The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) Read online

  “Well!” he said again.

  “Or are you here with people?”

  “No, yes, I—” The look of entreaty on Jack’s face was more than Probst could stand. He’d spent too large a part of his life with Jack to be able to lie easily. “No,” he said, “I came alone. Where are you sitting?”

  Jack pointed towards the north end of the field and laughed. “In the three-dollar seats!”

  Probst heard himself chuckle.

  “Jesus, Martin, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” Jack held his arm. They were climbing into the stands.

  “It must be ten years.” Instantly Probst regretted having named the actual figure.

  “We keep seeing your name in the paper, though…”

  From the field Probst heard the wordless exertions of another play, the accidental grunts, rising cheers and tearing fabric. Jack DuChamp had moved his family to Webster Groves about the same time Probst and Barbara had moved there. Unfortunately, the house Jack bought was soon condemned to make room for Interstate 44, and the only houses for sale in Webster at the time were well beyond his price range. So he moved his family to Crestwood, a new town, a new school district, and Probst, whose company held the I-44 demolition contracts and did the actual razing of the houses, felt responsible. As a matter of fact, he felt guilty.

  “Aren’tcha?” Jack had stopped halfway up the long stairs and was surveying the crowd to their right.

  “Beg pardon?” Probst said.

  “I said you’re just the same.”

  “No.”

  “You always did have your head in the clouds.”

  “What?”

  “Excuse us,” Jack said. A young family in tartan stood up to let them by. Probst tried to keep his eyes on his feet, but the dark space beneath the bench reminded him uncomfortably of the heavy cream. He wondered how few minutes he could get away with staying before he left again. Would five suffice? Five minutes to atone for a decade of silence?

  Jack stopped. “Martin, this is Billy Wonder, friend of mine. Bill-y, this is Martin Probst, a very old friend of mine. He, uh—”

  “Sure!” A large-boned man with buck teeth sprang to his feet. “Sure. Sure! This is quite an honor!” He took Probst’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  “Didn’t catch your name,” Probst said.

  “Sure! Windell, Bill Windell. Glad to know you.”

  Probst stared at the buck teeth.

  “Can we make some room here?” Jack said. Windell pulled Probst into a narrow space on the bench. Jack sat down fussily on his right with an air of mission accomplished. Windell slapped a pocket flask in a leather case against Probst’s chest. “Never touch the stuff! A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” He drove his elbow into Probst’s left biceps.

  “Bill’s my boss,” Jack explained.

  “You’d never guess it to see us at work,” Windell said.

  “Don’t you believe it.” Jack reached across Probst’s lap and unscrewed the cap of the pocket flask. “He’s done one-forty all by himself.”

  “Hundred thirty maybe.” Windell gave Probst a big, practiced wink, and Probst, not bothering to wonder what in hell the two of them were talking about, was filled with the certainty that Windell was a scoutmaster. His eyes, which were blue, had a milkiness that often showed up in men charged with instilling moral values. Furthermore, he had a crewcut. “So: Martin Probst.” Windell sucked his teeth and nodded philosophically.

  Probst had no place to put his elbows. He tilted the flask to his lips, intending to take a polite sip. He gagged. It was apricot brandy. Elbows almost knocking on his lap, he passed the flask to Jack, who shook his head. “Thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

  He tried to return it to Windell, but Windell said, “No, be my guest.”

  Probst took a long swig, wiped his mouth, and looked at Jack for the cap to the flask. Jack didn’t seem to have it. Probst noticed it below him at his feet and reached down, but his legs straightened as he bent, pushing it over the edge of their tier and underneath the bleacher in front of them. He dropped into a squat, groping down.

  “Don’t. Here—no,” Jack said. “I’ll get it.”

  “No, no. Here.” Probst stretched until his fingers reached the ground, then unexpectedly he tipped backwards, landing on his butt in the shade of the fans, who were leaping to their feet in response to something on the field. The cold penetrated his pants, but he was more comfortable down here. His hand traveled far, searching for the cap. It came upon a sneaker and backed away over the coarse, damp concrete, and then ran into something soft—an apple core. Screams rode the chafed air. The space was too narrow for him to see what he was doing. He groped further, sensing Windell’s scoutmasterly gaze. Probst and Jack had been Scouts together, often tentmates, all the way up through Eagledom.

  Well hi! The cap. He’d found the cap. His hand closed around it. He struggled up. “I think I’d better be going,” he said.

  A forlorn sound creaked out of Jack. “Nih.”

  “At least stay for the half,” Windell said.

  Probst remembered the peculiar power Jack could wield, the whirlpool of guilt into which he could drag his more successful friend. “How much time is left?” he asked.

  “Four minutes,” Jack said reproachfully.

  A messy running play expired in front of them. The score was still 13–0. Probst turned to Windell. “So, uh, where do you live, Bill?” He already knew roughly what Windell did, he being Jack’s boss and Jack being in middle management at Sears.

  “We’ve been living in West County for six years.” Windell gave a laugh.

  What was so funny about that?

  “I see. Whereabouts?”

  “Ballwin, Cedar Hill Drive. Not far from whatchamacallit. West—”

  “Haven. Westhaven.”

  “That’s the place. We’re about a mile east of there. I’m always driving by it. See your name a lot.”

  “Yeah.” Probst sighed.

  “It looks like some project.”

  “The foundations alone are twenty-five acres.”

  “Huh.” Windell stared at the field, where penalty flags had been dropped. Jack was sitting on his hands, apparently content to let Probst’s presence speak for itself. His nose was red. Small brushes of straight gray hair sheltered his ears.

  “But it must be a long commute for you,” Probst said.

  “Hm? Oh. Not too bad. It’s something you get used to.”

  “Well, if we keep on building like this in West County, you’ll be sitting pretty. Who knows, maybe Sears will move its headquarters out there.”

  “Sears?”

  “I,” Probst said. “I thought you worked for Sears.”

  “No. I’ve been with Penney since I was, God, twenty. But Jack worked for Sears. He came over to us five years ago.”

  Jack sniffed and swallowed. He didn’t seem to be listening, but after a few seconds, without looking at them, he said, “That’s right,” in a loud, deep voice.

  “We’ve—” Probst felt that he was going to pop like a balloon if he had to sit here a minute longer. “We’ve been pretty out of touch since Jack left Webster—”

  “Oh! Way to go!” Windell shouted, interrupting him.

  “What a game,” Jack agreed.

  This was the moment Probst had been waiting for. He stood up quickly. “That’s it for me,” he said. “Bill, it’s nice meeting you. If you’re ever by Westhaven, one of my men will be glad to show you around. And Jack, you and I—” Escape was so close he could taste it. He looked down at Jack, who had raised his chin but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ll have to get together sometime.” He clapped Jack lightly on the shoulder and started moving away.

  “Martin!” Jack said suddenly. “It looks like I’ve got an extra ticket to the Big Red game on Sunday. Next week. Bill here’s got a camp-out with his Scouts, and—”

  Probst turned back, feeling his face light up. “You’re a scoutmaster?”

  “It’s t
he very least an old sinner can do for the world,” said Bill, who was not old, and seemed sinless.

  “—the Redskins,” Jack was saying. “We could catch up a little, get a bite to eat before—”

  “Sure, yes, fine,” Probst said, still staring at Bill.

  Rolf Ripley liked a girl with pluck, and Devi, his latest acquisition, had it. Last night in her suite at the airport Marriott, she’d told him his nose was redder than a souse’s.

  “A souse’s, luv? Do let’s let Rolf give us a good spank.”

  “And you’ll start to cough,” she said.

  “That won’t happen, luv. I don’t get coughs.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve learned from decades of experimentation to sleep with my head flat on the mattress. That way, the what the devil d’you call it—the mucus—stays where it belongs. No cough.”

  Devi laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “A cold doesn’t spread through mucus. It spreads through blood.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “I heard it on the radio.”

  “Then why, pray tell, do I not get coughs?”

  “Your body must be as stupid as your brain!”

  She was a gem, a gem. And when he wanted to change key, he simply pushed a pedal: “Take it back.”

  “I take it back.”

  He’d never had another quite like her. All the dishes in his past, the Tricias and Maudes and Amandas, the sex piglets and Dallas snobs and randy undergrads, the mute tarts, corporate wives and gold-digging salesclerks, banquet favors, cynical secretaries and door-to-door sluts: all paled before Devi. Even the few he’d had in London and New York were not the real item, but imports, farm-girls at heart, sinning venally, not mortally. Men from the capitals never shared their finest stock, and though Rolf was in all ways their superior, Fate had consigned him to Saint Louis. Oh, the Saint Louis girls! God knew, Rolf had tried his Pygmalion best to teach them; still they remained porcine and drawling. They couldn’t hold a candle to Devi. She was his aesthetic fulfillment, teachable and teaching, as sharp as the glitter city Bombay and, in her docility, older than the Old World, an object to rut on and an angel to frame. In fact, he damn near loved her, and if she weren’t an Indian he might have gone further and made himself her fool. But he was at pains to be careful. For not only was Devi in cahoots with S. Jammu and Princess Asha Hammaker but she was dreadfully indiscreet. Among the tidbits she had dropped were the facts that Jammu was angling for the affections of the mayor; that Asha, whose fortune was made now, was pursuing Buzz Wismer as well; and that both these South Asian lovelies were intent upon staging a real-estate panic in the ghetto. Interesting.

  As for cars, he liked ’em small and fast. His Lotus whisked him home from the Marriott for a long winter’s nap, and on Thanksgiving Day his Ferrari whisked him and Audreykins to the Club for civilized noontime drinks and a brief show of holiday propriety. He was a family man, after all. It wouldn’t do to take Devi to the Club. There were too many stockholders at the bar, and Rolf of late had grown a tad fanatical about his stockholders. For the first time in years, his finances were iffy. If one of the club members downing toddies were to lose confidence in Rolf’s good judgment, why then the next member might, too, and the next, and the next, and soon the NYSE, and Rolf might find himself producing neither toaster-ovens nor inertial guidance systems, and headquartered in neither the county nor the city, and living permanently in Barbados or Lincolnshire, not Ladue. It was better not to bring Devi. These codgers liked Audreykins, and why not?

  Chester (3.7%) Murphy ambled over and confessed that Audreykins looked lovely today, as indeed she almost did, despite the fact the Armani she wore was made for a woman with a third shoulder somewhere in the vicinity of her fifth vertebra. Leaving the room to allow her and Chester to converse about Peace, Hope and Charity, Rolf placed an amorous call to Devi’s suite at the Marriott. He finished by smothering the receiver, still warm from the last caller’s breath, with kisses. When he returned he saw Audreykins absorbing the wise words of the Baseball Star, who was wearing a green blazer just a shade lighter than the one Rolf himself had on, and what with the Star being chums with Julian (5.5%) Woolman and Chuck (major creditor) Meisner, he found it expedient to visit the bar for a refill. Drown a fever, drown a cold. He had a nasty sensation of having inhaled water. Repeated doses of The Glenlivet were the only sure cure. His muscles ached less when steeped in spirits, though his sense of blame still throbbed. This cold was the fault of Audreykins. Two weeks ago she’d been a regular snot factory, specially diligent on the night shift, and had sniffed and sniffed and sniffled, always as though she were blubbering. Barbie, it seemed, had infected her. Rolf observed that her Armani’s third shoulder had migrated into the region of her right armpit. Dear child. The Club buzzed timelessly in the afternoon sun.

  “How are you feeling?” Audreykins asked an hour later, as they zipped through the cheesy business district of Webster Groves.

  “Rummy, thanks,” he said.

  “Too bad,” she said unkindly.

  “Oh, it isn’t the cold,” he lied. “It’s the thought of another meal with Martin and Barbie and the brat.” Climbing into fourth gear for the big curve in Lockwood Avenue, he was gratified to see her foot press down on an imaginary brake. “I suppose,” he went on, “I ought to count my bloody blessings your folks are in Pago Pago.”

  “I don’t see why you bring this up now. We could have gone to the Club.”

  “Except then Martin would have said, ‘Uh, how about the Saint Louis Club instead? Uh, they’ve got a, uh, traditional dinner. Uh, goose, turkey, the works. Ya interested?’” Martin thought the new Saint Louis Club was the smartest place in town. Rolf did a deadly impression of Martin.

  “And it’s New Zealand, not Pago Pago.”

  “Mea culpa.” He glanced to his left and caught a glimpse of Sherwood Drive, fast receding. “Dash it all, why didn’t you say something?”

  “Mm?” she said.

  Rolf scowled. Of course she hadn’t said anything. She gave him no help. “We’ll just have to turn around then, won’t we?” Thirty yards past the railroad bridge he swung over the left-hand curb with a well-absorbed shock. Gunning the engine, he threw the Ferrari into second gear and spurted across the median. The tires grabbed the pavement. The car tore off again under the bridge and up Sherwood Drive, while Audreykins shook like a leaf.

  She fairly ran up the brick walk to the Probsts’ front door. Rolf consulted his Tourneau. Twenty to four. He hadn’t intended to arrive so punctually. Audreykins aimed a few girlish taps at the front door (“It’s only us!”) and Martin must have seen them coming, because the door swung right open. He beckoned them inside, took Audreykins’s hand, and, smiling with admiration, planted a kiss on her cheek. He turned. “Rolf. Afternoon.” He wore a bright red sweater and dark plaid pants.

  “Good to see you, Martin.” It was! Martin looked dashed bad, his eyes pinched and his hair full of lumps. Rolf felt better already.

  Audreykins was speaking in a low voice to Barbie, and when Rolf saw them side by side his spirits dipped again. His wife paled when she stood beside her sister. He pushed her away and leaned to receive Barbie’s kiss. “Barbara, dear.” He gave her a short, strategic squeeze in the hindquarters.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  He straightened. “Pardon me?”

  “Rolf, here, let me take your coat.” Martin was pestering his shoulders, and he shrugged the coat off. Barbie was the girl with pluck. He had the wrong sister.

  The women beat an effortless retreat to the kitchen. Martin was having inordinate trouble stuffing the coats into the closet, where Rolf recognized jackets dating back to the mid-sixties. One shiny gold anorak in particular caught his eye. The Martian Look. Martin the Martian. “Those old jackets do eat up the space, what?” he said meanly.

  Martin gave up, leaving Rolf’s coat and muffler draped broadside over the others, and
hastily shut the door.

  They repaired to the living room and stopped by the fireplace, where kindling crackled beneath sodden logs. A draft brushed Rolf’s knees. Martin and Barbara had redecorated this room since he saw it in August, and why they hadn’t gone ahead and put in carpeting was beyond his comprehension. It was as comfortable as a bloody cathedral. Martin prodded the fire with a poker. Sunlight, tinted green by encroaching ivy, showed up streaks and spatters on the row of leaded windows in the long western wall. Beneath them was a window seat with lime-colored cushions, and to Rolf’s right was the piano, which Barbie could play with less precision and more feeling than Audreykins. Barbie had clearly had complete control of the redecoration. On the wall above the sofa, where Martin would have hung mail-order prints of pheasants and setters, she’d installed a series of three outsized still lifes, all by the same fellow. The paintings dominated the room. The first was a pineapple that had been split in two; the rind was gabardine, the meat a yellow tulle. In the second were bananas, fat portentous nanners on a sea of grays and whites, and in the third, a—what? A kiwi fruit. Quartered and emerald, with dark speckles, it looked like an animal from the ocean. He regarded the three paintings somberly. It was cold and glum in here. He felt unwell.

  Martin clapped the dust and ashes off his hands, and Rolf closed his eyes. The man was going to ask him how business was. Invariably the crass ass inquired about business. He waited. The question didn’t come. He opened his eyes and saw Martin frowning.

  “Had a pleasant day?” Rolf asked, certain he hadn’t.

  “Went to the Webster-Kirkwood game, that’s about all.”

  “Luisa took you?”

  Martin coughed and his face grew still more sour. “No. She’s gone for the weekend.”

  “Not coming tonight? That’s a pity.”

  “What can I get you, Rolf?”

  “Scotch if you have it, Martin.” As if he might not.

  Martin marched away and returned moments later with refreshments. He raised his glass. “Happy Thanksgiving.”