The Second Coming

double-breasted suits and showed too much gum when they smiled.
    He had not been admirable in his dealings with Jimmy Rogers.
    On the other hand, Jimmy always had stuff between his teeth and came too close, breathed on you, and touched you when he talked. No wonder he got along with Arabs.
    Then Jimmy had been kind to him in Long Island City, ministering to him among strangers.
    Now here is Jimmy again, coming too close and telling jokes and making deals with Arabs.
    Did this mean that lifelines were back to normal, that is, nonconverging and parallel to infinity? Or had something happened and their lifelines had bent together?
    They were waiting for Bertie to hit a fairway wood. Jimmy stopped the cart a little too close to him. Why would Jimmy not know that ten feet is too close and fifteen is not?
    Bertie shot. His body remained still and erect as a post while his arms swung and his legs jerked. The ball shanked, rustled like a rat through the thick grass. Bertie actually said pshaw.
    A club flashed above the deep far bunker, sand sprayed, and a ball arced high over the green and back down into the ravine. Lewis Peckham clucked and cocked his head a sympathetic quarter inch. “He sculled it.” Ed Cupp was at least six feet eleven inches tall but only his shining blond head showed above the bunker lip. He climbed out cheerfully and went striding off, swinging his sand-iron like a baseball bat. He played golf like a good athlete who had just taken it up, with a feel for the game and a toleration for his mistakes. Though he was in his late forties, he looked like a UCLA forward—which he had been—swinging across campus. Do native Californians stay blond and boyish into old age? Yet when he spoke—and he spoke often, mostly about a warranty problem with his Mercedes which had broken down in Oklahoma—it was with the deliberation of an old man, a ninety-year-old sourdough telling you the same long story about the time somebody jumped his claim.
    Lewis Peckham looked at his, Will Barrett’s, two-iron shot which lay hole-high and three feet from the pin. He nodded twice. “That was a good golf shot.”
    In the cart Jimmy leaned close and again put a thumb in his back, signifying Kitty.
    â€œDo you remember when Kitty was queen and you presented her at the Fall Germans?” he whispered.
    â€œAh—”
    â€œShe was—still is—the best-looking white girl I ever saw-she’s certainly been lovely to me and I really appreciate it. Don’t you remember? I got Stan Kenton.”
    Strangely, he had forgotten about Kitty being queen but not about Stan Kenton. In college Jimmy quickly learned the ropes. He had gotten to be manager of this and that, manager of stadium concessions, of the yearbook, of the cap-and-gown business, manager in charge of decorating the dance hall and hiring an orchestra. Jimmy was making money long before the Arabs.
    â€œWhat I am saying is this,” said Jimmy and the thumbnail turned like a screw, not unpleasantly, into his spine. “Kitty is going to rely on you for something. She has enormous respect for you, you know. We all do.” The eye gleamed and the thumbscrew went in a little too hard. “You old rascal, you did it, didn’t you?”
    â€œDid what?” He smiled. He frowned. He was almost surprised. The thumbnail going in so hard and the “rascal” was not like Jimmy.
    â€œNothing. You just sat back like you always did and picked up all the marbles. That’s what I call class.”
    â€œClass?”
    â€œYou made it in the big apple, you married a nice Yankee lady who owns half of Washau County, you retired young, you came down here and you helped folks, poor folks, old folks, even built them a home, helped the church, built a new church, did good. Now your lovely daughter is getting married. Joy and sorrow, that’s life. But yours seems mostly joy. You know what you did.”
    â€œNo, what?”
    â€œYou won. That’s what you did, you old—” The eye glittered and the thumbnail screwed into his back. “You won it all, you son of a bitch, and I love you for it.”
    The thumbnail signified love and hatred.
    Through the not unpleasant pain of the thumbnail he wondered where Jimmy had picked up these expressions, “big apple,” “class,” “I love you for it.” He sounded like an old Broadway comic. Playing Long Island City.
    Jimmy Rogers loved