Good neighbor sam, p.3
Good Neighbor Sam, page 3
Min was saying, "I'm completely opposed, naturally, to lying or dishonesty of any kind whatsoever. But to just sit by and let your cousins get that money is ridiculous. Why, they're not even cousins; they're only your second cousins!"
Janet said, "Well, of course it was entirely up to Granddad to whom he left his money, and I wouldn't dream of interfering with his wishes in any least way. But they don't deserve that money! And if they think I'm just going to hand it over to th— Oh, my God!" she said in an entirely different tone of voice, and I dropped my paper and turned to follow her eyes out between the two houses to the street and a blue-and-white station wagon at the curb before her house.
A woman and a man were getting out, the woman glancing all around the neighborhood even before she was entirely out of the car, and Janet said, "It's them. It's the cousins. I might have known." Then she stood up and called, "Yoo-hoo!" in a delighted lone of voice.
They saw her; she beckoned, and as they began walking toward us across the grass, I had a chance to look them over. Even allowing for the prejudice of our being on Janet's side against them, I think it's an objective fact that they were not likable people. Walking toward us, they emanated suspicion like heat waves, and above the big teeth-showing smiles their eyes searched us over like monkeys hunting lice. The woman was forty-odd, skinny, her skin deeply tanned for too many summers. But she was smart-looking; her summer dress and hat — wide-brimmed to keep the sun from showing up the lines of her face — were expensive. Her smile was garden-party polite, hut her face was permanently hostile to every living soul in the world whose opinions were different from hers.
But I was positively fond of her compared to what I felt about the man who was with her; if we'd been dogs we'd have streaked across the lawn for each other's throats. He was that big, tall, wide, pseudo-athletic type, the kind that at first glance looks like a former football player. But they never are, being too wide-hipped — flab-waisted since early adolescence. I knew this son of a bitch; I'd known dozens like him; everyone has. They're affable, easy-laughing, easy-joking, in a way that can be charming till you see that it comes from never having even once in their lives perceived anything wrong with themselves. In their thirties and forties — and this one was about thirty-five — a sullenness begins showing through the charm, even a viciousness. This comes from the accumulating frustrations of a selfishness that is absolute, and they often become semi-drunks, nasty after a few drinks. I didn't really care for him.
We were standing, in a sort of meeting of the enemy chieftains, as they stopped before us, and Janet introduced us. They were a Mrs. Irene Krupp, and her brother, Jack Bailey, and I thought, It would be Jack and not John; any guy calls himself Jack as though it were a name and not a nickname couldn't be trusted not to steal a wet cigar butt. True to type, he was looking Min over thoroughly, and I yanked his eyes to me with, "Glad to know you, Bailey, old man," with a knife in my voice. Min glanced at me, meaning, Cut it out, now, and Bailey flicked me a look meaning, I know that you know that I know that you know that we both know how things stand between us, and always will, and that goes double for me, buddy-boy, and I returned the look, feeling good; nice and warm and mean with dislike for the bastard. It wasn't till I turned and saw the astonishment in Min's eyes that I realized what else Janet was saying.
While all these meaningful looks were going on she'd continued her introductions with, "This is my neighbor, Mrs. Samuel Bissell." Then she slid her hand possessively under my arm, saying, "And of course this is my husband, Howard. I do hope you'll call him Howie!"
I stood there, a little dazed, while they muttered responses, their eyes narrowed, studying me as closely as a guy buying a diamond in an alley. But I was able to admire the logic and simplicity of Janet's fast thinking. This unholy pair had caught her flat-footed, if you can use flat even figuratively for a girl like Janet, even referring only to her feet. Maybe I should say they caught her off-base, or with her — we'll make it flat-footed. With Gramps barely gone, they'd come rushing up from their lairs on the Peninsula on whatever off-chance might exist to find something, anything, before Janet could hide it, that would give them an excuse to contest her inheritance. And they'd almost succeeded.
But not quite. Her hand under my arm, she obviously seemed to have a husband, and now she said, "Min, darling, if you'll excuse us… ?"
Grinning at the startled look on my face, Min said, "Of course."
I'd recovered when we reached Janet's patio doors, remembering to step aside like a host and let the others precede me into the living room. As they did, I smiled over at Min, waved, and called pleasantly, "Tell Hertz to send the bill to me!" and she thumbed her nose at me.
For twenty minutes we sat in Janet's living room with nothing to discuss. Janet just sat back on the davenport, smiling at the pair of them pleasantly, and let them struggle with whatever they could find to offer, which wasn't much, as reason for coming here. She had a good time, and so did I. With my hands clasped comfortably back of my head, I sat on the davenport beside Janet sneering at Bailey across the room. Once I said, "Janet, love, when you sell the estate I think each of your cousins should have something from it; an ash tray, a favorite old plate, a sentimental memento of some sort. Their visit of condolence today so very soon after he passed on" — I smiled at them brilliantly — "shows how dearly they loved the old fellow."
Irene smiled back at me, and I knew how it had felt riding in a tumbrel past the eyes of the women knitting beside the guillotine. Bailey stared at me and began wetting his lips over and over. Through several seconds I thought he was not going to be able to hold back an answer, but he did. He finally swallowed whatever he'd had to say, and I mean literally; his Adam's apple moved up and down as though it were apple-bobbing time at Halloween. He sat there then, glaring at me, and my heart sang.
When they left, muttering bloodcurdling goodbyes, Janet and I stood in her front doorway, arms around each other's waist like a couple in a life-insurance ad, and Bailey bucked the car in his hurry to leave. I turned to smile down at Janet and said, "Well, dear? Where's my five and a half million bucks? Community-property law, you know," and I squeezed her waist in friendly fashion.
She quickly removed her arm from my waist and herself from my arm, saying quickly, "Let's call Min over! She'll be dying to hear all about this," so we did, and she was.
Later, when Min and I were back in our own living room, she looked at me appraisingly for several seconds, then said, "You liked that, didn't you?"
"Liked what?" I looked up from my magazine.
"You know damn well what; pretending that you and Janet — "
"Oh, maybe," I said, smiling at Min, and putting the magazine down. "She's a cute kid, and all that." I got up, walked to the davenport where Min was sitting, and sat down beside her. "Lots of things I like," I said, and got my arm around her. "But some more than others."
She said, "Stop that," but didn't move away.
"Okay, Minnie."
"And you can cut that out, too."
"Is it true that you're the only girl in the world named after a mouse?"
"I mean it now. My name is — "
"I know. But I'll bet you wouldn't mind if my name were Mickey Mouse."
"Your name is Samuel Rat. Now let me go, I have to fix lunch." And she pulled away and stood up. But she was smiling at me, and I was smiling back, and there would never be enough honey-haired blondes in the entire world to replace her little finger.
Let me explain. I really and truly, cross my heart, love Minerva, my lawful wedded wife. I would not trade her for a full-size replica of the Colossus of Rhodes carved from a single diamond. I love her in all the ways there are; she's the bee's knees. But bumbling old Mother Nature will not admit or even recognize those facts and just shut up and let me alone. She keeps murmuring in my ear, "Wouldn't it also be nice — wouldn't it be grand and glorious, all the Fourth of Julys since seventy-six rolled into one — to slip under the sheets with that long, lithesome, limber — " And I clap my hands over my ears, yelling, "No, no, you old fool, I'm married! Married, you hear?" And in that stupid Neanderthal voice she says, "Married; what's that? It has no place in my scheme, never has and never will, and — this is an order! — I want you to sneak over to Janet's — "
There ought to be a sort of time-out. Every once in a while a universal bell would ring and for just an hour, a day, a night, you weren't married. When it passed, you were married again and that hour, day, or night didn't count, so that you'd have an absolutely clear conscience — I'm only kidding, of course.
I just want to make it plain that it wasn't my fault; it was Stepmother Nature who lured me into a complex dream that night in which Janet's voice kept calling, "Sam!" in an urgent, seductive whisper that I wanted to answer but couldn't because of my better self. Then suddenly I was awake, propped up on an elbow in the dark, and it seemed to me that in just the instant before I'd awakened she'd again called, "Sam!" with still greater urgency. And now the voice whispered desperately, "Sam, for heaven sakes, wake up!" And I realized it was Janet and knew where she was; just outside the stupid little windows up under the eaves.
I got up, found the chair, climbed up on it, and stood, right foot on the seat, left foot on the chair arm, a hand lightly gripping the back, rocking at what I estimated to be a steady thirty beats to the minute, excellent conditions for the ascent. Then, right leg bent, calf tensed, I leaped into the air, my groping foot moving out to the right as it had done so many times before. You wouldn't think darkness would make all that difference, but it did. My foot just passed on over that chair arm out into space, and I felt my body following it with the rapidly increasing acceleration of a felled tree. I knew I was on my way to the floor between chair and the foot of the bed and would break both arms, my skull, and dozens of ribs, and I made a tremendous effort.
Like an Alpine climber feeling the avalanche begin under his feet, and who makes a normally impossible leap across a chasm, I shoved my left foot against the rocker arm with the strength of a stallion. The chair flew across the room and crashed into the dresser like a runaway steam roller, rattling the entire house on its foundation. And in the very instant of that crash I landed on my back on our bed with the force of a jetliner momentarily touching down in a crash landing.
My eyes were now accustomed to the faint light in the room, and as my back pressed deep into the mattress from the force of my fall, I watched Min — she'd been asleep on her stomach, and I saw her eyes pop open — rise from the mattress from the counterforce of my landing and soar on up past me. But our courses weren't parallel; I'd struck at an angle, and they intersected. And as the springs under me compressed to their limits, then shot me toward the ceiling like a trampoline, we collided in mid-air and fell back toward the bed in a thrashing tangle of pajamas, nightgown, arms and legs, and Min screamed and began to fight for her life. It was a weak scream, the tuned-down fractional yell of a nightmare; she told me much later that she dreamed a giant bird had seized her in mid-air. But as she began slugging me, I grabbed her around the upper arms and felt the swift deep inhalation I knew was the immediate preliminary to a full-fledged ear-splitter. I didn't know why, but Janet's whispered cries had been unmistakably urgent with the need for secrecy, and just as Min's mouth opened to yell, I clapped a hand over it. Her teeth clamped down on my little finger, I began a shouted whisper of, "It's me, darling, it's Sam!" and after a moment I felt her relax, then she reluctantly let go of my finger.
"What in the living hell are you doing?" she asked, not unreasonably.
"I don't know, but Janet's here."
"Where?"
"Up here, Min," Janet's whispered voice said from somewhere near the ceiling.
"Oh, my God," Min said, and lay down again. "I'm still dreaming."
I got the chair upright under the windows once more, and standing only on the seat this time, I could still see the pale blur of Janet's face a foot above me on the other side of the window screen. I said, "Hi, Janet. Nice to see you again."
"I'm standing on a box on top of that wooden saw-horse, or whatever you call it, that you keep in the back yard."
"Splendid! But wouldn't it be easier to just ring the doorbell? Or even phone?"
"No, the wires may be tapped! And I couldn't ring the bell, or you might turn on a light before I could warn you."
"About what, Janet?" I said gently.
"That they're outside, watching!"
"I see," I said, knowing that in the deep middle of the night, brooding over no one might ever know what, Janet had gone insane. "Come on around; I'll let you in the side door."
"Don't turn on a light! And be very quiet."
"Okay, Jan," I said, and went around to the side of the house by the garage and let her in. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe and was barefooted.
We sat cross-legged on the bed in the darkness then, all three of us, very cozily, and I thought approvingly of the early-day Latter-day Saints and some of their curious and lamentably vanished beliefs.
Janet said, "I don't know why, but I woke up with this funny feeling. So I walked to the front of the house, peeked under a window shade" — she paused dramatically; we're all hams from birth — "and there, parked across the street, was this truck. I'm sure it wasn't there when I locked up the house earlier."
I said, "What kind of truck?"
"You know — like a sedan, only it doesn't have any windows."
"A panel truck?"
"I guess so. I watched for about five minutes, not moving the shade, and I'm sure I saw a movement in the front seat."
"Maybe it's just some guy out with a girl in the company truck and nowhere else to go."
She shook her head. "It's awfully late, even for that."
I got up, walked to the front of the house, and in the kitchen — a lot of Treasure Island houses are reversed on their lots, living rooms secluded at the back — I looked through the crack between window frame and shade. There was a Ford panel truck parked across the street, and in the light from a street lamp a dozen feet down the road I read the name painted on the panel. It said, "Bayview Rug Cleaning," and underneath that, "Mission at Fourth," and under that "Call us for an estimate!" But there was no telephone number, no city name, and Mission and Fourth could be streets in any town in California.
Back in the bedroom, sitting in a closet so no light could possibly show outside, I used a pencil flashlight to look up Bayview Rug Cleaning in both the San Francisco and Marin County phone books. There was none listed, and I knew that Janet was right. For whatever reason — whatever we'd done, looked, or said that hadn't quite been right — the cousins were suspicious. They may not even have been sure of what they suspected, but they weren't giving up eleven million dollars without a struggle. Outside in that truck was a private investigator, very well paid, and no doubt with the chance of a spectacular bonus, who was waiting and watching to learn anything there might be to learn, to see what he could see. I said so to Janet and Min, then added, "And there's one thing he has to see." I paused like Sergeant Friday, waiting for someone to say, "What's that?"
"What's that?" Min said, knowing damn well.
"A husband leaving for work in the morning."
We were all dead silent then, the alarm clock ticking away; no one quite wanted to say the next word. I felt sorry for Min; I could read her mind. She was adding up the columns in a set of mental books. On one side of the ledger, in a column headed Virtues, it said, Trust in One's Husband! But in the column opposite headed Possible Consequences, it said, in red ink, Alone? At Night? With Someone Who Looks Like Janet? Under Virtues it said, Loyalty to a Friend! Under Possible Consequences — Friend? Or Other Woman? But of course the books wouldn't balance by eleven million dollars; she couldn't let Janet lose her inheritance over a triviality. "What about the neighbors?" she said weakly. But we live on a curve of the road and there are only two houses across the street that can actually see Janet's or our house; the houses on either side are around the bend out of sight. I pointed this out gently, adding that both families across the way were on vacation, and Min nodded. "Well, then!" she said brightly, gaily. "I guess you'll have to leave from Janet's in the morning!"
We all knew this meant going over to Janet's before daybreak; there was no other way to avoid being seen crossing between the two houses. I was glad I was on the other side of the room sitting in the closet, and I didn't answer right away, to give the impression that I was weighing her suggestion while hunting alternatives. Actually I couldn't even think. Alone? At night? With Janet? What did this mean? What did I want it to mean? What did Janet…? What did Min…? What the hell was going on? I didn't know, but it was pretty exciting.
"Well," I said presently, as though agreement were being torn from my lips, "I suppose so. I guess that's what we'll have to do, Janet." Do what? Double, triple, and quadruple entendres swirled through my brain. "Okay," I said with brisk making-the-best-of-it finality, and I got up from the closet floor decisively before anyone could have second, less-interesting thoughts, "I'll do it. Come on, Janet. I'll see you home."
"She can make it home by herself," Min said, even more decisively. "It's not far, and the fewer people flitting back and forth, the better for Janet."
I let Janet out the patio doors at the back of the house and came back to bed. Min was so far over on her side she'd fall out of bed if she sneezed, and her back was squarely to me. "I've set the alarm for five-fifteen," she said coldly, as though all this were my fault. "It doesn't start getting light till after five-thirty. Now let's try to get some sleep."
"Right!" I said heartily, and as I settled down I muttered, "Hell. Five-fifteen. What a nuisance." But Min didn't move or say a word, and I knew I hadn't quite carried conviction.
At five-fifteen, shot out of sleep by the alarm like a man from a cannon, I staggered around the bedroom with my pencil flashlight, getting out shorts, shirt, tie, suit, shoes, toilet articles, wallet, keys, clean handkerchief. It was Min's idea that I ought to get dressed here; I'd be leaving for work in only two hours, she said. But I pointed out that I always take a shower in the morning, that I'd also have to shave, brush my teeth, and comb my hair, so what was the point in my dressing now? She couldn't think of an answer she was willing to make, though I felt she was trying, and just before five-thirty I left. If you think it isn't a weirdly confusing feeling to kiss your wife goodbye and then sneak through the dark over to the home of a beautiful divorcee in your pajamas and robe, carrying your clothes over one arm, shoes in the other hand, and wearing a Homburg hat — try it, buddy; just try it sometime.
