Chapter 1
A fortnight on and the sale of the pretty things of Mr. Geoffrey Durant-Dupont was to take place in the clubhouse at Summerfield Estates. The Big Event itself, of course, had to wait while the dawn finished pleasantly pinking things up. But the sunrise this particular morning lacked even a versicle of poetry, since our dear town of Merryweather had been on its tenth day of a triple-digit sizzlefest and in that hour of lightlessness between a sticky summer darkness and a preheated sunrise, a dusty pink murk was sitting over the town, until the sun cut up from the east like a slice of a particularly gory blood orange floating above its rosy domain.
Ms. Marjorie Mayfield, meanwhile, was on her morning jog, sweating along and looking as if trying to shrink down into her running outfit, all while loping coyotes criss-crossed her path at some distance before and behind her. Of course, with the paranoia of the apex predator, she is thinking sourly about the Marco and Michael’s sale. Still, she forced herself to lug along the familiar boulevard bordering the Lowland Heights Golf Club, where a few crepuscular duffers were honing their swings in the half-light, and thence down the hill (hard on the knees) to Summerfield Estates itself. By now the sun, sitting well above the east like a cut-out of yellow construction paper glued onto the sky, was sending out fresh waves of balmy discomfort. But scorning the stuffy, gritty air of dawn, Marjorie jogged on through the gates of Summerfield, happily letting the mermaid-and-Japanese-crane fountain douse her before reveling in the shade of the sycamores up the main drive. Her trek came to its end as she finally tramped like a marathoner around Sandra Circle, stumbled to a stop outside of the clubhouse, and found herself on the fringes of a sizable crowd of other sweaty folk. All of them were the picture of long-suffering, fanning themselves with glossy P&P flyers, while many more splashed themselves with tepid water from the second crane-and-mermaid fountain. If not precisely teeming or numberless, this human herd was respectable in number and already making an impatient press toward the clubhouse. (Maybe they just wanted to enjoy the air conditioning.)
But before things got ugly (at which point Marjorie would start giggling with joy), out from the clubhouse stepped Marco, shirted this time in chiffon green and his hair greased to a practically metallic glare. With that showmanship curiously innate in the not-very-tall, he set bottled water in an ice-filled cooler down next to the door, then began reading from a handheld device the names of those who had e-mailed for a place in line; and following an orderly queueing up of these aficionados of technology, he read from a clipboard which served the same purpose for those who had simply shown up and scratched their names on to paper, and these added themselves to the choo-choo train of shoppers. Then Marco opened the doors of the clubhouse and the head of the queue wound its millipede way within as Marco with raised hand counted off loudly until he reached twenty-five. At this traditional customer cut-off, he lowered his hand and followed his shoppers within like a caboose. The doors closed behind him like the garden gate of Eden, as the scathing sun hovered above, an angel with sword aflame.
While the temporarily damned attacked the bottled water, Marjorie slipped on a pair of sunglasses and snuggled into place among the remaining shoppers. But as she stood dripping away with perspiration and craving a spacious bowl of red-clover-honey-sweetened Greek yogurt with raw-sugared lemon rind, she saw that there was no way to force her way in. So, she set to rummaging through her brain for Another Way In, she remembered a service door, dutifully shut but usually not locked by this time of day, hard by the blocky air conditioner around the back. So, cocking her ear for the hum of the great box and the blowing of hot air, Marjorie broke off from the herd.
But before she could round the corner of the clubhouse, up to almost the very doors of the building and screeching to a halt, drove a sports car either teal blue or kingfisher green, a two-seater of very obscure make.(Marjorie made out the name Lombardi across its petite trunk.)Its experiment in velocity, out from it stepped a pair of elderly men, both wearing aviator glasses reflecting the stares of the nonplussed crowd about them. The first man, coming from the passenger’s side, was tallish, pale in the lemon-sour sunshine, superciliously upright in a seersucker jacket and slacks, his face defended from the caddish, curious sun by a Panama hat. The second man, the driver, was shorter but solidly composed, his white hair cropped like a front lawn after the first frost, and wearing a freshly-laundered sweat suit of royal blue, its white piping bleached to the snowy brilliance of seven-minute frosting and marked in flaking blocky letters ROMA MCMLX.
From her outlier vantage, Marjorie recognized the pair without recalling their names or any details other than that they were both circling eighty. (Again, Marjorie Mayfield knew of everyone at Summerfield, at least by sight.)
The short man in the sweat suit marched to the trunk of the car, held his open palm to it to demonstrate to the tallish fellow in seersucker What Must Be Done. He assented, walking like a venerable schoolboy to the indicated boot, opened it with a press of a practically-unseen button on its face, lifted out a sizable cardboard crate, and carried it toward the clubhouse. The other man, meanwhile, having closed the trunk, bent back into the little scarab-like car and took out two Pekingese, very tidily clipped with fresh coiffures, and installed under each arm a dog, muzzle-forward, like the wheezing, flat-faced ends of a hairy life-preserver. Joining the refugee from a Barbados veranda at the clubhouse doors, he and the other man entered to nary a word of protest from the dehydrating masses still without.
With this bizarre twosome gone, Marjorie went on with her mission, taking to the cement walk about the building, rounding one corner and then another, and reached the service door. Yes, indeed it was unlocked, ready for any crafty lady to slip through.
On her way into the community room, Marjorie quickly pilfered a janitor’s smock from an obliging service closet. Having zipped it up over her person (only just—those janitors certainly came small, she thought), she passed through a second service door and quietly introduced herself like an invasive species into the delicate ecosystem which was the maiden venture of P&P Estate Sales.
Like the motherly hyena watching the jackals and Marabou storks having a sumptuous go at a festering wildebeest, Marjorie slavered in resentment at what she beheld. In the little time that had passed since the opening of the doors, the pace and rhythm of the sale had already reached a fine mercantile froth, like a crock of raspberry jam boiling up in magenta foam. About her emanated the minor-key chatter of the faithless customers who should be devotedly patronizing her sale across town, but Marjorie charitably chose to spare these traitors—for now. The wares for sale were arrayed on two dozen tables about the edges of the capacious room (Marjorie thought that an arrangement of the tables in aisles would have better suggested “shopping”—Typical rookie mistake, she sniffed.)But as she took in this acreage of antiques and vintage what-nots, Marjorie thought, just how many punchbowls, napkin holders, cake pedestals, salt cellars, tea balls, malachite-handled letter-openers, and porcelain sauce-boats the size of a dinghy did anyone really need? One bank of tables, glaringly arrayed with entire squadrons of china, might have been straight out of a technicolor wedding reception circa 1955 and she would not have been surprised to see Jane Wyman and Agnes Morehead poking about the tureens, fingerbowls, and oyster spoons for some little thing for Sandra Dee.(In fact, Marjorie did overhear a lady with a head of white hair like cotton-candy heatedly chiding an affianced member the younger generation through her flip-phone, “You get here now, young lady. And bring the flatbed. No.No—And do not think that I’m going to spring for invitations telling people to go to the bridal registry at Walmart. And yes, you do need a runcible spoon.”) Marjorie was quite sure that this enthusiast was what her colleague “Doogle” Hanson would term a ’plant,’ a loud-mouthed agent provocateur tasked with ginning up the uncertain and vacillating by casting abroad the word that any of this porcelain twaddle was worth anything.
Not that all the items resonated within the Emily Post/Amy Vanderbilt oscillation field. On one table, in crates on their ends, politely awaiting a new home, stood uncountable editions of Horizon (indulgently priced at $5.00 for the lot.) (Marjorie clucked to herself, “Oh, boys, no one reads anymore. They stare at tiny screens.”)On a second was gathered a battalion of bronze figures, a stable of reproduction T’ang horses, a Basque butcher’s machete still stained with blood, begonia-leaf ash-trays (several sizes), a family of Edwardian dolls, and a military crate full of suspicious scaly metal ovoids paint-stenciled Danĝero—neplodigitaj granatoj (courtesy of that Esperantist terror cell we all read about in History class.)Marjorie had her doubts that any of these museum pieces would move. Just because the seller likes something does not mean that the sellee will take a shine to it. Where were the half-empty tubs of petroleum jelly, the throw pillows with the waxy government inspection tags, the scores of classical music and nature sounds CDs, the room of Christmas decorations, the shoebox full of bifocals and rectangular magnifying glasses, the nested soufflé dishes, the rainbow artisanal soap, the metric wrench set, the ubiquitous commemorative book about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and the plastic zip-bag of old matchbooks? That is what the public expects.
But putting aside her veteran’s critique, she craned her neck to make out the crafty movements of her competitors. Like a silent-movie mechanic moving from gear to gear, oiling and inspecting, squirting and polishing, Marco mingled among the masses, working the room. Michael, bent over and quiet, was at the till tapping on a calculator, his eyes darting here and there through those telescopic glasses. Hard by him sat the “nicest things” in a glass case. (The pilferers and bargain-hunters were always eyeing the counter staff for fatigue before going in for the kill.)
At this point Marjorie caught sight behind the sales counter of a massive screen over which rippled invitingly benign images in a montage like a movie trailer: a happy she-shopper, her visage a mask of joy, for her quest for that 1923 pickle crock, the perfect oddment for the beach house, has ended at last; two other women (suspiciously resembling Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart) embrace when they encounter one another at a P&P estate sale; a slender young father with a wisp of dark beard holds his biracial child up to an ornate picture on a wall—and of course the tike reaches to it in wonder at its fanciness; then an elderly couple finds a box of old 78 records and begins to dance in a sweet bubble of nostalgia to the smiles of the other shoppers.
Way too much, Marjorie thought. All she wanted at this point was a decent, commonsensical fifty-cent half-used box of anti-nausea medication, but if it was anywhere in this off-Broadway production of Sotheby’s: The Musical she very much doubted.
She sought a bit of sanctuary by shuffling over to the outsized gas fireplace, but any peace evaded her when she saw with a start on the fireplace mantle a framed photograph of the recently-departed Mrs. Paula Paglia. Plainly in homage, its frame was unevenly crowned with dusty silk dahlias and ivy from the craft store and across the bottom was taped a hand-drawn placard of white cardboard reading, “Doing what she Loved,” which Marjorie guessed was a euphemism for “She died doing what she Loved.” This was courtesy of Connie, no doubt.
At this point, she heard louder voices piercing the hubbub of the polite feeding frenzy about her. She saw by the till the tallish man in the seersucker suit still holding the mysterious box, with the sapphire-clad junior college wrestling coach next to him. He was dramatically holding forth to young Marco. With the lightbulb of inspiration warming the crown of her head, Marjorie slunk closer to overhear what she might.
The tallish old man was explaining to the dessert-green master of the revels (i.e., Marco), “I shook the tree to get as many overripe fruits as possible to drop in, for moral support, at least." He turned to the man beside him with an intimate lilt. “I called Felipe’s daughter to order him to appear, but she concocted some tepid excuse about his being under the weather. Something about the ICU.I told her, they do make portable respirators." The other man grunted. “Using post-operative complications as an excuse to dodge a social obligation. The end is near.”At this point the tall man deposited on to the table before the till the box. He went on, “Apparently, I gave you a wrong box to sell by accident." This latter modification was meant for the second man. “Apparently, I cast Andreas’ pearls before the swine of the buying public.”
Marco opened the box (at this Michael stood up, undiplomatically ignoring the customer with debit card at the ready, to stare at what was coming to light) and he drew out for quick assessment several old books, like refugees from the reading room of a Victorian men’s club.(Michael sat back down and took the plastic money from the customer—Valuating old tomes was not his forte.)Marco read off of the spine of one, “The French Revolution, Carlyle,” and as he opened the marbled cover his eyes redoubled in roundness and awe.“1837.”
The tallish man raised a hand in dismissal. "I do not care whether the old Presbyterian did bounce grandfather on his knee. There is not one mention of the Martyrs of Compiègne. And what is this nonsense about ‘Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves?’ I say, be gone! But, we will carry off that one...” and he pointed to another box, yet untouched amid the copies of Horizon.
The second man took the Pekingese from under his beefy upper arms and gave them to the first, who took them with the forbearance of a husband taking two purses from his wife. Unburdened, Man № 2 retrieved the box and returned with to the till. Out of curiosity, Marco made an exploratory probe of its contents, only to discover with wide and semi-embarrassed eyes that this was a trove of dated publications redolent hair tonic, with titles such as Physique Pictorial, Tomorrow’s Man, Grecian Guild Pictorial, and (for variety) Motor Design Digest (1959 Yearbook.)
“Testaments to a bygone era, my boys,” the tallish man held forth. “Nary a steroid nor tanning bed nor runny tattoos to be found. Fresh air and mother’s cooking. Not that my mother cooked, which could explain my physical collapse." He scanned the room and forlornly watched his possessions fall to his neighbors. “Ah, goodbye, my treasures. Well, young man, I will be sure to find you a little vin de marché from the cellar to anoint this transaction. But we must return to our lair before Una and Olga overheat…” With this he transferred the little panting dogs to the second man as their dainty pink tongues with gratitude tasted the air-conditioned atmosphere about them. “Besides, the Gymnastics Channel is broadcasting their Olympics tryouts retrospective and Andi needs his dose of Yuri Van Gelder.”
“Fabian Hambeuchen, mein Herr,” the second corrected him.
“Ever the German. And I’m making bouillon des escargots this evening and that calf’s head in the car will not keep in this heat. But one more turn about the room, just to reflect on a few happy memories—but what other kind can you have with a runcible spoon? Good luck, my lads. Let us be on the move, Andi. I think my Tom Collins is wearing off.”
So, whistling Poulenc, he took up the misappropriated box and turned about like a weathercock to tour the room, the second man defending his flanks, with double-barreled toy breeds at the ready (although to Marjorie, from her secret vantage point, it looked as if this one had not yet cooled off.)
With the patrons of the sale safely out of range, Marjorie seized the moment and wound her way around a few desultory shoppers to show herself before Marco, who himself pulled back in unprofessional surprise. But collecting himself, he rallied for a brief back-and-forth with this force of nature.
In a neat sing-song of falsity, Marjorie said, “I just wanted to come by for the maiden voyage, like any good fairy godmother. I should have bought a casserole, I know, but I am sure that you’re too busy to eat. You know, I’ve been reading Frances Mayes—or is it Peter Mayles? One of those people. I just cannot put it down. You know, your people are so bound to the rhythms of the land. Americans need to do more with local stone and fennel seed.”
“Actually,” said Marco, “I thought of building a cabin.”At hearing this until-now unvoiced dreamy plan, Michael at the till looked up at him like a black-footed ferret out of the prairie but Marco gave his cohort a microscopic shake of the head to allay any fears.
“Well, there you go,” rubberstamped Marjorie, still dribbling joy. "So, the sale’s going well, I see. Just wait until you do a hoarder’s sale and someone sues you after they step into a box of old syringes. Not that I’ve ever seen that happen. But it is all part of the fun, isn’t it? You know, Marco, I couldn’t help overhearing: the client, he’s still alive?” Marco nodded. “So, this isn’t really an estate sale.”She leaned into him and whispered as if slipping him the plans for Canada’s invasion of Mexico. "My colleague, Doogle Hanson, he would call this kind of ‘sale’ a ‘trap’.While there are those who would, I for one would never report you to the ethics committee.”
“Ethics committee?” Marco asked with a granule of concern.
Smelling the vapor of fear, Marjorie raised a warning finger. “I’m surprised that Tom at the mall didn’t take you two aside and have ‘the talk’ about the ethics committee. But, then, you know about Tom.”
At this point, Michael lightly coughed and at Marco’s glance at him, he gave his head a mute shake.
But she carried on, unaware that she was humming a lullaby to the comatose. "It’s out there, unseen, until it strikes. I survived one go-around with them, but only just. And I just thought that I was doing ‘the right thing’ in my early days and that ‘no one would notice.’ A word to the wise. That’s all I’m saying." And nodding steadily with her eyes fixed like gunsights upon him, she dropped back into the customers with their panettone molds, mounted eland horns, and mid-century staplers, until with a final nod and a tight, knowing smile, she turned away, reveling in the warm feeling percolating through her tissues that she made a blow against the younger generation.
But before she could reach the back door of the community room and make her escape, she caught sight of Connie having an unhappy moment. Standing by the picture of Paula Paglia on the fireplace mantle, she was still dressed for tennis, but now in black, a sort of latter-day Wimbledon widow’s weeds: an inky top, and a finely pleated skirt of dark hue. Her visor was black as well, an enshrouding veil—at a stretch.
Looking up and seeing Marjorie, Connie sniffed, “Poor Mrs. Paglia.”
Marjorie knew her part. She blinked a few times, tightened her mouth, muttered something unintelligible and commiserating, and leaned in with a comforting hand. But knowing that Something More was expected, she asked, “Did you put this up for her?” meaning the photo and its rough dusty halo of bogus blossoms.
Connie nodded, then carried on pouring out the honey and gall. "I think that she was the first resident here—except for that one fellow, the old lawyer, I forget his name.But she knew Sam Summerfield. And now—I can’t bear it—poor Dr. Davenport’s gone, too.”
“Oh, you mentioned him before, didn’t you?” Marjorie asked in a convincing show of ersatz ignorance.
“We just got the news yesterday. I wish I had a picture of him to put up, too. He helped so many people here.”
“But, what happened? No, no, I don’t want to know.”
Connie was too entwined in the sagas of the dead to hearken to the wishes of the living. “Well, the best the police can figure out is that someone sent him a letter bomb. It was all over in a second, they said.”
“Oh, no,” breathed Marjorie and brought a few fingertips to her lips to conceal her glee. She would definitely patronize that courier service again.
Connie let out an amorphous noise, part sigh, part sob, part whimper. “And now poor Roger’s taken a turn for the worse.”
But before Marjorie could ask about the exact state of poor Roger’s health, Connie put together a show of all-American grit, sopped the inky streams of running mascara down her face, sniffed with determination as if trying to trap a little happiness, and asked with a newfound surprise, “Marjorie: why in the world are you dressed up like one of the janitors?”
“A little volunteering once a week. It’s my way of giving back. I leaned my broom down somewhere around here.”
“I think that’s wonderful. Well,” Connie sniffed, wiping her eyes a final time, “I guess I should take a look and see what they have here. Some of the things looks pretty nice.”
Marjorie deftly wrapped the other woman in a half-embrace. “You know, Connie, shopping should never replace a good cry. And you know, too, geriatric shopping addiction is the latest concern of the American Psychological Association. And besides, I don’t think your conscience would let you buy anything here. I don’t want to tell tales out of school...”
“Oh, no more bad news. Roger’s just broken up about Dr. Davenport.”
“It was his time. I just wanted to say, you know that that poor old man—” She indicated with a discreet wave of the index finger the first of the old pair still moving from table to table with their Pekingese.
“Oh, Geoff,” said Connie.
“Whatever he calls himself. You know that he has…” she mouthed the word “…dementia.” Connie brought a pitying hand up to her own mouth and Marjorie nodded somberly. “Those boys are simply taking advantage of his senility to cash in. Young people these days do not have any of the good values that you and I grew up with.”
Connie sniffed despairingly and with a hopeless wave of the hand muttered, “I can’t, I just can’t, Marjorie,” and she made for the television room, probably to watch the Saturday marathon of McMillan and Wife on the Romance Channel, Marjorie guessed.
With that, Marjorie trotted on toward her escape hatch, knowing that any victory this morning was for a battle, not the war, and she had done right by Marjorie Mayfield Estate Sales. She had produced pained indulgence, professional contempt, feigned concern, and surreptitious agitprop, her version of chemical warfare. (She had seen a documentary about that on the Death Channel last Christmas Eve while finishing off a half-pint of Santa’s Little Helper Peppermint Swirl.)
But turning back to look one last lingering time, she caught sight of a disturbing interchange at the other side of the room.
That Marco was talking with a middle-aged woman, whom Marjorie knew. She knew her, she knew her, she knew her…But from where? Ah, yes, her mind hissed, her memory showing itself like a snake from its hole: That woman was Patty Paglia, the daughter or daughter-in-law, something like that, of Paula Paglia. And she was taking a business card from Marco—and that Firenze fashionisto was tapping her contact information into his handheld device with a smile and a flirtatious inclination in her direction. The shamelessness of it all, inhaled Marjorie, as if she were watching a trench-coated lecher dispensing sugar-free candy to obese children.
She growled through grinding teeth. “Old Lady Paglia is mine,” and that snake in her brain, doing double duty as memory and malice, grew, branching into a hydra, with plans, schemes, plots, and generic foul skullduggery shuffled out on to the stage of her brain like bounty-hunters dragging their chainsaws, bazookas, and trained wild pigs along to the interview.(The mental creativity of Marjorie Mayfield was multidimensional and if she had her way, that little interloper Marco could die painfully and slowly several times over.)
But even as Marjorie mentally inked out ignominious and unattractive ends for her competitors, her sight suddenly became clean and clear, like a summer twilight after warm winds have blown away the smoke of wildfires. She heard herself saying aloud, “You know, Marjorie, maybe this is their time. You were a young slip of a thing once, all smiles and dreams. These boys will find their niche, just like you did. You know, I remember,” (at this point, Marjorie was tinkling the ivories for some phantom in her brain) “when I first came on the scene, Depression glass was all the rage and you could never compete against Hannah’s House of Glass. Until that sad accident. They never did discover, just who’d loosened the tie rod ends in her van, after she hurtled over that embankment. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this game.”
At which, she heard another voice, this one about as lively as melting slush. "We think perhaps, you are too large for this game, Mrs. Marjorie.”
She looked up and beheld Dmitri (and a couple of his goons in the background).He was squinting tiny-eyed down at her.
At this point she felt their strong hands upon her, heard the opening of a nearby door, and realized that, first of all, she was being hauled out of the building and, secondly, was being hurtled through the back doors of a sizable vehicle of dark depths and cavernous dimensions.
Marjorie landed with a thigh-bruising bang on to a metal floor as the doors behind her closed, with the rattle of clamps, hooks, deadbolts, latchbolts, and auxiliary latches all shifting efficiently into place. She knew that she was not leaving any time soon.
In the dark of this mobile holding tank, Marjorie thought that she felt whistling over her face the wicked white winds of a wide winter wasteland. She certainly heard the panting of sweaty goons immediately at her ears. Right then, bulbs glowed to life about her, although these did not so much give light as push the gloom aside. But there was enough light to see Dmitri pointing to opposite end of this mobile abattoir.
Staring into the depths, Marjorie found forming out of the abyss a fairly disturbing image: a gilt throne where sat a fellow who would impress anyone as a kind of industrial Mr. Rogers. Frighteningly severe, the lines of his face gritty as if stained with metal filings, he wore a Greek fisherman’s cap about whose edges showed thick white hair with an almost yellow sheen, a gray cardigan over a gray checked shirt buttoned all the way to the collar and at the wrists (Marjorie was sure this was to hide his thick bestial pelt of hair and dragon scales), as well as gray pleated pants and black shoes with Velcro straps. If Dmitri and his cohorts were geologic, this fellow was monumental, something discovered by an archaeologist in a lost Tibetan valley: a pyroclastic god of destruction enthroned after the toxic fumes had blown on, things had cooled off, and all the local fauna had been well-preserved as fossils several feet underneath.
Beside him on the metal floor slinked a young woman, swarthy, of Central Asian extraction no doubt, her hair like the darkest silk of far Cathay. At the sight of this love-toy, Marjorie drew up her chin(s) and pressed back her shoulders and the two women eyed one another with those glances, squints, and venomous darts delivered which comprise in the female of the species a secondary language of curses, disdain, and fang-toothed warnings.(Marjorie, though, accented her glance with a small finchy smile that suggested the condolence, “Well, sweetie, at least I am not chained to the floor.”)
Marjorie opened the negotiations. “Milosh, it’s been too long.”
“Mrs. Marjorie,” he responded, his voice like gray uncased sausage meat oozing all over the floor.“I trust that your delivery into our presence has not been injurious to your body.”
“Not at all. I guess this is a case of bringing Marjorie to the mountain, eh?”
“You are like the ‘skin-of-pig’ manipulated by contestants in American football.”
“It is such a thrill to be the object of so much masculine attention.”
“A steady diet of cabbage and root vegetables makes northern man strong. But, I must make comment on your appearance: you are wearing smock of custodial worker.”
“Slimming, isn’t it?” Marjorie asked with a few poses to generate an admiring reaction.
Milosh said nothing.
“This is my new uniform,” Marjorie proceeded undaunted, “for my second job so that I can rake in the bucks and get you your money as quickly as possible.”
“Unfortunately,” Milosh mournfully announced, “your quickness has been too slow, Mrs. Marjorie." Marjorie with an expression of surprise drew back, but not too far back since Dmitri & Co. were still there in their capacity as rock wall. Their master asked, “How much do you owe to Milosh?”
“You know, why should numbers interfere with a solid working relationship?”
Now Milosh smiled. "Yes, no need to state obvious. It is curious habit of American people that they do not discuss democracy, religion, and money, all of which they seem to hold so dear to heart.”
“When in Rome...”
“Therefore, we will not mention quantities, other than to remind you a final time that this money will come to Milosh or Milosh will visit Marjorie for one last occasion.”
“Well, no need to make me the center of your social life. After all, I am still raking it in. And if you could, please remember that there are a couple more fish in the pond these days.”
“You speak of these sensitive but efficient young persons fired by American capitalism, Marko and Mikhail?”
“Fresh meat, naïve,” she sighed dismissively. “Green, that is the best that I can say.”
Milosh suggested, “The dramaturge-author of play Othello speaks of the monster with green eyes. Are your eyes green, Mrs. Marjorie?”
“Only when I wear my colored contacts. I think they call the shade nephrite.”
Milosh made a sound between a chuckle and chortle, then resuming his gravity waved a monarchial hand, and the slinky girl chained by him rolled around and retrieved a file from behind his throne. He flipped through its loose sheets within with a long sighing breath. He handed one sheet to Marjorie and asked, “Who is this Earth Mother?" He handed her a gritty photo of shady provenance.
Recognizing herself and recalling that visit to Sundae Best in Alder Creek Flats Village off of the interstate, Marjorie admitted, “As surveillance photos go, pretty darn unflattering.”
“And another." Marjorie was treated to another slice of her life, not necessarily suitable for framing, but showing her accurately enough exiting from Glenda’s Gourmet Cones in the Lewis-and-Clark Lofts “small mall” downtown. “Oh, we know this also as Mrs. Marjorie. Here is a ‘snap’ worthy of camera of Sir Cecil Beaton...”This one Milosh simply held up towards her, pinched between two fingers as if it were a nice sheet of tripe ready for the stewpot. “We see Mrs. Marjorie at recent sale with duration of three days, where she sells off ill-gotten goods to other unsuspecting old people.”
“I would debate the point that I am ‘old.’”
“And we see here...”
“I think that we’ve seen enough. I’m a quick study.” She went on to venture light-heartedly, “What I gather is that you know where I go and that you can get me any time you like. Ease and convenience are true American traits. But I must say your restraint and sense of mercy are admirable—the signs of a deep, deep character.”
“In dictionary of Milosh, word deep is always next to word hole." At this Milosh raised his hand again, exposing 1/8th of an inch of wrist and Marjorie, wanting to make a game out of her last moments, craned her neck to see whether there really was a greasy, swinish hide under that sub fusc polyester. But as he dropped his limb, Marjorie, if not seeing her entire life pass unrepentantly before her eyes, experienced again that sensation of being seized and hurtled through the air, only in reverse, as the back doors of the van gaped open and Dmitri and his fellows tossed her out on to a grassy median.
To an ostinato of locks and bolts tumbling, turning, and clicking into place, Marjorie discovered that she had been dumped one mere block away from the clubhouse, which was still in sight. She watched with relief as the van with its ogrish crew circled away around the clubhouse—until the same malevolent Milosh-mobile suddenly circled back and screeched to an ominous stop back in front of her.
Its doors gaped back open and out spilled Dmitri and his goons like a pile of masonry.Once more they laid their hands on her and in a rerun of manhandling, slamming doors, and the securing of locks that rang with a decidedly underworld finality, Marjorie found herself again before Milosh, the space between them, like the gory sand between a gladiatrix and a testy emperor.
He was not a happy man.Leaning terribly towards her like an idol breaking off its base to crush its worshipper, he bellowed at her, “Кто же этот человек? [1] ”
Unfamiliar with this collection of sounds, but which sounded to Marjorie like the sonorous iron echoes of ancient bells across a fearful land, she cautiously shrugged her shoulders, grinned dumbly, and offered empty upraised hands.
With a snort of flame and smoke, he broke his message into manageable earfuls, as if Marjorie were a tiny child needing to ingest her lessons through the ears.
He began, “Who...” like an owl overcoming a bout of pneumonia.
He then proceeded to, “...is...” that short word transmogrifying into a buzz-saw blade clawing its way towards her.
Then he dispensed, “...that...” his tongue reminiscent of the same on a statue of Kali-Ma, on the look-out for a fresh head to add to her necklace.
And finally, his mouth gaping like a cave and his swollen pinkish uvula shaking like a prehistoric bat, he roared out, “...man?!”
Again, Marjorie could only offer a dumb look.At this, Milosh swiped a hand down through the air and Dmitri and his close companions gripped Marjorie from behind.They rotated her 45◦ to the right, so that she found herself facing a window of smoky glass which she had not noticed before—although when one is in the mode of fight-or-flight, little details like black windows in the shadows escape notice.
Through it, Marjorie could see any number of people, some male, some female, walking along the sidewalks of Summerfield beside the van, all coming and going about the clubhouse with fresh antiques and empty debit cards.Just to play along, Marjorie tried to examine with a little objectivity these people, to find who might be “that man” after whom the old bear was so aggressively inquiring.
Milosh, meanwhile, was fuming like a volcano and spitting out, “Гитлеровец!” and “Фашист! [2] ”
Craning of the neck toward her host, Marjorie asked, “Who are we looking for?”
But Milosh could only point his hand with frenetic imprecision toward the windows.After a few more invectives like shrapnel at Stalingrad, Dmitri and the lads pushed Marjorie against the glass for a better look.(This did nothing to improve her perception and the shift in weight simply tilted the vehicle like a boulder ready to open rockslide season.)
With a grunt from Milosh —or possibly an escape of heated air from a mountainside vent—his goons released her and the van/bus/death train settled back on to four wheels.Drawing a theatrical breath, Marjorie bent toward the window herself to show that she was playing along.
Looking again at the passing people without, she now saw waltzing through the mob of customers that pair of oldsters who were playing impresario to this morning’s abomination,Making for their little sports car, the tallish fellow was weighed down with a cardboard box and behind him about two steps like a bodyguard came the second man in his athletic ensemble and toting the Pekingese like Chinese dust bunnies.They reached their little roadster, climbed within, and were off, the car itself so small that it disappeared behind the mass of interfering bodies.
Marjorie calmly faced Milosh and said with perfect innocent ignorance, “I don’t know who they are.”
This was an incorrect answer.
He bellowed, “Эта машина моя! [3]” then dumped out like a vat of molten zinc-cadmium alloy, “Этот старый хрен умрет! [4] ” Then, though, he shouted, “Dmitri!” who lumbered into view. Milosh growled, “Объясни. [5] ”
Dmitri announced more that explained, “Mr. Milosh possesses strong emotions of dislike and hatred which will not die toward old man that we saw enter small automobile.”Before Marjorie could ask for a bit of clarification, Milosh was banging his fist against the arm of his throne with Krushchevite histrionics.“Умрет, умрет, умрет! [6] ”
Figuring that she could parse out the details on her own time, Marjorie told the Slavic Krakatoa, “He’s just one half of a comedy sketch that lives here in Summerfield.”
Milosh seemed to have had scarcely cooled to the point at which he could be touched without inflicting third-degree burns, when Marjorie placed a spread hand upon her chest, feigning sympathy.She said, “I wish I could make your heart lighter.”
On hearing this, Milosh suddenly swelled, almost joyous, and smiled like a troll who had just downed a pair of lost children.He seemed no longer bent on burying ancient cities or changing the weather patterns.“Mrs. Marjorie, what happiness you will give to old man and in the giving, you will bring to yourself also happiness.”
“In American we call that a ‘win-win’.”
Milosh nodded.“Milosh will forgive immense debt which Mrs. Marjorie owes to him—”
“That sounds like a ‘win’ for Marjorie.”
“—if Mrs. Marjorie brings old man to Milosh.”
“That sounds neat and tidy.Where would you like me to arrange this little meeting?”
“Perhaps in sausage factory or dump for nuclear waste.For you, there is no problem.We will send message to you as to where you must bring this person.Then you bring.Then you are free of debt to Milosh.Of course, he must arrive in front of us still living.”
She delicately hypothesized, “How am I to get this fellow to come along with me?”
Milosh smiled with benign tolerance.“Mrs. Marjorie, this is for you little, tiny task.”
“I will admit that I have a proven track record,” she said, “but I dislike live animals.Too much fuss.”
Milosh smiled on—even beamed—as if watching a baby shark innocently assaulting a vacationer in the surf.“Mrs. Marjorie, without which limb do you think you are able to live first?”
She gathered his import. “So,” she said.“I’m supposed to be your patsy.”
“No, no, Mrs. Marjorie.You are vanguard of justice. Dmitri will explain for you.”
Marjorie had forgotten that the remainder of the happy band was waiting at her rear, but Dmitri now shifted into view and told her, “Mr. Milosh has been looking for this man for almost sixty of your Western, decadent years.This old man—”
For some reason, Marjorie broke into, “This old man, he played one, he played nick-nack on my drum...”
Milosh was taking on his volcanic aspect once more, increasing in size and malevolence, while Dmitri stared down on her and went on.““Mr. Milosh, who is always correct, is very certain that on this very hot morning he has sighted his ancient nemesis.How wonderful materialistic universe has been to Mr. Milosh this day.”
“And being always right is useful skill,” said Marjorie.“Put that in your personal ad, along with ‘likes long walks through a rifle range’.”
“This old man, though, may have changed his name many years ago in past.”
Marjorie said, “And there are a great many names and countries one would have to rifle through to find him.So…”
“So, you will have much activity.Your hands will be happy.”
And with that, Milosh gave out a low seismic growl, 1.073 on the Richter Scale, not even worth a mention on a slow news day, but it earned Marjorie for a fourth time that ride through the air as Dmitri and his satellites hurled her back out on to the grass by the clubhouse.
With that, the Miloshmobile was revving its engines and roaring away.
Alone and by this point a common-law marriage with a janitor’s smock, Marjorie watched Milosh’s van zoom away, this time without an untoward and startling return trip.
With a sore posterior, Marjorie stood up, brushed her dignity clean, and grumbled, “I am not your patsy, Ivan.Go catch your own rabbits.”
But at this, her iThing chirped like a little birdie and once she had fished it out from some inner portion of her outfit, she saw that she had received her bill from Van Cauwenberghe’s (a cute, cute pink emoticon shaped like an ice-cream cone asking, “What’ll It Be?” as if her remittance were a fun surprise.)And then another chirp, and a notice about her condo fees.And her car payment.And her car insurance payment.And her motor club dues.And her quarterly payment to Lowland Heights Golf Club.And her automatic payments to Stop Childhood Hunger and Stop Childhood Obesity.And a late fee from some place called the library for the book Let Sleeping Cows Lie: Don’t Believe What Haters Say About Milk, Cheese, and Ice Cream, by Gloria Alderstump-Ampersand.
Then she looked up and beheld yet more happy purchasers coming out of the P&P Estate Sales sale, all intoxicated with their junk and crockery and Cubist stage design folios. Too many happy purchasers.Those sales should have been hers.
So, she would take care of that old man.Then, next on her list, Marco and Michael.
[1] “Who is that man?”
[2] “Hitlerite!” and “Fascist!”
[3] “That car is mine!”
[4] “That old horseradish will die!”
[5] “Explain.”
[6] “He will die, die, die!”
