The Fan

13

Boucicaut came back in a good mood, bursting into the trailer with Gil’s car keys in one hand and a pint of something in the other. It was raining hard now, pounding on the flat roof, and Gil hadn’t heard him drive up. He slipped off the catcher’s mitt and set it on the table.

“Nice wheels, old buddy,” said Boucicaut, flipping him the keys. He glanced around. “You didn’t light the stove?” Boucicaut knelt, opened the blackened stove door, tossed in sticks of wood and scraps of paper, struck a match. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into a city boy.” Flames shot up inside the stove.

“I wasn’t cold,” Gil said.

“Tough guy, I forgot,” said Boucicaut. “Good thing.”

“Good thing?”

“ ’Cause we’ll be spending time outside tonight. If you can lend me a hand, that is.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing much.” Boucicaut took a hit from the pint bottle, passed it to Gil.

Canadian. Gil didn’t like Canadian. He drank some anyway. Sour and harsh, compared to Mr. Hale’s Scotch, but it felt good going down. He realized that he was indeed cold, and had some more.

“Know your muffler was gone?” asked Boucicaut.

Gil nodded.

“Not to worry. It’s all fixed.”

“It’s all fixed?” said Gil; he didn’t have the money for new mufflers.

“And there was a little bumper problem. That’s fixed too.”

“What do I owe you?” asked Gil. Right words but wrong sound: he was instantly aware of the dismay in his tone, of failing to sound successful.

“All taken care of.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Do what?” said Boucicaut. “Didn’t cost a cent.”

“How’s that?”

“Friend of mine’s got a lot of spare parts and a welding torch.” Boucicaut kicked the wood-stove door closed with the toe of his boot.

What kind of friend had mufflers for a 325i hanging around? Gil was wondering whether to ask or just let it slide, when Boucicaut noticed the baseball gloves on the table. “Where’d you find those?”

“In the closet,” said Gil. He waited for Boucicaut to ask what he’d been doing in the closet.

But Boucicaut did not. He just took another drink from the bottle, and handed it to Gil.

Gil finished the bottle. It went to his head, hot, harsh, challenging. “What did you want me to help you with?”

“No big deal,” said Boucicaut. He went to the table, picked up the trophy, turned it in his hand. “You like practical jokes, right?”

“Depends.”

They took Gil’s car, Gil driving, Boucicaut navigating. The scraping sound was gone, the car again riding as quietly as it had the day he’d driven it off the lot. They drove west, out of town, into the storm.

“What are you sniffing at?” Boucicaut said.

“Nothing. Where are we going?”

“Ski country,” said Boucicaut. He had another pint. They passed it back and forth. “I bet you’re a skier, Gilly. Successful guy like you.”

“No.”

“Golf? Tennis?”

“No.”

“Thought all you corporate dudes were into shit like that.”

Gil felt a strong urge to confess that he wasn’t a corporate dude, that he didn’t even have a job, that he was done: to spill everything to Boucicaut. He overcame it. “Too busy,” he said.

Boucicaut laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, hard. “Too busy makin’ money, right? Son of a bitch. How much’re you worth, anyway?”

“Give me a fucking break.” Gil realized he had shouted the words.

There was a silence. Then Boucicaut said, “Easy, old buddy.”

They climbed out of the rain and into falling snow, up in the highlands where winter lingered. Ahead lay the light of the access road, and beyond it the mountain, the top a shadow in the night, the bottom lit like a pearl for night skiing. It was all new to Gil, not just the development: even the shape of the mountain had changed.

“Hang a right,” said Boucicaut.

Gil turned onto a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It mounted a rise, swung into thick woods, and then began climbing steeply up and out of sight, around the side of the mountain. The tires whined in the mix of mud and snow. Gil stopped the car.

“We’ll never get up that.”

“Sure we will,” said Boucicaut. “Just pop the trunk.”

“What for?”

“So I can get the chains.”

“I don’t have chains.”

Boucicaut laughed and got out. Gil popped the trunk. In the rearview mirror he watched Boucicaut, reddened by the taillights, pulling out a set of chains. Gil felt questions stirring in his mind, raising their heads like sea worms in the sand, only to be flattened by a calming wave: Boucicaut was taking charge.

Boucicaut got back in the car, slamming the door on a swirling funnel of snow. “Let’s go.”

Gil drove up the side of the mountain, the chains digging in like teeth. After a few condo clusters came the chalets, at first close together and big, later farther apart and enormous, almost all of them shining an outside light or two, but dark within.

“This is where the New Yorkers stay,” said Boucicaut. “Jews. They never come up this time of year, no matter how much snow’s left. Cut the lights.”

Gil braked, switched off the lights.

“Did I say stop?” Boucicaut said.

“You want me to drive with no lights?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t see a thing.”

“You have turned into a city boy, old buddy.”

Gil drove, very slow. He saw nothing but black snowflakes striking the windshield, their edges green from the instrument lights. But Boucicaut, silently, with little movements of his hand, showed him the way. Gil hunched over the wheel, peering into the darkness. Boucicaut sat back, tipping the bottle up to his mouth once or twice. The chains crunched unhurriedly through the snow.

A yellow light glimmered in the distance. Boucicaut put the bottle down. The light grew bigger and brighter: a lantern light, mounted on a post. “Close enough,” said Boucicaut.

Gil stopped in the middle of the road. From his pocket, Boucicaut fished out a key ring loaded with twenty or thirty keys. Flipping through them, he felt Gil’s gaze. “Screwed every maid in the valley,” he said. “For fun and profit.” He selected a key and slid it off the ring. “Just pop the trunk again and sit tight.” Boucicaut got out, walked toward the light. For a minute or two his silhouette moved behind a curtain of black snowflakes. Then the light went out, and he was gone.

The wind rose, made aggressive noises in the trees and around the car. Gil ran the motor to keep warm. After a while, he switched on the radio, pressed AM, hit SEEK. He caught a few bars of different songs he didn’t know, rap, lite, country, rock. Then, faint, crackling, distorted: “… two on, two out, top of the sixth, with the score…”

Gil set the station, jacked up the volume. The game faded away, like windblown voices. Another station ballooned across the frequency, playing some stupid oldie. Gil slapped the dashboard, hard enough to make his palm tingle. That felt good, so he did it again, a little harder. The game returned for an instant, almost lost in I’m-gonna-love-you-all-night-long bullshit: “… and he rings him up-Rayburn didn’t like that call one bit. He’s…” And it was gone again. Gil’s hand was raised to strike the dash once more, when a bear-sized shadow loomed in front of the car.

Not a bear, although there were probably bear still in these woods, but Boucicaut, carrying a big box, or a stack of smaller boxes. Gil slid down the window. “You have to play it so fuckin’ loud?” said Boucicaut. “I could hear you all the way up to the house.”

Gil shut off the radio. Boucicaut moved around to the trunk. The rear end sagged for a moment. Then he was at the window again. “Don’t go away,” he said.

“Where would I go?” said Gil. “I’m lost.”

Boucicaut laughed. Gil started laughing too, a laugh that gathered momentum and took on a life of its own. He clamped it off.

“Got that bottle?” said Boucicaut.

Gil found it on the floor. Boucicaut took a hit, then Gil, then Boucicaut again. “Save me some, old buddy,” said Boucicaut, walking off in the darkness.

Gil switched on the radio, pressed SEEK. SEEK couldn’t find the ball game. He swallowed some more Canadian, then punched in the FANLINE on his autodialer. The number rang and rang.

“Fucking answer,” he shouted down the line.

But there was no answer. He counted fifty rings and hung up.

Boucicaut came back, made the rear end sag again, snapped the trunk shut, got in the car. “Vamoose,” he said.

“Where?”

Boucicaut had the bottle in his hand. “Back down, for Christ’s sake.”

“The joke’s over?”

“What joke?”

“The practical joke.”

Boucicaut smiled, his remaining teeth green in the panel light. “Yeah, it’s over.”

Gil drove down the mountain, back into the rain, lights out most of the way. Boucicaut emptied the bottle, chucked it out the window. “Bang and Olufsen any good?” he said, as they came to the stop sign at the access road.

“Top of the line.”

“Hey,” said Boucicaut, “we make a good team.” He got out and took off the chains.

Gil thought: Yes. I know that. He ran his tongue along the edge of his chipped tooth.

At the bottom of the mountain, Boucicaut pointed west, away from town. Gil followed almost-forgotten back roads for ten or fifteen minutes, turned down a long, unpaved lane, parked in front of an old farmhouse. Boucicaut went in without knocking. He came back with a man even fatter than he was, shirtless despite the cold. They emptied the trunk, carrying everything inside.

Boucicaut came back alone. “Nice work,” he said, shoving something into Gil’s shirt pocket.

“What’s this?”

“Your share,” said Boucicaut. “Not too rich to turn down a hundred bucks, are you?”

Gil wasn’t.

“And something else,” said Boucicaut when they were back on the road. “I thought of you as soon as I saw it, old buddy.” He reached into his jacket, flicked on the interior light, held something up for Gil to see: a baseball, in a clear crystal box. A yellowed, autographed baseball, but Gil couldn’t take his eyes off the road long enough to read the name.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“The Babe,” said Boucicaut. “Who else?”

“That must be worth a lot of money.”

“It’s yours.”

Gil wanted to say something like, “I couldn’t do that,” but he was too choked up. Boucicaut set the ball down on the edge of Gil’s seat. It rolled against his thigh and rested there.

Miles went by, with rain pelting down, Boucicaut leaning back, eyes closed, Gil feeling the ball against his leg, thinking, we’re a team. They were almost in town when Boucicaut opened his eyes and said: “Ever see American Blade magazine?”

“Sure.”

“Came across a copy today. Some of your dad’s knives were listed in the back.”

“I know.”

“Guy was asking four grand for one of them.”

“They’re collector’s items.”

“That’s where they all went-to collectors?”

“Most of them.”

“How many’ve you got?”

“You’ve seen it.”

“Just the one? How did that happen?”

“It happened.”

Gil drove back through town, into the woods, up the lane that led to Boucicaut’s trailer. The wind died down; all at once the windshield wipers were squeaking on dry glass.

They parked, got out of the car, Gil taking the ball. “Wait a sec,” Boucicaut said. He went into the trailer alone. The outside lights flashed on, illuminating the yard. When Boucicaut came back he had the baseball gloves in his hand. “Feelin’ loose?” he said.

For a moment, Gil couldn’t speak. A thrill went through him, shooting down his spine, along his arms and legs, up the back of his neck, into his face.

“Thought we’d play a little catch,” said Boucicaut. “How’s the old arm?”

“Best it’s ever been.”

Boucicaut laughed, donned the mitt, motioned for the ball.

“We’re going to use this?”

“What it’s for, ain’t it?” replied Boucicaut. Gil handed him the ball. Boucicaut put it in the fielder’s glove and handed it back. Then he walked to the edge of the yard, turned, got down in his crouch. His legs must have been very strong, Gil thought, because he did it quite easily, despite all that weight.

“Let’s see what you got,” Boucicaut said, pounding his mitt.

The thrill washed through Gil again. He rubbed the ball in his hands, felt the softness of the old, oiled cowhide, saw the signature in the yellow glow of the outside light: Babe Ruth. He slid his left hand into the glove, gripped the ball across the seams with his right.

“Give me a sign,” he said.

Boucicaut smiled a thin smile and held his index finger along the inside of his thigh. Gil toed an imaginary rubber, went into his windup. It all came back, the slow and easy pivot, left leg coming up, arm sweeping back, nice and loose. He even remembered to point the ball for an instant straight at center field; it felt tiny, his hand huge. He himself felt huge, light, full of possibility. And then he was bringing it all up and forward, bending his back, bearing down, closing his shoulder, snapping his wrist like a whip: perfection. He let go and followed through, left leg whipping around, knuckles almost in the mud. The ball flew in high and blazing.

But too high? And blazing perhaps only for Boucicaut, who got his mitt up oh so slowly, barely managing to tip it. The ball sailed up out of the yellow dome of light and into the woods, crashing softly out of sight.

“Ball one,” said Boucicaut, laughing. Gil didn’t join in. Ball one, maybe, but catchable. He kept the thought to himself.

They got flashlights from the trailer, poked beams of light between the tree trunks.

“Know any of these collectors?” asked Boucicaut, kicking at a soggy mound of leaves.

“What collectors?”

“Knife collectors.”

“A few.”

“How many knives have they got, guys like that?”

“Of my old man’s? I know one who’s got twenty at least. And hundreds of knives all together-Randalls, Scagels, Morseths.”

“Hundreds? At four grand apiece?”

“They’re not all worth that.”

“But some?”

“Some.”

“They must keep them at the bank or something, right?”

“Not the ones I know,” said Gil, thinking of Mr. Hale, with his velvet-lined drawers; and his safe, behind the photograph of Mrs. Hale and her fencing team.

They searched the woods for twenty minutes or so. No ball.

Boucicaut whistled. The black mongrel bounded out of the shadows. “Find the ball, Nig,” said Boucicaut.

But Nig couldn’t find it either.

“Goddamn it,” said Gil. Nig stiffened.

“It was probably a fake,” Boucicaut said. “Let’s get something to drink.”

A good idea. Gil’s elbow was starting to hurt. “We’ll find it in the morning,” he said.

“Sure, Gilly.”