Winners (13 page)

Shane nods. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“How we going to tell him,” Jimmy says, “unless you help us find him. You got any ideas at all where he might be?”

“I got all kinds ideas.” Tennessee steps back and examines the side of the van. “A man ain’t nothing without ideas.” Then he begins slowly chanting numbers: “Two, seven, nine.” He keeps chanting and Shane thinks it’s impossible, how could anyone owe anyone that much money, until he realizes it’s not a mathematical figure but Shane’s own phone number which Tennessee is reading off the van’s painted flank.

“Forget it,” Shane says. “Fuck this.” He slams the van into gear but keeps his foot on the brake as Tennessee grabs the doorjamb and leans his head inside.

“You want business? Sauce can’t handle no business. I seen you, boy, you think we playing checkers up here? This for keeps, motherfucker, you ever wonder why you ain’t got a hole in your head? Shit, I’m keeping you alive, bitch. You wanna keep fucking that ho’ somebody better keep her breathing too. We got debts to pay, motherfucker. You know who I am? I’m the nigga who gets paid, that’s who I am.” His hands grip the rim of the window as if he’s trying to plunge his fingers through the metal, or restrain himself from diving through the window and ripping them apart. “Ask your rock stars where Sauce at, where my paper.” He pushes off gently, now, and backs away from them, smiles, his teeth straight out of a toothpaste commercial. “And have a nice day,” Tennessee says.

Shane slips his foot off the brake and the van starts rolling forward. His left knee is shaking and he reaches down to steady it with one hand.

“Tough guy,” Jimmy says, watching the world fade behind them in the side view mirror. He’s grinning. “That’s what I’m talking about. Fulla shit. Whoooey.” He hunches his shoulders, rolls his neck like he’s getting loose for something. “That’ll wake you up, huh. You see Samson up here with these assholes? No wonder he cut and run.” Jimmy waits for Shane to join in, but Shane is just driving. “You okay?”

Shane’s not sure he could speak right now, and doesn’t know what he’d say if he could. Instead he nods and drives, doing his quickest best to get them off the hill.

L
OU RETURNS FROM
New York unhappy. Her meetings have not gone well. Despite the market and the optimism, the bankers want to delay their IPO. Bankers are morons, Lou says, thriving on acronyms and incomplete sentences. She swears to Shane she’s sick of this shit even if she knows it’s all she does or talks about. She mentions a novel by Balzac.

“I missed you,” he says.

“You did?”

“Yep. Nothing good seems to happen when you’re not around.” He kisses the soft skin at the hinge of her jaw. He slides his hand across her stomach and slips it slowly down her pants.

“Well.”

They take the afternoon off and have sex on the floor of the living room, rolling around inside the red oval on their imitation Persian rug. They work hard to get her there. She does not come easily, but this time he feels her with him at the end. Afterwards they lounge on their bellies in a patch of sun, their pale butts seeming innocent in the blinding light. Lou looks happy, her eyes closed, lying there in silence while he rubs her legs.

“I needed that,” she says, finally. “Scary how much I needed that.” He closes his eyes, not wanting to speak, enjoying the physical calm. She drapes her body over his. “Can I just stay here for a while,” she says.

“Yes.”

She lingers for a few minutes. For a moment he thinks she’s fallen asleep. Then her body stiffens and she sits up. “I can’t. I gotta go.”

“Where? No,” he says, “I’m getting the handcuffs. I’m putting you under house arrest.” She makes her move and he grabs her with his legs, pins her firmly between scissored thighs. She struggles briefly.

“Okay.” She relaxes. “I’ll stay, but we have to do something.”

“Handcuffs isn’t something? How about ice skating?” A brand new rink has just opened downtown.

“Really?” She’s amused. They went skating together before, years ago at the Embarcadero, where Lou glided while Shane stumbled behind, providing comic relief.

“Not really. Or let’s go tonight.”

“What about now?”

“How ’bout a walk?”

“A walk?”

“A walk.”

They eat grape Popsicles and hike up the long serial-killer stairs near their house, climbing through a stand of eucalyptus to the very top of Diamond Heights. The warm weather is holding on miraculously into its second week. Shane asks Lou about the things she ate in Manhattan. She tells him about seeing some guys playing basketball in a chain-link cage. She checks her watch a few times, but she’s not wearing one. She shows him her purple tongue. On the bay in front of them, two enormous freighters arrive like floating cities, riding low in the water under the weight of treasures from Korea, Hong Kong, Japan.

“Where’s the first place you want to go?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Mexico?”

“Farther.”

“Brazil?”

“Not Brazil. I think rule number one is never let your husband see Brazil. How about Spain?”

“I haven’t thought much about Spain.”

“I’ve always wondered about it. Christians and Moors. Picasso, Gaudi, Goya, Cervantes—just seems like something wonderful and strange goes on there, you know? Maybe we could buy a place on the coast and live there. For a year or two or ten.”

He sees blinding white buildings under a cloudless sky, a winking blue sea. “I would try that,” he says. Two-hour lunches, he thinks. Siestas. That salty ham.

“Supposed to be cheap in the south.”

“Our kids would speak Spanish.”

“With that snooty accent. How great would that be?”

“Do they have.” He’s about to say basketball but decides against it. He’s pretty sure they do. “Chimneys?”

“You’d never have to look at another chimney in your life.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Hot nights.”

“Sangria.”

“Stupid shitty bankers.”

When they get home Shane makes them cocktails with lots of rum and mint. He finds Lou smiling and alert at the sliding doors, listening to the portable phone.

“I want to ask you something,” he says.

“Guess who that was,” she says, hitting a button on the phone and holding it to her chest. “Your buddy ol’ pal. Something about dinner?” She examines him happily for secrets. He shakes his head. “At a certain David Fulton’s house?”

“Really.”

She smiles. “I’ll still pretend it’s a surprise.” She holds out the phone for him to listen, but he hands her the drink instead. She takes a sip and aahs with satisfaction. “Do you like his friends?”

“They’re banker-like.”

“Oh but you had a good time that night. You two totally hit it off.”

He wants to tell her she’s wrong but doesn’t know where to start. “Well, you know, he’s a partier. But I’m not exactly their kind of people.”

“No, you’re exactly not. That’s why he likes you.”

“What time.”

“Soon.”

He nods. “That’s not what I needed to ask you though,” he says. She is on the way to the bedroom as he follows close behind. “Do you remember the kid I play ball with? That kid I’m always talking about?”

“The Dragon?”

“No, the kid, the young one.”

“What kid?”

“Samson,” he says.

David Fulton’s house is tall and narrow and elegant, wedged between two nondescript buildings in the foothills of Pacific Heights. The style is unusual for the city, almost Franco-Prussian gothic, stern and gray, with a beautiful copper-green roof pitched extra-steep as if for snow. Poking out up top are two serious chimneys seemingly built for Nordic storms, not California fog and drizzle. It seems strange to Shane that he’s never seen this house before, which looks like it’s been extracted from a quiet city in Austria and potted here full grown.

“Shane!” Fulton shouts, as if they are unjustly separated friends from the old country. He wears very blue jeans and a tight white ribbed long-sleeved shirt. Shane notices his body now, the wide practiced chest, thick shoulders, solid arms. The gym. I’ll have to ask him about Samson, he thinks. “And the lovely Lou. What luck! Come in, come in. Let’s recreate!”

The entire front of the house seems devoted to hallway, long and wide, built with a four-abreast processional in mind. An excellent hallway for a swordfight. The ceilings sit up high enough that they disappear, and light beams out from obscure fixtures along the smooth white museum walls. Shane trails behind Lou and Fulton, observing their soft banter about the house. He reaches out to touch the surface, his hand brushing against cool, hard stone. Marble, perhaps. He pulls his hand back quickly, checking to see if he’s left a smudge.

Their host leads them to a mammoth living room suitable for Christmas caroling or impromptu wedding receptions. Piano. Two large Northern European couches, perversely elongated past any usual size, face one another. Neither one of them would even fit in Sam’s house. The wide windows frame a perfectly coiffed backyard of big squared shrubs, baseball-diamond grass, and flowers, with a flagstone patio to one side sized for small helicopter landings.

“Everybody, meet everybody,” Fulton says. “This is Lou. Shane. You know Ed and some of these bums.”

They smile, laugh, offer pleasantries. “The bums need a drink,” Ed tells Fulton. “Before I tell you the wonderful tale of Texticom.”

“Yeah?” Fulton looks interested. “I thought Phil said no.”

Ed nods, smiling tight-lipped. “Yeah. Well I broke his rice bowl.” Dribble the ball once hard, hit the shot, stare into those eyes. That’s right: you weak, bitch. That’s why you sitting, nigga.

“Unbelievable,” Fulton is saying, shaking his head and smiling. “I want the bloody blow by blow.” They wouldn’t last two seconds on the court.

Lou touches Shane’s elbow and gives him a cautious look: where are you, come on back. He’s not a hundred percent sure how okay they are after the Debra conversation but he winks at her and she winks back. That poor kid, she said. That poor woman. But. It’s not that simple. Once he would have agreed but now he isn’t sure. Maybe it is that simple. Maybe you give a woman a job, you find a disappearing Sam, you do these simple things and make things right. He follows her now, as Lou pulls him away from Fulton and Ed and slips them into another conversation with two tall women by the window. Hawaii is a topic. Fulton’s house is a topic. He watches his wife listening to everyone at once, her senses spidering out to recognize the footsteps of new arrivals in the distant hallway, smell the cologne cocktail of the three men behind her, hear Fulton whispering into Ed’s ear. If he puts his hands against her wrist and neck he knows he’ll feel the quick blood beat of her sharpest self. She is excited, something is happening here even if it looks like nothing. The two tall women are behaving dull and she keeps herself in check, rounding her edges, making pleasant, saving herself for someone who’ll appreciate a stabbing. Despite Lou’s best behavior, the women don’t like her. Most women don’t. But she doesn’t give up, filling in their hollow smiles with a funny self-effacing monologue on her three most embarrassing pairs of shoes, and Shane leaves her there to win their hearts alone. He takes a few steps and inserts himself into another group nearby.

“Shane.”

“Rick.”

“Celeste.”

“Lynn.”

“Loren.”

They wait for him to say his piece and when he doesn’t they slip back to their show in progress. “I wish you’d come in on that.”

“I know.”

“Step up and pet the pony.”

“Who took ’em?”

“Sachs.”

Someone mentions kissing frogs as he nods to the conversational beat, riding the sound, letting the words fall apart. He is on a collision course with drunk.

“So how does David know you?” a woman asks him suddenly. She has long brown hair without an errant strand or split end in sight. Everyone turns to hear the answer.

“We don’t really.” If they’re expecting more, they’re in for their first of many disappointments of the night. “And how do you know him?”

“Everyone knows David. The question is more how does David know us.”

The couple next to her laughs.

“Biblically?” the woman says, smiling.

“Fiscally,” someone pitches in.

“But I haven’t seen you before? Who are you with?”

He glances over at Lou, still deep in conversation. Why not, he thinks. “I work on chimneys.”

He enjoys the small ensuing silence. “Chimneys? Like.” She points a tentative finger at the rooftop above them. He nods. She nods. “Ah,” she says, “you’re a real person.” She trades a meaningful look with one of her pals.

“David’s latest favorite?” the pal says.

“Chimneys,” another man says, musing, not quite getting it. “What’s the Web component?”

“Black widows, mostly.” He’s made the joke before, it works, it’s serviceable, but this time no one seems to hear him.

“You could do something, though, couldn’t you,” one of the women says. “The house-services portal. Everything from chimneys to painting to foundation to whatever, everything. Like an online contractor.”

“I-contract.
Rightman.com
.”

“
Housecare.com
. Homecare. Upkeep.”

“It’s got to be out there.”

“Classic middleman play.”

“Maybe Home Depot’s on it.”

“No, that’s it, you build the thing and sell it to Home Depot. Or bid it out between them and isn’t there another one?” She points at Shane to give him his cue.

“Lowes?”

“Lowes,” she repeats, making it sound somewhat nasty.

The conversation continues. The drinks continue. Cell phones detonate with peppy tunes and are duly answered. Shane slips away to find Lou again but Fulton finds him first.

“The escape artist,” Fulton says. “Now I suppose I see why.” Together they watch Lou holding court in the corner, her laugh rippling through the room. “Where’d she come from? Are there more?”

“I found her at Cal.”

“Sweethearts! My god. She’s going to be king someday. I need to have you over again before she takes her throne.”

“She’d like that. She thinks you’re important.”

“But you don’t.” Fulton grins.

“I don’t know anything about it.” He finds himself staring at a line of incredibly expensive-looking lighting fixtures around the mantle, above the fireplace. “Did you do a lot of work on the house?”

“You like?”

“What’s not to like?”

Fulton laughs. “This couple spent five years fixing it up. I didn’t have to do a thing.”

“You bought it like this.”

“Sure. Everything in it, too.”

“Everything?”

“They took their clothes, I guess. Some people have the gift. Some people like nothing better than to march around the world, looking for this stuff. You imagine?” He points to a simple yet elegant chair in the corner, a silver antique clock sitting on the mantle.

“And they agreed?”

“Some people are good at things. Some are good at money. I said a number and they moved to Paris in two weeks.” He scrutinizes Shane’s face, looking for a reaction. “Totally obscene, isn’t it,” he says, smiling.

They arrive at the front room, far from the guests, where Fulton produces a bottle of scotch and pours for them both. “So when we going to party again?” he says as they clink glasses. “The projects, man, I’m telling you, those projects are a trip.”

Shane shakes his head. I’ve got to get out of here, he thinks. Fulton’s eyes dart across his face, reading him, and he kneels down quickly in front of the fireplace to change the subject. “So what can you tell me about my chimneys?”

Shane squats gratefully beside him. “Not much. They’re big.”

“What do you do when you clean them? Are there chemicals?”

“Brushes.”

“Old school. So you stick a brush up in there.”

“Down. From the top.”

“Of course. From the roof. It all makes sense now. You’re the guy who spends days on the roof. While the rest of us. Yeah, I gotta see that.” He leans forward with a big smile on his face, a best friend suggesting an evening caper. “I always wanted to go up there.” He points upwards and nods.

“I should have brought my ladder.”

“The painters left one.” Fulton squints with mischief. “Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Why not.”

The sun has set but the sky’s still incandescent as they sit atop the crest between two chimneys where an attic window pokes out like a ship’s cannon. Fulton sits carefully at the roof crest, his bare feet propped against the cannon barrel. He stares at the waves of roofs stretching in every direction as Shane gazes down into the dark hole in Fulton’s house. Below he can hear the conversations in progress, the buzzing words floating up the chimney like sparks. From the sound of things, he and Fulton are not missed.