Having this messengered to your digs after numerous calls to reputed place of employ. Don’t you keep office hours anymore? It’s tiresome, God knows, but one should try to keep up appearances and also be accessible in case of emergencies like present one. To be brief:
A long-anticipated tryst with the libidinous Inge—pin-up Queen manquee—is endangered by visit of cousin from Boston branch of family. I know what you’re thinking: A Boston branch of the Allagash clan? But every family has its dark secrets. Said cousin is doing academic gig at NYU and laying over at the Allagash pad. Must be entertained in grand manner. A well-bred young woman, something of an intellect, who would not be charmed by some junior account exec with toothpaste market surveys on the brain. This assignment calls for nothing less than a speaker of French, a reader of
The New York Review of Books
and that inexpressible guileless charm with which your name is synonymous. Don’t let me down, Coach, and everything I possess, including a portion of Bolivia’s finest, not to mention my undying gratitude and fealty, is yours. Have taken liberty of informing cousin, one Vicky Hollins, that you will be meeting her at the Lion’s Head at seven-thirty, to be joined by self and Inge at earliest possible convenience. Described you as cross between young F. Scott Fitz-Hemingway and the later Wittgenstein, so dress accordingly.
Yrs. in Christ, T.A.
P.S. Should you get lucky with cousin or inflict rare social disease this office will deny all knowledge of your actions.
The presumption of Allagash appalls you. When you call his office to decline the invitation, he has already left. Well, it’s his cousin and his problem. The thought of the Allagash genes and the Boston climate is a frightening one. His brief description suggests a prig, a wearer of plaid tartan skirts, a former contender on the green New England hockey fields and a noncontender in the Looks Department. Born into the manner that Clara has been faking ever since she went to Vassar. You will unplug the phone and say you never got the letter.
You switch on the tube and throw yourself on the couch. Much fun on
Family Feud
. Ten grand rides on a question about garden tools; Richard Dawson flexes his eyebrows. But you keep glancing at the clock. By seven-twenty you are on your feet, pacing between the two rooms, kicking your laundry into the corners. If you know Tad, he won’t even make it to the Lion’s Head and the poor girl will be left to the slender mercies of all those aspiring actors and failed writers. A few friendly drinks with her wouldn’t kill you. You throw on a jacket and head out.
You arrive ten minutes late. It’s two deep along the bar and no sign of Allagash. No sign of anybody wearing a plaid tartan skirt and Allagash features.
In the middle of your beer you spot a woman standing alone beside the coatrack, holding a drink and reading a paperback. She looks up from time to time and then returns to her reading. You watch her eyes as they move around the room. Her face is intelligent. The hair is somewhere between strawberry and gold, you can’t tell in this light. That she could be the Boston Allagash is too much to hope. Boots, jeans and a black silk shirt. Not a patch of madras or tartan on her.
The hell with Allagash and his race. You would like to speak to this woman, ask her if she’s eaten dinner. Perhaps she is the one who could make you forget your cares and woes, start eating breakfast, take up jogging. You edge in closer. The book in her hand is Spinoza’s
Ethics
. No flies on that. She looks up again and you catch her eye.
“We don’t get many Rationalists in here,” you say.
“I’m not surprised,” she says. “Too dark.” Her voice is like gravel spread with honey. She holds a smile just long enough to encourage you and then returns to her book. You wish you could remember something about Spinoza, besides the fact that he was excommunicated.
Allagash appears in the door. You consider hiding out in the Men’s Room, but he spots you and comes over. Tad shakes your hand. Then he plants a kiss on the philosopher’s cheek.
Introductions, brief confusion about whether everyone has met. Allagash tells you, with a deprecating roll of his eyes, that Vicky is studying Philosophy at Princeton. He introduces you as a literary cult celebrity whose name has not yet reached the provinces.
“Hate to dash out again. But I said seven-thirty and Inge thought I said ten. So she’s still in
media
dress, as we say. Got to get crosstown and pick her up. But let’s by all means meet for dinner.” He consults his watch. “Let’s say nine-thirty. Better make it ten. Ten o’clock at Raoul’s. Don’t forget.” He slips a glass vial into your pocket while he’s kissing Vicky. Then he’s gone in a wake of camel’s hair.
Vicky seems confused by her cousin’s hospitality. “Did you catch all that?”
“More or less.” You know you will not see Tad for the rest of the night.
“He said seven-thirty and his date thought he said ten?”
“It’s a common mistake.”
“Well,” she says, putting her book in her purse. This could have been a very awkward situation, but she’s taking it in stride. “What now?”
Allagash has bribed you with a piece of the rock. You could invite her back to your place to share the booty, but somehow you think not. Although you suppose she would appreciate it, you’d like to see if it’s possible to get through an evening without chemicals for a change. Hear yourself and another person talk without Speedy Gonzales South American accents.
You ask her if she wants to stay for another drink, and she asks what you want to do. Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato’s pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think.
You linger at the edge of Sheridan Square to watch an acrobat ride a unicycle across a tightrope strung between the fences. A teenager in the crowd turns to Vicky and says, “He did that between the towers of the World Trade Center.”
“Can you imagine,” a woman asks.
“Sounds like my job,” you say.
When the acrobat passes the hat you throw in a buck. You walk west, without any firm destination in mind. Vicky is telling you about her work. She’s in her third year of graduate school, came in for an NYU conference at which she will read a rebuttal to an article entitled: “Why There Are No People.”
The evening is cool. You find yourself walking the Village, pointing out landmarks and favorite townhouses. Only yesterday you would have considered such a stroll too New Jersey for words, but tonight you remember how much you used to like this part of the city. The whole neighborhood smells of Italian food. The streets have friendly names and cut weird angles into the rectilinear map of the city. The buildings are humble in scale and don’t try to intimidate you. Gay giants stride past on hypertrophied thighs, swathed in leather and chains, and they do intimidate you.
Vicky stops in front of an antique shop window on Bleecker and points to a wooden carousel horse, painted red and white, mounted on a pedestal. “I’d like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn’t be out of place in the living room.”
“How about a jukebox?”
“Oh, definitely. There’s always room for a jukebox. And maybe a pinball machine. A really old one with Buck Rogers stuff.”
As you resume your walk she describes the house in which she grew up. A rambling Tudor affair on the shore in Marblehead, which started out early in the century as a summer house and, despite the formal dining room, never quite lost its wet-towel ambience. There were empty rooms to play in, and a closed alcove under the stairs which no one could enter without her permission. Pets galore. A gazebo where the four girls had tealess tea parties presided over by Vicky’s eldest sister. Their father kept chickens in the boathouse and spent years trying to bring a vegetable patch to life. Every morning he woke up at five and went for a swim. Mother stayed in bed till her daughters and the pets gathered in her room.
What she tells you is enhanced by the increasing animation of her gestures and facial expressions and becomes a vivid image of this childhood Arcadia. You notice for the first time that she has freckles. You didn’t know they still made them. You imagine her as a child carrying a bucket of sand down to the beach. You see yourself watching from the bluff, through a time warp, saying:
Someday I will meet this girl
. You want to watch over her through the interval, protect her from the cruelty of schoolchildren and the careless lust of young men. The irrevocable past tense of the narration suggests to you some intervening tragedy. You suspect a snake in the vegetable garden.
“Your parents?” you say.
“Divorced three years ago. Yours?”
“Happy marriage,” you say.
“You’re lucky.”
Lucky is not the word you would have chosen, except maybe out of a hat.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters,” she asks.
“Three brothers. The youngest are twins.”
“That’s nice. Symmetrical,
I
mean. I’ve got three sisters. Boys were very mysterious to us.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Listen. Do we have to meet Tad later?”
“Tad has no intention of meeting us. Or, rather, he has good intentions, but he won’t be there.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, it’s just that I know him. Tad is always on his way, but he seldom arrives.”
“What did he tell you about me,” she asks, after you have been seated in the courtyard of a café on Charles Street. She has a conspiratorial smile. She seems to think that your allegiance to Tad will crumble before this new intimacy.
“Not much,” you say.
“Come on.”
“He tried to build you up. I was expecting a field hockey player with monogrammed knee socks and thick glasses.”
She does not press for the compliment. Just smiles and looks down at the menu.
You tell her what a good guy Tad is. You like his energy and his style—
joie de vivre, je ne sais quoi, savoir-faire, sprezzatura
. You are nearly sincere. Having a cousin like Vicky tips the scales in his favor. You are inclined to cut him some slack. Not necessarily the man for a heart-to-heart, but indispensable in a party situation. You tell her that Tad has been a good friend in time of need. If not exactly sensitive, then generous in his own careless way. “Are you two very close,” you ask.
“I think he’s an ass,” she says.
“Exactly.” Everything she says is right. She’s got you in the palm of her unclenched hand. You love the way she raises her water glass to her lips, the ease she has with her hands and mouth. You are afraid you are staring too intently into her eyes, even though this intimacy does not appear uninvited.
“What’s your job like?” she says. “I guess I should be pretty impressed.”
“Please don’t be. I don’t like it much. I don’t think they much like me.”
“I know people who would kill for a job like that.”
You’d rather she wasn’t too impressed with a job you may not have the next time you see her. You wish that no one, including yourself, had ever been impressed. You wince to think of all the self-aggrandizement you have heaped on this subject. You describe for her the tedious procedure of factual verification, the long hours over dictionaries, phone books, encyclopedias, government pamphlets. You tell her how you were reprimanded for suggesting stylistic changes.
“I’ve only known you a couple of hours,” Vicky says, “but it doesn’t seem to me like your kind of job.”
“I don’t think it is.”
Standing on the corner of West Fourth Street and Seventh Avenue, you are ostensibly waiting for a cab to take Vicky back to Tad’s apartment. Empty cabs keep rolling past and you and Vicky continue to talk. You have talked about work, money, Cape Cod, breakfast cereals and the Mind-Body Problem. You have already written down her address and phone number in Princeton. Walking back from the restaurant she took your arm and you have been holding hers ever since. You feel that passing males—at least the heteros—look on with envy. You consider performing an act of inspired madcappery at her behest: stealing the hat from a policeman, or the handcuffs from one of the gay caballeros of Christopher Street. Maybe climb a lamppost and wave her scarf from the top.
“
Now
I
really
have to go,” she says.
“I wish you didn’t.”
“Me too.” She steps forward and kisses you. You return the kiss and prolong it. Time passes. You become aroused. You consider asking her back to your apartment, and think better of it. You want to leave this flawless evening intact. Already you are thinking of the walk home, the review of details and nuances in bed before you sleep, of the phone call which you have promised to make tomorrow morning. You are thinking that Clara Tillinghast can go to hell because tonight you are happy.
PYGMIES, FERRETS AND DOG CHOW
Over coffee and eggs you read both
Times
and
Post
, including sports pages. Coma Mom is fading fast. Boston wins on the basketball court, loses in baseball. The waitress has filled your cup six times and it’s only eight-thirty. At six-thirty you woke like a man accustomed to the hour, feeling a clarity compounding the exhilaration from your night with Vicky and the dread of your morning with Clara. You called the former when you woke up. She told you Tad never made it home and that she slept very well once she convinced the doorman she was a legitimate visitor. You want to call her again, maybe tell her all about your breakfast.
You’re at the office by nine-thirty. Meg’s already there. She looks embarrassed when she sees you. You can guess what happened yesterday after Clara returned. By now everybody has the story of your incompetence. You don’t bother to ask.
Meg, though, can’t bear the suspense. She comes over to your desk and says, “Clara’s in a rage. She says the French piece is a mess but it’s too late to pull it from the issue. There was a big pow-wow last night to decide what to do.” You nod your head. “What happened?” she asks, as if an easy answer had inexplicably eluded her.
Rittenhouse comes in and performs his customary greeting, which falls somewhere between a nod and a full bow. You will miss his bow ties and his Edwardian bookkeeper manner. After hanging his scarf and derby on the coatrack he joins Megan at your desk, looking even more grave and mournful than usual.
“We’re talking about the French piece,” Megan says.
Rittenhouse nods. “I think the way they changed the schedule was disgraceful. Although they must have had their reasons.”
“You didn’t have nearly enough time,” Megan says. “Everybody knows his research is slipshod.”
“We’re behind you all the way,” Rittenhouse says.
There’s not much comfort in this, but you appreciate the thought.
Wade saunters in and stops in front of your desk. He looks at you and clicks his tongue. “What kind of flowers do you want on your grave? I already have the epitaph:
He didn’t face facts.
”
Megan says, “Not funny, Yasu.”
“Well, Jesus. Even Lear had a clown.”
“This could’ve happened to any of us,” Megan says. “We’ve got to stick together.”
You shake your head. “It’s my own damn fault. I dug my own grave.”
“You didn’t have enough time,” Megan says. “It was a sloppy article.”
“We’ve all seen errors slip through the net,” Rittenhouse adds.
“How bad could it be,” Megan asks. “You got most of it done, didn’t you?”
“I really don’t even know,” you say. They’re wondering:
Could this happen to me?
and you would like to reassure them, tell them it’s just you. They’re trying to imagine themselves in your shoes, but it would be a tough thing to do. Last night Vicky was talking about the ineffability of inner experience. She told you to imagine what it was like to be a bat. Even if you knew what sonar was and how it worked, you could never know what it feels like to have it, or what it feels like to be a small, furry creature hanging upside down from the roof of a cave. She said that certain facts are accessible only from one point of view—the point of view of the creature who experiences them. You think she meant that the only shoes we can ever wear are our own. Meg can’t imagine what it’s like for you to be you, she can only imagine herself being you.
You want to thank them for their concern, yet you could never truly explain how this fiasco came about.
The group disperses. It’s coming up on ten o’clock. You don’t have anything to do. Your hands move around the desk collecting paper clips and pens, rearranging stacks of paper. The Druid sneaks past the door. His eyes meet yours and then he looks away. You feel a touch of heat in the cheeks. His renowned manners have failed him. That is something, at least. Tell your children you were the only man in history snubbed by the Druid.
On your desk is a short story that you have been wanting to read. You follow the lines of print across the page, and it’s like driving on ice with bald tires; no traction. You get up and fix yourself a cup of coffee. The others are hunched over their desks. In the quiet you can hear the scratching of pencil lead on paper and the hum of the refrigerator. You go to the window and look down on Forty-fifth Street. Maybe you can spot Clara on her way in and let her have it with a flower pot. Although the pedestrians are indistinct, you can make out a man sitting on the sidewalk playing a guitar. You open the window and stick your head out, but the traffic noise covers the music. Someone taps your hip. Wade is pointing toward the door, where Clara is standing.
“I would like to see you in my office immediately.”
Wade whispers, “If I were you I would’ve jumped.”
From the window to Clara’s office is a very short distance. Much too short. You are there. She slams the door from the inside, takes the seat in front of the desk and stares you down. She doesn’t ask you to sit, so you do. This is shaping up even worse than you anticipated. Still, you feel a measure of detachment, as if you had suffered everything already and this were just a flashback. You wish that you had paid more attention when a woman you met at Heartbreak told you about Zen meditation. Think of all of this as an illusion. She can’t hurt you. Nothing can hurt the samurai who enters combat fully resolved to die. You have already accepted the inevitability of termination, as they say. Still, you’d rather not have to sit through this.
“I would like to know what happened.”
A dumb question. Far too general. You draw a good breath. “I screwed up.” You might add that the writer of the piece in question really screwed up, that you improved the thing immeasurably, and that the change of scheduling was ill-advised. But you don’t.
“You screwed up.”
You nod. It’s true. In this case, however, honesty doesn’t make you feel a whole lot better. You’re having trouble meeting her glare.
“May I be so bold as to ask for a little elaboration? Really, I’m interested.”
Sarcasm now.
“Just
how
did you screw up, exactly?”
More ways than you can say.
“Well?”
You’re already gone. You are out the window with the pigeons. You try to alleviate the terror by thinking how ridiculous her French braids look, like spinnakers on a tugboat. You suspect that deep down she enjoys this. She’s been looking forward to it for a long time.
“Do you realize just how serious this is?” she demands. “You have endangered the reputation of this magazine. We have built a reputation for scrupulous accuracy with regard to matters of fact. Our readers depend on us for the truth.”
You would like to say, Whoa! Block that jump from facts to truth, but she is off and running.
“Every time this magazine goes to press that reputation is on the line, and when the current issue hits the stands you will have compromised that reputation, perhaps irretrievably. Do you know that in fifty years of publication there has only been one printed retraction?”
Yes, you know.
“Have you considered that everyone on the staff will suffer as a result of your carelessness?”
Clara’s office is none too large under the best of circumstances, and it is getting smaller by the minute. You raise your hand. “Can I ask what errors you have found?”
She has the list ready to hand: Two accents reversed, an electoral district in central France incorrectly identified as northern, a minister ascribed to the wrong department. “This is just what I’ve been able to find so far. I’m scared to death of what I’ll uncover as I go along. The proofs are a mess. I can’t tell what you’ve verified and what you haven’t. The point is, you have not followed standard procedure, which by this time should be second nature to you, which procedure is thoroughly outlined in your manual, which procedure is the net result of many years of collective labor, and proper application of which ensures that, insofar as possible, errors of fact do not appear in this magazine.”
Clara is red in the face. Although Wade claims she has recently taken up jogging, her wind is lousy.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I don’t think so.”
“This isn’t the first time. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt before. You seem unable to perform the duties required for this job.”
You’re not about to take issue with anything she says. You would confess to all of the crimes detailed in the
Post
today in exchange for an exit visa. You nod your head gravely.
“I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
“I assume I’m fired.”
She looks surprised. She drums her fingers on the desk and glowers. You’re pleased that her hands are shaking. “That’s correct,” she says at last. “Effective immediately.”
“Anything else?” you say, and when she doesn’t answer you stand up to go. Your legs are trembling, but you don’t think she notices.
“I’m sorry,” she says as you open the door.
In a stall of the Men’s Room you wait for composure to return. Despite your relief, and your feeling that you got no worse than you expected, your hands are twitching to the beat of your knees. Pointlessly exploring your pockets, you come up with a small glass vial, Tad’s gift. In terms of improving your mood, this might be just what the doctor ordered. Or precisely not; bad medicine.
You shake a healthy snort onto the back of your hand. Lifting hand to face, you lose your grip on the vial, which drops with sickening accuracy into the toilet bowl, bounces once against the porcelain and then submerges with an insolent splash that resembles the sound of a very large brown trout spitting out the hook of a very small and painstakingly presented dry fly.
Maybe this isn’t your day. You should’ve checked your horoscope in the
Post
.
• • •
Huddled around Rittenhouse’s desk, the others fall silent when you return.
“Well?” Megan says.
Though your knees are still shaking, you have this strange feeling of omnipotence. You could dive out the window and fly over the rooftops. You could pick up your desk with one hand. Your former colleagues carry the stamp of oppression on their brows.
“It’s been nice working with you.”
“They didn’t,” Megan says. “They couldn’t.”
“They did.”
“What exactly did she say,” Rittenhouse asks.
“The gist of it is that I’m fired.”
“They can’t do that,” Megan says.
“Perhaps we could take your case to the employee arbitration committee,” Rittenhouse says. “As you know, I’m a member of the committee.”
You shake your head. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
“Well, at least they could allow you to resign if that’s what you want to do,” Wade says.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say. “It really doesn’t.”
They want to hear exactly what was said, and you oblige them as well as you can. They advise you to make a stand, appeal the decision, ask for clemency, plead special circumstances. They are not convinced that you’d rather switch than fight. Clara does not reappear. Wade thinks you ought to seize this opportunity for a dramatic parting gesture. He suggests hanging a moon in the Druid’s office. When Megan asks what you’re going to do now, you say you don’t know.
“No point in sticking around here. I’ll pick up my things tomorrow.”
“Can we have lunch tomorrow,” Megan asks. “I’d really like to talk to you.”
“Sure. Lunch tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
You shake hands all around. Megan catches you at the elevator. “I forgot to tell you. Your brother Michael called again. He sounds really eager to talk to you.”
“Thanks. I’ll call him. Thanks for everything.”
Megan puts her hands on your shoulders and kisses you. “Don’t forget lunch.”
Down on the street, you clamp your sunglasses to your face and wonder where to go. An old question, it seems to come up more and more frequently. You’ve lost whatever bravura you possessed a few minutes ago. It’s just beginning to sink in that you have lost your job. You are no longer associated with the famous magazine where, in time, you might have become an editor or a staff writer. You remember how excited your father was when you got the job, and know how he’s going to feel when he hears you have been fired.
You go over and listen to the sidewalk guitarist. He’s playing blues, and every phrase is aimed directly between your third and fourth ribs. You listen to “Ain’t Got No Home,” “Baby Please Don’t Go,” “Long Distance Call.” You turn away when he starts into “Motherless Children.”
On Forty-second near Fifth a kid falls into stride beside you.
“Loose joints. Genuine Hawaiian sens. Downers and uppers.”
You shake your head. The kid looks all of thirteen.
“Got coke. Got coke if you wannit. Uncut Peruvian flake. Closest you’re gonna get to God these days.”
“How much?”
“Fifty dollar the half.”
“Half what? Half borax and half mannitol?”
“Pure stuff. Uncut.”
“Sure thing. Thirty-five.”
“I’m a businessman. Not a fie-lanthropuss.”
“I can’t do fifty.”
“Forty-five. You’re robbing me.”
You follow the kid into the park behind the library. Look both ways before you enter. His brother may be waiting with a baseball bat. Two elderly male civilians are throwing bread at the pigeons. The kid leads you over to a big tree where he tells you to wait. Then he runs to the other side of the park. You can’t believe you’re doing this. Encouraging juvenile delinquency. Wasting your money on street toot. The kid comes running out from behind the fountain.
“I want a taste.”
“Shit,” he says. “Who you think you are—John DeLorean? You be buying a half. I’m telling you it’s good.”
The classic standoff. His salesman’s smile is disappearing. You suddenly realize you are about to be ripped off, but you hang onto the hope of a buzz.
“Let me see it at least.” He walks behind the tree and opens the packet. You’re buying some kind of white powder and the weight looks about right, not that this means much. You give him the money. He stuffs it in his pocket and backs off, watching you as he retreats.