Roberto Natchez had a silver-plated letter opener. He'd bought it many years before; it had struck him as a necessary accoutrement for a budding literary man, though the implement, weighty and portentous, seemed designed for the unsealing of more important mail than the poet ever got. He grabbed it now and stood before the painting Augie Silver had given him in friendship. His face contorted, he raised the blade and let the point of it rest lightly near the center of the canvas, poking at a swath of sunshot sky. He breathed deeply, gripped his weapon as tightly as though he were about to plunge it into flesh, and he slashed. He slashed again and again, the canvas made a rasping, screaming sound as it was rent, flecks of brightly colored paint floated off the sundered cloth like tinsel glitter. He slashed until the picture was in shreds too narrow to hold the knife, and then he stepped back, breathless and sweating, to see what he had done.
The frame had been knocked askew, ribbons of canvas hung down at random angles over the bottom of it. Natchez smiled. He examined the ghastly smile in the mirror, then turned to the painting again. He moved toward it, intending to take it off the wall, smash it, and put it in the garbage. Then he had a different idea. He'd leave it where it was and as it was. Let it hang there in tatters. Let it hang there dead. It struck him as somehow more authentic that way, more in the spirit of the crackpot tropics.
Clayton Phipps had not left his house in four days and was turning a sickly shade of yellowish gray. He hadn't shaved, he'd slept only for brief intervals at odd hours. His scalp seemed to have stretched from the weight of fatigue; a roll of loose skin gathered at the base of his skull, another formed a curving ledge above his eyebrows. When he finally ventured out late on Friday afternoon, the damp white light stung his eyes, and the concrete sidewalks felt bruisingly hard against his feet.
He walked to Augie Silver's house and knocked softly, tentatively, on the door.
Reuben opened it. "Meester Pheeps," he said. There was surprise in his voice, though it was unclear whether it had to do with the visit itself or the neat man's slovenly condition.
"Is Augie home?"
Reuben recognized suffering; he recognized repentance. He answered gently. "He is home. I do not know if he likes to see you."
Phipps gave a resigned and tired nod. "Would you ask him, please?"
Reuben left the visitor standing at the door; in deference to his unhappiness, he did not close it in his face. Augie was in the backyard sketching Nina as she swam. He put his pencil down at Reuben's news, and hesitated only for an instant. "Yes," he said, "of course I'll see him."
There is a kind of fondness that can co-exist with disappointment and that persists even in the absence of forgiveness-a fondness that itself becomes an unexalted but tolerable species of forgiveness-and this is what Augie Silver felt as his old friend came through the French doors and approached him. He looked at the white stubble on Phipps's jowls, the black bags under his sagging eyes, and he found it unexpectedly easy to muster a wry affection. "Clay," he said, "you look like hell."
The other man managed something like a smile. "Thank you."
"Whisky?"
Phipps's shirt was damp, he was itchy behind the knees. "Awfully hot for whisky," he said.
"That's obvious," said Augie. "Let's have whisky anyway."
Reuben went for drinks. Nina, dimly aware of muffled voices, peeked above the water just long enough to identify their guest; she decided she would keep on swimming. For a few moments no one spoke; Phipps seemed to be recharging, taking nourishment from the fact that he had been invited in, that he had not been turned away forever. Not until the Scotch and ice arrived and the two men had clinked glasses did he say another word. "Augie, those paintings. I was thinking. Maybe it's not too late to withdraw-"
"I don't ever want to see those pictures again, Clay." The artist's voice was soft but it was definite. "I don't imagine you do either. It's history. Cheers."
The chilled whisky was both cold and hot; it tickled first and then it burned.
Phipps looked into his glass. The ice was melting so fast he could see water streaming off the cubes, shimmering pale currents snaking through the brown liquor. "What happened to us, Augie? To our hale little group of buddies?"
"I know what happened to me," Augie said. "Damned if I know what's going on with you guys." He watched his wife swim. He loved the way she turned, reaching for the wall then becoming a liquid J as she reversed direction underwater. After a moment he said, "You going to the auction?"
Phipps listened hard for a note of rancor, but he heard no blame. "I was going to," he said. "Now I just don't know."
"You might want to decide," Augie said. "It's three days from now."
Phipps shrugged absently. "There's a fellow does charters in a Learjet. Dies in the off-season. Said he'd take me anywhere, anytime for a mention in the newsletter."
Augie could not help smiling. Incorrigibility might not be the loftiest of human traits, but there is always comfort in consistency. "Same old Clay," he said, "the freeloader's freeloader."
By way of answer, Phipps raised his glass. But the twinkle in his eye lasted only for an instant. Then his face caved in, his gray cheeks went slack, his voice turned shrill and maudlin. "Isn't there anything I can do? I feel like such a shit."
"Don't feel like a shit," said Augie. "And no, there's nothing you can do."
With effort, Phipps leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. There was a creaking sound, it was unclear whether it was the furniture or his disused joints. "Augie, these threats, are you really in danger?"
"D'you think I was grandstanding the other night?"
"Maybe I can help," said Phipps. "There has to be some way I can help."
The painter regarded him. He was fat, he was old, he was bald, he was slow, he was searching desperately for some shred of grandeur within himself. Augie patted his knee and with his other hand poured him half a glass of Scotch. "Maybe there will be, Clay," he said. "In the meantime, drink up, go home, and get some sleep."
43
That weekend was the hottest of the year.
People woke up sweating, tangled sheets kicked down near their ankles; pillows took on a sour smell, a smell like something from an overcrowded hospital. The wind went dead calm and the clouds melted into a shroud of rainless haze. Asphalt softened; houses swelled; window sashes seized like rusted pistons. The ocean went improbably flat and soupy green; there seemed to be a cushion of milky white between the water and the air, a zone reserved for the vapor that was constantly rising as from a pot about to boil.
At the Silver house a kind of equatorial stupor had set in. The stupor did not undo anxiety but gave a giddy, unreal cast to it. It seemed impossible that someone was trying to murder Augie; it seemed impossible to prevent it. His killing was so inconceivable that it seemed at moments almost not to matter; then the enormity of imagining it did not matter broke through the haze, and another wave of panic surged over the household. The panic gradually subsided into temporary exhaustion; then, after a nap, a swim, the debilitating march of moods replayed itself.
On Saturday night, in bed, naked, uncovered and not touching, Nina said to Augie, "I so want to believe that somehow, after Monday, this will all be over."
Augie, depressed and sulky from the heat and the fear, perversely made a joke he realized would not be funny. "No way," he said, "the summer is just starting."
He turned over on the soggy sheets and tried to go to sleep.
A lot of guys didn't like to work on Saturdays and didn't like the four-to-midnight shift. They had wives, families, girlfriends, boyfriends. They had dinner dates, poker games, softball leagues to get to. Which was fine with Jimmy Gibbs. To him, a day was a day and the evening shift had certain advantages.