Condo Conversion, Chapter 7

 

I awoke to the sound of the phone ringing.  I answered it groggily. 

            “This is Peter.”

            “This is your brother.”

            “How ya doin’, Dave?”  My brother David is two years younger than me but vastly more successful.  He is a mortgage broker in the city and has been on a very good run of luck these past few years. 

            “The question is how are you doing?  Have you banged any seventy year olds yet?”

            “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

            “I expect details.”

            “Of course.”

            “The reason I’m calling is I’ve lined up a suite at the Reno Peppermill this Saturday.  Rick will be there, as well as Nicholas.  You should come.”

            “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered hesitatingly.  “I don’t really have the dough.”

            “What do you mean you don’t have the dough?  Didn’t you just score a retainer today?”

            “Yeah, but that has to go to rent and supporting myself for the next little while.”

            “Listen, don’t be difficult.  The room is free; the drinks are cheap. I’m paying for gas.  All you need is gambling money.”

            “That’s what I’m worried about.”

            “What worry?  If you get down you can always borrow more money from me.”

            “Then I have to pay you back.”

            “So?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “All right, I didn’t want to have to say this, but I’m going to anyway.  I’m worried about you, Pete.  You’re not the same.  You’ve lost your gambling spirit.”

            “No, I’ve lost the losing spirit.  I haven’t won on the table games in like two years.”

            “See what I mean?  You have a bad attitude.  You can’t win with a bad attitude.”

            “That was a low blow, what you said.  Nobody has more gambling spirit than I do and you know it.”

            “So, are you coming?”

            “Yeah.”

            At six-fifteen I was getting ready for my dinner with Marion.  After brushing my teeth I scrutinized my countenance in the mirror.

            Not a bad face, I thought, but one of a person nearer to forty than thirty.  Premature lines in the corners of my eyes, small hairline red cracks and splotches on my large Roman nose, a lack of color in my face and barely visible but burgeoning freckles on the top of my head where male pattern baldness had laid waste to my once great forest of hair.  I had gained some weight as well, which gave my neck and cheeks a paunchiness I was not used to.  When I was younger I was so skinny and all I wanted was to be able to put on a few pounds.  Now that I was older I realized how hard it was to lose weight once you had it. 

            But still, not a bad face.  God had not been unfair to me.  It had character; it was a face that merited female company.  I wondered what Marion must have looked like fifty-five years earlier.  She was probably a decent babe in her day.

            At six twenty-nine I exited my bungalow and walked across the small lawn to hers.  The door was open a couple of inches, but I knocked anyway. 

            “Come in,” she called.

            I entered.  There was a small card table that had been set with a lace tablecloth, old floral plates and antique silver wear.  As Marion was nowhere in sight, I indulged my interest by picking up and inspecting a knife off the table.  It was heavy, real silver: stamped Tiffany.  She had brought out the good stuff for me. 

            She emerged from out her bedroom dressed in dark blue sweatpants, a soiled baby blue sweater and white slippers.  I was glad she was comfortable.  If she had been all dressed up it would have made me uneasy. 

            “Hello Peter,” she said softly.  “I’m so glad you came.  Tonight we’re having a dinner of Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.  I hope that sounds good to you.”

            “It certainly does,” I replied.

            “I’ll get started on it after Jeopardy.”  And with this, she turned on the television and offered me a seat on the couch next to her. 

            The program began.  I like Jeopardy.  It is truly one of the great game shows of all time.  I don’t watch regularly, but when I do I like to play along.  I’ve always been under the assumption that everybody plays along.  That, I believe, is what makes it such a compelling program.  On this particular night I was on fire, hitting more than half the questions to the answers. 

            “What is Liberia?”

            “Who is William Randolph Hearst?”

            “What is a sonnet?”

            “Who are the Carthaginians?”

            “Could you please stop that?” Marion snapped.  I was totally confused.

            “Huh?”

            “You are ruining the show.”

            “Oh,” I responded, embarrassed and a little taken aback.  “Sorry.”

            We watched the rest of the program in silence.  I guessed at the answers in my head, but it just wasn’t the same. 

            When the show was finished Marion rose from her seat. 

            “You just stay where you are.  Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

            Fifteen minutes? I thought.  How could that be?

            “No, Marion, allow me to help you.”

            “Absolutely not,” she responded pleasantly.  She walked over to the refrigerator, opened the freezer and removed two blue boxes: frozen dinners.  I understood and was pleased that she wouldn’t be straining herself.  Anyway, I like frozen dinners. 

            Soon the plates on the table were removed, replaced by the plastic boxes that contained our dinners.  She poured two waters for us to drink.  So there we were, eating Swanson’s Hungry Man with fine silver.  The steak was a little chewy, but the green beans and potatoes were quite palatable.  The meal even included an additional treat: a chocolate brownie.  What more could be desired?  A beer, perhaps. 

            I took responsibility for keeping the conversation rolling, asking her about her family.  When she tired of this topic I queried her on some of the events and personalities of her lifetime: FDR and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini.  She had remarkably accurate and clear memories of this history.  She recalled the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House during Christmas 1941 and the heroic welcome he received.  “He was a very great man,” she said.  “He understood the danger in our world before anybody else, even the President.”  I listened intently, as I am always enthralled by these increasingly rare first person narratives.  Those were truly weighty times that forged great men.  Today we live in a historical cesspool.  Our leaders, I think, have diminished accordingly. 

            When dinner was finished we cleared the table together.  We sat back down on the couch but had little left to discuss.  She yawned, which I took as a sign to make my exit.

            “Marion, thank you so much for dinner.”

            “It was my pleasure.  We must do this again sometime,” she said as she led me to the door.

            “I look forward to it,” I replied.

 

            Two days later I was awakened by loud noises outside my window.  It was fairly early, eight o’clock in the morning.  As I don’t like to rise unnaturally unless I have some business to conduct, I was perturbed.  I put on my robe and went outside.  Three men were crowded around Marion’s open door, shouting at one another.  They were strangers to me.  Two of them were young and dressed in blue uniforms, the other a middle aged fellow in plainclothes with an expression of complete anguish on his face.  I walked toward them.

            “What is the meaning of all this racket?” I asked. 

            They turned as a unit and looked at me dumbfounded, as if my very presence was surreal.  Just as the first whiff of that foul odor penetrated my nostrils, I peered over the shoulder of one of the men and saw the source of their dismay: there was Marion, dressed exactly as I had left her two days earlier, dead on the couch.  She had a strange look frozen on her face, a look of surprise.  At least she had been sitting, I thought. 

            “Oh,” I said.  I turned and walked back into my apartment.  It was impossible to get back to sleep.  I felt like getting high.