Two Much! (18 page)

What the game consists of mostly is running back and forth in an empty room, occasionally crashing into a side wall. I understand the upper class is nuts over it.

Volpinex told me the rules of the game, and I began to understand its appeal for a certain kind of intellect, since it's about as complicated as fifty-two-pickup. “I see,” I said. “I hit then you hit then I hit then you hit.”

“That's right,” he said, bounced the ball, and whammed it with his racket at the opposite wall. It hit, and caromed back on a beeline for my head. I flung myself away to the right, heard the
fwizzzzz
of its passage, and turned to see it thud into the opposite wall and head back my way again.

But with less determination. It bounced before it reached me, and only hurt my hand moderately when I caught it. A rather hard little rubber ball. I said, “This thing goes pretty fast, huh?”

“Good players in a fast game,” he told me, “will get rebounds up to a hundred miles an hour.”

“Wouldn't do a fellow's forehead much good,” I suggested.

He offered me his thin smile. “You do have to keep out of the way,” he said. “Go ahead and try it.”

All right, bastard. I'm fairly good at pool, I should be able to work out the angle between where I was standing and that creep's nose. I chose a spot on the far wall, bounced the little ball, and swung as hard as I could.

The ball went some damn place. It hit the wall, but nowhere near the spot I'd chosen, and it came back out at an angle that had nothing to do with Volpinex's nose.

And Volpinex was off like a mechanical rabbit. He shot past me, flung himself in front of the richocheting ball, swung his racket, sliced the ball on the fly, and here the damn thing came again. Off the wall and straight for my left eye, faster than ever.

“Jesus!” I shouted, and practically fell on my ass scampering out of the way. The ball whizzed by, and I turned to speak severely to Volpinex, only to see him running again, at an angle across the floor, racket at the ready.

What in hell was all this?
Whump
went the racket against the ball, and here came the ball, a buzzing little V-2 rocket aimed at the London of my stomach. By screeching to a halt and sucking in my gut I gave the little devil room to fly, but it was gone so fast, and coming back again from the wall so soon, that I didn't have time to do anything else but duck again, reeling away toward the side wall, off balance to the front, running like mad to try to get my body back under my head.

Whump
I heard behind me, and
thock
as the little round bastard shot off the wall again. I didn't even look for it; I just hit the wall and shoved myself backward hard. As quick as a subliminal message on a movie screen, the ball came spinning in from the comer of my right eye,
zzethuzzed
off the wall in front of me, and rocketed away somewhere to my left.

I followed it, running for my life. Volpinex was loping to intersect the damn thing. He was swinging; I was veering to my left because that was where I'd guessed he would go next.
Ying
, went the ball, very loud, as it brush-burned my right earlobe. I was running as though a husband had come home unexpectedly, and I was watching Volpinex's eyes. Let
him
watch the ball.

It was coming in behind me, I knew that, and he was coming in from the front. At what I judged to be the last second, I launched myself across Volpinex's path, leaping out low and straight, parallel to the floor, as though I were making a flat dive into a swimming pool. I caught him at shin level, me in hurtling motion and him in a flat-out dash, and the two of us went tumbling about on the floor like planes colliding above the clouds.

I rolled and rolled, until I was away from all those extra legs and rackets, and then lunged staggering to my feet, gasping for breath and staring all around for that goddamn rotten ball.

There it was, on yet another ricochet. But its speed was lessening now, it was bouncing across the floor in long innocent skips, as though it wouldn't hurt a fly. Running diagonally after it, I snapped it out of the air, clutched it in both my hands, and let my momentum carry me on to the nearest wall, which I thudded into like a mail sack.

For a minute I just stayed there, leaning forward into the wall, my hands clutching the ball protectively at my middle. My throat was painfully raw from gasping, my right side felt as though I'd broken my ribs against that murderous bastard's shins, my left side had a crick in it from all that running, my legs were trembling, my earlobe burned, and generally speaking I was a mess.

“Had enough for today?”

I rolled till I was sideways against the wall and could see Volpinex standing there, smiling at me. He wasn't even out of breath, the bastard. And I had no doubt he really was some sort of karate genius. I panted at him.

“Perhaps it's too fast a game for you,” he said. He patted the racket into his other palm: plong, plong. “You don't want to get into games that are too fast for you,” he said. “You should get out of such games, as a safety precaution.” And he turned and walked away, across the room and through the little door on the far side and out of sight.

Oh, I had a lot to say to him, it was just I didn't seem capable of speech yet. So I just hung against the wall, going
hee-haw
through my open mouth, and glared daggers at that closed door. None of them stuck.

A
ND THEN I WROTE
, “T
HE
front of the card shows a yawning grave. Inside, the card says, ‘Drop in any time.' ”

That was at three o'clock, back in my office, shortly before Bart called Betty from L.A. Sucrets had eased my throat, Excedrin had dulled my aches and pains, and Mediquik had stunned my stinging earlobe. My ribs appeared to be intact, though there were spreading bruises on my right side, and I was seated in relative calm at my desk. After phoning the
Daily News
to reassure myself that Bart's flight hadn't crashed or been hijacked, I dialed Betty's number.

“Kainair reseedonce.”

“Hi, Nikki, this is Bart.” I shouted a bit, like someone calling long distance. “Is Betty there?”

“Hold on one moment, pleeze.”

So I held on one moment, massaging my sore ribs. Get even with Volpinex, I have to get even with Volpinex.

“Hello? Bart?”

“Hi there, sweetheart!” I shouted. “Well, I'm here!”

“Oh, I'm happy you called,” she said. “That was nice of you.”

“Yep,” I said. “The flight was easy, Joe met me at the airport, and here I am.”

“Did you see that girl yet?”

“Heck, no,” I said. “I just got here. Joe has the doctor's phone number, so I'll call him next and see what I'm supposed to do.”

“What's the weather there?”

“Hot,” I said, telling her what this morning's
Times
had told me, with its national weather map. “Hotter than New York. I bet it's a hundred.”

“Really? That must be awful.”

“Well, it's air-conditioned where I am, and Joe's car is air-conditioned, so it isn't too bad. Boy, it's funny, you know? It's only noon here.”

“You're probably suffering jet lag,” she said.

“I wouldn't be surprised.”

“You know,” she said, “Art's really mad about you going away.”

My, how news can travel fast. I said, “Art is? What for?”

“He told Liz he was going to throw you out of the business because you came to help but then you didn't do anything, and now you've run out on him.”

“Well, that dirty rat,” I said, with honest outrage. “He told me himself I should take a few days off, while he was doing that auditing business.”

“All I know is what Liz told me.”

“Well,” I said, “I'll get back there in a day or two, and straighten things out with that brother of mine.”

“Maybe you shouldn't be involved in that business of his anyway,” she said. “Wouldn't it make more sense if you were my business manager, with a salary and everything?”

“You mean, live on you?” I sounded
really
boy scout when I said that.

“Of course not. I have a business manager now, so you'd just take his place.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that might be all right. Though I don't like the idea of getting somebody else fired for no reason at all.”

“Well, he could still be my lawyer, but you'd be my business manager, that's all.”

“Lawyer? You mean Volpinex?”

“Oh, no, he's not
my
lawyer. I have somebody of my own.”

Which was good news. I said, “But your man is lawyer and business manager both?”

“It's always been more convenient that way.”

“Well, I think it would probably be better management to have two different people for those two different jobs.”

“There, you see? You're already talking like my business manager.”

I laughed boyishly. “I guess I am,” I said.

W
HEN WE CAME IN
from the beach, around six o'clock, I said to Liz, “Well, what do you want to do tonight?”

“I don't know about you,” she said, “but I've got a date.”

“Ha ha,” I said. “Anybody I know?”

“Ernie Volpinex,” she said, and headed for the stairs.

I frowned after her. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is that on the level?”

She turned on the second step and looked at me. “Have I ever lied to you?” Then she started up again.

“Hold on, there,” I said, and followed as far as the foot of the stairs. When she turned to look down at me without curiosity, I said, “We're supposed to be engaged, aren't we?”

“Clause seven,” she said. The sexual nonexclusivity clause.

“So you're going out with Volpinex.”

“That's right”

“I see,” I said, controlling my sudden anger, and stepped a pace back from the stairs.

Her lip curled a bit. “I'm sure you do,” she said, and went on up to the second floor.

So. I detected Volpinex's fine Mediterranean hand in that, goading Liz to test my obedience to the contract. The bastard was going to be an ongoing pain in the ass, was he? Or in the side.

Had he told Liz yet how he'd squashed me? She'd noticed my bruises last night and I'd just muttered something about an accident, but Volpinex would go into more detail than that. I take badly to humiliation, and that was the weapon he was turning against me.

What could I do to him? Wandering out to the kitchen, making myself a drink, I tried to think of some way to get back at him, make him lay off.

“I could kill him,” I muttered aloud, surprising myself as much for the thought as for voicing it out loud in an empty room.

Kill him? No, that was merely one of those extravagant thoughts we all have sometimes. But what else was there? Carrying my drink out to the back deck and the late afternoon sun, I sat in a sling chair and brooded over the problem of Attorney Volpinex. I sipped at my drink and sopped up the last of the sun and after a while I snoozed.

When I awoke it was twilight, and the mosquitoes were growing interested. I went inside to a dark house and switched on some lights. Liz had gone, without saying anything, and Betty was having dinner with family friends. I had the house to myself.

So I got sloshed, which I very rarely do, and watched bad comedy on the living room television set until I passed out. I awoke around eleven with a splitting headache and an urgent desire to become sober; an hour later I was on my fifth cup of coffee and was watching
The Ladykillers
when Betty came in, looking cute but dated in her white frock. “Hi, there,” she said. “All alone?”

“Liz had a conference with her lawyer.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, and sat on the other end of the sofa, half-turned toward me, her face and knees all giving me sympathetic study. “I know she's my sister,” she said, “but I must admit she can be a trial sometimes.”