Susan, who was in a good mood, wasn't about to be baited. She smiled, and said, "As St Jerome wrote, 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.'" There are certain advantages in a classical education, and spouting fourth-century Roman saints to make a point with your spouse may be one of them. I replied, "As a wiser man said, 'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.'"
I poured two cups of coffee, and the phone rang. I answered it. "Hello."
"Mr Sutter."
"Mr Bellarosa."
"You all squared away there?" he asked.
"Maybe," I replied. "But I don't think he can bring the job in for that price."
"Sure he can."
"How?"
"Cheap labour, low overhead, and your materials."
I glanced at Susan, who was watching me closely, then said to Bellarosa, "All right. Whom do I pay?"
"You pay me. I'll take care of the boys."
The last thing I wanted was to have one of my cheques drawn to Frank the Bishop Bellarosa. "I'll give you cash," I said.
He replied, "I take cash for a lot of things, Mr Sutter, but I thought people like you want a record of everything."
Not everything, Frank. I responded, "It's still legal to pay in cash in this country. I will need a paid bill, from Dominic, on contractor's letterhead." Bellarosa laughed. "Now I got to get letterheads printed up for the guy. That's how you get into overhead."
"Perhaps you can get a rubber stamp for his brown paper bags." Bellarosa was in a merry mood and laughed again. "Okay. You need something to show capital improvement for the government if you sell or something, right? Okay. No problem. Hey, what are these cards your wife and you got with nothing on them?"
"They have our names on them," I said. "That's how you know they're ours." "Yeah. But then it just says Stanhope Hall. Where's the phone number, the zip, and all that?"
"They're calling cards," I informed him.
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. It's an old custom."
"Yeah?"
"Anyway," I continued, back on the subject, "I just wanted to let you know that Dominic seems very professional and was very pleasant to deal with." So don't kill him.
"Good. He knows his bricks and cement. It's in the blood. You know? You seen the Baths of Caracalla? That stuff impresses me. They don't build like that anymore. Two thousand years, Mr Sutter. You think this shit around here is going to be around in two thousand years?"
"We'll see. Also about the horses, thank you for the offer, but we'll have them boarded while – " "Nah. Why throw your money away? I got a stable here. It's all ready, and it's nice and close by for you. I boarded out my dog once and it died." "But we both went to boarding school," I reminded him, "and we're both still alive."
He thought that was very funny. I don't know why I feel compelled to use my razor-sharp wit on him. Maybe because he laughs.
He was still laughing as he said, "Hey, I got to tell my wife that one. Okay, look, Mr Sutter, I want you to know I got no hard feelings about the other thing. Business is business, and personal is personal." "That's true." I looked at Susan, who was reading the local non-newspaper at the kitchen table. I said to Bellarosa, "My wife and I would like to thank you for your help in this and for signing the variance petition." "Hey, no problem. I noticed that thing was in your wife's name." I hesitated, then replied, "This is her property. My estate is in the shop for repairs."
Ha, ha, ha. I hoped he was writing these down. Then, being about fifty-percent certain the phone was tapped, and Mr Mancuso or someone like him was listening in, I said distinctly, "If the job goes over cost, I insist on paying the difference. I will not accept a low bid, even as a personal favour, Mr Bellarosa, because you owe me no favours, and I owe you no favours, and it would be good if we didn't get into owing favours."
"Mr Sutter, you gave me some good advice the other day. I don't see no bill, so that was a favour. I'm repaying the favour."
I knew that I should watch my words, not only because of Mr Mancuso, but because of Mr Frank Bellarosa, who, like myself, makes his living with the spoken word, and who would not hesitate to use anything I said against me later. I asked him, "Are we all evened up on favours?"
"Sure. If you let me keep the horse shit for my garden. Hey, I got a calling card – NYNEX. But I don't understand your calling card. I'm looking at it. What's it do?"
"It's… it's hard to explain…" By now, of course, I was sorry I had played my silly joke with Dominic. But Susan actually started it. I said, "It's like a… like a handshake."
There was another silence as he processed this. He said, "Okay. My best regards to your wife, and you have a good day, Mr Sutter."
"And you, too, Mr Bellarosa." I hung up.
Susan looked up from her newspaper. "What is like a handshake?"
"A calling card."
She made a face. "That's not quite it, John."
"Then you explain it to him." I remained standing and picked up my coffee mug from the table. "I don't like this."
"You made the coffee."
"This situation, Susan. Are you mentally attending?"
"Don't get snotty with me. You use too many pronouns and too few antecedents.
I've told you that."
I felt a headache coming on.
Susan said in a kinder tone, "Look, I understand your misgivings. I really do. And I am in complete agreement that you should not do any legal work for that man. However, we can't help but have some social interaction with him. He's our next-door neighbour."
"Next-door? We live on two-hundred-acre estates. People in Manhattan don't even know the people in the next apartment."
"This is not Manhattan," she informed me. "We know all our neighbours here."
"That's not true."
"I know them." Susan stood and poured herself more coffee. "Also, I don't want to give him or anyone the impression we are… well, bigoted. What if he were black and we were snubbing him? How would that look?" "He's not black. He's Italian. He's arrived. So now we can snub him because we don't like him, not because of his race or religion. That's what makes this country great, Susan."
"But you do like him."
There was a silence in the kitchen, and I could hear that damned regulator clock tick-tocking.
"I'm your wife, John. I can tell."
I said finally, "I don't dislike him." I added, "But he's a criminal, Susan."
She shrugged. "So people say. But if he weren't a criminal, would you like him?"
"Possibly." I'm not a bigot or too much of a snob. Half my friends are Catholic. Some are Italian. The Creek is half Catholic. In fact, many of the racial, religious, and ethnic barriers around here have tumbled, which is good because in some odd way these new people have brought a new vitality to a dying world, like a blood transfusion. But as I said, you can assimilate only so much new blood, and the new blood, to continue the analogy, has to be compatible. In my world, certain types of occupations are okay, and some are not. Also, golf, tennis, boating, and horses are taken seriously, whereas theatre, concerts, fine arts, and such are okay, but not taken seriously unless one happens to be Jewish. It is still mostly a Wasp world in form and substance, if not in actual numbers.
Catholics and Jews are okay, you understand, if they act okay. Harry F. Guggenheim, one of the wealthiest men in America in his day, a friend of Charles Lindbergh, a staunch Republican and a Jew, was okay. The Guggenheim family opened the door through which other Jews have passed. Before the last war, Catholics with French names such as the Belmonts and Du Ponts were okay, Irish Catholics were okay if they said they were Scotch-Irish Protestants, and Italians were okay if they were counts or dukes or had names that sounded as if they could be.