Rich Man, Poor Man

“Go to hell.” She hung up.

He waited for a moment, shaken. How could a girl be so … so decisive? “That’s fine, Julie,” he said into the dead phone. “See you tomorrow. ’Bye.” It was not a bad performance. He hung up.

“Here’s your drink,” Boylan called to him across the room. He made no comment on the telephone call.

Rudolph went over to him and took the glass. “Cheers,” Boylan said as he drank.

Rudolph couldn’t bring himself to say Cheers, but the drink warmed him and even the taste wasn’t too bad.

“First one of the day,” Boylan said, rattling the ice in his glass. “Thank you for joining me. I’m not a solitary drinker and I needed it. I had a boring afternoon. Please do sit down.” He indicated one of the big armchairs near the fire. Rudolph sat in it and Boylan stood to one side of the hearth, leaning against the mantelpiece. There was a Chinese clay horse on the mantelpiece, stocky and warlike-looking. “I had insurance people here all afternoon,” Boylan went on. “About that silly fire I had here on VE Day. Night, rather. Did you see the cross burn?”

“I heard about it,” Rudolph said.

“Curious that they should have picked my place,” Boylan said. “I’m not Catholic and I’m certainly not black or Jewish. The Ku Klux Klan up in these parts must be singularly misinformed. The insurance people keep asking me if I have any particular enemies. Perhaps you’ve heard something in town?”

“No,” Rudolph said carefully.

“I’m sure I have. Enemies, I mean. But they don’t advertise,” Boylan said. “Too bad the cross wasn’t nearer the house. It would be a blessing if this mausoleum burnt down. You’re not drinking your drink.”

“I’m a slow drinker,” Rudolph said.

“My grandfather built for eternity,” Boylan said, “and I’m living through it.” He laughed. “Forgive me if I talk too much. There’re so few opportunities of talking to anybody who has the faintest notion of what you’re saying around here.”

“Why do you live here, then?” Rudolph asked, youthfully logical.

“I am doomed,” said Boylan, with mock melodrama. “I am tied to the rock and the bird is eating my liver. Do you know that, too?”

“Prometheus.”

“Imagine. Is that school, too?”

“Yes.” I know a lot of things, mister, Rudolph wanted to say.

“Beware families,” Boylan said. He had finished his drink fast and he left the mantelpiece to pour another for himself. “You pay for their hopes. Are you family-ridden, Rudolph? Are there ancestors you must not disappoint?”

“I have no ancestors,” Rudolph said.

“A true American,” said Boylan. “Ah, the waders.”

Perkins was in the room, carrying a hip-length pair of rubber boots and a towel, and a pair of light-blue wool socks. “Just put everything down, please, Perkins,” Boylan said.

“Very good, sir.” Perkins put the waders within Rudolph’s reach and draped the towel over the edge of the armchair. He put the socks on the end table next to the chair.

Rudolph stripped off his socks. Perkins took them from him, although Rudolph had intended to put them in his pocket. He had no idea what Perkins could do with a pair of soggy patched cotton socks in that house. He dried his feet with the towel. The towel smelled of lavender. Then he drew on the socks. They were of soft wool. He stood up and pulled on the waders. There was a triangular tear at the knee of one of them. Rudolph didn’t think it was polite to mention it. “They fit fine,” he said. Fifty dollars. At least fifty dollars, he thought. He felt like D’Artagnan in them.

“I think I bought them before the war,” Boylan said. “When my wife left me, I thought I’d take up fishing.”

Rudolph looked over quickly to see if Boylan was joking, but there was no glint of humor in the man’s eyes. “I tried a dog for company. A huge Irish wolfhound. Brutus. A lovely animal. I had him for five years. We were inordinately attached to each other. Then someone poisoned him. My surrogate.” Boylan laughed briefly. “Do you know what surrogate means, Rudolph?”

The school-teacherly questions were a

“Of course,” said Boylan. He didn’t ask Rudolph to define it. “Yes, I must have enemies. Or perhaps he was just chasing somebody’s chickens.”

Rudolph took off the boots and held them uncertainly. “Just leave them anywhere,” Boylan said. “Perkins will put them in the car when I take you home. Oh, dear.” He had seen the rip in the boot. “I’m afraid they’re torn.”

“It’s nothing. I’ll have it vulcanized,” Rudolph said.

“No. I’ll have Perkins attend to it. He loves mending things.” Boylan made it sound as though Rudolph would be depriving Perkins of one of his dearest pleasures if he insisted upon mending the boot himself. Boylan was back at the bar table. The drink wasn’t strong enough for him and he added whiskey to his glass. “Would you like to see the house, Rudolph?” He kept using the name.

“Yes,” Rudolph said. He was curious to find out what an armory was. The only armory he had ever seen was the one in Brooklyn where he had gone for a track meet.

“Good,” Boylan said. “It may help you when you become an ancestor yourself. You will have an idea of what to inflict upon your descendants. Take your drink along with you.”

In the hall there was a large bronze statue of a tigress clawing the back of a water buffalo. “Art,” Boylan said. “If I had been a patriot I would have had it melted down for ca

The room was almost as big as the high school gymnasium. A huge crystal chandelier, draped in sheets, hung from the two-story-high ceiling. Only a few of the bulbs in the chandelier were working and the light through the muffling sheets was dusty and feeble. There were dozens of sheet-draped chairs around the painted wooden walls. “My father said his mother once had seven hundred people here. The orchestra played waltzes. Twenty-five pieces. Quite a club date, eh, Rudolph? You still play at the Jack and Jill?”

“No,” Rudolph said, “our three weeks are finished.”

“Charming girl, that little … what’s her name?”

“Julie.”

“Oh, yes, Julie. She doesn’t like me, does she?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Tell her I think she’s charming, will you? For what it’s worth.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Seven hundred people,” Boylan said. He put his arms up as though he were holding a partner and made a surprising little swooping waltz step. The whiskey sloshed over from his glass onto his hand. “I was in great demand at debutantes’ parties.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his hand. “Perhaps I’ll give a ball myself. On the eve of Waterloo. You know about that, too?”

“Yes,” Rudolph said. “Wellington’s officers. I saw Becky Sharp.” He had read Byron, too, but he refused to show off for Boylan.

“Have you read The Charterhouse of Parma?”

“No.”

“Try it, when you’re a little older,” Boylan said, with a last look around the dim ballroom. “Poor Stendhal, rotting in Civitavecchia, then dying unsung, with his mortgage on posterity.”

All right, Rudolph thought, so you’ve read a book. But he was flattered at the same time. It was a literary conversation.

“Port Philip is my Civitavecchia,” Boylan said. They were in the hall again and Boylan switched off the chandelier. He peered into the sheeted darkness. “The haunt of owls,” he said. He left the doors open and walked toward the rear of the house. “That’s the library,” he said. He opened a door briefly. It was an enormous room, lined with books. There was a smell of leather and dust; Boylan closed the door. “Bound sets. All of Voltaire. That sort of thing. Kipling.”

He opened another door. “The armory,” Boylan said, switching on the lights. “Everybody else would call it a gun room, but my grandfather was a large man.”