"He'd work, of course. I could get him a job of some kind. I'm pretty well-known in town, he's eighteen? nineteen?"
"Eighteen."
"I’ve got it," he said triumphantly. "I could get him a job in a bank. Larry Gore would do it for me, he's president of one of the banks in town, he handles all my investments and is a distant relative of mine, the only one I have. But more than that, he'd do it for me if I asked him."
She looked at him uncertainly. "But—I don't know—Billy might not like it, and yet wouldn't say anything, he's sensitive. I'd hate to think that he might be unhappy and
yet—"
"Look,” he said firmly., "I'd have him write to you regularly. You'd get a letter from him every week. I promise you. If he didn't like it, he wouldn't mind telling you, especially in a letter, and then you'd call or write me and I'd ship him home. I'm going home tomorrow morning. Say the word and I'll start the ball rolling."
They discussed it at length, she was uncertain and raised many objections, which he answered skillfully as the consideration moved from her interests, to Billy's, to his own. "Oh, he won't be any bother to me. Quite the contrary. It will be nice having someone to talk to at the dinner table, and I'll feel better knowing there's someone in the house at night."
When Billy came home, she broached the idea.
"Mr. Jordon has invited you to come and visit with him while I'm abroad."
"You mean the whole time?"
"That's right." said Jordon. "And after, till you get around to go to college, if you like."
"Well, gee, it's a small town where you live, isn't it?"
"It's a small town." Jordon admitted, "but it's a nice town, right on the seashore, there's swimming and sailing, and you're only about half an hour from Boston."
"But what would I do all day long?"
"You'd get a job." said Jordon promptly.
"What kind of a job?" asked the young man cautiously.
"Maybe in a bank."
"Hey, that's kind of cool."
Despite the lateness of the hour, Jordon chose to walk back to his hotel rather than order a cab, he exulted in the thought that his son would be living with him, he was a boy, and he would make a man of him.
He heard the grating of a key in the front door lock, he called out. "Is that you, Billv? Come in, come in, bov, the door's unlocked." He rubbed his hands and smiled as the young man entered. "How'd things go at the bank today? All right? Anything unusual happen?"
"Unusual? No, sir."
"Well, that's the best way. I guess, the regular routine. Oh, case I forget, tomorrow when you go in, would you look up Johnny Cunningham's account and let me know how it stands."
4
"OH, BEN, I LOVE IT. I SIMPLY LOVE IT." MIMI SEGAL whirled around like a ballerina pirouetting, her arms outstretched, her head lifted, her blond hair flowing in the crisp autumn breeze, she squinted against the reflection of the sun on the dancing wavelets. "There's a sign there on the beach that says Private. Does that mean it's a private beach?"
"I should think so," said her husband. "The lot goes down to the beach so the beach must be part of it. Those houses on either side, they each have paths leading to those little landing docks, so I guess these lots include the adjoining part of the beach."
"How did you find it? And how do you know it's for sale?"
He smiled fondly at her. "While you've been going in to Boston shopping, I've been wandering around the area." He was a good bit older than she, fifty to her thirty-eight, so there was a touch of the avuncular in his affection for her. "I saw this place when I walked out to the lighthouse yesterday."
"But how do you know it's for sale?" she persisted.
"Anything is for sale if the price is right." He turned to where the car was parked and called out to the chauffeur. "Hey, you know who owns this land?"
The chauffeur, who had been provided along with the car by the Rohrbough Corporation, shook his head. "I don't know, sir."
"Well, they'll know in town." Segal said to Mimi. "Let's walk along the beach and see what it's like." He put his arm around her waist, and because she was taller than he and was always worried that he might be self-conscious about it, she bent her head to rest on his shoulder, he was of average height, but she was tall for a woman, like a fashion model. It was her second marriage, and she had met him shortly after she had managed to free herself of an alcoholic husband, she had had doubts when he had indicated that he wanted to marry her, mostly because at forty-seven, he was still a bachelor. What was wrong with him? Why hadn't some woman grabbed him up long ago? He was not bad-looking. In fact, she decided she liked his sharp, intense face, with its sensitive mouth and long thin nose, with his shock of iron-gray hair, she thought he was even distinguished-looking. So she had agreed—and had no regrets.
"Are you sure this is what you want. Ben?" she asked anxiously.
"About building a house here?"
"About that, and well, everything, leaving Chicago, giving up finance to go into production—"
He halted in his stride, the better to explain. "You plan and you maneuver and you finally bring it off and make a lot of money. But even more, there's tremendous satisfaction in it, the second time, there's satisfaction, but it's not such a big deal, and then after a while, it becomes just another business. Because, you see, you know how to do it now. It becomes routine. Sure, there's a lot of money to be made, but that's all."
"Most people would say that's enough."
He nodded. "Sure. But if you use it just to make more money, there's no sense to it. I couldn't spend it; I never learned how, not the kind of money I was making. So I used it for leverage to make more deals—"
"But what do other businessmen do?" she asked.
"Some of them make things, or transport them, or distribute them so people have access to them, that seems more worthwhile."
"You do the same thing Bert Richardson does, and you've always admired him tremendously."
"You bet, and do you know what he told me? That he felt the same way. But what keeps him going, he told me, is that he's got three sons, and he hopes maybe they'll be able to make better use of his money than he has, then I began thinking, there's one thing I could buy with my money. I could buy a new lifestyle, a lot of men have that idea when they get to my age. Doctors want to become businessmen, lawyers want to become college professors, businessmen want to become artists or actors. Not many of them do. Most of them feel they can't afford it, or they're afraid to take the chance. But here I am with plenty of money and sick of just putting deals together. Why shouldn't I try something else? So I started to look around, and when this Rohrbough proposition came up, I thought I'd like to try operating it."
"I'm glad you told me. Ben," she said. "I was afraid you were doing it for me because of what I said once about wanting to live a normal life and be a part of a community."
"Then you don't mind?" he asked.
"Mind? I love it Ben."
"And you don't miss your friends in Chicago?"
"We have no friends in Chicago. Ben. Just business associates. You can't make friends when you live in a hotel, not even in a big suite in a residential hotel. You're always just a transient. Oh, Ben. I'm so happy. Let's celebrate."
"You're on,” he said. "But look. I was planning to drop in at one of the local banks, they do the payroll for Rohrbough, and I wanted to size the place up. I'll have the driver drop me off there, and you'll go on to the hotel, we'll get together around noon."
"How are you going to find out who owns it?"
"No problem there. I'll ask at one of the local realty offices, they'd know. Or I could ask at the bank. Look, baby, I'll pick you up afterward, and we'll drive up the coast and have lunch at some restaurant where they specialize in fish and seafood. I've been hankering for it since we came. How about it, baby?"