Goldilocks (3 page)

“Maybe it’s simpler than that.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Maybe they’re afraid you’ll put the touch on them, or maybe you already owe them so much they don’t want to embarrass you.”

“That’s a low blow, Barney.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.”

The waiter, one of several who had been with the restaurant for years, removed their salad bowls and set down dishes, lamb on the stick for each, and a platter of French fries to share. The fries were a favorite of Daisy’s, but now he merely picked at them. According to the strict diet laid out by his doctor, he should not have been eating them at all. When his napkin fluttered to the floor, he reached down and came up wheezing. He stretched his neck again, caught the waiter’s busy eye, and ordered a Cutty on the rocks.

Cole said, “I thought you quit.”

“I cheat.”

They ate in silence, Daisy nibbling. When his drink arrived, he immediately reached for it with a tremulous hand that went steady as soon as the heat of the scotch touched his stomach, a part of which had been cut out a year ago. Color dribbled into his face, and he began eating with more energy, though with the same small bites, as if his teeth were tender.

“I heard from Louise,” Cole said, and Daisy’s head bobbed.

“What did she want?”

“A favor.”

“You owe her one.”

“She reminded me.”

“Who loved her the most, Barney, you or me?”

“I think you had the edge.”

His head dipped again, this time as if the rise of voices in the restaurant were too loud, megaphonic, skull-hurting. Abruptly he drew up his chest and raised his chin. “She ask about me?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said you were doing fine.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want the bitch feeling sorry for me.” He rattled the ice in his drink and let the subject slide, as if at will he could excise certain essentials of reality from persons in his past. He quit picking at the French fries, which had gone cold, but he finished his lamb and the green beans that had come with it. Then, sucking on chips of ice, he glanced around again, at people leaving and some just arriving. “You haven’t asked about Edith. Usually you ask right away.”

“How is she?”

“Terrific. I go, she oughta have the wake here. Noon hour would be best. What d’you think?”

“You’d have a crowd, if that’s what you want.”

“No box. Why waste money, just lay me out on a table, nice cloth on it, kind they use here at Christmas to put people in the spirit. Later, if you’re a real buddy, you could sling me over your shoulder and lug me up the street to St. Mary’s for the mass. Priest — who is it now, Father Flaherty? — could prop me in a pew. I’d like that.”

“What if someone comes in late and sits beside you, doesn’t know you’re dead?”

“I won’t tell him. You want to, you can whisper to him I’ve risen. Jesus Junior.”

Cole signaled for coffee.

“What’s the matter, Barney, don’t you go for that?”

“I wonder if we might be serious for a moment.”

“About what?”

“Your debts.”

“You putting the arm on me?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t want to talk about them. Not when I’m in such a good mood.”

The coffee came. Daisy oversugared his and took a deep swallow, burning his throat. There was a time, high school, when he could bury flaming matches in his mouth and inhale Pall Mall cigarettes from the lit ends. The class cutup. The memory flashed bright in Cole’s mind, succeeded by another image of Daisy, a second-stringer in the backfield, indestructible in helmet and pads, a sea of enemy jerseys parting as if by a miracle as he galloped fifty-five yards to score the winning touchdown over Lowell. Or was it Haverhill? At any rate, the Lawrence
Eagle-Tribune
published a page-one picture of him with a careless arm around the unlikeliest cheerleader, Edith Pratt, while his eyes sought the prettiest, Louise Leone, Cole’s girl at the time.

“You gonna drink your water?”

Cole slid the tumbler toward him and with a faint twinge of nostalgia remembered the two of them commuting to Suffolk Law School in Boston, Daisy scrounging for tuition and struggling with his grades, graduating at the bottom of the class but passing the bar on the first try. With borrowed money and scavenged furniture, they rented and equipped dinky office space together in the Bay State Building, from which, for purposes of publicity, Daisy rang up restaurants during the busy hours and had himself paged:
Urgent telephone call for Attorney Francis J. Shea.

Daisy’s teeth lay apart in an odd smile.

“What’s the matter?” Cole asked.

“I’m starting not to feel so good. God’s punishing me in the stomach, what’s left of it.” He inched his chair back and rose carefully, which for a moment seemed a desperate undertaking. His first step, sideways, was shaky, but his next one straightened.

“Where are you going?”

“Men’s room,” he replied with a wink. “Don’t want to embarrass you.”

Alone, Cole sipped his coffee. Ten minutes later the waiter asked whether he wanted a refill, and he shook his head, somewhat disquieted over the time Daisy was taking. He paid the check with a Bishop’s credit card and marked in a generous tip. On his way out of the dining room he paused to exchange pleasantries with two fellow lawyers, one of whom, despite dubious qualifications, was in line for a judgeship. He entered the lobby and descended switchback stairs to the lower level, where a woman with a small tidy face and beauty-parlor hair emerged from the ladies’ room tugging at herself. A few years ago, quite successfully, he had represented her in a divorce libel, and he recalled everything about her except her name.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You can’t expect to remember all of us.” She spoke of herself, her remarriage, her daughter’s graduation from Merrimack College, and then, with a long glance to her left, well past the cigarette machine, she whispered in a disturbed tone, “Isn’t that your friend?”

“Yes,” Cole said. “Please excuse me.”

Daisy sat on a padded bench with his head tipped back against the hard wall, his eyes shut tight, and his hands limp in his lap. His legs were doubled in as if they had buckled, and the cuffs of his trousers had ridden up over his black anklet socks, exposing the chalk of his calves. Cole leaned forward.

“Excuse me, Daisy, but are you alive or dead?”

The eyelids fluttered open. “A little of each,” he said and flashed a truculent little smile. “I’m gonna outlive all of ‘em, Barney, even you. Wanna bet on it?”

Cole said, “What will you put up — an IOU?”

• • •

“I put him in the conference room,” Marge said.

“Why did you put him there?” Cole asked with mild surprise, for the chairs in the narrow waiting area beyond her desk were unoccupied.

“I didn’t like the way he looked at me,” she said, and Cole did not question her judgment. She was efficient and intelligent, attractively plain in a wholesome way, with penny eyes and straight brown hair that fell just below her jawline. She had been with him for seven years, part-time for a while and then full-time when his regular secretary had left to get married, a step that did not appear imminent with Marge, who lived with and cared for her mother. Staring up over her IBM typewriter, she said, “He claims he had an appointment.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“Yes, I should’ve.”

“Is it personal?”

“More or less.”

She lifted her appointment calendar. “You have Mrs. Goss at two. She’s always prompt.”

“I won’t keep her waiting,” he promised.

He opened the door of the conference room with scarcely a sound and shut it behind him with a noticeable one. The room, narrow and book-lined, austerely furnished with an old oak table and heavy chairs, had a cloistral atmosphere. His heels clicked over the carpetless floor. “Henry, isn’t it?” he said, and watched the denim shape rise out of the farthest chair. A ham of a hand flew at him.

“Yes, sir, it is. Henry Witlo.”

The handshake was firm but clumsy. Cole was Henry’s height but was substantially outweighed. Henry’s shoulders seemed to hover, and the blue eyes looked painted in beneath the shock of yellow hair.

“Sit down, Henry.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cole.”

Cole moved to the other side of the table, sat directly across from him, and for a cool moment studied him. The face, doughy enough to diminish lines, was not as young as it had first seemed, and the smile was looser than necessary. Cole said, “Mrs. Baker phoned to say you were coming to Lawrence and might be stopping by, but I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“What did she tell you about me, sir?”

“She said you were looking for work.”

“I guess you and her are old friends.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Cole drew a yellow legal-size pad close to him and produced a pen. “What kind of work do you do?”

“Anything with my hands, long as it’s honest and proper. I’m into clean living. I like a few beers now and then, but I stay away from dope, don’t want to ruin my head, and I don’t fool with trashy women, don’t want to worry about AIDS. I care about myself.”

Cole scribbled on the pad, nothing legible. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five. I won’t lie, Mr. Cole, I’ve been around. Had my ups and downs.”

“Ever been in jail?”

“No, sir.”

“Where are you from? Originally?”

“Chicopee.” He said it fast, making it sound like a birdcall. An apparent smile of innocence followed. “Polack capital of New England. I’m proud of my heritage.”

“Have you ever done construction work?”

“Yes, sir. Plenty of it.”

Cole tucked away the pen and spoke with his face forward. “I’ll ask around, Henry, do what I can, but I can’t promise anything. You understand that?”

“I’m staying at the Y, sir. Temporarily. You can call me there. How soon d’you think that’ll be?”

“I just told you, no promises.”

There was the smallest suggestion of a nod, then a slow lift of the jaw that was a shade challenging. “Were you in the army, sir?”

“Everybody was somewhere,” Cole said, always alert to the unsaid.

“Nam?”

“No.”

“Where?”

“I was in the reserve.”

“Officer?”

“Yes.”

“I was one of the last ones out of Saigon.”

“You must’ve been pretty young.”

“Sixteen when I joined. Big Polack kid, they were glad to take me. I had a phony birth certificate, wasn’t hard to get. My girlfriend’s mother worked in city hall and fixed one up for me. She was glad to do it, wanted me out of Chicopee, away from her daughter. Seems someone’s always wanting me out of somewhere.”

Cole found himself listening more to the voice than to the words, the tone suggesting a man who kept records of wrongs, real or otherwise, perpetrated against him. The telephone, which rested just out of reach, shrilled once and went silent — Marge’s signal that she had seated Mrs. Goss in his office. Henry went on as if he had heard nothing.

“ ‘Fore I went to Nam, my mother threw a party for me at Rutna’s Bar & Grill, place where she worked. Never seen her looking so happy. She was thinking of the insurance.” He lopped his arms over the sides of his chair. “You know who my best buddies were in Nam? Black guys.”

Cole glanced at the scribbles he had made and then tore the sheet from the pad. He shifted his feet, ready to rise.

“You don’t say much, Mr. Cole.”

“I don’t have to. I’m not the one looking for a job.”

“No, but you owe me something,” he said, his eyes cast implacably on Cole’s face.’

“What makes you think that, Henry?”

“I figure I did your fighting for you — me and the niggers.”

• • •

He apologized to Mrs. Goss for keeping her waiting, though he knew she never would have complained. Intensely shy and self-conscious, emotionally rootless since the death of her husband, she sat rigid and prim in the red leather chair, like a schoolgirl waiting to be called upon to recite in front of the class. She was fifty-nine, demurely dressed and inviolably proper. Her careful hair held the cinnamon tones of its original color, and her round face, smooth and childlike, resembled that of a plaster doll retrieved from an attic.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” she said with a small catch.

She was in the throes of selling her house in Lawrence and acquiring a condo in Andover, with Cole handling the legalities. The house, where she and her husband had lived most of their childless marriage, was in the city’s Mount Vernon section, always vulnerable to random burglaries but in recent months afflicted with a rash of them, both in the nighttime and in broad daylight, horror stories attached to some. A woman whose frail mobility depended on a walker was pummeled by scruffy youths and hospitalized for a week. A family returning from vacation found their home looted, vandalized, and befouled.

“Nothing’s cast in stone yet,” Cole said. “There are always ways to get out of things.”

“I’ve never made a decision like this before. I depended on Harold for everything.” Her voice was hollow, as stark as Cole had ever heard it. “I feel so helpless. I’ve never even learned to drive a car.”

“Perhaps you need more time to think.”

“I miss him so much, Mr. Cole.”

Her husband, a disciplined and puritanical sort, with a stale look of thrift about him, had died at his desk the month he was due to retire from the Public Works Department, City of Lawrence. That was last January, burial delayed until the ground thawed. Cole had met the man a dozen years ago when he came in with a supportive collar around his neck, an apparent victim of whiplash from a minor auto accident. He was pleased when Cole finagled an unexpectedly generous settlement but resentful when a third of it was deducted for the fee. To placate him, Cole undercharged him for drawing up a will.

Mrs. Goss said, “It’s so lonesome with him gone. I try to think of people to talk to on the phone, but I never had many friends. Mildred Murphy was a good neighbor, but she moved to Florida when her husband died.”

“Have you considered that?” Cole asked gently. “Moving to Florida?”