Clemmie (19 page)

When Betty brought the sandwich she said, “His desk is all set, Mr. Fitz.”

“Thanks.”

“Who is he?”

He looked up, leaned back. “Half of a team of two management specialists. They’re conducting a survey.”

“Why does he move in with us?”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“He’s a pretty suave-looking article, Craig. And what was he doing with a copy of your report? How did Mr. Ober like it?”

“Mr. Ober didn’t look at it. Upson and his partner both got a copy. Later, God knows when, they’re going to ‘bounce it around.’ ”

“I don’t like that, either.”

“For God’s sake, Miss James, maybe you could type a list of what you like and what you don’t like. I do my work the best way I know how. If you’re trying to infer I’m incompetent, say so. You act like I was being trailed by assassins.”

She blinked and swallowed, backed a half step away and said, “Are you sure you’re not?”

“The word is chopping out dead wood. You’ve heard that, I presume. You’re afraid I’m dead wood.”

“If you weren’t upset you wouldn’t snarl at me, Mr. Fitz. You’re not dead wood or incompetent or anything like that. I could even explain how I feel if you’d be patient for twenty seconds.”

“Go ahead, Miss James.”

“There’s a story about a bad thing happening to the bearer of bad tidings. This is sort of like that, if you know what I mean. Suppose instead of you in this job they had a man who is, say, the world’s greatest administrator, and an engineering genius, and he worked twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. He
couldn’t
do the job right because the job can’t be done right, because the job is to go around patching and fixing and adjusting. It’s like a terrible old car—a headlight falls off and while you’re putting it back on a tire goes flat and while you’re changing
the tire the other headlight falls off. That’s just the way it is. It makes them nervous upstairs. When you and John Terrill try to explain, they think you’re making excuses. So it’s a lot easier to get nervous about you than it is to try to listen to what you think ought to be done. And I don’t want them
doing
that to you.” Her voice went strange and she whirled and left the office.

A very dandy boost for my morale, he thought. But she has it pinned down very neatly. Maybe that’s what’s been happening to my nerves. That’s where the confidence went, maybe. That’s why I’m beginning to feel and act like a clerk. They say that if you train a rat in many mazes, and then put him in an insoluble one, he’ll finally roll over, squeaking, and chew his paws in a curiously human way. My maze lends itself to about an eighty per cent solution. If I worked an eighty-hour week, I might conceivably boost it to eighty-one or two per cent. If I worked a ten-hour week, it would drop to maybe fifty per cent. So I balance my energies against a predictable degree of imperfection. If Upson is as shrewd as he appears to be, this may be the best thing that could have happened to me. My special problem, the problem that has kept me trapped in one job too long, will be presented objectively.

The other possible result is a not-too-glowing letter of recommendation and the quick heave back out into a world that each day seems more disconcertingly full of bland, wise, promising young men such as Upson and Montgomery.

The hell with it. Get to work.

But there is a change coming. It can be smelled from afar.

Al Jardine phoned Craig at five minutes of five.

“How about joining me for a knock at Nick’s after work? When can you make it?”

“Quarter of six okay?”

“We’ll be in the back room in a booth.”

“We?”

“Yes, Brace yourself, wolf. Me and Steve Chews.”

“Oh dear Jesus!”

“Did you think nobody noticed?”

“Al, it wasn’t like …”

“Save it until later, Craig.”

The bar at Nick’s was crowded. The back room was dimly lighted. He had to pause a moment until his eyes adjusted, and then he saw Al and Steve in a corner booth, drinks in front of them. Al hailed him and Craig walked over and sat down. The waiter took his order for a tall Scotch.

Steve was a colorless and apologetic man, and he looked ill at ease, and not at all friendly.

“What’s this all about?” Craig asked.

Al said lazily, “I’ll summarize. At the party Wednesday night you and the Westerling woman were making what my Irene calls a spectacle of yourselves. Her husband was aware of it. She was loading his drinks. That’s why he made the scene. Jealousy. Everybody saw you and Floss go down by the tool shed and come back looking all primed. She left and you left fifteen minutes later. She was out all night. Lollie kept phoning your house. You were out all night too. Yesterday Floss phoned Dave from a hotel. He went down and got her. He checked at the desk and found out she’d checked in at about eleven yesterday morning. He took her home and he and Lollie went to work on her. They broke her down. She says she was so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing. You took her to a motel. She implies it was very close to rape. Then you drove her into town and dropped her off. Dave is torn between murdering you and divorcing her. Lollie is all for divorce. I think we better have the story, Craig.”

Craig put down half his drink. “My God, if there’s any implication of rape, it was the other way around. She told me to leave in fifteen minutes and she’d be waiting down by the playground. She went home and changed and picked up a small suitcase. I didn’t go home with her and force her to change.”

“She covered that,” Steve said awkwardly. “She claims you agreed to drive her into town and leave her at a hotel. She said she was just going to punish Dave for kicking her in front of everybody. But instead you took her to a motel.”

“That’s a damn lie. My God, Al, she drove the car. I was in no shape to drive. She even found the motel.”

“Can you prove she drove?” Al asked.

Craig thought for a moment and said, “No.”

“Did you have relations with her?”

“I guess you could call it that. I’m pretty vague about it. We didn’t wake up until ten. She was scared stiff. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep. Listen, Al. This isn’t a new deal with her. She’s a tramp.”

“But it’s the first time she’s been caught,” Al said.

Steve seemed a little more friendly. “Dave is my cousin, Craig. Lollie has never liked Floss. Floss is trying to lie out of it, I’m sure. Now that I’ve heard your side of it, I have the feeling you’re telling the truth. But Dave doesn’t know what to believe. He’s damn near out of his mind. I tell you, it’s hell around that house. I hate to go home any more.”

“What should I do?” Craig asked Al.

“It’s pretty delicate. If he wants to try for a divorce and name you corespondent, it could clobber you nicely. Maybe we can pull some of the rug out from under him. Where did you stay?”

“A place called Pine Tree Cabins, out on Route 80, just this side of Forrestville.”

“Nice place?”

“God, no. Sordid. It was the sort of place where they’d welcome—the sort of business we took there.”

“Did you sign the register? What name?”

“Wait a minute. Now I remember. Jonathan Johnson. I don’t remember what I put down for an address.”

“On a registration card?”

“No. In a notebook.”

“I’ll pay a call. It shouldn’t be hard to get that back, or cost too much.”

“Then what?” Steve asked. “Where does that leave everything?”

“Then,” Al said, “I see Dave and I give him my man-to-man lecture number twelve. The need for love and tolerance. Let him who is without sin and so forth. I tell him that in a sense it might have been Floss’s fault, but really the fault is in the life we lead. Decay of moral values, too much strong waters. And so on. Give the girl another chance. It may strengthen the marriage instead of weaken it. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Floss told me that Dave isn’t the faithful type.”

“If true, that will help. Can you shed any light, Steve?”

“I know there was some bad trouble a while back. Something about Dave and a waitress.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to run along.” He looked at Craig. “I’m
just damn sorry this had to happen. I wish to God Maura hadn’t gone away for the summer. It just doesn’t seem like you, Craig. Damn it, it doesn’t.”

After Steve was gone Al said, “We certainly put on a lovely party, didn’t we?”

“I didn’t know I was being so damn obvious.”

“You haven’t had enough practice, maybe. I think it will blow over. But, my friend, you are not going to get away unscathed. You know Lollie. She is her own news service. By the time this week end is over, everybody you know is going to have the juicy details. And when Maura comes back, it is inevitably going to get back to her. And, knowing Maura, it’s going to hurt her.”

“What the hell can I do about it?”

“There isn’t going to be much you can do. Jesus, Craig, why did you get mixed up with one of those? How was she?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Al shook his head. “Irene is furious at you. And so are Jeanie and Alice. The great idol has tottered and fallen smack on its face. Let’s get another round here, waiter.”

“I don’t know why I drank so much, Al.”

“I’ve never seen you hit yourself so hard and often. I’m no psychiatrist, but are you trying to hide from anything.”

“How do you mean?”

“Are you in any kind of a jam. At the plant? Financial? A woman? Health? Got any bad worries?”

Craig thought of Ober and of Clemmie. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Al studied him for a moment. “Make sure of that. We’ve been friends a long time. I always had you cased as somebody who’d never make much of a client in the kind of law work I do. But I’ve been wrong about some others I cased the same way. A man is a pretty delicate organism emotionally. And a crack-up can come when you least expect it.”

Craig forced a smile. “I’m not fixing to crack up, Al.”

“Why don’t you get a complete physical check? I don’t like the way you look and act. You seem tightened up. You don’t have that old control. You seem a little blurred around the edges, and frankly, and don’t take offense, you’re looking a little seedy.”

“Lay off, Al!”

“I won’t lay off until I scare you a little, ole buddy. You know about accident prones. In my work I get a different kind of prone. I don’t know how to describe it. Call it a self-destruction prone. The tensions of the kind of life we lead pile up without our being aware of it. Then something gives. And you start a long ride down the chute. Or a short ride. The chute can be women or horses or liquor. But in every case it’s a way to hide from the tensions, a way of sticking your fool head in the sand.”

“For Christ sake, Al!”

“How come this is making you so uncomfortable? Am I hitting too close to home?”

“No. You’re swinging wild.”

“Okay. Is it like you, is it typical of Craig Fitz, to take a jump at that big, young, whining housewife?”

“No, damn it, but I was drunk.”

“Okay. Is it typical of Craig Fitz to get so boiled?”

“No. I had no intention of doing so. I—I was making myself a drink. I was making it light because I’d had two that Chet had made me. Then I just reached out and took the bottle and slugged it good. I don’t know why the hell I did. Maybe I’m lonesome. Maybe I’m worried about our new plant manager. Maybe I’m bored with my work. Does a man have to be completely logical in every single action?”

Al stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got to run, fella. I’ll let you pay the check. I hope I’ve started you doing some thinking. If there’s something chewing on you you haven’t told me about, get to work on it and find a solution. And stop at the house when you can. I’ll get Irene cooled off, and we’ll sit around and tell lies. Hell, why don’t you come along right now. You can keep her company while I go out and get that registration.”

“Thanks, Al, but I think I better stop around another time.”

“Be sure you do.”

After Al had gone he sat and finished his drink. Maura was going to hear about it. There was no way to keep her from hearing about it. It made him sick to think of how it would be for her when she heard. He could deny it, and that wouldn’t help much, or he could give her the full reason why he had decided to do it, why, with drunken logic, he had thought of Floss as an antidote to Clemmie.
The waiter came over and picked up the empty glasses and said, “Another, sir?”

“Please,” he said. When the waiter was ten feet away he said, “Waiter!”

He turned. “Yes sir?”

“A double this time.”

“Yes sir.”

He drank the double slowly. Al was wrong. There was no danger of a crack-up. That was foolish melodrama. A stupid episode with Floss. The marriage would survive it. Marriages had survived worse. Much worse.

Seedy.

Tat could be fixed. Should be fixed at once. But why should Al try to make a big deal out of it? It was understandable, certainly. A man’s wife is away. So he gets a little careless.

What big problem?

The Clemmie problem was under control. Well under control. A summer affair. Nothing more. Discreet. And, anyway, the damage was done, wasn’t it? That Floss thing fixed it. Once you bought your ticket, you might as well see the whole show.

He paid the check and left. The car was in a lot three blocks away. Dusk was over the city. He walked and swung his arms and felt very good, light on his feet, and half-smiling and leanly co-ordinated. He had an inexplicable feeling of anticipation. He knew he had had very little sleep, and it would be wise to eat and go home and sleep the clock around. But it was a summer dusk and he felt nimble and quick and he could hear music. He smiled at a pretty girl and winked a monstrous wink, and grinned inside when her face froze and she turned her head quickly to look the other way. The music was behind him and lost, and he hummed the melody and snapped his fingers in time to it.

He stopped in front of the parking lot and looked down the street and saw some white and elegant neon that spelled out, expensively, The Belle and Bottle.

He left his hat with a Botticelli virgin in the foyer, went in and sat in dim light at a padded bar stool, rested his arms on the padded edge of a freeform bar, sipped his Scotch and watched a tawny lass in a mirrored niche,
in a black and silky sheath, in a pink spotlight, finger a pallid piano and sing, into a golden mike, with a husky and sinuous sensuality, “Lush Life,” rocking her rounded silken hips on the bench in tempo.