Being ignorant of her tastes, personal or generational, Roy was tempted to ask what kind of place she would like, but when you do that with a woman you deny her the opportunity to blame you if it proves unsatisfactory. Francine was not the only one who had taught him that. From Michelle’s question he divined that she probably wanted to go to an expensive restaurant, or else she would not have asked it. But who could tell what her idea of a “fancy” place might be? Perhaps Baghdad, where the waiters, local lads, wore turbans and carried flaming shish kebabs through the dining room.
He would reserve his decision until he saw what she wore, always the most prudent course.
“Wear what you would want to be seen in by the people you admire most,” he said now.
“You say the most original things I ever heard anyone say. I don’t mind telling you that.”
“That will probably end now that I’m aware of it. Do you have a last name?”
“It’s Llewellyn.”
“Michelle Llewellyn,” said Roy. “Anyone with a name like that should always travel by Rolls-Royce. Now I’d better have your address and phone.”
Sam seemed to make a special effort to be amiable this evening, perhaps in atonement for his obnoxious performance last time.
“So, what are you driving tonight?” The patient showed no visible effects of the brief detour in his recovery; in answer to Roy’s questions he had again disparaged his doctors as mercenary alarmists.
“A fifty-two Silver Wraith Rolls-Royce.”
Sam made a face. “You park it in the lot out there?”
“Nobody’s going to steal it. What they steal are Honda Accords or Toyotas,” said Roy, “which can be chopped for parts.”
“How about scratching or denting?”
“I’m trying to impress a young girl.” Roy could not have explained why he volunteered this information, which would only confirm Sam’s opinion of him. He hastened to add, “But I’m not trying to seduce her.”
“Then why impress her?”
“I guess I’m feeling old at the moment.” He had craved girls in their twenties only when he was himself a teenager. He had always been attracted by a maturity relative to himself. His school-day crushes had been on teachers, not students. Of course he was now aware that everything he told Sam reached Kristin soon afterward. “I think I feel paternal.”
Sam chuckled, though not derisively. He was still on his good behavior. “Well, that’s a new one.”
“Maybe I’m finally growing up.”
Sam raised his big soft hands. “I don’t want to hear that. Please, I’m a sick man.”
Roy turned toward the door, as if by instinct, an instant before Kristin opened it and entered the room. He was not consciously expecting her, nor had he heard an annunciatory sound. It was strange as anything could be, perhaps disquieting.
She wore a sleek beige suit he had never seen before. He could not remember whether he had ever noticed that her eyes were on a level with his own when they stood near each other. Sam of course, if not flat on his back, would have dwarfed them both.
She gave Roy a quick, silent smile and went to Sam and kissed him. Only then did she say, “Oh, hi, Roy,” as if he had been overlooked.
“Kristin.” He brought a chair for her to the bedside.
She sat primly down and addressed her husband. “Maria wanted me to explain why she hasn’t visited you. She’s scared of hospitals. She wants you to come home soon so she can nurse you.” Kristin smiled at Roy. “Maria’s in love with Sam.”
Was this some kind of mockery? Sam didn’t seem to think so. He was grinning.
“Know about old Roy’s latest conquest? My nurse Suzie.”
Kristin looked up at Roy. “She’s very attractive.”
He shrugged. “Any connection between us is only a fantasy of Sam’s. I just gave her a lift last night when her car wouldn’t start.” He waited for Sam to refute this invention, but it did not happen. Perhaps Sam had not stayed on watch long enough to see them leave the lot in separate cars.
“She was setting you up, kid.” Sam snorted. “When did you ever hear of a new BMW not starting on demand? And you’re the car guy.”
Roy thought his best friend was a shit for persisting in this vein, embarrassing him before Kristin. The best way to dispose of the matter, however, was jocular. “And the upshot is that now she is bearing my child.”
Kristin at last lost her smile and turned back to Sam, not offended but rather bored, her habitual response to their sophomoric banter. He feared he might fall back in her estimation to where he had begun.
It was a relief when Sam changed the subject. “How much are you asking for the Rolls?” To Kristin, “That’s what he drove over here and left in the parking lot.”
Kristin turned her golden head to Roy. He said, “Nobody’s going to bother it. If they did, they might do me a favor. I could collect the insurance.”
Sam showed incredulity. “Why haven’t you been able to sell it? What are you asking?”
Kristin said, “Sam.”
Roy should have picked up on it at this point, but he was oblivious. “Well, starting at twenty-five, probably, but I’d probably go significantly lower if the offer was serious.”
“How about twenty?” Sam asked brightly.
“Sam,” said Kristin.
It would not be the first time Sam had found a supposed customer for one of Roy’s automobiles. None of the several persons for whom he had Roy make appointments bought a car or even made a respectable bid. One did not even show up. But, with the probability that his friend’s intentions had been kind—the delicate matter of whether he had expected a finder’s fee never came to the moment of truth—Roy had not chided him till now.
“You’re not going to send around another of those stiffs, I hope.”
Sam pouted briefly. “Thank you too, pal.” He lifted multiple chins; to see a prep-school picture of him nowadays would be a shocker. “I’m calling you on it: I’ll pay you twenty.”
Roy horselaughed for Kristin’s benefit as much as Sam’s. To her he said, “Can you believe this?” He reminded Sam, “You hate foreign cars, especially vintage models.”
“Kris just became branch manager at First United. She ought to drive something that befits her position. I can’t afford a new Rolls, but they look more or less the same whatever the year, don’t they? Nobody but you could tell the difference.”
This statement evoked a number of emotions in Roy. Before the could find a voice for any of them, Kristin spoke up gently, asking her husband, “Can’t we let this go till you come home?”
Sam pouted again. “I thought you’d be pleased. Take a test drive. Roy doesn’t sell these things unless they are in tip-top condition, as he always tells me. Tell her, Roy.”
Roy was under the complex pressure of conflicting importunities. Such dilemmas were necessarily resolved by satisfying nobody, if not damaging everybody. God damn you Grandys, he could say only in fantasy.
In reality he caved in favor of Sam, who after all lay in a hospital bed with a faulty heart. Sam’s wife had just become manager of a bank.
“Drive it on loan for a while, Kristin. See how you like it. No”—he was going to say “strings,” but the word was incongruous in this context—“no obligation. I mean, it’s among friends. Oh, and congratulations!”
“Thank you. The present manager is retiring, and—”
“They offered it to me,” was Sam’s jest, “but I got stuck here.” He then made amends for the interruption. “Ain’t she something? Fact is, she had to fight like hell for the job. She’s a tough customer. Don’t fall for the modest act.”
“Please shut up, Sam,” said Kristin. “Roy shouldn’t have to listen to the hustle, close as he is to us.”
Roy was moved by the statement, but he addressed Sam. “So get out of here soon, will you? We’ve got some celebrating to do: Kristin’s promotion and of course your recovery. My own sole accomplishment is keeping your friend
ship.” For the last few words he turned to include Kristin.
“We’ll go in the Rolls,” said Sam. “I’ll serve as chauffeur. I’ll get me a black cap. You quality folk can drink in back, from the built-in bar.”
Kristin rose in one fluid movement, without pushing the chair away.
“You just got here.” Sam’s triumphant tone had turned instantly to the plaintive.
“I’m only going to the bathroom.”
When she had closed the door, Sam told Roy, in a lowered voice, “Talk her into taking the Rolls. She’ll resist, but I know she’ll like it. And thanks for offering to lend it to us. I really couldn’t do it otherwise.”
He wasn’t “doing” it now, but of course Roy would not make that point, though he knew Sam would never pay him a dollar, no matter what. He walked to the window and looked down on the parking lot.
Sam asked, “Is it still there?”
Roy turned. “When are they going to let you out of here?”
Sam’s smile soured. “If this place bores you, think of what it does to me.”
Now his best friend was chastened. “I didn’t mean that, kid. I just hope you can come home soon.”
Kristin emerged from the lavatory. Sam waited until she reached his bedside, before announcing to them both, head swiveling, “Now for my surprise. They’re letting me out tomorrow—pending another episode, of course.”
Kristin was standing, hands clamped to the back of the steel chair. “Now you tell us. How long have you known it?”
“Your excitement is overwhelming.”
“Of course it’s great news.” She showed a bright face to Roy, as if asking for confirmation.
Roy played along. “That’s terrific, kid. What time should I pick you up?”
“I’ll do it,” said Kristin.
“Let Roy,” said Sam. “You’re manager of the First United Bank. He just waits for phone calls from wealthy car-nuts.”
That was normal needling, and Roy was relieved to hear it. “There haven’t been many of them lately.”
Kristin noted drily that tomorrow was Saturday. “Meanwhile, can I remove some of this stuff tonight?” She indicated the bedside table overloaded with electronic gear.
Sam said no, anything she took away would inevitably be needed as soon as it was gone: one of those truths of nature.
“I’ll check at the nurses’ station to see what time you’ll be released tomorrow,” Kristin said.
Sam asked Roy, “You’re not leaving, too?”
“No. I’ll hang out for a while.”
“Bye,” Kristin said to Sam. She did not come to kiss him this time. “Goodbye, Roy.” She had hardly glanced his way.
8
Roy took the chair last used by Kristin. “I wanted to talk to you in confidence,” said Sam. “In case you haven’t noticed, Kris has no sense of humor. That’s no criticism. It’s praise. She doesn’t have a dark side. You have to have a decadent streak to look at things our way—I mean, you and me.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Roy. It was not that he disagreed, but rather that he disliked being included in someone else’s self-characterization, even that of his best friend.
Sam elevated his head with an elbow hooked behind the pillows. It looked uncomfortable. “I’ve been on the phone with Ray and Sy.” Ray Walser was his accountant; he shared Seymour Alt with Roy. “I’m thinking about Chapter Thirteen.”
“Christ sake.”
“How about that?” Sam snorted and rolled back, staring at the ceiling. “My wife’s a bank official, and I’m about to go into bankruptcy.”
“That might affect her career, wouldn’t it?”
“Ha! What would it do to mine?”
Did you ever have one, you selfish asshole? was not said aloud by Roy, and not even, exactly, thought; it was as if muttered by a passing stranger. “You must be in deep.”
“The failure of eToys was the last straw. I was still buying it when it was at the peak price, in the low eighties.”
“The stock went to zero, didn’t it?” This event had been of only academic interest to Roy, who never played the market.
“They were really fucked when Toys ‘R’ Us linked up with Amazon. I don’t know how it could have been foreseen. Shit.”
“What does Kristin think of this?”
“She doesn’t,” said Sam, still talking to the ceiling. “She doesn’t know everything about me. Some guys have girlfriends on the side. I got this.”
“You won’t be able to hide Chapter Thirteen from her.”
“Don’t I know it.” He rolled over ponderously to look at Roy from a horizontal position.
“How much do you need?”
Sam produced a laugh from the massive cavern of his belly. “I wouldn’t want to scare you off by answering that literally. But I could take the edge off, avoid bankruptcy for the moment anyhow, with, say, fifty.”
Roy stood up and one-handedly carried the chair to the corner.
“Mind giving me an answer?” Sam asked. “I’d kinda like to know where we stand.”
Roy resented the “we.” He fussed with the chair, as if its precise placement were a matter of substance.
“Okay,” Sam said behind him. “How much could you let me have?”
Roy moved to the foot of the bed. “There hasn’t yet been any year I’ve made a profit.”
Sam grimaced. “You mean selling old cars.”
“That’s what I do.”
His best friend produced a rhetorical groan. “That’s never been what you’ve lived on.”
“If you could call it living.”
Sam was not amused by the self-disparagement. “You don’t live the crummy way you do because you can’t afford otherwise.”
“Look,” said Roy, “I couldn’t just give you that kind of money.”
“It would be a loan, for God’s sake. Sy can set that up.”
Roy deplored seeing the hope in Sam’s eyes. He disliked the idea of making him happy by monetary means, which experience had proven to be the shortest-lived of states. By the time the funds reached him, Sam felt more deprived than ever.
“I’ve got to think about this. You can’t expect to spring this on me and get an immediate answer.”
Sam scrooched up until his head was higher on the pillow. “You won’t even feel it. You and I both know what your dad left you.”
“You’ve always been more of an authority on that than me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Roy did not want to get into an argument. “You had a father of your own.”
“That fucking loser.”
Because Sam had usually been at Roy’s house, Roy had never seen much of Samson Grandy, Sr., a stockbroker who had not done as well as his only child thought he should have, leaving him, on a coronary failure in middle age, with only slightly more than a million in securities along with half that in real property, which Sam soon impatiently sold at lower-than-market prices. Sam’s mother had died, after a lingering illness, when he was twelve, and his father, like Roy’s, never remarried; unlike Victor Courtright, he had a series of lady friends, not one of whom young Sam could abide. It was fortunate for him, then, that he could enjoy the friendship of Roy’s father, who preferred Robin and Sam to his own son. Roy had resented this, but blamed neither his sister nor his best friend.
“Would Sy Alt be the right guy?”
“To handle this? Why not?”
“He can’t represent us both.”
Sam sighed. “This ain’t a divorce, kid. We’re not adversaries. I trust you.” He assumed a huge grin.
Roy had always been irritated by Sam’s premature optimism. “It would have to be set up as a legitimate loan, with a believable rate of interest, you know. The IRS is watching.” None of his other “loans” to Sam over the years had exceeded the ten-thousand-dollar annual limit for untaxable gifts. “And what could you list as collateral? Didn’t you tell me your house is in Kristin’s name?…Don’t ke
ep smiling. I’m not saying yes.”
Sam turned his head away, but the visible side of his face, large as a ham, looked smug. Roy felt an impulse to hurt him in a unique way, neither physical nor emotional. But what was left? Torment him mentally with some unsolvable brain-twister? The fact was that Sam had always had his number. Perhaps that was true of Kristin as well—Sam had hers, not that she had Roy’s, with whom she was still hardly more than an acquaintance. Giving Sam fifty thousand dollars because of her would be grotesque.
“I won’t tell your pal Kris,” said Sam, as if he had read Roy’s mind, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“It never occurred to me. It’s beside the point.”
“Didn’t you give her your word you wouldn’t lend me any more money?” Assuming that he had his friend morally on the run, Sam was gloating.
“I told you I have to think it over. And it wouldn’t be lending in any case. You’d never return any part of it.” On that note he left the room.
In the parking lot he was wary lest he encounter Suzanne Akens, with whom he had been too unguarded, justifiably earning her scorn. But it was not she who awaited him beside the Rolls-Royce. It was Kristin Grandy.
“Easy car to find in a crowd,” said she, and then, perhaps as a courtesy to him, looked at the coachwork and added, “It really is lovely.”
“I meant what I said,” Roy told her. “Drive it on loan for a while. See how it fits.”
“Please. Let’s take that as one of Sam’s jokes. What isn’t, unfortunately, is his wanting to borrow more money from you.” She elevated her impeccable chin. “That’s obviously what he wanted to talk to you privately about.”
Roy had not sworn an oath of silence on the matter, nor had he been asked to. Basic principle, however, restrained him from saying more than, “The subject came up.”
“Well, it’s your affair, Roy. It’s your money and your friend, but Sam cannot handle money.”
“To say the least.”
Kristin and the Rolls-Royce were a natural pair. They seemed self-illuminated in the beginning twilight. Her beige suit looked golden; the white car showed suggestions of pearl.