“Listen, sugar, you’re not going to come any closer to the unadulterated product. This hasn’t been stepped on with procaine or lactose or talcum powder or any of that shit. This is the goddamn sacred bestowal of the Inca sun god right here.”
Without looking up: “Have you got some beer in the icebox? Or a bottle of Cold Duck?”
Pierce was not a romantic. His relations with women had always been capricious, diversionary. These recreational contacts (sometimes nearly grudging) were wholly separate from the deadly serious system of male competition that had begun long ago at the core of his life and grown outward, adding layer upon layer until exterior guise and interior pith were indistinguishable. But Tildy was anomalous, that rare species who could thrive outside those boundaries, well beyond the reach of his manipulations. Pierce felt like he was looking at diamonds through the wrong end of a telescope, and did not like it at all. He wanted to impress this woman he barely knew, to draw her in. He wanted a charm to reach her with, a magnet, but he had only the parlor trick of spilling the white flakes into a glass of bleach and water, explaining to her that the speed with which they dissolved demonstrated their purity.
“I believe you. I believe that you’re a man with refined tastes and the equipment to back them up. But I would still like a bottle of beer.”
Pierce looked to Christo for help, gained no more than a shrug, and left the room in a poorly concealed sulk.
“I think you hurt his feelings,” Christo said. “I’m proud of you.”
“I thought you said I was going to like him.”
“Did I? You’re sure I didn’t just say you’d like his weed?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well, maybe it’s just a city mouse versus country mouse thing.”
Tildy came and straddled his knees, put her arms around him. “Do you have to be partners with him? Absolutely have to?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. Going into business with him doesn’t mean I have to convert.”
The gentle breath soothing his temples, the slow lips that touched him were like dry little explosions to his coked-up nerves. He stiffened under her, shifting, turning his head to one side.
“You’ve come all this way on your own, making your own game. What is it you want to grab so bad you’d change now?”
“That’s the kind of thinking keeps people driving tractors all their lives and buying on time.”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Plenty. Let’s not get sentimental about it.” He nudged her off his lap and refilled his nose at the mirror.
“You’ll be giving something away if you go in with him and we all know it,” Tildy said. And to herself: Why why why do I care?
Pierce stepped in with Canadian ale, a mug chilled in the freezer and renewed aplomb.
“Here we are. A simple brew from the North Woods.”
Pierce opened a desk drawer, removed writing materials and a pocket calculator. “I think it’s time, jazzbo, that you and I sat down and hacked out some specifics. The kind of move you’re looking to do, that ad-lib style of yours just won’t cut it.”
“Absolutely. I’ve been itching to get at this all night.” Christo’s eyes were a shotgun; he fired both barrels at Tildy, but she was watching bubbles burst in the beer foam.
“Itching is just low-level pain,” Pierce said. “That’s what my grandma taught me the summer she had shingles. All right then, let’s say we capitalize this thing for a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Hold on.”
“Take it easy. This is only for practice, a nice round figure. Now, you’ve got two cuts to make out of that before you clear this end—” Punching numbers on the calculator.
“Two cuts?”
“Right. The Swede I told you about and then your transshipping back. That’s going to be your second cut.”
“Isn’t there a simpler way to go?”
“Come on, where’s your sense of artistry? I mean, shit, we’re not in this for the money are we? We’re in this to keep from dropping dead with boredom.”
“Sure, sure. I’ve really been looking forward to a trip abroad. But what are we talking about? Maybe twelve and a half percent each way?”
“That seems like a solid figure. So you’re at seventy-five thou, and from there we go to your expenses, which are travel, and the car…. And some emergency fix-it money — we’ve got to allow for that.”
Tildy, with no appetite for shop talk, slipped out and went looking for a telephone. Incense aromas followed her through the thin, dank air outside the room. She stopped in the dim hallway, noticing the photograph of Pierce, his blond bowl cut melting into the pale background of snow and trees; he had on tinted glasses, the kind state troopers wore. Reminded her of Sparn, a youthful picture of him she’d once seen, all slick and slender, outside some Palm Beach movie house with straw hat tipped low and coat draped over his shoulders in the customary impresario pose.
She supposed there were other similarities between the two, both tacticians with unswerving faith in trappings of every kind, but she was already sufficiently depressed — no need to contemplate them further. Dipping her thumb in beer dregs she drew a large X on the frame’s glass.
Next to a ceramic crucifix in the next room Tildy found a wall phone. She pressed a button to activate one of the four lines and punched up a long-distance number; then she wound the cord in her fingers and counted the rings.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Your wife.”
“No shit. Where you at?”
“Still New York.”
“So how’s it goin’ up there, baby? That dude findin’ any work for you?”
“Finding work? I don’t …” Some line Christo must’ve given him the night they left; she couldn’t remember. “No, it’s been mostly window shopping and bar hopping, Karl. Not much news to tell. It’s only, I don’t know, I wanted to hear your voice and make sure you were getting by all right is all.”
“Well, ain’t you some sweetness. Tell ya, I been shaky some, but then I just sit still and talk to you out loud like you was right here and it calms me down. You always say the right things. And I know you would too if you was really here. See, while you been bar hoppin’, ole Karl’s been all sober. Ain’t had even one drop since you left. How ’bout that?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Yes indeed. Like to drown in sweat the first couple days. But ain’t I makin’ that effort? I’m tryin’ to be a good boy for you, so why can’t you come back home?”
“I will, you know I will. Just not right now.”
“But I need some reward. Even a trained seal when he does his stuff right, they give him a fish. I can’t be doin’ like you want me to all on my own. You got to throw me a few fish about now.”
“I love you Karl and I’m glad I called. Don’t make me regret it.”
“Well, I’d sure like to know what it is up there that’s keepin’ you.”
“So would I.”
“Then why don’t you cut loose and come on down for the weekend. We’ll go up to Tampa and eat crabs and get rowdy.”
“Sounds good, and we’ll do it. Just not right now.”
“It’s just I been missin’ you so hard.”
“I know. Let me tell you where I’m at in case you need to call.”
Karl couldn’t find paper, so he wrote on his hand in ink. “I been thinkin’ all about you. See, it’s like that old song, baby. You’re the queen of my heart … Baby?”
He was talking to an empty line.
Tildy looked all around, everything so neat and squared off, like a dentist’s waiting room. There was a draft and the surfaces of furniture were cold. She cried without moving her face.
Down at the other end of the hall, ice motes oozed through septums and blood pumped thick from triphammer hearts.