18mm Blues by Gerald A Browne

impression. White bloated triangles of boats were running and tacking. The high-rises of San Francisco a more definite backdrop than usual and, nearer, the protruding, dun-colored lump of Alcatraz, which caused Grady to consider there were all kinds of detention.
    Harold got there forty minutes late. By then Grady was dozy. Harold told him not to bother getting up, pulled a lounger around for himself. Grady would have welcomed going inside, had had enough of sunning in his business clothes.
    â€œWant a drink?” Harold asked as he sat.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œTall or short?”
    â€œTall, thank you.”
    Harold didn’t look in the direction of the house, merely held two fingers high. In less than thirty seconds the houseboy arrived with the drinks. Harold must have told him to have both tall and short ready. The drinks were a Mezcal and pineapple juice concoction topped with a half-inch kicker of 180-proof rum. To not have to gulp his way through the rum Grady requested straws.
    â€œHow did the trip go?” Harold asked.
    â€œNot bad.” Grady had brought along the sales report, believing it would please his employer and father-in-law. He got it from his jacket pocket, handed it across.
    Harold pushed his Gianfranco Ferré sunglasses up onto his forehead so he’d have a clear, untinted view of the report. He just squinted at the bottom line.
    Grady was awaiting a smile or some praising reaction.
    Only a faint uninterpretable grunt from Harold. He allowed the sales report to drop to the grass. At once the breeze stole it away through a bed of birds of paradise to get caught up in an oleander hedge.
    Grady told himself he wouldn’t retrieve it, not even had it accidentally slipped from Harold’s fingers.
    Harold repositioned his sunglasses, took a sip and crossed his feet. He was wearing a pair of elevator high-top sneakers. Had those and all his shoes custom made in Italy so they’d give him two inches more height. Not because he was so short. He just wanted to be taller than five eight in stocking feet, believed that at five ten to eleven he could get away with claiming and feeling he was close to six feet, which, as he saw it, was the masculine summit.
    Harold admitted to fifty, would be sixty-two come October. He’d had his eyes done, lids and all, eight years ago and needed to have them done again. His hair had gone gray and white and its front line was well in retreat, but he hadn’t done battle with that. The exposed skull skin was thoroughly freckled. For some reason his eyebrows had remained dark, and the contrast of them bushy and unkempt as they were along with his surprisingly deep voice gave him a paradoxical attractiveness. He smiled a lot. Not because he was well humored but because his number five tooth, the right upper bicuspid, was crowned with gold and a certain degree of smile would flash it. Harold had practiced before mirrors and was able to gauge by the tension he asked of his cheek muscles precisely the measure of smile required.
    As for style, Harold had little of his own and was ambivalent about from where he should borrow. At times he dressed the WASP, at other times the Bijan. He had the most professional-looking golfing outfits and the best set of sticks a lot of money could buy. Belonged to the Belvedere Country Club, where his claim of severely torn ligaments in his right shoulder that would never properly heal was believed with sympathy. How unbearable, his not being able to play!
    Then there was trout fishing. He owned the proper, impressive tackle. He’d talk streams and flies with anyone anytime, had elaborate opinions of the Beaverkill, the Frying Pan, the San Juan, the Middle Fork of the Salmon, said the Upper Yellowstone around Livingston was his favorite water. As though he’d fished them all. As though.
    Harold held his arm up, fist clenched.
    The houseboy came within seconds with a silver dish of macadamia nuts.
    Grady wondered