Rich Man, Poor Man

The harbor was silent, the lights out in most of the ships. He yawned, stretched, stood up. His body had gotten over feeling bruised and while he still limped, his leg had stopped feeling as though it was broken in half somewhere along the middle when he walked. He hadn’t made love to his wife since the fight and he was thinking that this might be a good night to start in again, when he saw the car without lights driving swiftly along the quay. The car stopped. It was a black DS 19. The two doors on his side opened and two men got out, then two more. The last man was Danovic, one arm in a sling.

If Kate hadn’t been aboard, he would have dived over the side and let them try to get him. But there was nothing for him to do but stand there. There was nobody on the boats on either side of him. Danovic remained on the quay, as the other three men came aboard.

“Well, gentlemen,” Thomas said, “what can I do for you?”

Then something hit him.

He came out of the coma only once. Wesley and Kate were in the hospital room with him. “No more …” he said, and then slipped back into the coma again.

Rudolph had called a brain specialist in New York and the specialist was on his way to Nice when Thomas died. The skull had been fractured, the surgeon had explained to Rudolph and there had been catastrophic bleeding.

Rudolph had moved Gretchen and Jean and Enid to a hotel. Gretchen had strict orders not to leave Jean alone for a minute.

Rudolph had told the police what he knew and they had talked to Jean, who had broken down hysterically after a half hour’s questioning. She had told them about La Porte Rose and they had picked up Danovic, but there had been no witnesses to the beating and Danovic had an alibi for the entire night that couldn’t be shaken.

VII

The morning after the cremation Rudolph and Gretchen went by taxi to the place and got the metal box with their brother’s ashes. Then they drove toward Antibes harbor, where Kate and Wesley and Dwyer were expecting them. Jean was at the hotel with Enid. It would have been too much for Kate to bear, Rudolph thought, to have to stand by Jean’s side today. And if Jean got drunk, Rudolph thought, she would finally have good reason to do so.

Gretchen now knew the true story of the wedding night, as did the others.

“Tom,” Gretchen said in the taxi, as they drove through the bustle of holiday traffic, “the one of us who finally made a life.”

“Dead for one of us who didn’t,” Rudolph said.

“The only thing you did wrong,” Gretchen said, “was not waking up one night.”

“The only thing,” Rudolph said.

After that they didn’t speak until they reached the Clothilde. Kate and Wesley and Dwyer, dressed in their working clothes, were waiting for them on the deck. Dwyer and Wesley were red eyed from crying, but Kate, although grave faced, showed no signs of tears. Rudolph came on board carrying the box and Gretchen followed him. Rudolph put the box in the pilot house and Dwyer took the wheel and started the one engine. Wesley pulled up the gangplank and then jumped ashore to throw off the two stern lines, which Kate reeled in. Wesley leaped across open water, landed catlike on the stern, and swung himself aboard, then ran forward to help Kate with the anchor.

It was all so routine, so much like every other time they had set out from a port, that Rudolph, on the after deck, had the feeling that at any moment Tom would come rolling out of the shadow of the pilot house, smoking his pipe.

The immaculate white-and-blue little ship chugged past the harbor mouth in the morning sunlight, only the two figures standing in incongruous black on the open deck making it seem any different from any other pleasure craft sailing out for a day’s sport.

Nobody spoke. They had decided what they were to do the day before. They sailed for an hour, due south, away from the mainland. Because they were only on one engine they did not go far and the coast line was clear behind them.

After exactly one hour, Dwyer turned the boat around and cut the engine. There were no other craft within sight and the sea was calm, so there wasn’t even the small sound of waves. Rudolph went into the pilot house, took out the box and opened it. Kate came up from below with a large bunch of white and red gladioli. They all stood in a line on the stern, facing the open, empty sea. Wesley took the box from Rudolph’s hands and, after a moment’s hesitation, his eyes dry now, started to strew his father’s ashes into the sea. It only took a minute. The ashes floated away, a faint sprinkling of dust on the blue glint of the Mediterranean.

The body of their father, Rudolph thought, also rolled in deep waters.

Kate threw the flowers in with a slow, housewifely gesture of her round, ta

Wesley tossed the metal box and its cover over the side, both face down. They sank immediately. Then Wesley went to the pilot house and started the engine. They were pointed toward the coast now and he held a straight course for the mouth of the harbor.

Kate went below and Dwyer went forward to stand in the prow, leaving Gretchen and Rudolph, death colored, together on the after deck.

Up in the bow, Dwyer stood in the little breeze of their passage, watching the coast line, white mansions, old walls, green pines, grow nearer in the brilliant light of the morning sun.

Rich man’s weather, Dwyer remembered.

Turn the page to start reading the follow-up to Rich Man, Poor Man

CHAPTER 1

FROM BILLY ABBOTT’S NOTEBOOK—

I AM WORTHLESS, MONIKA SAYS. SHE SAYS IT ONLY HALF-SERIOUSLY. MONIKA, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS NOT DEMONSTRABLY WORTHLESS. BEING IN LOVE WITH HER UNDOUBTEDLY CLOUDS MY VISION OF HER. MORE ABOUT THAT LATER.

SHE ASKED ME ONCE WHAT I WRITE IN THIS NOTEBOOK. I TOLD HER THAT THE COLONEL KEEPS SAYING WE HERE IN NATO ARE ON THE FIRING LINE OF CIVILIZATION. IT IS IMPORTANT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS, I TOLD HER, TO KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ON THE FIRING LINE OF CIVILIZATION IN BRUSSELS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. MAYBE SOME DUSTY, IRRADIATED SCHOLAR WILL DIG AROUND IN THE RUINS OF THE CITY AND COME UPON THIS NOTEBOOK, CHARRED A LITTLE AROUND THE EDGES AND PERHAPS STIFF WITH THE RUSTY STAINS OF MY BLOOD, AND BE GRATEFUL TO WM. ABBOTT, JUNIOR, FOR HIS FORETHOUGHT IN JOTTING DOWN HIS OBSERVATIONS OF HOW THE SIMPLE AMERICAN SOLDIER LIVED WHILE DEFENDING CIVILIZATION ON THE EDGE OF EUROPE. WHAT THE PRICE OF OYSTERS WAS, THE SHAPE AND DIMENSIONS OF HIS BELOVED’S BREASTS, HIS SIMPLE PLEASURES, LIKE FUCKING AND STEALING GASOLINE FROM THE ARMY, THINGS LIKE THAT.

MONIKA SAID, DID I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE FRIVOLOUS? AND I SAID, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO BE?

DON’T YOU BELIEVE IN ANYTHING? SHE ASKED ME.

I BELIEVE IN NOT BUCKING THE TIDE, I TOLD HER. IF THERE’S A PARADE GOING DOWN THE STREET I FALL IN LINE AND KEEP STEP, WAVING TO THE POPULACE, FRIEND AND FOE ALIKE.

GO BACK TO YOUR SCRIBBLING, SHE SAID. WRITE DOWN THAT YOU’RE NOT A TRUE REPRESENTATIVE OF YOUR GENERATION.

SCRIBBLING PERHAPS IS THE WORD FOR WHAT I’M DOING. I COME FROM A LITERARY FAMILY. BOTH MY MOTHER AND FATHER ARE—OR WERE—WRITERS. OF A SORT. MY FATHER WAS A PUBLIC RELATIONS MAN, A MEMBER OF A PROFESSION NOT HELD IN PARTICULARLY HIGH ESTEEM IN THE HALLS OF ACADEME OR IN PUBLISHERS’ OFFICES. STILL, WHATEVER THE MERITS OR FAILURES THAT CAN BE PUT TO HIS ACCOUNT, HE ACHIEVED THEM AT A TYPEWRITER. HE LIVES IN CHICAGO NOW AND WRITES ME OFTEN, ESPECIALLY WHEN HE IS DRUNK. I REPLY DUTIFULLY. WE ARE GREAT FRIENDS WHEN WE ARE FOUR THOUSAND MILES APART.