Privately, you have always found Q-Jos size appealing. From the day you met, you have experienced-and rigorously suppressed-a strong impulse to jump onto the perfumed acreage of her lap, to rest against the buddhas of her breasts and let her rock you in her baobab arms. But while others also are fascinated by her, by her purple turbans, her multicolored caftans, her welding-spark eyes, cavernous dimples, Santa Claus laughter, patchouli effluvium, ebony cigarette-holder, and rings whose stones are the circumference of goiters, you nevertheless are embarrassed to be seen with her in public. God forbid that your employers or clients should ever discover that this baggy flake considers herself your companion. It continually humiliates you that the fates have seen fit to match you with such a friend. Once you have moved into your new condominium-if by some miracle the stock markets duck-dive has not annihilated those plans-you intend to see less of her, although less of Q-Jo is still aplenty.
NINE-TEN P.M.
So what did you find out? Q-Jo wants to know when you return to the booth and your recently refilled coffee cup.
About AndrE or the market?
She looks at you incredulously. AndrE, of course. The stock market dont mean shit to me.
It means more than you know. If this collapse is as lethal as it could be, itll impact the lives of everybody in this country.
Haw! she guffaws, and licks a temporary cold sore of mashed potato from her upper lip. Itll screw up the lives of those people who allow it to screw up their lives. The rest of us will get along just dandy.
Yeah? How dandy will people get along when their investments fail, when their pension funds are belly-up, when federal programs run dry, and factories and banks slam doors in their faces and theyre out of a job? You have a mortgage yourself, do you not?
Theyll get along just like theyve always gotten along. Before there was any such thing as banks and mortgages and factories and jobs. Before they bought into this bogus melodrama.
What bogus melodrama?
The one youve based your life on. Now drink your coffee. I want you sober as a judge when we go out that door.
Good grief, Q-Jo! You are just so … naive. You live in your own little world …
It aint so little.
… and think everybody else can do the same. Well, anyway, even though youre not interested, a guy at the office told me that its rubber-ball city in Tokyo right now. Index hits the floor, hits the lid, hits the floor, hits the lid. Every time the Nikkei starts down the drain, the pharmaceuticals rally and fish it out. Where its going to close is anybodys guess. You are visibly excited.
Gwen, baby, please ask the waitress to bring us three walnut shells and a dried pea. I know a fun game we can play.
Look, my whole futures at stake here.
Yes, yes. Q-Jo sighs a sigh as big and luxuriant as a bargeload of catnip. Youve been saying that all night. Confusing future with career, confusing career with that roulette wheel you spin every day. A crash could be the best thing thats ever happened to you.
Youve been saying that all night. And I dont want to hear it anymore. If you arent going to do the cards for me, lets forget it.
Im eating, Q-Jo says. It is a statement impossible to refute.
NINE-FIFTEEN P.M.
Q-Jo gnaws. You sulk. What gall she has, criticizing your profession. She a fortune-teller, one cut above a grifting gypsy in a dusty storefront. Then there is that other job of hers, the one nobody in the whole world does but Q-Jo Huffington, a job so wacko it doesnt have a name. What would a person call it, anyhow? Travel agent after-the-fact? Surrogate boredom victim? Marginal employment any way one slices it. Yet she insists that you are trafficking in illusions. What nonsense. Confused, whimsical, baroque, her aspirations are immaterial in the truest, and most regrettable, sense of the word; whereas you dream on solid ground, pure, clean: the sweetly insatiable yearnings of a young bride. In a little ruffled apron yodeling with strawberries that you embroidered yourself, you kneel at the oven door of the world, keeping a nervous but hopeful eye on the money soufflE. Q-Jos version of this scene has you a vampire wrapped in the curtains.
Well, she says, interrupting your pout, did you get hold of Belford?
Yes. I reached him on his car phone. Hes still driving around Queen Anne, looking for AndrE. Rather upset that we arent helping. Id promised him we would.
Almost done, she says. From her full red lips, she wipes the last stains of the flesh of the pig. Let me just grab a dish of their tapioca pudding. A body cant hardly find old-fashioned tapioca pudding anymore.
Belfords in a state. Ive never seen him worked up like this. Hes usually so calm. You pause. Reflect. Naturally, I hope he finds AndrE, but you know, it might be a positive thing for him if hes rid of that monkey.
Oh, I disagree. The brutal truth is, that monkeys the one and only interesting thing about Belford boy. Without AndrE, hes the duke of dishwater, the earl of dull. She pauses. Reflects. As far as I know, that is. I have no idea what hes like in the sack. Its a fact that some men conceal the greater part of their personality between their legs. She flashes a grin you could slide a dictionary into. Care to comment?
Good grief, Gwen! Your face turns so red you can see it reflected in Q-Jos silverware. The vice squad could hire you as a smut detector. You are sputtering toward an irritated response when, thankfully, a beehived waitress bustles over to take Q-Jos dessert order. You excuse yourself and set off toward the lavatory, passing en route the ice machine, the milk dispenser, and a case in which humble proletarian bowls of pudding and Jell-O quiver with passive resentment in the shadows of opulent slices of pie. If this amounts to a confectionery model of impending class warfare, it is no secret where your sympathies lie. You all but nod hello to a particularly patrician wedge of coconut meringue.
The toilet is a shock to your sensibilities, not because it is in the least unsanitary but because it has been freshly painted with untold quarts of yellow enamel the color of a canary with liver disease. Blinking at the unrelieved brightness, wrinkling your nose at the perfume machine-fifty cents for a squirt of Evening in Paris-remembering with a sudden fondness the understated elegance of the Bull&Bears facility, you, fully sober at last, let yourself into one of the twin screaming-yellow stalls, hike up your dress, pull down your panties, vigorously scour the seat with a wad of tissue, then sit. Although the cocktail lounge is at the other end of the restaurant, you can hear Dick Dickerson at the organ as plainly as if he is being piped through the plumbing. Dick is offering a rendition of Lazy River, and a few of the customers are singing along. Your father used to listen to Lazy River (a jazz version, of course), accompanying the recording on his bongos-those cursed drums that ruined your chances for a normal childhood.
You are sitting here, half in reverie, half in annoyance, when your body abruptly twitches in a mild startle reaction. Cutting through the residual aromas of stale tobacco smoke, cheap perfume, oil-based paint, and piney woods deodorizer; cutting through the loo-air with a golden track, comes the smell of your own micturition, a smell heightened a hundredfold by your recent ingestion of asparagus. And the instant your brain identifies the odor, it thinks of Larry Diamond. Just as the perverse bastard knew it would! You are disgusted with yourself and furious with him. And, as you discover when you wipe your labia, recognizably and quite inexplicably aroused.
NINE TWENTY-FIVE P.M.
You storm past the pie cabinet, where the Jell-O has started to look alarmingly upwardly mobile, and catch up with Q-Jo at the cigar counter. She is chewing on a toothpick and paying the tab.
Belford Dunn is the nicest, most decent man I know, his sex life is nobodys business, and besides, you dont even have a boyfriend! You say this through clenched teeth while practically balling your tiny hands into fists.
Whoa. Whoa, there. Take it easy, lady. No need to get defensive. Belfords a sweetheart. The whole damn town knows Belfords a sweetheart. If the nimble-minded should ever put him on trial for terminal dullness, Ill testify under oath that hes t
wice as nice as he is tedious. Fair enough?
Your inclination to vigorously condemn this faint praise is tempered by the embarrassment you feel at the way the cashier is regarding the pair of you. You make an edgy move toward the door, and Q-Jo says, Good. Now lets go try and reunite our boy with his red-assed ape. She lays a thick, sweaty palm on your shoulder. I suggest we begin by checking the jewelry stores.
NINE FORTY-FIVE P.M.
Near the crest of Queen Anne Hill, Q-Jo pulls over and eases her Geo Storm (the fact so many fat people drive small cars might be worthy of a behavioral scientists attention) right up to the rear bumper of Belfords huge Lincoln, like an ambitious cocker spaniel sniffing out the estrogen level of a Doberman bitch. When she turns off her headlamps, you can see the silhouette-the squarish head, the wide shoulders-of the man you have vowed to ease out of your life by July 4 (Independence Day!), yet whose honor, if not Elan, you have just passionately, though incongruously, defended. The ambiguity is not lost on you. It irks you, in fact. And there may be more to come. Any moment now, this man will spread his mouth over your mouth, and, duration depending upon how distracted he is by AndrEs disappearance, mash it about. To what extent will you find that agreeable? Considering that obsolete boyfriend or no obsolete boyfriend, market crash or no market crash, worst day of your life or no worst day, your glands are blithely brimming.
Q-Jo opens her door and, like a discount Houdini trying to escape from a golf bag, begins pulling herself free of the car. Belford opens his door, slides out, and rushes to Q-Jos assistance. You sit there. You look him over. You wonder.
Belford Dunn used to be a logger. What in earlier, more colorful times was called a lumberjack. He resided near his birthplace on the Olympic Peninsula and felled cedar and fir for his livelihood. At some point, he read the handwriting on the sawmill wall. It said, Timber is a dying business.
Right next to it was a wall upon which was written, A tree farm is not a forest. Belford put two and two together, concluding that at the rate Americans were selling logs to the Japanese, it was merely a matter of time before we ran out of woods and that the plantations that were being established in their stead were without appeal, being devoid of wildness and beauty, diversity and danger, curiosity and reverence, that primal reverence that has forever been inspired by the Unknown Place; the place unknown, that is, to all but such messengers of our psyche as the moon and the mushroom and the owl and the stag.
When Belford packed up and left Port Angeles, it surprised his parents, who always thought of their son exactly as he was described in his public school evaluation: Lovable but average. (Perhaps, Gwen, that is the way you think of him now.) Lovable though he may have been, however, he was, at thirty-three, unmarried, and he had only a few compunctions about leaving less foresightful buddies behind to whine and howl about the eventual loss of logging jobs. He did try to talk some sense into them, but their vision extended no farther than the nearest tavern, the length of a pickup truck, the panel of a VCR. So, adios, amigos… .
Once settled at the Seattle YMCA, Belford enrolled in real estate classes. He earned a Realtors license, landed a job, and within eighteen months was selling more properties, both residential and commercial, than all but a handful of Puget Sound agents. He proved to be a natural salesman, primarily because he liked people and they liked him. They trusted him. Belfords brain chewed its cud as placidly as a moo-cow behind the broad, open facade of what is commonly known as an honest face. Indeed, he was honest. From his thin, sandy hair to his shoeshine. He was active in the Lutheran church out of genuine piety, not as a ploy to make contacts-although contacts he did make in abundance. And money he made in abundance, as well. Ten years later, he still generates what you, Gwen, call jumbo juice. But most of it he gives to the church or to charities. And even more disturbing, in your estimation, he is planning to quit his job in September so that he might go back to school to become a social worker. Good grief! The upside, you suppose, is that if nobody can successfully apply the Heimlich maneuver to an economy that is choking on a dinosaur bone, America will need more social workers than real estate salesmen. But who is going to pay them? And how much?
It was from Belford Dunn that you bought your apartment. At the time, it was his apartment, but having proclaimed it too fancy, he moved several blocks away to smaller, simpler digs. His idea of fancy hardly coincides with yours. The building, a 1930s low-rise, is solid, and each of its units has leaded-glass windows, exposed beams, tiled fireplaces, and Swedish hardwood floors; in short, old-fashioned charm galore, but no one could claim it is a chic address. How could it be? Q-Jo Huffington lives there. Some months ago, you put your unit up for sale and signed a contract to buy a marine-view condo in a desirable upscale high-rise downtown. Good-bye, marginal neighbors, hello, concierge! The deal is scheduled to close next week. But next week, you-and the fellow stockbroker who is negotiating to buy your current place-may be sipping your morning coffees in the unemployment line. The timing of the crash could not have been worse. When you think about it, you scarcely can prevent yourself from screaming foul language and stamping your little feet.
At any rate, Belford seemed like a good catch at first. Even today, you are not prepared to admit that personal wealth and emotional stability are inadequate substitutes for savoir-vivre. Nor that unrelenting decency can wear on a persons nerves. What you will admit is that if you knew you had to spend the rest of your life with a social worker, you would blow your brains out. You might do that anyhow. Your mom did.
Out on the curb, Q-Jo is giving Belford a high five. Hey, you big flamboyant, fun-loving, spicy guy! He knows shes joshing him, hes not stupid, but he smiles good-naturedly. Its a smile a girl could bring home to mother, if she had a mother; a smile a girl could pet like a pony, sip like a lemonade, hum like a popular tune; a smile a girl would feel safe with in a dark alley. Not that Belford would ever take you down a dark alley. Except for assorted camping trips and fishing expeditions, which you found tiresome, dirty, and boring, Belford has never taken you anywhere. Belford is not given to the romantic vacation, the luxury resort, the spontaneous weekend in Palm Springs. Three years ago, shortly after you met, he went to Europe. He thought he ought to see it. You were annoyed, frankly, that he didnt invite you-you slept with him earlier than you might have in the hope that hed ask you along-but, alas, it was a package tour. Pre-sold and all that. You didnt sulk for long. It will polish him, you consoled yourself. Hell be more sophisticated after hes seen London and Rome. What you hadnt counted on was that hed spend the entire month in Saint-Tropez fighting to gain custody of a monkey too hot for France to handle.
TEN P.M.
On Queen Anne Hill, there are a lot of places where a monkey might hide. Its a residential area, an area of yards. To be sure, the hill is ringed with apartment buildings-yours is one-but its primarily a neighborhood, an extensive neighborhood, of single-family dwellings. And single-family dwellings have yards. Front yards, back yards, side yards. In these yards there are shrubs, bushes, hedges, trees. Bordered by toolsheds, garages, patios, gardens. There are schoolyards, too. And a couple of parks. There are even several wild wooded patches, spacially limited, yet adequate habitat for small animals. If opossum and skunk and raccoon can hide there, survive there, year after year, decade after decade, almost in the middle of a teeming metropolitan chockablock, think how an enterprising monkey might fare.
As distraught as he is -the kiss with which he greeted you turned out to be no more than a matrimonial peck-you would suspect that Belford would be driving around willy-nilly, mistaking for AndrE every pussycat that darted behind a rosebush, yet surprisingly, there is a modicum of organization to his efforts. A modicum. His method has been to motor very slowly up and down one section of Queen Anne streets for twenty minutes, then to speed back to his apartment to see if the prodigal simian might not have returned; then, disappointed, to select a different section and repeat the process. You could greatly improve the efficiency of this operation, an
d normally you wouldnt have rested until you had done just that. Tonight, however, you havent the starch for it. Fate has sicced the witches on you, and only a miracle in Tokyo can keep your innards out of their menudo.
So, Belford continues to do what hes been doing for hours, only now while he scans one side of the street, you halfheartedly scan the other. And behind you, taking up most of the Lincolns roomy backseat, sucking on shaggy, smelly cigarettes, tugging at the folds in her caftan, Q-Jo cranks up the psychic radar.
Getting anything, Q-Jo? Belford asks.
Nada. But thats hardly surprising. I dont read monkeys.
Over your shoulder, you shoot her a glance. Since when?
Jackasses, yes. And jackals. Maybe a baboon now and again. But just the two-legged kind.
AndrEs only got two legs, Belford objects.
Well, yeah, I suppose thats true. Hed have to have hands and fingers to do the things hes done.
Now would be the perfect moment to segue into a discussion of AndrEs past activities and the possibility that he may be trying, at least, to resume them; the ideal time to bring up Q-Jos proposal that the search party cruise the downtown gem shops, the museums, and first-class hotels-but neither Q-Jo nor you dare pursue it. Theres something intimidating about a strong man on the brink of tears. Moreover, Belford has yet to contact the police. Hes refusing to face reality, you think. Turning back to the window, you recommence your monkey watch with half-open eyes, reviewing in your mind the mistakes that left you so personally vulnerable to a market meltdown. Facing a little reality of your own.
Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Therefore, as it is a cloudless night, there must be a moon in the sky. And whether waxing or waning, it must be virtually full. Sure enough. There it is. Poking over the tip of the Queen Anne communications tower, big and bulbous and shiny and pitted, like the nose of a vaudeville comedian.