Frank went upstairs to look in on Lucy. She was sitting in the tub, bubbles up to its gunwales, and when he entered she grabbed her breasts with soapy hands and said, “Come in and make the ficky-fick, Frankie!” Frank wondered if most property investors were addressed in this manner. He was startled by this new Lucy. She had evidently had some conversion since he last was with her, one that seemed entirely foreign to her personality.
“I don’t think so.”
Nothing about Lucy moved. Her big eyes searched Frank. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Steam lifted from the tub and went out through the tilted window. She had invented this character for herself and now she didn’t know what to do with it. Real empty-headed wantonness didn’t quite work for Lucy.
“I knew if I lived long enough, someday I’d get turned down,” she said. “They say it builds character.”
15
Frank stopped by Dick Hoiness’s insurance office and asked him to join him for a drink. It seemed to be a wonderfully burgeoning insurance world in there, with all sorts of things pressed into service to hold down papers, even rocks. There were two secretaries on suave gray rolling chairs faced in opposite directions, operating computers. Dick got the jacket of his seersucker suit off the coatrack in the corner of his office. He was watching Frank quizzically. Frank had known for some time that he was going slightly downhill since Gracie’s departure, but this odd gaze from Hoiness confirmed it.
“Man, it’s ten A.M.,” said Dick. “Can I join you for something other than a drink?”
“No, this is more of a drink situation. You’re going to have to roll with me on this one.”
They drove back to the Dexter Hotel and went into the Meadowlark Bar with the Art Deco aluminum cocktail silhouette in front.
“Is this important?” he asked.
“Important.”
“Do I have to drink?”
“Yes.”
They had the bar to themselves. At such an hour, even the bartender viewed one with suspicion, barely accepting that in hard times problem drinkers help make ends meet. The light was dim, designed really for chatting up the opposite sex; but at this hour it seemed just gloomy.
“Let’s sit in a booth,” Frank said.
The bartender rolled his eyes. They each ordered a beer. Dick gathered his toward himself on the tabletop without actually taking a drink from it. He still had a kind of nocturnal demeanor from his rock-and-roll days. Frank looked at this well-adjusted insurance man and remembered him calling out over the top of reaching hands and transported faces, “I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels!” with a death grip on the bucking neck of his guitar. Long time ago.
“I don’t know why I had to tell you this,” Frank said, “but I’ve accumulated a good many things and you’ve got them insured and I just had to tell someone that I am not enjoying any of this, including the accumulations, and it’s probably because I haven’t gotten over Gracie.” Hoiness looked at him in astonishment; it confirmed Frank’s sense that he was coming adrift.
“You’re telling me this? I’m flattered you would think of me to tell this.”
“You’re in insurance. You deal in the values the world accepts or you’d be out of business. I pay you to insure things that are starting to have no value to me.”
“You’re not canceling …”
“No, I just need to have things spruced up so I can keep playing. I want to be a player. I don’t want to get benched just at the point I’m getting a few things done. I want to play my ass off. But does this ever happen? Do you get clients that say they don’t want things insured until they rediscover their meaning?”
“No.”
“You don’t? It’s worse than I think.”
“I’m not saying that …” Hoiness lifted his hands in confusion. “I guess we all get the feeling we’re doing something wrong. It’s like walking alone through a store at an off hour, trying to act like you’re not shoplifting. In other words, your only choice is to go on about your business. How is your business?”
“My business is good,” Frank said. He didn’t mention any doubts he might have had.
“Now we’re businessmen,” Hoiness said.
“Yes.”
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Frank. “The Theys have taken us in.”
“We’re pretty cozy. We’re one of them. I married a They — nice tits, mother of my kids, never seen me on drugs, never seen me with my dick through the back of a park bench waving to the nuns. It’s outa sight. It’s PTA.”
“We’re pretty cozy in here,” Frank mused, “right in the golden hearth of American life. We should thank our lucky stars.” Frank stared at the picture of the elk and the waterfall behind the bar. “I don’t want to get booted out of the hearth, Dick. I think it’s possible to appreciate it. I think you ought to be able to sit in front of your hearth even if you are all by yourself.”
Dick looked at him and said, “This is from the point of view of the committed life insurance salesman: I’ve noticed that people who lose the point of everything don’t seem to be around too much longer.”
“Said like a true They.”
Karl Hammersgard came in the door out of the blinding light, the sleeves of his blue oxford shirt rolled up, the pleated khakis straining around his midriff and rising slightly above the tops of his oxblood loafers. You could see the comb lines in his blond hair going straight back from his ruddy forehead. He was short and tough.
“Holy cow,” shouted Hoiness, “a real drunk!”
Hammersgard went to the bar and got a shot and glass of water without seeming to notice there was anyone in the place but him. He knocked back the shot, sipped the water, got the shot refilled and came to the table. He looked at Frank and Dick. “Ain’t that a pair to draw to,” he said.
“Join us, Karl,” said Frank.
“I thought I was the only day drinker in our group,” said Karl, sitting down.
“Normally you are,” Dick said, “but Frank’s not feeling too good.”
Karl raised his glass to Frank. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“The escalating boredom of life in the monoculture.”
“Good, Frank. Is that what this is?”
“Yeah,” said Frank, “like something you grew in a petri dish.” Then Frank didn’t feel particularly well. But it was hard to be solemn.
“So, what’s with you?” Hoiness asked him.
“Well, the usual. We’re four and oh.” Karl was the high school baseball coach. “So, I’m happy. We play Red Lodge tomorrow and they’re tough, or supposed to be tough. I’ve saved this one kid — pitches, unbelievable slider — for tomorrow. This kid is pure baseball. Being scouted already. It’s an away. I want to see him at that altitude. I think his stuff will absolutely shine. When you see this kid walk out there, it’s like seeing baseball itself, with a kind of glow. I’d like to put him in a glass case and suck out all the air. He’s that good. So, like I say, I’m happy, things is good.”
Frank looked at Karl. Karl was normal. Have a couple of shooters in the middle of the morning because they taste so good. No other reason. Big, life-loving Scandinavian brute. That’s what Frank hated about having a crooked personality — the weirdness, the glancing impulses, jokes going wrong, worldly mania one day and pining for a monastery by sunup the following. It was good to have companions like these, large mammals. In fact, overwhelmed by his love of them, Frank lustily ordered another drink.