7
The turkey was about as gratifying as a Perry Como Xmas carol. The other parts of the menu, giblet gravy, hominy, celery root and spoon bread dressing, roasted chestnut salad, and plum pudding, were about as interesting, but he was hungry and so he dug in.
While Phillip and Virginia stared at each other across the table, sighing and blinking their eyes, he helped himself to the food. He hadn’t eaten this well in a long time. Nance finished his meal, and was dabbing at his guardsman’s mustache with a Bloomingdale’s napkin. Now they were holding each other’s hands. Before lapsing into some sort of love trance, they had spent about thirty minutes discussing kiwi and olive oil. Nance cleared his throat. This got Virginia’s attention.
“Would you like some coffee, Nance?” she said. Phillip frowned. He had a very narrow face. Little bitty eyes that shifted when you looked into them. He was wearing jeans and black Reeboks. A custom-made shirt and a Brooks Brothers tie. His jacket was designed by Armani. Virginia probably selected Phillip’s wardrobe. She was always volunteering to select Nance’s when they were married. He always said no thanks. He liked the rumpled look. Once he became attached to an item of clothing, he wouldn’t take it off. Sometimes he slept in his favorite shirts and sweaters. These days he was wearing black suits a lot. Virginia told her television audience that her ex-husband was going around dressed like an undertaker. She was always putting down his manners to the delight of the audience. She said that once she introduced him to the great tango accordionist Piazolla, and he said hello Mr. Pia Zadora. She said that he was the type of guy who went into Ethiopian restaurants and requested chopsticks. Virginia was in one of the huge kitchen’s alcoves, preparing the coffee. Nance belched. Phillip looked at him with disgust.
“Can I help you with coffee, hon?”
“No, I can handle it, dear,” came the answer from the kitchen.
“I hear you received a quarter of a million dollars to write about the surps. Where they are, and where they’re going, in which you trace their difficulties to their behavioral patterns. It was in The Exegesis,” Nance said, a little drunk and looking for trouble.
“Yes. I’ve already begun my research.”
“Now, I agree that some of these surps are their own worst enemies, but you seem to let the government, economics, and racism off the hook. It seems to me that Jesse Hatch’s philosophy is that of constructing a two-tier economy in which the surps will take the fall for any fluctuations in the raw market. These people in Washington have already written off millions of these homeless surps, I mean you can’t walk down the street without half of the people asking you for five dollars. They got whole families out there begging.”
“Those people are crazy. They prefer being out there.”
“Crazy? You sound like Pierre DuPont or somebody.” It was taking a long time for the coffee to be prepared. In the meantime Nance had knocked down a couple of shots of the rum that Virginia always kept around during the holidays. When they had first married, Virginia had shared his lackadaisical bohemian attitudes toward Xmas, but now she was more enthusiastic than a Jamaican. She had even persuaded the members of the condominium that she lived in to put a manger scene outside.
“Pierre DuPont has a lot of good ideas.”
“Yeah, if you and these DuPonts get your way the only people left in this country will be WASPs, the real ones, and the made-in-Taiwan ones like you.”
“If WASPs lose power in this country, it will be like killing the goose with the golden egg. Who is going to run the country? You and your surps? Ha. There would be brownouts every thirty minutes, and the telephones wouldn’t work,” Phillip answered, ignoring Nance’s sarcasm.
“And nobody will publish your articles.”
“What? What did you say?” Phillip Wheatley was usually very cool, but this last remark got a rise from him.
“Aw, man. They’re using you. Every time you write a column, somebody gets kicked off food stamps.” Nance was beginning to slur his words.
“Virginia, you’d better come and see about your ex-husband.” Virginia brought the tray of coffee into the room, and placed it on the table. “I’m sorry it took so long. I was trying out my new Italian espresso machine. Mr. Whyte gave it to me for Xmas.
“Now, Nance. Are you picking on Phillipkums again?” They both winced. “I think you’ve had enough of that,” she said. She picked up the bottle of rum, clamped a top on it, and placed it on a shelf.
“He was making fun of my column, sugarpie.”
“At least you have a job. Nance drifts from job to job. He’s almost fifty years old and still hasn’t figured out what he wants to do with his time. Whoever named you Nance was right. Anansis. Can’t figure out how to grow your yams and potatoes.” Nance’s grandfather had named him that. He was a professional folklorist. In the old days he just sat around the barbershops telling the old tales. Now he was making eighty thousand a year on the university circuit. “I worked and slaved to help him through law school only to have him conclude one day that there was no such thing as law in America. Only power. He dropped out of law school.”
“You’ll never let me forget about that, will you?”
“Nance, if you don’t know how to act, you can get out of my house. Go back to hustling your fares.”
“What?” Phillip said. He had a slight grin. She paused for a moment. She was going to enjoy what she was about to say.
“He drives this old beat-up Cadillac that must have over 200,000 miles on it. It was given to him, or shall I say willed to him by a gangster named Joe Baby. He sneaks around La Guardia, looking for fares, waiting on the Eastern shuttle from Washington. When he has five passengers, he drops them off at hotels downtown. Sometimes he’s even able to fit in six. They sit on two seats that pull up from the floor of the backseat.” Phillip was really cackling.
“Who was this Joe Baby?” Phillip asked.
“Oh, he was some hoodlum who’d hired a man to do a job for him. The man disappeared. Nance was hired to locate the man. He couldn’t because the clues kept getting ahead of him. He was one lousy detective. Now he’s driving this car, and helping people avoid bill collectors.” They were both laughing now. Nance had his coat on. He belched, an act which really offended them. “He has the manners of Big Jay McNeeley’s saxophone with his burps squeals howls and honks. He’s always dressing in black these days, like some kind of undertaker. And his stomach. That’s his biggest recreation. Filling his stomach. I’ll bet that after he leaves here he’s going to head to a deli to get a prune danish. His stomach is his only friend. Once while he was asleep I drew a mouth, nose and lips on his stomach. I gave his stomach’s face a satisfied look.”
Nance had the face of a fat black cat. He stretched his chin out, as he tried to maintain his dignity. He started out of the door, a little tipsy and as they stood there, Phillip’s arm around Virginia’s waist, Nance couldn’t resist one last shot.
“Well, Virginia,” he said. “I have to hand it to you. You really scored this time. He must be at least twenty years younger than you are.” But she didn’t get mad.