The Last Coin (25 page)

Andrew’s face stretched with astonishment. He reached out suddenly and pumped his neighbor’s hand, then let it drop just as suddenly. “You aren’t
the
Eddie Fitzpatrick?—who played for the Dodgers one season? Old
Slider
Fitzpatrick?”

Just then the door to the house kitchen swung open and Rose peered in, holding a glass of lemonade. “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

Andrew stepped across to take the lemonade. He waved back at his neighbor. “Rose, this is Eddie
Fitzpatrick
, of the Dodgers, remember him? Relieved Wally Moon that one night at the Coliseum. Walked eight batters in an inning.
You
remember. It was on the night that the hot dog vendor tumbled down the stairs and broke his leg. Who’d have thought? And right across the street, To …” He grinned at Jack Dilton. “Baseball fan, Mr. Dilman?”

Rose gave Andrew a hard look, a drop-this-nonsense look, and started to say something to the neighbor. Ken-or-Ed interrupted her though, his face having gone red. “Your husband is an idiot,” he said, glaring past her at Andrew. “And what’s more, he’s a filthy Peeping Tom. That’s what I think. That’s why he was up in that damned tree the other night, peering into windows. By God, my wife heard a noise last night, too, and …”

Andrew had hauled off his jacket by then and tossed it onto the bar, accidentally knocking off one of the tornadoes, which cracked to bits on the hardwood floor. Doubly enraged by the broken saltshaker, Andrew pushed Ken-or-Ed’s shoulder, spinning him half-around. “I don’t care
who
you are,” he shouted, waving a fist. “Call me an idiot! Call me a Peeping Tom! I’ll …”

Ken-or-Ed hunkered over, both hands in front of his face in the style of a turn-of-the-century boxer. “Try me,” he said. “C’mon!”

“Try nothing!” Rose shouted, stepping in between them. “Get out of my house, you and your friend both.”

“That’s right …” said Andrew, endeavoring to move Rose out of the way. This was a man’s work. He’d bloody the fool’s nose. One good blow …

“You shut up, too. You’re both fools. Now get out. Andrew, sit down, for God’s sake, before you turn yourself into the idiot he says you are. There’s the door, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

Dilton had already retreated toward it, and was busily measuring it with a pocket tape measure. Suddenly Mr. Pennyman was standing behind him, having materialized, it seemed, out of the afternoon air. Dilton hopped back into the room, prodded by the tip of Pennyman’s cane and turning around to protest. The idea of Pennyman showing up at all further infuriated Andrew, who was mad now in such a variety of directions that he couldn’t speak.

“What seems to be the trouble?” asked Pennyman slowly, uttering the syllables in a voice that sounded as if it had come out of a machine. Instantly a quiet descended on the room, and Ken-or-Ed blinked at him, seeming to wonder why his simple presence was enough to strike them all silent.

Pennyman leaned on his stick and smiled. “You’re from the planning commission,” he said to Dilton.

“That’s right. This entire business is illegal, if I’m not mistaken. The doorway isn’t broad enough, there’s no ceiling sprinklers—not even a smoke alarm. It’s a shame.”

“Save your catalogue, sir. I represent these fine people, and I can assure you that everything that goes on here is legal and aboveboard. I believe they attained a variance some months back and have a moderately good relationship with the Coastline Steering Committee and the Chamber of Commerce.”

Andrew started to protest. Pennyman
represent
them! He wouldn’t be represented by Pennyman on a bet. “We can …” he started, but Rose stepped meaningfully on his foot, and he shut up.

Dilton stared at Pennyman and Ken-or-Ed stared at Dilton. “Let’s go,” Dilton said, sliding his pen back into his pocket.

“This is pointless.”

“We’ll be back!” shouted Ken-or-Ed over his shoulder, but the threat didn’t amount to much, and Andrew yelled “Hah!” just to show him. It made him feel almost happy to see that the fat man’s shirt had come untucked in the melee, and what was left of his hair had been jacked up into a sort of wonderful hedge.

“Tuck in your shirt!” Andrew shouted out the door, but Rose dragged him away. He was giddy with victory for a moment, but then there was Pennyman, smiling benevolently.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said to Rose.

Andrew plucked up his coat and put it on. “Don’t bother,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done.”

Rose cast Andrew another look. “Thank you,” she said to Pennyman.

Andrew started to speak again, but Pennyman had very gallantly kissed Rose’s hand and was tapping toward the door, and the sight of the hand-kissing froze Andrew’s words before they’d had a chance to be uttered. Speaking was no good at all here. The more he spoke, the worse it got. Andrew would have simply slammed Pennyman in the back of the head then and there, except that there was something in him that wouldn’t allow for the striking of an old man. Or else there was something in him that made him afraid to. He pushed this last thought out of his mind and bent over to sweep up the fragments of the broken tornado. And just before Pennyman disappeared, Andrew heard him mutter the words “upset” and then “he’ll calm down.” Then he was gone, giving Andrew no chance at all to murder him.

Andrew stood staring at the backs of his hands on the bar. Then, calmly and deliberately, he picked up the unbroken tornado and threw it hard at the wall. It exploded in a spray of black pepper, the “I been to Kansas” sign snapping off entire and spinning away across the bar like a top. Rose gaped at him. Without looking up, he slammed his fist down sideways onto the little, hollow ceramic sign, crushing it. He could feel it slice into the side of his palm, and he was glad for it. It would show Rose something; that was for sure.
What
it would show her he couldn’t say; not enough, maybe. To complete the picture, he smashed his closed fist into one of the wooden panels fronting the bar, with far more force than he’d intended. He winced in spite of himself, and blood from the cut sprayed back onto his pants. Rose walked silently through the door, back the way she’d come. Andrew watched her go, the wild energy emptying from him. He pressed his left hand over the bleeding cut and flexed his fingers, wondering if he’d broken one of them. He half-hoped he had. He deserved to. But then he’d have to live with the day-to-day reminder of it for the next six weeks, and that he didn’t deserve. That would be too much.

He seemed to go limp all of a sudden. All his rage had leaked away like water out of a cracked jar. He wanted suddenly to chase after Rose, to explain himself. It was easy enough. It was Pennyman, is what it was—kissing her hand. He couldn’t have that. It wasn’t gallant, it was … a perversion. Pennyman was laughing at both of them. Andrew could stand the laughter; he was big enough to shoulder it; but he couldn’t have the slimy old fake making up to Rose that way. He nearly punched his hand into the bar again, but he didn’t have enough jazz. He was drained, empty. He slumped into a chair and stared out through the street door, thinking of nothing.

At dinner that night Rose didn’t say a thing about the trouble in the afternoon. She was cheerful, in fact, and had opened a bottle of Spanish champagne, which Andrew was happy enough to see. He kept wanting to bring the subject up, conversationally, as if by chance, in order to get around to explaining himself. He knew, though, that he oughtn’t to be
explaining
anything. He ought to be apologizing. There was a vast difference. It was easy enough for him to do the one; the other was tough.

And here was Rose, pouring him a third glass of champagne. Pennyman was out; Mrs. Gummidge was upstairs, eating with Aunt Naomi. It was just the two of them. That sort of rage—that cold sort of smashing and breaking—was something entirely foreign to Rose. She didn’t engage in it. She couldn’t be made to understand it, any more than a tropical native could be made to understand ice … But there he went again, thinking of explanations.

If she just weren’t so damned pleasant, with the champagne and all. She very clearly had “forgotten all about it,” so as to make it easier on him. And she
meant
it, too. There was nothing deceitful in it. She was simply good, in about a hundred ways, thank God, and her goodness made Andrew feel worse.

Then it occurred to him abruptly that she was taking Pennyman’s advice, and letting him “calm down.” That wasn’t so good after all. Thinking of Pennyman made Andrew go cold. The champagne wasn’t worth anything all of a sudden. The pleasant sense of proportion it had given him evaporated and he felt only a dull headache.

Things changed so fast. The days seemed to bolt past while he hurried blindly toward a destination that no one on earth could define for him. He never seemed to get there either. More than half his life was gone, and he seemed no closer to any of his nebulous goals than he’d ever been. He’d been closer, in fact, when he was eighteen and was full of dreams and spirit. What had Aunt Naomi said? The world wasn’t your oyster any more. Well, that would take some getting used to.

He could remember when, not so very long ago, he’d been as even-tempered as the next man, more so even. Laugh-a-minute Andrew; that’s what he’d been. Now the tiniest thing would set him off. The bad, out-of-temper mornings came around more often than the mornings full of cheerful whistling. Would it get worse? Would Rose tolerate him? Why in the hell
couldn’t
he have just a little bit of Pennyman’s gallantry and self-assuredness?

The champagne was gone. He couldn’t suggest opening another; that would be going too far. It would be a disaster to end the day in a drunken stupor, desperately pretending that he wasn’t. He smiled at Rose, marveling at how pretty she looked. She hadn’t ever needed make-up, although she looked smashing when she had it on. When she was half-disheveled, at the end of a long, tiresome day like this one, she looked prettiest.
Capable
was what she looked, and just a little bit tough, as if there was nothing that she might do that would surprise you. How in the world had he ended up with a woman like her? Why didn’t she just pitch him out? He felt the wild urge to ask her, but he stepped on it. There was no use pushing his luck.

Maybe things hadn’t gone so badly for him after all. When you looked around, why there was a comfortable house full of books and the smell of the sea, and there was Rose being good to him, and a business to dabble in that let him do just what he wanted—even if doing it made him feel guilty. It occurred to him for the first time—as if the champagne, or something, had whispered it very clearly into his ear—that he’d be more satisfied, perhaps, if he thought less about his regrets and more about—what?—his many blessings, maybe.

He must be drunk. He was getting maudlin. In a moment he’d start singing, counting them one by one. He pushed himself away from the table in tolerably better spirits, though. There was nothing for it but to keep going, to put one foot in front of the other. Steady-on—that was what was demanded of him. And besides, Pennyman would get his one of these days soon. Andrew would have to bring it off in such a way that it was Pennyman, and not himself, who was made to seem mean and small, especially to Rose.

“I’m going out to work on the cafe,” Andrew said, kissing Rose on the cheek. “It’s pretty nearly ready.”

Rose nodded. “I’ll just clean up. Why
did
that man come around this afternoon? He turned out to be far more horrible than I’d have guessed.”

Andrew shook his head, grateful that the subject, finally, had been brought up. “I don’t know what set him off. He must have known all along what we were doing here. Now he’s taken it into his head to start trouble. He’s a lunatic. That’s all I can think of. He can’t touch us, though. Don’t worry about it, for heaven’s sake. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call Uncle Arthur tomorrow. He’s connected; maybe he can help.”

“I’d be relieved if you did. Don’t go brawling with the neighbors, though. Promise me that. You know how you are. You’ll hurt someone and then there’ll be trouble. That seems to be what he wants, you know. To start something.”

Andrew nodded. That certainly seemed so. “I wouldn’t have hurt him much,” he said. “Just a little poke in the nose.” He was moderately proud of the idea. Once he got hold of a man, he didn’t let him go until he’d wrung him out.

“And what was that nonsense about a baseball game? I don’t believe I’ve ever been to one.”

“That was good, wasn’t it?” Andrew grinned, recalling how easy it had been to make Ken-or-Ed or whatever his name was both furious and mystified at the same time. That took a certain technique. “Sent him straight through the roof, didn’t it?”

“But was it a
good
idea to send him straight through the roof?”

Andrew shrugged. “It did the trick. I’m glad you stopped me, though. I
might
have hurt the man after all. I’m a pretty dangerous character, aren’t I?”

“That’s why you need me around. Admit it.”

“I admit it. Happily.” He kissed her again and went out whistling. He’d have another go at the menu. It was due at the printer’s day after tomorrow. Pickett would be home late tomor- row night, and could give him a hand. Then, as a gesture, he’d run it past Aunt Naomi the following morning. Who could tell?—she might have something smart to say about it after all. He glanced back at Rose as he shut the door behind him. She winked at him very jolly and then gave him a mock-serious look, a no-nonsense look, a behave-yourself look, as if she were keeping him in line. And it made him feel almost whole again.