The Road To Ruin

27

FLIP WAS FURIOUS; he was beside himself. How could Monroe Hall, who just last week had called himself Flip’s “pal,” have done such a thing? There wasn’t even any profit in it for Hall; just loss, for poor Flip.

Driving toward the estate for today’s session, he rehearsed in his mind just how he would tell the man off. “Everybody knows you’re the most selfish man in the world, I mean that’s what you’re famous for, but why do me like this? What did you get out of it? Was it just for fun?”

Lips moving, mouthing the angry sentences, he turned in at the entrance and stopped at the guardshack. The sullen guard came out as usual, but today Flip didn’t give him a friendly greeting. Today he didn’t give him a greeting at all, or a word at all. Staring straight ahead, his telling-off of Monroe Hall still circling in his brain, he merely held his driver’s license up where the troglodyte could read it, if he could read. The man took a long time, unmoving, standing beside the open window of the Subaru, but Flip didn’t care. Take forever if you want, you creep. Ban me from the estate, I’ll be just as happy to go home.

Whether or not the guard could read Flip’s license, he could probably read Flip’s face, because he finally stopped waiting for Flip to do or say something, but just turned around to lumber back into his cave, presumably to make the call to the Big House.

Flip put his license away, then glowered at the bar directly in front of him, waiting for it to lift. When it finally did start its upward arc, the guard came back out, leaned down close to the window, and said, “You wanna be more friendly.”

Flip looked him up and down. “To you?” Then he drove through and onto the estate.

Well, that made him feel a little better, for a minute anyway, until, as he approached the Big House, he saw the front door open and Hall step out into the sunlight to wave at him. Today’s sweat-set was Day-Glo orange, so that Hall looked less like a Mafia subcapo and more like a weather balloon, slightly deflated.

I’ll show you some weather, Flip mouthed, as he parked the Subaru in its usual place, got out, and threw his canvas bag over his shoulder with such force he hurt his back. Smarting even more, blaming Hall for this as well, he marched around to the front door, where Hall greeted him with his usual smarmy smile, saying, “Right on time, Flip. As ever. Come in, come in. I did ask you one time if you rode horses, didn’t I?”

Thrown off stride, Flip tried to work out that question and its answer while Hall shut the door and they started toward the central staircase. “I don’t,” he decided was the clearest response, then expanded on it: “Ride horses.”

“Right, I remember,” Hall said. They moved up the stairs. “You remember that, I told you I have these horses, beautiful beasts, but I can’t find an instructor. This is a perfect time of year, Flip, perfect time of year. Up on that horse, ride over hill and dale, get an entirely new perspective.”

“I’ve never done it,” Flip said. Now I’ll tell him off, he assured himself, but the instant didn’t seem just right somehow.

Moving down the wide upstairs corridor, Hall said, “I know you told me I shouldn’t weigh myself every minute, but I did weigh myself this morning, and Flip, I’m down three pounds! From a month ago.”

“Very good,” Flip said, and somewhere a cuckoo commented threefold.

“Oh, there’s that damn thing again,” Hall complained. “Sometimes, Flip, I think I should just let it run down, not have it wound any more, not have to listen to it get things wrong all the time, but I don’t know, I just can’t do it. It would be like killing the poor little thing. I know, I know, you’ll say I’m just a sentimental boob, but there it is. I’ve gotta let that clock do its thing.”

Sentimental! Following Hall into the gym, Flip gnashed his teeth, and made a dozen brutal crushing remarks that somehow never quite passed his lips.

It went on like that, an hour of fuming silence. He got minor revenges by pushing the treadmill beyond Hall’s capacity, by overloading the weight machines, by being a bit more snappish and imperious than usual, so that by the end of the hour Hall was a sodden orange orange with all the juice on the outside. But the challenging of the man, the confronting him, the direct accusation, somehow that just never emerged. Flip boiled with it, he seethed with it, if he were a kettle his lid would be doing a polka, but it was just not possible for him to pour his fury all over Monroe Hall.

At the end, though, he did manage, though obliquely, to get to the subject of his distress: “I won’t be able to make our session Wednesday.”

Hall looked stricken; good. “Oh, Flip,” he said. “You have to.”

“No, what I have to do,” Flip told him, “is go to Harrisburg to meet with somebody at the Internal Revenue office.”

“Oh, dear, Flip,” Hall said, looking as concerned as though he were an actual human being with actual human emotions, “I hope you aren’t in any trouble.”

“Turns out,” Flip said, packing his canvas bag, not looking at the rat, “I am. Turns out, some cash income I received was reported to the IRS.”

“But, Flip, naturally,” Hall said.

Now Flip had to look at him, and the man was as innocent as a newborn. Into that perspiring baby face, Flip said, “Do people report their cash income to the IRS?”

“Well, I certainly hope so,” Hall said. He paused briefly to wipe that face with a towel and pant a bit, then said, “It would be unpatriotic not to report your income, pay your taxes.”

“Unpa—Unpa—” Flip could only sputter at the outrageousness of this felon, this world-class cheat, this despicable rotter, telling Flip Morriscone he was unpatriotic! Unpatriotic!

“I certainly hope,” Hall was going on, as though Flip were not doing a meltdown directly in front of him, “you declare what I pay you, because of course I report all my expenses. All my expenses, Flip, whether they’re deductible or not. I believe in transparency, and you should, too.”

Flip slowly shook his head, unable to speak.

Hall lifted a chiding finger. “Now, Flip,” he said, “take it from one who knows, one who’s been there. The best thing for you to do at this hearing is just come clean, pay whatever they want you to pay, and put it behind you.” The chiding finger waggled. “And don’t play fast and loose again, Flip, that’s my advice.”

How he got out of that building without strangling Monroe Hall then and there Flip would never know. How he got out of there at all he couldn’t understand, and had no memory of the corridor, the stairs, the front door or anything else until he found himself driving the Subaru past the sullen guard—whose look toward Flip was now reproachful, if you please—and out of the estate.

He made the turn. He drove away, toward his next appointment. At last, he spoke, through gritted teeth. “Revenge,” he growled. “Revenge.”