And, speak of the devil (or the Elvid, if you like that better, Streeter thought), enter the Garbage King himself, with the necks of two sweating bottles of Spotted Hen Microbrew caught between the fingers of his left hand. Slim and erect in his open-throated Oxford shirt and faded jeans, his lean face perfectly lit by the sunset glow, Tom Goodhugh looked like a model in a magazine beer ad. Streeter could even see the copy: Live the good life, reach for a Spotted Hen.
“Thought you might like a fresh one, since your beautiful wife says she’s driving.”
“Thanks.” Streeter took one of the bottles, tipped it to his lips, and drank. Pretentious or not, it was good.
As Goodhugh sat down, Jacob the football player came out with a plate of cheese and crackers. He was as broad-shouldered and handsome as Tom had been back in the day. Probably has cheerleaders crawling all over him, Streeter thought. Probably has to beat them off with a damn stick.
“Mom thought you might like these,” Jacob said.
“Thanks, Jake. You going out?”
“Just for a little while. Throw the Frisbee with some guys down in the Barrens until it gets dark, then study.”
“Stay on this side. There’s poison ivy down there since the crap grew back.”
“Yeah, we know. Denny caught it when we were in junior high, and it was so bad his mother thought he had cancer.”
“Ouch!” Streeter said.
“Drive home carefully, son. No hot-dogging.”
“You bet.” The boy put an arm around his father and kissed his cheek with a lack of self-consciousness that Streeter found depressing. Tom not only had his health, a still-gorgeous wife, and a ridiculous pissing cherub; he had a handsome eighteen-year-old son who still felt all right about kissing his dad goodbye before going out with his best buds.
“He’s a good boy,” Goodhugh said fondly, watching Jacob mount the stairs to the house and disappear inside. “Studies hard and makes his grades, unlike his old man. Luckily for me, I had you.”
“Lucky for both of us,” Streeter said, smiling and putting a goo of Brie on a Triscuit. He popped it into his mouth.
“Does me good to see you eating, chum,” Goodhugh said. “Me n Norma were starting to wonder if there was something wrong with you.”
“Never better,” Streeter said, and drank some more of the tasty (and no doubt expensive) beer. “I’ve been losing my hair in front, though. Jan says it makes me look thinner.”
“That’s one thing the ladies don’t have to worry about,” Goodhugh said, and stroked a hand back through his own locks, which were as full and rich as they had been at eighteen. Not a touch of gray in them, either. Janet Streeter could still look forty on a good day, but in the red light of the declining sun, the Garbage King looked thirty-five. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink to excess, and he worked out at a health club that did business with Streeter’s bank but which Streeter could not afford himself. His middle child, Carl, was currently doing the European thing with Justin Streeter, the two of them traveling on Carl Goodhugh’s dime. Which was, of course, actually the Garbage King’s dime.
O man who has everything, thy name is Goodhugh, Streeter thought, and smiled at his old friend.
His old friend smiled back, and touched the neck of his beer bottle to Streeter’s. “Life is good, wouldn’t you say?”
“Very good,” Streeter agreed. “Long days and pleasant nights.”
Goodhugh raised his eyebrows. “Where’d you get that?”
“Made it up, I guess,” Streeter said. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“If it is, I owe a lot of my pleasant nights to you,” Goodhugh said. “It has crossed my mind, old buddy, that I owe you my life.” He toasted his insane backyard. “The tenderloin part of it, anyway.”
“Nah, you’re a self-made man.”
Goodhugh lowered his voice and spoke confidentially. “Want the truth? The woman made this man. The Bible says ‘Who can find a good woman? For her price is above rubies.’ Something like that, anyway. And you introduced us. Don’t know if you remember that.”
Streeter felt a sudden and almost irresistible urge to smash his beer bottle on the patio bricks and shove the jagged and still foaming neck into his old friend’s eyes. He smiled instead, sipped a little more beer, then stood up. “Think I need to pay a little visit to the facility.”
“You don’t buy beer, you only rent it,” Goodhugh said, then burst out laughing. As if he had invented this himself, right on the spot.
“Truer words, et cetera,” Streeter said. “Excuse me.”
“You really are looking better,” Goodhugh called after him as Streeter mounted the steps.
“Thanks,” Streeter said. “Old buddy.”
He closed the bathroom door, pushed in the locking button, turned on the lights, and—for the first time in his life—swung open the medicine cabinet door in another person’s house. The first thing his eye lighted on cheered him immensely: a tube of Just For Men shampoo. There were also a few prescription bottles.
Streeter thought, People who leave their drugs in a bathroom the guests use are just asking for trouble. Not that there was anything sensational: Norma had asthma medicine; Tom was taking blood pressure medicine—Atenolol—and using some sort of skin cream.
The Atenolol bottle was half full. Streeter took one of the tablets, tucked it into the watch-pocket of his jeans, and flushed the toilet. Then he left the bathroom, feeling like a man who has just snuck across the border of a strange country.
The following evening was overcast, but George Elvid was still sitting beneath the yellow umbrella and once again watching Inside Edition on his portable TV. The lead story had to do with Whitney Houston, who had lost a suspicious amount of weight shortly after signing a huge new recording contract. Elvid disposed of this rumor with a twist of his pudgy fingers and regarded Streeter with a smile.
“How have you been feeling, Dave?”
“Better.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Vomiting?”
“Not today.”
“Eating?”
“Like a horse.”
“And I’ll bet you’ve had some medical tests.”
“How did you know?”
“I’d expect no less of a successful bank official. Did you bring me something?”
For a moment Streeter considered walking away. He really did. Then he reached into the pocket of the light jacket he was wearing (the evening was chilly for August, and he was still on the thin side) and brought out a tiny square of Kleenex. He hesitated, then handed it across the table to Elvid, who unwrapped it.
“Ah, Atenolol,” Elvid said. He popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed.
Streeter’s mouth opened, then closed slowly.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Elvid said. “If you had a high-stress job like mine, you’d have blood pressure problems, too. And the reflux I suffer from, oy. You don’t want to know.”
“What happens now?” Streeter asked. Even in the jacket, he felt cold.
“Now?” Elvid looked surprised. “Now you start enjoying your fifteen years of good health. Possibly twenty or even twenty-five. Who knows?”
“And happiness?”
Elvid favored him with the roguish look. It would have been amusing if not for the coldness Streeter saw just beneath. And the age. In that moment he felt certain that George Elvid had been doing business for a very long time, reflux or no reflux. “The happiness part is up to you, Dave. And your family, of course—Janet, May, and Justin.”
Had he told Elvid their names? Streeter couldn’t remember.
“Perhaps the children most of all. There’s an old saying to the effect that children are our hostages to fortune, but in fact it’s the children who take the parents hostage, that’s what I think. One of them could have a fatal or disabling accident on a deserted country road… fall prey to a debilitating disease…”
“Are you saying—”
“No, no, no! This isn’t some half-assed morality tale. I’m a businessman, not a character out of ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’ All I’m saying is that your happiness is in your hands and those of your nearest and dearest. And if you think I’m going to show up two decades or so down the line to collect your soul in my moldy old pocketbook, you’d better think again. The souls of humans have become poor and transparent things.”
He spoke, Streeter thought, as the fox might have done after repeated leaps had proved to it that the grapes were really and truly out of reach. But Streeter had no intention of saying such a thing. Now that the deal was done, all he wanted to do was get out of here. But still he lingered, not wanting to ask the question that was on his mind but knowing he had to. Because there was no gift—giving going on here; Streeter had been making deals in the bank for most of his life, and he knew a horse-trade when he saw one. Or when he smelled it: a faint, unpleasant stink like burned aviation fuel.