living room poured him a glass of wine. They clicked glasses, and out of nowhere, Howie said, “I’m going to get married, Saul. I wanted to tell you in person.”

Saul tried not to act surprised. This was, after all, standard practice for Howie, to say nothing about the person or persons he had been seeing or what he had been doing and then to announce big decisions as done deals. He avoided advice, consultations, and unwanted intimacies this way. He loved to ambush with surprise news, then watch the reaction. Or maybe he just didn’t want to deliver big news over the phone. “Hey, congratulations,” Saul said, trying to think of an alternative way of saying what he was about to say in a non-clichéd form. But the cliché was there in front of him like a roadblock. “So. Who’s,” he asked, “the lucky girl?”

“Her name?” Howie seemed briefly taken aback, stunned by the question. He shut his eyes twice, as if he had been plunged into profound thought. “Her name is Phyllis.”

“Phyllis?” Saul asked, his voice carrying a small current of disbelief. “That’s a name for old people. Nobody is named Phyllis. Not anymore.”

“Well, she is. I guess nobody told her parents. She goes by ‘Lis.’”

“Lis,” Saul repeated.

“Yeah. Or ‘Phyl’—whatever.” Howie glanced at Saul, then glanced around the living room. “You’ll be my best man?”

“Of course. Where’d you meet her? What’s she like? Do you have a picture? When’s the wedding?”

“Naturally I have a picture.” Howie took a sip of his wine. He gave Saul his trickster smile.

“Well, may I see it?”

“Oh. Okay.” Howie reached for his wallet and pulled out a photograph, which he handed to Saul. It showed a pretty young woman standing on the seashore in the Bay Area—Ocean Beach, Saul guessed—whose auburn-colored hair was shoulder length, and with a display of short bangs and delicate hands raised in a double wave. She wore a thin blue jacket. In the photograph the wind was apparently blowing from left to right, causing several strands of her hair to press themselves against her cheek. The hair against her cheek attracted Saul to her. He was moved by how she stood in the wind. Her smile was lovely and warm. She had the appearance of amiability and sweetness and strength, though her eyes were slightly recessed and did not quite participate in the smile she was smiling.
She looked like Patsy. She looked
like Patsy’s sister, if Patsy actually had a sister. She looked like Patsy. She looked like
Patsy. She looked like Patsy’s sister.
Saul felt a mild shock before he recovered himself.

Howie might have said, “So. What d’you think?” but then he wouldn’t have been Howie.

“She’s very pretty,” Saul told his brother. “Is she Jewish?”

“Yes,” Howie said noncommittally. He glanced straight up at the ceiling. “Why do you ask?”

“Just thinking about Mom. Not that she cares one way or another. Well, that’s another story. She’s very pretty,” Saul repeated, suddenly and unpleasantly aware that he had accidentally left his pronoun referent vague—the unconscious at work, always busy, always looking for opportunities to make Saul slip up.

“Thanks,” Howie said, as if he were responsible for his fiancée’s good looks. “You know, I can’t wait to see Emmy.” He said this without enthusiasm, the phrase oiled with politeness.

“She and Patsy will be home any minute now,” Saul said. “Any minute.” Then he blurted out, “You know, this Phyllis of yours looks a lot like Patsy.”

Howie coughed angrily. Then he said, “That’s a strange thing to observe. She doesn’t look
at all
like Patsy. They’re completely different. You’re hallucinating.”

“Of course she looks like Patsy. They could be sisters.”

“Saul, what makes you say that?”

“Look at her
hair
. Look at her
smile
. That expression on her face.”
Look
at her benevolence,
he wanted to say, but didn’t, because no one ever said things like that, except sentimentalists.

“Are you telling me that I searched around until I found someone like your wife?”

“No,” Saul backpedaled, “I’m not telling you that.”

“Because she doesn’t look like Patsy at all.” Howie sat up like a guard who has heard an alarm go off. “She looks completely like herself.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“
I
know,” Howie said, “we’ll ask Patsy, once she gets home.” He stood up and stretched, as if he had reached the inevitable crossroad and had made the correct turn. “Let Patsy decide whether Lis looks like her.” He leaned backward. “You asked what she’s like.”

“Yes,” Saul said. “I did.”

“She works with me . . . with us. At eFlea.” In one of his phone calls, Howie had informed Saul that he currently was one of the partners in an online flea market, positioned to compete with eBay. “She’s smart and beautiful.” Then, after a long beat, Howie said, “She reads the encyclopedia to relax. On New Year’s Eve we both made resolutions, and I made her resolve to go on exactly as she had been in the past. And she did. She resolved to go on being the way she was. We met when . . . well, she came to me when I was coking up and drinking too much and screwing everything in sight, and she sort of fixed me up with herself. I was a mess, all glue and shards.” Howie waited. “The Great Chain of Misbehavior, with me at the bottom, buried in all that cash I had made and was losing. There are a lot of
me
’s out there,” he said, apparently meaning the West Coast. “You know,” Howie said, warming to the subject, “my character doesn’t exactly fill me up. My character only goes out partway to my edges. But Lis’s character goes out all the way to her fingertips. Do you understand what I’m saying?”