Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (24 page)

“You will convalesce at my villa on Corfu. You can't go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles is about wounds, not healing. You need the Mediterranean sun on your face. You'll heal much faster.”

The suggestion had an immediate appeal.

“Will you be my nurse, bucking up my spirit with your compassion and giving me a reason to live?”

“No, but I have a seventy-seven year old housekeeper who does wonders with Aloe Vera. She has no compassion though. Do not do as she asks, and she spits at you.”

“I've always been an excellent patient. Haven't I, Roee?”

“My religion cautions me from bearing false witness.”

“Really?” Hamo said. “My religion cautions me from witnessing false bears.”

To look at Hamo and wonder was all that we could do.

“Well, a week in Corfu sounds wonderful. As long as you'll be there,” I said to Lydia.

“I do have a TV station to run, Nico.”

“Nico?” Roee wondered.

“Nickname.” I said by way of answer.

“No,” Lydia said, a smile carved from evil delight on her lips, “Pet name.”

~ * ~

Earlier that day we had gotten back to the Savoy at about eight AM. I was exhausted. More than I had been for quite a while. I had wanted to go straight to bed and sleep, forgetting about my wounds, but Roee, of course, would have none of that. He nursed me—well. Then he made me take a scalding hot bath and threw three slugs of Dewar's down my gullet. Only then did he allow me to climb into bed, making me put on a pair of his cotton pajamas first. I usually sleep in only a t-shirt.

“You need to pamper yourself, feel like a little boy home sick from school. Consider it a form of homeopathic medicine.”

“My mother never gave me whisky when I was home sick. You've improved upon mother.”

“Thank you.”

Now that I was in bed, of course, I didn't feel sleepy. I felt talkative. “Should I allow myself to feel like an idiot?”

“Why?”

“I walked into a trap.”

“It happens.”

“Can't let it happen too often, or we could be out of business.”

“Let it be a lesson to you then.”

“Possibly.”

The intoxicating warmth was just beginning to spread out from my stomach, making me feel as if I could defy gravity. Must have been Roee's intention. He wanted me to float off into dreamland. I was just beginning to like the idea, even the sense of vulnerability that came with it, when, in the middle of closing the drapes, Roee was stopped by a thought. “I'm also wondering if there are not other things to learn here,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Pye. If he's this tough on competitors, what must he be like if you're late on your credit card bill?”

“You think there's something more there?”

“I wouldn't be surprised, but I can't figure out what. The cover seems to have held. He was going to murder Elsworth Henderson, not the Fixxer. That much seems clear, but a banker murdering? After all, it's just business.”

I seemed to have been tethered to the ground. For suddenly, although still floating, I was yanked back, couldn't go any higher. "I was still high, but.... “He said that too.”

“Who? Said what?”

“‘It's just business.' Pye said that when he was requesting our sources of financing. He said something about it not being like he was asking me to reveal something important, like, ‘state secrets.' It was, ‘just business.' You know, it occurs to me, Roee, that that's probably the most pernicious phrase in the English language. It's used to excuse so much, isn't it?”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. Roee, what binds society together?”

“Fixx, you need your sleep.”

“Answer my question. What binds society together? What has always bound society together? At least for the last ten to twelve thousand years or so?”

“I don't know. Common beliefs. Religion, on occasion.”

“Roee, no disrespect to your own, but religion only binds the like-minded together. I mean all of society, all of society in the mundane, the real. Nothing exulted.”

“A sense of community, then.”

“But where does the sense of community come from?”

Roee shrugged. “Common needs. Common aspirations. Common desires.”

“Well, as most individual needs, aspirations and desires often clash with one another, the most common one, I suppose, is the need to live well, to prosper, maybe something as basic as feeding yourself, and your family, if you have one. Hard to do that all by yourself unless you're lucky enough to be the sole occupant of an island with plenty of exploitable flora and fauna.”

“How about political systems?”

“Same problem as religion, Roee. If anybody ought to know that, it's you and me.”

“I'm at a loss, then. Why don't I give this some thought while you get some sleep.”

“It's Business, Roee! Business binds society together, Trade and Commerce. It binds us together because I cannot, or do not choose to make my own—” I looked for an inspiration. I found I was lying under it. “Blanket, for example. So I pay somebody to provide this blanket to me, and he paid somebody to ship the blanket to him, and he paid someone to weave the blanket, and he paid someone for the wool from which to weave it.”

“Your narration reminds me of those wonderful 16mm films we used to watch in school on the kibbutz—although we did try to be fairly self-sufficient.”

“You obviously didn't pay attention.”

“No. I think I was passing mash notes to Teddy. He was cute.”

“Business, Roee. The good old profit motive. Individual, selfish needs that, paradoxically, bind everybody together in a society. Not family, not a sense of community, not religion, not political systems, not kingdoms, not nations, nothing like that at all, but, ‘just business.' The simple day-to-day trading of basic needs for civilized existence. That is what separates us from anarchy. It is the core, the essence of human society. Yet we have talked ourselves into believing that business is somehow exempt from the natural human considerations of fair play. We demand that our children learn the—what?—the rules of the road. We demand values in our families, morality among our religions, and ethics among our politicians, but when it comes to business, everything's fair game instead of fair play. It's competition, it's not personal, it's just business. And yet if business is the binding element of society, then nowhere else should basic morality be in evidence in sentiment—and in evidence in fact. Especially nowadays.”

“Fixxer, haven't you always told me, much to my protest, that the universe is amoral.”

“Yes, the universe is amoral, Roee, but that doesn't mean we have to be.”

“Maybe you should stick to vodka,” Roee said.

“So, this takes us back to the original question. Could a banker, in the heat of spirited competition, murder to further his goals? I can't find an argument that would deny all possibility of such an occurrence. Can you?”

“Sad to say—no.”

That settled, my body demanded its due. “Damn, I'm tired.”

“Mental exertion, Fixx. It's the most exhausting kind.” Roee said as he finished closing the drapes, tucked me in, and turned out the lights.

~ * ~

Of the seven days I spent at Lydia's villa in Kassiópi on the island of Corfu, the Mediterranean sun, whose healing properties I was supposedly there for, managed to make an appearance on only three. Which is one more than Lydia made. It was her TV station that kept Lydia away, as she had predicted. It was the fact that Corfu is the wettest location in Greece, with not much less yearly rainfall than London, and the fact that it was, after all, midwinter, that seemed to have deterred the sun. I wasn't that disappointed. The sun as an exception rather than a rule has always been my preference.

Kassiópi, a holiday town without quite being a tourist one, looks out across the Ionian Sea towards Albania. It's a favorite spot to build villas. Lydia's was a wedding present from her shipping tycoon husband who himself had never been to the place. It was all white and sleek and modern with every possible convenience, luxury, and extravagance. It was built on a hill just above the town, a long, narrow building with large windows, and a generous terrace facing the sea to the Northeast, and duplicate features on the opposite side facing the ascent of Mount Pandokrator to the Southwest. The views were of the blue or grey of the sea and the green of the land; the white and dusty red of the town buildings and their roofs, and the now and then rolling black of rain clouds, those coming in from the sea and those gathered to huddle around the peak of the mountain. The spikes of cypress trees appeared everywhere, tall and straight, as if on duty.

It was restful. The problem was, I didn't particularly want to rest. Helen, though, gave me no other choice. Helen, Lydia's seventy-seven year old housekeeper, the one known for her ways with Aloe Vera, took me in hand—she had a very tight grip—and ran my days. Lydia had been right; she had no compassion and very little patience. I was spat upon several times. Helen spoke no English and yet communicated precisely. She was about five feet ten and built like a bull and dressed all in black. She moved like a bank of storm clouds through the sleek white of the villa. She was the near antithesis of her namesake; her face would not sink a thousand ships, but that it would take the wind out of their sails, I had no doubt.

To be fair, I had to moderate these views somewhat after I sat down to the first dinner she prepared for me. It was a local specialty called
sofríto
,
a veal casserole in a white sauce of onions, peppers, wine vinegar, and garlic. I ate it with her homemade bread, alone on the terrace overlooking the Ionian Sea, watching the progress of the black clouds that would bring that night's rainfall. The combination of this wide view of the Earth in its living parts—sea, sky, wind, land, flora and fauna—and the wonders of tastes skillfully combined into something somewhat akin to ecstasy, if ecstasy actually existed, made me quite tolerant of being but a vassal in Helen's hands. At least until she started spreading that Aloe Vera on my face again.

During the days, when there were breaks in the rain, Helen would send me off on walks, slapping a hand drawn map in front of me, handing me the proper attire and booting me out of the villa. Each day a different walk, each walk stunning. It's as if she wanted me to see and get to know intimately this land she lived in. I assumed she wanted me to come back and assure her that her land was as close to paradise as one could get. Loyalty to one's own land often causes the assumption that it is somehow more divine than all other lands, which never rise above the mundane of their dirt. I was happy to so assure her as best as I could in the English she couldn't understand. She would snort in response, turn her head to the right, and spit. I took it that meant that she was pleased.

One cannot walk without thinking, of course, and the thinking can take as many turns and directions as the walk. I kept getting onto narrow trails into my past. I would quickly backtrack, but there seemed to be many trails to my past. The convictions of my parents, sad idealists that they were, kept popping up in the landscape; features one could view as noble from one angle, laughable from another. I kept tripping over my crudely forged double childhood, a childhood so steeped in the “Importance of It All,” yet, by necessity, so conveyed as sunny normal, or, rather, sunny Norman. The dead approached me on the walks—not unusual during a Greek odyssey—but I have little to say to the dead. They are not great companions, the dead, not many laughs.

On occasion, despite all this, even as it threatened to rain again, I realized how good life can be, and marveled over the paradox.

When I returned, Helen the nurse would administer to me again then disappear to prepare dinner. I would fix myself a drink and thumb through the many fashion magazines Lydia had about. Then Helen would serve me dinner. Afterwards, it was time to go to work. Greece is ten hours ahead of L.A. Now was the time to call.

“Talk.” Roee said, miles away.

“It's me.”

“How's the vacation?”

“It's raining.”

“Ah.”

“Lydia's in Athens”

“Ah.”

“Too much time alone.”

“Ah.”

“Talk to me Roee. Tell me of progress.”

“Charles W. Pinsker has made contact with Sara Hutton. I had a lovely lunch with her today in her private dining room. Ate off the finest china. Drank out of Waterford crystal. I think we hit it off quite well. I was conspiratorial in my general aspect and demeanor. I think she appreciated that. She is most interested in meeting Lydia Corfu and talking turkey. Not the country, of course.”

“Of course.”

“We will meet her next Saturday at her house.”

“Good.”

“Are you healing?”