devoted to its athletic facilities. There was a small weight room with rowing machines and tread- mills, but the lion’s share of the space was given over to squash, court tennis and racquets. Court tennis and racquets are such unusual games that even at the Avenue few men know the rules, and Puff had never played either of them. Instead he was a swimmer, and having stripped naked — no one wore trunks — Puff headed down to the beautiful white tiled pool room and hung his towel over the back of a chair. On a small dais at the far end of the room Dick Burkus lay face down on a table getting a massage. “Dick,” said Puff. “Puff,” Dick grunted. Dick was a large man with a fat face and a big belly. He had a hairy chest and a hairy back and though he was mostly bald on top, he had large tufts of bright red curly hair around his temples. Dick was the head of the admissions committee at the Avenue Club, and he had known Puff since he was a boy. They had gone to the same board- ing school together, they had graduated in the same class at Harvard, and forty years later they were still travelling in the same circles and going to the same cocktail parties. But they had never much liked each other. Puff thought Dick was vulgar; Dick thought Puff was a bore. “Jos Nicols,” said Puff approaching the dais. “I’m aware of it.” Jos Nicols was the young member (mean- ing under 35) who sat on Dick’s admissions committee. Jos had been sent to Tokyo for three months just as the club elections were ap- proaching and Puff was concerned about find- ing a replacement. “I thought Ben Davis would make a good substitute,” said Puff. “He’s a clever young man. Banker at Lazard, seems to know lots of people. I spoke to him last night and he said he’d be happy to fill in. As you know, we need to have at least one young member on the committee. It’s the young members who’ll have to live with our de- cisions and they deserve a voice in the election.” Dick groaned as the masseur kneaded his hands into Dick’s buttocks. “It’s my commit- tee Puff. Tell Ben Davis he’s off the hook. I’ve already decided on a replacement. I told Bul- lard to ask Dante at the office this afternoon.” “Dante?”
keeper — and Dick was constantly hiring, firing, and bickering with them. Rebecca hated it, and she suspected, rightly, that if she were to become the woman of the house, the nasty business of managing the staff would get passed on to her. Rebecca wanted no part of that, so she told Dick that she’d only be willing to spend the summers on Long Island if he gave her a place of her own to escape to. “Fine,” said Dick. “I’ll build you one.” There was a large, tumble-down garage a hundred yards from the main house and Dick proposed to have it renovated for her. Which is when the trouble started with Puff. Puff had nothing particular against Rebecca, but he disapproved of Dick’s love life in general, and he was violently opposed to the garage reno- vation because according to the local zoning, old garages could only be made into new garages. Turning an old garage into a lover’s retreat com- plete with kitchen and two baths was a flagrant violation of the law, and as soon as Puff discov- ered the plan, he brought a complaint before the town council, forcing the councilmen to vote against the issuance of any construction permits. Naturally, Dick was furious and his anger only subsided when he hit on the idea of plant- ing an eighty foot flag pole near the water on the edge of Puff ’s boundary line. It was within spitting distance of Puff ’s dock; it flew a giant American flag that waved night and day; and it was so perfectly placed as to stand directly in line of sight between Puff ’s favorite terrace chair and a picturesque nineteenth century lighthouse across the Long Island Sound. This was the famous spite pole, and when Puff complained about the obstruction to his view, Dick told him to take his complaint to the town council: “It’s the American flag, Puff. See if they don’t tell you to stick it up your ass.” Puff swam fifty laps. He pulled himself out of the pool and toweled off. He hoped that Dick was not still in the dressing room. Lincoln MacVeagh is a lapsed WASP. As a boy, he could not imagine getting on an airplane with- out wearing a necktie. He went to boarding school at Groton, studied philosophy at Harvard, and since then has worked as a busboy, a school teach- er, a framing carpenter, a caterer, a journalist, and a computer programmer. Paisley Mischief is his first novel. *
“He’s your nephew,” said Dick. “I thought you’d be pleased.” “Dante’s a nice boy but he’s not someone I’d put on the admissions committee.” “It’s not rocket science for chrissakes, all he has to do is show up. Swim your laps, Puff. Don’t worry about what doesn’t concern you.” Puff lowered himself into the water, and a moment later Dick got up from the massage table and went back to the dressing room. Both men were annoyed. Of course it didn’t make the slightest difference who filled in on the admis- sions committee, but Puff and Dick were so fed up with each other these days that they could hardly ever meet without some sort of disagree- ment. It had been like this for almost two years now, and the ill will between them had grown so great that it even had its own monument. This monument was known as the spite pole, and the history behind it requires some explanation. Besides being members of the same club and sharing many of the same friends, Puff and Dick also owned neighboring estates on the North Shore of Long Island. Dick had eight bedrooms on ten acres, Puff had nine bedrooms on fifteen, and although they had never giggled or shared secrets, each had long made an effort not to an- tagonize the other, and for decades they managed to bump along amicably and the peace was kept. But then Dick met a freelance journalist named Rebecca Holland and fell in love. For Dick this presented a problem. He didn’t want to marry Rebecca because there was always the possibility of divorce, and having been di- vorced twice, he knew how expensive it was. But at the same time Dick loved Rebecca and he very much wanted her to live with him as if she were his wife. He had convinced her to move into his apartment in the city, but he couldn’t persuade her to spend the summer months at his house on Long Island. Rebecca didn’t mind visiting for the occasional weekend but she refused to stay longer than that, and with good reason. In the first place Rebecca was a woman with a life of her own and she didn’t wish to give up her independence if Dick was unwilling to marry her. In the second place, Rebecca knew enough about life at Dick’s summer house to conclude that it was very often a pain in the ass. The upkeep of Dick’s estate called for three full time servants — a maid, a cook and a grounds-
The great benefit of eating lunch in the dressing room was that you got to eat naked.
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