“Eberhart. Burt Eberhart.”
“That’s it. He struck me as a nice guy. Is he still around?”
“You have some memory. He’s still around. Fat and balding. He lives here on The Beach, on Vizzard Road. Married to a social climber. Three ugly kids. He’s in the insurance business.”
“The insurance business?”
“Yes. He handles Alan’s insurance, and now the company’s insurance, and the club’s. He has been well set up. By Alan. They were friends at Colgate.”
“Sounds like a good business. Seeing Alan’s still flying, he’s probably got a lot of insurance on him.”
“A foolish amount. My father wanted to teach Alan, via the route of monthly premiums paid by Alan himself, the value of Alan’s precious life. An effort to get him to stop flying after Julie was born. It worked not at all. Alan remains perfectly willing to cast his wife and child to the insurance adjuster just to climb through the clouds to sudden sunlight once again.”
“Alan pays the premiums? Not the company?”
“When we say ‘the company’ in my family, we mean my father. Dad obliges Alan to have such insurance coverage as a condition of his employment, but Alan must pay the bill himself. Daddy’s very cute at making such arrangements. Pity they never work.”
“I should think, from what you say, Alan would need to get away and have some fun by himself once in a while.”
“There’s the club.”
“He relaxes when he flies,” he said.
“And everyone else has heart failure. I hate to think what he’s flying this weekend. For fun. You wouldn’t even recognize those experimental craft he flies as airplanes. They look like the mean, nasty sort of weapons aborigines throw through the air. Horrifying.”
“It must be tough on you.”
“I wish he’d stop flying.”
“One thing I’ve always wondered about.”
“Dad is late for lunch.”
“Is he coming?”
“He was supposed to meet me here twenty minutes ago.”
“Perhaps I should leave.”
“No, no. He’d be happy to meet you. Any friend of Alan’s and all that. What were you wondering about?”
“Why Alan’s parents didn’t come to the wedding.”
“Alan’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“They’re estranged. He never sees them.”
“He never sees them?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Yes, it does. I had the idea they were rather close.”
“No way. He hates them. Alan always has. I’ve never even-met them.”
“How can that be so?”
“You must be thinking of someone else.”
“I’m sure Alan used to fly home to see his parents whenever he could. Every six weeks or so.”
“Not Alan. His parents were very pushy toward him. The crisis came, I think, at the Golden Gloves.”
“The Golden Gloves? I remember Alan had boxed.”
“Alan boxed because his father made him. Pushed him right up the ladder or whatever into the state Golden Gloves. When he was fifteen. Every day after school he had to spend in the basement at home, boxing until supper time. He hated it. He refused to go into the nationals. He and his father have never spoken since then.”
“I must be confused.”
“You must be. And he’s always said his mother is a sickly, neurotic thing. Spends most of her time in bed.”
“Aren’t you interested in these people? Alan’s parents? Aren’t you curious to meet them yourself?”
“Not if what Alan says is true about them. And I’m sure it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Believe me, honey, I have enough difficult people around me to not want to add in-laws.”
“I see.”
There was a stir in the pavilion as a handsome, distinguished-looking man in his fifties entered, dressed in white tennis slacks and blue blazer. People reacted like children in a sandbox catching sight of someone coming with a box of popsicles. They waved from their tables. Men nearest the entrance stood up to shake hands. Women beamed. The headwaiter welcomed with happy bows of his head.
“There,” Joan said, “is Dad.”
Fletch said, “Yes, I remember him.”
“Don’t be disappointed if he doesn’t remember you.”
“Why should he remember me?” Fletch said.
“Because you’re beautiful,” she said. “You really turn me on. Are you sure you have to leave town today?”
“I’ve got to be back tonight.”
“But tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Listen,” Fletch said, “you and Alan ought to have a place you can go and be by yourselves once in a while. I mean, a place of your own.”