Two Much! Read online

  “Charlie, Charlie,” I said, “what makes you talk that way? I have been out of town. You can ask Gloria.”

  “I was there yesterday,” he said. “And I went to your apartment, talked to that freak you’ve got in there.”

  “You’ve got my home address, Charlie? That’s wonderful; now we can see each other after business hours, too.”

  “You’re in town now, you bastard, and—”

  “Charlie, what are you upset about?”

  “You owe me three hundred and fifty dollars, you son of a bitch!”

  “That much?” With my free hand I opened my checkbook, which I keep edged in black.

  “I’ll take it out of your ass, Art, if I can’t get it any other way.”

  “Charlie, you know how bad the greeting card business is in the summer. Don’t act as though I’m not your friend, buddy, you’ve cashed my checks before.”

  “Some of them,” he said. “And some of them I used to fix bicycle tires.”

  “That’s good, Charlie, that’s very funny. Listen, I’m looking at my checkbook right now, and—”

  “The bank repossessed mine,” he said.

  “Charlie, you’re really in top form today. You ought to write this stuff down.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m writing down. Never trust a dirty son of a bitch.”

  “That’s a good rule, Charlie. Listen, to be serious for a minute, I can’t pay you the whole thing right now, but I can send you a check for, uh, fifty bucks.”

  “A hundred,” he said. “And don’t send it, I’ll come down for it”

  “Sixty is the absolute best I can do,” I said. “I have the landlord breathing down my neck.”

  “Eighty.”

  “Charlie, you can’t get blood from a stone.”

  “I can get blood from you, Art Eighty.”

  “Oh, very well. Seventy-five. But I don’t know what I’ll tell the landlord.”

  “You’ll think of something. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “No violence, Charlie, okay? Fun’s fun, okay?”

  “I’ll be as good as the check,” he said ominously.

  “Listen,” I said, “on the trip down, be thinking about this one. ‘Get well soon—my doctor says you have it too.’”

  “Have what?”

  “Don’t worry about it Charlie. What we want is a girl, like a nice cross between a nurse and a hooker, okay?”

  “You’re a complete birdbrain, Art, you know that?”

  “I have faith in you, Charlie,” I said, and hung up, and went out to say to Gloria, “Now, how do you suppose Charlie got my home address?”

  “Probably from your sister.”

  “That’s a wonderful theory,” I said, “only slightly hampered by the fact they don’t know each other.”

  “Charlie was here yesterday when she called,” Gloria said. “He’s paranoid, he thought it was you on the phone, he grabbed it out of my hand and they had a nice long chat.”

  “Goody,” I said. “Get her on the phone, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  I went back to my office and made out Charlie’s check. Seventy? No, I’d better not fool around; he’d sounded truly annoyed. If only all these people would remain calm until Thanksgiving; but they never do.

  Buzz. “Your sister.”

  “Fine.” I pushed the button. “Doris?”

  “My goodness, you returned a phone call. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I think of myself as an only child,” I said.

  “That’s your trouble, Art; you think of yourself all the time. Think about somebody else once in a while and—”

  “The reason I’m calling,” I said, “is to tell you I understand you had a nice chat with Charlie Hillerman yesterday.”

  “Who? Oh, that artist man in your office.”

  “That’s the one. And Doris, I just wanted to say, if you ever give anybody my home address again, I will come personally over there to Red Bank and cut your vocal cords.”

  “Oh, that got to you, huh?”

  “This is very serious, Doris. There are all kinds of wrong-headed people wandering loose in New York; you can’t be too careful.”

  “If you’d behave decently to people, you wouldn’t have to be afraid of them.”

  “What a wonderful concept. In the meantime, keep your mouth shut about my address.”

  “I will, if you’ll answer my calls.”

  “I’m answering. I suppose it’s Duane and the child support money again.”

  “I just can’t talk to him, Art,” she said. “If I even call him on the phone, he rants and raves so much it terrifies me.”

  A perfectly natural reaction, it seemed to me. “If you’d behave decently to people, Doris,” I said, “you wouldn’t have to be afraid of them.”

  “Oh, you think you’re so smart. All I want you to do is call him and tell him this time I really will have him arrested and put away in prison for ever and ever. Really really really.”

  “Uh huh. I’ll call him tonight”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “Of course not. I’m making a note of it now.”

  “And I’m sorry I gave out your address.”

  “Good. I hope I’m not. I have to hang up now, the other phone is ringing.”

  I hung up, and shook my head. The idea of me phoning Duane Cludder and ordering him to pay my sister her back child-support money was absurd on the face of it. Casting it from my mind, I turned to the accumulated mail stacked on my desk by Gloria, and waded through another sea of pettiness and cheap threats. And also a statement from my distributor, full of numbers out of some sort of accountants’ fantasyland and accompanied by ah insultingly tiny check. I buzzed Gloria. “Get me All-Boro.”

  “And two Excedrin?”

  “Naturally.”

  The rest of the mail slid smoothly across my desk and into the wastebasket, except my Master Charge statement, which went into the center drawer of the desk. As I put it in, my eyes lit on my former glasses, worn until three years ago, when I’d purchased my contact lenses I visualized myself putting them on, saying to Charlie Hillerman, “You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses, would you?”

  Buzz. “All-Boro.”

  “Right.” I pushed the button. “Hello?”

  “All-Boro Distributing. Who’s calling, please?” It was the regular receptionist; I recognized her rotund voice.

  “This is Those Wonderful Folks,” I said. “Put that cheap filthy kike bastard on the line.”

  “One moment, please.”

  While I waited, Gloria came in with the Excedrin and the paper cup of water. I downed them, she went away, and Gossmann came on the line, “Hello, Art? Anything wrong, boy?”

  “Not a bit of it,” I said. “I was just noticing some pretty heavy returns on this statement you sent me.”

  “It’s been a tough year, Art. Looks like people are moving away from obscenity.”

  “According to this statement,” I said, “virtually my entire year’s output has been returned from the retailers.”

  “We’ll send them out again in the fall” he said. “Maybe tastes will change again.”

  “I sure hope so. In the meantime, I don’t know, call it nostalgia, I thought I’d come visit my stuff.”

  “You what?”

  “I thought I’d trot out to your warehouse this afternoon,” I said, “and look at all my cards sitting there.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to do that,” he said.

  “Just a little trip down Memory Lane,” I said.

  “It’s a mess out there right now, Art. We’re doing inventory.”

  “In August?”

  “Sure, it’s a slow time of year.”

  “Well, inventory’s just counting, isn’t it? I’ll come help count. I’ll count all my cards.”

  “Art, you’ll just depress yourself. Besides, I think we’re gonna send some out again this afternoon. They’re probably loading on the trucks right now.”
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  “Fast action, Joe,” I said.

  “Well, we got your best interests at heart.”

  “I’m glad. And I’ve got some other fast action you can do for me.”

  “Anything, Art.”

  “A revised statement,” I said, “and another check, on my desk by next Wednesday. Or I go to the Queens D.A.” He and I both knew that, since All-Boro’s primary product was pornographic magazines and dirty books, the Queens D.A. would just love an excuse to subpoena the company’s records.

  “Aw, now, Art,” he said. “We don’t have to get nasty with each other.”

  “We don’t? Next Wednesday, you unutterable prick.”

  I hung up, and looked around my desk. Time was fleeting. Not only would Charlie be here soon, a visitation I was looking forward to missing, but if I didn’t manage to get out of town and grab an earlier ferry than Ralph, Candy was likely to have a relapse.

  The Christmas card. I needed a Christian; how about Cal Knox? I didn’t owe him any money at the moment. I called him, he loved the idea, and that was that. Anything to take to the island with me? I opened desk drawers, and once again noticed yesteryear’s spectacles. Another thought occurred to me, a different usage than protection from Charlie Hillerman. I chuckled at the silliness of the idea, and put the glasses in my attaché case.

  IN THE NEWSPAPER LIBRARY on West Forty-third Street I read:

  ALBERT AND ELIZABETH KERNER

  DEAD IN FREAK ACCIDENT

  Albert J. Kerner, prominent manufacturer and financier who was chairman of the board of Laurentian Lumber Mills, world’s third largest supplier of wood and wood products, and his wife Elizabeth Margaret Kerner, the former Elizabeth Margaret Grahame, both died yesterday in a freak automobile accident in this city. Mr. Kerner was 57 and his wife 53, and they lived here.

  Mr. Kerner, well known in Wall Street and social circles, inherited much of the family’s company holdings, but in recent years had engaged in expansion, leading to the acquisition of several other firms, including a television station in Indiana.

  The couple are survived by their daughters Elizabeth and Elisabeth.

  Hmmmmmm.

  “YOU MUST BE BETTY,” I said, though I knew better.

  “Not on your life,” Liz said. “But I suppose you’re Bart. Come on in.”

  I stumbled slightly on the threshold. Damn glasses, how does anybody see with them? All my perceptions were just slightly off; objects I looked at were either a bit too close or a bit top far away, or in any event slightly distorted. It was like living in a Dali painting.

  “Watch your step,” Liz said.

  She led me into the living room. Without its party it seemed cozier, with comfortable chairs grouped around a stone fireplace. Portraits on the walls were undoubtedly Mom and Pop; he looked like the sort of fellow who makes illegal campaign contributions, and she looked like a Grahame.

  I have never been in this house before, I reminded myself, and said, “Nice place you have here.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “we already got a buyer.”

  “Oh, yes. Art told me you’re selling.”

  She gave me a sardonic look; I wasn’t being any fun. “I’ll tell Betty you’re here,” she said, and left before I could thank her.

  What was happening to me? I paced around the room, frowning inside my glasses. Usually I’m fairly good at casual chitchat, but just now I’d done a very good imitation of that entire party from the other night All I do is put on spectacles and I suddenly become a baby Frazier; why?

  I suppose partly it was the physical unease caused by the glasses themselves. If you’re constantly afraid you might lean just a bit too far to the left and do half a cartwheel you really can’t devote full attention to bon mots. And also there’s a certain tension involved in facing a girl you’ve recently screwed in the upstairs closet and convincing her she’s never met you before.

  Well, probably it was all to the good. I hadn’t thought in terms of a personality change when I’d decided to have a go at being Bart, but why not? It could only reinforce the physical changes I’d wrought.

  An oval mirror in an ornate frame hung on the wall near the dining room arch, and in it I studied again the new face I’d made for myself. The glasses made me seem more serious, perhaps a bit older, and I’d combed my hair straight back to reveal the receding hairline I usually camouflage. I am thirty now, and for the last year the hair has been retreating from my temples like the tide going out. Never to come in again, unfortunately.

  “Well, hello.”

  I turned around, and Betty had entered, wearing the same white dress and the same hostess smile as the other night. “Now,” I said, “you must be Betty.”

  “Why, you don’t look like your brother at all,” she said, and through the artificial smile it seemed to me I detected disappointment.

  “You look a lot like your sister,” I said. I tell you, I’d never been funnier.

  “Oh, she’s prettier than I am,” Betty said, adding artificial coyness and artificial demureness to her artificial smile.

  “Not at all,” I said. “You’re a terrific-looking girl.” I admit I wasn’t being exactly brilliant, but you try complimenting a twin.

  We chatted on in that sprightly way a bit longer, and then Betty said, “Well, shall we go?”

  “After you,” I said, with a little bow. Christ!

  Liz did not reappear, which was just as well. Betty and I strolled along the dark lanes past the quaint old-fashioned streetlights—imitation gas lamps, very pseudo-London—and did not hold hands. How to proceed? Glibness now would not only be out of character for the persona with which I’d saddled myself, but would also be inappropriate for this Senior Prom beauty tripping along at my side. I was here to ball her, not terrify her.

  In point of fact, just why was I here? In order to get away from Candy and Ralph for a while, to some extent. And because the impersonation was a comic challenge that appealed to me. And because I’d suddenly realized I’d always wanted to fuck twins. And because they were rich orphans.

  Let’s not downgrade that final consideration. I’ve never been familiar enough with money to feel contempt for it, so I wasn’t about to kick a girl out of bed for being rich. Money and those who possessed it had always held a certain appeal for me. My one descent into marriage, to a bitch named Lydia whom I’d met in college, had been based partly on the mistaken notion that my bride’s family was well off. A publisher, I’d thought, is a publisher is a publisher; but not, it turned out, when the things published were four weekly newspapers in rural areas of New England.

  So I was here to amuse myself by rubbing against a rich body. Which meant we were now in the seduction scene. Of course. I was the male lead in a Doris Day comedy. Simplicity itself. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. “It’s charming here,” I said.

  AND THE LADY WILL HAVE the beef stroganoff,” I said.

  The waiter, a slender youth dressed like a musical comedy star, pocketed his pad and pranced away. “I’ve never been here before,” Betty said, looking around in polite approval.

  Neither had I. “I’ve always liked it,” I said. “There’s something … intimate about it.”

  She gazed out across the huge deck polka-dotted with tables, half of them occupied. “Yes, isn’t there,” she said.

  So far tonight I had done everything exactly right, though often for the wrong reason. The boat, for instance. Feeling I couldn’t spend the rest of the summer stealing bicycles every time I visited a Kerner sister, I had this afternoon made an arrangement with a local Fair Harbor teen-ager who possessed a motorboat. For fifteen dollars he would chauffeur me along the bay to Point O’ Woods, wait for me to pick up my date, transport us here to the Pewter Tankard in Robbins Rest, and come back for us at eleven. At that time I would give him a prearranged signal as to whether or not he was to wait for me after returning us to Point O’ Woods.

  Well, I’d prepared all that only because the alternative—assumi
ng no bicycles to steal—was a two-mile walk in each direction. I would not have been in love with that option in any event, but with these awkward glasses confounding me at every step it would have been impossible. Thus, the boat. But now that I was in a seduction comedy, the boat had become the most quintessential of romantic gestures.

  Similarly the restaurant. This was Friday, and my first three dinner choices in Ocean Beach had already been full when I called. But the Pewter Tankard, being slightly off the beaten track—it catered to boat people, and was accessible only by water—had been happy to take my reservation. Romance, again; I had found that little out-of-the-way restaurant, barely half full on a Friday night in August, where we could sit on an open deck built out into the bay and watch the distant lights of Long Island beneath a sky full of stars.

  Betty sipped at her sherry, while I pulled gently on my rum and tonic. She said, “I understand you and your brother are in business together.”

  “That’s right,” I said, and prompted by her friendly inquisitive look I added, “We’re in publishing.”

  “Oh, publishing!” she said happily, making the same mistake I’d made with Lydia. “Do you mean books?” More cautious than I’d been, you’ll notice.

  “Oh, nothing that grand,” I said, in my modest way. “We have a small line of greeting cards. Like Hallmark, you know.”

  “Oh, really! That’s fascinating.” And apparently it was, since she went on from there to ask several hundred questions about the company. My answers were generally more descriptive of Hallmark than of Those Wonderful Folks, but the gist was there.

  Meantime, nothing was happening on the food front “Excuse me,” I finally said to Betty, and snagged the waiter as he pirouetted by. He assured me our appetizers were scant seconds from delivery, but his manner struck me as shifty-eyed, so I ordered another sherry for Betty and another rum-and for me. “By Pony Express, all right?”

  “Certainly, sir.” And he gamboled off.

  “You’re very masterful,” Betty told me. Her disappointment that I was not my brother seemed to have waned. In fact, she now said, “I bet you have the business head in the family, don’t you?”