He let himself in and sat at one of the six tables. He looked around, taking things in by the light that came through the front window, past the small counter and the doorway to the kitchen. Next to the kitchen doorway, the blackboard still hung and he was able to make out a few words. He got up and went closer, peering at it. It said “Crawfish Etouffée” and it was written in Gracie’s hand in that powdery, fragile chalk script. He sat down at the table again and looked out through the window into the declining light of day.
He had a sharp feeling that he had lost his touch, a feeling that once the slide reached a certain speed, it couldn’t be stopped until it reached the bottom. He felt a chill. “Gracie,” he said aloud, perfectly aware that it was not a great thing to begin talking to yourself. “I think I’m going broke.”
30
This feeling stayed with him so long that it was not exactly a surprise when his accountant asked to see him. John Coleman was one of the most reputable accountants in the city and Frank enjoyed going to his office for a sense of the pulse, a cool office with muted traffic sounds below and an undisturbed air. He showed Frank a chair, then swung sideways in his own after asking his secretary to hold his calls. He always gave Frank the feeling that he had set aside more time than they would ever need. “Are you all right?” he asked. John still wore wide, soft ties restrained in the middle by a tie clasp with a little chain.
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t been by.”
“Not much happening. It takes almost a year to absorb the blow of last year’s taxes.”
“You’re a success, Frank. It’s expensive to be a success.” Coleman wrapped his hand around his forehead.
“In more ways than one.”
“Quite right. It’s either too much or too little, isn’t it? I mostly see too little. But Frank, you’ve always had a nice light touch, a nice feel for the situation.”
“John, I appreciate the valentines. What’s up?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I think I see problems.”
“Are you talking about my cattle deal?”
“Partly.”
“I’ll tell you what that was. That was a bum deal and we all have them.”
“The clinic?”
“That was a case of drawing the line. Where’d those assholes go, anyway?”
John said in the tone of an elementary schoolteacher, “They went elsewhere. They went to the new clinic.” He pursed his lips, raised and lowered his eyebrows.
“There’s a new clinic?”
“Out near Nineteenth.”
“Oh. I thought that was a day care.”
“See, Frank? You would have known that before.”
“Anyway, we’ll fill the building.”
“You will.”
“I believe so.”
John laced his fingers over the top of his head and looked straight at Frank. Frank thought it was a rather artificial gesture. He asked, “What about Gracie?”
“What about her?”
“Hear anything?”
“Nope.”
“She divorce you yet?”
“Not yet. I don’t really care. I guess she’ll get around to it. I couldn’t give a shit less.”
“I’m just trying to imagine its impact on your finances.”
“I guess she’ll take me to the cleaners.” Frank yawned. “Little coaching from the boyfriend, they’ll see a big future. Takes money. Might want to make a hit in Sedona. Oak Creek Canyon. Strong showing in Scottsdale. I’m having trouble with the future. It’s my least favorite tense.”
“Frank, I’m your accountant. Are you saying you don’t care?”
“No, I’m saying my focus is elsewhere.” He wanted to get up. “Do what you can, John. I’m not much help just now.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah, yeah I do.”
“What is it?”
“I’m gonna drive around. Take in the sights.”
Frank felt very heavy in his chair. John’s healthy interest was unbearable. His comfortable office had become a cell. Frank resolved to make a smooth, unjerky exit so that he didn’t seem disturbed or alarmed to John, who always had his best interests at heart. It was astonishing how the smoothness could go and leave an alarming jerkiness in its wake; it was astonishing how lightness could become heaviness. He was reduced to longing to be elsewhere. He thought he was within an inch of jumping out the window or breaking into a crippled trot.
Frank feigned a smooth tone. “John, you know about thick and thin. This is thin. We’ll be fine.” He lifted his hands and dropped them to the desk with a dead-fish sound. It was not really smooth, a geekish gesture actually. It was as if he had emptied a couple of detached hands from a basket.
“I know we will,” John said in a warmly formulaic tone that indicated the numbness was catching.
“Well, I gotta go,” said Frank, not knowing where to put his gaze.
“It was good of you to come,” said John with an averted look of his own. This was torture for both of them.
“So long, John,” said Frank. He was sweating bullets.
“So long, Frank. Hope everything goes okay.”
“It will, John.”
“Good, Frank.”
“This is me, then,” Frank bleated, “heading on out.”
He made it through the door with a sense of rebirth, went down to his car and was suddenly fatigued again and wanted to curl up and sleep in the back seat.
He drove back to his office. Eileen did a cute little number about not knowing who he was. Wanting to fire or kill her, he laughed amiably. He closed his door and gazed at the surface of his desk with its notices and mail. The short-term interest rates that were presumed to stir a recovery weren’t doing that, and of course they couldn’t save as bad a calculator as Frank was on his cattle. Shell Oil and Chrysler posted losses so huge Frank felt his didn’t matter. A human rights group was disturbed by its tour of China, and Canada’s ban on tobacco advertising was overturned. Israel declared itself unpersuaded of the need for peace talks. Makes my failed marriage seem like a small thing, Frank thought. We never indulged in penny stock fraud, and unlike the Ceausescus, we never built underground mazes or had group sex with Nazi soldiers. But while I was buzzing around in a stolen car, Cadbury Schweppes enjoyed some modest gains on the strength of North American operations. Charles Keating’s exciting new show, a securities fraud trial, would be opening to standing room only in beautiful, easygoing Los Angeles, California. Indeed, Frank’s follies notwithstanding, Deadrock, Montana, seemed fairly quiet, with street scenes innocent of arbitrageurs.
The bank agreed to treat the loss as a simple debt, to be repaid over the year at simple interest, one point above prime. At first they wanted to exploit their position on the clinic, and Frank told them where they could put their position. He felt so blue, he looked at the stream of receipts for the mini-storage. It didn’t matter that it was chicken feed; it was steady. He began to think about an entirely new life, fueled by mini-storage facilities scattered around in midsize towns in Montana. He thought this new life could be in the Tongass wilderness in Alaska, a de Havilland Otter to get him around the half-drowned climax forest. This perked him right up.
Holly called while Frank, with forensic calm, was trying to clean out the refrigerator — a single olive floating in a quart jar of brine, cheese slipping into decay, a plastic dispenser with old ketchup running down the side, a carton of whipping cream with a vicious odor, a huge wedge of angel food cake folding in on itself in desiccation. He had the willies.