There was a moment of silence before Elvid began bellowing laughter. He strode around his card table, clapped Streeter on the back (with a hand that felt cold and fingers that felt long and thin rather than short and pudgy), then strode back to his folding chair. He collapsed into it, still snorting and roaring. His face was red, and the tears streaming down his face also looked red—bloody, actually—in the sunset light.
“Your best… since grammar… oh, that’s…”
Elvid could manage no more. He went into gales and howls and gut-shaking spasms, his chin (strangely sharp for such a chubby face) nodding and dipping at the innocent (but darkening) summer sky. At last he got himself under control. Streeter thought about offering his handkerchief, and decided he didn’t want it on the extension salesman’s skin.
“This is excellent, Mr. Streeter,” he said. “We can do business.”
“Gee, that’s great,” Streeter said, taking another step back. “I’m enjoying my extra fifteen years already. But I’m parked in the bike lane, and that’s a traffic violation. I could get a ticket.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Elvid said. “As you may have noticed, not even a single civilian car has come along since we started dickering, let alone a minion of the Derry PD. Traffic never interferes when I get down to serious dealing with a serious man or woman; I see to it.”
Streeter looked around uneasily. It was true. He could hear traffic over on Witcham Street, headed for Upmile Hill, but here, Derry was utterly deserted. Of course, he reminded himself, traffic’s always light over here when the working day is done.
But absent? Completely absent? You might expect that at midnight, but not at seven-thirty PM.
“Tell me why you hate your best friend,” Elvid invited.
Streeter reminded himself again that this man was crazy. Anything Elvid passed on wouldn’t be believed. It was a liberating idea.
“Tom was better-looking when we were kids, and he’s far better-looking now. He lettered in three sports; the only one I’m even halfway good at is miniature golf.”
“I don’t think they have a cheerleading squad for that one,” Elvid said.
Streeter smiled grimly, warming to his subject. “Tom’s plenty smart, but he lazed his way through Derry High. His college ambitions were nil. But when his grades fell enough to put his athletic eligibility at risk, he’d panic. And then who got the call?”
“You did!” Elvid cried. “Old Mr. Responsible! Tutored him, did you? Maybe wrote a few papers as well? Making sure to misspell the words Tom’s teachers got used to him misspelling?”
“Guilty as charged. In fact, when we were seniors—the year Tom got the State of Maine Sportsman award—I was really two students: Dave Streeter and Tom Goodhugh.”
“Tough.”
“Do you know what’s tougher? I had a girlfriend. Beautiful girl named Norma Witten. Dark brown hair and eyes, flawless skin, beautiful cheekbones—”
“Tits that wouldn’t quit—”
“Yes indeed. But, sex appeal aside—”
“Not that you ever did put it aside—”
“—I loved that girl. Do you know what Tom did?”
“Stole her from you!” Elvid said indignantly.
“Correct. The two of them came to me, you know. Made a clean breast of it.”
“Noble!”
“Claimed they couldn’t help it.”
“Claimed they were in love, L-U-V.”
“Yes. Force of nature. This thing is bigger than both of us. And so on.”
“Let me guess. He knocked her up.”
“Indeed he did.” Streeter was looking at his shoes again, remembering a certain skirt Norma had worn when she was a sophomore or a junior. It was cut to show just a flirt of the slip beneath. That had been almost thirty years ago, but sometimes he still summoned that image to mind when he and Janet made love. He had never made love with Norma—not the Full Monty sort, anyway; she wouldn’t allow it. Although she had been eager enough to drop her pants for Tom Goodhugh. Probably the first time he asked her.
“And left her with a bun in the oven.”
“No.” Streeter sighed. “He married her.”
“Then divorced her! Possibly after beating her silly?”
“Worse still. They’re still married. Three kids. When you see them walking in Bassey Park, they’re usually holding hands.”
“That’s about the crappiest thing I’ve ever heard. Not much could make it worse. Unless…” Elvid looked shrewdly at Streeter from beneath bushy brows. “Unless you’re the one who finds himself frozen in the iceberg of a loveless marriage.”
“Not at all,” Streeter said, surprised by the idea. “I love Janet very much, and she loves me. The way she’s stood by me during this cancer thing has been just extraordinary. If there’s such a thing as harmony in the universe, then Tom and I ended up with the right partners. Absolutely. But…”
“But?” Elvid looked at him with delighted eagerness.
Streeter became aware that his fingernails were sinking into his palms. Instead of easing up, he bore down harder. Bore down until he felt trickles of blood. “But he fucking stole her!” This had been eating him for years, and it felt good to shout the news.
“Indeed he did, and we never cease wanting what we want, whether it’s good for us or not. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Streeter?”
Streeter made no reply. He was breathing hard, like a man who has just dashed fifty yards or engaged in a street scuffle. Hard little balls of color had surfaced in his formerly pale cheeks.
“And is that all?” Elvid spoke in the tones of a kindly parish priest.
“No.”
“Get it all out, then. Drain that blister.”
“He’s a millionaire. He shouldn’t be, but he is. In the late eighties—not long after the flood that damn near wiped this town out—he started up a garbage company… only he called it Derry Waste Removal and Recycling. Nicer name, you know.”
“Less germy.”
“He came to me for the loan, and although the proposition looked shaky to everyone at the bank, I pushed it through. Do you know why I pushed it through, Elvid?”
“Of course! Because he’s your friend!”
“Guess again.”
“Because you thought he’d crash and burn.”
“Right. He sank all his savings into four garbage trucks, and mortgaged his house to buy a piece of land out by the Newport town line. For a landfill. The kind of thing New Jersey gangsters own to wash their dope-and-whore money and use as body-dumps. I thought it was crazy and I couldn’t wait to write the loan. He still loves me like a brother for it. Never fails to tell people how I stood up to the bank and put my job on the line. ‘Dave carried me, just like in high school,’ he says. Do you know what the kids in town call his landfill now?”
“Tell me!”
“Mount Trashmore! It’s huge! I wouldn’t be surprised if it was radioactive! It’s covered with sod, but there are KEEP OUT signs all around it, and there’s probably a Rat Manhattan under that nice green grass! They’re probably radioactive, as well!”
He stopped, aware that he sounded ridiculous, not caring. Elvid was insane, but—surprise! Streeter had turned out to be insane, too! At least on the subject of his old friend. Plus…
In cancer veritas, Streeter thought.
“So let’s recap.” Elvid began ticking off the points on his fingers, which were not long at all but as short, pudgy, and inoffensive as the rest of him. “Tom Goodhugh was better-looking than you, even when you were children. He was gifted with athletic skills you could only dream of. The girl who kept her smooth white thighs closed in the backseat of your car opened them for Tom. He married her. They are still in love. Children okay, I suppose?”
“Healthy and beautiful!” Streeter spat. “One getting married, one in college, one in high school! That one’s captain of the football team! Chip off the old fucking block!”
“Right. And—the cherry on the chocolate sundae—he’s rich and you’re knocking on through life at a salary of sixty thousand or so a year.”
“I got a bonus for writing his loan,” Streeter muttered. “For showing vision.”
“But what you actually wanted was a promotion.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a businessman now, but at one time I was a humble salary-man. Got fired before striking out on my own. Best thing that ever happened to me. I know how these things go. Anything else? Might as well get it all off your chest.”
“He drinks Spotted Hen Microbrew!” Streeter shouted. “Nobody in Derry drinks that pretentious shit! Just him! Just Tom Goodhugh, the Garbage King!”
“Does he have a sports car?” Elvid spoke quietly, the words lined with silk.
“No. If he did, I could at least joke with Janet about sports car menopause. He drives a goddam Range Rover.”
“I think there might be one more thing,” Elvid said. “If so, you might as well get that off your chest, too.”