Twanged (2 page)

Chappy had been disgusted enough to want to leave immediately, but Bettina had complained that her blood sugar was very low and insisted they stay and have something quick.

The bartender had started to yak with Chappy when Bettina went to the ladies’ room. He droned on about the birthday party they’d had the night before for a young American girl named Brigid who was on her way to becoming a country music star. Her mother’s family lived in town and they had all been in attendance. Brigid had performed several duets with the famous all-Ireland fiddle champion Malachy Sheerin; he, of course, had played his legendary Fiddle of the Cliffs.

“Why legendary?” Chappy asked.

The bartender’s eyes widened. “Why, lad, it was fashioned from the wood of a fairy tree. There’s a blessing on it. Whoever owns it will always have good luck and get his heart’s desire.”

Chappy’s ears perked up. He believed in good-luck charms. Maybe if he owned the fiddle, he could be a musical-comedy star after all.

“How can I make arrangements to buy it?” he asked.

The bartender looked at him as though he were nuts. “That’s a laugh. Out of the question. It’s an Irish fiddle that will stay with the Irish.”

When Bettina returned, he served them some dreadful leftovers. Then when Chappy handed over his credit card while Bettina headed out to the car, the bartender’s eyes widened again.

“Chappy Tinka,” he said with gusto. “CT. Those are the initials carved into the fiddle. Theories abound, but no one knows what they stand for.”

Chappy Tinka, they stand for, you moron! Chappy wanted to cry out. Now he knew he had to have it! It was meant to be! Somehow or other he had to get it.

Slapping the bill in front of Chappy, the bartender continued, “Malachy Sheerin has had that fiddle for over sixty years now. It was given to him when he was a lad. He’s carried it all over the countryside with him, going around playing and telling his stories. More Irishmen have heard that fiddle . . .”

Chappy could barely listen. For him to hear someone tell him there was something he couldn’t have was very provoking. Throughout his fifty-four years of life, what Chappy wanted, Chappy got. Usually, anyway. The Tinka name was recognized everywhere. His grandfather had made a fortune in the thumbtack business, and Tinka Tacks was about as respected a company as you could get. Unfortunately for Chappy, people on the A-list for parties in the Hamptons didn’t get too excited about thumbtacks. But Bettina was working tirelessly to get them on that list.

So was Chappy, actually. In the fall he’d finally be building a little theatre in the compound, a theatre where he could produce plays and maybe even star in a few himself. Who cares if he had, just last year, been encouraged to drop the improvisational acting class he had signed up for with such enthusiasm? Who needs it anyway? he’d decided. Some of the best actors in the world had never taken a lesson. The teacher was just envious of him, he was sure of it. To say that his range seemed to be limited due to his upbringing! What nerve!

Chappy had come away from that class with one bit of unintentional advice from the teacher, which he planned to heed.

If you want to work as an actor, you’d better build your own theatre.

Amen, Chappy thought. So be it.

And to have the magical fiddle! He would eventually mount a production of
Fiddler on the Roof
and cast himself in the lead. He’d keep the fiddle under the stage for good luck when he wasn’t playing his heart out. The feng shui specialist brought in by the architect of the theatre to rearrange furniture so their life would be more harmonious also believed in the power of special objects. “Put a crystal in the wealth-and-power corner of the room, which is the far left,” he’d said. “You’ll be wealthier, happier, and more famous.” Chappy had thought he was full of bull, but when he’d found out about the fiddle, he couldn’t help imagining what the legendary fiddle would do for him if it were placed
stage left
in Chappy’s Theatre by the Sea. Chappy nearly trembled at the thought. His plays would win awards and he would show off to all the Hamptons swells what an artistic and talented man he was.

Why, the 1910 picture of Grandma and Grandpa Tinka’s wedding party hanging in the hallway had three or four fiddlers flanking the happy couple! Clearly it was time to bring fiddling back to the Tinka homestead.

So in that little pub in Ireland, Chappy had decided that no matter what, that fiddle would be his. Who cared if it was supposed to stay with the Irish? Chappy wasn’t Irish at all. The thumbtack clan dated far back in this country, but not as far back as they would have liked. The
Mayflower
had been pulling out of the dock in Plymouth, England, when Chappy’s forefathers had arrived late, screaming for its return. Too late. They had literally missed the boat and been forced to wait for the next pilgrimage. Ever since that day, the Tinka descendants had been neurotic about punctuality.

Chappy couldn’t steal it himself, of course. There was no time and he couldn’t let Bettina in on his plans. But when he got home he’d dispatched his idiot employee, Duke, to go to Ireland and bring it back. And for days now Chappy had had no choice but to wait and worry.

Of course he’d gotten phone calls from Duke, with nothing but the usual bumbling excuses. “I went to the wrong cottage.” “He had guests who stayed late and I had jet lag, so I went back to my hotel.” “He got drunk at a party and stayed over at his friend’s house in the village.” You’d think he was asking him to unload a Brinks truck! How hard could it be to steal a fiddle from a cottage in rural Ireland? There probably wasn’t even a lock on the door.

Chucking the lemon into the pool, Chappy got up and went into the house, entering through the sliding glass door with the trumpet-shaped handle. A few notes of “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” played every time the door opened.

Constance, the beady-eyed fortyish housekeeper who always looked confused, came running. She was wearing a denim skirt, and a bottle of window cleaner was fastened to a holster around her scrawny hips. She had just finished spraying a glass display case of harmonicas that Chappy had installed about the same time he’d had the musical note painted at the bottom of the pool. “Mr. Tinka,” she asked breathlessly, “is there something else I can get for you?”

“No. Nothing!” he shouted. “Nothing. Where is my number one sweetheart?” he asked, referring, of course, to his wife, Bettina. In actuality, she was sweetheart numbers one and two. They’d married each other twenty-five years ago, after Bettina had graduated with honors from charm school at age twenty-one. But since the course of true love was never rock-free, and charm school training only goes so far, and Chappy’s mother, who had never approved of the match, had done her best to break them up, they’d divorced.

“I’ve never seen a gold digger with a bigger shovel,” his mama had said.

But the story had a happy ending. Bettina, just separated from a husband she couldn’t stand talking about, had called Chappy to express her condolences when she’d learned of Chappy’s mother’s passing. So what if she’d only heard a couple of years
after
Hilda Tinka’s demise?

“I’ve just heard the terrible news,” she’d said. “We’ve lost Mother.”

Funny, Chappy had thought at the time. Bettina had never called her anything but “that old bat” during their marriage. But Chappy had realized that maturity brought forgiveness and understanding to Bettina. They’d been reunited and in September would celebrate the one-year anniversary of their second go at marriage. Now they divided their time between a sprawling Park Avenue apartment and their castle in Southampton.

“She’s getting ready for a season with Peace Man in the meditation room. The ladies have all arrived,” Constance said breathlessly.

“Very well,” he grunted as he charged down the hallway, past the old family snapshots of his parents and grandparents in their Sunday best sitting in the sand under the broiling hot sun. Framed pictures of celebrities in the grips of his and Bettina’s arms also adorned the walls. Most of the celebrities wore the expression of deer staring into headlights, having been pounced on by Bettina at the moment of recognition.

A blown-up picture of a miniature Chappy smiling out from his baby buggy was Chappy’s favorite.

He kept walking. At the other end of his gargantuan summer home was a turreted room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the Atlantic. Peace Man was Bettina’s new guru, and he liked to lead his chanting sessions in there.

“We are close to the sea and the salty air. We are close to the source of life. Peace Man likes it in here,” he’d said, as usual referring to himself in the third person.

Chappy stood in the hallway and watched as ladies from other expensive houses, who had been scrounged up by Bettina, sat down in yoga position on the floor and shut their eyes. Peace Man was busying himself plugging in his lava lamp. Bettina was sitting right up front, anxious to soak up every scrap of New Age garbage that Peace Man would offer. It really bugged Chappy to see her so mesmerized by a weird guy with a shaved head who wore a light green outfit that looked as if it had been issued by the state.

Finally, Peace Man spread out his hands to the assemblage. “My sisters, are you ready to get in touch with your inner child?”

“Yes, Peace Man,” they answered in hushed tones.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Peace Man.”

“Now I want you all to relax. We need to open ourselves up. To be available to what the universe sends us. To pick up its energy and heal ourselves. To see the light. Have any of you, my sisters, had a near-death experience?”

“YES!
I did, Peace Man!” a platinum-haired twig called out with her eyes still shut tight.

“Tell Peace Man about it,” he said in a soothing tone.

“My husband cut up my American Express card.”

Gasps rippled through the room. “That’s worse than death,” a nasal voice honked from the corner.

“Sisters, sisters, hush now. Material goods are not what we seek. Spirituality is something that money can’t buy. . . .”

Chappy turned away. “Then what do you do with all that money you collect from me?” he grumbled to himself.

“Mr. Tinka, oh, Mr. Tinka,” Constance called, breathless again, as she came running toward him, practically skidding in her cowboy boots on the slick mahogany floor. Chappy liked it when the staff wore western-style clothing.

“What now?” God, what a day, he thought.

“Duke is back. He’s looking for you.”

“He’s back! He didn’t call first. Well, where is he? Where? Where? Where?” he asked, spitting out the words.

Constance gestured dramatically. “I told him to wait in your study and I’d find you. This house is so big and I feel old today.”

Chappy didn’t run very often, never really exercised much because he was out of shape and it was so hard to start, but this occasion deserved a bit of a sprint on his part. He reached the double doors of his study and frantically pushed them open.

Duke, grinning like the Cheshire cat, sat in the studded leather wingback chair, holding on to the fiddle case. “I’ve got it, boss!” he cried, raising it up in the air as if he had just won Wimbledon.

Fumbling, Chappy closed the doors behind him. “Give me that,” he blurted, grabbing the treasure and laying it out on his antique desk. Carefully he unbuckled it. “I’ll have to replace this cheap case.”

He pulled out the fiddle, examined it as Duke sat there smiling, and suddenly screamed, “
I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE AN IDIOT! THIS ISN’T IT! WHERE ARE MY INITIALS?”

Duke, an aspiring actor himself, who had devoted the last ten of his thirty-five years to working as Chappy’s assistant when he wasn’t chasing down a part or memorizing lines from plays, frowned at the employer he’d actually met in an acting class a decade before. Chappy had had to secretly sign up for it because his mother was still alive: She disapproved of Chappy’s thespian aspirations almost as much as she disapproved of Bettina. “What are you talking about? You can always get it mono-grammed.”

“THE MAGICAL FIDDLE I WANTED HAD MY INITIALS ON IT! THIS ISN’T THE RIGHT FIDDLE! WHOSE IS IT?”
he screamed.

Duke stared blankly, something that he did many times a day. He ran his hands through his wavy, shoulder-length blond hair and shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know, man. I snuck into Malachy’s house, risking my butt, and took the fiddle he was playing with. I saw him playing it! I stuck it in the case and never looked at it again until now!”

“Well, this isn’t the fiddle I need for
Fiddler on the Roof!”
Chappy stomped his foot and sat down.

“Fiddler on the Roof?”
Duke repeated. “Did you get a part in something and not tell me?”

“NO!
For the Chappy Theatre, stupid. And I also need it for feng shui when the theatre is built.”

“Is that a new play?”

“NO!
It’s the Chinese art of placing special objects around the home so things go better. Rearranging the furniture and such.”

“I get it.”

“Well, thank God. Now, you didn’t see any other fiddle in his house?”

Duke stared into space and scrunched up his nose, the only indication he ever gave of being deep in thought. “No, man, he lived in a one-room cottage. Wow, it was small. Not too much furniture to arrange there. I didn’t see any other fiddle. Hmm,” he uttered. “Hmmmm. Hmmmmm.”

“WHAT ARE YOU HMMMMMING ABOUT?”

“I stole a tape recorder he’d been talking into.”

Chappy looked at him, appalled by what he had just heard. “Why did you do that?”

“Mine broke before I left. Maybe we should hear what he was talking about.” As he reached into his carry-on bag, Duke said, “It was really weird. I thought the old dude was just talking to himself when I was watching him from the window. But when I went inside I saw this . . .” He placed the small machine on the desk.

“HURRY UP!”
Chappy yelled.

“Chill, man, chill,” Duke urged. He rewound the tape and pressed
PLAY.