Читать книгу Manila Gambit - John Zeugner - Страница 6

“Paul, it’s the little gestures, the little gestures that count. Very few of us—really, none of us—get the chance to make big differences in how the world works, so we have to try at the immediate, mundane level. Make the little gesture and with conviction. Make the world a better place by increments. By increments!” Waldo has struck his characteristic expansive stance at the Hane Country Club bar, left armpit shoved into the padded edge of the bar top, left hand cradling the back of his bald head. “Yes sir, Snelly, the little gestures. How many do we pass up? The tiny moments God grants us to tease out a small change, a brief incremental change that could have—really should have—momentous effects? And we slouch down in our patented ways, and the moment passes us by because we couldn’t see what would ensue.” Waldo closes his eyes, as if to imagine history scampering by.

We are waiting for Waldo’s wife Hillary to arrive. It is four-forty on Friday afternoon, and, as is his custom, Waldo has left the Hane Tribune early, closed up his publisher’s office and gathered me out of the city room for drinks at the club. I am the son Waldo would repudiate, if he had one, the novitiate he wishes to inculcate in the crafty ways of finding a rich wife and living the club life thereafter.

Because he is Hillary’s husband, he is the Hane Tribune’s publisher, but he knows he has nothing to do with the paper. He merely occupies the publisher’s office from 9:30 to 3:30 each day and agrees to meet people those who run the newspaper haven’t got time to see. Sometimes he wanders around the city room, trying, he once explained to me, to get the feel of the place, but mostly he reads in the huge corner office and waits for drinking time with Hillary. About twice a year he suggests something to the editors and they agree to look into it. He likes to be introduced as the publisher of the Hane Tribune. He likes to drink tall Gin and Tonics in the late afternoon and Drambuie after dinner. And he likes to get dressed in white flannels and double-breasted blazers and wear shoes with tassels. He loves sporting a white yachting cap.

“You think that would be a good title for a column?”

“What?”

“By Increments. By Increments, by Waldo Turner.”

“What about ‘Little Gestures’?”

“Not bad either, but you’d have to have something to say. And who has anything to say anymore?”

“Dentists.”

“Only minority dentists,” Waldo sighs. “Actually, I was reasonably serious. By Increments could be an educational tool for this retirement community and it would shield the rest of the paper from the threat of my intervention.”

I nod approval, conscious that, indeed, Waldo had at some time made certain decisions that closed certain doors in order to fling wide open far different ones. He finishes his drink and fires the empty glass about twelve feet along the bar top. The bartender apparently approves, or at least he smiles his deferential, subservient grin, and quickly makes a fresh Gin and Tonic. He carries this back to Waldo, who nods and says nothing. Instead he turns to me again, eyes my partially full glass and says, “Actually, Hilly won’t be coming tonight. She’s not feeling too well.”

I wonder, does this mean dinner is off too? And I begin the tiresome calculation of T.V. dinner versus Kentucky Fried Chicken versus something else.

Waldo says, “I want us to have dinner anyway. We have a few things to discuss.”

I can see it coming. We have only one thing to discuss—Pamela Snow, Waldo’s candidate for my replication of his life. The Snows reputedly have more money than even Hilly’s daddy, Sam Hane, a redoubtable toilet tissue magnate who bought most of Hane County in the 1920s and established the Hane Tribune to provide employment for a few relatives and advertise his basic commodity. Hane worried, apparently, that folks in southwest Florida didn’t have much use for “soft as rainwater” toilet tissue. After the land collapse of 1926 the rest of the county fell into his hands, and in return for staving off ruin he had the place named after him: Hane, Florida, in Hane County, Florida. Once Waldo remarked to me, “It’s true old Sam Hane owns the name around here, but the Snows own the whole damn alphabet.”

Waldo was, and is, no subtle match-maker. He has consistently sought to truss Pamela and me up as a blessed union providing each of us with those essentials we independently lack. In Pamela’s case, sanity; in mine, money. Or so he argues. All these machinations terminated about three weeks ago when it became clear that our couplings were inadequate for the mutual depression that centered around them, went with them like a little nimbus of grey something or other. And so I told her it would be wiser—that seemed like the best term at the time—that we both try to establish other avenues beyond boredom. “You’re the fourth person to turn down my marriage proposal,” Pam said, tears welling up in her eyes—scary bright tears as reflective as the sparkling surface of the bay and then the Gulf of Mexico beyond her shoulders.

Here, I was thinking, the water is clear and the sky gorgeous and the air as caressing as possible. Whence all this sorrow? Be rid of it. Be rid of it. Simply wishing and stating it could make it so.

I had expected the city room to become a regular Waldo prowling ground. I expected to be summoned momentarily to the big publisher’s office and harangued or cajoled or ordered to resume this replication of Waldo’s life. But, of course, he was, and is too crafty for that. Instead, we went through two regular Fridays of getting smashed on G & T’s and watching Hillary eat away the best part of flown-in lobster dinners. And nothing was said, nothing at all despite the obviousness of commenting on Pamela’s absence from our festivities. Now, just when I had begun to imagine escape from raillery and domination, Waldo has altered the Friday afternoon ritual and ordered, no doubt, Hillary to stay away. Now comes the pitch, I am certain.

Waldo watches the ball game on the bar television, and when he is midway down his G & T, he sighs a bit and suggests we go to the dining room for an early bird supper—tonight the attachment to the oversize menu announces a special of lamb curry and rice and tomato sauce and vinegaretted string beans, plus a hearts of palm salad.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he says, as we dig out our oysters. “Pam’s not doing well. She went back up to Tampa on Tuesday and has had treatments since then every day.”

“Fifth floor?” I ask quietly. Florida oysters are smaller and juicier. Eating them takes special jaw control, if you want to talk at the same time.

“Yes. Yes, where else? But electrical rather than chemical treatment. She was in a pretty bad way.”

“It’s not my fault.”

Waldo pauses looking at me, but my eyes skitter around him and watch the bartender flailing away with a blue rag at the bar surface where we had been standing. Waldo says, “One of the things that disturbs me about you is the way you use terms like fault and my fault. You know what that signals to me? A desire to remain immature, to escape, to drift off, to elude even a little interconnection with anything else.”

“Anything?”

“Anything and everything.”

“We’re interconnected,” I answer, enjoying the oysters less and less.

“Very funny. Very amusing. Another distancing trick. She’d like to see you, and Hilly and I think—“

“I don’t want to see her.”

“Why?”

“Because she always misinterprets what I say, what I do, what I think.”

“She does or you do?”

“Well, I’m not claiming to be in love with her. Not claiming that ‘our relationship’ makes the sun come up, the moon rise.”

“You don’t have much compassion, do you?”

“I’m eating with you, aren’t I?”

“Precisely illustrates what I said, doesn’t it?”

“You notice how we ask each other questions all the time?”

Two enormous hunks of Crenshaw melon arrive, so ripe that my piece has a layer of goo along the top.

“I have a proposition for you,” Waldo says, taking his knife and slivering the melon along the rind and then cutting neat cubes for eating. “Hilly and I want you to visit Pam. You owe her that. You should want to do it of your own accord. But if you don’t—for whatever reason—”

“I could give you twenty. But they boil down to one essential: compassion, your favorite term. Remarkable isn’t it? Compassion. Why should I deceive her, exploit her?”

“Can I finish?” Waldo continues eating two neat cubes and wiping his mouth with the immense blue napkin. “Let’s say you have valid reasons for not visiting the sick, or at least persuasive reasons. That brings me to my proposition. You visit her, You spend some time with her next week, maybe two days with her, or two visits for however long they allow, and in return I’ll see to it you get a byline column in the Tribune. That’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care that much.”

“We’ll see. I’ll get you a column.”

“They won’t go for it.”

“You let me worry about that.”

“Well. Jesus! They won’t go for it.”

“They don’t have to go for it. We, Hilly and I, have to go for it. And we do. We do already. Do you understand?”

“I suppose.”

“No. I want you to really understand it, understand the whole process. Arnie and Phil are cracker-jack editors, cracker-jack publishers, the best in this area—top flight. They know the business cold. They can do things, get things done. They know their trade. But that’s just what they are, superb trades men in someone else’s employ. At the behest of somebody else. Whatever objections they have are ultimately resolvable by someone else, because they don’t have controlling capital. It’s very simple. They’re excellent and replaceable. You could be excellent and replaceable—make a nice life for yourself. Work hard and develop highly expensive replaceability. Or you could think about taking care of Pam and become irreplaceable.”

I start to answer, but Waldo holds up his hand, pushes his palm at me. “You’re glib enough and I’m tired of hearing your responses, to tell the truth. I want you to reflect a little on what I said. I don’t want to address that any more. I want you to think about it. I’ve thought about your situation. So has Hilly. We make a proposition. Let’s talk only about that. Forget the so called ‘long-term’ if you can, at least for now. What do you say? A visit or two in return for a byline column.”

“My byline?”

“Yes, sure.” Waldo watches my smile. “Then it’s done, isn’t it? This melon is delicious, soft, succulent, malleable.”