“Good ‘nough,” he said, stuffing his checkbook down on top of the ten-thou-278
sand-dollar bundles. “Take it easy.”
He left and they all looked after him. Then the old woman shuffled up to the pretty teller and presented her Social Security check, properly signed, for payment. The pretty teller gave her two hundred and thirty-five dollars and sixty-three cents.
When he got home he put the money in a dusty beer stein on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Mary had given the stein to him as a gag present on his birthday, five years ago. He had never particularly cared for it, preferring to drink his beer directly from the bottle. Written on the side of the stein was an emblem showing an Olympic torch and the words:
U.S. DRINKING TEAM
He put the stein back, now filled with a headier brew, and went upstairs to Charlie’s room, where his desk was. He rummaged through the bottom drawer and found a small manila envelope. He sat down at the desk, added up the new checkbook balance and saw that it came out to $35,053.49. He addressed the manila envelope to Mary, in care of her folks. He slipped the checkbook inside, sealed the envelope, and rummaged in his desk again. He found a half-full book of stamps, and put five eight-centers on the envelope. He regarded it for a moment, and then, below the address, he wrote: FIRST CLASS MAIL
He left the envelope standing on his desk and went into the kitchen to make himself a drink.
January 10, 1974
It was late in the evening, snowing, and Magliore hadn’t called. He was sitting in the living room with a drink, listening to the stereo because the TV was still hors de combat.
He had gone out earlier with two ten-dollar bills from the beer stein and had bought four rock and roll albums. One of them was called Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones. They had been playing it at the party, and he liked it better than the others he had bought, which seemed sort of sappy. One of them, an album by a group called Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, was so sappy that he had broken it over his knee. But Let It Bleed was filled with loud, leering, thumping music. It banged and jangled. He liked it a great deal.
It reminded him of “Let’s Make a Deal,” which was MC’ed by Monte Hall. Now Mick Jagger was singing:
Well we all need someone to cream on,
And if you want to, you can cream on me.
He had been thinking about the bank poster, showing the whole earth, various and new, with the legend that invited the viewer to Go AWAY. It made him think about the trip he had taken on New Year’s Eve. He had gone away, all right. Far away.
But hadn’t he enjoyed it?
The thought brought him up shop.
279
He had been dragging around for the last two months like a dog whose balls had been caught in a swinging door. But hadn’t there been compensations along the way?
He had done things he never would have done otherwise. The trips on the turnpike, as mindless and free as migration. The girl and the sex, the touch of her breasts so unlike Mary’s. Talking with a man who was a crook. Being accepted finally by that man as a serious person. The illegal exhilaration of throwing the gasoline bombs and the dreamy terror, like drowning, when it seemed the car would not lurch up over the embankment and carry him away. Deep emotions had been excavated from his dry, middle-echelon executive’s soul like the relics of a dark religion from an archaeological dig. He knew what it was to be alive.
Of course there were bad things. The way he had lost control in Handy Andy’s, shouting at Mary. The gnawing loneliness of those first two weeks alone, alone for the first time in twenty years with only the dreadful, mortal beat of his own heart for company. Being punched by Vinnie-Vinnie Mason of all people!-in the department store.
The awful fear hangover the morning after he had firebombed the construction. That lingered most of all.
But even those things, as bad as they had been, had been new and somehow exciting, like the thought that he might be insane or going insane. The tracks through the interior landscape he had been strolling (or crawling?) through these last two months were the only tracks. He had explored himself and if what he had been finding was often banal, it was also sometimes dreadful and beautiful.
His thoughts reverted to Olivia as he had last seen her, standing on the turnpike ramp with her sign, LAS VEGAS . . . OR BUST! held up defiantly into the cold indifference of things. He thought of the bank poster: GO AWAY. Why not? There was nothing to hold him here but dirty obsession. No wife and only the ghost of a child, no job and a house that would be an unhouse in a week and a half. He had cash money and a car he owned free and clear. Why not just get in it and go?
A kind of wild excitement seized him. In his mind’s eye he saw himself shutting off the lights, getting into the LTD, and driving to Las Vegas with the money in his pocket.
Finding Olivia. Saying to her: Let’s GO AWAY. Driving to California, selling the car, booking passage to the South Seas. From there to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Saigon, to Bombay, to Athens, Madrid, Paris, London, New York. Then to-Here?
The world was round, that was the deadly truth of it. Like Olivia, going to Nevada, resolving to shake the shit loose. Gets stoned and raped the first time around the new track because the new track is just like the old track, in fact it is the old track, around and around until you’ve worn it down too deep to climb out and then it’s time to close the garage door and turn on the ignition and just wait . . . wait . . .
The evening drew on and his thoughts went around and around, like a cat trying to catch and swallow its own tail. At last he fell asleep on the couch and dreamed of Charlie.
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January 11, 1974
Magliore called him at quarter past one in the afternoon.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll do business, you and I. It’s going to cost you nine thousand dollars. I don’t suppose that changes your mind. ”
“In cash?”
“What do you mean in cash? Do you think I’m gonna take your personal check?”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“You be at the Revel Lanes Bowladrome tomorrow night at ten o’clock. You know where that is?”
“Yes, out on Route 7. Just past the Skyview Shopping Mall.”
“That’s right. There’ll be two guys on lane sixteen wearing green shirts with Marlin Avenue Firestone on the back in gold thread. You join them. One of them will explain everything you need to know. That’ll be while you’re bowling. You bowl two or three strings, then you go outside and drive down the road to the Town Line Tavern. You know where that is?”
“No.”
“Just go west on 7. It’s about two miles from the bowling alley on the same side. Park in back. My friends will park beside you. They’ll be driving a Dodge Custom Cab pickup.
Blue. They’ll transfer a crate from their truck to your wagon. You give them an envelope.
I must be crazy, you know that? Out of my gourd. I’ll probably go up for this. Then I’ll have a nice long time to wonder why the fuck I did it.”
“I’d like to talk to you next week. Personally.”
” No. Absolutely not. I ain’t your father confessor. I never want to see you again. Not even to talk to you. To tell you the truth, Dawes, I don’t even want to read about you in the paper. ”
“It’s a simple investment matter.”
Magliore paused.
“No,” he said finally.
“This is something no one can ever touch you on,” he told Magliore. “I want to set up a . . . a trust fund for someone.”
“Your wife?”
“No. ”
“You stop by Tuesday,” Magliore said at last. “Maybe I’ll see you. Or maybe I’ll have better sense.”
He hung up.
Back in the living room, he thought of Olivia and of living-the two seemed constantly bound up together. He thought of GOING AWAY. He thought of Charlie, and he could 281
hardly remember Charlie’s face anymore, except in snapshot fashion. How could this be possibly happening, then?
With sudden resolution he got up, went to the phone, and turned to TRAVEL in the yellow pages. He dialed a number. But when a friendly female voice on the other end said, “Arnold Travel Agency, how may we help you?” he hung up and stepped quickly away from the phone, rubbing his hands together.