Chance

A fool for love

In the days that followed, Big D ostensibly at work on Chance’s furniture, Carl yet in absentia for reasons still unknown, Chance went about his business. He continued his work with Doc Billy. On the Beck Depression Inventory, Billy endorsed the following items:

• I feel sad much of the time.

• I feel more discouraged about my future than I used to.

• I have failed more than I should have.

• I don’t enjoy things as much as I used to.

• I feel I may be punished.

• I cry more than I used to.

• I have lost most of my interest in other people or things.

• I don’t consider myself as worthwhile and useful as I used to.

• I sleep a lot more than usual.

• I get tired or fatigued more easily than usual.

• I am less interested in sex than I used to be.

Chance noted the Doc’s score as ¹³/₆₃ and consistent with a mild level of depression. He might have said the same for himself but he was trying not to go there. He’d been drinking more of late and this worried him. He’d been considering Lexapro but had thus far rejected the option as some form of capitulation to despair, a position he would not have shared with the many patients for whom he would no doubt continue to prescribe the drug. With regard to Doc Billy, he was in no less of a quandary. His sympathies were with the old man but professional considerations were proving difficult to ignore. His livelihood was, at this point in the game, more or less dependent upon maintaining his reputation as an expert witness in just such cases as Dr. Billy’s, and the Beck Depression Inventory was only one of the many tests he had thus far administered. Cumulative scores suggested it would be mistaken to say Dr. Fry’s problems with attention, concentration, and memory were primarily or exclusively the result of emotional issues, i.e., the intrusion into his personal life on the part of a relative he believed to be quite distant and interested only in his money. Cognitively speaking, the old boy was most definitely on a downward slope.

The other player in all of this, the caregiver and prime suspect, was Lorena Sanchez, formerly of Oaxaca, Mexico, a devout Catholic who prayed often in Billy’s presence. When asked for a description, the doc had described her as five feet tall and chunky. They were seated in the dreaded kitchenette, Dr. Chance and Dr. Billy, windows shut and shuttered, blinds drawn, stove at three-fifty for “extra heat.” The elder doc was sporting the hearing aids he described alternately as “Jap work” and “not worth shit.” The green oxygen tank was at his side, emitting a series of soft clicking sounds, as if extremely small and perhaps alien visitors were trapped inside, attempting communication with the outside world of which Chance himself was more or less a part. “The thing is,” Billy told him, “when she gets dressed up…” He shook his hand, as though shaking water from the tips of his fingers, eyebrows raised. Chance got the picture. “First time I saw her like that… we were at the Bagel House on Lombard and I told her, too, I told her how beautiful she was.”

“And how did she respond?” Chance asked.

The old man was a moment in thought. “She took me by the hand,” he said softly, his eyes tearing. “ ‘I never had anyone like you,’ she said to me.” He paused and looked at Chance. “She meant it, too. I can tell you that. She wanted us to get married. Still does. Can you believe it? In case there are ever problems, financially speaking, she says.” Billy slapped his leg with the flat of his hand. “We fell in love with each other,” he said. “And yeah, I know there’s probably some ulterior fucking motus. I’m ninety-two years old, for Christ’s sake. She’s fifty-three. But this other… that’s the long and the short of it. If she’s not the real deal, the real deal does not exist, not in this life.”

By “this other” Chance had taken him to mean the part about falling in love, upon which subject and about half drunk, Doc the Younger was inclined to wax philosophical:

The philosopher Nietzsche asserted that “In the end, one loves one’s desire and not the desired object.” Viewed in this somewhat detached framework, one might say that by virtue of his relationship with Lorena, William felt safe, protected, and valued. He also experienced for the first time the euphoria of being in love. To his great credit, he is able to acknowledge that at some level he knows, and has known, that he has been manipulated. Nevertheless, he comes back ultimately to the question, “What value is money without love?”

Chance polished off yet another bottle of wine as he worked, attempting to conclude his assessment of Doc Billy, with whom he had been just that day another four and a half hours in the small saunalike apartment. He sat now in his own, depressingly similar to Billy’s save for the heat. Billy had been in his for fifty-five years, alone and unloved. Little wonder he’d fallen for the wondrous Lorena, short and chunky notwithstanding. “While acknowledging that there appears to be compelling evidence of elder abuse in this case…” Chance went on, casting about, ever more desperately, it would seem, for some favorable comment on which to end, anything really that might stave off such humiliations as time, the world, and the Oregonian relatives were almost certain to inflict, “…one needs to be open to the possibility that at some level William Fry recruited Lorena for his own purposes, that he retained her, as it were, to subject himself to undue influence, that is, he wanted to experience the combined feelings of love, safety, and pleasure in her companionship. I believe that William, in fact, remembers somewhat more than he admits to knowing. In essence, he has been a partner in a cover-up, a co-conspirator who now wishes to protect Lorena from the legal consequences of her actions…” Feeling that this was somehow unsatisfactory, he paused and tried again. “Still, and in spite of his evident physical limitations… and rather obvious need for the appointment of a financial watchdog… Dr. Fry retains considerable dignity, awareness, and insight into his predicament…”

In the end, he sighed and put the thing aside. There was, after all, only so much that a man in his position might be expected to do. What would be would be and the best he supposed that one might hope for would be that the old boy at least find some way to go out with his boots on, some doomed yet heroic last stand… all but bedridden at ninety-two, oxygen tank in tow, at long last at one with his brothers, a fool for love.

When he tried to imagine what the doc’s last stand might look like, however, he found that he could not, and his thoughts turned, as they so often did of late, to Jaclyn Blackstone. In fact, she was in danger of replacing Mariella as the object of the season’s obsession. Was she, too, for perhaps darker and more twisted reasons than Doc Billy’s, the partner in a cover-up, a co-conspirator now wishing to protect her former lover from the legal consequences of his actions? He had no sooner put the question to himself than he thought less of himself for doing so. He thought of the driver Big D had stared down in the street. The fact was, he could not escape the feeling he had been made a cunt of there in the hospital, impotent in the face of Jaclyn’s tormentor. What, he wondered, would Big D have done with that, knowing what Chance knew, and allowed himself the rather lengthy indulgence of a variety of school yard fantasies. The fantasies were remarkable for their clarity and sheer amount of bloodletting. This Blackstone did not just drive away. He did not get off with any benign stare down. He was alternately beaten toothless, disemboweled, garroted, emasculated, and murdered outright. Chance went to inquire after his furniture at noon on the following day.

As on all other visits, he found the front door open, the building dark and void of customers. Finding no sign of Carl, he moved directly to the back of the building. The light was on in D’s workroom but the big man did not answer his call. Bending to look through the narrow window by which he and D had first been introduced, he could see that a rear door had been left open to the alley, a slant of yellow light spilling in. Chance took the liberty of letting himself into D’s space and making for the light. Along the way he noted his furniture, piled rather unceremoniously, it seemed to him, in a corner of the big room. If D was at work on the trim and general restoration, it was not yet in evidence.

He found the big man outside in the alley, seated on an overturned crate, a bag from some local fast food joint at his side, a large Diet Coke in one hand and a copy of The Grapes of Wrath in the other. He looked up as Chance moved to join him. “I’ll be all around in the dark,” D said by way of greeting. He did not consult the book. “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they built… I’ll be there too.” He paused. “I may have left out a couple,” he said. He looked at the book.

“That’s about the way I remember it,” Chance said. “That’s very good.”

“Somebody mentions something I don’t know, a book or something… sounds interesting, I’ll track it down, try to see what it is.”

“An admirable trait,” Chance said. He seated himself on a concrete step near D’s crate.

D closed the book and looked at him. “Sup, Big Dog?” he asked. “You got more furniture to move?”

“Hardly. But I can think of a few more assholes you might give the treatment to, like that guy in the street.” It flattered Chance to believe this was something they had shared, a kind of male bonding, as it were. As for the myriad fantasies the incident had inspired… he’d keep that to himself. The joke about a few more assholes was about as far as he would permit himself to go but D was all over it. “Who?” he asked, and Chance did not get the feeling that D was joking around. He came this close to saying something about Jaclyn Blackstone and her predatory husband, the bad cop, before sound judgment got the better of him. The guy was an Oakland homicide detective, for Christ’s sake. He had an expensive suit, a gun, and a badge. He was, as Chance saw it, a man at home in the world, a man who knew how things worked, and how they didn’t. He would crush a person like D, not physically perhaps, not in a fight, but he would crush him all the same, and Chance along with him, grind them both beneath his shoe and never break stride. “Half the city,” Chance said finally, making light. “How’s it with the brass?”

D seemed a bit disappointed and when he spoke again it was with considerably less enthusiasm. “Take a little time for me to get what I need,” he said. “’Nother day or two, I’ll be able to start. Should take me about a week.”

At which point Carl Allan appeared. “Is there a doctor in the house?” he asked. He was standing in the doorway that led back into D’s workroom, puffy in the face with a still swollen nose and dark half-moons beneath his eyes, a jaunty straw hat in the style of certain fifties hipsters placed well back on his head to accommodate the white bandaging that peeked out beneath it. He was leaning on a wooden cane with an ornate silver handle. “Thought I heard your voice,” the old man said. He was looking at Chance and doing his best to smile.

Chance rose at once. “My God,” he asked. “What happened?”

Carl waved it off. “A minor mishap,” he said. “I’ll be right as rain in no time at all.” He went on before Chance could say more. “I was pleased to see you brought your pieces in. I’ve already spoken to two buyers who may be interested.”

Interested in what, Chance wondered, copies or originals? Were the buyers in question private parties or dealers? Perhaps he should inquire. But then he had brought the stuff in. A course had been charted, and looking about him there in the alley, he felt himself, for what must have been the first time in a life noteworthy for its adherence to convention, a partner in crime. There followed a momentary, unaccountable elation and he looked once more to his co-conspirators, the one the size of Texas just now making gurgling noises with his straw as he sucked down the last of an enormous Diet Coke, the other rail thin in a plaid sharkskin jacket, head wrapped in gauze—desperadoes beneath the eaves.

“You’re done out here,” Carl said, interrupting his reverie, “come inside. I need you to fill out a couple of papers.”

“Papers?” Chance asked. He was not sure he cared for the sound of it.

“We’ll want to document the pieces,” Carl told him. “We’ll want your signature.”

The idea of actually attaching his signature to something was sufficient to stifle his momentary elation. Signing papers evoked the specter of attorneys and courts of law, the stuff of life, as opposed to fantasy. D chose this moment to repeat the gurgling sound with his straw. My God, Chance thought suddenly, what have I done? Surely this was the very kind of poor judgment his father had so often warned of. The deal would sour. It was so written. He would be found out. Additional lawsuits would be added to those in which he was already mired. His life would turn to shit.

“You youngsters keep right on talking,” Carl said. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.” He turned unsteadily in the doorway. Chance watched as he walked away, leaning heavily on the cane. “The hell happened?” he asked of D, not quite able to mask his own sense of desperation.

“Kid took him off.”

“That kid I saw in here? Leather pants and pointed boots?”

“I guess.”

“There’s more than one?”

D laughed. “The old man has a weakness, I guess you could say, but yeah, it was probably that one you saw, flavor of the fucking month. Kid wanted money. Carl said no. Kid came in here with two of his pals, beat him up pretty good and stole some shit.”

“Christ.” Chance seated himself once more on the step. “What did they take?” He supposed he was imagining how it would have been had his furniture been here a week earlier, and how it might be if they came back wanting more.

“Couple of antique chairs, some money was in that desk up front…”

“Did he go to the police?”

“He came to me. What pisses me off, I wasn’t here when they came around but I guess that’s how they planned it. Little prick knew his routine. Knew mine too, I suppose. You gotta watch it with that shit.”

“What shit would that be?” Chance asked. “I’m not sure I follow.”

D just looked at him. “Having a routine,” he said. “Same place, same time every day? Like walking around with a fucking target on your back.”

D was, Chance thought, beginning to sound uncomfortably like certain of his patients, the ones with delusional paranoia. He kept the observation to himself and nodded, as if to confirm the position’s fundamental soundness.

D waved toward the building at his back. “Stuff’s all back in there, is what I was about to say.”

“The stuff that was stolen?”

D nodded.

“You got it back?”

“That and then some.”

Chance waited.

“I needed to make it worth my while.”

Chance shook his head, imagining what that might mean. “You make it sound easy,” he said.

“Pretty easy.”

“They weren’t armed? They didn’t want to fight you for it?”

D shrugged. “The kid knew me.” He pulled the plastic top off his Diet Coke and examined the inside of the cup, apparently wanting to be sure that he’d gotten the last of it. “One of his pals thought he’d try his luck with a baseball bat.”

Chance laughed out loud. He was thinking about the BMW driver in the street, that and Detective Blackstone, entertaining his fantasies. “Not a good idea, you’re telling me.”

“He should’ve stuck to baseballs.”

“So what then?”

D got to his feet, tossing his trash into a nearby Dumpster. “Then he went away,” D said, as matter-of-factly as ever.

Chance gave it a moment to see if D would say more, but D seemed done and was now peering into the Dumpster as if he’d found something there to interest him. “When you say he went away…” Chance started but let it drop. He was thinking maybe it was one of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of things. And what, after all, did he know?

In the end, Chance signed his papers and left. Funny, he thought, once more in the street, preternaturally quiet, it seemed to him now, striking for its absence of loitering youth, how these little trips to the old furniture store could put a new slant on one’s day. He returned by way of city streets to his office to find Jaclyn Blackstone in his waiting room, staring pensively at the clouds beyond the window, a silver splint on her nose, bruises not unlike the old antiques dealer’s fading beneath her eyes, which for the first time, he noted, were a rather beautiful shade of golden brown, almost yellow, he thought, like those of a cat.