Face on the Wall (28 page)

The man grinned and tossed the envelope over her shoulder. It landed in the middle of the hall floor and slid into the big room beyond. Annie chased after it and snatched it up, meaning to throw it back, but the front door banged shut with a shivering slam. By the time she wrenched it open, he was leaping into his car. The engine was running. He zoomed away.

Reluctantly she opened the envelope and read the official language of Sprocket's court order. Outraged, she tore it in half and called Homer. There was no answer, only the polite language of the message machine. Annie was so angry she could hardly speak. Her message was a string of obscenities, but its meaning was clear.

Homer's first words when he called back were as wrathful as her own. “Don't leave,” he shouted into the phone. “Whatever you do, don't move out.”

“You bet I won't move out. I'm here to stay. So what can they do to me, Uncle Homer?”

“God, I don't know. I'll find out. In the meantime, hang in there.”

Annie put down the phone and stared at her painted wall. Legally it belonged to the Gasts. Now they wanted her out. Well, she was not going to leave, she was never going to leave. How could she abandon her wall to the tender mercies of Robert and Roberta Gast, who would hide the five arches of her painted gallery under a dozen rolls of Williamsburg wallpaper? They didn't give a damn about her wall.

“Is she gone?” said Charlene.

“Not yet,” said her father. “But she's got to obey the court order.”

“It's that painting of hers,” said Roberta. “She's sentimental about that big painting on her wall.”

“But it's not her wall anymore,” said Gast. “It's our wall. We can do whatever the hell we want with that goddamned wall. You know what it is, that wall?” He swallowed hard, as a vision of the painted wall rose in his mind, bright with color and flowering with stories. “It's self-indulgence. Pure self-indulgence.”

“You can knock it down, right?” said Charlene. “You'll have to, because my swimming pool's got to be, like, really, really big. I got this book out of the library. You've got to have radiant heating and automatic ventilators and a shower room and a towel closet and—”

“Oh, God, Charlene,” said Bob Gast, dropping his head in his hands, “sometimes I think we should just—”

Charlene did not wait to hear what he was going to say. Once again she moved in close and whispered in his ear.

“Oh, God, I know,” said her father. “I know, I know.”

Roberta Gast did not ask what it was that her husband knew. She knew what he knew. She leaped up and began pulling things out of the refrigerator for supper, trying not to think about the future.

“Lord Fish, Lord Fish!” shrieked the fisherman, struggling to keep his boat from foundering in the tormented sea. “My wife is not happy being emperor.”

“Perhaps,” croaked the fish, gazing up at him from the boiling whirlpool below the boat, “she would like to rule the world.”

“Oh, yes, Lord Fish! How did you know? She wants to rule the whole entire world.”

The eyes of the great fish glowed back at him. “Go home, my friend. Your wife is ruler of all the continents on earth and all the islands in the sea.”

Chapter 42

B
y now Bob Gast was well acquainted with Ted Hawk, proprietor of Hawk Wrecking and Demolition, owner of the big machines that were now demolishing Fred Small's house in Southtown and grinding their way across his ninety-nine acres of burdock, uprooting hundreds of small hemlocks and white pines and crushing an entire nursery of pasture juniper and mountain laurel. Originally Bob had chosen Hawk's outfit from an ad in the Yellow Pages—

HAWK WRECKING AND DEMOLITION

COMMERCIAL * RESIDENTIAL * INDUSTRIAL

24 HOUR EMERGENCY SERVICE

7 DAYS A WEEK

LICENSED * BONDED * INSURED

Braintree Mass

848-5555

So now he knew just where to go for this job here at home. On the phone to Hawk he explained the problem. “It's a wing attached to my house. It's only the wing that is to be—uh—removed. The house is to remain intact.”

“Well, sure, no problem. Why don't I come out and take a look?”

Ted Hawk was a tall, dignified man in a business suit. He walked around the new wing with Bob Gast. As they strolled past the south side, Annie was plainly visible within, sitting on her scaffolding, twisting around to look at them.

“Somebody's living in there now?” said Hawk.

“Oh, sure, but she's getting out. Don't worry.”

“You positive? She hasn't got a lease? You've got a deed, says you're the owner? We've got to see the deed. Like at Southtown, we don't want any trouble. You'd be surprised the kind of things that happen.”

“Oh, everything's fine, perfectly legal, all according to Hoyle.”

“Well, as you know, there's paperwork. We've got to prep it, do utility disconnects, get all the fluorescent tubing out because of, you know, PCBs. Notarized permission letter, building inspector informed. You got any tax liens on the property? Mortgage Bank's got to sign off too.” Again Hawk looked appraisingly at the wing of the house that no longer belonged to Anna Elizabeth Swann. “It's a small job. Take a day, maybe two with site clearing. When will your tenant be out, all her stuff?” Hawk's voice was loud. He was staring straight into one of Annie's big windows.

Embarrassed, Gast drew him aside. “In two weeks. She's got to be out by May twenty-first.”

Hawk consulted his pocket notebook. “Right. Say May twenty-third. That okay with you?”

Gast cleared his throat and stared at Hawk with bulging eyes. “How much is this going to cost me? I mean all together?”

“It's a small job.” Hawk rubbed his chin. “Twenty thousand? Round figure.”

“Jesus Christ! Small's house, it was only fifteen.”

“Well, this one's tricky, separating the two parts. It's like dividing Siamese twins, you gotta be careful.”

“Well, okay, go ahead, God!” Bob added up figures in his mind. It wasn't just the original sum of his mounting debts, plus this extra twenty thousand, it was the accumulating interest.
One hundred dollars a day, one hundred dollars a day, one hundred dollars a day.

Chapter 43

Build it up with needles and pins,

Needles and pins, needles and pins!

Build it up with needles and pins,

My fair lady!

Mother Goose rhyme

“I
told you,” said Bob Gast, standing at Annie's front door, “you're to be out of here by the twenty-first.”

“I'm not going,” said Annie.

Gast restrained an impulse to take her by the arms and drag her out. But Annie was a big woman, taller than he was, and probably stronger. And that weird character O'Dougherty was visible outside the window, glancing in their direction. Yesterday Bob had seen him turn six handsprings on the lawn, one after another, his body making impossible contortions, springing higher with every bound.

And anyway, things were bad enough. Violence would only get him in trouble. “In that case I'll be forced to call the police.”

“And I'll be forced to call the newspapers.”

Gast blanched, then said sarcastically, “I don't think an article in the
Concord Journal
would make much of a stir.”

“One in the
Boston Globe
would make a stir.” Annie pawed around in her head for the name of a famous columnist. “Gabe Garibaldi, he'd be interested.”

“Gabe Garibaldi!” In spite of himself, Gast was choked with doubt. He had read Garibaldi's column. The man was a master of sentimental hardship cases. “Mother-to-be fired without cause.” “Elderly ripped off.” “Widow robbed of life savings.”