Recessional: A Novel (12 page)

The Colombian intellectual gave a surprising answer: “Two reasons. First, sitting here I can watch the pretty girls as they float about our dining room. Second, when you’ve edited a newspaper in Bogotá and traveled frequently to Medellín, you learn always to sit with your back to the wall, and in a corner like this I have my back to two different walls. Double precaution.”

That session of the Palms tertulia ended with the members’ assuring their new manager that he would be welcomed back at later meetings when the discussion would probably focus on some less morbid topic.

Dr. Zorn had now enjoyed a series of triumphs in getting the two Indiana couples to enroll in Gateways and in welcoming the affluent Yo-yo Mallorys back into their big apartment, and on his terms. But he had accomplished nothing in his real problem area, filling the beds in Assisted Living.

But now he was about to achieve an outstanding victory in that
field, not because he had been especially brilliant in setting it up but because a used-car dealer from Sarasota had to go to the men’s room. The fortunate accident was set in train one day as Andy sat in his office biting his nails, studying a report on what the Palms was spending on advertising for Assisted Living and the meager results the ads were producing: “Krenek, there’s got to be a more effective way of bringing patrons in here to Assisted.”

“You have to keep your name before the public. Otherwise you slowly die.”

“Granted. But you don’t always have to do it in the same old way. Tell me. Who is our ideal prospect?”

“For what? Residence in Gateways or temporaries in Health?”

“Gateways takes care of itself. Long-term assured growth. Over here in Health is where we make our money. Who’s our target?”

Krenek thought for a few moments, then spoke judiciously: “First of all, someone with above-average income. Stable family but not rich enough to afford round-the-clock private nurses. An accident happens? An operation is necessary? A temporary bed here is their ideal solution.”

“I know, but explain who these people are.”

“Upper-class but not elite. What you might call upper-upper.”

“What are they like?”

“The men go to work in offices. They belong to luncheon clubs like Kiwanis. They play golf. And when older family members get real sick, toward the end, they want to get them into a center where they’ll get good care. They aren’t afraid to spend money, these people, especially on parents who’ve been good to them. They love them, but they do want them out of the house.”

Andy was reflecting on something Krenek had said: “Kiwanis, aren’t they something like Rotary? Which has more prestige?”

“I think you’d have to say Rotary, at least in this part of Florida.”

Without further comment Zorn said: “We’re going to invite Rotary clubs to have their meetings here. We’ll give them free dinners.”

“They meet at noon.”

“Good. Luncheons are cheaper,” and Zorn’s plan was set. From the start it began to produce results, for when these men of upper management saw that the Palms had a touch of class they began recommending it to friends who needed health services for the elder members in their families.

The operation was simple. From a list of Rotary clubs, Krenek
selected one nearby, telephoned the secretary, extended the invitation and set a date. Then Andy told the kitchen staff: “Wednesday noon. Rotary lunch. Important to us, so serve an extrafine meal. There’ll be tips.” The Rotarians, enjoying the break in their routine and a chance to inspect a different operation, completed their club business with dispatch and listened to Zorn deliver what he called “a low-key, no-heavy-breathing, soft-sell description of the Palms,” after which the men were taken on brief tours of the health-care units. The procedure required only eighty minutes from the Rotarians and less than five dollars a plate from the Palms. As the men finished their meals they saw a box labeled:
FOR OUR HELPFUL WAITERS
, and many who had enjoyed the food tossed in dollar bills.’

Zorn’s strategy worked, because although he could not point to a single instance in which a Rotarian, after a free meal, brought a member of his own family to the Palms, he knew that the men did talk to others about the two health services, and several families in the area who enrolled elderly relatives did say: “We heard about you from our neighbor who attended a lunch here.” When careful calculations were made, Zorn and Krenek reported to Chicago: “The Rotary lunches pay handsomely. Assisted Living is slowly beginning to bloom.” But one such gathering brought an unexpected surprise.

Krenek had invited a club from the Sarasota area and was pleased with the number of apparently well-to-do men who traveled north to visit. The meeting started well, but just as Dr. Zorn was ready to launch into his spiel an excited Rotarian who had slipped out to go to the men’s room came bursting back: “Hey, fellows! Guess who I just met out in the hall!” He brought with him an old man of singular appearance, for despite his advanced age, the slump forward in his hesitant walk, and the cheapness of his sports shirt and trousers, he had the slim figure of a rigorously trained athlete who had not allowed the years to pile on excessive weight. Dr. Zorn knew him only as Mr. Bixby, but now the Rotarian who discovered him was excitedly addressing the luncheon: “Fellow Rotarians, this man is one of the all-time great baseball players, Buzz Bixby of the immortal Philadelphia Athletics of 1929, ’30 and ’31. A computer study has just decided that they were perhaps the premier ball club of all time, because of their fabulous pitching staff,” and without notes he reeled off the names of that incomparable staff: “Grove, Earnshaw, Walberg, Rommel, John Picus Quinn and Howard Ehmke.” As he mentioned
each name, the old man nodded approvingly, for with his bat and glove he had helped them win their games: “And among these immortals was Buzz Bixby!”

“What’s his story?” Zorn whispered and Krenek explained: “His admirers found him in a flophouse without a dime, so they put together a fund to buy him life occupancy in one of our less expensive one-room jobs in Gateways.”

“Was he pretty good?”

“Hall of Fame.”

“How old is he?”

“Approaching ninety, but he still has all his marbles.”

“And his physique,” Zorn said admiringly. “Does he give us any trouble?”

“He’s a teddy bear. Everybody loves him.”

Now the man who had found him wandering in the halls made the formal introduction: “I’ve persuaded Buzz to tell us about that unforgettable afternoon when he achieved immortality.”

Standing tense and poised as if waiting for a fastball from some Yankee pitcher, the old fellow began what Zorn accurately judged to be a set speech; a sportswriter who admired him had gone to the record books and composed several flowery paragraphs that depicted that long-ago game and Bixby’s role in it. Having given the speech many times, he had learned how to deliver it with maximum effect. The sportswriter had coached him on one important point: “Buzz, you mustn’t sound boastful. The facts are powerful enough, so you can afford to start low-key and self-deprecating.”

“What’s that?” Buzz had asked.

“Sounding like you don’t know you’re a hotshot. It can be very effective. Start with exactly these words, and you’ll win your audience right at the start.” Now, speaking to the audience at the Palms, he obeyed instructions: “Some who are entitled to have an opinion believe it was the greatest game in the history of baseball, but I’ve seen better on television.” He knew the competing teams, the year and even the specific dates of memorable games: “Bobby Thomson’s one-out homer against Ralph Branca, Wednesday, October third, 1951, that won the National League pennant, or that grand World Series, Boston-Cincinnati, sixth game, Tuesday, October sixth, 1975, with Carleton Fisk dancing around the bases in the eleventh inning. But what I am about to relate was the greatest single inning in baseball,
with no one qualified to cast a negative vote.” The effect of these polished words was sobering, for his listeners could see that the old man meant to be taken seriously. But then, using a tactic he had found effective, he turned away from the words the sportswriter had written for him and dropped to the street accents of his youth.

“Can’t never forget it. Columbus Day in Philadelphia, 1929. World Series fever. The A’s and Cubs locked in a duel. Saturday game all-important. We win, we gotta near lock on the world championship. They win, they surge on to take it all.

“As I’m leavin’ home for the ballpark I’m stopped by Zingarelli, who runs the sandwich shop: ‘Buzz, you gonna have a great day.’ So I ask: ‘You the prophet now?’ and he says: ‘Columbus Day, ain’t it. All us Eyetalians got power this day. You gonna be hot.’

“So I thank him, but when the game starts I think: That crazy Eyetalian don’t know from nothin’, because we can’t get men on base let alone around to score, while Chicago is runnin’ wild. They rack up two runs in the fourth and explode in the sixth with five runs. And in the seventh they add another to insult us. Score them eight, us zero. And no sign of us bein’ able to change things, because their pitcher Charley Root ain’t throwin’ baseballs, he’s throwin’ BBs. We can’t even see ’em let alone hit ’em. Game is lost and we’re in deep trouble.”

At this point in his recollection of that historic day, unequaled in World Series history, Buzz allowed his entire body to relax in despair. Hands, fingers, shoulders, head all displayed the grief of a professional athlete whose team has collapsed, and he looked so forlorn that Zorn felt sorry for him, a fine fellow who had thrown away his chance for the world championship.

Suddenly everything changed, for he judged that he should return to his prepared speech. Straightening his head, stiffening his jaw, and making his eyes flash, he kept his voice very low and with increasing volume delivered the lines he liked best: “But our A’s were not dead. Slowly, like a summer storm about to explode in fury, we began to chip away at our overconfident enemy with a determination never before seen. The miracle happens slowly, nothing dramatic to scare Chicago, just a scratch hit here, another there until they realize, too late, that the full storm is upon them.”

An imposing figure, he returned to his own words: “Al Simmons nudges a home run over the wall, saves us from the disgrace of a
shutout, but that makes it only eight to one. Foxx gets a hit. Bing Miller slips one through the middle. Another scratch hit and I come up with two on and the score eight to two, still their favor. I shoot a hard one toward second, where Rogers Hornsby, greatest second baseman of all time, dives for it and misses by one inch. I’m safe and two runs score. On and on our bats rattle out hits like the spatter of raindrops in June, so that when I come up for the second time in the inning, again we have two men on, and this time I hit a Texas Leaguer, you know, a short pop fly just past the infield. Now the best man in the majors to handle a Texas Leaguer is Rogers Hornsby, but this time he gets a slow start on his famous backpedal and again he misses by one inch and again I bat in two runs.

“At the end of that famous inning we have ten runs, unbelievable, and the victory. And our luck holds, because next day we go into the bottom of the ninth trailing two to zero, but like before we start pecking away and win the game three to two, and wind up the series four to one, favor of us.”

Recalling those miraculous days when he was twenty-two and champion of the world, he stopped being a garrulous old raconteur and finished with an effective parable penned by the writer: “And so we see that we are the toys of fate. Chance determines so much of our lives, as my case proves. I keep with me photographs of my two hits in the wild inning. They show Hornsby missing my grounder by less than an inch and my pop fly, same margin. An inch and a half in his favor, I’m a bum. An inch and a half my way, I’m in the Hall of Fame. Chance does direct all.”

The light faded from his eyes. His voice returned to its characteristic rumble, and once more he was eighty-eight years old, enjoying a Florida retirement complex paid for by admirers who felt that they too had shared in the glory of that distant Columbus Day in 1929.

Although Zorn was mesmerized by Bixby’s talk, he was not entirely happy with it, for the old hero had talked so long that he denied Zorn a chance to deliver his sales pitch about the Palms. But the lunch was not a loss: the Sarasota club members told so many of their fellow Rotarians in south Florida that the great Buzz Bixby was residing at a rather neat place called the Palms that they began telephoning to see if they might hold one of their meetings where Buzz could address them. So many asked that Zorn had to say: “We’d be honored, but we can’t keep doing this for free,” and the various clubs
gladly paid for their lunches. Zorn also organized a program so that he was assured ten minutes at the end to speak about the Palms. As the weeks passed he found that he was listening to Buzz so often that he had memorized the speech and would catch himself reciting as he went about his duties: “Some who ought to know are of the opinion that it was the greatest inning in the history of baseball,” so he made an adjustment in the schedule. He spoke first, then had Krenek hurry in: “Dr. Zorn! Important call from Chicago,” and out he scurried. Although he and Krenek did notice that patronage from the Sarasota area had increased, in his March report he could not yet tell Chicago: “The Palms is now in the black.” But he would keep working.

One of Andy Zorn’s most reassuring experiences at the Palms was his discovery that John Taggart had told him the truth about the man he would be working with. Ken Krenek had a remarkable ability to work for those above him. He studied their habits, their preferences, their weaknesses and their vaulting ambitions. He then asked himself: What can I do to help this man achieve the best for both of us? He seemed to have neither vanity nor envy.

At fifty-four he was the epitome of indispensable service, as exemplified in that marvelous word
factotum
(from the Latin
facere
, do, and
totum
, everything). A smiling pragmatist, he had the job of keeping everyone happy, which meant that he was on call a good twenty hours each day. A leaky faucet was brought to his attention at midnight, and a bus arriving fifteen minutes late for a scheduled nine-in-the-morning start was sure to result in telephone calls to Ken, as he was generally called. He arranged for guest quarters when relatives visited residents, found dentists and ophthalmologists when needed, and arranged tours to museums and parks and places of unusual interest in the Tampa–St. Petersburg area, work for which he was applauded by his appreciative guests.