“I didn’t say that I have any issues of loyalty with my party.”
“Indeed you didn’t,” the professor replied.
“I might have asked you this question purely in order to clarify my party’s interests.”
“Indeed.”
“So, under no circumstances would you pay twelve million, but would definitely pay six. Am I right?” Georg asked.
The professor took his time answering. “Your party, to whom you must decide how much or how little of this conversation you will report, is urging us to close by Friday. That’s the day after tomorrow. The other seller is not as impatient. I don’t wish to intimate that a quick closure is out of the question-in fact, it might very well be the most apt solution. But as we have already touched on the issue of competition, we should also touch on the time factor. Let me put this in refreshingly direct American terms: the sooner you want to see cash, the less cash you’ll see.”
“Will you be in town until Friday?” Georg asked.
“I most certainly will.”
“Where can I reach you?”
“Call the Westin St. Francis, and ask for room 612.”
“You’ll hear from me,” Georg said.
The professor nodded and left. Georg watched him until he disappeared around the corner of Third Street. Then Georg made his way through the underbrush, reached the cover of the parked cars, and got to Fern and Jonathan’s front door. It was a quarter to twelve.
The other offer that the professor had mentioned kept going through Georg’s mind; was Georg trying to get Joe entangled in an affair in which he had long been involved? If the other offer was real, then all the facts pointed to Joe. Furthermore, the professor’s proposal that Georg close the deal with a few million and bail out was working irresistibly on his mind. Should I quit trying to expose Joe? The money issue had always been at the back of Georg’s mind. His dream had been that at the end of all this Joe would be finished and he would be rich: all’s well that ends well. How he could get his hands on the money was unclear, though how he could finish Joe off was very clear indeed, and Georg had set his priorities accordingly. But now suddenly both goals seemed within reach. Or is it, he said to himself, that I want it all, as Fran pointed out the other day, and hence want too much?
He drove to Golden Gate Park and looked for Jill and Fern. He couldn’t find them. He drove to the shore and went for a run along the beach. He ran with wonderful lightness, until his legs practically gave way and he fell onto the sand. He lay there until he felt a chill. By evening he knew that he wouldn’t risk the money just to settle accounts with Joe.
45
GEORG WOKE UP AT FIVE in the morning. The house was rumbling and shaking. He went to the window. A long freight train was rolling by. The engine’s eyes threw white light onto the tracks, which Georg had seen from the street but not paid attention to. A pulsating red signal lit up the abandoned cars and trucks along the roadside. The train rattled past beneath his window, black and heavy. A worker stood on the platform of the last car, swinging a lamp. Georg leaned out and saw the lights of the train grow smaller and fainter, and heard the deep, dull warning signal the locomotive emitted at every crossing grow softer.
Jill was asleep. He lay down next to her and watched the brightening dawn. The phone in the kitchen began ringing and wouldn’t stop. As Jill grew restless, he got up and answered.
“Hello?”
“Is that you, Georg?”
“Fran! How the hell did you…”
“Your friend in Germany told me where you were. You had jotted down his number on a pad and I called him. He told me where you are. Listen, Georg, you’ve got to get out of there. Joe wants to… Joe realized that the negatives were missing. He looked in the safe and they weren’t there, so he knew that I had… What could I do but tell him what I did? I had to tell him everything. He says he’s going to get Jill and bring her back. Are you there, Georg? He’s on his way to the airport. He swore he wouldn’t do anything to you, but he was so mad and looked so crazy. Georg, you’ve got to get out of there! Leave Jill where she is, please don’t take her with you. But you have to get out! All night I’ve been wondering if I should call you, or if you’d use my call against me. You must leave Jill and me alone. I can’t handle this anymore. I don’t want anything to happen to you, but I want Jill back. I’m really scared.”
“Don’t worry, Fran, I won’t take her with me. Don’t be scared. She’s doing fine here, there’s a dog and a cat she likes, and everyone’s being really sweet to her. How does Benton intend to get her?”
“He says there’s no way you can have her with you all the time, so you can’t really use her as a hostage. He’ll get at her when you’re out somewhere without her. He’s taking one of his men along.”
“Do you know when he’s arriving?”
“He’s leaving now, on the Pan Am flight from JFK. He’ll be in San Francisco by noon. Will you promise you’ll be gone by the time he gets there, and that there’ll be no trouble when he comes to take Jill away?”
“Don’t be afraid, Brown Eyes. There’s no need to be afraid. Jill won’t be in any danger, and I won’t cause problems. You’ll have her back, and when she’s grown up you can tell her the story of the crazy guy who ran off with her, and she can tell all her friends that when she was a baby she had been abducted by someone who had run off with her to San Francisco. Hey, Brown Eyes, don’t cry.”
She hung up. Georg turned on the coffeemaker and took a look at Jonathan’s new painting. The day before there had only been the tree trunks of a dark forest with the rough outline of a man, crouching or kneeling, his arm gently hugging the shoulder of a girl. Jonathan must have worked late into the night. The man’s head was finished. His mouth was whispering something into the girl’s ear, his brown eyes exuding warmth and humor, as if they wanted to share with the viewer the anticipation at how happy the little girl would be at his whispered words. Her face was beaming, her shoulders raised shyly. The girl was still an outline, but the man’s head brought her alive.
This one’s a winner, Jonathan! The air in your painting is no longer thin, the people no longer wooden. Perhaps happy paintings don’t sell as well as paintings of horror, because everyone who is happy is the same, or, as Tolstoy puts it: only in suffering is one an individual and interesting, or perhaps one merely feels that way, or, whatever, I can’t remember his exact words. Either way, I’m standing in front of your new painting and know that I’m not sentenced to loneliness and being shut out from communicating with other people.
The coffeemaker had stopped hissing, and Georg went to the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the end of the long table. Seven people could sit on each side, he counted; one could throw a dinner for sixteen. He looked out the window. The sky was blue. On the street the truck engines from next door were rumbling. Why did they all sound so different? Why doesn’t one truck engine rumble like another? At night, when all the trucks are lined up, they look the same.
Don’t try dodging the issues, weigh the situation! Why is Benton coming here? What does he think I’m doing with the negatives in San Francisco? Does he suspect that I got in touch with Gorgefield Aircraft? He’s not coming here to talk. He could do that on the phone, or at least try. I doubt he’s coming to talk to Gorgefield, either. He could do that on the phone too. Perhaps he did talk to him and didn’t like what he heard. Is he coming here because of Jill? That’s a stupid question. Even if Jill or Fran were important to him, he knows I wouldn’t do anything to the baby. I doubt that even Fran sees me as a tiger, but Benton sized me up as a paper tiger right from the start.