Institute (8 page)

I knew nothing to say to that except hold her closer. She moved so I could sit beside her, and then I saw the gingham apron she had on over her dress. I laughed, and she asked: “Well, what’s so funny? I love you, that’s all.”

“It makes you look cute.”

“It makes me want to snuggle.”

“Okay, then snuggle.”

So she snuggled and time went by. At last she drew a deep breath and said it was time to talk. “I’m so proud of you,” she said.

“What have I done for you to be proud of?”

“The impression you made on
him.
He called to tell me.”

“What impression?”

“You said no to him, for one thing. He’s so used to yes men around him that he couldn’t believe his ears at first. He was still gasping when he called me. Said you threatened to put him in jail.”

“I did no such thing, and he said no such thing.”

“Well, it was
something.”

“All I did was warn him that his idea was against the law.”

“Yes,
that
was it.”

“I said not one word about jail.”

“I think that was his little joke. He has an odd sense of humor. But that wasn’t all. Lloyd, you impressed him no end, the way you had done your homework, as he called it. You had things at your fingertips. Also, he says you come by your brains honest. How did your mother get in it?”

“I mentioned that money liked her.”

“And he fell for her plenty.”

“I happened to use an expression of hers and it seemed to catch his ear.”

“What expression?”

“ ‘If, as, and when.’ ”

“Why would that catch his ear?”

“It’s one bankers use.”

“Oh! ...
Oh!
Well, that
would
catch his ear.”

“Speaking of ears ... I began to nibble on hers, but she pushed me off.

“No, please,” she said a little breathlessly. “There’s more.”

“Say on, pretty creature, say on.”

“He was suspicious of you before—half-liked you but thought you were much too cheeky to really have any brains. But your saying no to him caught his attention, and suddenly he’s now sold all the way, even on you, as the person who should be in charge. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I thought I detected a change in his manner.”

But I must have seemed withdrawn or hesitant or something short of joyous, because suddenly she pulled away in the dark and asked: “Well, for heaven’s sake, what is it
now
?”

“It doesn’t quite add up.”

“What doesn’t add up?”

“In the first place, he knows.”

“Lloyd, how could he possibly know?”

“How could he possibly not?”

“Then, O.K., he knows. But if he’s sold on you even
when
he knows, what is there to have a long face about?”

“I told you—it doesn’t add up.” I told her about the hand he had injured, and she jumped up, all excited.

“But he
does
chop ice! He never uses cubes.”

“O.K., but then he switched.”

“I told you he did. He
explained
it.”

“Yeah, but in regard to
you
—”

“It’s simple, if you just remember that he loves me—all except in that one, just that one, way. So if he thought you were kind of a phoney and very bad for me, it could account for the first way he felt, even including that hand, if that’s the reason he had, though he told me about it, about jabbing it with the ice pick, I mean—and he wouldn’t have, if it was just something he made up and put the bandage on to pretend. So, at first, he was upset on my account, and then he wasn’t. It could be as simple as that.”

“Wait a minute. Maybe that makes sense.” I didn’t know whether it did or not, but at least I felt that it could—and anything to please her after her sweet, romantic welcome. I kissed her and pretty soon she kissed back. “I think the roast is done,” she said.

Is there any greater intimacy than a man frying eggs for his woman or her roasting beef for him? Once more we were there at the kitchen table, she letting me carve, then serving me vegetables, the boiled new potatoes with parsley butter on them and the peas on little glass plates. We gobbled our dinner down, now and then touching cheeks, and I told her how happy I was. But in the still of the night, she whispered: “I almost forgot. He’s bringing Inga back, which, in a way, is the best news of all.”

“Who’s Inga?”

“I told you—the Swedish housekeeper we had, who got a cable from Stockholm while I was in the hospital with my miscarriage. He had to pack her off, but now he’s bringing her back.”

“Why is that good news?”

“It has to mean he’s getting organized to live alone.”

“Leaving us a clear track, you mean?”

She burrowed close, and for some time nothing was said. But I knew she wasn’t asleep.

“Lloyd, there’s just one thing.”

“What is it, Hortense?”

“Listen, do you or don’t you?”

“Do I or don’t I what?”

“Love me?”

“You know I do.”

I threw back the covers, flopped her over, and fanned her backside until it sounded like pistol shots in the dark. Then her arms were wrapped around my neck.

“I’m a degenerate,” she said. “I love it when you bop me.”

M
Y FINDING A BUILDING
was purely by accident, and I got credit for brains I didn’t have. One day I woke up with a drawstring on my stomach—from the fact that I had a job to do and no idea how to do it. Hortense gave me my breakfast, there-thered me, and promised between kisses that something was bound to turn up. I called her Mrs. Micawber. She said: “Instead of glooming about it and feeling sorry for yourself, you could make some use of the day, like paying a courtesy call on Ralph—Ralph Hood, the senator. Except for writing him a note, which really isn’t much, you’ve done nothing about him. Why don’t you take him to lunch? Or at least
invite
him?”

So I called his office and a bit to my surprise got through to him at once. He said he’d check his calendar and see if he was free and call me back. He did, and he was free. I said I would pick him up in my car, as the only place I was known was at Harvey’s, and from his office, it would be too far to walk. He told me to put my car in a parking lot and he would “blow” me to the ride.

At twelve I stopped by his office and for twenty minutes had to shake hands and chat with the administrative assistant, the assistant assistants, and the secretaries—all in the outer office. Then for ten minutes I was admitted to his private office where the decorations consisted of framed pictures of him shaking hands with presidents Kennedy and Johnson, with the Queen of England, and with Smokey the Bear. At last we went downstairs. The guard at the door said to him: “Your car is waiting, Senator.” And sure enough, it was—at the curb, a Chrysler limousine with uniformed driver. We chatted as we rode, and I gave him the big piece of news, that the Institute seemed to be set, “and it’s all due to you, Senator. I can’t thank you enough.”

He held up a hand. “I like to be thanked, but it was due to you, not me. I’ve heard a little about it. Richard Garrett called me, and so did Hortense. You impressed him no end—and her even more, I suspect. Lloyd, I wasn’t surprised. You impressed me, too, in court that day. More important, you impressed the judge. I would even go so far as to say that you set him back on his heels somewhat.”

This left me slightly crossed up, that this reaction to me, Mr. Garrett’s reaction, I mean, which he had passed on to her by phone, had now become official. So it was being passed on to everyone. But I began to realize that it was the only reaction that could be maintained. If I was a guy whose wife would shortly be paired more or less publicly with the head of an institute he was underwriting, the only way he could play it would be straight, make noises that this friend of his wife’s was really some kind of genius, that Dr. Palmer had the job for
that
reason and not for reasons that might be inferred. But, of course, I said nothing about this to the senator. I merely listened while he talked on.

When we arrived at Harvey’s, which is a basement restaurant with underground parking for cars, I gave the driver ten dollars to go have his lunch. Then I led the way to my table which I had reserved by phone and which the girl, a rather good-looking maîtresse d’, had waiting when we got there. We ordered, and when Senator Hood asked for a martini, so did I. He resumed discussing the Institute and the future I could look forward to, “now that the Garretts have fallen for you.” But I must not have been paying attention, because he stopped in midsentence and asked: “What is it, Lloyd? What did I say?”

“It’s not you. Senator; it’s him. Mr. Garrett.”

“Lloyd, he’s big.”

“He’s been stuck with me, once I got her on my side, but he keeps blowing me up, making me bigger than I am. It makes me damned uneasy. A person knows his limitations.”

“Maybe he’s
not
blowing you up. You impressed me just as much as you apparently did him. That ghastly day in court, when you calmly took charge up there on the witness stand and got it into the record that the pot they found in Jack’s car must have been planted by the police, which, you thought, was most unlikely, or else stashed by someone else because it was hot and had to be gotten rid of, as to your certain knowledge that it was not in the glove compartment when you and the boys left the car to go to the basketball game. It was a cool, nervy performance, your making that judge listen, and once he listened,
believe.
It was a day I’ll never forget. So I’m not so sure that Richard Garrett overrates you. Perhaps, as they say, you don’t know your own strength.”

Though I certainly didn’t mean to, I had sounded cranky, so I started kidding along with the waitress as a way to save face. When she left again, the senator asked: “Lloyd, something’s bugging you more than you’ve been letting on. Come on, what is it? If you want to talk, that is.”

I didn’t want to, but I could hardly help it. I blurted out the whole thing—about the building, the law against renting yourself office space, which, it turned out, he had voted for, being ordered to find a building and soon. Senator Hood began to laugh.

“It’s like being given a scuba outfit and told to find the lost Atlantis,” he said. “And it also sounds like Richard Garrett, who is in the habit of commanding things to be done forthwith, and then, presto whango, they are ... sometimes.” Suddenly the grin left his face, as though Marcel Marceau had waved his hand across it, and he started snapping his finger at the girl. “Miss,” he said when she sashayed over, “I’m Senator Hood of Nebraska, and something has come up. We have to leave. We’ll be gone about a half-hour. When we come back, we will want our lunch ready exactly as we ordered it. Keep our table for us, please.”

“Yes, sir,” she said as he pressed a bill in her hand.

“What is it, Senator?” I asked, wondering if he were ill.

“You’ll see. Come on, Lloyd.”

We went upstairs and out on the street. A taxi stopped for us as soon as he had raised his hand. He gave an address on K Street, and when we got there he told the driver to park, “here by the curb—we want to sit for a minute and then go back where we came from.” Through the window he pointed at the building across the street. It was still under construction. Scaffolding was all around it and out over the sidewalk. It was a beautiful modern thing of sandstone. But it wasn’t one of those buildings that look like a refrigerator with windows cut in the sides. It had windows, of course, but they were spaced in a graceful way, with stone in between. I counted ten floors. The top two were set back in a kind of mansard style, a little like the Lincoln Memorial. The entrance was beautiful—no columns, no fancy stuff, just two large bronze doors. He stared and then said quietly: “How would that do for your institute?”

“Perfect! Wonderful!”

“Let’s go back to Harvey’s, driver.”

While we rode, he talked. “You’ve heard of Bagastex?”

“I’ve heard of bagasse.”

“That’s right—Bagastex is made of bagasse—that stuff they get when they grind the juice out of sugarcane. It’s a floor covering that was developed by the Tombigvannah Corporation in Georgia. They tooled up, spent millions on it, and put up that building there, the one you just looked at. They had it made, they thought. By the end of the year they were due to line up with the big ones. And then the boom got lowered. Bagastex didn’t sell. Meanwhile, in Georgia they had had the bad judgment to fudge on their taxes. They knew they could be heading for trouble but figured that with the money they’d be making, they could square up and get on with the show without being caught. But they couldn’t. And they can’t meet their installment here, their last one on the building, with the contractor. So tomorrow in court the contractor will sue to have them declared bankrupt so their assets can be impounded and their creditors paid—perhaps. How do I know this? A certain senator came to me for help in getting a postponement tomorrow. But I can’t do a thing. There are reasons why I simply don’t dare to. But
you
can do something. You can phone Richard Garrett and have him get on it quick. It’s the chance of a lifetime, to pick up a building dirt cheap and perhaps do more than that. So, get on it. But remember:
keep me out of it
!?”

“I hear you, Senator. O.K.”

Back at Harvey’s, he paid for the cab. When we returned to our table, the maîtress d’ was there, looking at her watch.

“You were gone twenty-five minutes,” she said to the senator. “I’ll tell teacher to give you an apple.”

“Honey, I love you,” he told her.

He had her bring a phone and phone box, and we looked the numbers up, especially Tombigvannah’s lawyer, a man named Downing, who had offices in the Pell Building on Fourteenth Street. I wrote everything down on the four-by-six cards a researcher invariably carries and finally put in a call to Wilmington. Miss Immelman transferred my call to Mr. Garrett’s office. He was friendly and interested in what I was calling about. “It’s a beautiful thing,” I assured him and described the building. “It’s really something. How much of it I’ll need, I don’t know right now—two floors at least, perhaps three. But the other floors, you can rent out.” But when I tried to explain the deal and mentioned Tombigvannah, he cut in quickly and hard.