“You’ll have to get it first, and that comes after I get it.”
“Oh, you’ll get it.”
“Thank you, Stuart, I appreciate that.”
“I thought, Natalie’s going to be fine, Paul’s going to be fine, Mama Whitelaw too, even though she abandoned her babies. Evelyn, I hate to put you in the same list with them, but you’ll be fine because you take it as it comes. When I asked Natalie where I’d live after we got this behind us, she said she had ‘no idea because as far as this house is concerned you’re shit out of luck, I’ve come to like it, corny grows on you.’ I had my mother’s china — now I don’t care about china—but I had this china she painted and it’s not well done and it’s not worth anything, but Natalie, when you told me I couldn’t have it because you expected company, I said to myself, ‘Let’s blow this cunt out of the water—’”
Covering his face with one hand, Melvin raised the other in caution as Evelyn felt herself cringing.
Natalie turned to Blaylock. “Do I have to listen to this?”
“In a word, no. But it makes a nice preview. Stuart has retained counsel, and this is pretty much where he’s coming from.”
“Will I be able to explain how bored I am by all this?”
“Absolutely. Jurors are unlikely to be moved by it, but you can unburden yourself as you see fit.”
Stuart was motionless except for the tears that began to pour down his face. Evelyn spoke to him.
“I am resigned to the fact that your divorce is inevitable,” she said, “but I think you both will have to go through the usual channels to get this settled and even so it’s very very sad.”
“My favorite channel,” Blaylock said, “is the one where you take the asset pile and go right down the middle with a cake knife. Stuart, pull yourself together.”
Stuart said directly to Evelyn, from an anguished face, “It’s not money, I want to get even.”
This propelled Melvin Blaylock to his feet. “Stuart, Stuart, Stuart,” he said, “money is how you get even!”
Choudri Rabindrinath Majub, at precisely 9:15 a.m., strode into Paul’s office, his calling card fluttering to the secretary’s desk midstride, a vigorous presence. “Ah, good morning,” he said, thrusting out his hand and tossing a ratty tan topcoat over what Paul had imagined to be important documents. “C. R. Majub,” said the visitor.
“Yes,” Paul said levelly. “I know who you are.”
“My God, what a climate!” Majub was a small man, a narrow-featured face, his neatly parted hair combed straight to the side from the part. He wore a Scottish tweed jacket, twill trousers and an unstarched white shirt with a broad red-and-brown silk tie covered with tiny horses, and a pair of cordovan shoes that on a normal-sized man — Majub was small — would have weighed six pounds.
“Papers arrived at my hotel — plenty of time, thank you — and reviewing everything — may I sit? — I experienced appropriate shock. Never saw receivables at these proportions! There’s a loyal customer base we can continue to look to, but not as panacea for some very startl—”
“Look,” said Paul gruffly, “instead of going over this column by column, can you give me sort of an executive summary?” There was a very long silence, long enough to begin hearing sounds from outside the building.
Majub smiled, and Paul tried to remember why this aborigine kept turning up in his life. At the same time, he meant to keep a bit of pressure on Majub. “Why the smile?” he asked.
“I always smile when I conceptualize,” Majub said with an even bigger smile.
“Oh,” said Paul. “How far’d you get with it?”
“I’m there, baby.”
“Would you like to share?”
“Mr. Crusoe, I am a polite man. I aspire to being infinitely polite, but I accept that I shall never achieve it.”
“The self-improvement craze is sweeping the country. What about my bottling plant?”
Majub’s attempt to seem imperturbable was unavailing, given the light that danced in his eyes. “Clearly, you have had great success,” he cried, “at running this concern into the ground!”
Paul gazed at him heavily. “You look happy.”
“I’m not!” With the flat of his hand, Majub smoothed his tie and then buttoned his jacket over it.
Paul’s attention was drawn unwillingly to all the tiny hairs bristling from the tweed, which gave Majub’s air an insectlike alertness. Why someone would wear something like this was beyond him, and he felt increasingly hostile; nor could he shake the queasy feeling that he should know more about this tormenting brown gnat.
“You must understand,” Majub said, “that my vital interests are tied to the best valuation we can accomplish. Our fees are a measured portion of the sale. There is no motive for me to understate the worth of this firm. But I cannot be unrealistic, as prospective buyers know they will have to live with the facts if they elect to purchase.”
“Just seemed to me you were a tad aggressive in characterizing my management.”
Here an astonishing belly laugh burst from Mr. Majub, who wiped his eyes and said, “Come, come, Paul.”
“Mr. Crusoe,” said Paul.
“Sure,” said Majub, peering up in a pixieish manner. He was having a wonderful time.
“Las Vegas!” Paul shouted. “We met in Las Vegas!”
But Majub just smiled and pointed under Paul’s desk. “Is that your dog?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What’s his name?”
“Whitelaw.”
Majub seemed to reflect for a spell before speaking. “America is a marvelous country,” he said. “How the world has enjoyed living under your nuclear umbrella!” This confused Paul. He thought Majub was an American.
“I grew up in Maine,” said C. R. Majub. “My father was a lobsterman, but both my uncles were cowboys. My uncle Olatanji was the champion of the rodeo.”
The women turned to each other.
“Look it up,” he went on. “Olatanji Majub, world champion of the big rodeo!”
Certainly he sounded very American for someone born, as he’d told the sisters, in the Punjabi state next to the Great Riff. Only occasionally was his English disturbed by a howler, as when he attempted to describe his girlfriend back in Ohio as “red hot,” and inadvertently described her as “piping hot.”
Natalie found him peppy and well dressed and was pleased to welcome him into her home so recently vacated by her ex-husband, about whom she always reached the same stark conclusion: “Good riddance!”
Word of Majub’s arrival had been circulating for days. He’d visited several attorneys and personally done a rapid inventory at the bottling plant among items that must’ve been quite unfamiliar to him. With each department head he had let an amused glance at Paul’s office be glimpsed; when the foreman for procurement suggested tarring and feathering for the CEO, Majub shook his head faintly, implying that something more restrained but definitely along those lines was already in store.
“Girls,” said Majub to the women gathered to see him at Natalie’s house, “do you know why I am here?” The balls of his fingers rested on a book of celebrity photographs by Annie Liebovitz.
Natalie smiled. “We think so.”
“Not sure,” Evelyn said.
“I’m here to make the bottle plant go away.” He smiled at Evelyn.
“Altogether?” she asked.
“Not altogether, but into something smaller we call money. Unlike the bottling plant, you can carry it in your little purses.”