Rich Man, Poor Man (56 page)

The telephone rang, and Rudolph looked at his watch. Tom had said he would come by at five and it was almost that now. He picked up the phone, but it wasn’t Tom. He recognised the voice of Johnny Heath’s secretary on the phone. ‘Mr Jordache? Mr Heath calling.’

He waited, annoyed, for Johnny to get on the phone. In his organisation, he decided, when anybody made a call, whoever was making it would have to be ready to speak when the phone was answered. How many slightly angered clients and customers there must be each day in America, hung up on a secretary’s warning trill, how many deals lost, how many invitations refused, how many ladies who, in that short delay, had decided to say no.

When Johnny Heath finally said “Hello, Rudy,’ Rudolph concealed his irritation.

‘I have the information you asked me for,’ Johnny said. ‘Have you get a pencil and a piece of paper?’

‘Yes.’

Johnny gave him the name and address of a detective agency. ‘I hear they’re very dependable.’ Johnny said. He didn’t inquire why Rudolph needed a private detective, although there must have been some guessing going on in his mind.

‘Thanks, Johnny,’ Rudolph said, after he had written down the name and address. Thanks for your trouble.’

‘It was nothing,’ Johnny said. ‘You free for dinner tonight?’

‘Sorry,’ Rudolph said. He had nothing on for the evening and if Johnny’s secretary had not kept him waiting he would have said yes.

After he hung up, he felt more tired than ever and decided to postpone calling the detective agency until the next day. He was surprised that he felt tired. He didn’t remember ever feeling tired at five o’clock in the afternoon.

But he was tired now, no doubt about it. Age? He laughed. He was twenty-seven years old. He looked at his face in the mirror. No grey hairs in the even, smooth blackness. No bags

under the eyes. No signs of debauchery or hidden illness in the clear olive skin. If he had been overworking, it did not show in that youthful, contained unwrinkled face.

Still he was tired. He lay, fully clothed, on the bed, hoping for a few minutes of sleep before Tom arrived. But he could not sleep. His sister’s contemptuous words of the night before kept running through his mind, as they had been all day, even when he was struggling with lawyers and architects. ‘Do you enjoy anything?’ He hadn’t defended himself, but he could have pointed out that he enjoyed working, that he enjoyed going to concerts, that he read enormously, that he went to the theatre, prizefights, art galleries, that he enjoyed running in the morning, riding a motorcycle, he enjoyed, yes, seeing his mother sitting across from him at the table, unlovely, unlovable, but alive, and there, by his efforts, not in a grave, or a pauper’s hospital bed.

Gretchen was sick with the sickness of the age. Everything was based on sex. The pursuit of the sacred orgasm. She would say love, he supposed, but sex would do as a description as far as he was concerned. From what he had seen, what happiness lay there was bought at too high a price, tainting all other happiness. Having a sleazy woman clutch you at four in the morning, trying to claim you, hurling a glass at you with murderous hatred because you’d had enough of her in two hours, even though that had been the implicit bargain to begin with. Having a silly little girl taunt you in front of her friends, making you feel like some sort of frozen eunuch, then grabbing your cock disdainfully in broad daylight. If it was sex or even anything .like love that had brought his mother and father together originally, they had wound up like two crazed animals in a cage in the zoo, destroying each other. Then the marriages of the second generation. Beginning with Tom. What future faced him, captured by that whining, avaricious brainless, absurd doll of a woman? And Gretchen, herself superior and scathing in her helpless sensuality, hating herself for the beds she fell into, adrift from a worthless and betrayed husband. Who was immersing himself in the ignominy of detectives, keyhole-peeping, lawyers, divorce - her or she?

Screw them all, he thought. Then laughed to himself. The word was ill chosen.

The telephone rang. ‘Your brother is in the lobby, Mr Jordache,’ the clerk said.

‘Will you send him up, please?’ Rudolph swung off the bed, straightened out the covers. For some reason, he didn’t want

Tom to see that he had been lying down, with its implication of luxury and sloth. Hurriedly, he stuffed all the architects’ drawings into a closet. He wanted the room to look bare, without clues. He did not want to seem important, engrossed in large affairs, when his brother appeared.

There was a knock on the door and Rudolph opened it. At least he’s wearing a tie, Rudolph thought meanly, for the opinion of the clerks and bellboys in the lobby. He shook Thomas’s hand and said, ‘Come on in. Sit down. Want a drink? I have a bottle of Scotch, but I can ring down if you’d like something else.’

‘Scotchll do.’ Thomas sat stiffly in an armchair, his already-gnarled hands hanging down, his suit bunched up around his great shoulders.

‘Water?’ Rudolph said. ‘I can call down for soda if you…’

Water’s fine.’

I sound like a nervous hostess, Rudolph thought, as he went into the bathroom and poured water out of the tap into Thomas’s drink.

Rudolph raised his glass. ‘Skol.’

*Yeah,’ Thomas said. He drank thirstily.

There were some good write-ups this morning,’ Rudolph said.

“Yeah,’ Thomas said. ‘I read the papers. Look, there’s no sense in wasting any time, Rudy.’ He dug into his pocket and brought out a fat envelope. He stood up and went over to the bed and opened the envelope flap and turned it upside down. Bills showered over the bedspread.

*What the hell are you doing, Tom?’ Rudolph asked. He did not deal in cash - he rarely had more than fifty dollars in his pocket - and the scattering of bills on the hotel bed was vaguely disquieting to him, illicit, like the division of loot in a gangster movie.

They’re hundred dollar bills.’ Thomas crumpled the empty envelope and tossed it accurately into the wastebasket. ‘Five thousand dollars’ worth. They’re yours.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rudolph said. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

There’s your goddamn college education that I did you out of,’ Thomas said. ‘Paying off those crooks in Ohio. I tried to give it to Pa, but he happened to be dead that day. Now it’s yours.’

You work too hard for your money,’ Rudolph said, remembering the blood of the night before, ‘to throw it away like this.’

‘I didn’t work for this money,’ Thomas said. ‘I got it easy -the way Pa lost his - by blackmail. A long time ago. It’s been in a vault for years, waiting. Feel free, brother. I didn’t take any punishment for it.’

‘It’s a stupid gesture,’ Rudolph said.

‘I’m a stupid man,’ Thomas said, ‘I make stupid gestures. Take it. Now I’m rid of you.’ He turned away from the bed and finished his drink in one gulp. ‘I’ll be going now.’

‘Wait a minute. Sit down.’ Rudolph pushed at his brother’s arms, feeling, even at that hurried touch, the ferocious power in them. ‘I don’t need it. I’m doing great. I just made a deal that’s going to make me a rich man, I … ‘

‘I’m happy to hear it, but it’s beside the point.’ Stonily, Thomas remained standing. ‘I want to pay off our fucking family and this does it’

‘I won’t take it, Tom. Put it in the bank for your kid, at least.’

‘Ill take care of my kid my own way, don’t you worry about that.’ Now he sounded dangerous.

‘It’s not mine,’ Rudolph said helplessly. ‘What the hell am I going to do with it?’

‘Piss on it. Blow it on dames. Give it to your favourite charity,’ Thomas said. Tm not walking out of this room with it.’

‘Sit down, for Christ’s sake.’ This time Rudolph pushed hard at his brother, edging him towards the armchair, rising the blow that could come at any moment. ‘I have to talk to you.’

Rudolph refilled Thomas’s glass and his own and sat across from his brother on a straight wooden chair. The window was open a little and the city wind entered in little gusts. The bills on the bed fluttered a little, like a small, complicated animal, shuddering. Both Thomas and Rudolph sat as far away from the bed as possible, as though the first one inadvertently to touch a bill would have to claim them all.

‘Listen, Tom,’ Rudolph began, We’re not kids any more, sleeping in the same bed, getting on each other’s nerves, competing with each other, whether we knew it or not. We’re two grown men and we’re brothers.’

‘Where were you for ten years, Brother, you and Princess Gretchen?’ Thomas said. ‘Did you ever send a postcard?’

‘Forgive me,’ Rudolph said. ‘And if you talk to Gretchen, she’ll ask you to forgive her, too.’

‘If I see her first,’ Thomas said, ‘she’ll never get a chance to get close enough to me to say hello.’

‘Last night, watching you fight, made us realise,’ Rudolph persisted. “We’re a family, we owe each other something.’

I owed the family five thousand bucks. There it is, on the bed. Nobody owes anybody anything.’ Thomas kept his head down, his chin almost on his chest.

‘Whatever you say, whatever you think about the way I behaved all this time,’ Rudolph said, ‘I want to help you now.’

‘I don’t need any help.’ Thomas drank most of his whiskey.

‘Yes, you do. Look, Tom,’ Rudolph said, ‘I’m no expert, but I’ve seen enough fights to have an idea of what to expect from a fighter. You’re going to get hurt. Badly. You’re a club fighter. It’s one thing to be the champ of the neighbourhood, but when you go up against trained, talented, ambitious men -and they’re going to get better each time now for you - because you’re still on the way up - you’re going to get chopped to pieces. Aside from the injuries - concussions, cuts, kidneys *’

‘I only have half hearing in one ear,’ Thomas volunteered, surprisingly. The professional talk had drawn him out of his shell. ‘For more than a year now. What the hell, I’m not a musician.’

‘Aside from the injuries, Tom,’ Rudolph went on, ‘there’s going to come the day when you’ve lost more than you’ve won, or you’re suddenly all worn out and some kid will drop you. You’ve seen it dozens of times. And that’ll be the end. You won’t get a bout. How much money will you have then? How will you earn your living then, starting all over at thirty, thirty-five, even?’

‘Don’t hex me, you sonofabitch,’ Thomas said.

Tm being realistic.’ Rudolph got up and filled Thomas’s glass again, to keep him in the room.

‘Same old Rudy,’ Thomas said mockingly. ‘Always with a happy, realistic word for his kid brother.’ But he accepted the drink.

Tm at the head of a large organisation now,’ Rudolph said, Tm going to have a lot of jobs to fill. I could find a place in it for you, a permanent place …’

‘Doing what? Driving a truck at fifty bucks a week?’

‘Better than that,’ Rudolph said. ‘You’re no fool. You could wind up as a manager of a branch or a department,’ Rudolph

said, wondering if he was lying. ‘All it takes is some common sense and a willingness to learn.’

I have no common sense and I’m not willing to learn anything,’ Thomas said. ‘Don’t you know that?’ He stood up. ‘I’ve got to get going now. I have a family waiting for me.’

Rudolph shrugged, looked across at the bills fluttering gently on the bedspread. He stood up, too. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said. ‘For the time being.’ There ain’t no time being.’ Thomas moved towards the door.

‘I’ll come and visit you and see your kid,’ Rudolph said. Tonight? Ill take you and your wife to dinner tonight. What do you say to that?’

‘I say balls to that.’ Thomas opened the door, stood there. ‘Come and see me fight some time. Bring Gretchen. I can use fans. But don’t bother to come back to the dressing-room.’

Think everything over. You know where you can reach me,’ Rudolph said wearily. He was unused to failure and it exhausted him. ‘Anyway, you might come up to Whitby and say hello to your mother. She asks about you.’

‘What does she ask - have they hung him yet?’ Thomas grinned crookedly.

‘She says she wants to see you at least once more before she dies.’ ‘Maestro,’ Thomas said, ‘the violins, please.’ Rudolph wrote down the Whitby address and the telephone number. ‘Here’s where we live, in case you change your mind.’ Thomas hesitated, then took the slip of paper and jammed it carelessly into his pocket ‘See you in ten years, brother,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’ He went out and closed the door behind him. The room seemed much larger without his presence.

Rudolph stared at the door. How long can hatred last? In a family, forever, he supposed. Tragedy in the House of Jordache, now a supermarket. He went over to the bed and gathered up the bills and put them carefully into an envelope and sealed it. It was too late in the afternoon to put the money in the bank. He’d have to lock it in the hotel safe overnight.

One thing was certain. He was not going to use it for himself. Tomorrow he’d invest it in Dee Cee stock in his brother’s name. The time would come, he was sure, when Thomas could use it. And it would be a lot more than five thousand dollars by then. Money did not negotiate forgiveness, but it could be depended upon, finally, to salve old wounds.

He was bone tired, but sleep was out of the question. He got out the architect’s drawings again, grandiose imaginings, paper dreams, the hopes of years, imperfectly realised. He stared at the pencil lines that would be transformed within six months

into the neon of the name of Calderwood, against the northern night. He grimaced unhappily.

The phone rang. It was Willie, buoyant but sober. ‘Merchant Prince,’ Willie said, ‘how would you like to come down here and have dinner with the old lady and me? We’ll go to a joint in the neighbourhood.’

‘I’m sorry, Willie,’ Rudolph said. ‘I’m busy tonight. I have a date.’

‘Put it in once for me, Prince,’ Willie said lightly. ‘See you soon.’

Rudolph hung up slowly. He would not see Willie soon, at least not for dinner. Look behind you, Willie, as you pass through doors.

‘My dear son,’ he read, in the round schoolgirlish handwriting, ‘your brother Rudolph was good enough to provide me with your address in New York City and I am taking the opportunity to get in touch with my lost boy after all these years.’