“What makes it Mediterranean, looking down at the Pacific Ocean?”
“Tile roof, big oval windows and doors. The outside wasn’t bad, even though pink’s not one of her favorite colors. It’s the inside of the house she can’t stand. The decor throughout, the furniture, the art, floor to ceiling everything’s Chinese. And she doesn’t even like Chinese food. Listen, I can roll us another one if you want.”
“Not for me.”
“It’s local, Malibu Gold, but pretty good, huh?”
Canavan said, “Yeah, great,” and asked Robin, “Why didn’t this hypothetical woman change the decor?”
“Her husband loved it. He knew what everything was and where it came from. It was like a culture thing with him. He becomes an expert on something besides picking hits. Incidentally, not one of the artists he represented ever made a record that stiffed.”
“He bought all the Chinese stuff?”
“His previous wife, the second one. They redecorated completely after a trip to China.”
Canavan said, “You couldn’t . . .” caught himself and said, “She couldn’t get used to it?”
“Joe, it was like living in a fucking pagoda. Jade figurines, Tang horses and tomb figures, that honey-colored huanghali furniture, blue-and-white Ming garnitures, they’re vases, Ming kesi panels on the walls, ink paintings, opium beds, snuff bottles, ivory carvings, coromandel screens, Quing dynasty court rugs . . .”
“She could’ve sold it.”
“Cloisonné enamel incense burners, Sung dynasty Buddhas. Five years,” Robin said, “she lives with all this Chinese shit cluttering up the house. Big, heavy pieces, the tomb figures almost lifesize. Five years, Joe. She begs her husband, ‘Please, can’t we try something else?’ No. ‘A Mediterranean house, why don’t we do it Mediterranean?’ No. Not ‘No, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.’ Her husband was a cool guy for his age, never raised his voice. But, really, it was all she thought about. She’d smoke a jay and scheme. Like hire a burglar; he takes it out a piece at a time. Or have it done all at once while they’re in Cabo, or Maui.”
“Once her husband’s gone,” Canavan said, “why didn’t she get an auction house in and sell it?”
“She felt it would be disloyal to his memory and it would be on her conscience.”
Canavan thought that was interesting. “But it’s okay if something happens to it.”
“Yeah, like an act of God.”
“Or a fire, in an area known for its fires. You know who you remind me of?”
“Linda Fiorentino.”
“You look just like her.”
“I know.”
“That movie where she goes in the bar . . . ?”
“The Last Seduction. She wants a Manhattan and the bartender won’t look at her. So she goes, ‘Who does a girl have to suck around here to get a drink?’ “
That was it. Not who do you have to blow.
“But as I was saying, when you come right down to it, Joe, who’s out? Who’s hurt? Who gives a shit outside of this person who owns the house?”
“I’ll tell you who,” Canavan said, “if you really want to know. The law. Arson’s a second-degree felony. A conviction can get you two to twenty years. There’s a death as a result, it goes up to five to ninety-nine.”
Her reaction: “For Christ sake, Joe, come on. You want to put me in jail?”
“I’m not the law. All I’m supposed to do is let ’em know when I see a crime’s been committed.”
She said, “Joe, come on, you’re not a snitch. I can tell you’re a very practical guy. How much you want?”
Like that, ready to pay him off.
He said, “What’s your best offer? So we don’t waste time.”
“How about fifty grand?”
“You can do better’n that.”
“A hundred?”
He said, “Mrs. Harris,” and paused. “You mind if I call you Robin?”
Sounding formal now, and he could see she didn’t know what to expect, hesitating before she said, “Sure, why not,” in a kind of vague tone of voice, her mind looking ahead.
He said, “Robin, you’ve talked to a lot of people. Fire, law enforcement, insurance company stooges . . . One of ’em even brought a dog out to sniff around. But no one’s accused you of burning your house down, have they?”
She shook her head and brushed that soft, dark hair away from her face.
“You drive up to the house, the sky’s full of smoke. You’ve already seen houses burning on the TV news, and they’re right over in the next canyon, not half a mile away. You’re thinking, Damn it, why can’t my house catch on fire?”
She was nodding, staring at him with a thoughtful expression, following every word.
“You go inside and stand there surrounded by all this oriental stuff you hate.”
“You don’t say oriental, you say Asian.”
“Either way, you hate it. You stand there looking at all that lacquered stuff, Buddhas and dragons, and you light a joint.”
He watched her raise her eyebrows.
“The joint is to take the edge off, calm you down. But now you look at the match in your hand. It goes out and you light another match and look at the flame.”
She was nodding again, staying with him.
“All that smoke, and remembering what you saw on the news, you’re convinced sooner or later your house will catch fire.”
“I was, I was sure of it.”
“You’re about to lose part of your life, and there’s nothing you can do but stand back and watch. Five years up in smoke.”
Robin waited.
“What you do then is part acceptance and part a farewell gesture to the years you spent here with Sid.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“You light the Wall Street Journal.”
He watched her nodding her head, thoughtful now. She looked up at him and said, “You’re not putting that in your report, are you?”
Canavan shook his head. “I have no evidence to prove it, or disprove what you said. The house was burning when you got here.”
“What about the lady fire warden?”
“Mrs. Montaigne? She must’ve been mistaken.”
Robin paused and said, “How do I pay you the hundred thousand?”
“You don’t,” Canavan said, getting up from the sofa. “I was playing with you, that’s all. Seeing what I could score if I did that sort of thing. You should hear some of the offers I get, I come across a fraud situation and I can prove it. Some bozo in a neck brace looking for a million bucks, says he’ll split it with me.”
“You turn them in?”
“If they’re pros, like the ones that stage car accidents and people are injured. Or if they get ugly about it. Otherwise I tell ’em, forget the claim and don’t try it again.”
“You’re not turning me in?”
“I told you, I believe your story.”
“So what should I do?”
“If I were you?” Canavan said. “I’d keep after the insurance company. Make ’em pay.” He turned to leave, saying, “It was nice talking to you, Robin.”
And saw her raccoon eyes staring at him.
“You can’t stay a while, Joe?”
If he didn’t stay, he could always come back.
HANGING OUT AT THE BUENA VISTA
They lived in a retirement village of cottages set among palm trees and bougainvillea, maids driving golf carts. The woman, Natalie, wore silk scarves to cover what was left of her hair, a lavender scarf the afternoon Vincent appeared at her door. He told her through the screen he thought it was time they met. She said from the chair she sat in most of the day, “It’s open,” closed the book she was reading, a finger inside holding the page, and watched him come in in his khaki shorts and T-shirt.
“You didn’t have to get dressed up on my account.”
She liked his smile and the way he said, “I was right. I’ve found someone I can talk to.”
“Abo
ut what?”
“Anything you want, except golf.”
“You’re in luck. I don’t play golf.”
“I know you don’t. I checked.”
She liked his weathered look, his cap of white hair, uncombed. “You’re here by yourself?”
“On my own, the first time in fifty-seven years.”
She laid the book on the table next to her. “So now you’re what, dating?”
He liked the way she said it, with a straight face.
“If you’re interested, Jerry Vale’s coming next week.”
“I can hardly wait.”
He said, “I like the way you wear your scarves. You’ve got style, kiddo.”
“For an old broad? You should see me in a blond wig.”
“A woman can get away with a good one. But you see a rug on a guy, every hair in place? You can always tell.”
“That’s why you don’t comb your hair?”
Again with the straight face. He shook his head.
“I made a decision,” Vincent said. “No chemo, no surgery. Why bother? I’m eighty years old. You hang around too long, you end up with Alzheimer’s, like Howard. You know Howard? He puts on a suit and tie every day and calls on the ladies. Has no idea where he is.”
“Howard’s been here. But now I think he and Pauline are going steady. Pauline’s the one with all the Barbie dolls.” Natalie paused and said, “I’ll be eighty-two next month.”
“You sure don’t look it.”
“Not a day over, what, seventy-five?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Vincent said. “You’re the best-looking woman here, and that’s counting the maids and the ones that pass for nurses. Some are okay, but they all have big butts. You notice that? Hospitals, the same thing. I’ve made a study: The majority of women who work in health care are seriously overweight.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals?”
“Now and then. No, this is the closest I’ve come, this assisted living. Or as it says in the literature, ‘The gracious and dignified living you deserve.’ As long as you can afford it, live in your own prefab cottage. I did all right with prefab, built terraces, row housing. Some, it turned out, in the wrong place. Andrew came along and blew ’em off the lot.” He said, “I know you were married. What’d your husband do?”
“Commercial real estate.”
“I might’ve known him.”
“In New York City.”
There was a lull. Vincent glanced around the room, at furnishings from another life, expensive-looking pieces.
“You’re happy here?”
“Am I happy?”
“I mean, do you like living here?”
“It’s all right.”
He waited before saying, “Are you in pain?”
“I have my pills.”
Vincent nodded. “Back ’em up with a cocktail in the evening, against orders.”
She said, “Do you always wait till evening?”
“Hardly ever.”
Natalie stirred, pulling herself up. “You can have whatever you like as long as it’s Polish vodka.”
“You want me to get it?”
She said, “Sit still,” up and moving now: slim brown legs in a white shirtdress that barely reached her knees. He could see her fifty years ago, taller, not as frail, dark hair in place of the lavender scarf, a confident, good-looking woman. She returned with drinks in crystal glasses, handed him one and settled back into her chair with a groan. Now she was looking at him again.
“Don’t you have drinking buddies?”
“The guys here,” Vincent said, “the ones who know where they are, either play golf and talk about it on and on, or they sit and watch CNN all day. I get the feeling they miss Ronald Reagan.”
She sipped her drink. “Is it a matter of time with you?”
“I’m given maybe six months. What about you?”
“Anywhere from a few months to ‘who knows?’ “
“Are you afraid?”
“Not so much anymore.”
He said, “You learn to live with it.”
And she smiled. “In a manner of speaking.”
“’Maintaining a quality of life,’” Vincent said, quoting the literature again, “’to which you’re accustomed.’ Only this isn’t what I’m accustomed to. Hanging out, not doing anything.”
“Waiting,” Natalie said. “No, I’m not either.” They sipped their drinks in silence, not a sound coming from anywhere in the house or outside, in that green glare of vegetation in sunlight.
“You want to get out of here?” Vincent said.
It surprised her. “What do you mean?”
“Take off? Go somewhere?”
Natalie said, “I suppose we could,” nodding her head. “Or,” she said after a moment, “you could get your pills and move in here with me. What do you think?”
Now Vincent was nodding in the same thoughtful way.
“Would we sleep together?”
Natalie took a moment before saying, “Well, not the first night.”
CHICKASAW CHARLIE HOKE
This time Vernice started in on Charlie while he was making their toddies, what he did every evening Vernice worked days. Charlie said, “Take a load off your tootsies, honey, and let me wait on you.”
She eased into her La-Z-Boy to sit there as she always did, leaving a space between her round thighs. Vernice was in her forties, younger than Charlie by ten years, a big redhead with the whitest skin Charlie had ever seen on a bare-naked woman. She started in by saying Carlyle, her brother-in-law, hired a family to work his soybeans and now had a job at the Isle of Capri dealing blackjack. It was always someone she knew, the manager of some podunk motel now a pit boss at Bally’s. She’d mention the casinos were always looking for help or desperate for it.
Charlie would say to her, “Honey, I’m not just help.” This time he said, “Honey, can you see me dealing cards?”
“Carlyle says between tips and wages he can make up to a thousand a week.”
“Those people do that kind of work are ro-bots,” Charlie said, pouring bourbon over crushed ice, adding sugar now, an orange slice and a maraschino cherry. “Be a waste of what I’m good at.”
“What, talking to people?”
“Talking, referring to my career, sure.”
“You could tend bar.”
Charlie smiled over at her, Vernice in her pink waitress outfit she wore at the Isle of Capri coffee shop. He said to her, “Can you see me in a little red jacket and bow tie? A grown man my size grinning for tips?” Charlie was six-four and would put his weight at around, oh, two-forty if asked. He had a gut that wasn’t too noticeable on his frame. He had a nose he said was his Chickasaw Indian heritage and eyes like a hawk; he’d set the palm of his hand above his eyes and squint to demonstrate. Seeing himself in one of those little red jackets caused Charlie to shake his head.
He said, “I don’t work for tips—” without thinking, and wanted to grab the words out of the air. Shit. Like a ball you throw to curve low and away and the son of a bitch hangs letter-high on the batter. He stepped over to Vernice with her drink. “I know what you’re thinking, that I don’t work, period, but you’re too nice a person to hurt my feelings.”
“What you do,” Vernice said, “is talk.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Tell baseball stories over’n over.”
“Honey, baseball’s my life.”
“Oh? And what’s it pay now, fifteen years later?”
This didn’t sound like his honey speaking. It was now sixteen years since he’d played ball, but he didn’t correct her.
Now she said, “Tell me what I’m getting out of this arrangement?”
He wasn’t certain what she meant, but said the first thing in his mind. “You get me, you get my companionship—”
“I get to hear you talk,” Vernice said, “is what I get. I get to fix you supper, I get to loan you money . . .”
She p
aused to think of something else and Charlie said, “Till I’m back on my feet. I didn’t quit that bingo hall ’cause I don’t like to work. I told you, how’m I gonna talk to a bunch of old women don’t even know who I am? I need the right spot’s all. Come on, you know me by now. How long we been together?”
He thought she might say too long, though it’d only been a couple months. No, this time she went right to the point saying, “I made up my mind. I’d like you out of the house, Charlie, by the end of the week. I can’t afford your companionship any longer’n that.”
He thought of a remark he could make if this was one of their usual arguments—Vernice fussing at him for not taking the trash to the dump and his saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t notice you broke your leg.” He could say something about her calling this RV in a trailer park on the outskirts of Tunica, Mississippi, the South’s Casino Capital, a “house.” He could say, “Oh, that’s what you call this tin box waiting on the next tornado?” But this wasn’t an argument where you could say what you wanted and then take the trash to the dump.
She was giving him a deadline at the worst time, broke and needing a place to live; so he had to be nice. This wasn’t hard because he did like Vernice, her usually quiet way, her pure-white body, her housekeeping. He told her one time cleanliness was a rule with the Chickasaws: a woman who didn’t keep her house clean was marked, had her arms and legs scratched with dried snake teeth. It was true. He’d give her Indian lore and she’d roll her eyes. Or she’d say he was no more Indian than she was and Charlie would say, “Then how come they called me Chief all the years I played ball?”
Vernice brought him back to right now saying, “By week’s end, Charlie. I’m sorry.”
He turned to the counter and took time to screw the cap onto the Early Times bottle. He turned back to her saying, “What if I’m offered a position by then?”
“I love your choice of words, a position.”
“As a celebrity host. What some of us do when we retire.”
“Shake hands with the slot players?”
“Take care of the high rollers, honey, see they’re comped to whatever they want.”
“Like girls? You gonna be a pimp, Charlie?”
He let it go by. “Or I could set up the entertainment, special kinds of events.”