able to shake it off, as he did now.
He turned to me and raised his hand to shade his eyes. “Bud was just telling me about something of his, ah . . . what did you say it was, Bud, a process?”
“I’d put it more in the realm of a concept.”
“A concept?” I asked.
“It’s a straightforward thing,” said Bud. “It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t been thought of.”
“Probably has,” I ventured.
“All great concepts have a disarming simplicity,” added Mickey.
“I see,” I said. “It’s one of the great concepts.”
“We’re looking forward to hearing all about it.” Mickey smoothed back his hair as if smoothing over my hostility. “We have an insatiable curiosity about new ideas. Comes with the territory. I gather, Neil, that packaging comes into play. That’s right, Bud, isn’t it?”
“Sounds intriguing,” I broke in. “But you know, Bud, my brother is leaving tomorrow and we have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Of course,” he answered. “I’m running late myself. I’d only meant to drop by to give you this.” He handed me the parcel he’d brought and fixed me with a look hinting that before I came downstairs my brother had been talking about me after all.
“See you again,” I said as he was leaving.
“Count on it, fella.”
When he was out of earshot, or when Mickey thought he was, Mickey turned to me. “We were having a nice chat till you came along,” he said. “What in hell have you got against him?”
I looked at the box Bud had left for me. Its shape promised a bottle of King’s Ransom, the scotch du jour. It was tasty stuff, I had to admit. Few other gifts could have made me regret my unfriendliness more. “What have I got against him? Not much. Which is why I wanted to get rid of him. He doesn’t want to get mixed up with us.”
“He’s the one who brought it up. And why shouldn’t he have? He’s got an idea he believes in. He’s casting around for backing. If it seems worth looking into, then I think we should look into it. It’s the way things are done, Neil. I’m not sure why you need to be reminded of that. You seem to think there’s something unsavory in what we do.”
“You do see, don’t you, why I wouldn’t want my brother to start doing business with my neighbor.”
“I don’t see it, I’m afraid.”
“Because if you start, I’ll end up doing business with him.”
“And what’d be the matter with that? You don’t like the idea of the sweet smell of success coming from next door?”
“It’s the other smell I don’t like, the sour one. Imagine living next door to that.”
“It’s all sour as far as you’re concerned. You’ve become so mistrustful that you wouldn’t know a fair proposition if it stood on its hind legs and sang for you.”
I unwrapped the box and found a note from Bud thanking me for taking him to the hospital. There was also an invitation to a party. The thought of it nearly ruined my pleasure in the anticipation of the gift. It isn’t that I disliked parties. But the prospect of rubbing elbows with a clutch of boisterous strivers seemed, well—it seemed the very opposite of whatever it was to sip at the King’s Ransom in the peace of my own living room. At least the party was a long way off. I’d have plenty of time to come up with a plausible excuse. But what did I care whether it was plausible? In fact, it’d be better if he didn’t believe it. He’d know not to invite me again.
I had just hung up the phone in the foyer one afternoon and was thinking about the things I needed. A housekeeper, for one—our latest, a Holy Roller who as far as I could see spent most of her day in a rocker singing hymns, had decided that it would be unseemly for her to stay in the house with a bachelor. I needed another station wagon. And after calling around to car dealerships and discovering that orders for wagons were backlogged, I was thinking that I needed a personal secretary. Joyce’s attention to romantic intangibles might have slackened over the years, but on practical matters it had never flagged.
The phone rang again. I let it ring—a splotch of sunlight streaming through a transom onto a corner of the wall had caught my notice, a hydra-headed blue and orange shadow that twirled, disappeared, and returned in a different spot—till it occurred to me that one of the car dealers might have found something. But it was no car dealer. It was Joyce.
There were greetings and pleasantries, and I heard the old warmth in her voice, the intimate or at any rate exclusive tone she used when she was away and anticipating our reunion. But when the formalities were done, she remembered herself. Her voice closed up and she was all business: the things she wanted and needed and didn’t want and didn’t need and had forgotten to mention.
I didn’t say much myself, and was careful not to contradict her. But however I agreed on every item, there were more on her list, and more, their recitation like the construction of our estrangement’s barrier. Finally I broke in to ask her how she was really, and after pretending not to know what I meant, she declared that she was “thriving under the new dispensation.” I was all over it.
“Thriving under the new dispensation? Where’d you get that one? Don’t tell me you’ve taken up with a clergyman.”
“Watch it, Neil. I don’t have to put up with your sarcasm anymore.”
We hung up, and I found myself staring at that shadow. It was awfully busy, its spheres and specks bobbing and spinning. Too busy for my liking, evidently—I was running my hand over it like a cat trying to pin it down with a paw. When the shadow disappeared, it seemed that I had succeeded—till it was back again, as irrepressible as the meaning behind Joyce’s stilted phrase.
Though I must have come across Bud in the following weeks, I can’t say that I noticed him. Only a memory of him in his garden comes to mind: a stray lock dangles over his brow while he digs holes into which his daughter places the bulbs lying in burlap beside her. But this might well come from another time. Having been vandalized by sentiment, the dates on such images are generally illegible.
I didn’t see him, and then I saw him all the time—mornings inbound, evenings outbound. In the station house or on the platform or inside a train car, I’d see him and he me. We’d say hello and go back to our newspapers. A hint of embarrassment at my earlier rudeness to him lingered. Winding my way down the slalom-course of the newspaper’s columns I’d remind myself to make amends without really intending to do so. But I wasn’t about to invite him over. The idea of entertaining anyone, let alone him, was impossible. Joyce’s absence would make it too awkward. That I ultimately met the obligation was only thanks to Vicky—thanks, that is, to her wild backhand.
In her girlhood Vicky had been a natural at tennis, strokes smooth and balance steady from the moment she’d picked up a racquet. I encouraged her and got fast results, victories in local tournaments, and a regional ranking. But before long the round of camps and clinics and coaches was taking her away from us. Joyce was for weaning her off competition. I had another idea. I had played seriously myself and didn’t see why Vicky and I shouldn’t work out together. I decided to build a court for her at home.
And I did build it, over Joyce’s objection and despite some hostile geology: the ground was less stable than I’d been led to expect, the bedrock higher, the drainage faster, the water table deeper; a silver-colored copper beech that in the original plans had been left alone had had to come down. I let Joyce choose the barrier between the court and the surrounding ground. She rejected them all: clubhouse, fence, hedges, ditch, terraces, a stone wall. Nothing would do. The clay court we ended up with was easy on the feet and the eyes too, but it punished you for missing. Other than the brick ledges I had the builder sneak in, there were no backstops. The ball could fly or roll—or fly and roll—where it would. What we had, thanks to Joyce, was a court