The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (10 page)

“I’m not sure we need one,” I said. “We have income adequate to our purposes.”

“Development isn’t just about raising money,” put in the other, a Mr. Peter Flaler, his voice condescending. The Mutt of this duo, Mr. Flaler was thin, tall, and apparently unable to relieve his narrow face of a supercilious smirk. He went on to explain in the manner of one speaking to a dullard, “People of substance like to and want to give to worthy institutions.”

“Yes, and to receive due recognition, of course,” chimed in Sherkin.

“You don’t just ask for money,” said Mr. Flaler with his smirk. “Who wants to give millions for paper clips and staff dental coverage? No, you give them something they can put their name on.”

“Right,” said the Jeff. “A building. A center. A professorship. A library. A gate.”

“A gate?”

“Of course. Your main gate, for instance. You could, for a reasonable bequest, name it, say, the Bill Gates Gate.” They all smiled. “All it would entail is a little plaque stating that the doorway was given in memory of Bill Gates.”

“But the gate wasn’t given by Mr. Gates. The gate’s been there
for more than a hundred years. People aren’t stupid.” I was now playing their game, playing as dumb as they thought I was.

“Of course. It’s only a convention. Mr. Latour, we all want in some small way to be immortal.”

“Do living people really have doors named for them?”

“You wouldn’t believe the things people have named for them. We have one benefactor, a couple actually, who have an elevator named for them. It’s over in the Medical School. The Waldo and Rose Grosbeak Elevator.”

“Amazing.”

“Oh, yeah. Waldo’s Class of ’Sixty-one. Founded Grosbeak Camping Gear. Deep pockets in those hiking pants, ha, ha. Of course, a named elevator isn’t really like a named chair. I mean it doesn’t get endowed as such.”

“It wouldn’t have an occupant,” explained Mr. Sherkin, his face contorted with suppressed laughter. “That is to say, no one would hold the elevator except in the sense of keeping the door open.”

“Where do you put the plaque?” I asked.

“On the inside. Right next to the municipal inspection notice. In fact, the Grosbeaks would probably pay to have that old elevator I noticed over in your place redone as something far more efficient and safe.”

“Amazing.”

“Hey, it happens every day. And what’s really hot is the last-name deal.”

“The last-name deal?”

“Okay, it goes like this. Instead of the plaque on, say, a reception desk, stating
THIS DESK GIVEN THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF DICK AND DOTTY DICKHEAD
, it just has a nice brass plate that says
DICKHEAD
. Because if you put up all that other stuff, it looks like someone just coughed up the bucks to get their
name there. But if it just says
DICKHEAD
, it makes you stop for a minute and think, yeah, that
Dickhead.”

“I see.”

“Isn’t that what Walter J. Annenberg did at Harvard?” Mr. Morin put in.

“Exactly. He gave several million dollars to Harvard just to have a dining hall named for him.”

“A dining hall?” I repeated with not entirely feigned incredulity.

“A freshman dining hall at that.”

“Amazing.”

“Well, it is a Harvard dining hall.”

“But a dining hall nonetheless.”

“Yes.”

“I mean a place where people eat.”

“Not really people, students. But eating is very important.”

All three were now openly tittering as Mr. Flaler went on.

“Exactly.”

“Well, Mr. Annenberg must be very rich and very humble to do such a generous thing.”

“Rich and generous but not necessarily humble.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he has his name, just his last name, and the word
Hall
incised in great gold letters like they’ve been there forever just outside the dining hall in a hall that has until now been reserved for small marble plaques bearing the names of those sons of Harvard who were killed in the Civil War.”

“Really? Annenberg’s name stands out among the fallen heroes of Harvard?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t that a little … louche?”

“Oh, no, Mr. de Ratour. It merely exemplifies what benefactors want in return for their money.”

“But those are heroes …”

“Yeah, but they only gave their lives …”

“And not for Harvard, either.”

“Do people give their lives for Harvard?”

“They’d rather have your money.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t see the point of trying to be remembered by people who don’t know who you are or what you were.”

Mr. Morin snorted. “Maybe that’s because the people they knew wouldn’t want to remember them.”

Mr. Sherkin then turned on what he must have taken for charm, telling me, “Your museum, Mr. Ratour, is virgin territory. I took a walk through it the other day. It was disorienting to find hardly anything named for a hit … I mean a benefactor.”

I nodded and dissembled a quiet excitement as a plan began to form in my mind. I asked, “What’s the actual mechanism for getting people to make really big contributions?”

Mr. Flaler inhaled sagely. “The approach. Asking for money is like asking for love. You have to do it right. Mostly, you get the rich to ask the rich. People with a lot of money need reassuring.”

“You have to schmooze them,” Mr. Morin put in.

“Schmooze?”

“Give them drinks and praise. Glad-hand and glad-mouth them. Talk up the vision thing.”

“Like we said, people like to see their names chiseled on buildings.”

“Yeah, it’s like the whole thing becomes their tombstone. Only it’s not in the cemetery.”

“Right. And buildings need names.”

I shook my head. “We have a policy at the museum. All gifts must be anonymous and with no strings attached. We are willing to consider naming a room or gallery or library for someone whose achievements in his or her field — Mason Twitchell’s, for instance — merit such consideration.”

Mr. Sherkin frowned. “Any gifts to the university need to be channeled through the Development Office.”

I grimaced a smile at the man and said nothing.

Mr. Morin cleared his throat. “Look, Norm, we’re making you an exceptional offer. Everyone wants a piece of the New Millennium action, but the deal is strictly limited.”

“And what does the Museum of Man have to do in return for this privilege?”

“Simple. You get your Board to agree to a closer association with the university. Then we can cut out all this crap in the courts.”

“I might even bring it up with the Board. And now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a museum to run.”

It took me a while to extricate myself. Thanking them each graciously and shaking their hands, I picked up the impressively designed three-ring binder titled “Development Goals for the Museum of Man in the New Millennium.” It could well serve as the basis of a fund drive of our own.

But I must be careful. What I sense at Wainscott, what I don’t want to happen at the MOM, is the philistinism that can result when an institution becomes too consciously institutional and loses sight of its original purpose.

It is late evening and I sit under the eaves in an attic study I have had knocked together and fitted out with shelves for books and an old couch for dozing. It is a veritable eyrie and overlooks the backyard of the Dolores family, the nubile young girls of which sun themselves like semi-aquatic creatures next to the aquamarine pool during the sunnier months. (My father’s old study down on the first floor that I resorted to of yore has been turned into the entertainment center with the big television.)

It is nigh on Halloween, and I sit in this perch typing into my little tabletop — I’ve never had the thing on my lap once. From far below, in the fieldstone foundation, I can hear the syncopated
thump thump
of some infernal electronic noisemaker reverberating through the house as though it had been possessed by some mad demon of the aural. It’s only Sixpak Shakur, King of the Redneck Rappers, lead singer of Cool White Fudge, or that’s what was stenciled all over the van in which he arrived yesterday. I suppose we’re lucky that they all didn’t decide to camp here, four or five other young men, that is. They speak a gibberish among themselves that I take to be a kind of English.

Well, at least Diantha is happy. She positively flung herself at the young man, wrapping her legs around his midsection and carrying on in such a fashion that I feared for a moment they would attempt congress right there in the hallway. I should be relieved that she now has someone to assuage her too palpable needs. But I find myself just a bit envious, perhaps of their youth,
their vigor, their sense of utter irresponsibility, as though the world is some great machine that will tick over by itself forever regardless of what they do. And perhaps they are right.

We sat down to dinner, the four of us, with lobsters, salad, the very last of this year’s corn, as well as a piquant little Sauvignon Blanc. Sixy, as Diantha calls him, slurring it into “Sexy,” wore only a T-shirt with some sort of message on it and jeans, seemingly impervious to anything like the temperature. He is a big fellow, with a bland, blunt, sensual face, and sports, if that is the term, a polished shaved head and more rings in his ears that a Papuan native. It took me some time to realize that he was speaking English. When he saw the lobsters he launched into something like, “Oh, wow, man, real bugs, too rad.” Then, to me, glancing around, “Man, you are some kind of cool dude. I mean look at this crib, man, it’s right off the set.”

Later, when we were alone, he extended his sympathy regarding Elsbeth. “Di told me about your old lady, man. I mean bummer big time. I mean like too soon, man, for the big nap.” I took this to be an expression of sympathy and confess to being oddly touched inasmuch as he appeared utterly sincere in his sentiments. Still, I do wonder betimes what planet I am living on.

Poor Elsbeth couldn’t really manage to eat much of the dinner. She did seem happy that Diantha’s friend had arrived. She told me not to fuss with her, but I excused myself from the table as well. I asked her if she wanted to take some of her pain medication, and she shook her head. “I’d rather bear anything than have my head muddled,” she said.

We spent some time together, she lying in the bed we’ve arranged for her in the alcove off the living room, me sitting beside her holding her hand, now all skin and bones and ligaments. What frail vessels we are, finally.

But Elsbeth appeared at peace with herself. Alfie Lopes, the
minister in Swift Chapel, our friend who married us, came by today for something halfway between a pastoral visit and a crying fest. We held hands while Alfie improvised a little prayer about how we need to remember that each of us will be called. It is only a matter of time. And time, he intoned, quoting the much-underappreciated Delmore Schwartz, is the fire we burn in.

Perhaps not that strangely, Elsbeth comforted Alfie as much as he did her. But then my dear wife always has been strong in that way. She told me that early on she had decided not to cheat death by dying by her own hand when it dawned on her as a young girl the finality that life entailed. “Dying is not what you think,” she said as we sat together in the near dark, hearing the sounds Diantha and Sixy were making down in the basement setting up his equipment. “It’s frightening, yes. It’s too damn final. I’d rather postpone it. But it’s not strange or horrific or even malignant. It just is. And having you here is all that matters right now.”

So that I wept, but quietly, and then lay out on the narrow bed beside her, taking her in my arms and holding her, as if, like that, I might keep her forever.

Later, when the ruckus started from below, I made to go down to quell it. But Elsbeth forestalled me. “It’s okay,” she said. “I kind of like it. It’s alive.”

When she finally drifted off, I quietly got up, pulled the drape over the alcove, and made my way here.

We haven’t heard from Korky in a few days, but that’s not unusual. I know he isn’t one of those fair-weather friends who abandons you the moment the going gets rough.

I did have a run-in today with Maria Cowe, who is in charge of Human Resources for Affiliated Institutions, what used to be called Personnel. She demanded to know why I wanted the file of Celeste Tangent, the lab assistant Worried referred to in one
of his e-mails. I told her it was an administrative matter, and that surely it was only routine for directors such as myself to ask to see employee files and for her office to comply.

She responded that, because Ms. Tangent was really an employee of the Ponce Institute and not of Wainscott, I would have to fill out forms to make an official request.

I became quite angry. I told her that if Ms. Tangent’s file was not on my desk when I arrived the next morning, she would be hearing from the museum’s legal department.

Indeed, the first thing I did upon returning to my office was phone Felix Skinnerman. I told him that I wanted the museum to establish its own human resources department sooner rather than later, in fact immediately. I told him I wanted it called the Personnel Department. I told him I wanted him to subpoena from Ms. Cowe the records or copies of the records of anyone who works either directly or indirectly for the museum.

Well, Felix, as usual, calmed me down. He said this was an area where we had to go cautiously while our case was still in the courts. To raise this issue now, he said, would be to call attention to a very strong de facto link between the two institutions, strengthening the case of the university. He suggested I do what all administrators do — go over her head.

I told him that meant going to Malachy Morin, which was something, on principle, I simply would not do.

“Why do you need the file?” he finally asked me.

“It may have something to do with the Ossmann-Woodley case,” I said.

“Oh, then. Why don’t you contact your friend in the SPD and have him obtain it through the courts? It might take a while, but you’ll have it.”

I thanked him effusively and called Lieutenant Tracy. He wasn’t in, but he called back a short time later. I admit I felt a bit foolish
telling him that I could not, as a matter of routine, obtain the file of someone working, however indirectly, for the museum.