Two Much!

26

Volpinex said, “I’ve never had much of a sense of humor, myself.”

“You surprise me,” I said.

We were having lunch at a snowy table by a tall arched window. This dining room on the third floor of the club, hushed and half full, overlooked Park Avenue swarming with taxis. A new office building across the way, a dull slab gridwork of glass and chrome, formed a great segmented mirror in which I could see Volpinex’s club reflected like a dream of the landmarks commission: Victorian brownstone elegance shimmering on a surface of functional blah. I had waved my hand near the window early in the meal, hoping to see myself across the way, but the reflection didn’t offer that much detail.

“I’ve always thought of comedy,” Volpinex went on, “as a mark of unreliability. A fellow in my fraternity was always telling jokes, and then he hanged himself.”

“I won’t do that,” I promised.

He brooded at me. “No, I don’t suppose you will.”

“Chilly in here,” I said, and buttered a roll with a cold silver knife.

Volpinex always surprised me; in memory he tended to become older and fatter, but in life he was invariably a slender healthy thirty-year-old. My contemporary, in fact, and about my size, but probably in better physical shape: a karate expert, for instance. Born of Count Dracula, out of a White House aide. It was his humorlessness, the determined flatness and bullshit of his speech, that made him seem fat and fifty.

Speaking out of that train of thought, I said, “Comedy keeps people young.”

“In the sense that it’s childish, yes.”

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve always heard that comedy is what separates us from the animals.”

“Parrots tell jokes,” Volpinex said, “and hyenas laugh.”

“What do you think separates us from the animals?”

“Nothing,” he said, and the conversation paused while the waiter brought Volpinex’s oysters, my mussels, and our half bottle of Chablis. The tasting ritual was accomplished with deep and solemn pleasure on all sides, and the waiter went away. Volpinex said, “I do, however, appreciate that humor can be a salable commodity.”

“Anything can be sold,” I said.

He gave me a thin glinting smile. “Including yourself, for instance.”

“There’s always the possibility,” I suggested, “that I signed the contract not because I love money but because I love Liz.”

“I suppose that’s a joke,” he said, his smile fading. “You’ve never been audited,” he said, dipped an oyster in the blood red sauce, and ate.

I squinted at him. “Say again?”

“By Internal Revenue,” he explained. “They’ve never audited your tax returns.”

“They’d need a microscope.”

“You strike me,” he said, “as the sort of person who would commit fraud for the sheer pleasure of it Claim your dog as a dependent, that sort of thing. A tax audit might very well finish with you in Danbury.”

He meant the Federal prison there. In true Volpinexish language, the Feds call it a Correctional Facility. I said, “What are you getting at? Free legal advice?”

“Should you marry Elizabeth Kerner,” he said, “your economic position would alter significantly. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the IRS then took an interest in you.”

I ate a mussel. I drank a bit of Chablis. I said, “Did you really get me here to make stupid threats?”

“Threats? We’re merely discussing possibilities.”

“No, we’re not. We’re discussing fantasies in your head. You’re telling me you have friends at Internal Revenue, and they’ll lean on me if I don’t get away from Liz.”

Nothing changed in his cold dark face; I got a sudden whiff of hair oil. “The comedic mind is often paranoid,” he said, and sipped at his wine. “I’ve noticed that before.”

This echo of a comment I’d made to Linda Ann Margolies startled me; had she been a setup, working for Volpinex? No, that was paranoia. Volpinex had no need to infiltrate me with Mata Haris. I said, “I’m going to marry Liz. There’s nothing to talk about”

“According to your ex-wife,” he said quietly, “comedians make unsatisfactory husbands.”

I ate my last mussel I drained my wineglass, and a silent waiter at once refilled it and withdrew. I said, “Look, Volpinex, whatever dirt you could find on me you’ve already showed to Liz, and she brushed it off. The income tax threat doesn’t scare me because once I’m married to Liz I’ll use her accountants to defend myself.” I gave him the tightest grin I had in stock, and said, “I’m coming into the family, sweetheart, so just relax and enjoy it.”

He couldn’t answer at once. Our appetizer plates were being removed, a half bottle of Medoc was being tasted and approved, and our entrees were being delivered; lamb chops for him, rare sirloin for me. I finished my white wine while all this was going on, started in on my steak, and Volpinex said, “You have just touched on my real objection to you. And to your brother. Family. Who are you people, where do you come from? You are barbarians at the gates, and it is my duty to repel you.”

Could he possibly believe all that? But the humorless man makes no distinction between truth and falsehood; words to him are simply tools, effective or not effective. I said, “What about you, Volpinex? That’s no fine old Point O’ Woods name you carry around. What cave do you come out of?”

“While my ancestors enjoyed the Mediterranean breeze,” he told me, “yours were chained to the oars. Civilization has declined since then.”

I cut meat. “You don’t expect me to pull my forelock and shuffle out of your life,” I said. “So what’s the point?”

“I want you to understand my antipathy,” he said. “You have labored under the belief that we are a pair of opportunists together, that I am somehow similar to you.”

“You’re different, all right,” I said. “I know when I’m kidding.”

“You don’t think I’m serious about family?”

“Liz’s mother had the family connections,” I said. “But old man Kerner was a lumberjack out of Canada, with no more family than a hooker in front of the Americana Hotel. He had the one thing better than a family tree — a money tree.”

“You have neither.”

“They’re on order,” I said.

He studied me, saying nothing, and for a while we both merely ate. Every time I glanced at him he was still brooding at me, watching me like a highway engineer looking at a mountain. Tunnel away, bastard, this mountain is here to stay.

Finally he said, “Let’s discuss this from a different angle.”

“It’s your turf,” I said.

“You are not quite the standard fortune hunter,” he said, “some money-mad chauffeur out to make a quick killing. You are better than that, more educated, more intelligent, more talented.”

I put my fork down and stared at him. “Now you’re trying to sell me an encyclopedia.”

He ignored that, saying, “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit you enjoy the life you already have: the freedom, some sense of adventure and experiment, the opportunity to employ your talent.”

“And the bill collectors,” I said. “They’re my favorites.”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “The money Elizabeth offered you has gone to your head, and why not? It’s a lot of money. But it isn’t what you really want.”

“What I really want is a fire engine and a set of soldiers.”

“What you really want,” he told me, “is the life you’re living now, but with a somewhat firmer economic cushion.”

“Like two thousand a month.”

“No,” he said. “Earned money. The product of your own labor.”

“As a psychiatrist,” I told him, “you make a great stand-up comedian.”

He plowed ahead; he was thin, but he talked fat. “I have clients,” he said, “with available venture capital. You own a business with rather strong potential. A larger and more diverse line, national distribution of your product, and you could be quite well off. I believe I could authorize an investment of, oh, say, thirty thousand dollars.”

“You really are something, Volpinex,” I said. “First threats, then bribery.” And I couldn’t help wondering how he’d narrowed it down to just that figure.

“I had already assumed,” he said, “that you would choose the worst possible interpretation of that offer. Nevertheless, it still stands.”

“And nevertheless, I’m still going to marry Liz. Give it up, Volpinex. Nothing is going to keep that marriage from taking place.” I saw no point in mentioning that Folksy Cards would never survive expansion, or that thirty thousand dollars was fifteen months pay from Liz. What did I need with his venture capital? I had a couple ventures of my own going.

His look was now as cold as the air conditioning. “I had hoped we could find an accommodation,” he said.

So he’d shot his last bolt, finally. “I tell you what,” I suggested. “Try the routine on Bart. He might go for thirty thousand dollars. Or Betty might be more impressed by scandal than Liz.”

His expression clouded. “Your brother has lived a much cleaner life than you have,” he said, and I could hear a certain frustration in his voice.

Of course. A standard background check covers only two areas — credit and police blotter. Bart would come up blank on both, and the conclusion to be drawn was not that Bart Dodge had in fact no real-world existence, but that Bart Dodge was a very clean-living guy. It is, as they say, very difficult to prove a negative.

“Bart always has been a boy scout,” I said, and drank some of the Médoc. It was delicious.