Juice (5 page)

And now, today, at sunset on a May afternoon, Helen was depressed.

She poured herself a drink. The day had been eventful. Item: Dave had found a hornets' nest, smoked out the torpid residents, and proclaimed his desire to tack the nest above the front door as a warning to future vespid marauders. Item: Sally had taken the mare out and come home with the conviction that twenty acres was insufficient land. “Really. You just barely get started and there you are home again. Or trotting in circles.” Animals. Three dogs—four, now; a battalion of cats, black, white, gray, ginger, torn and tabby, striped and barred, responding to names like Vespasian, Irving Thalberg, Barney Oldfield, William Randolph Hearst, Domenico Theotocopuli, and Thomas Aquinas—or not responding (they led their lives, Helen led hers); and the mare and the stallion, who were more traditionally, if not less suggestively, named Guinevere and Lancelot.

The telephone rang. She went into the house, and passed a bookshelf. She was reading
The Charterhouse of Parma.
She had never read it before and she did not like it. It was natural to linger at the bookshelf; for a moment she forgot the telephone. It rang again. More and more now she liked to reread. She liked Dostoevsky in spite of Mr. Stearns. She liked Dickens in spite of many people; she liked Malraux, but felt left out; she liked Thomas Wolfe, but had not read him for years.

There is no book like Joe, she thought. But books are always there when you want them.

Her hand closed over the receiver.

Mr. Arthur Rhein, who was aging, rich, and querulous, occupied the two-story penthouse of a new building to the north of the city. The structure was an upended rectangular prism slashed boldly by trite horizontal accents: bands of window, streaks of color. Rhein's quarters consisted of ten rooms, six on the seventeenth floor and four on the eighteenth. These rooms were furnished heterogeneously, to say the least. The apartment as a whole contained an example (and often more than one) of bad taste from every major historical period of Western civilization. His Roman room was dominated by an appalling Empire (French, of course) divan; the room's Romanity consisted of half a dozen execrable casts of inferior egg-eyed busts, ranged about a central (and dry) fountain that could only have been a bird bath for Libyan buzzards. His French room was really quite good; it was cluttered with the kind of furniture still found in
ancien régime
French households: rickety, tortuously ornamented chairs and tables, desiccated and, in use, audible; the chairs swayed and creaked, and a gathering of more than three people occasioned a symphony of squeaks, groans, and crepitations. The paintings in this room were, with the exception of one rather daring Venus, sylvan scenes. Most of Rhein's guests, after an hour in the room, went home feeling that the Franco-Prussian War had turned out not badly after all. His Early American room was another triumph of trumpery: it was the common room of a Colonial inn, and included four muskets and a bumper at the fire place for warming steins of ale. Two rugged artificial beams traversed its ceiling. Mr. Rhein had once invited a few of his peers to a party in this room; for the occasion he had hired a model and attired her in a lowcut barmaid's dress. “It was crazy, man,” she reported afterward. “They kept calling me ‘wench' and ‘my chuck.' And nobody laid a hand on me!”

That was downstairs. The upstairs furnishings were more—but not wholly—contemporary, ranging from solid Grand Rapids to a Danish chair which had proved superfluous at the office. Rhein, with some justice, disliked the Danish chair. A guest would find it comfortable enough, but there were no arms, hence no rests for a drink or an ash tray; and emerging from it was risky (dislocation, coronary) for any of Rhein's coevals, Rhein's kitchen was upstairs. It was thoroughly modern and was presided over by an elderly man who had studied in Paris, returned to his native land, and found that he was in line for (at worst) short-order cuisine in diners or (at best) hams, yams, and yassuh on plantations in Grosse Pointe, Kittaning, or Southampton. He had drifted west. Rhein had found him through a Tony agency. The agency woman had listed Robert's impressive qualifications, and had added casually, “Of course, he's colored. We don't usually handle colored help.”

With sudden and very intense loathing Arthur Rhein said, “You stupid bitch.” It was not like him. It was a reflection of his helplessness. Rhein had one virtue, if no other: he did not understand the commoner prejudices, and he had never consciously felt one. But their existence had never inspired anger, until this day; and now he did not know what to do. He felt that something was expected of him. He felt that the woman had insulted him—more, that she had wantonly trampled upon humanity's intelligence and honor, gratuitously traduced evolution. This was not the way he expressed it. He expressed it by saying, “You stupid bitch,” and then, because he had felt powerless and had not enjoyed the feeling, he asserted what power he could: “In that case there will be no fee,” he said coldly (the woman had been stunned by his first remark, and made no answer, no slightest protest, now), “and if you set bill collectors after me, if you sue, I shall buy your agency and see that none of you ever works in this field again. I'll take his card now.”

Stupefied, the woman handed him a card.

“Good day,” Rhein said. In the corridor, waiting for the elevator, he began to shake. He wondered why he had reacted so violently, but by the next day he was over it; he never bothered to find out.

Rhein's dinners were, after that, events. His acquaintances could ignore the motley appointments, and were even able to generate the requisite laughter—Mr. Rhein was, of course, a raconteur. Rhein warmed to the compliments, laughed, poured Rémy Martin with a liberal hand, offered two-dollar Upmanns. On her first visit Helen Harrison had been dazzled, amused, and furious. “The old fool!” she said later. “He can't even pronounce what Robert cooks.” (They had been served trout with capers, Bâtard-Montrachet '45, and venison steak, Grands Echézeaux '34. Under her envy Helen was ecstatic.)

“Give him credit,” Joe said. “Another man his age, with his money, would have ulcers and live on gruel and collect pornography. Rhein not only knows good food, he likes it. And if you're that sore at him, all you have to do is learn how to cook.”

“Of course,” she said. “Oooh, I hate him.”

“You don't hate him,” Joe said. “You're jealous.” His voice was cool; there was even a small note of anger. “Isn't there something a touch, ah, backward, maybe even, let's say, feudal, about coveting another man's servant? Maybe we could swap the mare for him.”

“I hate you too,” Helen caid calmly. “You're right, and I never thought of it, and you make me feel like a stupid bitch.”

Robert was off tonight. He had left for Rhein an artichoke vinaigrette and an egg-and-Roquefort salad. He had gone to the fights. He liked the fights; he had been desolate when Marcel Cerdan went down in the Azores. He left early on fight nights, dined with friends downtown, and arrived at the arena ten minutes before the first preliminary, which gave him time to go over the evening's card, overhear the late odds, and start a cigar. Ordinarily he did not smoke; it was a sacrifice he made willingly to his profession. But at the fights he smoked cigars; his profession had given him a strong sense of the fitness of things, and here cigars were meet.

At seven o'clock Arthur Rhein, like an elf looking for shoes to mend, opened the refrigerator, peeked expectantly within, and smiled. He debated beverage, and groped for a bottle of ale. Robert disapproved of beverage with salad. Rhein admitted him correct, but took advantage of the proviso that was the key to Robert's gustatory philosophy: what you enjoyed most made the best meal. Robert had been trained to enjoy the classic compositions; but in others divagations were not only tolerated, but approved. Except at large, planned meals, of course. When a casual luncheon guest wanted whisky-soda with his chop, so be it; when there were eight for dinner, Robert was adamant. And he drew the line always at soft drinks. So did Arthur Rhein. It was a marriage made in Lapérouse.

Rhein had been troubled all afternoon. He made a rule of casting out troubles before a meal, but tonight it was difficult. Tonight he was concerned with man's inhumanity to man—specifically, with Joe Harrison's airy, almost disrespectful inhumanity to Arthur Rhein. Rhein knew better than to assume that his millions made him superior. But half a century earlier Rhein had not had those millions, and the acquisition of them could not have been pure luck. Riches implied nothing but high taxes; self-enrichment, on the other hand, might imply a great deal: judgment, talent, shrewdness, foresight. And Harrison persisted in behaving as though he, Rhein, had none of these.

The artichoke distracted Rhein momentarily. The artichoke was a small perfection, a victory over the forces of barbarism and darkness. Rhein's heart melted; he felt pleasure in every capillary; he tingled. He swigged at the ale, and knew peace.

But only momentarily. In 1926, when Rhein had merged his first two transmitting stations, Harrison might have been thirteen years old. Rhein himself had been thirty-five, clever, adventurous, and ambitious. Rhein knew that the young displaced the old; and he was too sensible to deny that he was old; but he felt outraged now when he was made to infer that his place was at board meetings and not in the office. And he was unaware so far that Harrison respected him. He could not see that if Harrison had lacked respect Harrison would not have bothered to argue; Harrison would have agreed politely and gone his own way.

Rhein was irritated that Harrison had anticipated him, and even more irritated that Harrison had gone, without his knowledge, to Harry Bing. Rhein liked Harry Bing. But it was not the thing to do.

The mistake had been to keep the board chairmanship and let the rest go. It took a man out of things. But they had all made it clear (all but Harrison) that they thought he would be better off upstairs. New times, new men. New slang. A new working language, composed of elliptical phrases which somehow signified all that had once needed firm, gentlemanly explication. A new world of stars, directors, financiers, advertising men. All on their way up. Jostling Rhein. None of them really knowing much about the business; each knowing (or thinking he knew, which was sometimes just as good) everything about his own fractional area. The world was run by absentee generals and occasional vice-presidents.

Rhein saw, tonight, what it meant. As a working executive he had passed the point of diminishing returns. He nibbled sadly at the artichoke heart. His personal fortune was handy as a reserve, but P.A.N. had been more than self-supporting for several years. His experience was necessary only as long as the world of communications bore some resemblance to the world he had created and still knew; but that resemblance diminished daily. A good deal of the business was already beyond him; he admitted that. Only by virtue of his position could he command the respect of, give orders to, an editor who had come out of Missouri and taken a portable typewriter to Africa, China, Siberia, and come home to accept a Pulitzer Prize; or a news chief who had unreeled a portable mike in the Apennines to bring his audience an hour of the true sound of war; or a director who had worked with Clair and Korda and studied burlesque and tiptoed eagerly through Berlin to see what they were doing with Brecht, and then staged
Wozzeck
and come home prepared. But Rhein knew the stupidity of using his position at all; and Rhein had not been to Africa or China or Siberia or the Apennines (he knew only vaguely where the Apennines were) or Berlin, and Rhein deplored burlesque, was ignorant of the director's function, thought Brecht had died in 1920 or so, and felt himself entirely destroyed by the notion that it was now necessary to have seen, to have done, to have known these things. Time was when an eye for a deal and a nose for profit were all you needed. And it was too late for Arthur Rhein to matriculate; he did not want to; he resented those who had, the newcomers, the relentless generation of them, not as rivals—why should he have to compete with them?—but because they did not know who or what he was, and they did not care.

Arthur Rhein was, cruelly, obsolete.

But they needed him yet. He dug more vigorously into the artichoke heart and cheered slightly. Few of them could count higher than a million, which was where Arthur Rhein started. Few of them—none of them, really—had the habit of six zeros. And this was a world in transition. Big money was handled by committees, by councils, by foundations, by governments, less and less often by men. Even Arthur Rhein had often to turn to groups—the state legislature, the FCC, the county police. Lawyers, commissioners, administrators. Everybody from the governor to the cop on the beat. Sheriffs. Judges. From million-dollar tax deals to a twenty-four-hour picket line: there was somebody who had to be seen. And Rhein was often an imposing emissary.

If that was all he had left, it was still something. It was too bad that it came down to money; but it was still something: to spend more money in a day than most men see in a lifetime, and to do at least
that
without fear, without hesitation, in the certain knowledge that it was right, that it would come back to him—to P.A.N.—and then some.

Not so obsolete after all.

But why this desire to control the details? To be Joe Harrison? Harrison was a good man, no question. Presumptuous, aggressive, independent, arrogant, contemptuous even, but competent. Harrison had made a good deal of money for P.A.N., and probably saved it more. Harrison was known and liked. And Harrison was not corrupt. Harrison was tough, and could be counted on.

The word “indispensable” crossed Rhein's mind again; he dismissed it. He finished the heart of artichoke and wiped his lips. He drained his glass and refilled it. He pushed away the mountain of dead leaves and attacked the salad, eating directly from the bowl. For a moment his face was reflected in the varnished black tabletop: thin, jowled, lined. His eyes, he knew, were still bright, his mind alert, his senses functioning perfectly. His hair was thin and white. He had never used glasses. He was five feet eight and had a potbelly, but that did not matter. The belly was Robert's fault, and if it was the price of Robert's food, he would pay cheerfully.