Nothing but Blue Skies (39 page)

He felt his lips. They had become objective facts, cracked and swollen. He made a squeamish perusal of his head with his fingertips: nothing really horrible, no stitches, but a dull ache at the very back of his head, a traditional boot target.

There was a breakfast tray beside him. Who brought it? It looked wonderful. He thought, Some nice person brought me my breakfast. He felt love just sort of leaving him and going into space. There was the
Journal
rolled up beside it. How good. There were three codeine tablets with water; someone had anticipated his present headache. He swallowed them. And now for the world.

The news of the world was full of failure and miscues. Ford was recalling 641,562 Aerostar minivans. Currency traders were dumping the pound. Japanese trust banks’ pretax profits plunged. The criminal investigation of Salomon Brothers continued. Bond prices slipped again. The usual remedies for jump-starting the economy were not succeeding. I know why, thought Frank. It’s because we’re disheartened. We bought all the stuff, we shit in the nest, we don’t believe in anything. How dare you jump-start us with reduced interest rates! We’re the folks who butt-fucked the goose that laid the golden egg! We can no longer be jump-started!

There was a strong tread on the stairs. “Mr. Copenhaver?” came a voice in the pause between audible steps.

“Yes, who is it?”

“It’s Brad Taylor, Mr. Copenhaver. I’m with Security Merchant Bank.” There was no further sound.

“That’s my bank,” Frank called back suspiciously. And this, he thought, was what was known in my father’s day as a young whippersnapper.

“I have Dr. Jensen down here with me. Who would you like to see first?”

“How the hell should I know? I don’t know why I would need a doctor and I don’t know who you are.”

There was a pause.

“Dr. Jensen said I should go ahead. May I come up?”

“Come on.”

Brad Taylor stood in the doorway with a file folder in one arm, dressed in a gray suit with a silver-and-red-striped tie and his hair combed so that it fell to one side. “How do you do, Mr. Copenhaver.”

“How do you do.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine, considering I received the combined weight of two hundred corn-fed farmers and ranchers united in the service of world fascism. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Your whole life ahead of you. What an appalling prospect.”

“Thank you.”

This one was in a fog, thought Frank. “Ordinarily, I deal with George Carnahan. I’ve seen him in a few tight spots over the years, and given what a spineless puke he is, I take it you’re bringing me bad news.”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“I see you’re a shy boy.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be. This isn’t your fault.”

“I know. Still, I hate to be in on this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?” asked Frank, his suspicions further aroused. You run with the pack for years, then one day you note a circling tendency and find yourself in the center.

“Well, there was a tremendous shortfall on those cattle we floated. And we’ve seen the clinic and the condition it’s fallen into. We’ve been very troubled —”

“Don’t be. The Japs just bought a painting for six million. At least somebody’s gonna eat these critters. It’s more than just blue sky.”

“But is it?”

“What are you getting at?”

“We’re concerned with the reaction of our examiners.”

“Piss on ’em. Besides, that’s banker double-talk. This imaginary figure called the examiner. The most ordinary people reject this bullshit. Banking is nothing but a pyramid scheme. You’re an apprentice swindler. George Carnahan is a more polished swindler. That’s why he’s not here today. Brad, it’s a bleak thing that an attractive young man like you should already be making references to the examiners.”

Brad Taylor looked completely dazed. He held up the file folder and said, “Why don’t I leave these for you to go through. George thought it was only fair, given the long relationship we’ve enjoyed with you, to let you know the remedies we’re seeking to cover our losses on the cattle.”

“You going to try to take the clinic?”

“I’m afraid we are.”

“I’m afraid you aren’t.”

“We’d let you try to sell it, but our position takes all there is.”

“What about this house?”

Brad nodded.

Frank told him, “Over my dead body. This motherfucker has been the site of my hopes, dreams and failures ever since that day in October long ago when I gave up being a hippie and set out to make a fortune. I brought this house back into our family. Tell you what, explain to George I’ve got several show pigs over in Reed Point. They need a new home. We’re deep discounting them all
and several of them kiss pretty good by George’s standards. Tell him I said so. Take the file folder with you and goodbye.”

Frank rolled over and waited for the exit steps of the young man and the sound of Dr. Jensen’s ascent. I require that these rich scenes occur in my own unencumbered home, Frank mused, with its deed in the cupboard. Here I have farted, cooked, dealt and procreated coequally, enriching its thousandfold oak boards with my own life. If there are to be dramatic scenes of my decline, let them take place in this fine Montana home.

Now comes before us Dr. Jensen, wishing to know if Frank is comfortable. Frank said that he was, and asked if the doctor had examined him before he regained consciousness. The doctor said that he had, and concluded that Frank suffered a concussion. Frank thanked this young doctor for making a house call while still in his spandex bicycling shorts. The doctor said that he was welcome. He said this idly because he was checking out the house, taking in the oak floors, the depth of crown molding, the swirling shapes of the staircase, the fancifully paned windows, the ice-cream, deep, hand-troweled, perfect plaster with its frieze of tangled roses ’round the top. Frank gazed at him, seeing right into this, and thought, In a moment he will pant like a coyote hazing jackrabbits into traffic on the interstate.

Dr. Jensen took Frank’s wrist between his thumb and forefinger, raised his arm to drop his sleeve away from his watch, then studied its dial. “What’s the fate of our old clinic?”

“Why do you ask?” Frank said. “You’re not there anymore.” He smelled something.

“Er, well, because this could be a good time to open communications again. Various efforts at resettlement in other spaces have been less than perfect.”

“So, you guys might want back in?”

“Might.”

“Gets pretty dicey when you can’t co-op the electronics and stuff.” Frank figured out the smell, an old college favorite, a men’s cologne called Canoe.

“Absolutely.”

“Well, you’re too goddamn late. I’m selling it to a Wop for a noodle factory.”

As Frank said these things, he wondered whether he meant any of it or if a desire for a dark-sided fulfillment at the expense of his adversaries had given him a lingo of revenge that he donned like a disguise. He hoped this wouldn’t be the birth of a new, obnoxious Frank Copenhaver, but in his present wooze, he wasn’t sure. He just felt that, out here alone, he had to fight his battles stylishly because in his failing greed there was an errant valor in complicating the lives of well-paid white people.

“Phil tells me you made off with his wife for good.”

“I’m afraid she got a taste of the good life and kept on rolling. Got her a car dealership in Great Falls.”

“So the pressure is off everybody.”

Dr. Jensen smiled at him mildly. Not patronizingly. To him, Frank seemed to be a lawn ornament, perhaps, or a float in a small-town parade. He was reaching Frank a piece of paper, which Frank perceived, with a bit of cynical closure, as a bill. But it was a citation for disorderly conduct from Sheriff Hykema.

“I asked him not to wake you up,” said Dr. Jensen.

Frank fell asleep again after the doctor had gone, and thought he was dreaming when George Carnahan stood at the foot of his bed and said, “How dare you talk to my impressionable young associate as you have.” Frank flowed along with the dream, enveloped in its unfolding. “How dare you take any position other than that we have treated you with inordinate flexibility and kindness, unwavering Christianity and goodheartedness, in your many years of reckless wheeling and dealing. For reasons none of us can understand, you have ceased entirely paying attention to business. Several of my older colleagues have suggested that you have reverted to being the fog-bound hippie we remember you to have been, as though it were some sort of debility that must one day surface. And finally, how dare you call me a spineless puke and a pig-kissing swindler. I am your old friend and business acquaintance who hates to bring you bad news. If in avoiding
doing that personally I sidestepped a painful moment, so be it. And now I would like you to examine these.” By now Frank’s eyes were open and he knew it wasn’t a dream.

“George, get my glasses off the mantel.”

George brought Frank his reading glasses and Frank examined a stack of identical checks on which someone had signed his name and wrote “1st payment,” “2nd payment,” down to, ten months later, “last payment.” The funds were used to buy a small filling station. Frank looked up at George and studied him in his checked tweed jacket. George had loose jowls and a tiny, disapproving mouth.

“Who owns the filling station, George?”

“I’m afraid it’s Eileen.”

“What do you know about that?”

“I’m waiting to hear.”

“Do you know this station?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a good one?” Frank asked.

“I’m afraid it is. Out on an empty stretch of road toward Whitehall. I mean, there’s about one living in it, but it’s doing eighteen percent, pretax. She runs it tight as bark on a tree and makes damn sure she preserves her margins.”

“I taught her to speak and now she curses me.”

“She will when you turn her in.”

“Who said I was turning her in? Did I say to you, George, that I was turning in my old secretary?”

“Frank, you’re not yourself. This head thing. At your worst, you’d always have been able to spot someone bending over backward to save you.”

“Unlike others in the business community, I’ve taken a pause to relocate some meaning.”

“You took a pause when Gracie left, Frank, and now your pause is jammed. When I get back to the bank, the VPs are going to be on me like flies on shit. They’re gonna ask me. And what am I gonna answer? I’m gonna answer, It’s irreversible.”

“You can read about it in the papers, George. Consumer pessimism
is on the upswing. Besides, I am not going broke. I’m just relinquishing day-to-day responsibilities.”

George had had enough. He left. Frank rolled up in the covers, forming a tube with just his face sticking out. He looked out at the big blue sky. It made a pleasant abdication to think of himself as an atom compared to outer space. He had a sense no one was buying his reevaluation of his life. Soon it would be time for him to ask if he was buying it himself.

“You’ll have to sit up.” He opened his eyes and there was Lucy with his dinner on a tray. He was woozy from codeine but glad to see her. She was wearing a pure white linen blouse and skirt. It seemed a miracle to find the only person he knew who lived in this peculiar zone.

“It’s like being in the hospital,” he said with a puzzled smile. He hoped he would seem to be referring to something far larger.

“You might as well be in the hospital.”

“Where’s your nurse’s costume?”

“Very funny.” She pinched his cheek. “Very funny.”

She put the tray on his lap. It looked appetizing: a breast of chicken encrusted with some herbs, butter beans, half a roasted yam, a little salad, quite nice indeed.

“Are you eating?” Frank asked.

“I already ate. I’ve got stuff to do.”

She moved as if to go. Mouth full, Frank raised his hands to stop her. He tried to say “Stay for a moment,” but the yam caused it to come out very differently. A crease of annoyance appeared between Lucy’s eyebrows, partly concealed by her extraordinarily precise bangs. He plucked orange specks of yam from his blanket and swallowed with an audible gulp. “I was hoping perhaps you might stay and visit for a moment.” He was conscious of a
sluggish spasm moving the yam down his gullet while he tried to suavely murmur a few niceties.

“Gracie said I could bring your dinner because no one else planned to. But she said that if I hung around for quote a little tête-à-tête unquote, she would quote tear my fucking face off unquote.”

Frank’s spirits were careening wildly. He considered himself completely recovered except for the small matter of the blinding headache and faint codeine buzz. He was ashamed to realize that it was but a matter of time before his crooked heart was consoled by Lucy finding a way to have sex with him. They seemed to have an odd lack of control over this. Waiting for the inevitable, Frank marveled druggily at the curious way women betrayed each other. It seemed wildly at odds with their stated policies. His sluggish perceptions took this in voluptuously.

Lucy was fussing with the curtains now. Soon she would be carried toward him by an invisible conveyor belt. She had raised Gracie as a menace not to herself but to both of them. Lewd conduct, like teenage love, required abstract opponents to reach full flower. Frank allowed his silence to become loaded silence. With hieratical signification he moved the tray, with its burden of pimpled chicken skin, rind of yam and sheen of salad dressing, to the table beside the bed. Moronic speechlessness found its counterpart in a faint smile of Lucy’s. Frank thought, I have won the toss and elected to receive.

The blast of a car horn outside seemed to announce the beginning. Vague and adrift, Frank permitted the uncoiling of his cock until its jaunty presence was visible through the sheet. He put his hand up Lucy’s skirt with a boardinghouse reach. Lucy was like a tree shedding its leaves in the fall. She stood naked beside the bed knowing he was now helpless. I suppose she’s having a good time, he thought absently; and now comes the “tally me banana” part. She mounted him in reverse, a position that enabled her to watch the street. She was shivering, then hooting faintly like an owl in the brush. He held her buttocks so as to participate in their motion. By spreading them slightly, he was able to take a more
precise measure of their activity, concluding that the vertical travel of the asshole, which seemed so dramatic, was actually only a matter of inches. Then came her voice. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It was not the dragonish bellow that sometimes announced the onset of her orgasm. It seemed to be a call-and-response thing, more than one voice in spirit, high and low or, more properly,
here
answered by
there
. Then Lucy shouted without much of what Frank took as conventional passion, “I’m coming!” But before Frank could join her in ecstasy, she had climbed off him and was standing next to the bed, getting back into her clothes in a hurry. There had indeed been two voices: Lucy’s and, from the bottom of the stairs, Gracie’s. “I’m coming as fast as I can!” Lucy yelled down to the first floor in a fearful rage.