Nine
Don’t talk to me about fate. It’s 1946 and you’re offered some IBM stock at seventy percent of market price and you turn it down and today that block is worth about five million dollars more than what you would have had to pay for it, and you try to console yourself by saying it’s fate, that’s the way it goes with fate, you can’t fight fate.
Phaugh. It ain’t fate, comrade, it’s you. You decide not to buy that stock, you. Nobody twisted your arm. It’s just that you’re an imbecile that’s all.
But don’t feel bad, brother of mine, don’t feel badedoo, I’m an imbecile, too. We’re all imbeciles, marching along arm in arm together, with Corrigan leading the way. It isn’t the fluke of fate when we make a wrong decision, podnuh, it’s the fickle finger when we make a right one.
When was the last time you made a right decision? Yeah, you, hiding over there behind that eight ball.
What gets me mad is that we didn’t even talk about it. Jodi and I, I mean. We rode up in the elevator, and we were both thinking the same thought, and we both knew that the other was thinking the same thought, and we didn’t even talk about it. Arm in arm, brother, imbeciles we.
You know what I’m talking about, don’t act coy. Jodi and I and the little bastard, that’s what I’m talking about. A series of really monumental wrong decisions had brought me thus far to Rio de Janeiro of all places, in company with a college-educated whore and a five-year-old basketball who wanted to live with us forever. Do you realize how long forever is? More than a year.
And we didn’t even discuss it. Never mind right decision wrong decision, I’m not talking about that. It was far too late for a right decision by then. What we had to do was choose which wrong decision to plummet into. And the best wrong decision we didn’t even talk about.
There are shades and shades of rightness and wrongness. Now the blackest wrong decision we could have made, the wrongest wrong decision, was to act sensibly, in line with our previous wrong decisions, and simply turn Everett Whittington over to his dear papa and take our next plane back to New York and never see one another again. And the whitest wrong decision we could have made, the rightest wrong decision, was to act with total incoherence, to run off somewhere with Rhett, and the three of us remain an unlikely trio forever. Of course, there were complications of legality and income and language and a few dozen other hurdles far too high to leap so we didn’t even talk about it. That’s what makes me so mad, brother, that we didn’t even talk about it. I don’t mind being an imbecile, it’s part of my humanity, but I hate being a coward as well.
So I bit my tongue as a punishment, and we went up in the elevator again, and Rhett looked up at me and said, loud and clear. “Whatcha gonna do with my suitcase?” And the elevator operator glanced around, wondering too.
I said, “Hush, Rhett, we’re skipping out on the bill.” So then the operator figured we couldn’t possibly be skipping out on the bill, so he ignored us again, and I bit my tongue harder for even more of a punishment because it wasn’t a bill we were skipping out on; we were skipping out on Rhett.
Outside, a gaily colored taxi was a reminder of our gaily colored homeland far to the north. I looked at it, standing there in the Southern Hemisphere sunshine, and a strange thought went gliding unasked through my mind: I never have liked New York.
The lemmings rush to the sea. The bright young humans rush to New York. I think now that the lemmings have the smarter idea. Drowning is so much cleaner a death.
We boarded this northern chariot and I withdrew from my pocket the slip of paper and read from it the address, and on the second try the driver comprehended, and we jolted away into traffic.
“Where are we going?” That was Rhett.
“To see your father, dear.” That was Jodi.
“Are we all going to live with my father?” That was Rhett again.
“Grrrrr.” That was me.
“I don’t remember what my father looks like.” Rhett once more.
“Oh, Harvey.” Jodi again. “Oh, hell.” Me.
The conversation continued in that vein, sporadically, until we turned through a blacktop turnoff between pale stone walls and along the curving drive to a low rambling white manor which lacked only the darkies’ quarters out back. We emerged from the cab, and I’m certain that this time I was overcharged, and we rang the bell.
A haughty male servant allowed us ingress, and ordered us to wait upon the marble entrance hall. He went away toward the back of the house, and when he opened the distant massive door sounds of revelry poured forth, snipped off again when he closed the door once more behind him.
Guilt and indecision faded for a time from my mind, as I stood waiting for Dixon Whittington to put in his appearance. I was, like unto bird and snake, fascinated by the man. I wanted to know what he would look like. What would a corporate thief look like? What would be the physical appearance of a man who entrusted his son for a three thousand mile journey to the hirelings of mobsters? What possible face could front such a mind?
Renewed revelric reverberations signaled the re-opening of the door. I looked up and saw the face I’d been wondering about.
One thing was certain. No Dorianesque painting was locked away above stairs in this villa. The face of Dixon Whittington reflected the man. The eyes, of course, were the features one noticed first. Small and nearly round, with a darkish gray-green tinge, they were set deep in the forepart of his skull, widely separated by pasty flesh. The nose was thick and veined, with flaring deep-lined wings and black gaping hair-filled nostrils. Lines of sour discontent fanned down across the flesh from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His cheeks were rounded and mottled, though meticulously shaved, and his small mouth was thick lipped, the lower lip protruding in a moneyed pout. His forehead was high and pale and gleaming, with thick black brows hung awninglike over those beetle eyes. In ridiculous contrast to the jungly under-brush of brows, his coal-black hair was plastered straight back on his bulky head in the style of Valentino.
The body on which this head sat solidly and truculently was, in a word, gross. Is that the right word? Does it get the idea across? What I’m trying to picture for you is, see, a businessman. You know what businessmen are built like, they’re the ones for whom the double-breasted suit was invented. Kind of barrely. Chunky. Now, you take that businessman, and you give him a nasty mind and a life of ease and dissipation, and pretty soon that same double-breasted suit, when he puts it on, is single-breasted. And he isn’t chunky anymore, he’s soft and flabby. Gross, in other words. But the original businessman body is still down inside there someplace. You have the feeling that if you prodded him with a finger, it would be like prodding a thick layer of dough over a honeydew melon. Soft and flabby, with the original chunkiness down underneath. Gross. See?
I looked at this thing, this seven hundred thousand dollar mistake, this Dixon Whittington, and then I looked at Rhett. The gross mistake before us had created this tiny child, and what that proves I don’t really know. I’d have to see the mother first. But of course, the mother had flung herself from a window, and was unavailable for the viewing.
Come to think of it, that fact alone made the viewing unnecessary. It didn’t matter what the mother looked like. Having been betrayed by this dank troll here in front of me, she had taken the easy way out, totally ignoring her own responsibility to the child she had brought into the world.