The Last Coin (14 page)

“I don’t know,” said Andrew, trying to think of something funny to say—some ridiculous destination for the off-course whale. If it
was
off course. Aunt Naomi didn’t seem to think so. He wasn’t much in a joking mood, though. Somehow the presence of the old lady, staring out into the fog and talking about things lurking in the sea, took the edge off his sense of humor. It occurred to him that in a moment she’d turn around to confront him, her face a grinning skull, like something out of a late-night horror movie.

She swiveled round suddenly, regarding him strangely, then gasped and half stood up, as if
he
were the grinning skull. He reached down and flipped on the bedside lamp, but the sight of his illuminated face made her recoil even more, and for a moment he was certain that she was going to topple backward out the window.

“Who’s done that to you?” she asked.

Andrew was at a loss. He touched his cheek and shrugged. “Pardon me?” he said. He’d humor her. That’s what he’d do. It was instantly clear to him. She’d gone round the bend. She was seeing things. She looked straight at him and saw—what?—her long-dead husband, perhaps, or Saint Augustine, or her old grammar school principal. He couldn’t deal with this sort of thing at all. He shouldn’t have to. She was Rose’s aunt, after all. He’d get Rose up here.
She’d
know what to do. She was a marvel in this sort of situation. She’d say it was the ‘possum business, though, that had driven Aunt Naomi crazy. If it was ever discovered that he …

“The line on your face,” she said. “Who did that to you?”

The line, thought Andrew. Of course. She hadn’t run mad. “No one
did
it to me,” he said. “I was reading a book about schizophrenics. Strangely frightening business, really, about symmetrical faces, and …”

“
Books
. You weren’t reading books. Someone did that to you and you don’t have the foggiest notion why. You’re like a child. Tell me. Who was it? It’s smeared, isn’t it? It must be smeared.”

Andrew was seething again. Who was she to call him a child? She was driven half-wild by his having a line drawn down his nose, and she was calling
him
a child. But she’d given him two thousand dollars just that morning, hadn’t she? He thought hard about the money in his wallet, about the trunk full of liquor, about the chances of wrestling another thousand or so out of her in a few days, after he’d introduced her to the French chef from Long Beach. It was best not to take offense. Old people as often as not didn’t mean any offense to be taken. And she was right, wasn’t she? “Mr. Pennyman,” he said. “Yes, it’s smeared. I’m just going in now to wash it off.”

“Pennyman!”

“That’s right. A little gag of his. A quarter rubbed in pencil dust. Very funny. Kid’s trick, actually. We were horsing around on the porch.”

“Yes. A silver quarter.”

Andrew stared at her, washed by an entirely new wave of emotion; nearly drowned in it. “How did you know that?”

She waved the question away. “I knew it. Stay away from him. Everything he says to you is significant. There’s no such thing as a casual conversation with a man like Pennyman. I know who he is now. Take my word, and steer clear of him. And here,” she said, dipping her napkin into the water glass beside her bed, “see if you can wipe that off.”

Andrew grinned and took the napkin. Humor her, he thought. Don’t say anything. He rubbed at the line, then looked at the smudged napkin. Peering into the mirror over the dresser, he wiped some more until the mark was gone. He handed the napkin to Aunt Naomi, thanked her, and turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said, peering at him closely. “Do me a grand favor, will you?”

“Anything,” he said.

“Fetch that old silver spoon from the china cupboard. The one Rose calls the pig spoon.”

Puzzled, Andrew hopped away down the stairs and was back in a moment carrying the spoon.

“I want to give this to you,” Naomi said.

“To Rose?” asked Andrew.

“No, to you. Despite our differences, I’m pretty sure you’re a man of honor. Listen closely. This spoon is yours now. It’s been mine for a long time, but I’m quit of it now. It belongs to you. Do you want it?”

Andrew blinked at her. In truth, he didn’t much want the spoon. It had a curious history and was a moderately interesting relic, but it couldn’t be
worth
anything. It was simply a dust collector. He tilted it into the light and stared at the delicate scoring on the concave surface. It seemed to be pulled down into the handle, so that the markings were proportionate at the top of the spoon and then stretched away below. It was thin enough so that he could have bent it in half between his thumb and forefinger. The silver of it was warm, almost hot, but that came from his holding it in his hand, he supposed. It
was
an interesting piece. He’d always been fascinated by it. It felt almost like some sort of magic wand in his hand. Suddenly he didn’t want to give it up. He wanted to keep it. And almost as suddenly he felt vastly tired. Of course he did. He’d been up half the night and then awakened at dawn. His back was stiff, too. A hot shower
would
be nice. It would pick him right up. “I’d love to have it,” he said. “I’ll just put it back into the hutch.”

“God bless you,” said Aunt Naomi, smiling one of her very rare smiles. It was genuine, too. Andrew felt a sudden liking for her, and he wondered at the tinge of sadness that flavored her smile. That came from age, he guessed. There was always some sadness flavoring your smiles when you stood in the shadow of the gravestone. It was regret, is what it was, for the passing of time. She had fond memories of that spoon. It was all she had left of her husband—aside from his money, of course. It was the last link to the Iowa farm. She lowered her voice suddenly and said, “But I wouldn’t put it back into the hutch if I were you. I’d find a safer place. It’s really far more valuable than you suppose—very old, actually. In a sense, it will make its value known to you. You’ll see. Put it somewhere safe for now.”

Andrew smiled back at her. She’d gone mystical on him, obviously. “I’ll keep it safe as a lamb,” he said. And then, hearing Rose calling from downstairs, he tipped a non-existent hat to Aunt Naomi and stepped out onto the landing, tucking the spoon into his pocket, muddled with mysteries. Halfway down, it occurred to him that Naomi might easily have overheard his conversation with Pennyman, down on the porch. Both of them had exclaimed over the silver quarter. Of course she had. She wasn’t filled with arcane knowledge after all; she just wanted to
seem
so.

Rose stood in the living room holding the telephone. It was a long distance call—from Vancouver. Puzzled, Andrew took the phone, half-expecting, impossibly, to hear Pickett’s voice on the other end.

But it wasn’t Pickett. It was a man who claimed to be named August Pfennig—a dealer in coins and books and curiosities, calling from his shop on the waterfront. He asked whether Andrew was of the Iowa Vanbergens and whether he wasn’t related by marriage to the Iowa Zwollenveters, and when Andrew said that he was, Pfennig sighed, as if happy at last. The man’s name was vaguely familiar to Andrew, as if he’d run across it in a magazine article, perhaps, and remembered it because of its curious sound. He thought hard while the man rambled on, but he couldn’t fit the name with a face.

Pfennig’s voice was slow and careful, as if he were half-old and half-calculating. There was a false joviality to it, too, that Andrew recognized at once to be the empty, pretended interest of a salesman. He couldn’t stand salesmen, especially salesmen who muttered about mutual friends, since that was always a lie right on the face of it. It was interesting, though, that one had called all the way from Canada. At least it wouldn’t be insurance that the man was peddling. Maybe it was light bulbs. Andrew had got a rash of calls about light bulbs—a charity of some sort selling them for fifteen dollars a bulb, guaranteed to outlast everything, still to be glowing after you were dead and living with the worms.

The man wasn’t selling light bulbs. He was buying—not selling anything at all. He dealt in estate jewelry and libraries. Andrew had been a hard man to “track down.” Since the death of his brother-in-law, said Pfennig, he’d rather lost track of what went on in Southern California, and he said this in such a way that it sounded as if Andrew ought to know who this brother-in-law was.

“Well,” said Pfennig, carrying on, “I do like to renew old acquaintances. Things seem to go to bits these days, don’t they? The years sail past so.”

Andrew admitted that they did, thinking that somehow the conversation was at an end, that Pfennig, whoever he was, had called all the way from Vancouver to chat. Perhaps he was one of Rose’s old school friends, a casual acquaintance from Orange City. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered the name to Rose, who stood waiting, curious. Rose shrugged and shook her head. Andrew shrugged back. The man’s voice trailed off into nothing.

“Pardon me?” asked Andrew politely. “I’m afraid I missed that last part. Bad connection.”

There was heavy breathing on the other end, like someone hyperventilating. “I’m not well,” the man said suddenly. “I’m … ill. Bedridden. If you could speak up …”

Irritated, Andrew spoke directly into the mouthpiece, talking roundly, “I said,
‘What?’ “

There was more breathing, and for a moment Andrew thought the conversation had gone entirely to bits, but then the man Pfennig continued. “I was led to believe,” he said, “that you were a collector, and I hoped that we could trade this for that, in the spirit of collecting, of course. I’m not in this for the money.”

Andrew nodded. Here it was. He wasn’t in it for the money, wasn’t he? He was in it for sport. He was calling from Vancouver for the jolly spirit of collecting. Pfennig droned on, asking about family Bibles, hymnals, Dutch translations, perhaps, of old prayer books. He worked his way into cookbooks and volumes of medical arcana and books describing home remedies. Andrew didn’t have any of them. He had a falling-apart copy of
The Whitehouse Cookbook
, but Pfennig wasn’t interested in it. “Not in my line,” he said, and then went on to arts and crafts pottery and hammered copper.

“I’ve got a Roseville vase,” said Andrew helpfully. “Fuchsia pattern—green and pink. Fairly rare, actually. But I don’t want to sell it.”

“Too bad,” said Pfennig, clucking his tongue. “My brother-in-law led me to believe you might put me in the way of some rare coins. What do you have along those lines?”

Andrew paused, thinking. He had the remnants of an old childhood penny collection and a half-dozen oval dimes flattened on a railroad track, but beyond that …”Are you sure it’s me?” he asked. “Maybe … My wife’s
cousin
collects coins. He’s always regretting that he can’t put his hands on a curly quarter. Too expensive by half. It would cost him the value of the rest of his collection.”

“This is an
old
coin, that I’m talking about,” said Pfennig, and he went on to describe the thing—the hawk-nosed face on the one side, a curious rune on the other. A silver coin, but not as worn as you’d guess, given the thing’s great age. They didn’t have much silver of this quality any more, not very much at all.

“I’m really very sorry,” said Andrew. “Someone’s mistaken. I’m just not much of a coin man, actually. I’m afraid that I don’t go in much for the kind of collecting …”

“You’re telling me you don’t own this coin, then?”

“That’s correct, Mr …”

“Have
you owned it? Sold it, maybe?”

“No, really I …”

“Think about it. I’m prepared to offer a substantial sum. More than the man you’re dealing with now. On no account let him have it. I’ll be in touch.”

“I don’t have any coin!” Andrew began. “What
man?”
But Pfennig hung up. In a moment there was a dial tone.

“Who was it?” asked Rose.

Andrew shrugged. “I don’t know. Man from Vancouver buying and selling things.”

“You shouldn’t let them waste your time like that. Tell them very firmly that you won’t talk to them and then hang up. You’re too polite for your own good, letting people like that waste your time away.”

“What do you mean ‘people like that’? What kind of person was he? He was an old acquaintance of some sort. How did I know? ‘People like that’! I go in for politeness. That’s my way. Cheap as dirt, politeness.”

Rose shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen, not seeming to want to argue about how cheap politeness was. Andrew took a step toward the kitchen, thinking to press the issue. What, he would ask, did Rose have against politeness? And how on earth, not having listened in to the conversation, did she know that … But thinking about the conversation with Pfennig muddled things up. What
was
it all about? A wrong number, likely. Or rather a case of mistaken identity. Surely no one would have recommended Andrew as a collector of rare coins.

“Food’s getting cold,” Rose said from the kitchen. She looked tired, Andrew thought as he stabbed away at his chicken. This business of opening an inn was wearing her out. She’d run an ad in the
Herald
already, and she was working doubly hard just in case it paid off early. It was premature, certainly, but she was right when she said that it might take time to draw customers. “Anything come from the ad?” Andrew asked, deciding to let the politeness issue drop.

Rose nodded. “One man. A nut from the look of him. Reminded me of Moses. He came around this afternoon and had a chat with Mr. Pennyman on the porch. I thought he was a friend of Mr. Pennyman, but it turned out he wanted a ‘semi-permanent’ room. Those were his words. I don’t know exactly what he meant.”