The Good Neighbor (30 page)

“Fine,” said Colt. “Be out there tomorrow morning at nine
A
.
M
. sharp.”

“Now, hold on there,” said Steinbach. “We’re booked solid for a month and a half. I won’t be able to get a crew out there until Jan uary at least, and then the ground’ll be like rock, an’ we’re gonna hafta—”

“Three hundred dollars an hour,” said Colt. “Plus a small bonus for yourself, Mr. Steinbach, if the work is completed in a timely fashion. Beginning tomorrow. Will that effectively resolve any scheduling conflicts?”

“Three—”

“—hundred dollars an hour. Plus.”

“Uh,” said Steinbach. “Hm. Well, I think we can figure out a way to make it work. Sure. Tomorrow? Nine
A
.
M
.?”

“Correct,” said Colt. “Call me on this number if you have any problems.” He gave Steinbach his cell number and hung up.

“Where ju wanna go, main?” asked the cabdriver.

Colt thought. He wanted Scotch badly. Scotch, and a nice, fat, expensive illegal cigar. He gave the name of a bar on Eighty-third where he could find these things, and more.

20
‌

Cruelty

T
he next morning, after two Scotches, a Macanudo, and an other blissful night alone in the apartment, Colt was back in the

office—at the proper time. The market was to open at 9:30. At 9:28, his cell phone rang. Colt had just typed in several buy orders that he intended to execute as soon as the bell rang, and he already had his hands poised over the necessary keys. These buys were hot picks—Internet stocks he’d been watching for weeks, stalking them as a panther stalks a fat, wounded gazelle. Part of him wanted to ignore the ringing, but he’d never been able to bring himself to leave a phone unanswered. After all, one never knew who it might be. The president, maybe, calling to commend him for being an upstanding American citizen. Stranger things had happened.

“Hello?” he said.

“You asshole,” said Francie.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Colt said, in a voice loud enough for Raoul, Buddha, and Joe to hear, since they were all listening anyway. “Everything okay?”

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OWALSKI

“There’s some kind of machine in the backyard, and they’re digging up the cemetery,” Francie said. “So, no, everything is not okay. Coltrane, why is this happening?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Colt said. “Was there any thing else? We’re about to open for the day, and I’m just the teen siest bit busy right now.”

“Colt, how could you do this?” she said. “I thought we were go ing to
talk
about it, at least!”

“It’s my house, isn’t it?” Colt said.

Joe, Buddha, and Raoul all looked up. On television, the bell clanged and the shouting started. Colt stabbed frantically at his keyboard.

“I have to go!” he said. “Market’s open!”

Francie sighed. “Coltrane, I was hoping to tell you this in per son, but . . . I want a divorce.”

Colt swallowed the acid that rose in his throat. “Yeah?” he said as he punched at his keyboard. Errors sprang up on the screen.

“Yes. I do. I’ve been thinking about it, and . . . well, bearing in mind everything that’s happened between us recently, and . . . the fact that we do seem to be drifting . . .”

“Well—Francie—this isn’t really the time to talk about it.” “See? You think even the market opening is more important

than discussing your marriage! That’s called mental cruelty, Coltrane!”

“Francie,” Colt said, lowering his voice, fighting the urge to jump through the phone and throttle her, “I hate to break it to you, but the market opening
is
more important than talking to you. Okay? This is how I make my living. You know that country house you love so much, that you happen to be sitting in right now? Well, I bought it. With money I earned from this job. If you prevent me from doing my job, you are preventing me from earn ing money. Which means I can’t buy things. And neither can you. You know the fucking market opens at nine-thirty. So you call me with one minute to go, and you make me miss it?
That
is mental

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235

cruelty. It’s also
really fucking stupid
!” He barely managed to keep his voice down.

“How could you get a vasectomy without telling me?” Francie shrieked, so loud that Colt was afraid the three stooges could hear. He looked at them quickly, but they were all pretending to ignore him. “How could you do it?
That’s
what I call cruelty!”

“Right, well, I have to get off the phone now,” Colt said.

“No! No! I will not be put off by you again! I demand your full and complete attention right now, Coltrane! This is not just a job I’m talking about here. It’s more important than that! It’s our lives!”

“I have to
go
, goddammit,” Colt said.

“Coltrane, I have never in my life felt so betrayed. By anyone.” He could hear the tears coming in her voice.

“Well then,” he hissed into the receiver, “why don’t you write a poem about it?”

He wished he hadn’t said that, because then she started to cry, and it was like a punch in his gut. Once he had loved her for the way she saw the world in broad strokes of emotion, and admired the way she’d tried so hard to capture it in words—and always failed. Had he ever told her that? Probably not. Maybe he should tell her now.

“Our marriage is over, Coltrane,” she said, weeping. Too late.

At that moment, he had a flash of how the whole business must look to her. And he thought: she must think all I care about is money, that money is the most important thing. Well, it’s not. Not forever, anyway. But right now it is. Because you have to make sure you have enough. It’s fine and dandy to sit around writ ing poems or taking vacations or whatever. But before you did anything else, you had to make sure you had enough. And we do not have enough, not yet. Not even close. And I, it seems, am the only one who understands that.

“I agree,” said Colt.

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OWALSKI

When she didn’t say anything for a long moment, he hung up. “Everything okay, Coltie?” asked Buddha. “Everything hunky

dory?”

Colt looked at the television screen; the market had shot up al ready by twenty points. He should have been in on the action from the first second. Now he would be playing catch-up all day.

“It’s all good,” said Colt.

He pulled his chair in closer to his desk and focused hard on the television, trying not to blink.

“It’s all good,” he said again, though now they really were ig noring him.

❚ ❚ ❚

The phone rang again about four minutes later. It was Wayne Steinbach.

“Uh, we got a situation here,” he said.

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Colt said. It was 9:46
A
.
M
., and he was already weary. More than anything, he wanted to go home and get back on the couch.

“Randy Flebberman is down here and he’s madder ’n a bull at a ball fry.”

“A bull at a
what
?”

“You know, when they castrate the bulls and fry up their balls?”

“I was not aware of that charming custom,” said Colt. “Is that before or after you marry your sisters?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Tell me what Flebberman is doing.”

“Well, he says he’s gettin’ a lawyer and an injunction and all that stuff.”

“He doesn’t have an injunction yet, does he?”

“Well . . . I dunno. He’s sayin’ he’s gettin’ one, is what I’m tellin’ ya.”

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Colt sighed. Now the stocks he’d targeted had completely lost their attractiveness,
and
his wife was leaving him. And now this. It was not going to be a bad day; it was going to be a terrible day. He pounded his fist on his desk. Everyone’s computers shook. Joe, Raoul, and Buddha looked at him again, this time in alarm.

“Tell me this one thing. Is he waving a piece of paper around in the air?” he asked Steinbach.

“No.”

“Then he doesn’t have an injunction.” “How d’you know?”

“Because the first thing people do with injunctions is wave them around in the air. Look, Steinbach, this is a waste of time. I own that land and I don’t have to have dead people on it if I don’t want to. Understand? I hired you to do a job, you said you would do it. That’s a verbal contract. Verbal contracts are binding, just like paper ones. Ask any lawyer. I can take your ass to court.”

“Now look. Randy Flebberman is a friend of mine,” said Stein bach, his voice growing higher. “I went to high school with him. Hell, I dated his wife once. Before she was his wife, I mean. I knew he wasn’t gonna like it, but if I’d a known he was gonna take it like
this
, I wouldn’t a done it at all!”

“Are you ready to go to court with me, Mr. Steinbach?”

There was a long moment of silence; Colt hoped Steinbach wouldn’t know that he wasn’t in the least legally bound to com plete the job, as long as he hadn’t accepted any money yet. He waited.

“No,” Steinbach said finally.

“Right. Then I’ve said all I have to say. Good day to you, sir.” Colt hung up and met the stares of his coworkers.

“Dead bodies?” said Raoul. “On your property?” said Joe.

“What’s goin’ on, Colt?” asked Buddha. “Your wife finally find out where you been buryin’ your enemies?”

“Would you guys mind your fucking business?” Colt said,

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OWALSKI

louder than he’d meant to. Then, having attracted the attention of
everyone
in the office, he decided a break was in order. He got up and put his coat on.

“Where you goin’?” asked Joe. “It’s not even ten o’clock!”

“My morning is shot,” said Colt. “Fucking wife, fucking Stein bach, fucking you guys. I need a break. I’ll see ya later.” And he left, with the eyes of the entire office on him—for a split second, before they were drawn back to their screens.

❚ ❚ ❚

Twenty minutes later, Colt was wandering slowly through Cen tral Park, his hands deep in his pockets and his collar up around his ears, although it was actually getting warmer out—it looked like the snow they’d already had might have jumped the gun on win ter. They could be in for another week or so of fall weather before things got really shitty again. That would be good, he thought. He hadn’t been ready to winter in, not yet.

By force of ancient habit, he headed up to the Swan Pond. When he was a boy, he had loved to come up here and watch the big white birds glide along the top of the water, admiring their aristocratic elegance. It was one of the few memories of his child hood that was pleasant. If he had any money, which he usually didn’t, he used to buy a handful of food from the vending machine and toss it in the water, little by little, drawing it out so he could stay a long time. The ducks would come in, too, vying for a chunk of the action, but the swans always chased them off. Colt remem bered now how that made him feel: proud. Because they were eat ing his food. He admired swans for not being afraid to take what they wanted—shame never entered the picture for them. Just like him. There was no shame in doing whatever you had to do to sur vive, even if it meant crawling on your belly through shit and mud all the early years of your life. That was nothing to be ashamed of—as long as you were crawling uphill.

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It had been a long time since he’d come here. Both the ducks and the swans were gone now, driven south by the early storm. All that was left were pigeons. Colt had always hated pigeons. Disappointed, he started wandering back down toward the south gates of the park, where he’d come in.

So Francie wanted a divorce. As he’d told her, that was not un expected. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of it himself, either. Several times, in fact. Why hadn’t he gone ahead with it? Because there seemed to be hardly any point—he was too busy to justify it. For all the hours he’d spent working every week, they might as well have been separated, anyway. Funnily enough, they only saw each other about as often as a recently divorced couple might—a divorced couple on slightly better than amicable terms, that is, who had perhaps agreed to continue sleeping together every once in a while just to take the edge off the loneliness.

The real truth was—and this was something he would have been ashamed to admit, even to Forszak—he was simply more in terested in making money than anything else. Well, that in itself was not so unusual, in this business. But he cared about it more than sex, even, and that
was
unusual, and that was the part he was ashamed to admit. A lot of the guys in the office ran around on their wives. By no means all, but some. It almost seemed to go hand in hand with the kind of work they did. Yet Colt had never done it—not for lack of opportunity, and not out of virtue, either. He had simply always been puzzled by what the point of all that fooling around was. Soon enough, everything new became old; all acquisitions eventually became another liability. Then you ended up like this Joe, who had left his first wife to move on to the sec ond, and then on to a third; it was probably only a matter of time before Number Three found out he was shtupping a woman in Commodities. And all he had to show for it was two alimony suits and an ulcer. Jesus, what a clusterfuck!