The Winners Circle Page 4

  Jerry saw the moment unfold. Few times in his life, he gained such clarity. His arms and legs moved as if by rote. Chelsea watched from the bank of the stream. He stepped up and thrust his arm forward, stone and all, and slammed his fist on target, knocking Kruk’s smart-ass expression out of the exchange.

  The punk fell back on his ass—the part of his anatomy that governed most of his thinking. He stared up from the grass, pawing at his face. A trail of saliva leaked from the corner of his mouth. “You, you.”

  Jerry wasn’t the goon anymore. He knew that before Kruk’s nose started bleeding, even before Kruk squeezed out dirty tears. Kruk covered his nose and ran, joining his buddies halfway up the trail. Later on, Kruk’s father hardly believed that Jerry had fractured the boy’s nose, but the kids got the message. Don’t mess with Jerry Nearing or anyone who knows him.

  Chelsea retrieved her knapsack from the grass and slung it over her shoulder. Jerry watched her turn toward him. She seemed well past crying, collecting herself in a way he would grow accustomed. Her eyes were ice blue, like the color of the sky before it snowed. Her lustrous skin swept away, disappearing into the yellow fur along her hairline. The metal that twisted around her teeth didn’t belong to this face. It was no big deal.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured.

  Jerry didn’t reply. He must have been shaking. He looked past her and down the trail at Kruk’s retreat. He felt both scared and proud of the power he’d gained with a single blow.

  She nudged his elbow. “We better get home.”

  They walked for a while in silence. Their feet padded the trail like two young animals. Occasionally their arms touched and pulled back. She mumbled phrases between her wires, and Jerry nodded. She didn’t say much beyond ‘thank you,’ but some contracts are born without even speaking. His job was to shelter Chelsea, and she loved him for it. He was suddenly useful again.

  “Open your mouth, please,” Dr. Weinberg said.

  Jerry watched Chelsea recline on an adjustable chair. They sat in a bright office with budding plants and sculptures with motorized waterfalls. It duplicated the waiting room outside and the offices next door. He felt lost inside a mini-mall for plastic surgery.

  “Tilt your head, please.” Dr. Saul Weinberg had a patchy gray beard and a body best suited for a lab coat. He passed a lighted magnifying glass over Chelsea’s face and furrowed his brow. Haskell Cogdon had recommended Weinberg. Cogdon was making a lot of suggestions, sticking his little fingers into every plan Jerry and Chelsea made.

  “Can you do anything?” Jerry leaned forward in his seat across the room. Chelsea wanted a different look. He wanted to restore the farmhouse and purchase a new set of pots and pans. She desired the perfect mouth—a chance to erase her flaw once and for all. A month ago, this wasn’t an option, but now they were saddled with options, and Cogdon explored each one, lining their countertops with brochures and prospectuses that supposedly unlocked the secrets of wealth and empire. Chelsea’s face seemed the best place to start conquering the world.

  “Can you take the …” Jerry began.

  “Give me a minute please,” Weinberg said.

  Chelsea flinched as the light hit her eyes.

  Weinberg folded back her upper lip with his thumbs. “They did a nice job with the teeth. How long ago was this?”

  “She was eight during the last operation,” Jerry said.

  Weinberg ignored Jerry.

  “Haskell Cogdon recommended you,” Jerry said.

  Weinberg returned to his drawing pad. He swept a graphite stick over the paper, scratched his beard, and scribbled some more.

  “He claimed you were the best,” Jerry said.

  Weinberg acknowledged the remark with only a subtle flick of the chin, but when he held up the sketchpad, Chelsea’s reaction startled him.

  She leapt forward in her seat and embraced the pad in her fists. “Is this me?”

  “We can pull down the upper lip and plump the corners,” Weinberg said dryly.

  Jerry was also shocked by the change. Chelsea had been rendered ordinary by the adjustments on paper. Some men might say beautiful, but she was already the most beautiful woman Jerry knew, inside and out.

  “We’ll plump the lower to match,” Weinberg continued. “You’ll be pleased with the result.”

  Chelsea stared down at the pad, as if gazing into a magic mirror. Jerry wished he knew what she was thinking.

  “It’s desirable to show some teeth,” Weinberg said.

  “A little teeth?”

  “I call it a Venetian crest. I have photo catalogues for you to browse.”

  A phone started ringing in the office. After a while, Chelsea and Weinberg were staring at Jerry.

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “It’s you.” Chelsea dropped the pad in her lap. “It’s the cell phone.”

  Jerry dug into his jacket pocket. He wasn’t comfortable with the device yet. Whenever a phone rang in the past, it typically wasn’t for him, even when he used to pray for the job service to call with a prospect. Now he received phone calls day and night. Each call seemed like nonsense, but the nuances of his day suddenly held value to others.

  “The green button picks up,” Chelsea said.

  “Got it.” Jerry put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Jerry, my friend.” Haskell Cogdon was his upbeat self, ready to ratchet up their lives another notch. He was their attorney, financial advisor, and estate planner rolled into one. Jerry didn’t know if they needed that. He only knew Chelsea liked having Haskell around.

  “It’s Haskell,” Jerry called across the room.

  “What does he want?” Chelsea said.

  “What do you want?” Jerry repeated into the palm-sized device. He felt as if he was talking into a calculator and any minute someone might smirk and hand him the actual phone.

  “I have something to show you. I’m coming over.” The sound of Haskell’s Mercedes hummed in the background. Jerry recognized the ping of the German diesel engine. At the GM plant, if someone drove a foreign car, they had to park in the furthest spot from the entrance.

  “I’m not home.”

  “I know where you are. I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”

  “Hello?” Jerry shook the phone and returned it to his ear. “Hello?”

  “What did he want?” Chelsea twisted in the chair. She wore capri pants, which exposed a band of skin around her ankles.

  “He just hung up.”

  “That’s it?”

  “He said he’d be here in ten minutes. He has to show me something, then he hung up.”

  “And?”

  “He just hung up.”

  “You don’t have to say good-bye on cell phones.” Chelsea glanced at Weinberg for affirmation. “You just make your point and move on.”

  Weinberg shrugged. The sleeves of his white coat bunched near his collar.

  “What should I do about Haskell?” Jerry asked, confused by the new jargon in his life. It wasn’t just the cell phone lingo. He struggled with the terms for their tax shelters and retirement plans, and that literature from Cogdon, which piled in front of their toaster oven, might as well have been pages ripped from a medical journal. A man best suited for machines and power tools felt lame once he acquired the means to employ contractors and lawyers. He suddenly knew very little.

  “Go with him?” Chelsea said.

  Weinberg nodded, clearly desiring Jerry’s absence.

  Chelsea turned to the doctor. “We have things to discuss.”

  “Aren’t we about finished?” Jerry asked, but she had that look in her eye, determined, set on a course he’d discover later.

  “Go with Haskell. I’ll call the car service.”

  Jerry sunk in the soft leather seat of Haskell Cogdon’s Mercedes. They cruised over the pitted back roads of Mercer County without incident. Blackbirds swarmed overhead. Yanni oozed from the stereo, surrounding the cabin in redundant mellow noise. The car seemed ready to
burst into a commercial for itself.

  “Did you sign the papers?” Haskell guided the steering wheel with manicured hands. His sunglasses were deep brown, reflecting the sun and the silver shards of hair within his sideburns.

  “Which papers?” Jerry sipped a club soda in a crystal glass. A custom mini-bar lay open between the seats.

  “If you assign me with power of attorney, I can administer your accounts with better ease.”

  “So you say.”

  “One phone call, and I’ll do what you ask.”

  “Can’t you do that now?”

  “You may miss important opportunities.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You might be on vacation, and I can’t reach you.”

  Jerry pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “I thought that’s what this was for.”

  “We’ll discuss it again later.” Haskell hit the turn signal.

  They veered off the main road and into the hills outside Princeton. The pavement disappeared into a narrow path with overgrown tire ruts. A minute earlier, they drove past palatial estates, and the next, they forged deep into a wooded hillside that Jerry never knew existed.

  He listened to the sticks and branches snap along the sides of the Mercedes. “You’re going to ruin the clear coat finish on this baby.”

  “The lease is up next month. I’m thinking about a Jag.”

  “Jag?”

  “The sports coup with the convertible roof.”

  “Chelsea wants one of those.”

  “I know.”

  Jerry fidgeted in the seat. He slumped inside smaller cars. He needed more legroom. “Where are we?”

  “You’ll see.” Haskell fixed his permanent smile straight up the path.

  They stopped in a clearing dotted with tree stumps. Meadow grass sprouted around the decaying cuts, and early moths flew about the cattails, glittering in the sun.

  “Follow me.” Haskell left the car. He wore cowboy boots with his double-breasted suit. A scarf poked from his pocket.

  Jerry unfolded himself from the car, glad he’d worn his work boots. Chelsea hassled him to update his wardrobe, ordering a fortune in shoes, pants, and shirts from catalogs, but after a cursory look, he let the boxes pile in the corner of their bedroom. He preferred his well-worn boots to the odd Italian loafers with girlie tassels. He favored jeans and flannel shirts over the baggy pants and linen shirts. Forget about the colors. What passed for fashionable and suave would have gotten you beat to a pulp in grammar school, not to mention your stones busted on the assembly line at the car plant.

  Haskell led them up a footpath crowded with pine and fir trees with large sticky needles. The attorney stumbled on the big rocks. He wasn’t a hiker.

  “You want me to carry you?” Jerry joked.

  “Wait ‘till you see it.”

  “See what?”

  “The view.”

  “What view?”

  “You’re a lucky man. People envy a man with options.”

  Options was one of Haskell’s favorite words; mobility too. He spoke like a luxury car brochure. God knows, Jerry’d read enough of them in the last month. He wrestled between the choice of a Land Rover and the super Ford pickup with every amenity. So he asked Ted at the garage to overhaul the old Ford’s engine instead. Chelsea still complained about it. “God, we’re never getting rid of that bomb, are we?”

  When they reached the ridge, Haskell pointed to a flat rock that jutted over the ravine. “Go ahead, there’s only room for one.”

  Jerry stepped onto the precipice without worry. In deer hunting season, he balanced himself on a tree limb for half the morning. He sensed the breeze in his hair and the smell of the budding pines. He loved the woods any time of the year.

  “Do you see it?” Haskell asked. “Look through the trees.”

  Jerry squinted, making out the tops of the buildings below. He recognized an ornate pair of iron gates. The crest held a shield in black and orange. “That’s Princeton University.”

  “Bingo, my friend. B-ingo!”

  Jerry glanced back at the little man. “So what?”

  “So what?! You can spend the rest of your life overlooking town. That’s what.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because Chelsea wants it.”

  “She never ...” Jerry wished he hadn’t admitted that. Men will always be men, and he needed to know what his woman wanted before any other man. “I mean, she never mentioned this place in particular.”

  “She wanted you to see it. It just came on the market. Twenty acres. It’s been a tree farm since colonial days.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “The owner died, and the heirs want to sell. Most people don’t know about it yet. You have to move quickly.”

  “I don’t want to move.”

  “Think of the options this place can afford. You can build the house of your desires.”

  “We’re going to do that in Hopewell.”

  Haskell spread out his arms. “Why Hopewell, when you can have Princeton? At five million, it’s a steal.”

  Jerry fought to stay one step ahead of him. “I suppose you’re going to tell me about the tax write-offs.”

  “Of course.”

  “Will the soil perk for water and septic?”

  Haskell donned a smarmy look, an extension of his repellent persona. “Those are merely details.”

  Details was another one of Haskell’s favorite words, and details were where Haskell would always excel.

  Jerry hopped off the rock. He looked down on Haskell. It wasn’t unusual for Chelsea to be swayed by dangerous promises, even an intelligent lady like her. Jerry determined to jettison this attorney from his life. He was going to discuss the matter with his wife as soon as he reached home. “Let me think about it.”

  The lilac sprigs shifted in the breeze, as Jerry drove the old Ford up the drive and past the dilapidated carriage house at the front of the property. Light emanated from the farmhouse, and he spotted Chelsea’s silhouette beside the living room reading lamp. The sight of her calmed his nerves. He decided to take the conversation slow. She was a hard mind to change. She trusted Haskell. Jerry wouldn’t send Haskell down the block for a loaf of bread. Haskell might not steal their money, but Haskell believed that he knew a better way of spending it.

  Jerry tossed his keys and jacket on the chair by the door. He considered dinner, preparing Chelsea’s favorite veal dish. “I see you got home alright.”

  Chelsea never turned around. She perched on the edge of the couch, leaning over a large binder on the coffee table. “What do you think of these?”

  He stood over her shoulder, taken aback by the array of photographs upon the page. They were snapshots of naked women, below the chin and above the waist, a full view of bare breasts. “What the hell?”

  “What do you like?”

  He double-clutched. This was not a question you often answered for your wife, not the typical wife.

  She flipped through the pages. He saw round shapes and conical shapes. There were pendulous sacks of female flesh and pairs that stuck out like bookshelves, defying gravity. Some looked petite and pert. Others floated like dirigibles, feminine warships in the sky. He spotted side views and overviews; views of how they’d look lying down. There was nothing erotic about it, just a who’s who of breasts in America.

  “What are you doing?” Jerry asked.

  “I want new ones.”

  “New what?”

  “Breasts, dummy.”

  He didn’t believe it, even as the words left her mouth. Chelsea was a B cup, a nice round shape, still high for thirty-two years. He reached over and slammed the binder shut. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Wouldn’t you like more?” She arched her back, pushing out her chest beneath a gray cashmere sweater.

  “Did Weinberg suggest this?”

  “I asked him.”

  “Why?”

  She led his arm a
round the couch, until he faced her. “It would be fun, don’t you think? Your friends wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes off me.”

  He balked at that. This was a woman who wanted no one’s eyes on her. “I have no friends.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Don’t be so resistant to change, Jerry. You’re becoming a bore.”

  He took her comment deep. He remembered a guy on the assembly line who chose new breasts for his wife over a pneumatic pump for his garage. He’d bragged to the others that she’d screwed him on the workbench after the operation. The guys laughed. Jerry played along, but he wondered why he didn’t want what the others wanted. He believed that if you forced a situation, you ended up with something that you never imagined.

  The new grandfather clock chimed the hour. Jerry stared at his wife, flipping through the catalog of breasts again. She was forcing the boundaries of a good thing. It was that damned money. And of course, he’d bought the lottery ticket.

  He sat beside her. “I want Cogdon out of our lives.”

  She looked at him. Her blue eyes swam in the intense halogen light. “I thought we were discussing my breasts.”

  “I’m done with that.”

  “This is about the land in Princeton.”

  “That’s another thing. We’re not moving. There’s no need.”

  “We can’t get rid of Haskell. He’s the only man who knows what to do with our money.”

  Jerry knew she was wrong, but he lacked the vocabulary to defend his point. It wasn’t so much his words. He understood the big words. It was the way Haskell presented them. This was another stinging blow to Jerry’s ego, and he fell back against the couch. He was aced out of his best role by his own wealth. The skills that had served him well for years were obsolete. Winning the lottery was like being laid-off, except the severance check arrived with a lot more zeros attached.

  Chelsea leaned her slender frame upon him. Her forearms propped against his chest. She started with a coy downward gaze, a look that usually melted him to the cushions.

  “I know what you need,” she said.

  He wanted her close. They hadn’t made love much. With her not working and an abundance of free time, they were somehow busier. It used to be the one thing they did for free, as often as they liked. He wrapped his arms around her waist. If he held her tonight, everything might be alright.