Condominium (6 page)

“So what’s the answer?” Pete asked.

“He wants to calm us down. He wants us to live with our problem. We’ve got some kind of leverage we don’t know about.”

“A strike?” Wasniak asked.

Forrester thought a moment and gave a single harsh bark of laughter. “Jesus, Stan, maybe you hit it. What if we all, every owner, stopped paying the recreation lease and the management contract assessment? Could they dispossess everybody? Who would they sell the apartments to in this market? Think of the stink in the
Athens Times Record
. The wire services would pick it up.”

“But what difference would that make to him?” Dave asked.

“Good question. It might somehow screw up his next project. These things need lots of permissions. If there was a stink, it might give him political problems somehow. My friends, we are going to have to find out what he’s planning to do next.”

“Nobody,” said Pete, “but nobody is ever going to get all the damn owners to get together on anything, ever. So Marty Liss shouldn’t worry.”

•  •  •

Five minutes after the directors left, Martin Liss had Frank West on the phone.

“Frankie, I don’t see you at the club anymore. You tired of giving me your money? Or maybe you got smart and give up the game.”

“I’ve been having this soreness in my shoulder, like bursitis but it isn’t that. Honest to God, I try to swing a club, it looks as funny as your swing, Marty. The doc told me to lay off awhile, and he’s giving me shots. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back and whip your ass good any day now.”

“You should wait so long. Look, what I called about, you got a couple of letters from Golden Sands about paying assessments on Five-A and Six-E.”

“Wait a minute. Let me think. Oh sure, from some joker there signs CPA after his name, like it is going to make me pay up. Don’t worry about it, Marty. In the file I’ve got the letter from Benjie when he was a director there, saying the transfer to us is free of all assessments and so on and so on. Airtight. There’s nothing they can do.”

“Frank, I got a two-word message for you. Pay them.”

“Am I hearing what you said? Pay? Look, I know it’s peanuts, a few hundred bucks, but unless we sell those two, assessments go on and on, and what the hell is the point anyway, when we don’t have to?”

“The only point you have to know is I told you to pay them.”

“But it just doesn’t—”

“Some days, honest to Christ, you got nothing between your ears but dog shit. What makes you think I got to stay on the phone and discuss things with you? What’s this with wanting explanations?
When I want something done, I tell you to do it, and all you have to do is go do it, you dumb fuck!”

“Now, Marty—”

“None of that either, West. All you do right now is you say to me, Yes, Mr. Liss, I’ll pay it.”

“Yes, Mr. Liss. I’ll pay it.”

“Frankie?”

“Yes, Mr. Liss.”

“Take care of that shoulder, and give my best to Fran and the kids.” Marty hung up and asked Drusilla to get hold of Sully. “And when you get him, hold him about three minutes before you put him through.”

“I’ve got Mr. Sullivan on the line, sir.”

“Well, well, well! What a real pleasure it is to me to talk to Mr. Sullivan the big shot in person! This is a real honor for me, such an important man.”

“What’s with you, Marty? What’s this about?”

“Two executives came to visit you. One was a vice-president of a manufacturing company. One was a partner in an important firm. I know how your mind works, Sully. These two guys have got more style, more class, more smarts than you have. That’s why you pissed on them.”

“On who? Why would I do that? Who’s been lying?”

“Why are you getting so excited?”

“My God, Marty, I’m excited because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about two friends of mine, two successful men I respect. Do you know about respect, Sully?”

“Honest to God, this is some kind of terrible mistake! When is this supposed to have happened? What are their names?”

Drusilla Bryne came in with a letter for his signature, put it in front of him and waited there. He said, “Hold on a minute, Sully.”

Drusilla said, “I’m going to lunch now if it’s okay.”

The office door was closed. That was the rule. Always close it. She was standing to the left of his chair. He winked up at her, switched the phone to his right hand, rolled his chair back a foot and reached his left arm around her. He pulled her close and bent forward and rested his left ear against the trim almost-flat belly, warm and soft beneath the summery skirt.

“The two gentlemen, Sully, were Mr. Peter McGinnity and Mr. Hadley Forrester.”

She stubbed strong slender fingers into the shoulder muscles near the nape of his neck, pressing and stroking, massaging away the tensions. The internal she spoke into his left ear, a
querk
and gurgle, a small growl of midday hunger. Sullivan spoke into his right ear, his voice light with relief. “Hey, I get it! You’re making a joke. Those guys are a total
nothing
, Marty. They’re senior citizens. Retired. There’s nothing they can do to anybody. No leverage. They came bothering me and I told them to shove it. What else?”

As he stroked and caressed Dru with his left hand, he said, “What you are going to have to do is kiss ass. You are going to have to tell them that you are going to take care of every complaint, because that is what you are going to do.”

“Marty! I get it! They’re in your office, right? They’re hearing your end of it. A snow job.”

“Wrong, Sully baby. I’m completely alone.” As he said that he stopped listening to Drusilla with the other ear, leaning away from her to look up at her questioningly. She made a face at him and
raised a fist in mock threat. He cowered back against the fragrant softness of her.

“Well … whatever you want me to do, I’ll do. You know that. But can you give me a guideline?”

“Such as what?”

“One thing those old clowns want, they want Higbee taking orders from the Association instead of out of this office.”

“Then you tell Julian that’s the way it is.”

“I just want to remind you that Julian is milking a nice return out of that situation, and if they give the orders it is going to stop fast. I’m not making an objection. I’m just reminding.”

“What I want over there at Golden Sands is people thinking somebody gives a damn about making them happy.”

“Okay. It isn’t going to be easy turning Julian around. Lorrie will get the message with no problem. Julian is a mule.”

“There’s the joke about the mule trainer.”

“I know. Sure. The guy hits him with a sledge and drops him in his tracks and says, ‘Now I’ve got his attention.’ Okay, Marty. Wilco. You never ask for anything without some kind of reason, and you’re not going to tell me until you’re ready.”

“Sully?”

“Yeh, Marty?”

“Kid, you’re doing a good job there. I’ve been over the statements. One word of advice. This will take the cream out of Golden Sands for a while. So don’t try to look good by squeezing it back out of the other condos we’re managing. Okay?”

“Got you.”

“Take care,” Martin Liss said and hung up. He released Drusilla Bryne. She turned and sat on the corner of his desk, one leg braced, one leg swinging, and looked down at him with a half smile. He noted that she was flushed and her eyes and lips looked heavy.

“So?” she said.

“On your way back from lunch stop in at Benedict’s and get me a liverwurst on rye and a large iced tea.”

Her smile disappeared and she stood up. “Is that all?”

“I’ll be reviewing a lot of figures this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have to ask you to stay over after five. Will you be able to?”

Thus reassured, her smile came back. “Ah, darlin’, I was starting to wonder if you’d ever ask.”

After she left he stood at the windows and looked out across the bay toward the Silverthorn tract, and then went into his private and personal washroom, relieved himself and, after washing, stared at his face in the mirror with the same remote and objective expression he had used at the windows.

GEORGE GOBBIN WAS
a tall dark-complected man in his late fifties, slightly stooped, lean except for a watermelon bulge of belly. He had a craggy face, a gentle, likable manner. He smiled easily and he was interested in people. He enjoyed civic meetings and social events equally, and these virtues had helped him make a pleasant living as a longtime personnel manager at Porter-Gifford, Inc., an old-line manufacturer of industrial pumps, valves and controls located in a small Iowa city.

Throughout his executive career he had clung to the two-hundred-and-forty-acre farm on Bird Creek, twenty-five miles southeast of the city, the farm his great-grandfather had worked and had died on, kicked in the head at seventy-five while harnessing a team to the rock sledge. During hard times he had almost lost the farm, time and again. He had bad luck with tenant farmers. Elda had urged him time and again to sell, but in him there was a
stubborn love of the rolling land, of the earth smells in springtime, of the watersong of Bird Creek.

And then, last year, several events changed the lives of George and Elda Gobbin. A new interstate link was rammed through the countryside within roaring distance of the farm, with a numbered exit a half mile from the dooryard. A remote and mighty conglomerate picked up Porter-Gifford as easily as a child buys a cookie, and soon some shaggy and intense young men had appeared and dismantled Gobbin’s personnel records system and coded everything into the conglomerate computer systems. And a lifelong friend, Hap Sexton—insurance and real estate—said he would like a chance to see what he might be able to get for the farm, and George, dispirited by events, said go ahead, and Hap did, and George accepted the offer that left him with four hundred and twelve thousand dollars after taxes and commissions.

After thirty-seven years with Porter-Gifford, he was able to opt for premature retirement at fifty-eight, selecting that alternative which would pay him seven hundred and twenty dollars a month for life, with Elda to get three hundred and sixty for her lifetime if he predeceased her. Through his local bank he put his four hundred thousand into tax-frees at an average five percent, earning twenty thousand a year. With their savings and the proceeds from the sale of their home, Mr. and Mrs. George Gobbin, after a twenty-day search, found and bought Apartment 3-C in the Golden Sands Condominium in November, paying twenty-two thousand down and signing an eight-and-a-half-percent mortgage for the thirty-four-thousand-dollar balance.

On the six-month anniversary of moving into Golden Sands, on a Thursday, the sixteenth of May, George drove them down to the Beach Mall Shopping Plaza. While Elda did the grocery shopping, he wanted to pick up the new reel he had ordered at Fisherama.
They had phoned to say it was in. When he picked it up, he decided he would not tell Elda what it had cost. He cashed a check at the Beach Bank, bought blades and corn plasters at Eckerd’s, locked his purchases in the trunk of the Chrysler and went looking for his wife. He found her in one of the middle aisles of the supermarket, standing and staring mutely at a display of canned soups. She was a small gray-blond woman with a tendency to gain weight. Lately she had been dieting, keeping careful track of weight and dimension, and swimming an hour a day. She had lost inches around her waist and hips, though not very many pounds as yet. She had a round, worn, pretty face, small hands, large breasts, and eyes of an extraordinarily clear and vivid shade of green.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, George! You startled me, dear. Nothing’s the matter. Edie Simmins said she cooked the meat the other night in chicken broth. I was trying to remember how she said she did it.”

“You can ask her.”

“Oh, I don’t want to ask her. I mean unless it comes up again. You know.”

“Sure.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“What should be wrong? How far have you gotten on your list?”

“About halfway. Don’t look at your watch, huh? I’m doing the best I can. They keep moving things around here, all the time.”

“They want you to have to look for stuff every time, so you’ll see other stuff you didn’t know you had to have.”

“Why don’t you go look at the magazines or something? You make me nervous hanging over me. You’ve done your errands?”

“Okay, okay,” he said and walked away. He walked slowly through the mall looking in the shop windows, and when he came
back she was at the checkout line. He waited and then wheeled the cart out to the car. Three big bags. The white tape dangled out of a bag. He looked at the total: $48.41. “Where does it all go?” he asked.

“Into damn good meals, friend.”

“Okay, okay. The question was rhetorical.”

“Don’t keep saying okay okay okay to me in that tired draggy voice as if you’re being terribly patient with some kind of stupid tiresome person.”

“I’m sorry if it sounds that way. I don’t mean it to.”

He walked away from her, wheeling the cart back to the walk in front of the supermarket. He gave it an extra push and watched it roll into the other carts. When he got back behind the wheel she said, “Thank you for apologizing so quickly, dear.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it’s all over before it got nasty, is all.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you want it to be over?”

“I guess so. Sure.”

“That doesn’t sound very definite.”

“It is definite.”

“Are you cross again today?”

“What makes you think I’m cross, for God’s sake?”

“Look out for that girl on the bicycle!”

“I
see
her!”

“Why did I bother to warn you anyway? Of course you’d see her. You’d never miss a bare brown ass wobbling in the sunlight, would you?”

“If I start going after kids that age, they’ll come after me with a net.”

“I don’t think she was really much younger than that Antonelli girl was.”

“For Chrissake, that was twenty years ago!”

“Which makes it okay?”

“Nothing happened anyway.”

“Those letters didn’t sound like it to me.”