Rabbit At Rest

"Dad? What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"You sound so winded."

"I just came in. I thought you were your mother."

"Mom's been here. I'm still at the lot, she suggested I call you. I've got this great idea."

"I've heard it. You want to open a drug treatment center."

"Maybe some day down the road. But for now I think we should work on the lot as what it is. It looks great, by the way, with all those little Toyotas in those fu

"O.K., O.K., you're good to include me," Harry says.

"Last night I was out on the river, you know over where they have all these little river cottages with colored lights and porches and steps going down into the water?"

"I don't know, actually, I've never been there, but go on."

"Well, Pru and I were over there last night with Jason and Pam, you may have heard me mention them."

"Vaguely." All these pauses for confirmation, they are wearing Harry down. Why can't the kid just spit it out? Is his father such an ogre?

"Anyway this guy they know has one of these cottages, it was neat, the colored lights and music on the radios and up and down the river all these boats, people water skiing and all -"

"Sounds terrific. I hope. Jason and Pam don't belong to that old Lyle-Slim crowd."

"They knew 'em, but they're straight, Dad. They're even thinking of having a baby."

"If you're going to keep coke licked, you got to stay away from the old coke crowd."

"Like I said, they're real straight arrow. One of their best friends is Ron Harrison, Jr., the carpenter."

What is that supposed to mean? Does Nelson know about him and Thelma? "O.K., O.K.," Harry says.

"So we were sitting there on the porch and this fantastic thing goes by – a motorcycle on the water. They have different names for them – wet bikes, surf jets, jet skis -"

"Yeah, I've seen ' em in Florida, out on the ocean. They look unsafe."

"Dad, this was the best I ever saw – it went like a rocket. Just buzzed along. Jason said it's called a Yamaha Waveru

"Nelson. Wait. Don't talk so fast. What about Ma

"It isn't Ma

"I meant to say Arnold. The guy who looks like a pig in pajamas mincing around. I know who Arnold is. I don't care who he is, he or she for that matter, who heads the fucking service division, they're used to cars, big things with four wheels that run on gasoline instead of compressed water."

"They can adjust. People can adjust, if you're under a certain age. Anyway, Mom and I have already trimmed Service. We let go three mechanics, and are ru

"So?"

"What do you think of the Yamaha idea?"

"O.K., now remember. You asked. And I appreciate your asking. I'm touched by that, I realize you don't have to ask me anything, you and your mother have the lot locked up. But in answer to your question, I think it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Jet skis are a fad. Next year it'll be jet roller skates. The profit on a toy like a motorcycle or a snowmobile is maybe a tenth that on a solid family car – can you sell ten times as many? Don't forget, there's a Depression coming."

"Who says?"

"I say; everybody says! Everybody says Bush is just like Hoover. You're too young to remember Hoover."

"That was an inflated stock market. The market if anything is undersold now. Why would we have a Depression?"

"Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more! My image of this is you were sitting there on the porch of that shack with all these colored lights stoned on something or other and this thing buzzes by and you think, `Wow! Salvation!' You're almost thirtythree and you're still into toys and fads. You came back from that detox place stuffed full of good intentions and now you're getting rocks in the brain again."

There is a pause. The old Nelson would have combatted him with some childish defensive whining. But the voice on the other end of the line at last says, with a touch of the ministerial gravity and automated calm Rabbit had noticed at di

"It sounds to me like you did too much mystic meditation at that detox place."

"You say detox just to bug me. It was a treatment center, and then a halfway house for rehab. The detox part of it just takes a couple days. It's getting the relational poison out of your system that takes longer."

"Is that what I am to you? Relational poison?" Being snubbed by Ro

Again, Nelson is silent. Then: "Maybe, but not only. I keep trying to love you, but you don't really want it. You're afraid of it, it would tie you down. You've been scared all your life of being tied down."

Rabbit ca

"Oh," the boy says airily, "didn't Mom tell you? That's been settled. They've been paid. We took out a loan."

"A loan? Who would trust you?"

"Brewer Trust. A second mortgage on the lot property, it's worth at least half a million. A hundred forty-five, and they consolidated it with the seventy-five for Slims five cars, which will be coming back to us pretty much as a credit on the rolling inventory we were maintaining with Mid-Atlantic Motors. As soon as they took our inventory over to Rudy's lot, don't forget, they started owing us."

"And you're somehow going to pay back Brewer Trust selling water scooters?"