“You’re lucky they settled so fast,” the banker remarked. “My aunt’s having a terrible time with her company.”
The woman said her homeowner policy was with Midwest Casualty. “I’ve got a great insurance man,” she added.
Later, when Edie Marsh told the story to Fred Dove, he reacted with the weakest twitch of an ironic smile. Under the woeful circumstances, it was as good as a cartwheel.
Edie, Snapper and the two noisy wiener dogs had moved into his room at the Ramada. No other accommodations were available for a radius of sixty miles, because the hotels were jammed full of displaced families, relief volunteers, journalists, construction workers and insurance adjusters. Fred Dove felt trapped. His fear of getting arrested for fraud was now compounded by a fear that his wife would call the motel room, then Edie Marsh or Snapper would answer the phone and the wiener dogs would start howling, leaving Fred Dove to invent an explanation that no sensible woman in Omaha, Nebraska, would ever accept.
“Cheer up,” Edie told him. “We’re all set at the bank.”
“Good,” he said in a brittle tone.
The long tense weekend had abraded the insurance man’s nerves-Snapper, gimping irritably around the small motel room, slugging down vodka, threatening to blast the yappy dachshunds with a massive black handgun he claimed to have stolen from a police officer.
No wonder I’m edgy, thought Fred Dove.
To deepen the gloom, sharing the cramped room with Snapper and the dogs left the insurance man no opportunity for intimacy with Edie Marsh. Not that he could have availed himself of a sexual invitation; the withering effect of Snapper’s previous coital interruption endured, as Snapper continued to tease Fred Dove about the red condom.
Also looming large was the question of Edie’s aptitude for violence-a disconcerting vision of the crowbar episode was scorched into Fred Dove’s memory. He/ worried that she or Snapper might endeavor to murder each other at any moment.
Edie stretched out next to him on the bed. “You’re miserable,” she observed.
“Yes indeed,” said the insurance man.
With his bum leg elevated, Snapper was stationed in an armchair three and one half feet from the television screen. Every so often he would take a futile swipe at Donald or Maria, and tell them to shut the holy fuck up.
“Sally Jessy,” Edie whispered. Fred Dove sighed.
On the TV, a woman in a dreadful yellow wig was accusing her gap-toothed white-trash husband of screwing her younger sister. Instead of denying it, the husband said damn right, and it was the best nooky I ever had. Instantly the sister, also wearing a dreadful wig and lacking in teeth, piped up to say she couldn’t get enough. Sally Jessy exhaled in weary dismay, the studio audience hooted, and Snapper let out a war whoop that set off the dogs once again.
“If the phone rings,” Fred Dove said, “please don’t answer.”
Edie Marsh didn’t need to ask why.
“You got any kids?” she asked.
The insurance man said he had two, a boy and a girl. He thought Edie might follow up and ask about their ages, what grades they were in, and so on. But she showed no interest.
She said, “Cheer up, OK? Think about your cruise to Bimini.”
“Look, I was wondering-”
Snapper, growling over one shoulder: “You two mind? I’m tryin’ to watch the fuckin’ show.”
Edie signaled for Fred Dove to follow her to the bathroom. He perked up, anticipating a discreet blow job or something along those lines.
But Edie only wanted a quiet place to chat. They perched their butts on the edge of the bathtub. She stroked his hand and said, “Tell me, sugar. What’s on your mind?”
“OK, the company sends me the check-”
“Right.”
“I give it to you,” said Fred Dove, “and you deposit it in the bank.”
“Right.”
“And then?”
Edie Marsh answered with exaggerated clarity, like a schoolteacher coaxing an exceptionally dull-witted pupil. “Then, Fred, I go back to the bank in a couple days and cut three separate cashier’s checks for forty-seven thousand each. Just like we agreed.”
Undeterred by the condescension, he said: “Don’t forget the hundred dollars I gave you to open the account.”