Schmidt Delivered Paperback - 2001

Excerpt

Yes, it's Schmidtie here. Hello hello. Yes, this is Schmidtie speaking.

He had knocked the telephone off his night table and was groping under
the bed for the receiver. People shouldn't be calling a retired gent
before nine. Or was this some sort of bad news? Charlotte!

I hope this is not an inconvenient time.

The speaker's voice was agreeably deep, with a mystifying rough
intonation at the edge.

You don't remember me.

Terribly sorry, I'm not good at recognizing voices.

Look, there's no reason you should remember me, though people usually do
remember my voice. I'm Michael Mansour. That's right, in this country I
pronounce "Man-sower," not "Man-soor." Anything to make it easy for the
natives. We met yesterday, at the Blackmans' party. You know who I am?

Now Schmidt had his bearings. Of course, the billionaire investor who
backs Gil's films. Egyptian, or something, but I lodged firmly toward
the top of Forbes magazine's list of the richest tycoons in America.

Of course. I've read about you, more than once. The king of bottom
fishers.

Ha! Ha! I like that--you made a pun, right? But that's just how I make
money. I'm a friend of Gil's, he gave me your telephone number. I'd like
you and your wife to come over for lunch on Saturday. My house, at
one-thirty, unless you want to take a dip in the ocean before we start
drinking. Gil says you're his best friend. He's told me what kind of
lawyer you were. I'm sorry we never got to work together. Anyway, Gil's
friends are my friends. So you'll come? Excuse me, you're sure you
remember meeting me? By the way, I've got a pool, too, if you don't like
the ocean.

Considering Mr. Mansour's grandeur, this diffidence was touching.

Of course I remember, replied Schmidt, reaching for a high level of
amiability. Elaine introduced us. Actually, the young woman I was with
is my friend, not my wife. She's not here just now. Could I call you
after I've checked with her?

He was telling a white lie. Carrie was right there, resolutely asleep,
her head buried under the pillow. It would take more than the three
rings of the telephone and Schmidt's talking sotto voce to Mr. Mansour
to wake her when she was like that.

Your friend is gorgeous. Charming too. I figured she was your wife, and
not your daughter, because she doesn't look like you. Anyway,
congratulations! I want you to bring her, but come alone if she's busy.
I can always have you over together another time.

I'll be in touch.

Having taken in the further news that Mr. Mansour was no longer to be
found at his East Hampton residence, which he had abandoned to the more
recent of his two wives, Schmidt wrote down the unlisted number. Not to
worry, he would keep it to himself. Ah, the Crussel house on Flying
Point Road in Water Mill? Yes, he knew how to find it all right. Yes,
and find memories in that house as well, that the visit might endow with
a new meaning not untinged with new bitterness, but he saw no point in
mentioning that to Mr. Mansour so early in the morning.

The original owners of the house in question, Mr. and Mrs. Crussel, had
been important clients of Wood & King, the firm where Schmidt had been a
partner until he retired. A trusts and estates colleague, Murphy, took
care of them, just as he watched over the modest affairs of Schmidt and
his late wife, Mary, but Schmidt, who specialized in representing
insurance companies in the loans they made, was usefully situated, in a
manner of speaking, as the Crussels' neighbor who knew them socially. It
fell upon him, therefore, to be the firm's unofficial emissary charged
with maintaining and developing them as clients, through more frequent
and more assiduous attendance at their lunches and dinners than would
have otherwise been his style. Occasionally, as though leading a Great
War charge a outrance, he had gone so far in his devotion to
professional duty as to propel a giggling and squealing Olga Crussel
into the surf and hold her up, with both hands, while she bobbed in the
unthreatening breakers. These exploits established in the Crussel
household his reputation for gallantry and limitless strength as a
swimmer; they also gave the authority of revealed truth to his
occasional, off-hand assurances that his partner, Murphy, knew what he
was doing and could be relied upon.

Schmidt was pleased to recall that the house, of which Mr. Mansour was
now the owner, was one of the few subjects about which the Crussels had
not asked his opinion. A prizewinning Brazilian architect, a friend of a
niece of the Crussels, had designed it. He had come out with her for a
Fourth of July weekend and stayed in the large clapboard cottage that
then stood on the site and that had been the Crussels' beach house ever
since they came to the Hamptons. Sizing up the opportunity for new
business--the large fortune, although discreet, was hardly unknown to
connoisseurs of such matters--he made a rapid drawing of what he would,
if the property were his, put in the place of their current dowdy home:
a large, loosely flowing aquatic structure corresponding to Olga
Crussel's inner self, with reception rooms and decks for entertaining in
full view of the ocean and Mecox Bay, between which this astonishing
acreage was located. Olga took the bait. For a Swiss banker, whose
family had been, since the days of Calvin, a pillar of Geneva's
patriciate, Jean Crussel was a prodigy of speed when he really wanted to
make up his mind. Besides, he doted on his wife. The decision to go
ahead was made on the spot, without so much as a call to Murphy or
Schmidt or Olga's pet decorator. The cottage was torn down during one
terrifying week, but construction of the new house dragged on. Getting
it finished and moving in turned into the Crussels' race against
senility and death. The old couple won the first leg: before the platoon
of round-the-clock keepers and nurses had to be brought in, they did
have two years' worth of showing off, at party after party, the
Brazilian's construction, which in Schmidt's opinion--but perhaps he was
unfair, having grown to like a good deal the unmourned old
cottage--resembled nothing more than a motel crossed with an ocean liner
a drunken skipper had carelessly run aground on the beach.

Jean and Olga were childless; the collateral heirs owned perfectly
adequate summerhouses nearby and elsewhere. They put the property on the
market and waited for years, unwilling, in the way of the very rich, to
lower the asking price. That an even wealthier new man had at last put
cash into the heirs' pockets and, presumably, stood ready to pour more
millions into this raped dune was bound to be a very good thing for the
local contractors, and for tradesmen in New York, London, and Paris.
Perhaps for the economy, worldwide. Schmidt imagined that Mr. Mansour
had already excised various sly improvements Jean Crussel made as soon
as the Brazilian, busy with commissions for other masterpieces, had
turned his back: remote-control switches that made the venetian blinds
in the bedrooms go up and down and devices that adjusted slats without
human intervention in relation to the angle of the sun, aluminum ramps
and no-slip surfaces positioned strategically inside the house and on
the decks to prevent a fall that might shatter decalcified bones, and
the cabaret room with its circular dance floor on which Jean and Olga
had daily practiced the tango and the paso doble under the surveillance
of a teenage Arthur Murray instructress. He might have even put down a
new deck at the shallow end of the pool to conceal the twin pink Jacuzzi
tubs. That's where the spider-thin husband and wife, sometimes in the
company of other octogenarians, soaked naked, lifting their candid and
blissful faces to the forenoon sun. The revolution in all of this,
thought Schmidt, remained to be seen and admired.

Should he nudge Carrie and awaken her? He decided against it. Instead,
he advanced his hand cautiously under the covers, ran it over her
breast, felt for her armpit, which was moist from sleep, let it linger
there while with his nose he ruffled the rush of her black curls on the
pillow, and quietly got out of bed. It was a pity. Right now he could do
it, without the help Carrie was willing to give him even while she
groaned with impatience. Failure going to bed, a makeup session in the
morning: both the symmetry and the thought that, if he did wake her, she
might attribute the satisfactory situation to his bladder rather than to
his libido, were discouraging. He put on his pants and shirt, waited to
put on his shoes until he was on the stairs, squeezed four oranges so
that Carrie could have her glass of juice right away if she came down
before he returned, did not drink any himself because he preferred to
have it with her at breakfast, and drove to the post office and then to
the candy store, where, each morning when he was in Bridgehampton, ever
since poor Mary and he had first started coming there, he picked up the
New York Times. The remaining errand was to get croissants, an important
change in Schmidt's routine. Until Carrie decided, at the beginning of
his long convalescence, that freshly baked croissants from Sesame, where
her friend, formerly a fellow waitress at O'Henry's, had begun to work,
would boost his morale, despite their outrageous price, he had
invariably eaten for breakfast one-half of a toasted English muffin
spread thinly with bitter orange marmalade. The other half he saved for
the next day. Without question, the new regime was a huge, habit-forming
gastronomic improvement. It had also brought about frequent chance
encounters with Gil Blackman, whose own morning addiction was to scones,
and introduced Schmidt to a daily spectacle he thought was perfect
material for one of those hard-edged or, as some would say, downright
nasty movies Gil had been making.

Had Schmidt dared, he would have presented a treatment to him in
writing: It's a few minutes short of nine o'clock. The Mercedes station
wagons, Range Rovers, BMWs, and Jaguars have assembled on the gravel in
front of Sesame's locked front door. Men with two days' growth of beard
are kissing women wearing what would seem to be cotton nightshirts and
flip-flops. These women have rushed here straight from bed, you can
still smell it on them, before they brushed their teeth. Also a Toyota,
which looks out of place. The fellow in it might as well be invisible.
He doesn't kiss anybody and nobody greets him. In fact, he has parked
off to the side, but he's in the way so he gets dirty looks.
Imperceptibly, a line forms. At nine sharp the door opens. Easy does it.
God help you if it looks as though you might want to cut in. This crowd
would tear you limb from limb. They're into serious fun. Now not all the
women are in nightgowns: they've been joined by others in riding clothes
with no breasts and hair that looks as if it's been soaked in chlorine,
women in sweat clothes so wet you think they've actually been running,
and fat guys with tits and horn-rimmed bifocals in tennis whites who may
or may not make it to the tennis court. Little girls got up like
scaled-down sluts, with chipped lacquer on fingernails and toenails,
whine about bagels. Tomatoes, two of which go at what the fruit stand
one hundred yards down the road would charge for eight of the same size;
little plastic containers, five dollars a pop, of oil and vinegar with
salt and pepper settled at the bottom, just stir and pour this dressing
over the tomatoes or the lettuce and arugula that are also available in
little Baggies at one dollar per leaf; prebrowned sausages ready to eat
as soon as they're warm (assuming a pair of hands can be found to put
them into a frying pan and on the stove, otherwise don't bother, just
serve them "at room temperature"); mineral water and fruit juice in
bottles like champagne splits for consumption on the premises or in the
waiting Range Rover. Wads of hundred-dollar bills. Give me three pounds
of this, give me a quart of that. These commands are barked at the
imperturbably polite boys and girls behind the counter, as though no
mode of address other than the imperative exists. The boys and girls
write it all down very neatly. A lanky old codger with blue eyes that
have seen better days and a thin mouth diffidently picks two croissants
from the basket. He hesitates. The purchase is too paltry. Should he
just stuff them in the pocket of his cotton jacket and walk out, instead
of bothering the help about a four-dollar transaction? Nuts, he won't
shoplift, but he'll show respect. One of the bony women lets him back
into the line. He lays the croissants on the counter, asks for fresh
goat cheese from Vermont and, because he likes it and it's suitably
expensive, a wedge of English blue.

But Schmidt doesn't write his version of Ali Baba's cave or tell his
friend Gil about it. For all his bluff manner, Mr. Blackman is very
sensitive. Schmidt fears that he might be offended by Schmidt's point of
view on these morning proceedings in which they are both such regular
participants.

Back in his own kitchen, at breakfast with Carrie. Her presence is a
miracle. Worshipful Schmidt knows that she is naked under the gorgeous
ruby-red silk man's bathrobe made up for her by a shirtmaker in the
place Vendome whom Schmidt's father favored. Schmidt had her measured
for it in Paris, during the spring vacation. There is no resource of her
sallow and triumphant body yet unexplored by his eyes, lips, and hands.
Her voice, hoarse and weary but tender as a mother's when she nurses and
coos at a child, fills his memory. When the jazz station he listens to
on his car radio plays a Billie Holiday song, Carrie becomes so
absolutely present that he blushes. Prudence, above all, prudence. But
after he has kissed her on both cheeks, his hand somehow finds its way
under the silk, touching the undersides of her breasts, and then the
nipples, which harden immediately. The hand wishes to descend, toward
Carrie's flat stomach. He restrains it, already reassured. If she
remembers how it went in bed last night, she has forgiven him. Or she
has forgotten--she fell asleep long before he did.

Hey Schmidtie, a woman called. She said she is Mr. Mansour's secretary
and asked if we have a fax machine. She wants to fax directions to his
house. I said you'd call her back. Who's Mr. Mansour?

A very rich man, friend of Gil's. You saw him at their house. Bald, on
the small side, and tanned. Some sort of Egyptian Jew, I think. Or maybe
he's Moroccan.

Yeah, I saw him. Was he standing next to Gil most of the time? That guy
undressing all the girls with his eyes?

No doubt, especially you. He telephoned first thing this morning and
invited us to lunch on Saturday. I said I'd ask if you want to go. He's
divorced recently. This may be part of filling out his new social life
with a few new faces. Or maybe it isn't. He's got so much money he can
order guests from a caterer.

He thinks we're married?

He did. I explained that we aren't.

And he still wants us both? Mr. Schmidt and his Puerto Rican girlfriend?

Of course, he does. He wants dreary Mr. Schmidt only because he'll bring
his delicious friend. He thinks you're beautiful. He told me. Everybody
does. Beautiful and insanely adorable.

Don't shit me, Schmidtie. He asked for me because he thinks I'm your
wife. Hey, no that's not it. He wants me there to wait on tables!

How many variations of this exchange have they gone through? Like
"Greensleeves" played into your ear over and over when the dentist's
receptionist puts you on hold.

Carrie, he said, you shouldn't think like that. You are a gorgeous,
young American citizen. If you really have the silly idea that people
look down on you because you're living with an old guy who isn't your
husband, let's fix it. Please consent to become the beautiful, adorable,
and proper Mrs. Schmidtie Schmidt! All you need to do is say yes. My
people and I will take care of everything else.

She looked away. One afternoon, almost two years back, soon after he had
recovered from the accident, while they were out on the back porch, he
had taken her hand and whispered, Please be my wife. Everything seemed
right for it. Bryan, her part-time boyfriend, was out of the way,
cleverly dispatched to work on the house Schmidt had inherited in Palm
Beach, to restore it to its pristine condition. He had as good as put
that repulsive fellow into long-term storage! Neither he, nor Bryan's
predecessor, Mr. Wilson, would handle Carrie's body again. In the case
of Mr. Wilson, who had bounced off the windshield of Schmidt's totaled
car, Schmidt liked to think that was a dead certainty.

She had stared blankly at him, then as now, but even so he had gone on
to argue his case.

Look, it's all come together. Charlotte has her Jon Riker. They're
married. He's made an honest woman of her. He says that, not I! I've
given her money and furniture and silver out of this house. Everything
she wants--for the time being anyway! They'll drift away from me,
farther and farther. Why shouldn't you and I be married? Come on,
sometimes I even think you love me. Maybe almost as much as you loved
Mr. Wilson!

As always, when he showed the poor judgment or bad taste to mention Mr.
Wilson, or she brought him up herself, big tears appeared in the corners
of her eyes and ran down the sides of her nose. He kissed it dry.

Man, she said, what's with you? You know I love you. I've loved you
since the first time. Hey, I practically had to rape you! I want to live
with you. But I can't marry you. Jesus, you're more than forty years
older! Even your daughter's older than me. What happens when we can't do
it anymore? I'm supposed to lie in bed at night and play with myself
while you read?

I hope that won't be for quite a while, he answered. Remember how you
asked me whether people could love each other and not do it all the
time? I told you they could. They get used to showing their love in
different ways, they give each other pleasure.

Like how? Fingerfucking me? Thanks a lot, I had that with Mr. Wilson
when he couldn't get it up no matter what I tried. Hey Schmidtie, we're
doing fine. Just leave it alone.

Sure, he'd resolve to leave it alone, if only to avoid being reminded
how completely right she was and what desolation awaited him down the
road if he wasn't lucky enough to die soon. But the subject had a queer
way of forcing its way in, for instance when anything concerning money
came up. Soon after she moved in, and time and again afterward, he told
her that she didn't need to be a waitress; it would take forever to save
enough to put herself through college. Of course, he knew he was
exaggerating. More was at stake for him than the date on which she would
receive her diploma. Why not quit, he pleaded, and let me pay for your
education? What's the point of refusing my help? Her invariable reply:
You want to turn me into a gold digger. Thereupon, just as monotonously,
he'd tell her that was nonsense; they were living in the same house and
eating the same food anyway, just like a husband and wife. The least he
could do was to make it possible for her to enjoy those privileges that
his wife would be entitled to as a matter of course. She would shake her
head and say, I'm not your wife. Charlotte and Jon will say they had me
figured out all along. I'm after your money!

Inspiration came to him at the end of one of those dreary exchanges. He
would hook her by the gift of a tiny BMW convertible, the car she
thought was the coolest in the world. The sales manager delivered it in
person to the house during lunch and, as arranged, left the keys on the
seat. As soon as they had finished eating, Schmidt said, Look, there is
something in the driveway I want to show you.

At first she just stood there, staring very seriously at the little car.
Only after he repeated twice, Go on, it's yours, did she look to him for
permission, open the door on the driver's side, ease her body in
delicately, as though the chassis were going to break at the least false
move, and run her hands over the steering wheel, the glistening
dashboard, the black leather.

Why don't you take it out for a spin, he asked. We'll have coffee when
you come back.

Instead, she got out. When she had finished kissing him, standing on
tiptoe, her arms around his neck, she whispered, Oh, Schmidtie, this is
so bad, I just can't say no to this car. You come too. Let's take this
baby for a ride.

She put the top down. Somewhere on an empty stretch of Route 114,
heading from Sag Harbor to East Hampton, past the road that leads to
Cedar Point, looking for all the world like a child before the Christmas
tree at Rockefeller Center, she floored the gas pedal. The car shot
forward. Schmidt waited until the needle was back at sixty and put
forward his proposition: Wouldn't it be nice to drive this car to
Southampton College and back? You'd make me very happy, I want a college
girl in the house. That way we would go on living here. I hear the
courses in psychology are pretty good. You could major in that and get
the diploma you need to be a social worker. If that still interests you.
They have courses in acting and creative writing too. How about it?

He held his breath while she made a face. The grimace changed slowly
into a smile, and she spoke.

Hey, you'll have a live-in college girl! I guess it beats fucking a
waitress. Shit Schmidtie. You would ask me now. How can I say no to you?

A great idea, because it had worked. She liked the college, even let him
help with her papers. An invitation from Mr. Mansour was hardly the most
romantic of contexts in which to press his suit. Nevertheless, there he
was, trying once more.

Carrie, my love, he said, swallowing the last piece of his croissant.
I've just asked you again to marry me. Aren't you going to say
something?

Yeah, I am. Thanks a lot, Schmidtie, but please drop it. We're OK the
way we are. Nothing's changed. You're too old. I'm too young. We'd give
Charlotte a heart attack. Your friends would flip out.

The Blackmans adore you, ventured Schmidtie. And they're practically my
only friends.

That was true. Everybody had dropped him when Mary died, or he had
stopped seeing them.

No reply.

But what about the estimable Mr. Mansour? Shall I say yes?

It was a mistake to have told Carrie that Mansour was very rich. That
had only made her shy, not curious. Perhaps it would be less frightening
to meet this fellow on her home ground. Therefore, he added, Would you
rather invite him to dinner here? Or to lunch, on a day when you don't
have classes?

Schmidtie, what's the matter with you? You've got rocks in your head? I
don't know how to entertain. What's this guy's house like?

It's in Water Mill. Right on the beach, very modern and, in my opinion,
too big and rather silly. I knew the old couple who built it. Before
they became senile, I used to go over there quite often. Now they're
dead.

OK. We'll go. But you'll tell me how to dress.

Schmidt dialed the number. A male voice with an identifiable
Mediterranean accent informed him that he had reached Michael Mansour's
residence.

Will you please tell Mr. Mansour that Mr. Schmidt and Miss Gorchuck--he
still found it difficult to repress a giggle when, as was usually
necessary, he spelled her name--will be glad to come to lunch on
Saturday?

Somebody, perhaps Mr. Mansour's punctilious secretary, had been at work.
Instead of giggling back or showing surprise, the voice replied, I will
tell Mr. Mansour, and went off the line.

Carrie was hanging up on him too. It had taken her no time to dress, as
she wore nothing under her blue jeans and shirt and combed her hair with
her fingers. Ah, "That brave vibration each way free"! She ran down the
stairs two steps at a time, blew a noisy kiss in Schmidt's direction,
and was out the door. Film studies. She had enrolled in a special summer
program. The class she was going to was a workshop. She wouldn't be back
until midafternoon.

Each change in Schmidt's routine was like a mountain he was at first
unwilling to climb, even if the result might be an improvement, such as
greater comfort and efficiency or better value for his money. This was
especially true of separating himself from an employee or disappointing
a tradesman. Thus, he had not let go the Polish brigade of garrulous,
familiar, and obese cleaning ladies, whose arrival on Wednesday
mornings, in leisure clothes of bizarre colors surely chosen to match
the paint of their gas-guzzling cars, heralded the two-hour passage
through the house of a benevolent tornado that blew away dust but
otherwise had little to do with cleaning and had constituted, in the
period between Mary's death and the advent of Carrie, his principal
contact with

Media reviews

"A COMEDY OF MANNERS SO DRY IT CRACKLES."
--The New Yorker

"A LITERARY TRIUMPH . . . Begley has done the most amazing thing. . . . He's given us a character who is heroic, villainous, intelligent . . . You want to punch him or hug him until he cries--or both. He's human, masterfully drawn. . . . I loved this book."
--CAROLYN SEE
The Washington Post Book World