Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [27]
"When could we talk about this? It’s something we ought to go over together, certainly. Tonight would be fine with me."
"I work tonight."
"Overtime at the wholesale house?"
"Another job—in a restaurant. Work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights."
I winced. The man had maybe seventy-five dollars a day coming in from his securities, and he worked three nights a week to make ends meet! "Monday?"
"Play organ for choir practice at the church."
"Tuesday?"
"Volunteer Fire Department drill."
"Wednesday?"
"Play piano for folk dancing at the church."
"Thursday?"
"Movie night for Alma and me."
"When, then?"
"You go ahead and do whatever needs to be done."
"Don’t you want to be in on what I’m doing?"
"Do I have to be?"
"I’d feel better if you were."
"All right, Tuesday noon, lunch."
"Fine with me. Maybe you’d better have a good look at this report before then, so you can have questions ready."
He sounded annoyed. "Okay, okay, okay. I’ll be here tonight until nine. Drop it off before then."
"One more thing, Herbert." I’d saved the kicker for last. "I was way off about what the stocks are worth. They’re now up to about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
"Um."
"I said, you’re about a hundred thousand dollars richer than you thought!"
"Uh-huh. Well, you just go ahead and do whatever needs to be done."
"Yes, sir." The phone was dead.
I was delayed by other business, and I didn’t get out to the Fosters’ until quarter of ten. Herbert was gone. Alma answered the door, and, to my surprise, she asked for the report, which I was hiding under my coat.
"Herbert said I wasn’t supposed to look at it," she said, "so you don’t need to worry about me peeking."
"Herbert told you about this?" I said carefully.
"Yes. He said it’s confidential reports on stocks you want to sell him."
"Yes, uh-huh-well, if he said to leave it with you, here it is."
"He told me he had to promise you not to let anybody look at it."
"Mmm? Oh, yes, yes. Sorry, company rules."
She was a shade hostile. "I’ll tell you one thing without looking at any reports, and that is he’s not going to cash those bonds to buy any stocks with.’’
"I’d be the last one to recommend that, Mrs. Foster."
"Then why do you keep after him?"
"He may be a good customer at a later date." I looked at my hands, which I realized had become inkstained on the earlier call. "I wonder if I might wash up?"
Reluctantly, she let me in, keeping as far away from me as the modest floor plan would permit.
As I washed up, I thought of the list of securities Herbert had taken from between the plasterboard walls. Those securities meant winters in Florida, filet mignon and twelve-year-old bourbon, Jaguars, silk underwear and handmade shoes, a trip around the world.... Name it; Herbert Foster could have it. I sighed heavily. The soap in the Foster soap dish was mottled and dingy—a dozen little chips moistened and pressed together to make a new bar.
I thanked Alma, and started to leave. On my way out, I paused by the mantel to look at a small tinted photograph. "Good picture of you," I said. A feeble effort at public relations. "I like that."
"Everybody says that. It isn’t me; it’s Herbert’s mother."
"Amazing likeness." And it was. Herbert had married a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad. "And this picture is his father?"
"My father. We don’t want a picture of his father."
This looked like a sore point that might prove informative. "Herbert is such a wonderful person, his father must have been wonderful, too, eh?"
"He deserted his wife and child. That’s how wonderful he was. You’ll be smart not to mention him to Herbert."
"Sorry. Everything good about Herbert comes from his mother?"
"She was a saint. She taught Herbert to be decent and respectable and God-fearing." Alma was grim about it.
"Was she musical, too?"
"He gets that from his father. But what he does with it is something quite different. His taste in music is his mother’s— the classics."
"His father was a jazz man, I take it?" I hinted.
"He preferred playing piano in dives, and breathing