and Neeby watched Levin, and Fathaw watched them both, and they both watched Elgar. Oh, it was a pretty, pretty net in which they had him dancing like a deranged butterfly, balancing his doom against his father’s.
“Are you still seeing that crackpot talking doctor, Elgar?” Fathaw’s respect reached out to encompass all solid things like land, figures, prime ribs of beef and machinery, but withdrew contemptuously from anything so slippery and limitless as talk.
“Yes,” Elgar squeaked. “Yes, Fathaw. He’s helping me.”
“Well, why in hell do you need help? You’re crazy. I mean you’re not that crazy. All you need is a good hard job. A stiff upper lip. Some good fresh air in your lungs. Why don’t you get away from it all? I mean camp out in the woods, rough it, don’t waste money on one of those expensive resort vacations. Go up in Canada with your brothers and bag some deer.”
The standard answers, with the standard reference to curbing expenses which always occurred in the first thirty seconds of Elgar’s conversations with his millionaire father. Also the standard suggestion about hunting, which Elgar always ignored, out of a conviction he was bound to fail, being essentially on the side of the deer.
“Why must you always assume there is a difficulty, Fathaw? I called to ask what you know about real estate.”
“What do you mean, ‘what I know?’ I know everything about it, of course. Know real estate like the back of my hand. That tract along the Upper County line. Built a shopping center up there recently. Now developing a town around it. Endersville. What’s Levin suggesting? Mortgages?”
“Why must you assume I act only on Levin’s suggestions? No, an apartment house, Fathaw. My own idea.”
“Tricky business, apartments. More nuisance than profit. Anyone who would rent a place to live is a gypsy. A vagrant. Miserable, dirty little people. No sense of responsibility. Wear and tear on property. Precious little return on your money. Bad business, Elgar, for anybody except old men and widows. And you know I don’t consider anyone old till he’s passed seventy-five. My time is money, you know. Real estate’s a large subject. Don’t be vague. What’s your problem?”
“The fact that you’re not even past sixty-five,” Elgar whispered into the phone, his clenched fist poised to drive through the nearest pane of glass, the one that held his own vague reflection.
“What?” the old man bellowed. “Speak up, will you?”
“The fact that as yet I’ve derived no income from this property. Have you any thoughts on how to collect rent from tenants?”
“Put it in the hands of a constable! Give them thirty days! Let him evict them!”
Put your problems but not your money into someone else’s hands. Another standard answer which had worked well for Fathaw all his life.
“I don’t want to do that, Fathaw. I want to handle it myself.” Even as he uttered this plea he knew it sounded ridiculous. As when once he had pleaded, “Let go of the bike. I want to ride it by myself. Even if I fall flat on my face.” Which, of course, he had done. His stomach went into such acrobatics at that point, Elgar had to put his head between his knees.
“Elgar,” said the stern voice at the other end, “where exactly is this property of yours?”
“Right in the center of town here. Corner of Jackson and Poplar Streets.”
“Elgar. Isn’t that a colored neighborhood?”
“It seems to be,” Elgar admitted. “Yes, Fathaw, that’s what it seems. Of course,” he added, “as you know, Fathaw, all things are not what they appear to be. My tenants refer to themselves as Creoles and Choctaw Indians. And sometimes, I believe, Nigerians and Senegalese.”
“Elgar, you are even more of a fool than I thought!” roared his father. “Nigerians, indeed! Your mother and I are simply at our wits’ end about you, Elgar. She worries about you constantly, about your bad habits, your foolish ventures, your undesirable companions. Frets night and day because you never visit us and never call. While your brothers are such loyal sons. What a contrast. I never know what to tell her about you. I never even know where you are. This nonsense of yours must stop, sir, do you understand? It must stop right now! I am going to put your mother on the phone in one minute. But first I want to know where you are, Elgar. I mean where you are right now. We’re coming down there to get you.”
“I am in Hell, Fathaw,” Elgar said simply, and hung up. And, retracting his hand at the last instant, slammed the receiver through the nearest pane instead. Showers of glass sprayed his face, miraculously missing the dangerous-glinting green eyes.
Hurrying numbly through dim streets to keep his scheduled appointment with Borden, he was only vaguely aware of moisture tickling various upper frontal areas. Hence when the good doctor received him with cracks in his professional composure, with his mouth, in fact, wide open, Elgar was surprised.
Until he reached up and touched his forehead. His fingers came away bloody. Touched his cheek. Also bloody. His upper lip yielded another harvest of gore. Apparently the scattering fragments of glass had made him as monstrous as his father’s vision of him.
“Just following my father’s advice, Borden,” Elgar said. “He told me to acquire a stiff upper lip. And it does seem to be getting numb, now that I notice.”
Borden stared. “Elgar, I know you love to be dramatic, and I have my rules, but this seems to be an emergency. If you want to see a doctor about those cuts, I can reschedule your appointment.”
“Funny, I thought you were supposed to be a doctor, Borden. You great big phony. Upset at the sight of a little blood.”
Borden said smoothly, “It is not so upsetting as all that, Elgar. All the same I am willing to delay your hour for fifteen minutes if you want to go downstairs and wash up.”
“No, let’s get right down to business,” Elgar said. “I can stand it if you can.”
Borden replied, “You should know by now that I can stand anything, Elgar. Come in.”
“However,” he added, opening a cabinet to reveal a businesslike assortment of swabs and syringes, “there is no reason why I have to spend the next hour contemplating physical horrors in addition to psychic ones. No. Tilt the face up to me, Elgar. Turn it toward the light. Yes.”
Borden’s fingers were wonderfully deft and confidence-inspiring as he dabbed lightly with antiseptic, peered closely, grunted, bent with tweezers, and removed several splinters of glass from Elgar’s scalp, finished by making rapid passes in the air with a roll of bandage.
Afterward Elgar went over to the mirror and checked. His head was neatly swathed and tied like the kid’s in “Spirit of ’76.”—Yep, he thought, puckering his chin thoughtfully, yep. A professional job.
“Are you quite finished admiring yourself?” Borden inquired. “Then perhaps you will want to lie down over here and describe this latest hair-raising episode. Or should I say, ‘scalp-raising?’ You say it resulted from a conversation with your father?”
Elgar stretched out and studied the dismal patterns on Borden’s mildewed ceiling. “You know I can’t talk to my father, Borden. It’s impossible. He always tried to make me feel like nothing.”
“Apparently
