The Arriviste, page 8
Mickey pinched a pair of reading glasses on the flange of his nose and looked over some figures in a memo pad he’d taken from the inside pocket of his jacket. I moved an ashtray from the coffee table to my armrest and inspected the clipper-ship insignia on the base.
The clubhouse lounge was meant to recall a ship’s cabin. By day the decor worked well enough with the light reflecting off the bay and pouring through the French windows, but at night it was sepulchral. The bar, wall panels, floors, roof beams, tables, and chairs might all have been hewn from the same primeval forest and stained for gloom. The mock oil lanterns were too heavily shaded to reveal the color of the upholstery. Coals in a fireplace between us and the waiters’ station gave off no more light than the ends of our cigarettes, which we could make out in a mirror above the mantle. At the far end of the bar, beneath Christmas trimmings, two men hunched over their stools at liar’s dice.
“White Russian?” Mickey asked. He directed his question to the waitress rather than to me. He had pushed his glasses farther down his noise and stared up at her with ardor. I looked away.
It embarrassed her too—she looked from him to me. But it was a moment before I understood that his question had been for me.
“Neil, do you or do you not want a White Russian?”
“A Pinch over, please,” I said to her. She was young, in her twenties, with frizzed brown hair, hoop earrings, frosted lipstick, a gauzy décolleté blouse, and an inscribed pendant in the opening.
“They make a good White Russian,” Mickey said to me, then looked back at the waitress. “Tell the barman to be sure it’s well chilled but not watered down. He shouldn’t load the shaker up with ice. What’s your necklace say?”
“It says ‘Robin.’”
“Robin,” said Mickey, “Robin—”
The men at the bar slammed their dice cups. “Not again!” one cried.
“Robin, forget what my brother here told you and bring him a White Russian too.”
“A Pinch over.” I fixed my eyes on hers. She bit her lip.
“Such a mule,” Mickey said. “Better do as he says. Will you bring us some nuts with those cocktails?” He pushed up his eyeglasses and returned to his figures.
She hesitated. “Is Pinch the red stuff?”
“It’s a whisky,” I said. “The bartender will know it.”
“The bartender’s new here.”
Mickey looked up from his figures. “For the love of Mike,” he cried. “Where’s Jimmy? I didn’t see him when I came in. He must be off tonight. Just our luck.”
“He died,” she said with just the right amount of feeling for a stranger’s demise. I liked her, it occurred to me.
“Died?” Mickey asked. “When?”
“A month ago. A little more, maybe.”
“That so,” he mumbled and glanced down at his memo pad.
She headed with our order to the bar, the cash register like an altarpiece at the back.
“The place is falling off,” said Mickey, his eyes still on his pad. I couldn’t tell whether he was ciphering or doodling. “So, what do you have in mind for B.Y.?”
“B.Y.?”
“You know, your man next door.”
“What do I have in mind? You said there wasn’t time to discuss it now.” I looked past him toward the water. I couldn’t see the current, only the rocking of masts in the slips. The beam of a dock light caught a gull landing clumsily beside it. He was too big for his own good.
“Well, he’s not here yet, so—”
“I have precisely nothing in mind.”
“Am I not going to get anything out of you even now? I’ve been after you about this for weeks.”
I stubbed out my cigarette. A middle-aged couple had crossed the lounge and begun to play backgammon.
Our drinks arrived along with a bowl of nuts. “You don’t have any that are still in their shells?” Mickey asked.
Robin cocked an eyebrow. “These are what we’ve got,” she told him and walked off.
Mickey sipped his White Russian. “Well, this is all right, at least,” he said. “It pays to tell them what you want.”
My whisky tasted soapy. The glass hadn’t been properly rinsed.
Mickey went to work on the nuts. “In Porto . . .” he said while chomping on a mouthful. By Porto he meant Puerto de Habòno. Everyone else said Puerto.
“Yes?”
He swallowed, then studied the surface of a pecan. “Amazing things, the lines, the texture. . .”
“What are you mumbling about?”
Throwing the pecan into his mouth, he said, “I happened to run into our friend at HABEX.” He meant the export bank in Puerto.
He looked past me. I turned and saw one man peering into a trophy case while another checked a coat. “I assume you’re not going to offer him anything now,” I said. “That would be imprudent.”
“Imprudent,” Mickey repeated, with his eyes still on Bud, who looked almost too well-turned out for the occasion. His handkerchief was poised to leap from his jacket pocket, his trousers to walk off on their own. Except for a slender bandage on a shaving cut above the chin, he was flawless.
He had seen us at our table and, with the other man in tow, hurried toward us as if pushed from behind. There wasn’t a hint of reluctance in that walk, of resistance to that push. The other man raced to keep up. The glass in an old breakfront sideboard rattled as they passed.
Mickey stood up and I followed suit.
“Did he say he was bringing someone?” Mickey whispered as they approached.
“No.”
The man looked familiar. “We’ve met,” he said. “At Bud’s, wasn’t it?”
“I remember.”
“Mickey Fox, Garson Eigenart,” Bud said, and they shook hands. I recalled that the last time I’d seen him his car was in a ditch, but nothing in his expression showed that he too recalled it. He was too busy being a character—the propriety of his checked suit and oxbloods was offset by his long sideburns, rainbow-colored paisley tie, and pinky ring; his quips by an ingratiating grin; his jumpiness by a mannered calm—to keep track of the other characters he met.
Mickey waved for the waitress, but she had disappeared. “I hope this place will be all right for you. Neil and I were talking about how it’s fallen off. We wouldn’t have chosen it if we’d known.”
As he settled into the couch across from our chairs, Garson accidentally kicked the low coffee table between us. The nuts scattered.
“Sorry, gentlemen. I’m a little cramped here,” Garson explained.
Bud and I slid the table away from the couch, and Mickey said, “This is just the kind of thing I’m talking about. There’s no one here anymore to see to the placement of the furniture. The place has gone to the dogs.” He gestured at the shore. “They’ve still got themselves a helluva spot, though—they can’t ruin a view like that.” A moonbeam died in the cloudbank like a floodlight in the glow of a city. “Unfortunately, it’s too late to see much of anything now.”
“No kidding,” Bud said. “You could develop photos in here.”
The waitress came to take our order. Mickey took every opportunity to hound her, and there was the same fuss about the drinks as the first time around. “Robin,” he said as though shielding his guests from an injustice, “Robin, bring them each one of these,” and pointed to his glass. They looked at me in silent appeal.
“They’ve always kept the lights down,” Mickey said. His twitch was acting up. His shoulder knocked against his chin, but he barreled ahead. “You know what kind of establishment this used to be? There was a gin mill down below. This cove is a natural harbor. Hauling cargo was a cinch. And it was protected. Till they built the pier, the trees went right down to the shore. The coastline is full of secret landing places, but this one was especially good.”
He paused for effect, but the effect he struck could not have been the one he was after. The struggle with his twitch hindered his control over his voice. He was speaking too loudly. The lounge had otherwise gone quiet.
I lit another cigarette. A wind-up clock ticktocked on the wall behind me. Outside, a length of cable clanged against a spar. Garson crossed his legs. The jiggling of his foot in the dimness made the perforations of his wingtips seem to swirl. He was close to kicking the table again.
“They made hooch down there,” Mickey continued. “Naturally, they brought the party upstairs. This used to be a cathouse.”
Bud and Garson seemed not to know what to make of this revelation. Their silence didn’t seem at first to trouble Mickey, who might have supposed that so startling a fact would need a moment to sink in. But when that moment was up and another had come and gone, he began rubbing at his fingertips as though the sap of awkwardness stuck to them.
“You don’t say,” Garson murmured, and spritzed his throat with Binaca. The bartender threw a couple of logs on the fire. The silence persisted.
Bud had an inspiration. He did what came naturally to him: he began to laugh—boisterously.
Mickey frowned. He was after wonder, not hilarity. “You miss my point,” he said. “To think that right where we’re sitting . . .” He leaned forward and knocked on the coffee table to mark the spot, or the brute simplicity of the business that had been conducted on it. “It wasn’t so long ago.”
“Not so long ago, not so long ago at all.” Bud kept his eyes on Mickey as he spoke. “There are places where the past is acutely present. If I’ve been a little quiet, it’s only because I’ve been distracted. This room is ripe with the intimacies of bygone days. You can still hear the bedsprings creak.”
Mickey was as pleased now as he’d been displeased a moment earlier. He turned to me. “Our friend is very shrewd. The point was a subtle one, if I may say so myself. He’s grasped it perfectly. To be so well understood is something.”
“It certainly is,” I said. “We came to talk business, didn’t we? I’m going to need to move along.”
“There’s no hurry. The first thing Neil learned in law school,” my brother explained to the others, “was how to sound busy.”
Robin brought our drinks and tried to make her escape. But Mickey couldn’t let her get away scot-free. “They say, Robin, that on quiet nights like this you feel the spirits pursuing their dark pleasures. What about it, Robin—seen any ghosts, felt any vibrations?”
“Excuse me?” She bent over to put napkins beside our glasses.
“Echoes of passionate cries?”
When she’d made her retreat, Mickey lifted his glass. “The success of a bold endeavor,” he said. We clinked glasses and jumbled the words success and endeavor.
“And your drinks?” he asked the others. “Did I lead you astray?”
They licked their lips and nodded approvingly.
“A nice change of pace,” Garson said.
“Not the kind of thing I’d ever have tried,” Bud chimed in. “My habits are tyrannical.”
“To the war on tyranny,” Mickey cried, and again they clinked their glasses. I didn’t join in this time. Mickey pointed at me with his chin and said, “Look at the sober sides.”
“I support the tyranny of habit.”
“Speaking of tyranny,” Mickey said, “the one thing I’ve never understood about this drink is why they don’t call it a ‘Menshevik.’ That’s the proper name for a White Russian, isn’t it? I mean the real ones. It would be a much catchier name.”
It was time to make my exit. I’d known what to expect but was exasperated all the same. No business would be conducted here. My brother was more interested in palavering, and Bud had shown up with an aspiring hippie whose connection to the enterprise was unknown. They might spend hours getting acquainted. Where in the gloom, among the rutting spirits and the silent stirrings of the bay, was the end? I had wasted enough of the day. I was hungry for supper. “I’ve got to be going,” I said and stood up.
“Going?” Mickey replied. “You can’t be . . . why, we’re just . . . Siddown, Neil. Please. Neil’s evidently got other business—”
“Other business?” I said. “This isn’t business. The only whiff of business, Mickey, is in your preparing to proposition the waitress. And if we’re here to talk business, what is he doing here?” I waved a hand Garson’s way. “As far as I know, he has nothing to do with the business I thought we’d come to discuss.”
“What’s the problem?” Bud asked. “Garson’s taking a friendly interest, that’s all.”
“I understood that you hardly know each other,” I said.
“And what of it?” Mickey asked. “New ventures make fast friends. That’s the beauty of them.” Mickey looked hot. His tan was splotching before our eyes like a paper bag holding a leaky container.
“Is he a principal of the company?” I asked. “I don’t recall seeing his name in your documents. Because if he’s not a principal, I don’t see what he’s doing here.”
Now Garson stood too. “What I’m doing here is, I’m a friend of Bud’s and I’m interested,” he said.
“Interested?” I asked. “What’s interested? Confidentiality was a concern of yours, Bud. If we’re going to become involved with you, then it also has to be one of our concerns.”
“Look, I didn’t come to horn in. I’m already in more businesses than I can handle,” Garson said, arms tightly crossed and voice quivering with outraged dignity.
“Ready for another? I certainly am,” Mickey said. He jiggled the ice in his glass and shouted for another round—there was no bantering with Robin now. He turned back. “You’ll have to excuse Neil. No one thinks you’re horning in. I’m sure you wouldn’t have come through the door if you hadn’t done the paperwork. You know lawyers, always worrying about risk.”
“I don’t care how interested he may be,” I said. “At this stage, any relationship he has to the business is through Bud. I can’t see that his presence is called for.” I heard a particular exhilaration in my voice, the measured aggression that enters it when I’ve got a point, the delight in an easy target. A shame that the scenes that excite us most are seldom worth the candle.
Garson fingered the corners of his mustache. “You have a reputation, you know,” he said.
“Of course we do,” Mickey replied. “And we’ve earned it.... Now please sit down. We’ve got drinks on the way.”
“A reputation for what?” I asked.
“For coming out ahead,” Garson said.
The fire had sprung to life, the flame from a lower log licking the one above it, which hissed and popped.
“You know, Bud,” Mickey said, staring into the glow, “it may be lucky for us that you brought Garson along, despite what certain people here may think. He may have saved us a lot of trouble. He’s right, of course. We do want to win. We want to win and win and win. Would you prefer to have losers for partners? I don’t think you would. But . . . ” he hesitated, his voice as if faltering. In the regret he projected through them, his eyes seemed a degree shy of liquefaction, the corners of their lids papery as moth’s wings. The clock ticktocked.
“But, there’s this question of trust. No getting around that, is there? Well, I suppose that if we were going to have this problem, it’s better that it happened sooner. A pity, though. I believe we’d have been a real help to you, Bud. And I don’t mean just with money, which is an abundant commodity after all. I mean with the intangibles, with contacts and plans and so forth. We’d have opened doors for you. But this is why I say it’s better we hit the wall sooner. The arrangements we were prepared to make are exactly the kind that depend on trust. Now, when I say trust, I’m not talking about blind faith. We’d have anticipated your getting outside advice once we’d gone down the road a ways. In fact, we’d have expected it. You’d have had some of your own skin in the game after all. At the same time, Neil and I have found that the key to almost every successful agreement is flexibility, maximum flexibility. Isn’t that right, Neil? I’m sure that your own experience bears this out. We may be the four smartest cats in the alley, but there’s still no way we’re going to foresee every contingency and provide for it. There’s just no way. Hence flexibility, hence trust. You end up making too many goddamn false moves without it. The handicap is crippling, crippling. . . .”
I doubt that any of us listened too closely, or that we were meant to. The words were familiar without being especially insincere, and this was their virtue. They weren’t exactly empty, and yet the burden of winning agreement wasn’t on them. They were like a eulogy delivered by a clergyman who doesn’t pretend to have known the departed and who finds sanctuary in a few general truths and the dignity of the occasion. They traded on a mood.
Our round arrived. Mickey sat up in his chair like a rallying convalescent. “You see, Neil,” he continued, “we had a business meeting after all. True, it’s the end of the venture instead of the beginning, but so it goes.” He picked up his glass and waited for us to do the same.
“I’ll be on my way,” Garson said and, when no one protested, gave his hand coldly to me and to Mickey. As he shook it, Mickey looked at himself in the mirror, at the firelight reflecting against him, the flame’s shadow washing over his captain’s outfit as if his ship was burning and he was going down with it. “Thanks for the drink,” Garson continued. “Fucking thing tastes like rose water if you want to know the truth.” Garson took a few steps toward the door and said to Bud in an audible undertone, “Are you gonna hang around with these stickpins?”
They went out together, checking their voices now—the word neighbor was about the only one I heard distinctly.
“He comes to us for seed money, and he thinks he needs to be protected from us?”
