Two Time

TWENTY-FIVE

THE MIDTOWN TUNNEL was only a few blocks away so I was out of Manhattan in a few minutes, heading east. There was one more stop I had in mind, one I hadn’t shared with Jackie. I’d written the address down on the top of a map of Long Island I kept stored in the console, now on the passenger seat to help me plot my course.

General Resource Recovery was located near Massapequa, a town just above the south shore of the Island. Their ad in Thomas Register promised fair prices for scrap metal of all kinds, and an assortment of high-quality, contaminant-free recycled material. There was a phone number, so I could have called ahead, but I knew Ivor Fleming was always delighted by a surprise visit.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so I hustled along as fast as the traffic on the Long Island Expressway and Wantagh Parkway would let me. I made it there by quarter to four, relieved to see an open parking lot instead of a tall chainlink fence and guard hut. A plain one-story office block fronted the lot. Behind and above you could see an elevated transport system for lifting and sorting a mountain of tangled, rusty red scrap. Somewhere out of sight a furnace was cooking up the goodies, separating elements and alloys, oxidizing and vaporizing trace materials and issuing ingots, rods and pellets of gleaming semi-molten steel.

I located the big black pickup as I approached the entrance. It was close in, but not in a reserved spot, of which there were only two. The one with the bulky black Mercedes had a sign that said, “Don’t even think of parking here.”

Passing through the heavy wooden entrance doors, only partly assisted by pneumatic door openers, I saw in my mind’s eye a coffee-table book—Reception Areas of Greater New York. I could dedicate it to all the receptionists and security guards, underpaid and overlooked, who so ably administer one of the great pivot points of American commerce. Some, like Eugenia Wilde, at the helm of a stout slab of hardwood furniture. Others, like Ivor’s two paunchy schlubs, relegated to a folding card table set up in a corner just inside the front door. Each guard had a uniform, a sign-in book, a Smith & Wesson, a chair and a walkie-talkie. Probably mandated by the union. There was a single black phone in the middle of the table.

I was about to approach the guards when I noticed the foyer expanded out from the entrance into a large room, at the opposite end of which was another set of double doors, and on the walls to either side a pair of huge murals. The first thing I thought of was heroic industrialism, like in 1930s Soviet art, with heavily muscled men and women, in squared-off profile, toiling with backs straight, eyes forward. But that wasn’t quite it. The paintings had an abstract quality, an imprecision of form and composition that almost suggested a parody of their presumed subject. But not quite. The factories in the background were partly made of boxes and smoke stacks, but also office towers, redwoods and ancient campaniles. The colors were indescribable except to say they were dark and light, familiar and entirely out of context. But not a mishmash—there was a strong organizing sense underlying both the paintings that reminded me of Picasso. Or maybe Hieronymus Bosch.

I wished Allison was there to explain to me what I was looking at. Or better yet, the guy who painted them. Butch Ellington.

“Hey Buddy. Over here,” said one of the guards.

“Sorry,” I said, walking back to their table. “Caught me by surprise.”

“You get used to it. Who you here to see?”

“Ivor Fleming.”

They simultaneously looked down at their respective sign-in books.

“You got an appointment? What’s your name?”

“Sam Acquillo. I don’t have an appointment, but he’ll see me.”

“Yeah, right. No appointment, no see.”

They both seemed amused by the idea.

“Okay but what if you’re wrong. What if he would’ve seen me but you didn’t let him know I was here. How would that go over?”

“There’re worse things than getting fired. So if you don’t mind,” he said, waving me toward the door.

“How about Ike or Connie. They here?”

The mood at the guard desk took a quick turn to circumspection.

“Maybe. You got an appointment with them?”

“No. But you can probably tell them I’m here, and I guarantee they’ll be out to say hello. Then, if they think Mr. Fleming’ll see me, you’re in the clear. How bout it?”

One of the two was sold enough to pick up the phone and call somebody, telling them to go find Ike and Connie and have them call the reception desk. While we waited I walked over to get another look at the murals.

One of the interesting things was the way certain images within the paintings had their own logic, telling their own little story, yet when you stood back they would collectively resolve into another coherent representation. I wondered how many levels of articulated imagery could be contained within a single work of art, like a fractal, revealing themselves layer after layer as you dove down into the painting.

Thus lost in thought, I didn’t realize my two buddies were out there with me until I heard Ike clear his throat.

You couldn’t say they were looking their best. Connie’s nose was still swollen, maybe permanently, and Ike’s lip was probably a week or two shy of full recovery.

“Hey fellas, how’s it going?”

I stuck out my hand to shake, causing them both to back up a step.

“Come on. I thought we’d cleared all that up.”

“What’re you doing here?” asked Ike.

“I want to see Mr. Fleming.”

“And I want to see Heather Locklear in a bikini. Not happening anytime soon.”

“You can be overprotective, you know, Ike. I think that’s what you’ve been doing here.”

“That’s the job, asshole. Protection.”

The two guards overheard the asshole part and walked over with their hands resting on their holsters. Ike smiled at me.

“You could probably use a little yourself right now,” he added.

“Call up Ivor and tell him I’m out here. I’ve just got one thing to ask him. If he tells me to beat it, I’ll beat it. And you’ll never see me again.”

“Not breathing,” said Connie.

I pointed at him, but kept my eyes on Ike. “What’d I say about that stuff?”

Ike jerked his head at Connie and told him to back off, which he did. I walked over to the guard desk and sat down in one of their chairs.

“Go ahead, give him a call. I’ll be right here.”

Ike nodded at the guards, one of whom came over and made the call.

“Lois, this is Max at the front desk. I’m with Ike and Connie and we got a guy named Acquillo who’s here to see Mr. Fleming. Doesn’t have an appointment, but Ike thinks Mr. Fleming might want to see him anyway. Don’t bother him if he’s really busy with something.” He paused, listening. “Okay then I guess why not ask him. You can call me back.”

From where I sat I had a good view of the mural on the right-hand wall. I determined it was painted on a very smooth surface, but not directly on the wall, though that was the impression encouraged by the way it was hung. Clever. Well thought out, like everything Butch Ellington did.

The phone rang. Ike picked it up.

“He said to come on back. Let’s go, hero,” he said to me, ushering me into the lead, with him and Connie a close step behind. We went through the double doors and into a wide room filled with cubicles that looked a lot more like Ross’s squad room than Brad Maplewhite’s brokerage house. A few people looked up at us as we walked down the passageways, though not overtly. I suspected in Ivor’s shop the concept of keeping your head down had some tangibility.

Ivor’s office was in the corner of the open office area distinguished by walls paneled in the kind of luan ply that was popular in the fifties and sixties. Back then you could have bought dimensional mahogany for about two cents a board foot, but why do that when luan looks just as good?

A frump of a middle-aged woman, who had to be Lois, got up from her desk and planted herself just outside the office door.

“You’re Mr. Acquillo,” she said to me.

“I am.”

“Just wait here a moment. He wants to see you alone,” she said, with a firm look at Ike and Connie. It didn’t seem to bother them. When she came back out to show me in, I could see why. At the far side of the room was a long leather couch, covered partway with a well-worn sheepskin mat that Cleo had deftly shaped into a comfortable bed. Ivor was at the other end behind a big wooden desk of the same vintage and aesthetic as the paneling. The walls, shelves and side tables were filled with golf memorabilia, some clearly going back decades, like a black-and-white photo of young Jack Nicklaus posing with skinny young Ivor Fleming. The present Ivor slumped down in a heavily padded green leather chair, swiveling slowly back and forth like a kid checking out his dad’s office furniture.

I ignored Cleo, but sat down as swiftly as I could in one of the hot seats directly in front of the desk. Lois silently shut the door.

“You got balls, I’ll give you that,” said Ivor, by way of a greeting.

“More curiosity than courage, if you want to know the truth.”

“I’m curious about something myself,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Okay.”

“My boys said they were jumped by a bunch of guys they never seen before. Pulled some kind of kung fu on em. What do you think?”

“Must’ve been something like that. Nobody else would take on a pair of hard cases like Ike and Connie.”

“Yeah. Sure. Nothing to do with you, then. I told them to keep an eye on you. They’re not exactly Serpico when it comes to undercover work. You coulda seen em and called in somebody.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t know how, even if I was stupid enough to show that kind of disrespect to you.”

He liked that. It didn’t show, but I’d known a lot of Ivors over the years. They always liked that kind of thing. He slid up a little taller in his chair and pulled himself over to the desk.

“So what’s with the investment deal,” he asked me. “You still trying to peddle that shit?”

I glanced over at Cleo. She looked like she was asleep on the couch. A good sign.

“Doesn’t look good,” I told him. “Your original assessment was basically accurate. Nothing much to sell, even though most of his clients got a pretty decent return on their investment. More than decent.”

That made him unhappy again. Only this time not at me.

“What a putz. I don’t know why I listen to these guys.”

“So he made all the calls. I mean, you followed his advice.”

“What the fuck else you pay him for?”

“Some people like to lead the charge with their brokers. Like to get in the game. Like you said, a trip to the casino without the chips and slots.”

“You want to know about steel? You come to me. There’s nothin’ I don’t know about how to make it, salvage it, extract it and sell it. Then get it back, chew it up and sell it all over again. This is what I know about. Investments? I don’t know shit about that stuff.”

I couldn’t admit it right then, but I sympathized with him. I didn’t know shit about that stuff either.

“So Jonathan told you to get into art.”

Ivor grinned a little at that.

“That was the only call that worked out. Those things over there on the wall? Worth five times what I paid for them.”

They might have been Chagalls, or painted by somebody trying to look like Chagall. No factories or heroic workers. Rather some spindly impressionistic flowers, butterflies and starscapes. Fit right into the scrap-metal ambience of General Resource Recovery.

“Same deal?” I asked Ivor. “Jonathan told you which artists to buy?”

“Yeah. Got a bunch of stuff. All’ve gone up, last I looked.”

“Including the big Ellingtons.”

“Shit, yeah. Maybe ten times. Got em on the cheap. His own fault, douche bag.”

“Jonathan?”

“Nah, the artist. Ellington. Professional wingnut. I’d only paid him about two-thirds of what he asked for before he got em hung in the reception area. I just asked him to paint some more clothes on the girls. Too much tit. Can embarrass people. He wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t pay him the balance. Said he’d sue me. Showed up here with this little bottle-eyed shit of a lawyer. Wouldn’t let em in the building. Told him if he wanted the pictures back, I’d take em down myself. Got a factory over there full of guys who know how to use a crowbar.”

That really made him happy. The happiest I’d ever seen him.

“You sure got him where you wanted him,” I said.

“Yeah. I sure did. Douche bag.”

I looked over at Cleo again, hoping Dobermans couldn’t read minds. She looked back at me, now awake, with a blank, noncommittal stare.

“Okay,” I said to Ivor. “I’m sorry again for bothering you. I really mean it this time.”

I jerked my head over at Cleo.

“Can I stand up?”

“Sure. Just keep your hands out where she can see them.”

I stood up and offered to shake, carefully. He took my hand.

“So that’s it?” he asked. “I thought you had a question for me.”

He was right. I’d lost my train of thought. Often happens when the talk turns to modern art.

“I do. I just wanted to know how you discovered Jonathan Eldridge. Who introduced you in the first place?”

“She didn’t tell you? Joyce Whithers. Sold Eldridge pretty hard. I figured that’s how you got on to me. Used to play cards with her. Still do, couple times a year.”

“I thought her husband was the card player.”

“Nah, the old lady had the brains and balls in that family. It was her game. She just brought him in so there’d be somebody around to get her a Scotch on the rocks and light her cigarettes. Smart broad. Getting me mixed up with that putz was the only thing she ever screwed me up on.”

“Thanks. That’s really all I wanted to know.”

“Next time you got a question like that, you can try picking up the telephone. Number’s in the book.”

“Sorry You’re right. I will. I appreciate it,” I said, making motions to leave. Then I thought of something.

“I’d really appreciate it if you cleared me with Ike and Connie. I don’t want any trouble.”

He waved that off.

“Nobody’s lookin’ for trouble,” he said, although with less sincerity than I’d hoped for.

Cleo stayed put on the couch, but as I passed by she pulled back her ears and wagged her tail. When Ivor opened the door Ike and Connie could see me scratching the top of her head and cooing softly in her ear.

“Tu eres una niña hermosa. Estoy pensando que tu debes morder a esos hombres allí en el vestíbulo.”

“Cute pup,” I said to them as I fell into the parade back to the reception area.

—

I had an escort all the way from Ivor’s scrap-metal plant to the reaches of Suffolk County. A full-sized black pickup with a clattery diesel engine. They managed to keep several car lengths between us regardless of traffic or speed limits, so every time I thought they’d abandoned the tail they showed up again. I didn’t know if this was meant to convey a message, or just a signal, or even who was doing the signaling. Ivor seemed willing to let it go, but he might have been playing me the whole time. Or, Ike and Connie might have been taking a little independent initiative. Hard to tell. But it did interfere with my concentration, which was annoying, since right then I needed every bit of concentration I could muster.

I’d bypassed the traffic lights along the first leg of Sunrise Highway by going north and picking up the Southern State. From there I dropped down to Route 27 where they’d made it into a four-lane road. It was filled with cars and trucks, and local people trying to get back home to catch a little daylight savings relaxation in the outdoor furniture out on the pressure-treated deck. With a different car I might have been able to get some distance on the pickup by weaving my way through the heavy traffic, but the Grand Prix wasn’t exactly engineered for nimble lane changes.

It was, however, born, raised and modified to accelerate very quickly in a straight line, hurtling its impossible mass up to a cruising speed you wouldn’t want to experience in any kind of pickup truck.

I’d just passed the exit for Shirley, Butch’s beloved hometown, when I noticed Ike and Connie were boxed in behind a brace of compact Japanese sedans driving side by side in tight formation. In front of me Route 27 was clear of significant traffic, a set of parallel concrete ribbons dissecting the pine barrens and disappearing into the ocean haze hanging above the South Fork.

I rolled up the windows and pushed in the clutch. I slid the Hurst shifter into third gear, brought up the RPMs, then popped out the clutch while simultaneously sticking the accelerator to the floor mat. With all four barrels opened wide, the 428-cubic-inch V8 bellowed under the hood. Just shy of the red line, I put it back into fourth, but kept the throttle open and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the speed climbed up over a hundred miles an hour.

I started to run through a mental checklist of all the equipment failures likely triggered by the sudden torque loads and excess velocity, but quickly gave it up. Too many to count, and it wasn’t going to stop me anyway.

I looked in the rearview as the speedometer pegged at 120 and the tack was flirting again with the red line. No sign of black pickups or law enforcement. I’d felt some vibrations in the suspension system as the big car accelerated up to its top end, but now everything was settled down, a tribute to Butch’s skill with the wheel balancer.

I could sense the scream of the big block engine, but I couldn’t hear it above the wind noise. Reality distorts a lot when you move past a hundred miles an hour. It goes by so quickly it loses definition, and takes on a jittery, smeared quality. I could feel alarm rising up in my rational brain, which was involuntarily processing the possible consequences of losing control, which at this speed could happen from nicking even the tiniest road hazard. My solution was to ignore my rational brain and keep the accelerator on the floor.

A green exit sign for Center Moriches flashed by. I eased back on the throttle until the speedometer needle came off the peg and started to move counterclockwise. A white step van appeared in the right lane. I gave him as wide a berth as I could in case he hadn’t seen me and accidentally drifted into my lane. It must have been frightening to have a gray-brown ’67 Grand Prix roar by your door at 120 miles an hour. It was frightening for me to see how quickly he dropped back in my rearview. I eased up more on the accelerator, watching the speedometer mark the drop in tens—100, to 90, to 80. The Center Moriches exit ramp was suddenly there, so I had to downshift while applying steady pressure to the brakes, the most easily taxed system onboard the Grand Prix, given its extravagance of heavy-gauge sheet metal, the kind Ivor could sell to Honda to remake into a fleet of Civics.

I was almost within legal limits when I took the bend of the exit ramp. The smell of partially oxidized fuel wafted up behind me as I slowed to a halt, but I expected that from the inefficiency of rapid deceleration. At the stop sign I checked all the gauges, including oil and water temp, which looked normal. I shifted into first, pushed the buttons to lower the windows and lit a cigarette.

“Beverly Hillbillies indeed,” I said aloud, feeling warmly about my preposterous car, the most puzzling legacy from my father, and the only one not encumbered by complex and hopelessly entangled associations.

—

I reached the tip of Oak Point as the last of the sunset had collapsed into a thin pink strip along the horizon. When I stopped at the mailbox Eddie came zinging over from Amanda’s house, barking and spinning around in circles. He seemed honestly glad to see me, or maybe was just hedging his bets.

After filling my aluminum cocktail tumbler with Absolut and crushed ice, I shook off the wrinkled khakis and oxford-cloth-shirt and went directly to the outdoor shower. There was a lot of day to wash off. It took half the tumbler and most of the hot water to even start the job. I could pound nails and set roof rafters for twelve hours and not be half as tired. It’s the mental fatigue that gets you, that clogs up the neural pathways and packs cotton behind your eyes. Proving empirically that the worst of weariness is a state of mind.

I put on a pair of clean blue jeans and a cotton shirt so threadbare you could hole it with a puff of breath and called Amanda on my rotary dial phone.

“You’re back.”

“How’d you like to come over and rot with me in the Adirondacks?”

“An original idea.”

“An invitation. Direct and unambiguous.”

“I have wine and a bowl of cherries.”

“I’ll be in the front yard. If I’m asleep when you get there, don’t hit me on the head.”

Walking barefoot across the lawn, cool and wet from the evening mist rolling in off the bay, I started feeling better. The half tumbler of vodka had done its part, but the greater salve was being back in the company of the Little Peconic, back from those other places that weren’t livable for me anymore. As it often does, the prevailing south-southwesterly had shifted all the way west, kicking up a short chop and fluttering the emerging white petals on the grandiflora. It was a dryer wind, for reasons unknown. I wished I knew more about the underlying forces that controlled the breeze crisscrossing the bay every day, or how the patterns of the prevailing winds changed with the seasons. But not that much. It was enough to keep track and stay alert for anomalies, or simply mark the familiar shifts, gusts and lulls.

“Big day, I take it,” said Amanda, dropping down into the other Adirondack. Also barefoot, she wore a dress with a loud tropical print that looked two sizes too big for her. Her hair was wet, like mine, as if she’d also just taken a shower. She’d brushed it straight back so I could see the full shape of her face in the fading twilight, her prominent cheekbones and green eyes and the reddish brown of her skin, the color of a glass of fine cognac.

“It’s nice to see you,” I said.

She looked surprised.

“You, too. What’s the occasion?”

“For what?”

“Such friendliness.”

“I’m always nice.”

“No, you’re not. Not in the ordinary way.”

“I’m not?”

“Unless you’re avoiding. Is that what you’re doing? You don’t want to talk about the day”

“I don’t. Not now. I need time to think a little. But it’s still nice to see you.”

“Okay.”

We sat quietly sipping our drinks and watching the evening descend into darkness, with the moon taking over, dipping the tips of the little bay waves in light blue iridescence.

“Say, Amanda.”

“Yes, Sam.”

“If you ever catch me expressing anything like willful pride in my ability to perceive reality, to extract the true thing even when it’s cleverly hidden from view, I want you to remind me of today”

“I will if you tell me what happened.”

“What is it, July 30? Just say to me, ‘remember July 30.’”

“So this isn’t avoidance. It’s humility.”

“That’s right. Maybe with a little awe mixed in.”

“Okay You’re humbled and awestruck. While you’re at it, tag on abstruse.”

I was able to deflect further questions by suggesting we go skinny-dipping.

“Your hair’s already wet,” I said, getting up and jumping down off the breakwater, unbuttoning my shirt and waving for her to join me.

“Is it dark enough?” she asked, as she sat down on the top of the breakwater before sliding off into the sand.

“Nobody on the point but you and me. Might as well own the whole world.”

Since the wind was coming out of the west I knew the water would be warm. I had a theory that the wind scooped up the sun-warmed water from the surface of the shallow Great Peconic, then slid it over here, where it was captured and pooled against Jessup’s Neck. A ridiculous notion, I’m sure, but I didn’t care. There was nobody around to tell me it wasn’t true. There was only Amanda, slender and supple, laughing naked in my arms after we’d dashed across the painfully knobby pebble beach and dove recklessly into the water, breaking through the surface into the fresh moonlight. Humbled, or awed, or simply grateful and surprised, it was easy at that moment to let all forms of thought dissolve into the sacred waters of the Little Peconic Bay, carrying away my manifold fears and indecisions, my uncertainties and confusion.

There’d be time enough to gather all that up again tomorrow.