He opened up a can with the electric opener. Inside was a small amount of crusty, yellowish salve, smelling powerfully of some kind of detergent. "The cook tried to throw this stuff out the other day, and I near to had a fit. I got a whole truckload of them for thirty-five dollars. You know what this would cost on today's market? I thought I could sell it—genuine collector's items, these are. Not that I need the money, but I've got to keep myself occupied. Collecting art don't take every min- ute." He put some on a biscuit and watched as I tried to eat it. "Not bad, huh?"
As soon as he looked away, I let the biscuit slip under the table to the dog. I had to make a fast clack with the fork and knife to cover up that powerful sound, the crunching of jaws.
Meanwhile Chuck had put away four or five of the eggs liberally doused with taco sauce. " Goddammit, you're slowing down. When I operated the Ballroom in Newport, we used to attract the sporting trade. You know, Marley, I never saw a professional golf or tennis player who would buy his own goddamn drink. Those fellows could eat; let me tell you, I could judge at breakfast who was going to win that afternoon."
"What was the Ballroom?" I said.
"Try some of the taco sauce on the mushrooms, brings out the flavor. Imported the stuff myself from a restaurant in Tex-arkana. Don't tell me you never heard of Dolger's Starlight Ballroom. There wasn't a day in the papers there wasn't some mention of the goings-on at the place. Lady and my mother were horrified; so was the community. It was their belief that a person's name should never appear in the paper but for three times—birth, marriage, and death. Hell, my mother and Lady never got used to some things; both of them society ladies. Place didn't last too long though—nightclubs are generally short-lived. Ripped out the whole main floor of the mansion, put in a stage and a wet bar out by the swimming pool. At one point I turned the whole back lot into a miniature golf course. Newport never saw the like. Had an orchestra—a different one every two weeks—up from New York. I was just a kid then. Have a couple more eggs, there's room on your plate. Or are you ready for some dessert?"
The dog got up under the table, emitting a slow, painful groan, and shuffled over to her water bowl. I tossed a few baked beans off my plate. Well, so it is that history is passed from mouth to mouth, virum volitare per ora. I guess the old guy just wanted me to know how it had been for him. Still, I was frantic to get on with my own life; I was willing to listen, though, if the end result would be my getting some money.
"All set," I said. The dog came back from her water bowl, pushed the beans around with her snout, and sunk back again. "Whoops, looks like I just dropped my napkin," I said, bending over to try to retrieve the baked beans.
"I guess you might say I was a rebellious kind of guy, Mar-ley. But I was a self-made man and generally people who have been brought up the way I was don't like to make money. Not me, though." He stopped talking to give the red-eyed dog a halfhearted kick. "Love that dog—she looks just like me. Tch tch tch. How about a drink to go with the eats?" He went over to the cabinet and came back with a dusty bottle of brandy covered with a parchmentlike paper he held up to the light.
I couldn't help but be fascinated with his face, so sad and elephantine. Big rheumy eyes folded in delicate tissue. Maybe I could use him as my male Madonna.
"Had to give up the booze," Chuck said wistfully, pouring out a snifter of stuff the color of rotten apricots. "But I sure miss those elevenses. Now I just cook. Believe me, cooking is creative. Why, I could write a cookbook of my own recipes. Reminds me of when I used to make my own ice cream during Prohibition days. Tutti-frutti. I had bonded rum in storage just for flavoring. I never considered it a waste of booze. Like paint, you can't stint on your art supplies if you want to succeed. Neighbors used to send their cooks over to my kitchen just to buy a quart—I had direct contact with the finest rum-runners from Cuba. Finish up this last sausage, sonny."
"Esto perpetua to you!" I said, holding up the sausage on my fork, while with the other hand I reached down and tried to loosen my belt. Meanwhile trying to record the man. A handsome face, combining the most gracious aspects of a moose and a doorknob. I could see the old genetic lines at work, a certain nobility and foghorn dignity. Yet it was an irritation to me that he had enough money to finance my genius idea, and I couldn't bring him to see the point. Oh, hope told a flattering tale: I still thought I might persuade him to fork over the dough.
Chuck leapt up from the table on his big feet, the chef's hat flopping over to one side, and brought on the coffee and some fat jelly doughnuts that were greasy and soft to the touch, but brown and gritty with sugar on the outside. "Have one of these," he said. "Made them myself. Special treat."
I blinked politely and bit into one. It was filled with loads of gooey, blackish grape jelly that blurted out over the sides of my mouth. "Good, good," I mumbled. "By the way, you haven't told me yet what you think of my project."
Meanwhile he had forgotten about the smoked trout. "Too late. Well, just try a little taste, Marley. I only took a couple out of the deep freeze, but I'll get out more if you think you want a snack after breakfast."
"Yeah."
"Where was I? The Starlight Ballroom. Well, when the neighbors took up in arms about the place, I turned it into a turkey ranch. Dolger's White Mountain Turkeys. Hah! The neighbors were even less happy about that, but they couldn't do a thing—they had made sure the neighborhood was zoned for livestock. They were thinking about their horses, I guess. Ever see a turkey make love?"
"No," I said.
"Or a hen straining to lay an egg that won't come out?"
"No."
"Ever cook up a bird, and when you open it there are hundreds of little turkey embryos, some in an egg and others getting smaller and smaller until the last one is tinier than a pearl?"
"No."
"All of this is leading up, I guess, to how I'm thinking about becoming a Catholic. I lived my life by biting into it like you would a person's arm. The neighbors should have complained less about the Starlight Ballroom; you should have heard them squeal about the farm. It was one of the finest turkey operations around. None of this chemical stuff; my birds were happy. I didn't make much money, though. Take your average Thanksgiving bird, for example—ten, twelve pounds. What family needs or wants a fifty-pound bird?"
"Maybe a large family," I said.
"Nope," Chuck said. "Don't have a large enough oven. But my problem was, I had a lot of other projects going—I started a magazine publishing dynasty, and got out at the right time, and made a real killing—and I lost interest in the whole bird endeavor. I could have been Frank Perdue today. Maybe not, though. The reason those birds got so big was that I hated to kill them off. The only kind act in my life as a young man. I let the birds live until they turned mean and sour and had to be ground up into turkey roll for the U.S. Army."
I was thinking about my stomach, a tender instrument. I could feel it down there at the bottom of my esophagus, like a woman's glove stuffed with snails and lye. "That's terrible," I said.
"I've always been a farmer at heart, though you wouldn't think of it to look at me. Got kicked out of prep school for raising ducks in the dorm room."
"Don't pay Chuck too much attention," Ginger said, wandering into the kitchen and pouring herself a cup of coffee. "We should all be so lucky as to be the kind of self-made man that Chuck is."
"These are men talking, Ginger," Chuck said.
"I'm going, I'm going," Ginger said. "Marley, you haven't been telling Chuck about your project, have you? Why don't you let him buy a couple of your paintings before you start in on him." She left the room, but not before shooting me an expression—I could see what Chuck meant, she was a nervous little thing, with those concentration-camp eyes popping out of a rich American face.