Seventh Avenue (42 page)

“I’m glad you didn’t do that,” Jay said uneasily.

“He tried to be nice when I got home from school.”

“He was still there? Without his clothes . . . ?”

“He was wearing some of the old stuff you left.”

“What’d Rhoda have to say?”

“Angry. She was very angry, and she screamed, but I didn’t tell her the truth, I couldn’t. I can’t tell her the truth about anything.”

“I couldn’t either.”

“I always lie to her and tell you the truth,” Neal lied.

“The man try to hit you or something?”

“He didn’t have the guts to. He wants Rhoda’s money.”

Jay seemed perplexed and leaned conspiratorially close to Neal.

“What makes you think that?”

“He would have beat the hell out of me if he was a man. If he didn’t
want
something from her . . . She should’ve introduced me, don’t you think? It would’ve been different then, don’t you see?” he said with feverish animation.

“Of course, Neal. She should’ve introduced you. Making a flophouse outa your home. The woman’s got more nerve than brains. She doesn’t think about anybody but herself.”

Neal nodded gravely.

“I’m glad I told you.”

“You can always tell me everything, like I do you. We’re not just father and son, we’re buddies. You’re my best friend.”

“I’d trust you with my life,” Neal said.

“You are.”

Jay was disturbed by Neal’s predicament and they drove home unusually silent. Huntingdon Close was a tree-lined cul-de-sac and Great Neck’s most fashionable road. It represented for Jay the embodiment of all the synthetic ideals he had picked up from the movies: the penniless provincial foreigner who eventually winds up his jaded existence on millionaire’s row - self-made, country-club set, hunting lodge in Vermont, winter villa in Florida, a boat on the Sound - in short his new life was a sharp reproach to the society that created both him and the illusionary vision he sustained in symbolic counterpoint. Jay,
however, had broken the mold. Except for the house, which he had built at Eva’s insistence, he enjoyed none of the privileges that money entitled him to. He had undergone a profound change, so profound that he could not gauge the extent of
it,
and he never regarded it as anything but a sudden and inexplicable loss of faith in his old ideals. His business no longer had any fascination; through sheer energy and ability it had become largely autonomous: it was too big for any man, and he and Marty had delegated most of the responsibility to half a dozen young creative people who injected a new dynamism into a giant grown unwieldy. They had three hundred shops from coast to coast and a dozen factories operating round the clock, and although the reins of the business were still held firmly in Jay’s hands, he no longer had the drive and initiative
that
had created a multimillion-dollar business out of a small shop and a marginal wholesaler’s loft.

The center of his universe was Neal; only Neal could re-create the
terrible,
agonizing love that he had felt towards Terry. It was primarily an uncreative relationship in that it ripped out his heart and guts, for he realized that the child was suffering, that his loyalties were still divided, that he had developed a shell of armor as obvious as that of a turtle, and that he was too old for his years. His manner and attitude Jay found inscrutable. The divorce was a fact of life
that
Neal had accepted calmly, but it had driven him underground, and Jay always had the sensation of pursuing an elusive and wily animal with an innate sense of survival and all the destructive weapons of the beast in retreat.

Of all things, Jay had developed a conscience about Rhoda. He recognized the wisdom of activating the dead battery her life had become. The store he gave her in the divorce settlement provided her with a purpose and an interest. She was an excellent saleswoman, but she had been too deeply schooled in Finkelstein’s business methods, and this very nearly destroyed the store. Two years earlier she had got into a terrible muddle with her accounts, bills were overdue, manufacturers were screaming about injunctions and subpoenas, and the staff was stealing with impunity. Jay had heard through trade gossip about this state of affairs, and at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, after almost two years of freedom, he had presented himself at the shop with two of his accountants, a batch of signs that proclaimed “Sale! Sale! Sale!” even though it was only November, and he had in ten minutes fired every sales assistant - eleven of them - given them two weeks’ severance pay, and had
closed the shop for the day.

When Rhoda had
arrived,
she was astonished to
find
the store closed
and had pounded on the door for a good ten minutes.

One of Jay’s minions let her in.

“
What’s going on?” she had protested. “Did we have a fire?”

“
No, Mr. Blackman’s taken over.”

“
Taken over? He can’t do that. It’s not
his
to take.”

She rushed into the small office in the back where the accountants were wrestling with double-entry books six months out of date,
which seemed to have been kept by someone using the continental
form of seven and who had then decided that seven and four made
eight.

“
Jay, what
d’you
think you’re doing? Where’s all the girls?”

“
I threw them out. I’m trying to straighten out this
shithouse
.”

“
Who asked . . . ?”

“
I can’t let you go
under .
. . It makes me look bad.”

“
What about my staff?”

“
I hired six girls, Saturday morning.”

“
Six? I had eleven.”

“
You had six girls. The other five sat on their asses when they
weren’t robbing you blind.”

“
You don’t have any authority here. It’s mine.”

“
I’ve got the authority of the bankruptcy courts. ‘Cause if I don’t
take the bull by the horns, you’ll be sitting there next
month,
and tears
won’t do a bit of good. They’ll chop you up like you were a piece of
li
ver.”

She pointed to a bespectacled little man with exquisitely shaped
hands, using three different colored
inks
.

“
Who’s that?”

“
That, Rhoda, is an accountant. He sees to it that if any stealing’s
going on, you’re doing it. You’re getting rooked, left, right, and center.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “Bills, most of them ninety days
overdue. They can put you in the hands of a receiver for something
like this. It’s a miracle you’re not on the street already.”

“
What do you mean by that?” she said angrily.

“
Look, Rhoda, what you don’t know about business could fill the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
When you got the store, the articles of
incorporation were dissolved. I told you to become a limited company
for fifty dollars. Any neighborhood shyster with a notary public stamp
couldn’ve done it for you. Limited company, limited liability. They
can’t touch your personal assets. You wouldn’t listen to me. They
can put a lien on your bank account, take all your personal possessions at
home .
. . furniture, clothes, Neal’s things, goddamnit!
Do you understand now?”

The little man triggered some figures on an adding machine.

“
Eleven thousand, two hundred and forty-six dollars, and sixty-one cents,” he said. “Could be worse.”

“
Which means a loss of thirty thousand dollars on top of that, at the
old
net-profit
figures.
Added to a five percent loss in potential turnover
figures.
Forty-eight thousand.”

The man turned some pages, did a few quick sums, and turned
to Jay.

“
How do you remember figures like that with so many stores and
factory production figures as well? You’re five hundred dollars off.
How do you do it?”

“
If you knew the answer to that, I’d be
the accountant
and you’d
be running
the business.
You make out the
checks,
and I’ll sign them.”

“
Do you want to establish any cash balance with any of the people
she owes money to? They might not want to give her credit in
the
future
.”

“
When they see my signature on the checks, they’ll know the
business is
solvent,
and they’ll give her all the credit she needs.”

All the checks were signed in fifteen minutes.

“
Willie,” he said to the other man at the desk, “call a messenger
service. I don’t want any of these checks mailed. All delivered by
hand and put one of my personal compliment slips in every envelope.”

“
Yes, Mr. Blackman.”

Jay walked through to the front of the store and looked at the
dresses on the racks. He picked up a dress every now and then and
threw it to the floor in disgust.

“
What’re you doing, selling to funeral parlors? I can’t believe that
you bought all this
dreck.
Must be a blind man who’s picking out this
garbage.”

“
I haven’t had time to cover the market and the store, so I only
get to the city once a month.”

“
Then who’s been giving you this crap?” He examined a
dress
and recoiled when he saw it was priced at fifteen dollars. “This is a
copy of one of my dresses. Blunt knocked it off. Mine sold at sixty
dollars a dozen. So how in hell’s name can you charge fifteen for a
dress that isn’t worth four?”

“
I paid a hundred and twenty a dozen for it.”

“
Not possible. You know too much about dresses to be taken in.”

“
Jean, my manageress, bought it. I okayed the invoice. She bought
it from one of the salesmen who represents about six manufacturers.”

“
Oh, my God,” Jay moaned. “Willie,” he screamed. “Get out here.”

Willie appeared, rubbing ink stains off his cuff.

“
Check every one of Blunt’s invoices and find the dress that goes
with it. She’s being overcharged.”

“
The salesman usually gets here on Mondays. I wonder what he’ll
think when he sees the store closed.”

“
What’s his name?”

“
Freddie Stevens.”

A face peered into the darkened grimy window, and a hand
rapped
against it. Jay opened the door. The man was wearing a camel’s hair
coat, a porkpie
hat,
and a slimline mustache.

“
Good morning,” Jay said.

“
Wha’ happened?”

“
Who are you?”

“
Freddie Stevens.”

“
Come in, Freddie.”

“
I know you?”

“
You will. How are the horses treating you?”

Freddie smiled a whole set of capped teeth.

“
Not bad. I hit
the double
at Hialeah on Friday. Been balling it up
all weekend.”

“
I like a man who knows his horses.”

“
Thanks, friend. Where’s Jean?”

“
Jean took the day off.”

“
Rhoda still running the joint?”

“
In a manner of speaking.”

“
Well, I’ve got some terrific numbers to show her. Immediate
delivery.”

Jay switched the light on.

“
Rhoda, Mr. Stevens is here to see you.”

Rhoda picked her way through
a rail
of dresses.

“
Hiya, Rho, how’re things? Where’s Jean?”

“
Off,” she said, glaring at him.

“
Somethin’ wrong?” he asked uneasily.

“
No, what’ve you got?”

He opened his sample case, pulled out eight dresses.

“
All colors and sizes except black and brown. And I can get you
delivery no later than tomorrow afternoon. What do you say? They’re
runners everywhere.”