Everybody's Fool

Charade

HAVING SLEPT THROUGH most of the day, Carl Roebuck awoke with a start at two-thirty in the afternoon with his hand in his boxers. Sadly, such lunacy was becoming the new normal. Unable to fall asleep most nights until it was nearly time to get up, he arrived on the job a sleepwalker, blinking, addled, unable to focus. A triple espresso wouldn’t have kept him awake, not that there was anyplace in Bath where you could get one of those. When his crew broke for lunch Carl usually went home with the idea of taking a catnap on the couch, but once there he’d fall into a sleep so profound that even his brand-new cellular telephone, placed a few feet away on the coffee table, its ringer on high, couldn’t rouse him. Quitting time was five-thirty, and he usually made it back to the job site in time to check on the day’s progress, assess new hazards and prioritize, with the help of his job foreman, tomorrow’s challenges, which, like today’s, would likely go unmet.

This morning, after the Hilldale fiasco, Carl had promised himself that this day would be different. After showering off the mud, he put on a fresh pair of boxers and turned on the morning news with every intention of getting his sorry ass in gear as soon as it was over. It was Saturday, normally not a workday, but given the week’s events at the mill — which was now officially a clusterfuck — there was much to be done, all of it urgent. First, he needed to locate Rub Squeers and get him started mucking out the yellow shit that was seeping up from the basement floor so that on Tuesday the masons could start rebuilding the collapsed wall, and his regular crew could get back to work on renovations. Convincing Rub to work on a holiday weekend wouldn’t be easy unless Sully was somehow involved. For the privilege of spending the whole day with his best friend in the whole wide world, Rub wouldn’t just stand in liquid shit, he’d eat it. Sully, on the other hand, would require a lot of convincing, and even then, there was the question of whether he was capable. Lately, Carl was beginning to wonder if something was seriously wrong with him, some medical condition he was keeping secret. Any exertion at all left him gasping for breath. This morning he’d been okay once aboard the backhoe, but he’d had a hell of a time climbing up onto it and getting back down later. And they’d only worked for an hour. Could Sully manage eight or ten, two days in a row, if that’s what it took? Even three? How much of that vile, viscous shit was down there? They wouldn’t know until they knew. The only thing he was certain of was that it’d be double time the whole ride, and double time had a way of turning two days’ work into three. And where was he going to find the money to pay them?

It had been his intention, had he not fallen asleep and wasted the whole damn day, to join Sully at Hattie’s for breakfast and give him the opportunity to repeat his offer of a loan. Though Carl was reluctant to accept help from a man who’d been saying for years that it was only a matter of time before he succeeded in completely bankrupting his old man’s business, the idea of paying Sully with his own money did have a certain appeal. Could it really be considered Sully’s, though? Over the last week or so Carl had lost over five hundred dollars to him playing poker at the Horse, which meant the money Sully’d be loaning him to pay them with had very recently been in his own pocket. Would this be like paying them double time twice? It was all very complicated, and trying to resolve the conundrum had made his head hurt. Which was why he’d closed his eyes, and now it was seven fucking hours later and his head still hurt.

There was a Cary Grant movie on TV, the one with Audrey Hepburn. Her recently deceased husband has left her an airline bag that everyone believes contains something — a key? a combination? a code? — worth a million dollars. Except the actual contents of the bag appear worthless. Carl had seen the movie several times and remembered it was the stamp on an envelope that everyone was overlooking. That’s where they were in the movie right now, the bag’s contents spread across the bed in a Paris hotel room, Audrey and Cary picking through the combs and toothbrushes and other useless shit. “The stamp, stupid,” Carl told them, though the first time he saw the movie he hadn’t tumbled to the stamp’s value, either. Cary Grant, in Carl’s considered opinion, was even dumber than he himself would’ve been had Audrey been coming on to him in that hotel room. At the very least he would’ve had the sense to sweep all that crap onto the floor and have hours of sex with her, even if she was too skinny. They could always resume the search later, and so what if they never did figure out it was the stamp? At least they’d have gotten laid, which would’ve been something.

But that was it in a nutshell. People just couldn’t gauge their own circumstances with anything like objectivity. Okay, sure, Audrey and Cary were in a pickle. In addition to being ignorant of the stamp’s significance, they had an American embassy official and three murderous if charismatic thugs breathing down their necks — and speaking of necks, Audrey’s really was exquisite. Still, the way Carl saw it, they had each other for company, and if you had to be in trouble somewhere, there were worse places than Paris. Carl’s own circumstances, except for the thugs, were much worse, having neither stamp nor girl nor, for that matter, a working dick should some girl magically appear. He was alone in North Bath, New York, so really there was only so much sympathy you could extend to these people.

At least he didn’t think he had the stamp. Was it possible that, like the characters in the movie, he did possess something whose value he was overlooking? If so, what? It didn’t have to be worth a million. Fifty thousand would suit his immediate purposes. Okay, in the end he’d probably need a million, though 50K would tide him over until the end of next week, when his next loan payment came due and he yet again had to make payroll. Was a measly 50K so much to ask for? He looked around the flat for something worth fifty grand, but Toby, his ex, had taken everything worth taking. If not what, then who? Gus Moynihan, after bailing him out on two occasions, had made it clear he didn’t intend to ever do so again. Sully, since his luck changed, was sitting on some cash. Probably not as much as he needed, though. Who else did he know that might have that kind of dough? Somebody who might be willing to part with it. Who thought giving it to Carl Roebuck would be a good idea.

She answered on the first ring. “Schuyler Properties. This is Toby.”

“Hey, babe, it’s me.”

“No,” she told him. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not what?”

“Whatever you want. Money, I assume.”

“It could be sex.”

“It’s working again?”

One night after the operation, he’d gotten drunk and called her, hoping for sympathy, or at least not derision. “Not yet,” he admitted. “Soon, though.”

“You hope?”

“Well, hope’s all I’ve got left. You took everything else.”

“I had a much-better lawyer than you did.”

“Mine was free, though.” Better than free, actually. Feeling bad about losing in court, Wirf had loaned Carl some money, then died before he could repay it.

“You still see Sully around?”

“Pretty much every day. We went grave robbing just last night.” He thought this admission would surely stir Toby’s curiosity, but they’d been married too long. She was familiar with his narrative head fakes and seldom fell for them. “He mentioned you the other day, actually.”

“Remind him that I want to list his house. In fact, if you convince him to put it on the market, I might consider loaning you some money. How much were you thinking?”

“Fifty.”

“Dollars?”

“Grand.”

“You always were a stitch.”

“Yeah? Well, what you always were rhymes with stitch. I keep hearing about what a kick-ass realtor you’ve become.” Indeed, every time she sold another million-dollar property in Schuyler, someone felt obliged to give him the details. “Besides, if you sell Sully’s house I’m out on the street. Why would I help you make me homeless?”

“I don’t know, Carlos. I really don’t.”

He couldn’t help smiling at this. “Hey,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s been years since you called me that.” It had been her pet name for him back when they were first married and she still went for his head fakes pretty much every time. Back when he could still laugh her into the sack. Back when she used to love him. Before he gave her so many reasons not to.

“Yeah, well…”

“Here’s a crazy idea,” he said.

“If it’s yours, it’s bound to be.”

“We should go out sometime, you and I.”

“That’s well beyond crazy.”

“Sylvia wouldn’t like it?” Sylvia Plath was his nickname for her poet girlfriend. Not entirely apropos, of course, since Plath was a suicide, not a lesbian, at least so far as Carl knew. But he didn’t have a large store of information about women poets, and Plath had to work better than Emily Dickinson, who wasn’t a lesbian, either, so far as he knew.

“We split up, actually.”

“No shit? How come?”

“Same reason you and I did.”

“She cheated?”

“Yup.”

“She’s an idiot,” he told her, only a little surprised to discover he meant it.

“Just her? Not you?”

“No, me too.”

“You really need fifty thousand?”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was ashamed. “Nah,” he said. “Really, I’m good. I was just calling to see how you’re doing.”

“Oh.”

“Which is? I mean, after Sylvia?”

“You mean, am I ready to come running back to you?”

Which was, he realized, kind of what he meant. Or even exactly. “Would that be so terrible?”

“Yeah, it really would.”

“I guess,” he admitted. “So, who’s next?”

“Maybe nobody.”

“But if. Like, would it be a man or a woman?”

“Yup. One or the other.”

On TV, one of the charismatic villains, dressed incongruously in a Stetson, is strolling past the crowded booths of the Paris stamp bazaar, himself clueless. All of a sudden he stops. There’s a quick series of shots, all close-ups of stamps, accompanied by pulsing music. Then tight on the actor as he spins toward the camera. Eureka! Cary Grant’s observing all this from afar, still in the dark. Dumb fuck, Carl thought. Dumb, stupid fuck. Too dumb to live, really, though Carl knew he would. He doesn’t deserve Audrey. Or any woman, really. Well past his prime, he’s making do on charm borrowed from his own youthful self. Maybe even he knows this, and maybe that’s why he didn’t take her back at the hotel when he had the chance.

“So what happens next?” Toby wanted to know, confusing him. Was she watching the movie, too?

“After what?”

“After you lose the company.”

So, yeah, of course she was onto him. Didn’t take that head fake. “Maybe I won’t.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s assume you do.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious to see if you can.”

What would he do after he lost Tip Top Construction, the company his father built and loved? The company he himself always loathed but had never managed to divest himself of.

Now Cary’s standing right where the guy in the Stetson was a moment earlier, and damned if he isn’t visited by the same blinding revelation! He, too, spins toward the camera, his face aglow with understanding.

“What do you think I should do?” Carl asked.

“What you’ve always wanted to,” Toby told him.

“What’s that?”

“Poor Carlos,” she said, as if to a child, and then she was gone, the line dead.

So much for that idea. No, the truth was simple and clear. He was all kinds of broke.

There were footsteps in the gravel below, so Carl went over to the window expecting to see Sully limping up the driveway. If so, did he have any choice but to ask? How would he broach the subject? What we were talking about this morning, your offer? Of a loan? Well, actually, here’s the thing…

Except it wasn’t Sully. The man’s back was to him, so it took him a moment to recognize the balding blond head below as Raymer’s. Taking something from his trouser pocket, he pointed it at the garage door. The remote they’d been looking for out at Hilldale? How the hell had he found that? When the door didn’t budge, he took several steps closer and tried again. Carl thought about calling down and telling him that the door wouldn’t open with that or any other device for the simple reason that no automatic opener had ever been installed. Instead, fascinated, he stood at the window and watched as Raymer discovered this for himself, pulling the door up by its handle, peering inside, running his hand along the frame where the metal tracking would’ve been had there been any and then, dejected, closing the door again. Sighing visibly, he put the remote between his teeth and, staring off into space, dug vigorously at his swollen, bloody right palm with the fingernails of his left hand, which, for some reason Carl couldn’t begin to comprehend, seemed to give him some kind of relief. Though perhaps not, because when he took the device from between his teeth, he threw back his head and howled like an animal caught in a trap. Then with all his might he hurled the remote toward the street.

If this was an invasion of the man’s emotional privacy, Carl couldn’t help himself. When Raymer moved back down the driveway like a zombie, he hastened to the other end of the apartment so he could watch him from the windows fronting the street. There he saw Raymer get into the police SUV parked at the curb, and when the engine roared to life Carl expected him to pull away, but instead he got out again, crossed the street, retrieved the remote from Mrs. St. Peter’s lawn and slipped it back into his trouser pocket.

When Raymer finally left, Carl continued to peer down into the street. He was pretty sure he understood what he’d just witnessed. Raymer had suspected Sully’s son of being his wife’s lover, and now he realized he was wrong. Carl, knowing who the guilty party was, could’ve put an end to the poor guy’s suffering, but it was none of his business, was it? Still, it made him wonder if somebody of his own acquaintance was observing his every mistake while remaining unseen and unwilling to help. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the nuts if that was how things worked? If we each knew things that other people needed desperately to know, yet were forever clueless about how to help ourselves?

Back in the living room, Audrey, trying to escape Walter Matthau, has run into a theater and managed to get herself trapped onstage in the prompter’s box. Somehow Cary Grant, dumbfuck right to the end, has entered the building through a different door and is down below the stage, looking up at all the trapdoors. As Matthau, revolver in hand, crosses the stage, telling Audrey he knows right where she is, that the jig is up and that she might as well come on out, Cary tracks his footsteps by sound alone. Along the wall is a bank of levers used to spring those various doors open. But which one to pull?

This time, too, Toby answered on the first ring. “I figured out what I want,” he told her.

“What’s that, Carlos?”

“To be more like my father,” he said. The old man had been married to his mother all those years until she died and never remarried, and never, to Carl’s knowledge, even looked at another woman. He expected Toby to laugh, but instead she said, “Your wish is granted.”

Matthau, always the squirrelliest of men, is standing directly in front of the prompter’s box. All you can see of Audrey is her big, terrified eyes, maybe the most beautiful eyes Carl had ever seen. He was glad she isn’t destined to die, that Cary’s down below and, though truly a dumbfuck, he will somehow guess which lever he needs to pull. Though Carl knew all this, the suspense was still unbearable.

He glanced down at his boxers and was shocked to see they were tented.