Timothy's game

smells turps and a whiff of garlic on his scraggly blond mustache.

“Spaghetti again?” she asks. “A’la olio?”

“Again,” he says with his quirky smile.

“I can’t complain; we had fettucini. Ma sends her love. Pa doesn’t send his.”

Eddie nods. “How is the old man?”

“Terrible. Smoking and drinking up a storm. I don’t know why he’s paying that fancy Park Avenue doc. He never does what he’s told.”

“He’s still got the girl in Brooklyn?”

“Oh, sure. I can’t blame him for that. Can you?”

“Yes,” Eddie Steiner says, “I can blame him.”

They sit side by side on a dilapidated couch, one broken leg propped on a telephone directory. Eddie pours them glasses of a harsh chianti.

“How you doing, kiddo?” Sally asks him.

“I’m doing okay,” he says. “A gallery down in the East Village wants to give me a show.”

“Hey! That’s great!”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m not ready. I’m still working.”

Sally looks around at the paintings on the walls, the half-blank canvas on the easel.

“Your stuff is getting brighter, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? Yeah,” he says, laughing, “I’m coming out of my blue mood. And I’m getting away from the abstract bullshit. More representational. How do you like that head over there? The little one on top.”

“Jesus,” Sally says, “who the hell is she?”

“A bag lady. I dragged her up here to pose. I did some fast pencil sketches, gave her a couple of bucks, and then did the oil. I like it.”

“I do, too, Eddie.”

“Then take it; it’s yours.”

“Nah, I couldn’t do that. Sell it. Prove to pa you’re a genius.”

“Who the hell cares what he thinks. I talked to ma a couple of days ago. She sounded as cheerful as ever.”

“Yeah, she never complains. Where’s Paul?”

“Bartending at a joint on Eighth Avenue. It’s just a part-time thing, but it brings in some loot. Including that wine you’re drinking.”

“Paul’s a sweetheart,” Sally says.

Her brother smiles. “I think so, too,” he says. “Hey, listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Ask away.”

“I want to do a painting of you. A nude. Will you pose for me?”

“A nude? What the hell for? You’ve seen me in a bathing suit. You know the kind of body I’ve got. My God, Eddie, I’m a dumpster.”

“You’ve got a very strong body,” he tells her. “Good musculature. Great legs.”

“And no tits.”

“I’m not doing a centerfold. I see you sitting on a heavy stool, bending forward. Very determined, very aggressive. Against a thick red swirly background laid on with a palette knife. And you looming out. What do you say?”

“Let me think about it-okay? You’ve never seen me naked before.”

“Sure I have,” he says cheerfully. “You were five and I was seven. You were taking a shower, and I peeked through the keyhole.”

“You louse!” she cries, punching his arm. “Well, I’ve added a few pounds since then.”

“And a few brains,” he says, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. “So good to see you, sweetie. But you seem down. Problems?”

“Well, you know, with ma and pa. And you.”

“Me?” he says, amused. “I’m no problem.”

“And me,” she goes on. “I’m a problem. I’m not doing what I want to be doing.”

“Which is? Making money?”

“Sure,” she says, challenging him. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” he says, sighing. “The bottom line.”

“You better believe it, buster. I see these guys raking in the bucks. … Like those banditos pa went to pay off tonight. I’ve got more brains than they’ve got, but they’re living off our sweat. What kind of crap is that?”

“Life is unfair,” he says, smiling and pouring them more wine.

“If you let it be unfair. Not me. I’m going to be out there grabbing like all the rest-if I ever get the chance.”

He looks at his paintings hanging on the walls. “There’s more than just greed, Sally.”

“Says who? What? Tell me what.”

“Satisfaction with your work. Love. Joy. Sex.”

“Sex?” she says. “Sex is dead. Money is the sex of our time.”

He doesn’t reply. They sit silently, comfortable with each other.

“You’re a meatball,” she says finally.

“I know,” he says. “But a contented meatball. Are you contented, Sal?”

“Contented?” she says. “When you’re contented, you’re dead. Once you stop climbing, you slide right back down into the grave.”

“Oh, wow,” he says. “That’s heavy.”

She drains her wine, rises, digs into her shoulder bag. She comes up with bills, smacks them into his palm.

“Here’s a couple of hundred,” she says. “Go buy yourself some paint and spaghetti. And a haircut.”

“Sally, I can’t-”

“Screw it,” she says roughly. “It’s not my dough. I’ll take it out of petty cash at the office. Pa will never know the difference.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Before she leaves, he embraces her again.

“You’ll think about posing for me?”

“I will. I really will.”

“I love you, Sal.”

“And I love you. Stay well and say hello to Paul for me. I’ll be in touch.”

She gets back to Smithtown a little before midnight. Goes up to her mother’s bedroom and opens the door cautiously. The night-light is on, and Becky is snoring grandly. Sally goes back downstairs to the office-den. The books for the accountant and tax attorney and IRS are kept in the office safe of Steiner Waste Control on Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan. The real books are kept here, in a small safe disguised as a cocktail table.

She spends a half-hour crunching numbers, using a pocket calculator that has no memory. Profits are up over the corresponding week of the previous year. But not enough. The tax paid to the bentnoses for the right to collect garbage is a constant drain. Go sue city hall.

Next she flips through the current issue of Barron’s to see how their equities are doing. A small uptick. Jake lets his daughter do all the investing. “I can’t be bothered with that shit.” He doesn’t know an option from a future, but he can read the bottom line. Every month. Then it’s a grudging “Not bad” or a furious “You trying to bankrupt me?”

Sally pushes the papers away on the big, leather-topped desk scarred with burns from her father’s cigars. She sits brooding, biting at the hard skin around her thumbnail.

They’re doing okay-but nothing sensational. Most people would consider the Steiners rich, but they’re not