The Mount Blancs

“I’ve seen guys do it before. They come into a furniture store and try to impress you or some lady. Trying to show you who has the biggest pecker. They try to buy all this stuff, and come to find out, they have no money. Their credit is no good. Neither is their pecker.”

“Ol’ Charley and Mrs. Mount Blanc came in last week. Bam. Bam. Bam.
They want this. They want that.”

“He bought a dining room hutch, a bureau with a mirror, end tables, and a waterbed with the whole shmear. Twenty-five hundred bucks worth of merchandise.”

Dave stretched in his easy chair. He was dressed in middle-aged drab:
an olive-green, Banlon sports shirt, brown slacks with pleats, and
Hushpuppies on his feet. His feet extended over the end of the chair.
Pipe smoke swirled around his face like the Delphic oracle.

“Ol’ Charley, he filled out the credit application, and his credit was as good as gold. He was willing to pay cash if there was a problem. It just goes to show you, you can never tell about people. Take me, for example, I’ve got the bigger pecker around,” Dave said.

We loaded up the twenty-five hundred dollars worth of merchandise.
Dave drove the van. I drove my Volkswagen. In downtown, swarms of
turkey vultures circled and cascaded in updrafts above the buildings.
We crossed two small bridges to Davis Island and passed a white
apartment building with a steel-ribbed dome on top. The covering on
the dome was tattered, exposing ribs picked clean. Farther along the
road a maroon Jaguar outside a New York pizza parlor advertised ‘We
deliver’ in yellow letters.

Another bridge arched over a canal with brackish water, thick like
molasses. Hyacinths covered sections of the water’s surface with plush, green carpeting. We turned and there was the Mount Blancs’
home, a Spanish Mediterranean, white with high walls and an orange
tiled roof, slightly pitched.

Mr. Mount Blanc opened the front door for us to carry in their new
bureau.

“Don’t mind the mess in the living room,” he said. “We’re remodeling.”

Dave was winded. He rested for a short time. Antique, golden lamps,
once attached to the walls, lay in a pile against the wall. Mrs. Mount
Blanc lounged on a white couch off to one side. She looked dressed
for a dinner party. She had on black slacks and a turquoise blouse
even though it was ten o’clock in the morning.

“I’m so glad you’re putting in the waterbed today. I’m tired of sleeping here in the living room.”

She pointed at their bed, the focal point of the room. It was on a
mirrored pedestal, raised up like a sacrificial Aztec altar. Ostrich and peacock feathers crisscrossed above it on the wall.

“Charley made it. Show them, honey. It’s rather cute,” she said in an abrupt, flippant manner.

Mr. Mount Blanc limped across the room to the bed. One of his shoes
had a built-up heel. His hair was unusually dark black and glossy, and
his blue pinstriped shirt came to an apex above his midsection, revealing a tuft of white hair. The longer I looked at Mr. Mount Blanc
the older he became, like he was remodeling himself too. He bent down
and adjusted a switch. The underside of the bed lit up with small bulbs reflecting off the mirrors.

“It’s on a dimmer switch. I can soften it or make it more intense,” he said.

He closed the curtains and turned off all the lights in the room, then flicked another switch. Strobe lights swirled and cast snowflake-like images on the high plaster ceiling and the walls. The snowflakes
rotated faster and faster.

Mrs. Mount Blanc giggled.

“What’s that over there?” I asked, pointing to a scale model of a forest, landscaped with plastic palms, ferns, evergreens, and flowers.

“It’s for a job I’m bidding on,” Mr. Mount Blanc explained. “A tourist attraction lost its foliage last year in the freeze. They want to re-landscape in plastic. In the long run, they’ll save money. They won’t have to water.”

Dave gave me the high sign. He bored with the chitchat and was ready
to split.

“I’m gonna help ol’ Wilbur, then I’ve got to get back to the store,” he said.

“Down the hall and to the right,” directed Mr. Mount Blanc.

We took the bureau to their bedroom then brought in the other pieces of the elaborate ensemble: a dining room hutch, end tables, and then the deluxe waterbed complete with a heater, bureau drawers, bookcase headboard, a vibrator, and a twenty-five hundred dollar price
tag. It was the most elaborate waterbed in Dave’s collection. He was
relieved and elated to drop their delivery slip into his leather pouch. He zipped it up, said his good-byes, and drove away in my Volkswagen.

I assembled the waterbed on top of the bureau drawers. I duct taped the heater on top of the center piece of plywood and ran the control wire out to the side next to the on/off switch for the vibrator that was attached underneath the center piece of plywood. When I turned it on, the center piece of plywood rattled. I removed one of the bureau drawers and reached under the plywood as far as I could, but I couldn’t reach the loose vibrator. I figured Mr. Mount Blanc didn’t wear his hearing aids at night so I left it.

While the mattress filled with water Mrs. Mount Blanc invited me into
their kitchen table. She stood next to her husband several inches taller than him, despite his built-up heel. Mrs. Mount Blanc caught me up on the details of her life like I was an old friend who just dropped in.

“The children are from my previous marriage. I guess Charley told you,
we just got married.”

“I didn’t know,” I replied. “Congratulations.”

“My first marriage ended in disaster. Who would have known, huh, Charley?” she asked.

Mr. Mount Blanc nodded.

“Charley’s such a dear.”

She turned to the refrigerator.

“Beer?”

“Sure.”

She reached in and grabbed the last two tall ones in there. She took
one and gave me the other. Mr. Mount Blanc stood awkwardly on his
stilted heels.

“My first husband graduated from Columbia University,” she said, taking a seat across from me. “He was brilliant, handsome, athletic, and debonair. We had the best of everything. Name brand. I was a name brand. Mrs. Steven Livingston. He could have had any woman he wanted.

“Why he chose me, I’ll never know.”

“You’re not so bad,” I said. “I mean, you’re pretty.”

“Charley and I are happy and that’s all that matters now. I was tired of living a lie with Steven. How can I say it? He was a crook. I didn’t figure him out until I had bailed him out of jail several times.”

A concerned look covered her face.

“I had to change my name as soon as I could. You won’t tell anyone I’m here, will you? He’ll do anything to get the kids.”

Mr. Mount Blanc stared at the floor.

“Charley, we’re out of beer. Will you go to the store and get some?” she asked.

“You don’t have to go on my account,” I protested.

“We need beer anyway,” she said. “That’s our only vice now. I guess we should cut back.”

Mr. Mount Blanc limped to the refrigerator to look. He turned and
gave me a long, hard stare. His face was drawn and troubled. Mrs.
Mount Blanc noticed his concern.

“He gets jealous when I’m around other men.”

I said my goodbyes when the bed filled. I didn’t want to come
between them and their remodeling. Before I left, Mr. Mount Blanc
insisted that I take the antique, golden lamps he no longer wanted.
There was room in my living room for junk that people always gave me.
A piece of themselves they had no use for anymore.