THE TOYOTA TOUCH, a big blue banner says in the display windows of Springer Motors over on Route 111. 36 Months / 36,000 Miles ? Limited Warranty on All New Models, a lesser poster proclaims, and another All?New CRESSIDAS ? Powerful New 3.0?Liter Engine ? 190 Horsepower ? 4?Speed Electronically Controlled Overdrive Transmission ? New Safety Shift Lock. Nelson isn't in, to Harry's considerable relief. The day is a desultory Tuesday and the two salesmen on the floor are both young men he doesn't know, and who don't know him. Changes have been made since last November. Nelson has had the office area repainted in brighter colors, pinks and greens like a Chinese tea?house, and has taken down the old blown?up photos of Harry in his glory days as a basketball star, with the headlines calling him "Rabbit.
Mr. Angstrom left for lunch around one o'clock and said he might not be back this afternoon," a pudgy salesman tells him. Jake and Rudy used to have their desks out in the open along the wall, in the direction of the disco club that failed and when the Seventies went out became an appliance?rental center. One of Nelson's bright ideas was to take these desks away and line the opposite wall with cubicles, like booths in a restaurant. Maybe it creates more salesman?customer intimacy at the ticklish moment of signing the forms but the arrangement seems remote from general business operations and exposed to the noise of the service garage. In this direction, and behind toward the river and Brewer, lies the scruffy unpaved area of the lot Harry has always thought of for some reason as Paraguay, which in reality just got rid of its old dictator with the German name, Harry read in the papers recently.
Yeah, well," he tells this fat stranger, "I'm a Mr. Angstrom too. Who is here, who knows anything?" He doesn't mean to sound rude but Thelma's revelation has upset him; he can feel his heart racing and his stomach struggling to digest the two bowls of nuts.
Another young salesman, a thinner one, comes toward them, out of a booth at the Paraguay end, and he sees it's not a man; her hair being pulled back tight from her ears and her wearing a tan trench coat to go out onto the lot to a customer fooled him. It's a female. A female car salesman. Like in that Toyota commercial, only white. He tries to control his face, so his chauvinism doesn't show.
I'm Elvira Ollenbach, Mr. Angstrom," she says, and gives him a hard handshake that, after Thelma's pasty cold touch a half?hour ago, feels hot. "I'd know you were Nelson's dad even without the pictures he keeps on his wall. You look just like him, especially around the mouth.
Is this chick kidding him? She is a thin taut young woman, overexercised the way so many of them are now, with deep bony eyesockets and a deep no?curves voice and thin lips painted a pale luminous pink like reflecting tape and a neck so slender it makes her jaws look wide, coming to points under the lobes of her exposed white ears, which stick out. She wears gold earrings shaped like snail shells. He says to her, "I guess you've come onto the job since I was last here.
Just since January," she says. "But before that I was three years with Datsun out on Route 819.
How do you like it, selling cars
I like it very much," Elvira Ollenbach says, and no more. She doesn't smile much, and her eyes are a little insistent.
He puts himself on the line, telling her, "You don't think of it usually as a woman's game.
She shows a little life. "I know, isn't that strange, when it's really such a natural? The women who come in don't feel so intimid-ated, and the men aren't so afraid to show their ignorance as they would be with another man. I love it. My dad loved cars and I guess I take after him.
It all makes sense," he admits. "I don't know why it's been so long in coming. Women sales reps, I mean. How's business been
It's been a good spring, so far. People love the Camry, and of course the Corolla plugs right along, but we've had surprisingly good luck with the luxury models, compared to what we hear from other dealers. Brewer's economy is looking up, after all these years. The dead industries have been shaken out, and the new ones, the little specialty and high?tech plants, have been coming in, and of course the factory outlets have had a fabulous reception. They're the key to the whole revival.
Super. How about the used end of it? That been slow
Her deeply set eyes ? shadowy, like Nelson's, but not sullen and hurt ? glance up in some puzzlement. "Why no, not at all. One of the reasons Nelson had for hiring a new rep was he wanted to devote more of his own attention to the used cars, and not whole-sale so many of them out. There was a man who used to do it, with a Greek name
Stavros. Charlie Stavros.
Exactly. And ever since he retired Nelson feels the used cars have been on automatic pilot. Nelson's philosophy is that unless you cater to the lower?income young or minority buyer with a buy they can manage you've lost a potential customer for a new upscale model five or ten years down the road.
Sounds right." She seems awfully full of Nelson, this girl. Girl, she may be thirty or more for all he can tell, everybody under forty looks like a kid to him.
The pudgy salesman, the one who's a man ? a nice familiar Italian type, Brewer is still producing a few, with husky voices, hairy wrists, and with old?fashioned haircuts close above the ears ? feels obliged to put his two cents in. "Nelson's really been mak-ing the used cars jump. Ads in the Standard, prices on the wind-shield knocked lower every two or three days, discounts for cash. Some people swing by every day to see what's up for grabs." He has an anxious way of standing too close and hurrying his words; his cheeks could use a shave and his breath a Cert or two. Garlic, they use it on everything.
Discounts for cash, huh?" Harry says. "Where is Nelson, anyway
He told us he needed to unwind," Elvira says. "He wanted to get away from the calls.
Calls
Some man keeps calling him," Elvira says. Her voice drops. "He sounds kind of foreign." Harry is getting the impression she isn't as smart as she seemed at first impression. Her insistent eyes catch a hint of this thought, for she self?protectively adds, "I prob-ably shouldn't be saying a thing, but seeing as you're his father. . .
Sounds like a dissatisfied customer," Rabbit says, to help her out of it.
Toyota doesn't get many of those," the other salesman crowds in. "Year after year, they put out the lowest?maintenance machines on the road, with a repair?free longevity that's absolutely un-believable.
Don't sell me, I'm sold," Harry tells him.
I get enthusiastic. My name's Benny Leone, by the way, Mr. Angstrom. Benny for Benedict. A pleasure to see you over here. The way Nelson tells us, you've washed your hands of the car business and glad of it.
I'm semi?retired." Do they know, he wonders, that Janice legally owns it all? He supposes they pretty much have the picture. Most people do, in life. People know more than they let on.
Benny says, "You get all kinds of kooky calls in this business. Nelson shouldn't let it bug him.
Nelson takes everything too seriously," Elvira adds. "I tell him, Don't let things get to you, but he can't help it. He's one of those guys so uptight he squeaks.
He was always a very caring boy," Harry tells them. "Who else is here, besides you two? Talk about automatic pilot
There's Jeremy," Benny says, "who comes in generally Wednesdays through Saturdays.
And Lyle's here," Elvira says, and glances sideways to where a couple in bleached jeans are wandering in the glinting sea of Toyotas.
I thought Lyle was sick," Harry says.
He says he's in remission," Benny says, his face getting a careful look, as maybe Harry's did when he was trying not to appear a chauvinist in Elvira's eyes. She for her part has suddenly moved, in her spring trench coat, toward the bright outdoors, where the pair of potential buyers browse.
Glad to hear it," Harry says, feeling less constrained and ceremonious talking to Benny alone. "I didn't think there was any remission from his disease.
Not in the long run." The man's voice has gone huskier, a touch gangsterish, as if the woman's presence had constrained him too.
Harry jerks his head curtly toward the outdoors. "How's she doing really
Benny moves an inch even closer and confides, "She gets 'em to a certain point, then gets rigid and lets the deal slip away. Like she's afraid the rest of us will say she's too soft.
Harry nods. "Like women are always the stingiest tippers. Money spooks 'em. Still," he says, loyal to the changing times and his son's innovations, "I think it's a good idea. Like lady ministers. They have a people touch.
Yeah," the jowly small man cautiously allows. "Gives the place a little zing. A little something different.
Where is Lyle, did you say?" He wonders how much these two are concealing from him, protecting Nelson. He was aware of eye signals between them as they talked. A maze of secrets, this agency he built up in his own image since 1975, when old man Springer suddenly popped, one summer day, like an overheated thermometer. A lot of hidden stress in the auto business. Chancy, yet you have a ton of steady overhead.
He was in Nelson's office ten minutes ago.
Doesn't he use Mildred's?" Harry explains, "Mildred Kroust was the bookkeeper for years here, when you were just a kid." In terms of Springer Motors he has become a historian. He can remember when that appliance?rental place up the road had a big sign saying D I S C O remade from a Mr. Peanut in spats and top hat brandishing his stick in neon.
But Benny seems to know all he wants to. He says, "That's a kind of conference room now. There's a couch in there if anybody needs all of a sudden to take a nap. Lyle used to, but now he works mostly at home, what with his illness.
How long has he had it
Benny gets that careful look again, and says, "At least a year. That HIV virus can be inside you for five or ten before you know it." His voice goes huskier, he comes closer still. "A couple of the mechanics quit when Nelson brought him in as accountant in his condition, but you got to hand it to Nelson, he told them go ahead, quit, if they wanted to be superstitious. He spelled out how you can't get it from casual contact and told them take it or leave it.
How'd Manny go for that
Manny? Oh yeah, Mr. Manning in Service. As I understand it, that was the reason he left finally. He'd been shopping, I hear, at other agencies, but at his age it's hard to make a jump.
You said it," Harry says. "Hey, looks like another customer out there, you better help Elvira out.
Let 'em look, is my motto. If they're serious, they'll come in. Elvira tries too hard.
Rabbit walks across the display floor, past the performance board and the Parts window and the crash?barred door that leads into the garage, to the green doorway, set in old random?grooved Masonite now painted a dusty rose, of what used to be his office. Elvira was right; the photographic blowups of his basketball headlines and halftone newspaper cuts haven't been tossed out but are up on Nelson's walls, where the kid has to look at them every day. Also on the walls are the Kiwanis and Rotary plaques and a citation from the Greater Brewer Chamber of Commerce and a President's Touch Award that Toyota gave the agency a few years ago and a Playboy calendar, the girl for this month dressed up as a bare?assed Easter bunny, which Harry isn't so sure strikes quite the right note but at least says the whole agency hasn't gone queer.
Lyle stands up at Nelson's desk before Harry is in the room. He is very thin. He wears a thick red sweater under his gray suit. He extends a skeletal bluish hand and an unexpectedly broad smile, his teeth enormous in his shrunken face. "Hello, Mr. Angstrom. I bet you don't remember me.
But he does look dimly familiar, like somebody you played basketball against forty years ago. His skull is very narrow, the crewcut hair so evenly blond it looks dyed; the accountant's half?glasses on his nose are of thin gold wire. He is so pale, light seems to be coming through his skin. Squinting, Harry takes the offered hand in a brief shake and tries not to think of those little HIVs, intricate as tiny spaceships, slithering off onto his palm and up his wrist and arm into the sweat pores of his armpit and burrowing into his bloodstream there. He wipes his palm on the side of his jacket and hopes it looks like he's patting his pocket.
Lyle tells him, "I used to work in Fiscal Alternatives on Weiser Street when you and your wife would come and trade gold and silver.
Harry laughs, remembering. "We damn near broke our backs, lugging one load of silver dollars up the street to the fucking bank.
You were smart," Lyle says. "You got out in time. I was impressed.
This last remark seems a touch impertinent, but Harry says amiably, "Dumb luck. That place still functioning
In a very restricted way," Lyle says, overemphasizing, for Harry's money, the "very." It seems if you're a fag you have to exaggerate everything, to bring it all up to normal pitch. "The whole metals boom was a fad, really. They're very depressed now.
It was a nifty little place. That beauty who used to do the actual buying and selling. I could never figure out how she could run the computer with those long fingernails.
Oh, Marcia. She committed suicide.
Rabbit is stunned. She had seemed so angelic in her way. "She did? Why
Oh, the usual. Personal problems," Lyle says, flicking them away with the back of his transparent hand. In Rabbit's eyes globules of blurred light move around Lyle's margins, like E.T. in the movie. "Nothing to do with the metals slump. She was just the front, the money behind it came out of Philadelphia.
As Lyle talks airily, Harry can hear his intakes of breath, a slight panting that goes with the bluish shadows at the temples, the sense of him having come from space and about to go back to space. This guy's even worse off than 1 am, Rabbit thinks, and likes him for it. He sees no signs of the Kaposi's spots, though, just a general radiant aura of a body resisting life, refusing sustenance, refusing to go along with its own system. There is a sweetish?rotten smell, like when you open the door of the unused refrigerator in a vacation place, or maybe Rabbit imagines it. Lyle suddenly, limply, sits down, as if standing has been too much effort.
Harry takes the chair across the desk, where the customers usually sit, begging for easier terms. "Lyle," Harry begins. "I'd like to inspect the books. Bank statements, receipts, payments, loans, inventory, the works.
Why on earth why?" Lyle's eyes, as the rest of his face wastes away, stand out, more in the round than healthy people's eyes. He sits erect, one fleshless forearm for support laid in its gray sleeve parallel to the edge of Nelson's desk. Either to conserve his energy or protect the truth, he has set himself to give minimal answers.
Oh, human curiosity. Frankly, there's something fishy about the statements I've been getting in Florida." Harry hesitates, but can't see that being specific would do any harm at this point. He still has the hope that everything can be explained away, that he can go back to not thinking about the lot. "There aren't enough used?car sales, proportionally.
There aren't
You could argue it's a variable, and with the good economy under Reagan people can afford to buy new; but in my years here there's always been a certain proportion, things average out over the course of a couple months, and that hasn't been happening in the statements since November. In fact, it's been getting weirder.
Weirder.
Funnier. Phonier. Whatever. When can I see the books? I'm no accountant; I want Mildred Kroust to go over them with me.
Lyle makes an effort and shifts his arm off the desk and rests both hands out of sight, on his lap. Harry is reminded by the way he moves of the ghostly slowness of the languid dead floppy bodies at Buchenwald being moved around in the post?war newsreels. Naked, loose?jointed, their laps in plain view, talk about obscene, here was something so obscene they had to show it to us so we'd believe it. Lyle tells Harry, "I keep a lot of the data at home, in my computer.
We have a computer system here. Top of the line, an IBM. I remember our installing it.
Mine's compatible. A little Apple that does everything.
I bet it does. You know, frankly, just because you're sick and have to stay home a lot's no reason the Springer Motors accounts should be scattered all over Diamond County. I want them here. I want them here tomorrow.
This is the first acknowledgment either has made that Lyle is sick, that Lyle is dying. The boy stiffens, and his lips puff out a little. He smiles, that skeleton?generous grin. "I can only show the books to authorized persons," he says.
I'm authorized. Who could be more authorized than me? I used to run the place. That's my picture all over the walls.
Lyle's eyelids, with lashes darker than his hair, lower over those bulging eyes. He blinks several times, and tries to be delicate, to keep the courtesies between them. "My understanding from Nelson is that his mother owns the company.
Yeah, but I'm her husband. Half of what's hers is mine.
In some circumstances, perhaps, and perhaps in some states. But not, I think, in Pennsylvania. If you wish to consult a lawyer -" His breathing is becoming difficult; it is almost a mercy for Harry to interrupt.
I don't need to consult any lawyer. All I need is to have my wife call you and tell you to show me the books. Me and Mildred. I want her in on this.
Miss Kroust, I believe, resides now in a nursing home. The Dengler Home in Penn Park.
Good. That's five minutes from my house. I'll pick her up and come back here tomorrow. Let's set a time.
Lyle's lids lower again, and he awkwardly replaces his arm on the desktop. "When and if I receive your wife's authorization, and Nelson's go?ahead
You're not going to get that. Nelson's the problem here, not the solution.
I say, even if, I would need some days to pull all the figures together.
Why is that? The books should be up?to?date. What's going on here with you guys
Surprisingly, Lyle says nothing. Perhaps the struggle for breath is too much. It is all so wearying. His hollow temples look bluer. Harry's heart is racing and his chest twingeing but he resists the impulse to pop another Nitrostat, he doesn't want to become an addict. He slumps down lower in the customer's chair, as if negotiations for now have gone as far as they can go. He tries another topic. "Tell me about it, Lyle. How does it feel
What feel
Being so close to, you know, the barn. The reason I ask, I had a touch of heart trouble down in Florida and still can't get used to it, how close I came. I mean, most of the time it seems unreal, I'm me, and all around me everything is piddling along as normal, and then suddenly at night, when I wake up needing to take a leak, or in the middle of a TV show that's sillier than hell, it hits me, and wow. The bottom falls right out. I want to crawl back into my parents but they're dead already.
Lyle's puffy lips tremble, or seem to, as he puzzles out this new turn the conversation has taken. "You come to terns with it," he says. "Everybody dies.
But some sooner than others, huh
A spasm of indignation animates Lyle. "They're developing new drugs. All the time. The French. The Chinese. Trichosanthin. TIBO derivatives. Eventually the FDA will have to let them in, even if they are a bunch of Reaganite fascist homophobes who wouldn't mind seeing us all dead. It's a question of hanging on. I have hope.
Well, great. More power to you. But medicine can only do so much. That's what I'm learning, the hard way. You know, Lyle, it's not as though I'd never thought about death, or never had people near to me die, but I never, you could say, had the real taste of it in my mouth. I mean, it's not kidding. It wants it all." He wants that pill. He wonders if Nelson keeps a roll of Life Savers in the desk the way he himself used to. Just something to put in your mouth when you get nervous. Harry finds that every time he thinks of his death it makes him want to eat ? that's why he hasn't lost more weight.
This other man's attempt to open him up has made Lyle more erect behind the desk, more hostile. He stares at Harry with those eroded?around eyes, beneath eyebrows the same metallic blond as his hair. "One good thing about it," he offers, "is you become harder to frighten. By minor things. By threats like yours, for example.
I'm not making any threats, Lyle, I'm just trying to find out what the fuck is going on. I'm beginning to think this company is being ripped off. If I'm wrong and it's all on the up and up, you've nothing to be frightened of." Poor guy, he's biting the bullet, and less than half Harry's age. At his age, what was Harry doing? Setting type the old?fashioned way, and dreaming about ass. Ass, one way or another, does us in: membrane's too thin, those little HIVs sneak right through. Black box of nothingness, is what it felt like with Thelma. Funny appetite, for a steady diet. Being queer isn't all roses.
Lyle moves his anns around again with that brittle caution. His body has become a collection of dead sticks. "Don't make allegations, Mr. Angstrom, you wouldn't want to defend in court.
Well, is it an allegation or a fact that you refuse to let me and an impartial accountant examine your books
Mildred's not impartial. She's furious at me for replacing her. She's furious because I and my computer can do in a few hours what took her all week.
Mildred's an honest old soul.
Mildred's senile.
Mildred's not the point here. The point is you're defying me to protect my son.
I'm not defying you, Mr. Angstrom
You can call me Harry.
I'm not defying you, sir. I'm just telling you I can't accept orders from you. I have to get them from Nelson or Mrs. Angstrom.
You'll get 'em. Sir." A smiling provocative hovering in Lyle's expression goads Harry to ask, "Do you doubt it
I'll be waiting to hear," Lyle says.
Listen. You may know about a lot of things I don't but you don't know shit about marriage. My wife will do what I tell her to. Ask her to. In a business like this we're absolutely one.
We'll see," Lyle says. "My parents were married, as a matter of fact. I was raised in a marriage. I know a lot about marriage.
Didn't do you much good.
It showed me something to avoid," Lyle says, and smiles as broadly, as guilelessly, as when Harry came in. All teeth. Now Harry does recall him from the old days at Fiscal Alternatives ? the stacks of gold and silver, and flawless cool Marcia with her long red nails. Poor beauty, did herself in. She and Monroe. Rabbit admits to himself the peculiar charm queers have, a boyish lightness, a rising above all that female muck, where life breeds.
How's Slim?" Harry asks, rising from the chair. "Nelson used to talk a lot about Slim.
Slim," Lyle says, too weak or rude to stand, "died. Before Christmas.
Sorry to hear it," Harry lies. He holds out his hand over the desk to be shaken and the other man hesitates to take it, as if fearing contamination. Feverish loose?jointed bones: Rabbit gives them a squeeze and says, "Tell Nelson if you ever see him I like the new decor. Kind of a boutique look. Cute. Goes with the new sales rep. You hang loose, Lyle. Hope China comes through for you. We'll be in touch.
On the radio on the way home, he hears that Mike Schmidt, who exactly two years ago, on April 18, 1987, slugged his five hundredth home run, against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Three Rivers Stadium, is closing in on Richie Ashburn's total of 2,217 hits to become the hittingest Phillie ever. Rabbit remembers Ashburn. One of the Whiz Kids who beat the Dodgers for the pennant the fall Rabbit became a high?school senior. Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler in center, Andy Semmick behind the plate. Beat the Dodgers the last game of the season, then lost to the Yankees four straight. In 1950 Rabbit was seventeen and had led the county B league with 817 points his junior season. Remembering these statistics helps settle his agitated mood, stirred up by seeing Thelma and Lyle, a mood of stirred?up unsatisfied desire at whose fringes licks the depressing idea that nothing matters very much, we'll all soon be dead.
