So I asked him if I could maybe stop by his place if he’d give me the address, and I would like to hear that tape. The last masterwork of Kaberrian.
“Oh, one night a month ago I got up in the middle of the night and I dug it out and put it on the box and erased it clean.”
“Why, why, why?”
“In it my Ellie too many times is telling that clown how much she loves him, when she found out later love is something a lot different. We both found out, man.”
I sighed. Shook the head. Stuck my hand in the Buckley pocket and rubbed his head a little. “Maybe it could have made a fortune, you crazy Kaberrian.”
“A fortune!” he said. “Off Ellie, like that way?” His eyes looked like the Kaberrian of old, the one who expressed revolt one time by running onto the “Today Show” when it was live and holding up in front of Lescoulie a sign saying “Fink Capitalist Stoolie.” Kaberrian’s eyes had that old gleam. “Noonan, you fink off your way, and I’ll fink off my way.”
Off he went. That’s the last we’ll ever see of him. Who’s going to keep up the good old traditions if we keep on losing the Kaberrians one at a time? Who can laugh in a world like this one?
Woodchuck
When the diffused brightness of direct sunlight no longer made a blue green glow through the closed draperies in front of the sliding glass that opened onto the beach-front bedroom terrace, Mr. Aldo Bellinger got up from the broad bed and padded naked across the thick tufted pile of the aqua rug and parted the draperies a few inches and looked out. The sun had slid below the Caribbean horizon, and the sea lay gentle against the broad beach of the island.
He thumbed the latch down, slid the door aside enough to step out onto the walled, second-story terrace, and closed the opening behind him, the draperies falling back into place.
A small wind came out of the west, not enough to raise surf, but enough to bring the sea scent, and the slap and sigh of the small waves, adrift on the thick moist tropic air. The darkening room behind him was all cool blue-and-green hush of ducted air from the faraway compressors and fans.
He leaned forearms on the broad top of the four-foot wall, big brown hands loosely clasped, and looked out at the coarse brown sand of the wide beach, at the shadings of the sea, green over the shallows, a deepening cobalt over the deeps. Far out, a pod of bait sparkled and thrashed, ripped from below by the savage rush of toothy predators, harassed from above by the circling, diving, squalling terns, their excited playground voices just audible over the soft sounds of small waves.
You put the package together, he thought, and it is never quite equal to the original vision. But this Club de Playa comes as close as any of them. Construction compromises, the result of haste, rising costs, availability, always degrade the concept. Such as the construction of the terrace wall on which he leaned. White pierced decorative block, a commercial pattern instead of the custom design that made the architectural rendering so handsome. And so, from now on, the Club de Playa would be graced by the tiresome vulgarity of the fleur de lis pattern in alternate blocks in all the walls of all the apartment terraces.
But if you did not ride herd, if you did not put the clamp on them and tell them to make the compromises necessary to meet the deadline and cost projection, you could lose your ass to aesthetics.
You had to heed deadlines, because you had to stay a little bit ahead of the other predators involved in resort projects. The money goes to the lead runners, in delicious abundance. The farther back you are in the pack, the less the margin, the more dangerous the risk. And the ones in the rear copy too late and lose it all.
This was the condominium concept applied to resort apartment-hotel living. Own your own vacation apartment directly on one of the world’s greatest unspoiled beaches, and let management rent it for you when you are not using it. See brochure for special tax advantages available to U.S. citizens on this friendly tropic island.
So he had scrounged for the necessary risk capital in a tight-money market and put up the hotel portion and the first two wings, forty apartments per wing, of the projected eight wings. Seventy-one apartments sold thus far. Take it far enough to prove it works, then unload it. Four days now of dickering and maneuvering with Larssen from Stockholm, who arrived backstopped by his quartet of four cool-eyed young Swedish specialists.
Good to be outnumbered, he thought. Just me and my secretary and Lee Rountree, the large young man who had styled, and followed through on, the promotion program that had sold off seventy-one of the eighty so quickly and easily to good-risk customers. Not a lawyer or an accountant on our resident team. Left them on standby in Miami. Roy can slam the Lear over there and have them back here in one hour total flying time, plus the red tape at Miami International.
He could feel the last of the residual tension going out of his neck and shoulders and jaw muscles. At ten this morning they had been one hundred thousand Jamaica dollars apart. Larssen had suggested in his sleepy voice they split the difference. Aldo Bellinger had said they had already, in effect, done that. Long silence.
Aldo had finally said, “I guess I won’t get up and walk out, because there is a good chance we might do business again some day. And the next time I might not have an alternate buyer. Phone Kinkaid in Nassau and tell him I authorize him to tell you the top and final offer his clients made. If he gets too cautious, put me on the line. It comes to... let me do some conversion here... about twelve thousand Jamaica dollars more than my final offer to you. I’ll pay that premium to do business with you, Larssen, but not a hundred and twelve.”
It had taken the usual half hour to get through to Nassau. Aldo Bellinger had gone down to the pool. One of the young Swedes had come and got him and taken him back to Larssen’s apartment. Larssen had known Kinkaid would not lie. Everybody knew that, fortunately. So Larssen had shaken hands, told his people to go to work on the papers, and told them that he and Mr. Bellinger were going to spend some welcome time on the beach.
Bellinger could feel the residual heat of the sun under the brown hide of his thick shoulders and muscular back. The light from the departed sun flared on white high clouds, turning them salmon pink, and the beach and the sea turned a golden pink under the bright glow of the clouds. He saw a woman walking slowly along the beach on the wet packed sand left by the receding tide. She was coming toward him. He realized that it was Anne Faxton, his private executive secretary. Seven years of extraordinarily efficient, discreet, and loyal professional service. And in the last four years of the association, it had expanded into an emotional-sensual dimension as well. Nothing he or she had sought.
One of those tritenesses typical of the rich years of the old movies, of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prefabricated romance. Executive and secretary flying to important meeting. Airport closed by floods. Land at alternate airport eighty miles away. Too much in a hurry to wait for bus arranged by airline. Rent car. Have to take a detour. Heavy rains. Drive slowly through what appears to be a wide shallow torrent across highway. Front end drops into a washout. Lightning illuminates dark farmhouse behind them, on high ground. During break in rain, grab baggage and trudge through mud. Nobody home. Force porch window. Saturday. Evidence that family went to city to shop, probably cut off by rising water. No electricity. Phone out also. Fireplace. Candles. Kerosene and lantern in rear shed. Smashing rain and whistling wind and constant lightning. Secretary scared of thunderstorms all her life. Night gets colder. Sit on couch in front of fireplace. Loud crack of thunder makes her lunge, shuddering, into his arms. Extreme close-up, two shot, for kiss illuminated by dance of firelight. Storm and mood music on sound track. Camera angle on floor by couch, as one by one, sweater, blouse, skirt, bra, panties drop onto pile.