Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (22 page)

 
          
 
In the bathroom, Pym knelt and reached under
the sink. He used a nailfile to pry loose a square tile behind the sink's drain
pipe. He had been hiding his pharmacopoeia behind the sink for years. Granted,
the chances were greater that he would be struck by lightning or bitten by a
puff adder than that he would be raided by the police for having a stash of
deviously acquired prescription drugs, but just as he had been trained to
arrange elaborate blind drops for passing information, to speak in absurdly
circumlocutory language when dealing with his contacts, to bum all his
typewriter ribbons, so too he concealed anything that might raise an eyebrow if
it were discovered in a random accident, like a fire or a flood from a broken
pipe in the apartment upstairs.

 
          
 
There were a dozen bottles of pills in the
hole in the wall—Valium, Dexedrine, Demerol, Seconal, Antabuse (capital for
causing spectacular, mysterious illness at a cocktail party, should such an
occasion ever arise) and four bottles of Percodan, the morphine-based
painkiller on which, Pym was certain, he now had Ivy hooked like a striped
bass.

 
          
 
He poured twenty Percodan pills into an empty
plastic vial, replaced the bottle in the hole and the tile in the wall, and
returned to the living room. Ivy was sitting down again, holding another glass
of sherry and a five-dollar bill. Eva stood before her, looking like a
concerned and caring nurse, the sherry bottle in her hand.

 
          
 
"I thought we should have a taxi take Ivy
home," Eva said to Pym.

           
 
"Of course. Good for you. Is he on his
way?"

 
          
 
Eva nodded. "Be here in a minute."

 
          
 
Pym handed the pills to Ivy, and she smiled at
him. Her eyes were glassy, and it took her a moment to say, "Thank
you."

 
          
 
"Let's help her downstairs," Pym
said. "I don't want her waiting alone on the sidewalk."

 
          
 
"About Jerome . . ."Ivy said, as she
struggled to stand.

 
          
 
"Ah yes . . . " Pym's mind charged
ahead, searching all avenues for access to a high-school diploma. "Can you
borrow a diploma from someone who graduated last year? From the same
school."

 
          
 
"I 'spect Jerome can get one."

 
          
 
"Good. As soon as you get it, you can
consider it done."

 
          
 
"I don't know how . . ." Ivy felt
herself beginning to weep. Tears were backing up behind her eyes and wanting to
squeeze out. For God's sake! she thought. What's going on? I'm grateful, but
it's not worth falling apart over. She swallowed, cleared her throat.

 
          
 
"Now, now. ..." Pym patted her on
the shoulder and led her toward the door.

 
          
 
The taxi was waiting. Pym and Eva helped Ivy
into the back seat. Pym took the five-dollar bill from Ivy's fist and gave it
to the Sikh driver, told him Ivy's address and told him to keep the change—a
two-dollar tip at least, Pym guessed.

 
          
 
"I don't know what the chemistry
is," Pym said as the taxi rolled away, "but blacks have a terrible
weakness for alcohol. Goes right to their heads."

 
          
 
Eva didn't reply. She was recording the taxi's
license number.

 
          
 
"Sikhs don't rob people," Pym said.

 
          
 
"How do you know he's a Sikh? Maybe he's
a Mexican with a turban."

 
          
 
"What kind of talk is that from a
socialist?" He hoped his voice sounded light and jocular.

 
          
 
"I don't turn my back on anybody,"
Eva said. "Not any more."

 
          
 
In the taxi. Ivy leaned her head against the
back of the seat. Her stomach was rolling, and her brain felt like dough. What
happened? One minute she was fine, the next she was pissed as a goat. That last
glass of sherry must've done it. Foul brew, served like wine but with a kick
like booze. No wonder the
British Empire
rotted away.

 
          
 
And probably the pills didn't help.

 
          
 
She rolled down the window.

 
          
 
Remember, girl, if you're going to spew, spew
to leeward.

 
          
 
''Who was she?" Eva asked as she and Pym
reentered the apartment.

 
          
 
"Nobody." He couldn't look at her.
He sensed that he was at a crossroads. He could take the safe path, say
nothing, or ... He busied himself collecting the sherry glasses and putting
them on the tray.

 
          
 
Eva grinned. "Don't bullshit me, Pop. You
can tell me. You having a little fling?"

 
          
 
"A what?!" A series of muscle groups
tightened in shock, snapping him upright and clenching a hand that held a
sherry glass so hard that the stem of the glass snapped.

 
          
 
Surprise had twisted the grin on her face into
a grimace. She said, "Sorry. I didn't—"

 
          
 
"No," he said. "I'm sure you
didn't."

 
          
 
Pym looked at Eva and saw that her face was
radiating uncertainty, bewilderment and (maybe he was seeing too much, but he
didn't think so) the first few wrinkles of fear.

 
          
 
He stepped through the crossroads.

 
          
 
The time had come.

 
          
 
"Get a jacket," he told her.
"We'll go for a walk."

 
          
 
BuRNHAM left the YMCA at
7:30
. He had played well, had split games with a
quick and hairy ferret who worked for the Treasury Department. The man was
younger than Burnham, had sharper reflexes and was more aggressive, bumping
Burnham off the "T" and wielding his racket more like an ax than an
epee. Burnham had won his points with wrist finesse and ball control, and by
the end of the fourth game he had perfected a maddening tactic of dinking the
ball low into the far comer, just above the tin, which had brought his opponent
to his knees, cursing and flustered. Burnham won the fourth game 15-6, and he
left the court feeling deft, clever and— intellectually if not
statistically—the clear winner. The match mirrored his day, which had begun
rough and uncertain and had ended on an unexpected high.

 
          
 
The match had been arranged by Hal, the
unofficial pro at the 17th Street Y, which was known informally and
unpleasantly as the Walter Jenkins Memorial Y, after the unfortunate aide to
Lyndon Johnson, whose career had screeched to a seamy halt when he was
apprehended in an unspeakable act with an unidentified stranger in one of the
men's room stalls.

 
          
 
Hal (whose last name was known only to himself
and to God) could never have been formally employed by the YMCA or any other
organization that pretended to conform to conventional morality, for he was, by
his own admission, an accident of nature. It was, he told Burnham one evening
after drinking half a quart of Scope mouthwash, as if his manufacturer had
gathered components for disparate devices and forcibly assembled them into a
bastard machine that could perform no socially acceptable function. Once, Hal
had probably been pretty—back in the days when he lived in
California
and made a living, he said, as
"catamite to the stars." He would have been slight and delicate and
fair. But now his skin was the color of old bone, his gums had receded so far
that his teeth looked as if a fair breeze would cause them to fall like apples
from a tree, and his remaining hair—meticulously molded around an insane yellow
toupee that would have passed for a decent blond merkin—had been peroxided so
often that it was the color of water.

 
          
 
Lacking the courage, the intelligence and the
resources of Quentin Crisp, Hal had not dared flaunt himself in polite society
and so had gone underground. If he could not secure a proper job by normal
means, he would fashion one for himself. Passing through
Washington
a few years earlier, he had spent a few
nights at the Y and had noticed that the athletic facilities were tacky and
unsupervised. Men and women (financial exigencies had long since forced the YM
and YWCAs to share the same building) had to provide their own locks, their own
towels and their own soap, and had to wear shoes everywhere for fear of
contracting some exotic parasite. They could not play squash on short notice,
for court time was allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, so an
individual had to call an opponent whose schedule matched his own, then show up
and wait and hope that his entire lunch hour wouldn't be spent waiting for a
court.

 
          
 
Quietly, Hal began to spend his days in the
cellar of the Y, dressed in white-duck trousers, white tennis shoes and a polo
shirt from the Malibu Beach Club. He bought two dozen cheap towels and rented
them for fifty cents apiece to people who had forgotten their own. Then he
provided padlocks for rent, and sold soap. Finally, as he saw the frustration
of players whose opponents failed to appear or who couldn't get court time, he
began to book games. Knowing that people tended to obey any sign that looked
official, he bought a snappy placard that said reserved and pasted it on one of
the four squash courts. Regular pairs could call Hal and book the court and
know that they would get to play. His tips for providing this convenience
ranged from a couple of dollars to as much as twenty. Before long, all four
courts were under Hal's control, and as he came to know the skill levels of the
various players, he was able to match partners. Nowadays, all one had to do was
call Hal and say he would like to play at such-and-such a time, and he would be
sure of having a court and an opponent who would give him what Hal liked to call
"a rum go."

 
          
 
Burnham sometimes wondered idly about Hal's
private life, but he never asked, and Hal was too smart and too circumspect
ever to let slip anything personal. (Even his one indiscretion, in the grip of
Scope, was not so much a complaint as a matter-of-fact observation.) Hal would
tell anyone who would listen about the sordid tragedy of Walter Jenkins, but
Burnham had the sense that telling the tale was a kind of therapy for Hal—as if
cautioning himself that a stupid slip could destroy the life he had so carefully
built for himself.

 
          
 
Burnham's opponent today was a conversational
fewmet, which was too bad because half the enjoyment of a vigorous workout came
from pleasant, vacuous, locker-room banter. He shed his clothes quickly,
scurried into the shower, and by the time Burnham arrived had soaped himself so
thoroughly that he resembled an overtaxed Brillo pad. He left the locker room
before Burnham.

 
          
 
As Burnham emerged, he saw Hal gazing
contemptuously at the man's departing back and holding between his fingertips,
as if it was a wet and dirty sock, a single dollar bill. By now, it was an
accepted routine that each player in an arranged match would give Hal five
dollars, and Burnham had dutifully folded a five-dollar bill in his palm. As
unobtrusively as possible, he exchanged it for a ten-spot from his wallet. He
smiled as he gave it to Hal, and Hal's return smile said that he appreciated
the gesture.

 
          
 
"He was a referral," Hal said.

 
          
 
Burnham shrugged. "It happens."

 
          
 
"Not twice." He pocketed the bill.
"Tomorrow?"

 
          
 
"How about
noon
?"

 
          
 
"I'll find you somebody jollier."

 
          
 
Outside, the evening was fine. The infernal
sun that had baked the city all day had finally moved behind the
Virginia
hills, and the air had cooled to a point
where Burnham's pores soon closed and did not pour forth defensive sweat. He
decided to walk home.

 
          
 
He climbed
Pennsylvania Avenue
and crossed the M Street bridge, and not
till then was the peace of his promenade smashed by the painful shriek of Pratt
& Whitney jet engines. A south wind was the curse of
Georgetown
, for it mandated that the glide path of all
aircraft destined for
National
Airport
was directly over the gilded ghetto.

 
          
 
Burnham had long felt that no one should be
allowed to fly over Georgetown, not because of the noise (he rather liked the
idea of Katharine Graham being forced to observe a moment of silence in
deference to People Express), but because flying over Georgetown was
destructive of fantasies. It was like watching a sci-fi movie being shot (the
actors acting to a blank wall which the special-effects wizards would later
transform into an invading armada) or learning how the magician makes you
believe he's cutting the woman in two.

 
          
 
From ground level,
Georgetown
was like the back lot at Burbank Studios.
It could be any number of things: quaint, colorful, historical, chic,
dangerous. What it could not be, and what nobody ever tried to pass it off as,
was grungy.

 
          
 
From the air,
Georgetown
was grungy. The houses, with their filthy
roofs and tiny gardens, were packed together like cattle in pens. The alleys
between the backs of the houses were littered with trash bags and garbage cans.
The carriage lamps and the washed bricks, the leaded windows and the brass door
knockers were all invisible.

 
          
 
From the air,
Georgetown
was revealed as the slum it used to be.

 
          
 
Burnham pushed open the door to his house and
knew instantly that something was amiss. From the second floor came none of the
accustomed cacophony of two tape decks playing two different songs by two
different groups, as each child did his and her homework to his and her Muse.
No food odors came from the kitchen. The kitchen had not been used since
breakfast.

 
          
 
His first conclusion was that Sarah had been
asked to stay late at work, addressing envelopes or laying out the draw for a
celebrity tennis tournament, and had farmed the kids out to friends' houses.
But that made no sense: The children were old enough to be alone in the house
until he came home, and he was capable of subduing a couple of lamb chops and a
box of frozen spinach for them. His second conclusion, a fleeting fantasy that
his family had been kidnapped, was dispelled by a pungent aroma of wine. Red
wine. Good, expensive red wine. A drinker might not have noticed it; the wine
had not been spilled or liberally poured, merely opened and reduced by a single
glassful. Burnham had not had a drink in a year, and his nose for alcohol was
as keen as a shark's for blood. It could detect vodka in orange juice, bitters
in ginger ale and ethanol in any combination through even a screen of Binaca.

 
          
 
He shut the door and turned left and saw
Sarah. She was dressed in a white silk blouse, with a demure little bow at the
neck, and a tweed suit. He didn't know she owned a tweed suit. What was she
doing, applying for a job? Before her on the coffee table was a single tulip
goblet and an open bottle of Margaux. A $22 wine. Judas Priest! Was Town &
Country coming by? She sat on the sofa with her knees together and her hands in
her lap. She hadn't been reading or watching television or doing a crossword
puzzle.

 
          
 
He said, "Hi . . . Hon?" as he shut
the door.

 
          
 
She smiled at him, a vague, perfunctory smile
appropriate to direct at a doorman or a train conductor.

 
          
 
Burnham felt a change in the atmosphere, as if
the barometer was falling, but he sensed that his behavior now wouldn't affect
anything, that whatever was going on had already happened. So he strode across
the room and said, "Where are the troops?" and flopped in a chair
beside the sofa.

 
          
 
Sarah didn't answer. She just smiled again,
more faintly.

 
          
 
Burnham felt like an unwitting participant in
a
Cheyenne
religious ritual. He leaned forward and
filled Sarah's glass and sniffed the bottle. "Times like this I miss the
stuff. Wait'11 you hear what the leader of the free world ..."

 
          
 
"Timothy."

 
          
 
That's all she said. Timothy.

 
          
 
Well? "That's my name."

 
          
 
"I want to talk to you."

 
          
 
Oh God. It was the monster. The children had
rolled back the rock from the mouth of its cave that morning, and sometime during
the day it had emerged. Try to stuff it back.

 
          
 
He forced a feeble laugh. "Their antennae
are something, aren't they? They see things about you, feel things, even before
you do."

 
          
 
"I want to talk to you.''

 
          
 
"What does that mean? You.''