“Yes, in a minute or two.”
Sorrel and Moldenke walked and paddled through the water in opposite directions.
Brainerd Franklin admitted a reporter on to the grounds of his estate, located on a bluff above the beach at Point Blast. His face was thicker now, the reporter recalled. She hadn’t seen him since his heart attack. His hair was grayer. His eyes weren’t as bright as they once were, but still pierced. His recurring phlebitis forced him to move slowly, the old self-assured stride replaced by an irritating limp.
He gingerly eased himself into a gray velvet recliner, resting his leg on a matching footstool. “I bought this chair when I was at my peak,” he said. “It’s been my favorite ever since I said goodbye to the game I loved. My resignation speech was written in this chair, with a glass of bitters right there on that table.”
The former exhibition golfer says he did the best he could with the talent he had. “I never thought about being loved. I wanted to golf, that’s all. I’ve married to keep up appearances, but it’s cold and distant.”
His resignation from the lucrative exhibition circuit has eaten away at his transplanted heart. His sad eyes glanced at a showcase where mementos of his headline-making world tours were proudly displayed. Then he gave a faint grin. “You know, in times like these, you find out who your friends are.” It’s no secret that in the aftermath of his retirement many of Franklin’s personal contacts abandoned him.
“Come on,” he said, limping to the door. “Let me show you around.”
The reporter followed him from his rosewood-paneled office and climbed into a yellow golf cart with the name Franklin painted above the grille. As they drove through the estate grounds, taking things at a slow clip, Franklin lamented the sorry state of his former golfing empire. “Those buildings over there were filled with my working staff. Now they’ve been stripped of furniture. But I’m told that’s the way it is for a jellyhead, the ups and the downs. I’ve had the ups. Now I’m going down.” The cart then returned to the main house. “I get out here,” he said.
Off to the side, Mrs. Franklin, a free woman, wearing a bright yellow and white pantsuit, stopped puttering in her garden and trotted toward the reporter. “Isn’t this a beautiful garden?” she asked. “I just love working with my flowers. That’s how I spend most of my time.”
When she had gone back to her garden, Franklin said, “Even without love, Sophie and I talk a lot about our shattered lives. I get strength from her. She is at peace with herself. She is truly a great lady.”
Franklin was met on the patio by a visiting nurse who removed his gray sports coat and made him swallow two or three pills. She then checked his blood pressure and palpated his wide abdomen, causing him to gasp when her thumbs dug into his spleen.
When the procedure was over, a pained Franklin beckoned to the reporter. “Come see my office. I’ll give you a souvenir.”
The reporter followed eagerly and stood at Franklin’s desk, watching him rummage in the drawers until coming up with an autographed ball. “Perhaps you’ll like this. It’s the only one I have left. The rest have been sold.”
His handshake was firmas she accepted the ball and left.
Moldenke retrieved his red suit, climbed back into it, and went to the changing nooks. The flimsy lock, as he feared, had been broken open. His dirty uniform hung there still, but his pass card was missing from the pocket.
The attendant at the rental shed showed a hardened attitude at first. “Anybody stupid enough to leave it in there with that little lock, I got no sympathy for.”
“How will I get on a streetcar?”
“I don’t care. I’m about to close.”
“Have you seen Sorrel? She must have come here to turn in her suit and change.”
“Big Ernie’s girl?”
“That’s her.”
“Ernie came and got her in his motor.”
“Did she mention she was with someone? This was a date. We were together. I thought she would wait.”
“Brought back her suit, changed clothes, and left. That’s it.”
“All right. Thanks.”
“Wait a minute,” the attendant said. “I’m feeling bad about this. Look, people lose their pass cards here all the time.” He reached into a box filled with them. “Here, take this one.” He handed a card to Moldenke embossed with the name Enfield Peters.
“I know him,” Moldenke said. “The actor.”
The attendant chuckled. “Free people don’t need a name. Half the folks in Altobello go around with somebody else’s card. Nobody cares. You want another card? I got plenty of unknowns.”
Moldenke thought of taking another one but reconsidered when he realized that Peters’ name on the card could pave the way for little courtesies and attentions he wouldn’t get otherwise. “No, I’ll keep this one.”
The Peters pass card proved effective when Moldenke boarded the car back to the Tunney Arms. The conductor tipped his cap and smiled. “Evening, Mr. Peters.”
“I’m going all the way to the Tunney Arms on the west side.”
“Yessir. Sit anywhere you like. I loved you in Who Puked? Great film.”
“Thank you. It was one of my best.”
“It took me a good while to figure out it was the waiter,” the conductor said.
“It had to be him. The clues were there all along.”
“You don’t look like you did on screen with an ear like that.”
“They do wonders with powder, wax, and rouge these days, and the lighting, too.”
Moldenke took the first seat available, let his head sink down to his chest, and closed his eyes. He wanted to be in a light trance for the long ride back, if not asleep. The clanking of the car’s wheels on the steel tracks and the squeal of the rusty springs made any state but hyper-vigilance impossible.
He saw that the passenger sitting next to him was reading the last few pages of the Treatise and when his stop came, he got up, closed the Treatise, and held it out for Moldenke. “Here, you want this? It’s just a load of shit. It’ll put you to sleep.”
“I’ll take it, thank you.” The Treatise would be just the thing, Moldenke thought, for going to sleep on the car. After reading a few pages dealing with the effects of sympathy in the distresses of others he was drowsy, a few more and he was asleep until awakened by the conductor. “Mr. Peters, you’ve shit in your uniform. You’re getting off here. Do you know where the public bath is?”
Moldenke stirred awake. “I know.”
The passenger sitting next to him, with a free child on his knee, held his nose. The child repeated the act.
Moldenke got off at the stop nearest the Tunney and walked down Arden to the public bath. The weather was getting nippy — probably an ice storm on the way. Conditions had been benign for a few days. A change was overdue. He hoped that all the putrid water had been run through the system and that the bath would be open. It was, but with limited services.
“I can wash your uniform and your drawers and your socks, but I can’t dry them. The furnace is out of radio gas. And only one pool is open, the first one. The water is nasty. It might be better tomorrow.”
“Wash the uniform. I’ll wait in the boilery. I have a book.”
The bath aide gave Moldenke a towel to cover himself. “I know that book, the Treatise. Everybody’s reading it. I read it.”
Moldenke settled on a bench, lit a Julep, and read Part One, in which Burke claims that terror is not only the strongest of the emotions but the source of the sublime. Ideas of pain, he goes on to say, are more powerful and more memorable than ideas of pleasure.