Two Much!

15

Saturday afternoon on the beach at Point O’ Woods — not exactly the Riviera. Older duffers sat around in shirts and pants and hats, discussing debentures, while their wives nattered under beach umbrellas. A few younger women paddled here and there in the shallow water, but there wasn’t a bikini among them. Mostly they wore one-piece suits with little skirts, and some of them even had on white rubber bathing caps. There isn’t a woman in the world who doesn’t look as though she has fat thighs if she’s wearing a white bathing cap and a yellow one-piece bathing suit with a little skirt, so there wasn’t much to look at except the beach and the ocean and the cloudless sky and the pretty houses. But Bart didn’t care; now that he was alive, he was having a great time.

Alive. Charlie Hillerman had showed up Wednesday afternoon with a doctored photostat that looked almost good enough in the original to pass for the real thing. A Xerox of it was perfect, absolutely perfect. And in the meantime I’d mailed off two dollars to Kings County with a request for another copy of my own certificate, so now Art and Bart would both be able to prove their existences.

And what if Bart actually married Betty? The possibilities were intriguing. Art might simply disappear, for instance, leaving his debts behind him. Or I might accept a settlement for a quiet annulment after I’d revealed the truth. Or Bart might be the one to disappear (killed by me), leaving Art to inherit. I could kill him with Daddy’s gun.

Which had been a strange moment. Every once in a while in the turbulent life of man it becomes necessary to lubricate the ways, and on one such occasion in Daddy’s bed I’d reached for the night table drawer, on the dim chance there might be some K-Y jelly in there. Pawing away left-handed, while the rest of me was occupied elsewhere, I suddenly became aware that I was clutching a gun. “Yike,” I said, and lifted the thing out to stare at it A revolver, shortbarreled, grayish-black metal, surprisingly heavy. “Good God,” I said.

Betty, naturally, screamed; anyone would who found herself in bed with a naked man clutching a gun. The scream startled me, my hand flew open, and the gun dropped out of sight into the drawer again. I slammed the drawer, and would have stammered out something about the true object of my search except that Betty cried, “Be careful with mat! It’s loaded!”

“Loaded! Good Christ, what for?”

“We don’t know how to empty it,” she said, and looked at me hopefully. “Do you?”

“That’s the first gun I ever touched in my life,” I said.

“It was Daddy’s,” she said.

So much for Daddy’s sex life. And, for a while, so much for mine. But within a few minutes we both got back into the spirit of the enterprise again, and succeeded quite well after all without the help of the petrochemical industry. And I gave not another thought to the gun in the drawer. Of course, it didn’t occur to me then that anybody was ever going to use it.

However. Apart from that one bad moment with the arsenal, Bart’s life that week at Point O’ Woods was as sweet as an Armenian dessert. Romp romp romp with Betty in and around Father’s bed, late dinners out under the stars, and rest periods here on the beach. What could be better? Even Betty’s insistence on wearing a one-piece yellow bathing suit with a little skirt couldn’t dampen my spirit. Nothing could.

“Here comes Liz,” Betty said.

“Mm?” She hadn’t been around all week. Lifting my head from the sand — it was weighted down by both glasses and clip-on sunglasses — I looked off to the southwest, and here from the general direction of Dunewood came Liz. In a bikini, by God, a gleaming white one; suddenly I could hardly wait to be Art again.

But who was that with her? Squinting, I saw it really was Volpinex, the creature from the mummy case, slithering across the sand like an oil spill. His beach apparel was everything he’d worn in the office, minus the suitcoat and tie, and plus large dark sunglasses that made him look like a Greek millionaire’s hatchet man.

Betty and I got to our feet, and Liz smirking as though at some private joke, made the introductions. I have not met this man before. “Glad to know you,” I said.

He gave me a cold dry hand to shake (which I immediately gave back), and said, “I suppose your brother told you about me.”

Surprise and shock suddenly lit my features. “Oh! You’re the man who thinks I’m a fortune hunter.”

His smile turned sour; he hadn’t expected so direct a response in front of the ladies. His mistake had been in thinking I was another smart aleck like Art. Nevertheless, he was game, saying, “Not a fortune hunter.” With a nod toward Betty, who was blinking in delayed comprehension at the both of us, he said, “A fortune finder, I would say.”

“Ernest!” Betty cried, in outrage and astonishment, while Liz chuckled her dirty chuckle and said, “Ernie, you do have a knack.”

“And a responsibility,” he told her, his smile oozing around the words.

“Ernest,” Betty said, “are you accusing Bart of, of...”

“Not accusing,” Volpinex assured her. Lifting one finger, as though making a point he particularly wanted the jury to think about, he said, “I consider it a possibility only. But given my role in your affairs, it’s a possibility I most certainly must take seriously.”

All around us the sun shone down on the worthy Episcopalians. I said, “I think you right, Mr. uh...”

“Volpinex,” he repeated, rolling the word like a fetishist with a mouthful of leather.

“Well, Mr. Volpinex,” I said, in my straightforward way, “I can’t say I like your insinuations. I agree with your responsibility, but not your manner.”

“That’s right,” Betty said. She looped an arm through mine and glared our defiance at the nasty man.

“I certainly don’t intend,” he said, with an ironic bow toward me, “to insult any honest gentleman present.”

“My life is an open book,” I told him. “I’ve lived the last seven years in California, and came here this spring because my brother wanted help in expanding his business. We may not be rich, but we are honest and hard-working. I invite you to study my past history as deeply as you want, and you will find nothing, I guarantee it”

“I must say I hope you’re right,” he said, trying for sarcasm but failing to hide his discomfort. He had come after me as though I were Art, and instead had found himself face to face with Horatio Alger. I’d give him Victoriana, and what exactly would he do about it?

Withdraw. “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you,” he said.

“You’re going to feel terrible, Ernest,” Betty said, “when you find out how wrong you’ve been.”

Volpinex glanced sourly at our linked arms. “Yes,” he said. “I know what a loyal heart you have, Betty. But do remember that I am loyal, too.”

I said, “And I’m sure Betty appreciates you for that”

He gave me a quickly calculating look. He knew I was too good to be true, but was it possible I was true anyway? The question still in his eyes, he turned away. “Well, Liz,” he said, with an unsuccessful attempt to take her hand, “we really ought to be going.”

“I can hardly wait,” she told him, “to see you with the other brother.” Then she turned her mocking smile on me, saying, “You really are an Eagle Scout, aren’t you?”

Betty said, “Now, Liz, don’t you start.”

“I meant it in sincerest admiration,” Liz assured her and to Volpinex she said, “Come along, Ernie, you know it gives you a rash to be in the presence of goodness.”

Volpinex showed us all something that might have been a grin, and followed Liz away in the direction of the Kerner house.

Betty said, “Now do you see why I want our engagement to be a secret? The world is full of suspicious minds.”

“He’s only doing what he thinks is his duty.” Bart, I was surprised to see, was magnanimous in victory.

She hugged my arm, giving my knuckles a graze of warm crotch. “Won’t they be surprised,” she said, “when we turn up married?”

“Yes,” I said, “I believe they will.”