Walter Lippit had a pretty place out in the country. We have country with hills, with woods, with fields, and with lakes. Lippit, because of enough money, had all of this. The house wasn’t big but sat pretty. All the landscapes came together where he had built it and the lake came even close enough to make shiny patterns on the living room ceiling.
I sat with the view of the lake and a hill. I might have had the view with the fields or the woods, except Folsom and Franklin had decided it this way. No difference to me. I sat in the room with the chintz and the pine paneling, and my closest friend was the bottle I held.
The light patterns on the ceiling were getting independent. Folsom and Franklin were in the same room, but I didn’t want anything from them. I just sat.
“Watch him,” said Folsom.
“He’s drunk,” said Franklin.
Folsom came around to the front of the chair and stood looking at me. Then he slapped my face.
“Yeah. He’s drunk.”
I kept sitting.
Franklin went to look out of the big window and looked bloated against all that light. And peaceful, I should think. He was feeling all right.
Folsom went into the next room-woods view from that one-and maybe was reading the paperbacks. Lippit had a library there. Nothing but paperbacks, in case it rained over the weekend.
The patterns on the ceiling were like cold water all over.
He wasn’t reading in there. He was on the phone. He was muttering and cackling at the country exchange but they only listen in on connections which have been completed. Before that happened, it took a while. Leisure. All is slow leisure and country-type pleasure, and the reason I would marry a stripper, she’d look good in even one slipper-
Now the ceiling moved, and not the patterns.
I looked away from there and listened. I even put the bottle down. Spill on the rug, if you want, but not on my pants.
“Yeah. No. I’m not in town. No.”
That was clear enough, and true to boot.
“It comes off like we said. Yessir, like we said.”
Maybe he meant my head? Where would I then have the hangover? In thin air?
“Yessir. You said it.”
Talking to Lippit? What a yes-man, that Folsom.
“Like I said, you stupid jerk, and no other way!”
He was not talking to Lippit. Stupid? Not Lippit A jerk, yes, but not stupid. Folsom was talking to one of his men.
“Nine o’clock,” Folsom was saying, “and that puts it right after the time when they close the building. Yes, that’s when I want it, or else that shop is lousy with people.”
Back on the candy shop beat?
“I don’t care about the help. I want the machines busted, the merchandise, and those masters. I said masters.”
I heard you the first time, Folsom, and if you’re following orders, boy, then boss Lippit is more than clean out of his head. He is clean out of every thing, including the more powerful instincts, such as the one about making money.
“Where? When?”
Ask again, Folsom. I didn’t get it either.
“Franklin,” he yelled, and Franklin said, “Yeah.”
“We gonna be done here before maybe an hour?”
“Yeah.”
A very intelligent beast, this Franklin. A four letter word, twice repeated, and making it sound the same way each time.
I could hear Folsom hang up and then I saw him come back.
“He hasn’t got any schedule,” Folsom told Franklin. “He’s just drifting around, here and there, like he does. Except for his two o’clock swim at that club.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Franklin. “Fine.”
“We gonna be done?”
“Why not be done? He’s yours, anyway.”
A lot of “he’s” in that conversation, except with the last “he” they were looking at me.
The other “he” was Lippit.
It closed out the inventory. Item: Break up my pressing plant, though that was nothing personal. Because, Item: Ruin the masters so that Lippit’s disc supply would again be cut off. Item: Get Lippit himself. That was business, and personal, because Franklin would be doing that job. Item: Very personal. Folsom to be done with me within the hour.
Now Folsom had me and then he would get Lippit. But first, me. He came at me, hoping I could take it for an hour.