Hooligans

BUSINESS AS USUAL

After I got out of the tub and dried off, I went in and lay clown naked on the bed to cool off. I stared

at the ceiling fan for a long time. Objectivity is a painful enterprise at best, and I had avoided it for

twenty years. Now, as it grew dark outside, shadows stretched across the room like accusing fingers

pointing at me. In the loneliness of the dark, romance wore off and reality took over. Other memories

started coming back to me. The past began to materialize again, unfettered by candlelight and daisies.

One face emerged from the harsh shadows and began to taunt me. It was Stonewall Titan.

I remembered Titan the night of the party, a little man, a shade under five five, who chose not to wear

a tux, opting instead for his usual dark, three-piece winter suit, and arriving just minutes before Doe

made her entrance.

More than once during the evening I caught him staring across the room at rue with those agate eyes

glittering in the candlelight. I didn‟t pay any attention to it at the time; it didn‟t seem important. Mr.

Stoney never smiled much anyway; he was a quiet man, constantly introspective or contemplative or

both, not an uncommon demeanor for short people. But now, reflecting on it, it strikes me that it was a

hard look, almost angry, as if 1 had offended him in some way.

After Doe came over and officially welcomed Teddy and me to her party, after she had taken my hand

and almost squeezed my fingers off and then drifted off to greet the rest of the guests, I worked my

way across the room and greeted the taut little man. He stared up at me and said, “You really stick to

it, don‟t you, boy? Been waiting a long time for tonight.”

“What do you mean?” I asked with a smile.

“Just don‟t count your chickens,” he said, and moved away.

That was the end of it. A caustic remark which he never repeated again during the summer I spent

with the Findleys. I had forgotten it. Looking back on the moment, it occurred to me that the little

man probably thought me unworthy of the Findley dowry. And since that night seemed to be the end

of my probation period, he apparently had been overruled. After that, I was treated more like family

than ever before. But Stonewall Titan never warmed up to me, I presume because I had offended him

by going the distance.

Was I really being tested during those years or was it just my paranoia, an excuse to back away from

another emotional commitment, to remain disconnected, as Stick called it? None of this had occurred

to me at the time. When you‟re nineteen or twenty years old and it‟s all going your way, you don‟t

think about such things.

But now in the darkness of the room, my suspicions were stirred.

Was that it? Was it all part of the Findley test? Were Doe and Teddy part of that three-year probation

during which they sized me up and checked me out for longevity_ consistency, durability, loyalty, all

the important things? Perhaps I had never passed the test at all. Perhaps they had seen in me some fatal

flaw that I myself did not perceive, something more ominous than bad ankles, something that did not

prevent Teddy from accepting me as his best friend, but precluded my becoming one of the Findley

inheritors. Perhaps my blood had never been blue enough.

Wake up, Kilmer.

Lying there, I began to feel like a piece of flux caught between two magnets. One drew me toward

Doe and Chief and the sweet life that might still be there. The other, toward the Taglianis of the

world, which was, ironically, a much safer place to be. In a funny way, I trusted the Taglianis

precisely because I knew I couldn‟t trust them and there was safety in that knowledge.

A lot of raw ends were showing. It scared me. It clouded my judgment. Dunetown was dangerous for

me. It was opening me up. My Achilles‟ heel was showing.

The magnets were drawing me out of my safe places.

I lay there, immobilized, staring at the lazy ceiling fan until the room was totally dark. At five after

nine the phone rang. It rang for a long time. At twenty after, it rang again. I didn‟t move. I lay there

like a statue. I couldn‟t talk to her, not right then. At nine thirty it rang twelve times; I counted them.

After that, every five minutes. At five of ten I heard a scratching at the door. It sounded like a

cockroach crawling across a kitchen cabinet. I raised upon one elbow and looked over. There was a

slip of paper under the door.

I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before I turned on the light, it was a

phone message from Dutch Morehead.

Tony Logeto had made the list.

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