“The cocksuckers,” said Orville rather surprisingly.
“Exactly.” Frank hesitated only a moment trying to imagine whether he meant the bankers or the chickens. Once again, Frank shook the powerful hand of Orville Conway. There was a very definite feeling about Orville, that he knew what he was looking at when he was looking at you. And this was the first little bit of accustomed movement Frank had felt in a long while. But he couldn’t always expect June to come around and get him going.
38
Frank walked home from the office. He passed the irregular colonnades of Schwedler’s maples — a fashionable tree of the twenties — the cotoneaster hedges, the American lindens and, around the bases of the turn-of-the-century homes, the bridal wreath spirea. The street in front of his house was a marvel of retained atmosphere, the permanence of settlers’ hopes, a perfect scene for the freewheeling newspaper boy coming along now, underhanding the evening paper onto lawns; the blue sports car whining along one gear too low; the plumbing truck with galvanized pipe lashed to its roof rack; and the black Saab that swung, like a wingless airplane, around the corner and parked in Frank’s driveway. Frank stopped to watch. He was far enough away that he could easily duck an unwelcome visit. Schoolchildren were starting to appear on the far side of the street, coats tied around their waists, carrying bookbags, walking backward to talk to those walking frontward.
It was Edward Ballantine. Frank took this anonymous moment to size him up. Ballantine was wearing a topcoat over blue jeans and NBA-style high tops. He had on a pair of orange reflective mountaineering glasses, and to hold them a leather thong that hung partway down his back. He removed the glasses and dropped them to his chest while he looked over the doorway. He seemed pretty confident as he stepped up on the porch to knock on Frank’s door. Frank walked as quietly as he could without seeming furtive, and crossed the street.
“May I help you?”
“Oh, Frank, hi,” said Ballantine. He had a facial trait that Frank identified as vaguely out-of-town and which consisted of animating his eyes while leaving his lower face in a noncommittal state. An insincere approach, Frank concluded, allowing for sudden mood shifts depending on the politics of the moment. He thrust out his hand for a handshake, and without looking at it Frank declined to take it. “May we go inside and have a word?” Ballantine asked, starting to throttle down the tone, utilizing the deftly shifted expression toward coolness.
“No,” said Frank, “we may not.” Frank recalled that Ballantine had already quizzed his accountant about the state of his finances.
“Am I to understand that you will not speak to me?”
“Not at all. You just need to do it here on the sidewalk. That’s my home. You know, a man’s home is his castle.”
“I think there are still some issues of joint tenancy there, Frank, with Gracie.”
“Could be, but for now possession is nine tenths of the law. And is that why you’re here, to discuss Gracie’s divorce settlement with me?”
“No, I —”
“Because that’s really not your job, is it, Edward? Though my accountant informs me you’ve been sniffing around.”
“If you’ll give me a chance to talk, I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
“It really is none of your business. I’m sure you can understand that, can’t you, Edward? It’s not a big concept. If it is to you, just let me know how far you got with it and I’ll try to help you with the rest.”
“Frank.”
“?”
“Shut up.”
Frank felt a violent impulse sweep through him, but it passed. Then Edward said, “I think you’re at the point where you might think of looking at your own life to find out what happened to your marriage. I mean, your wife wasn’t stolen by the Comanches or something. She pretty much shot out of here.”
“She did, didn’t she.”
“She sure did.”
“Well, I’d sure like to see her.”
“Just stop at the house. That’s why I came by. I wanted you to know where you could find us.”
“Where’s the house?”
“One Twenty-one Third.”
“Let me think about it first. But maybe I’ll stop over.”
“Nice place,” said Edward. He lifted his hand toward Frank’s house, let it fall.
Frank wondered why he had bothered. “You want to buy it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That was sort of part of the fantasy at one time, that house.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Edward.
“I thought maybe it would be better if you and Gracie had it —”
“It’s best if you see her.”
“— than if I go on rattling around in it. I’d be happier in a hotel, frankly.”
“I thought you owned a hotel.”
“Yeah, but it’s for chickens.”
Edward gave him a puzzled look, then reminded Frank that he ought to speak to Gracie. Edward turned to go to his Saab. Frank could see that it was hard to know how to make the proper exit, and in fact, he himself turned fairly woodenly to go to his house. He heard the little aircraft whir of Edward’s car, got the mail from his mailbox and went inside.
He put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave and turned it on. He switched on the radio, always set on the oldies station, and found, to his satisfaction, a Youngbloods retrospective in progress. The crooner Jesse Colin Young seemed to speak directly to him from the darkness while he opened his mail. What’s this? Eastman Kodak was going to buy the rest of Amerilite Diagnostics Ltd.? I didn’t even fucking see that coming! Weren’t these the pukes that said, ‘Keep it simple, stupid’? Frank hated the sense that if he took his eyes off these birds for so much as a day, they pulled something on him.
The phone rang.
“Mr. Copenhaver?”
“Yes?”
“This is Gladys Pankov from the city planning office. I also represent the Preservation League in my capacity as planner and secretary.”
“Right?”
“I was wondering — is this possible? — if you could clarify something for me about the Kid Royale Hotel. We had hoped that some program for its restoration were in place. But we’ve just received the oddest notice at the planning office.”
“Okay, now I’m with you. My mind was elsewhere. Kodak is on some kind of acquisitions tear. Now, yeah, okay, uh … no, that’s no longer the plan.”
“It’s not?”
Frank thought he knew what was coming. “Are you calling to tell me that exciting new grants are now available for this kind of work?”
“No, actually, I was running down a rumor.”
“It’s going to be a chicken ranch,” said Frank sharply.
“Yes, that was it. Well, just a couple of questions, then. Did you know that one of the rooms was the suite of William Tecumseh Sherman?”
“Sure, the guy that killed all the Indians. That’s a big room all right, hold a lot of chickens.”
“Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill stayed there, George Armstrong Custer, three of the original Vigilantes —”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Frank interrupted, “they’re all dead. So, there’s plenty of room for the chickens. Look, I hate to be short with you, but I’m nuking a cannelloni.” He got off the phone and felt his scalp. He thought about Gracie. It would be tempting to rage against women. Endless destruction around the world. Back to Helen, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth. Mad scientists. He investigated his paper. Poinsettia white flies devastate two agricultural counties in California. Is it men who are so crazy about poinsettias that they want to mail them to friends in California? Blaming the victims? The victims are lovely California vegetables with lethal bugs lodged in their vitals. They and their consumers, people from — one of Frank’s favorite phrases — all walks of life.