Henderson looked around. No pictures on the walls. The room was large and wood panelled. Twin ceiling fans stirred the warm night air. The furniture was old, worn but comfortable looking. Nowhere was there any sign of ostentatious wealth. He felt a brief twinge of unease.
Bryant was engrossed in the silent TV.
“Can I offer you a drink, Mr Dores? Bourbon, Martini?”
“A beer would be very welcome.”
“A beer would be very welcome,” Gage chuckled to himself. “I like that.” He pressed a bell push on the wall.
“So you’re the man who thinks he can sell my paintings for me.” He looked Henderson up and down. “How old are you?”
Why was there so much speculation about his age these days? “Thirty-nine,” he said. He heard a car pull up outside.
“Thirty-nine,” Gage repeated. “How old do you think I am?”
“Sixty-five?” Henderson guessed, and was rewarded with a bleat of sardonic laughter.
“I’m as old as the century, my boy. But I’m as healthy as my sons. Hell, I’m healthier.”
Henderson didn’t know what to say.
The door opened and a dark, big man came in. He wore a tight embroidered denim suit and had a scalloped warlock’s beard.
“Sorry, Dad. Didn’t know you had company.”
“Come on in. This is Mr Dores. His daughter, Bryant. This is my son, Freeborn.”
“Very pleased to know you, sir,” he said sincerely to Henderson, shaking him vehemently by the hand. “And you, Miss Dores.” He took some paces backward. “If you all will just excuse me I won’t derange you further.”
He had glossy, springy hair like his father, Henderson saw, except it was black. He looked like a professional wrestler or an amusement arcade proprietor: someone on the very fringes of the entertainment business. He had heavy gold-coloured rings on several fingers. He smiled at everybody and left.
A dull-looking middle-aged woman came in. She looked tired and hostile.
“Alma-May,” Gage said, “will you make up Cora’s old room for Mr Dores’s daughter. We have an extra guest.”
“What?” The outrage was genuine. “No way!”
“Alma…”
“God sakes.” Muttering, she left.
“Don’t go to any trouble,” Henderson said quickly, “we were planning to stay in a hotel.”
“Well, abandon your plans, Mr Dores. I won’t hear of it. Damn. Forgot to ask her to bring your beer. I’d better get it myself.” He went out through a door at the far end of the room. Outside, Henderson heard Alma-May’s voice raised in passionate argument.
“Now see what you’ve done,” he said accusingly at Bryant, but she ignored him.
“Mr Dores?”
He looked round. Freeborn’s bearded face smiled at him from the doorway.
“May I have a word, sir? If it’s not too much trouble. In private.”
“Of course,”
Henderson followed him out through the front door onto the porch. Freeborn, he noted, was not only large and tall but also very fat. But it was all held roughly in place by the strength and tightness of his shirt and trousers.
Freeborn smiled and scratched his beard. At last, Henderson thought, somebody sane.
“Excuse me asking, sir, but am I right in thinking you are the man from the New York auctioneers which wants to sell my Daddy’s paintings?”
So there were paintings. “Yes, that’s right,” Henderson said amiably. “We have the privilege to—”
“I think, to be fair, that I should inform you of a certain fact which has a bearing on your business.”
“What’s that?”
“That if you don’t get your fuckin’ ass out of this house by noon tomorrow I’m gonna bust yo’ fuckin’ head with it.” His voice was still reasonable, the smile still in place.
Henderson felt something slip and slide in his intestines.
“Look here—”
“You gonna be one sorry fucker if you ain’t gone. Know what I mean? Sorry.”
Henderson nodded. Freeborn patted his shoulder.
“You got the idea. Nice meeting you, Mr Dores.”
Henderson stood alone for a couple of minutes breathing very shallowly in an attempt to restrain the trembling that suffused his body. The last time anyone had threatened him in such a direct, virulent and intimate way had been at prep-school. Nothing in his experience as an adult had prepared him for such seemingly disinterested aggression.
He walked carefully back inside. Gage and Bryant sat side by side on a couch watching TV.
“There’s your beer,” Gage said, unconcerned by his absence. “Relax. We’ll talk business in the morning.”
Henderson sat down docilely and sipped his beer. His head seemed to be full of clamouring voices all shouting competing instructions and plans of action. This must be what it’s like for Ike on a busy morning in the diner, he thought aimlessly, feeling a new admiration for the man’s expertise…He concentrated. Should he tell Gage of his son’s unprovoked menace and threat? But how could he? He’d barely been in the Gage mansion for five minutes. “Excuse me, Mr Gage, but your son says he’s going to bust my head with my ass.” No, it wasn’t on. He had to speak to Beeby, that was what, and at once.
“Mr Gage? Could I make a phone call.”
“I’m afraid I won’t have a telephone in my house. But Freeborn has one in his trailer. He won’t mind.”
“It’s quite all right,” Henderson said. “Hate to disturb him. Not important.”
♦
He sat on wordlessly with Gage and Bryant trying to concentrate on the television. Within minutes he was totally lost, as the programme — a love story, he surmised — elided confusingly with the commercials every two minutes, it seemed. More confusingly, the same people — or astonishing lookalikes, appeared to be acting in both. Soap flakes, shampoo, dog food, then the young couple were meeting in a bar, they seemed happy. They were joined by young happy friends…but that turned out to be an extended beer advertisement. He wondered distractedly if the young woman and the dog had been part of a commercial at all. He tried to recollect the upshot of the scene he had witnessed: was she happy or sad as she walked through the woods with her canine friend? Suddenly a fat man was sitting on the bonnet of a car and making fantastical guarantees. Henderson’s brain reeled. He thought he glimpsed the young lovers again but they were still selling beer. Eventually he saw the credits roll and he knew that it was over, whatever it had been. He hoped they were happy. He sat back exhausted, his brow aching dully from the constant frown he had been wearing.
A woman of incandescent beauty announced that she would read the ‘World and National News’.
“Mrs Nazarine Kilgus, Furse County assessor, announced today that the annual ‘How’s Your Health Fair’ will be held next month at the Olar National Guard Armory in Olar. Mrs Kilgus said that everything would be free, except for an optional blood test which will cost eight dollars.”
An hour later, halfway into a movie — this, Henderson had managed to follow — Gage stood up and switched off the TV.
“Shuteye at the Ranchero Gate,” he announced and rang the bell for Alma-May. She didn’t appear, so Gage himself led them upstairs. He ran briskly up to the top landing and stood there waiting for them.
“Not even out of breath.”
“Most impressive,” Henderson said.
They walked along a passageway towards the rear of the house. As they passed one door they heard rock music thumping away. Gage beat fiercely on this and shouted “Shut that noise up now!” It died away to a muffled throb, like the distant pulse of a generator.
“I loathe and despise that modern music,” Gage said. “Which is why I have the television on so loud. I’d rather mindless babble than that garbage he listens to.”