“Do you want a lengthy speech on exposure to regulatory sanctions, property damage and the finer points of joint and several liability?” Burton asked her.
“Not particularly.”
“Then say no.”
“Attitudes like that are what calls for a Giant Finger,” I told him.
“Then tell Mr. Ellington he’s made his point, obviating the need for further implementation.”
Amanda laughed a light little laugh.
“What if Michelangelo had to contend with you two,” she said.
Isabella picked that moment to roll a tray out on the patio filled with serving bowls, vodka, bread and wine. I knew what Burton was doing. He wanted company and was asking us to stay. Further evidence that anyone can be lonely. Or that everyone is lonely in one way or another. He tolerated, or maybe even enjoyed, the eager flock of sycophants that usually fluttered about. But a man like Burton would starve on a steady diet of that. For some reason he hadn’t found a partner he could stick with. Or more likely, one he could trust. But all in all he was a happy man. Like Amanda, content to live within a containment field of his own design, occasionally foraying out to the territories to refresh his sensibilities and re-establish affiliations, before returning gratefully to the worn enclosure of his mind—safe, free and secure.
SEVENTEEN
I WAS ABLE TO EXAMINE Burton’s theories on the inexorability of aggression a few days later at the big lumberyard. Frank had sent over a set of plans for me to build an elaborate architectural detail for Melinda McCarthy’s backyard. A pair of custom benches, merged into a freestanding fence and gate affair that would anchor a future flower garden. My favorite kind of job, where I could prefab most of the pieces at the cottage, then have a gang of Frank’s guys haul the stuff to the site for me to install. Best of all I got to work with clear cedar and mahogany, nice smelling, straight grain stuff you can easily shape and join.
Wood like this is a specialty item, but I could usually buy what I needed from a regular yard if I had the time to pick through the stacks. They kept it out of the weather in a large shed at the far end, away from the main traffic area. It was open on one side where you could back up your truck, or in my case, your
It was early but the sun was already heating up the air. In a few hours the lumberyard would be a cruelly hot and dusty place, filled with runners from the big construction sites sent over to resupply the crews. The yard guys knew these often weren’t skilled people, more often simple haulers, Spanish speakers or somebody’s drunken or nitwit nephew who knew enough to stand in line, put an order on account and drive a truck that somebody else helped load. They didn’t get a lot of respect from the yard guys, whose status was only marginally greater than the runners. Which was why the yard guys were generally disrespected by the skilled tradesmen and contractors. And by their own counter guys, whose craft was plied indoors, and who therefore disrespected everybody, though most earnestly their customers.
I usually got there at opening time while it was still fairly cool and all the employees were too groggy to engage in hierarchical power plays. I’d just finished selecting and stacking a load of clear cedar on the roof and was about to tie it all down when a noisy diesel pickup backed in hard against the right side of the Grand Prix. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was, so I kept uncoiling and untangling a length of clothesline I’d just pulled out of the trunk, smoothing out the twists and kinks.
“Hey lookee here,” said Ivor Fleming’s skinny guy, now in a baseball cap, chewing something like tobacco or a big wad of bubble gum. “The crazy dude.”
He walked around the Grand Prix and stood a few paces away from me. Without looking up I turned slightly and leaned up against the rear fender of the car, seeing in my peripheral vision to my left, as expected, the shape of the fat one, Connie. I looked over at the skinny guy.
“‘Lookee here?’ You from Arkansas?”
“Bed-Stuy man.”
“That explains it.”
The skinny guy moved out a few more paces, filling the space between the back of my car and a stack of decking lumber.
“Interesting,” he said. “Financial fucker and carpenter. You’re a busy boy.”
“Diversification. Ask any financial fucker.”
He pointed at the lumber on my car.
“Talk about Arkansas. That looks like the Beverly Hillbillies.”
“Maybe you boys could haul it for me.”
That made the skinny guy smile, which was unfortunate since it partially exposed whatever it was he had in his mouth.
“So what are you here for?” I asked him. “Ivor building a new doghouse?”
“Just passing through,” he said.
“Passing through? You know this is a lumberyard. You can tell from all the wood.”
“I told you he’s got a mouth, Ike,” said Connie.
“Ike?” I laughed. “That’s your name? Ike and Connie? Is that like Ike and Tina? Must be why you guys are always together. Good thing Connie’s the fat one. Be tough with him on top.”
“A mouth with a death wish,” said Ike.
I thought about that. Conceptually anyway, he’d raised an important issue. After losing my job, my wife, most of my money and the affection of my daughter, my only child, I might not have wished for death, but I had little interest in living. Of all the loss the worst was the loss of time. I’d used up all those irreplaceable decades formulating an existence that turned out to be largely illusory. A mental construct within which I accomplished things of substance, but when the artifice became impossible to sustain, it all collapsed, every achievement and satisfaction taking its place amongst the rubble.
“Not true. Maybe at one time, but I’m over that. Death’s way too permanent. Ruins any chance of catching an upswing in circumstances. Guarantees you’ll miss out on things like the World Series and the Little Peconic Bay. And then there are other human beings.”
Though that was always the hard part for me, the human beings. The division I ran for my company was called Technical Services and Support, which better described its heritage than its eventual raison d’etre, which was essentially research and development. The original TS&S was a maintenance and repair operation that mounted expeditions into the company’s sprawling industrial infrastructure to optimize processes, troubleshoot failures and invent new systems. I liked that part of the job. They paid me to solve puzzles and crack codes. I thought at the time my skill in this derived from solid, clearheaded engineering, though in retrospect I ran almost entirely on intuition. I could see the resolution almost as a thing, an image in my brain, and then I’d reverse- engineer the steps needed to accomplish it. It was a game of physics, and chemistry and mechanical engineering, in which nobody scored more points than me. So they rewarded me by stirring people into the mix, thereby complicating the task a thousandfold with every unit of humanity introduced into the intricate, but far more predictable universe of fluid dynamics, energy and mass, cause and effect.
“Jesus, what a head job,” said Ike, spitting whatever he’d been chewing on the ground.
“Come on, think about it,” I said. “Once you decide you’re not gonna be dead, at least for the foreseeable future, you start facing the fact that you have to live among other human beings. Some, if you aren’t careful, you get to know. Get used to them hanging around. Not everybody, just certain ones. You can even start liking them. Take you guys. I feel like I’m really getting to know you.”
I was still leaning against the car, but I shifted forward enough to spread my weight more evenly to the balls of my feet.
“I think he’s a philosopher,” said Connie. “That’s what he is.”
“It’s rude to talk about people in the third person when they’re standing right next to you,” I told Connie, while keeping eye contact with Ike.
“Yeah fuck the third person, and the fourth,” said Connie, settling the etiquette question, if not the
