27
BUSINESS AS USUAL
After I got out of the tub and dried off, I went in and lay clown naked on the bed to cool off. I stared
at the ceiling fan for a long time. Objectivity is a painful enterprise at best, and I had avoided it for
twenty years. Now, as it grew dark outside, shadows stretched across the room like accusing fingers
pointing at me. In the loneliness of the dark, romance wore off and reality took over. Other memories
started coming back to me. The past began to materialize again, unfettered by candlelight and daisies.
One face emerged from the harsh shadows and began to taunt me. It was Stonewall Titan.
I remembered Titan the night of the party, a little man, a shade under five five, who chose not to wear
a tux, opting instead for his usual dark, three-piece winter suit, and arriving just minutes before Doe
made her entrance.
More than once during the evening I caught him staring across the room at rue with those agate eyes
glittering in the candlelight. I didn?t pay any attention to it at the time; it didn?t seem important. Mr.
Stoney never smiled much anyway; he was a quiet man, constantly introspective or contemplative or
both, not an uncommon demeanor for short people. But now, reflecting on it, it strikes me that it was a
hard look, almost angry, as if 1 had offended him in some way.
After Doe came over and officially welcomed Teddy and me to her party, after she had taken my hand
and almost squeezed my fingers off and then drifted off to greet the rest of the guests, I worked my
way across the room and greeted the taut little man. He stared up at me and said, “You really stick to
it, don?t you, boy? Been waiting a long time for tonight.”
“What do you mean?” I asked with a smile.
“Just don?t count your chickens,” he said, and moved away.
That was the end of it. A caustic remark which he never repeated again during the summer I spent
with the Findleys. I had forgotten it. Looking back on the moment, it occurred to me that the little
man probably thought me unworthy of the Findley dowry. And since that night seemed to be the end
of my probation period, he apparently had been overruled. After that, I was treated more like family
than ever before. But Stonewall Titan never warmed up to me, I presume because I had offended him
by going the distance.
Was I really being tested during those years or was it just my paranoia, an excuse to back away from
another emotional commitment, to remain disconnected, as Stick called it? None of this had occurred
to me at the time. When you?re nineteen or twenty years old and it?s all going your way, you don?t
think about such things.
But now in the darkness of the room, my suspicions were stirred.
