people to 'come back on Wednesday.' Give them time to catch up to you. You to fall back to the rest of us.'
'But I didn't. I said: 'Judge, does that mean you want me to call up Sammy Paradise and cancel that meeting, too, what I was telling you about out there before the gun went off?' Because now I don't know what the hell the man wants. I don't think he's too sure of it either.
'He looks at me like I have lost my mind. 'Of course not, Amby, for God's sake. What gave you that idea? But what you can do, after you've gone out and told everybody court'll be suspended for the rest of the day here, you can use the time we'll have before this Federal Probation, Paradisio guy arrives to fill me in on him. So I'll have some idea of what I should expect from him.' ''That I can do,' I said,' Merrion said. 'What the hell kind ah grapes're these? They made of iron or something? Fuckin' things look like they're rusty.'
'They're Furmint grapes,' Hilliard said. 'They originally came from Tokay, in Hungary. Years ago, I'm on the Hill, we had some hearings on a health bill to declare alcoholism a disease, make insurers pay to treat it. We had the usual parade of experts come in, and one of them got all wound up on what the stew-bums like to drink. They just love white Tokay wine, it's so sweet and strong. And cheap. I'd never had the wine and I made up my mind to avoid it. Don't want people thinkin'
I'm a wino, too, along with my other hobby. I find the grapes cloying, don't eat them.'
'Jesus H. Christ,' Merrion said, 'is there anything you don't know?'
'Well, twenty years ago,' Hilliard said, 'I would've said: 'No, not a hell of a lot.' But more recent events've made me question my confidence on that point. I'd have to say now: 'Quite a lot. Much more than I ever thought. And I didn't like learning it at all.'
TWENTY-TWO
'It's a very common tendency,' Sammy Paradise said earnestly over the submarine sandwiches from the Canterbury Village Sub Shop. 'Many of them do it.' Merrion had asked the court officer to get two Cokes, two Pepsis and two ginger ales as well. Paradisio when he saw the beverage selection said he 'should've asked for a can of canned iced tea, but it's probably too late for that now.'
Merrion had predicted it. 'Sammy's very serious about what he eats,' he told Cavanaugh. 'Whatever we get will have something slightly wrong with it. He will mention it. He wont want anything to be actually done about it; he just likes to keep the record straight. Sammy's very serious about everything, keeps close tabs on everything at all times.
He lives as though he's been warned that his life's being taken down and may be used in evidence against him at a trial in a court of law.
Basically a very nice guy, but for him everything in life is business.
So life becomes business for everyone else who gets involved with him, like it or not.
'He looks ten years older'n he is. At least. He's got a few years left now before he retires, three or four, I think. But he looks like he's seventy right now. I doubt he ever looked like a kid, even when he was one.'
Cavanaugh did not react. 'I do have to give Lennie that,' Merrion often said. 'He isn't one of those silly bastards who're sensitive about their age. Maybe he got so much shit for bein' young when he was appointed 'fore he's thirty, must be his Confirmation picture inna paper, he thinks he must still look young. He doesn't, but that may not be what he thinks. He looks as young as most people do when they aren't, anymore.'
Paradisio was five-eight or five-nine; a soft, unassertive, hundred-fifty pounds or so. 'His idea of a good strenuous workout's making sure it's all right with the wife if he takes the car Wednesday night. Sammy will not use 'my OGV,' Official Government Vehicle, on personal business. She wont mind; she's known for months he's going to want the car that night, ever since he got the tickets in December. He put the dates on this year's calendar before he hung it up in the kitchen.
'He picks up their son, Jeff, and takes the turnpike to Boston. The daughters aren't interested in baseball. He thinks it's probably because they think they weren't supposed to. 'They never really tried to play baseball, gave it half a chance. Naturally now they don't like it.'
'Sammy doesn't have that much to say about the girls. I get the impression he thinks how they're doing now is their husbands' business.
If they're doing okay, their husbands get the credit. If they're not doing okay then their husbands're to blame. Jeff is different.
Apparently sons, married or not, remain their fathers' responsibility.
Sam's very pleased with the way that Jeff turned out. I think this means he thinks he gets the credit. 'Jeffs all right,' Sam says,
'Jeffs doing very good. He's a hard-working kid and a good family man and I'm very proud of him. He started in fish and he did his job and worked hard and proved he was reliable, and so now he's in meat. That's a solid job to have and it's a good strong company he's got it with, too, the Big Y. In that business you're not gonna wake up some fine morning and find out you lost your job; people stopped buying what you sell. All a sudden what you were trained to do and've been doing all your life, for years and years, is now obsolete. You're outta work; there's nothing you can do. Terrifying, but it wont happen to Jeff; it can't. People'll always have to eat so they're always gonna need food.
What he's in is secure.
''But Jeffs also got a growing family, four kids, and you know what that means: Gotta be thinking now about tuitions down the line, all that kind of thing. And I'm through that; I don't anymore. And I'm one of the few guys I know who when the time came, didn't get hit as hard as I expected we was gonna. I actually made out a little.
''See, Jeff got outta Cathedral, he went the Navy. Now you did have tuition, Cathedral. It's a parochial school. But his mother wanted it, thought it was better, and so what the hell, I went along. This's something that she wants for the kid, might as well let him do it.' But it wasn't very much, couple grand or so a year back then. Nothing compared to college, which'd been what I was getting ready for. But then he ended up not going. When he came out the service he said he was too old, go back to school, and besides, him and Carol wanted to get married. Start a family.
''His mother was kind of disappointed, thought he should get his degree, but I supported him in that decision. Couldn't've done much else, said anything much against it not and been consistent, dropping out of AIC like I did. But also I agreed with him. I didn't think he needed it. I thought he could get along without it and if he didn't want to do it then he probably shouldn't he wouldn't get nothin' out of it. And on the basis of the way that things seem to've worked out, I think you'd have to say that both of us were right.
''And then his two sisters. Well, Deb just did the two years to get her nurse's thing there; the associate degree. The bachelor's which was two more years, she didn't do 'til later and she paid for that herself. So it was just Marie Louise that actually went and stayed the whole entire four years. Not that that was not expensive, having her down New Rochelle there — Jesus, checks I used to write. But still, it wasn't that bad. Her being the only one of the three of them that really went, the whole four years. The way it worked out, me and Lois hadda pay for just the six years of college, not the twelve like wed been planning.
''So okay, now I buy the tickets, Jeff and I go to the ballgame, and that's sort of my present to him. His coming to the games with me, that's his present to me.'
'It's like it's some kind of a sacrament,' Merrion said to Cavanaugh, 'going to the fucking ballgames. He exaggerates the meaning out of all proportion. Once he said to me that I must know what he was talking about, how much he gets out of it, because I probably did the same thing with my father, and I said Not really we only went once. Why, I couldn't tell you; it just wasn't a big deal for us. Sammy didn't know what to say. I hadda try to help him out.
''Look,' I said, 'Pat was just never that much of a sports fan, is all.
He could talk sports with the customers and sound like he liked sports; he didn't mind them. He'd watch a game, TV. But going to the games, all that kind of thing? Didn't interest him. He was a nice guy and a good father and he took us fishing, me and Chris, the Connecticut shore, Long Island Sound. But only once or twice. I don't know what made him do it. He must've gotten the idea from someone at work, so when he got a day off, he took us and we rented the equipment and we fished. Caught something too, I remember. I forget exactly what. It was okay,
