All That Was Happy (23 page)

“
But what if Huntington interprets my
refusal to give him an answer as a rejection and enters the
priesthood? I’ll lose him forever.”

“
Then you’ll lose him,” Father said.
“But nothing is forever, except our life with God.”

“
Father, I’m lost,” Beckie said. “I
don’t know what to do. What if Huntington can’t wait for
me?”

“
There’s only one thing to do in a case
like this,” Father said. “Trust God.”

“
But Father--I can’t!”

“
Why not?” he said. “Everything else
you’ve trusted in up to now has been a bust. What choice do you
have? Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for me to go.” He
handed her a card. “Call me if you need me,” he said.

Beckie found herself confronting that awful
place inside herself everybody superficially referred to as being
alone--a place surprisingly easy to find in spite of the ten
million souls surrounding her, a place where seeing life clearly
was difficult due to an absence of inner light, a place where
feeling anything at all was a matter, not of emotional discharge
and release, but of finding her way in the dark, guided only by the
rough edges of past regrets. Shouldering her disappointments, she
wandered one last time through the trackless wasteland of the place
she used to call home, turning off the lights one-by-one before at
last collapsing on the couch under the weight of the darkness which
pressed her inexorably downward into a troubled, but dreamless
sleep.

Chapter
42

“
Exactly how fast can you knock it all
down and haul it all away,” Beckie said to the man with the big
belly holding the clipboard.

“
Once we get the necessary permits,” he
said. “The whole thing’ll take maybe four or five
hours.”

“
How soon can you get started, assuming
you’ll earn a sizable bonus for completing the job
today?”

“
We have a man in the City Planning
Office that’ll have the permit to us in maybe half an hour,” he
said. “We do the permit process over the Internet. We could start
after that--of course, you still have to move all the furniture
out--how soon will the moving people be finished?”

“
There won’t be any moving people,” she
said. “The job I’m requesting includes the removal of all the
contents of the house, as well as the house itself.”

The man rubbed the top of his head. “That
sounds a little crazy, lady,” he said. “You just want us to scoop
all your furniture along with the house and dump it someplace?”

“
You’re missing the whole point,” she
said. “Which is how much money you’re going to make if you get on
the stick and get it done before 5 o’clock tonight.”

“
Okay, lady,” he said. “By 5 o’clock
tonight, this lot will be scraped clean as a whistle.”

“
Leave the trees,” she said.

Beckie, after a troubled sleep, awoke angry
and went straight to the Yellow Pages, locating quickly a company
specializing in urban demolition and who, for a fair price, would
remove forever from the face of the earth the house she and Bernie
had shared together for twenty-nine years, along with its furniture
and other appointments, said price including the complete removal
of the large swimming pool and the filling in of the hole.

That bit of business concluded, she returned
Mr. Boopers to his place in the straw carryall, emptied the
contents of the bedroom wall safe into the same, grabbed, as an
afterthought, the small statuette of the Virgin which sat upon her
fireplace mantle, and proceeded to her Mercedes SL-600 Desert
Silver Black Diamond Edition Convertible V-12 Roadster, which now
had the top down and from the rear deck of which protruded absurdly
the black surfboard, its tail fin waving proudly, said board which
was previously manufactured from a block of polyurethane foam by
Jacobs sometime during the 60’s surfing craze and which had once
belonged to the legendary Robert August--the very same board he’d
taken on his travels around the world in search of the perfect
wave, the very same board of which she’d been introduced to on the
day Mickey Dora, her first big crush, had enjoyed an exceptional
day hanging ten at Malibu, the same board upon which, during a
recent encounter with a very imperfect wave, was responsibly wholly
for the swollen bridge of Beckie’s nose and the blackening of her
right eye, said injury occurring to her nose after her attempt to
ride its nose and hang five on the unwaxed, and therefore
impossibly slippery surface of that nose, the nose which Huntington
had waxed that she might never slip again.

On the hands-free, she managed to raise
Lauren.

“
Lauren,” she said. “Do you recall what
Bernie did to me the other day? The seizure of my assets, the
freezing of my bank accounts, and the stealing of my car, all in
the name of Divorce?”

“
Yes,” Lauren said.

“
Bernie’s on his way back from Japan,”
Beckie said. “But before he sets foot on U.S. soil, I want you to
do the same back to him. That gives you maybe most of today, but
not much more than that. How soon can you get started?”

“
I’ve started,” Lauren said. “Call me
later and I’ll give you a progress report.”

“
There’s one more thing,” Beckie said.
“I want you to deliver a message to Huntington for me--it’s very
important that you tell him it’s my final answer. For personal
reasons, I won’t be contacting him for awhile.”

“
What’s the message?” Lauren
said.

“
Mickey Dora’s ham sandwich,” Beckie
said.

“
That’s the message?” Lauren said.
“Mickey Dora’s ham sandwich?”

“
He’ll understand,” Beckie
said.

Chapter
43

“
I’ll need five men, women, or any
combination of the two, armed,” Beckie said. “Have them meet me in
the Argon Tools parking lot in an hour.”

Beckie, on her way out to the Valley, taking
advantage of the morning rush hour slowdown to transact some
business on the hands-free and thus further bring about meaningful
change in her life, had just placed her order for the armed guards
from the security agency who’d done the bang-up job researching
Bernie, Ira and Leah. She’d need the intimidation factor if things
got sticky at the warehouse, but she felt confident she could enact
the further changes she had planned.

She pulled into the parking lot just as the
van load of guards was unloading--a motley crew of three men and
two women, clad in the requisite cop-like uniforms with wide
leather belts sporting, in addition to the sidearm, a variety of
other paraphernalia pertaining to enhancing the submission factor
among any who dared resist them.

Another sight greeted her eyes, a sight not
wholly unexpected--her former Roadster, the one presumably given to
Nolene as payment for her sins, the one in which she’d flung her
wedding ring but a few days before, parked in the executive space
next to the walkway, the deep metallic silver paint sparkling in
the bright April sun, proving that Solomon’s complaint was still
true--there was nothing new under the sun.

With introductions with the guards out of the
way, and her absolute authority being established with them by the
presentation of a variety of documents taken earlier from the home
safe, Beckie paused first by Nolene’s silver Roadster, fishing in
her bag and producing a set of duplicate keys, whereupon she
disalarmed the vehicle before handing the keys to a guard.

“
Some of this is going to seem a bit
irregular, at first,” she said. “But rest assured, if everybody
does their job correctly and as ordered, I’m paying each of you a
bonus of one-thousand dollars--in cash--unreported to your
agency--at the end of the day--If any one of you doesn’t feel
comfortable with anything I ask, you’re free to go, but you’ll
forfeit the thousand.”

At the mention of a thousand in cash, she had
their undivided attention.

“
Our first order of business today,”
she said--pointing to the largest guard in the group--“is for you
to drive this roadster around to the back of the warehouse and burn
it to the ground.”

“
Burn the car,” he said--a statement,
not a question.

“
It’s my car,” Beckie said. “I can
drive it, sell it, or burn it. I prefer it burned--just do it
safely. Join us inside when that’s completed. While he’s doing
that, I need two more of you to round up everybody in the warehouse
and bring them to the front office for a meeting. There should be
about twenty-five people back there. If there’s any trucks
unloading, order the drivers to leave the premises
immediately.”

She entered the office. About five people
were present, all of whom she knew, including Nolene, who was at
present occupied in the act of preparing herself a cup of coffee,
which she nearly spilled at the sight of Beckie leading the
charge.

“
Escort that woman off the grounds,”
Beckie said, pointing the finger at Nolene--”and don’t let her back
in under any circumstances.”

To say that Nolene had a personal problem
with being summarily and without further discussion removed from
the premises by an armed guard was an understatement, and all
persons present were treated to many familiar phrases which
described with some degree of accuracy exactly what they all could
do with certain things. During this brief hurling of angry
invectives, not only were many of the familiar stock phrases used,
but those within earshot also were introduced to a number of
descriptions of things that could be done with things that were new
to everybody, these new possibilities having just been invented as
they were, in the heat of the moment.

Five minutes after the expulsion of Nolene,
the staff being gathered, or rather packed together by the guards
at a spot near the entrance, Beckie called the meeting to
order.

“
As many of you may or may not know,”
she said. “Argon Tools is a closely held partnership. I have here
in my hand the official Joint Partnership Agreement which states
that in the event one partner--whom all of you know as Bernie, my
husband--is out of the country, that I am, as the Acting Partner,
duly empowered to transact any and all business on behalf of the
Company. Since Bernie is currently en route her from Japan and is
therefore out of the country, as Acting Partner, my first action is
to announce that each of you will receive in your next paycheck a
bonus in the amount of five-thousand dollars. Now I must inform you
that I am suspending all business of the company for the remainder
of the day. Each of you will have 5 minutes to gather your personal
belongings and vacate the premises--you’ll all be paid double time
for today. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Applause and whistles filled the air as the
group filed out, many smiling and laughing at the unexpected
cessation of their labors accompanied by the unexpected bonus of
what, for most of them, amounted to a 20% increase in their annual
wages. Not to mention an extra day’s pay. Beckie retained from the
departing personnel one elderly gentleman, the company’s in-house
accountant, Art Rivas. “Not you, Art,” she said. “Grab us two
coffees and meet me in Bernie’s office.”

Beckie turned to the assembled guards. “For
the next 24 hours, I want absolutely no one to be allowed inside
this building without my written permission.”

“
Beckie,” Art said. “I don’t mind
telling you this is most irregular.”

“
Tell me something else I don’t know,
Art,” she said. “And before you answer, you should know that I
value honesty above all else. You should also know that if my keen
ears detect the sour note of falsehood coming from your lips,
you’ll be out the door for good before this coffee
cools.”

“
What do you want to know?” he
said.

“
First,” Beckie said, “to your
knowledge, has my husband squirreled away any assets under anybody
else’s name--such as his Lolita, who is now, even at this moment,
on foot in a bad part of town?”

“
Well,” Art said. “It may be he has,
but I’m just the accountant here, not his personal
financier.”

“
Art,” she said. “Either you are going
to tell me the truth right now, or I’m going to bring in an army of
accountants who are going to back-track through, and analyze every
shred of paper in this place, right down to the stuff you wipe your
derriere on--do you understand what I’m saying? And if even one
account looks funny, I’m going to personally bleed you dry in Civil
Court for the rest of your life.”

“
He has a number of accounts setup with
Nolene,” Art said. “As well as with Ira, his brother, and his
sister-in-law, Leah. The three of them were going to serve as chief
officers of their arm of the consortium.”

“
Second question,” she said. “What’s
your estimate of the book value of the company as it stands today,
and has the business been compromised in any way by debt during the
past six months of merger negotiations?”

“
The merger negotiations were never
completed,” he said, “so there was never any debt incurred. Now, as
to the book value, do you want the figure to include good
will?”

“
Everything,” she said. “Good Will is
important in a long running business like this one. But I must
caution you--if I think you’re lying--if I think you’re jiving me
with the public books while keeping the real numbers secret--I may
just shoot you.” Beckie reached into her straw bag and pulled her
gun. “This is known as brandishing a weapon,” she said. “It’s a
crime in this city. Don’t make me guilty of anything
else.”