The Cadence of Grass (23 page)

“The expansion teams are hardly the whole story.”

“Stuart, are you all right?”

“No.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

“I’d really like to be available to you as your friend forever.”

“Yes.”

“You know that I’ve always liked you, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Stuart was a man in front of a firing squad.

“I won’t make you talk. We can continue this when . . . when—”

“When I’ve absorbed my situation,” he said with sudden clarity.

“That’s right,” said Evelyn, oddly desperate to confirm his discovery. Stuart would absorb things and they would go on from there. He would take in the idea that his dedication of a serious portion of his life to someone he loyally loved was now to be canceled by divorce, and that he must begin to plan how he would get on with his life.

This feeble concept was barely enough to allow Evelyn out the door; his eager nodding was about to break her heart. Stuart had indeed hit bottom, but it would be amazing to watch how far he would bounce.

“We have to deal with one of Daddy’s lawyers again, Melvin Blaylock. Why can’t we get one of the nice ones? Remember the nice one with the breath mints? This Blaylock was always against us.”

“Exactly,” said Evelyn. “So fuck him.”

“I’m there,” Natalie nodded emphatically. “When’s this shit supposed to go down?”

“At three o’clock. But which one is Blaylock? Is he the one with the pointed teeth?”

“No, that’s Larry Crowley. This one has wiry hair.”

“Long earlobes with creases?”

“No, that’s Calvin Banning. This one is just wiry hair, no neck and a wet lower lip.”

“Of
course
.”

Neither knew why Melvin Blaylock wanted to see them, but they feared bad news. Seated in the conference room at Valley National Bank, they were doodling on complimentary pads. Natalie was making a picture of Melvin Blaylock from memory, and it was surprisingly accurate. Evelyn’s horse was a juvenile silhouette.

The only surprisingly thing about Melvin Blaylock, looking as he always had in gloomy worsted, his bald pate allowing wrinkles of insincere surprise to travel all the way to the back of his head, was that he was accompanied by Stuart who, through size and vitality, seemed comparatively glamorous. Because of his dramatic black turtleneck sweater, the central heating was giving him a red face. He still had his blond hair in bangs, and the big watch that gave time and tide for both hemispheres was fastened outside the sleeve of the sweater.

“Which of you are we meeting with?” asked Natalie, exhibiting extreme wariness at the sight of her vigorous husband.

“You’re meeting with Stuart,” Blaylock said, closing the door. “Can I get anybody anything?”

“Then why,” Evelyn said, “are you here?”

“Stuart wants to keep the record straight, and—” he lit up the pause with his smile “—he has hired me to represent him.
You’re
here to preview the impact on the estate. That’s a courtesy for which you can thank Stuart.”

It was hard to believe that Stuart had called this meeting. Having deployed papers in front of himself, he looked, for the first time since entering the room, at Natalie. “I told Mel here that nothing you say is true, and Mel told me that if we go to trial we don’t want somebody else controlling the dialogue, that we want a level playing field. Isn’t that how you put it, Mel, level playing field?”

“Just like that, Stu.”

Natalie made an exaggerated slump into her chair and breathed out through pursed lips while allowing her raised eyebrows to drop. Evelyn went back to work on the horse. Melvin Blaylock was thinking how the opening rounds of a divorce were like the first bowel movement after Thanksgiving, awful and unforeseen. But it was great having an irate client, since reasonable ones turn you into a bureaucrat. Stuart’s opening salvo was gratifying, though Melvin was glad no extrafamilial witnesses were present, as a large percentage of them would’ve concluded that Stuart was ready for the booby hatch. He’d need to clip his wings if this thing ended up in court. Also, the sweater would have to go; all you could see were those blond bangs.

Stuart was ready. “It started with a dance, the way you moved your pelvis like a breeding polar bear. I went for it. I slaved for your dad, that goddamned cannibal. I couldn’t do what he wanted, not and go on believing I was still a human being. Then I got a pile of wood and bricks and pipes and wires and concrete and shingles and I built a house.” He showed them his hands. “I built a house and moved a whore in. Then I moved in with the whore. The old man beat me up on the job, and the whore sold me out every way she knew how. My answer was to work harder so my father-in-law could screw me over and lavish opportunities on Paul. Evelyn, did I ever tell you who I think Paul is?”

Evelyn shook her head infinitesimally.

“Well, let me tell you now, Evelyn, because you’re a good person, maybe not quite on the planet but a good person anyway, and you should know: Paul is the Antichrist.”

“Ah,” said Evelyn. This was one she hadn’t thought of.

“That’s strong,” mused Natalie.

“I wanted a baby, but you wondered how you’d look in a bathing suit. That’s understandable, but you didn’t want to
go
swimming. Natalie, when I get done with you, I’m adopting a houseload of little kids from Bulgaria, where they let you have as many as you want, and I’m raising them to college age on
your money
.”

“You’ll have to get it first, and that comes after
I
get it.”

“Oh, you’ll get it.”

“Thank you, Stuart, I appreciate that.”

“I thought, Natalie’s going to be fine, Paul’s going to be fine, Mama Whitelaw too, even though she abandoned her babies. Evelyn, I hate to put you in the same list with them, but you’ll be fine because you take it as it comes. When I asked Natalie where I’d live after we got this behind us, she said she had ‘no idea because as far as this house is concerned you’re shit out of luck, I’ve come to like it, corny grows on you.’ I had my mother’s china—now I don’t care about
china
—but I had this china she painted and it’s not well done and it’s not worth anything, but Natalie, when you told me I couldn’t have it because you expected company, I said to myself, ‘Let’s blow this cunt out of the water—’”

Covering his face with one hand, Melvin raised the other in caution as Evelyn felt herself cringing.

Natalie turned to Blaylock. “Do I have to listen to this?”

“In a word, no. But it makes a nice preview. Stuart has retained counsel, and this is pretty much where he’s coming from.”

“Will I be able to explain how bored I am by all this?”

“Absolutely. Jurors are unlikely to be moved by it, but you can unburden yourself as you see fit.”

Stuart was motionless except for the tears that began to pour down his face. Evelyn spoke to him.

“I am resigned to the fact that your divorce is inevitable,” she said, “but I think you both will have to go through the usual channels to get this settled and even so it’s very very sad.”

“My favorite channel,” Blaylock said, “is the one where you take the asset pile and go right down the middle with a cake knife. Stuart, pull yourself together.”

Stuart said directly to Evelyn, from an anguished face, “It’s not money, I want to get even.”

This propelled Melvin Blaylock to his feet. “Stuart, Stuart, Stuart,” he said, “money is
how
you get even!”

Choudri Rabindrinath Majub, at precisely 9:15 a.m., strode into Paul’s office, his calling card fluttering to the secretary’s desk midstride, a vigorous presence. “Ah, good morning,” he said, thrusting out his hand and tossing a ratty tan topcoat over what Paul had imagined to be important documents. “C. R. Majub,” said the visitor.

“Yes,” Paul said levelly. “I know who you are.”

“My God, what a climate!” Majub was a small man, a narrow-featured face, his neatly parted hair combed straight to the side from the part. He wore a Scottish tweed jacket, twill trousers and an unstarched white shirt with a broad red-and-brown silk tie covered with tiny horses, and a pair of cordovan shoes that on a normal-sized man—Majub was small—would have weighed six pounds.

“Papers arrived at my hotel—plenty of time, thank you—and reviewing everything—may I sit?—I experienced appropriate shock. Never saw receivables at these proportions! There’s a loyal customer base we can continue to look to, but not as panacea for some very startl—”

“Look,” said Paul gruffly, “instead of going over this column by column, can you give me sort of an executive summary?” There was a very long silence, long enough to begin hearing sounds from outside the building.

Majub smiled, and Paul tried to remember why this aborigine kept turning up in his life. At the same time, he meant to keep a bit of pressure on Majub. “Why the smile?” he asked.

“I always smile when I conceptualize,” Majub said with an even bigger smile.

“Oh,” said Paul. “How far’d you get with it?”

“I’m there, baby.”

“Would you like to share?”

“Mr. Crusoe, I am a polite man. I aspire to being
infinitely
polite, but I accept that I shall never achieve it.”

“The self-improvement craze is sweeping the country. What about my bottling plant?”

Majub’s attempt to seem imperturbable was unavailing, given the light that danced in his eyes. “Clearly, you have had great success,” he cried, “at running this concern into the ground!”

Paul gazed at him heavily. “You look happy.”

“I’m not!” With the flat of his hand, Majub smoothed his tie and then buttoned his jacket over it.

Paul’s attention was drawn unwillingly to all the tiny hairs bristling from the tweed, which gave Majub’s air an insectlike alertness. Why someone would wear something like this was beyond him, and he felt increasingly hostile; nor could he shake the queasy feeling that he should know more about this tormenting brown gnat.

“You must understand,” Majub said, “that my vital interests are tied to the best valuation we can accomplish. Our fees are a measured portion of the sale. There is no motive for me to understate the worth of this firm. But I cannot be unrealistic, as prospective buyers know they will have to
live
with the facts if they elect to
purchase
.”

“Just seemed to me you were a tad aggressive in characterizing my management.”

Here an astonishing belly laugh burst from Mr. Majub, who wiped his eyes and said, “Come, come, Paul.”

“Mr. Crusoe,” said Paul.

“Sure,” said Majub, peering up in a pixieish manner. He was having a wonderful time.

“Las Vegas!” Paul shouted. “We met in Las Vegas!”

But Majub just smiled and pointed under Paul’s desk. “Is that your dog?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Whitelaw.”

Majub seemed to reflect for a spell before speaking. “America is a marvelous country,” he said. “How the world has enjoyed living under your nuclear umbrella!” This confused Paul. He thought Majub
was
an American.

“I grew up in Maine,” said C. R. Majub. “My father was a lobsterman, but both my uncles were cowboys. My uncle Olatanji was the champion of the rodeo.”

The women turned to each other.

“Look it up,” he went on. “Olatanji Majub, world champion of the big rodeo!”

Certainly he sounded very American for someone born, as he’d told the sisters, in the Punjabi state next to the Great Riff. Only occasionally was his English disturbed by a howler, as when he attempted to describe his girlfriend back in Ohio as “red hot,” and inadvertently described her as “piping hot.”

Natalie found him peppy and well dressed and was pleased to welcome him into her home so recently vacated by her ex-husband, about whom she always reached the same stark conclusion: “Good riddance!”

Word of Majub’s arrival had been circulating for days. He’d visited several attorneys and personally done a rapid inventory at the bottling plant among items that must’ve been quite unfamiliar to him. With each department head he had let an amused glance at Paul’s office be glimpsed; when the foreman for procurement suggested tarring and feathering for the CEO, Majub shook his head faintly, implying that something more restrained but definitely along those lines was already in store.