Страница 102 из 194
“It’s a stupid gesture,” Rudolph said.
“I’m a stupid man,” Thomas said. “I make stupid gestures. Take it. Now I’m rid of you.” He turned away from the bed and finished his drink in one gulp. “I’ll be going now.”
“Wait a minute. Sit down.” Rudolph pushed at his brother’s arms, feeling, even at that hurried touch, the ferocious power in them. “I don’t need it. I’m doing great. I just made a deal that’s going to make me a rich man, I …”
“I’m happy to hear it, but it’s beside the point.” Stonily, Thomas remained standing. “I want to pay off our fucking family and this does it.”
“I won’t take it, Tom. Put it in the bank for your kid, at least.”
“I’ll take care of my kid my own way, don’t you worry about that.” Now he sounded dangerous.
“It’s not mine,” Rudolph said helplessly. “What the hell am I going to do with it?”
“Piss on it. Blow it on dames. Give it to your favorite charity,” Thomas said. “I’m not walking out of this room with it.”
“Sit down, for Christ’s sake.” This time Rudolph pushed hard at his brother, edging him toward the armchair, risking the blow that could come at any moment. “I have to talk to you.”
Rudolph refilled Thomas’s glass and his own and sat across from his brother on a straight wooden chair. The window was open a little and the city wind entered in little gusts. The bills on the bed fluttered a little, like a small, complicated animal, shuddering. Both Thomas and Rudolph sat as far away from the bed as possible, as though the first one inadvertently to touch a bill would have to claim them all.
“Listen, Tom,” Rudolph began, “we’re not kids anymore, sleeping in the same bed, getting on each other’s nerves, competing with each other, whether we knew it or not. We’re two grown men and we’re brothers.”
“Where were you for ten years, Brother, you and Princess Gretchen?” Thomas said. “Did you ever send a postcard?”
“Forgive me,” Rudolph said. “And if you talk to Gretchen, she’ll ask you to forgive her, too.”
“If I see her first,” Thomas said, “she’ll never get a chance to get close enough to me to say hello.”
“Last night, watching you fight, made us realize,” Rudolph persisted. “We’re a family, we owe each other something …”
“I owed the family five thousand bucks. There it is, on the bed. Nobody owes anybody anything.” Thomas kept his head down, his chin almost on his chest.
“Whatever you say, whatever you think about the way I behaved all this time,” Rudolph said, “I want to help you now.”
“I don’t need any help.” Thomas drank most of his whiskey.
“Yes, you do. Look, Tom,” Rudolph said, “I’m no expert, but I’ve seen enough fights to have an idea of what to expect from a fighter. You’re going to get hurt. Badly. You’re a club fighter. It’s one thing to be the champ of the neighborhood, but when you go up against trained, talented, ambitious men—and they’re going to get better each time now for you—because you’re still on the way up—you’re going to get chopped to pieces. Aside from the injuries—concussions, cuts, kidneys—”
“I only have half hearing in one ear,” Thomas volunteered, surprisingly. The professional talk had drawn him out of his shell. “For more than a year now. What the hell, I’m not a musician.”
“Aside from the injuries, Tom,” Rudolph went on, “there’s going to come the day when you’ve lost more than you’ve won, or you’re suddenly all worn out and some kid will drop you. You’ve seen it dozens of times. And that’ll be the end. You won’t get a bout. How much money will you have then? How will you earn your living then, starting all over at thirty, thirty-five, even?”
“Don’t hex me, you sonofabitch,” Thomas said.
“I’m being realistic.” Rudolph got up and filled Thomas’s glass again, to keep him in the room.
“Same old Rudy,” Thomas said mockingly. “Always with a happy, realistic word for his kid brother.” But he accepted the drink.
“I’m at the head of a large organization now,” Rudolph said, “I’m going to have a lot of jobs to fill. I could find a place in it for you, a permanent place …”
“Doing what? Driving a truck at fifty bucks a week?”
“Better than that,” Rudolph said. “You’re no fool. You could wind up as a manager of a branch or a department,” Rudolph said, wondering if he was lying. “All it takes is some common sense and a willingness to learn.”
“I have no common sense and I’m not willing to learn anything,” Thomas said. “Don’t you know that?” He stood up. “I’ve got to get going now. I have a family waiting for me.”
Rudolph shrugged, looked across at the bills fluttering gently on the bedspread. He stood up, too.
“Have it your own way,” he said. “For the time being.”
“There ain’t no time being.” Thomas moved toward the door.
“I’ll come and visit you and see your kid,” Rudolph said. “Tonight? I’ll take you and your wife to di
“I say balls to that.” Thomas opened the door, stood there. “Come and see me fight sometime. Bring Gretchen. I can use fans. But don’t bother to come back to the dressing room.”
“Think everything over. You know where you can reach me,” Rudolph said wearily. He was unused to failure and it exhausted him. “Anyway, you might come up to Whitby and say hello to your mother. She asks about you.”
“What does she ask—have they hung him yet?” Thomas gri
“She says she wants to see you at least once more before she dies.”
“Maestro,” Thomas said, “the violins, please.”
Rudolph wrote down the Whitby address and the telephone number. “Here’s where we live, in case you change your mind.”
Thomas hesitated, then took the slip of paper and jammed it carelessly into his pocket. “See you in ten years, brother,” he said. “Maybe.” He went out and closed the door behind him. The room seemed much larger without his presence.
Rudolph stared at the door. How long can hatred last? In a family, forever, he supposed. Tragedy in the House of Jordache, now a supermarket. He went over to the bed and gathered up the bills and put them carefully into an envelope and sealed it. It was too late in the afternoon to put the money in the bank. He’d have to lock it in the hotel safe overnight.
One thing was certain. He was not going to use it for himself. Tomorrow he’d invest it in Dee Cee stock in his brother’s name. The time would come, he was sure, when Thomas could use it. And it would be a lot more than five thousand dollars by then. Money did not negotiate forgiveness, but it could be depended upon, finally, to salve old wounds.
He was bone tired, but sleep was out of the question. He got out the architect’s drawings again, grandiose imaginings, paper dreams, the hopes of years, imperfectly realized. He stared at the pencil lines that would be transformed within six months into the neon of the name of Calderwood, against the northern night. He grimaced unhappily.
The phone rang. It was Willie, buoyant but sober. “Merchant Prince,” Willie said, “how would you like to come down here and have di
“I’m sorry, Willie,” Rudolph said. “I’m busy tonight. I have a date.”
“Put it in once for me, Prince,” Willie said lightly. “See you soon.”
Rudolph hung up slowly. He would not see Willie soon, at least not for di
Look behind you, Willie, as you pass through doors.
Chapter 7
I
“My dear son,” he read, in the round schoolgirlish handwriting, “your brother Rudolph was good enough to provide me with your address in New York City and I am taking the opportunity to get in touch with my lost boy after all these years.”
Oh, Christ, he thought, another county heard from. He had just come in and had found the letter waiting for him on the table in the hallway. He heard Teresa clanging pots in the kitchen and the kid making gobbling sounds.