The mayor came to the table with the vibrant merry hustle with which he drew all attention to himself. Briggs introduced him to Faucher, smiled patiently, and did not rise but stared at the mayor’s fringed vest. Following a local convention, the mayor asked John when he had gotten back.
“I’ve been back about five times this summer,” said John, “from Tanzania, Berlin, Denver, and Surinam.” He was always exasperated at being asked this question.
The mayor held his head in his hands. “Surinam! Never heard of it! Denver, I’ve heard of! What’s in Surinam?”
“Bauxite.”
“Baux—”
“Pal,” said Faucher, “give it a rest. We’re trying to eat.” He made a shooing motion and the mayor left; Faucher raised his eyebrows as he asked Briggs, “How can we miss him if he won’t go away?”
The last time Briggs had seen him, Faucher had been insuring marine cargo out of a nice office on Old Colony Avenue in Boston and doing rather well, especially in the early going, when Everett Hoyt had tipped him off to opportunities with far-ranging classmates. Now, Faucher said, he was an investment adviser at a tiny merchant bank in Boston, a real boutique bank. He liked meeting his people in St. Louis Square on warm spring days (he had a key), to lay out the year’s strategy, clients who were charmed by his arrival on a Raleigh ten-speed. For a long time he had made cavalier decisions about his clients’ investments, but now, in harder-to-understand times, they trusted him less and obliged him to chase obscure indices across the moonscape of U.S. and foreign equities. He vowed to deepen his mystery. He kept a hunter-jumper at Beverly and dropped into equestrian talk to baffle the credulous, using terms like volade and piaffe and volte to describe the commonplace trades he made (and commissioned), or comparing a sustained investment strategy to such esoterica as Raimondo D’Inzeao’s taking the Irish bank at Aachen on the great Merano. His own equestrian activities, he admitted, consisted in jumping obstacles that would scarcely weary a poodle, in company with eight- and nine-year-old girls and under the tutelage of roaring Madame Schacter, a tyrant in jodhpurs married to a Harvard statistician. To his clientele, yachts and horses were reassuring entities, things to which one’s attention could turn when times were good.
Faucher said, “John, I’ve got to tell you, nothing makes me happy anymore. I need new work. I want to be more like you, John. I need a gimmick. You get the time-zone watch from Sharper Image, and the rest is a walk in the park. Whereas my job is to reassure people who are afraid to lose what they have because they don’t know how they got it in the first place. John, it’s not that I mind lying but I like variety, and I’m not getting it.” His face was mottled with emotion Briggs found hard to fathom. “I desperately wish to be a cowboy.”
“Of course you do, Erik.”
“That family”—Faucher pointed conspicuously toward a nearby table with a rancher, his wife, and their three nearly grown children—“has been here an hour, and they have never spoken to each other once. Don’t people here know how to have fun?” The family was listening to this, the father staring into the space just over his plate, his wife grinning at a mustard jar in fear. “We do that when we hate each other,” Faucher said.
“I don’t think they hate each other, Erik.”
“Well, it sure looks like it! I’ve never seen such depressing people.”
Marjorie proceeded from the bar with a colorful tall drink. She was wearing a red tunic with military buttons over a short skirt and buttoned boots, hair pulled tight and tied straight atop her head with a silver ribbon. Briggs was glad to see her; she looked full of life. She said, “May I?”
Briggs got quickly to his feet and drew a chair for Marjorie, steadying her arm as she sat. Faucher looked very glum indeed. He said in an unconvincing monotone, “Sorry I missed you this morning. I understand you cooked a marvelous breakfast.”
“It filled us up, didn’t it?” she said to Briggs.
“All we could eat and no leftovers,” Briggs agreed.
“What’d you do with the rental car?” Faucher barked.
“In front of the bank, keys under the seat.”
Faucher lost interest in the car. “Not like I’ll need it,” he said with a moan.
The ranch family stood without looking at one another, obliging at least two of them to survey the crown molding. The father glared at Erik and dribbled some coins to the table from a huge paw while his waitress scowled from across the room. Karaoke had started at the bar, and a beaming wheat farmer was singing “That’s Amore.” “Can I get a menu?” Marjorie asked, craning around the room.
“Has it possibly occurred to you that we’re having a private conversation?” Faucher said.
Marjorie stopped all animation for a moment. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She looked crushed as she arose. Briggs tried to smile and opened his hands helplessly. She gave him a little wave, paused uncertainly, picked up her drink, and then turned toward the bar and was gone.
Briggs’s face was red. “I’m surprised you have any friends at all!” He was practically shouting.
“I only have one: you.”
“Well, don’t count on it if you continue in this vein.”
“I suppose it made sense for me to make two changes of planes plus a car rental to have you address me with such loftiness,” Faucher wailed. “I came to you in need, but your ascent to the frowning classes must make that unclear.”
After dinner, they had a glass of brandy. And then Marjorie appeared at the karaoke and managed to raise the volume as she belted out “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” followed immediately by a Cher imitation, pursed lips and slumberous eyes. “I Got You, Babe”—she directed various frug moves and Vegas gestures in Faucher’s direction.
Feeling under attack, Faucher urged Briggs to call for the bill and pay it promptly. “I can’t believe how quickly things have gone downhill,” he said, as if under mortar fire.
Marjorie followed them out of the bar. She was so angry she moved in jerks. She walked straight over to Briggs and said, “You think you’re above all this, don’t you?” Then she slapped him across the face, so astonishing him that he neither raised a protective hand nor averted the now-stinging cheek. “You want another one?” she inquired, lips flattened against her teeth.
“I think I’ll hold off,” Briggs said.
“Ask yourself what Jesus would do,” Faucher suggested.
Marjorie whirled on him and John hurried away toward a boarded-up drygoods store where he’d parked; Faucher joined him. When they got to the car, they looked back to see Marjorie’s friends restraining her by the arms theatrically. A cowboy with a goatee and jet black Stetson stared ominously as their car passed close to him on the way out of town.
“Don’t drive next to them, for Christ’s sake!” Faucher said. “The big one is about to come out of the bag!”
Faucher mused as they drove south into the piney hills and grassland.
“People have become addicted to hidden causes. That’s why you were the one to get slapped. They’ve been trained to mistrust anything that’s right in front of their eyes. That woman was a turnoff. Everything reminded her of family, like it was a substance. Not the family or my family but just family, like it was liverwurst or toothpaste. You can’t imagine the difficulty I had preserving the pathetic taco I was trying to sell as an erection in the face of all that enthusiasm for family. I told her she was amazing, and that seemed to take all the wind out of her sails. Oh, John, my path has been uneven. I’ve made so many enemies. Some of them intend to track me with dogs.”