Appointment in Samarra (24 page)

But meanwhile he had his work to do. Little jobs here and there. Odds and ends, daily routine work. Ed had been in such a rage, so burnt up, that he had forgot to fire Al, and despite everything he had said, he had not indicated that he intended to fire Al. In their line of work it was one thing to have a scrap, a mouth fight, or to be angry for a day or two at an associate. But to fire a man was something else again. You didn’t just fire
a guy like
that
(finger-snap). Not even in Gibbsville, which was not Chicago.

That was the trouble, in a way. In a way maybe it was a break that it wasn’t Chicago, because out there they knocked each other off with less excuse than a fight over a dame. But in another way Al was sorry it wasn’t Chi. In Gibbsville they never had a gang war, because Ed Charney simply didn’t have any competition. Whereas on the other hand, in Chi they did. They had gang wars all the time. They were used to it. In Chi you could get away with it. In Gibbsville it would be just a murder, and they would have to make a pinch and have a court trial and all that, and the juries around here were so screwy, they might even send you to the chair. “That Rock View, I don’t want any part of that,” said Al.

So now he had a nice little job to do. A little odds and ends. He had to take this champagne and this Scotch out to where English lived. English, the mugg that caused all the trouble in the first place. Although as he drove along he could not stir up any very strong hatred of English, because the truth of the matter was, if you wanted to know who was responsible, it wasn’t English or it wasn’t even Helene with her hot pants. It was Ed Charney himself. A married man with a kid, and absolutely haywire on the subject of another woman not his wife. That was where the trouble was. He wanted everything, Ed did. Well, that remains to be seen, as the elephant said.

“I’m above this kind of work,” Al said, as he lifted first one case, then the other, out of the Hudson and laid them down on the kitchen porch of the English house. He rang the bell.

“How much is it?” said the old woman.

“You don’t have to pay me,” said Al, who knew that English had credit with Ed.

“I said how much is it?” said the old woman, the cook, he guessed she was.

“A hundred and seventy-five. A hundred for the champagne, seventy-five for the Scotch.”

The woman closed the door in his face and in a few minutes she came back and handed him a check and a five-dollar bill. “The cash is for you. A tip,” said the woman.

“Stick it—” Al began.

“Don’t you say that to me, you dago wop,” said the old woman. “I got two boys would teach you how to talk. If you don’t want the money, give it here.”

“The hell I will,” said Al.

*   *   *

“Aw, my goodness. Where you going, beautiful lady? You going somewhere?” said Foxie Lebrix.

“Can that stuff,” said Helene Holman. “Will you phone down to Taqua and get me a taxi? I’ll pay you for the call.”

“Aw, but I hate to see you leave. I t’ought you and I—”

“I know you thought, but we ain’t, see? If you don’t want to get me a taxi, say so and I’ll walk it,” said Helene.

“Wit’ all dose bags?”

“You’re damn right. The quicker I get out of this place the better I like it. Well, what about the taxi?”

“Wall, I would not see you walking in the snow. Maybe we see each other in New York some day, and you get me a taxi when I leave your place, eh? Sure I get you a taxi.”

Mary Klein had gone home to lunch and Julian was alone in the office, with a small array of sheets of paper on which were rows of figures, names, technical words: Number of cars sold in 1930; our cut on new cars sold; gas and oil profit 1930; tires and accessories profit 1930; profit on resale of cars taken in trade; other profit; insurance on building; ins. on equipment; ins. on rolling stock; interest on bldg.; taxes; advertising; graft; expenses; light; other elec. outlay; heat; tool replacement; licenses; office stuff, incl. stationery; workmen’s compensation; protective association; telephones; bad debts; stamps; trade-in losses; lawyer & accountant fees; building repairs; losses not covered by ins.; plumber; depreciation on bldg.; deprec. on equipment; depr. on trade-in jobs; depr. on new cars not moved; contributions to charity; cash advance to self; notes due at bank; cash needed for payroll…. As a result of his figuring Julian announced to the empty room: “I have to have five thousand dollars.”

He stood up. “I said, I have to have five thousand dollars, and I don’t know where I can get it…. Yes, I do. Nowhere.” He knew he was lying to himself; that he did not need five thousand dollars. He needed money, and he needed it soon, but not five thousand dollars. Two thousand would be enough, and with any break in the beginning of the year, after the auto shows in New York and Philadelphia (which are attended by a surprising number of Gibbsville automobile enthusiasts), he would be able to get back on his feet. But he reasoned that it was just as hard to get two thousand as five, five thousand as two. It was easier to get five, he told himself; and as he had
argued less than a year ago, when he had gone to Harry Reilly for a loan, he might as well go for a neat, convenient-sounding sum. The question seemed to be: Where to get it.

Tempers are better in summer than in winter, in Gibbsville; Julian’s summer life had included a good deal of Harry Reilly last summer, and it was easy enough to get away from him. If you didn’t want to play golf with Harry, you said you had promised Caroline to play a match for blood with her, which did away with the necessity of asking Harry to play along. On the other hand, it was not bad to drink with Harry in a party of undershirted convivials in the locker-room, and Harry was a fair tenor and even knew songs about the roll of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Lafayette was Lafayette when Lehigh was a pup, the Lord Jeff of Amherst, and a lot of other college songs. Of course Harry got the words wrong sometimes, but Julian was no purist who would discourage the progress of a fair tenor. No, a good tenor, as locker-room tenors go.

He thought of these things. Harry must have changed since then, become obnoxious or something. Julian reasoned that he could not have asked the Harry he now knew to invest so much money in the business. Well, maybe the winter had something to do with it. You went to the Gibbsville Club for lunch; Harry was there. You went to the country club to play squash on Whit Hofman’s private court, and Harry was around. You went to the Saturday night drinking parties, and there was Harry; inescapable, everywhere. Carter Davis was there, too, and so was Whit; so was Froggy Ogden. But they were different. The bad new never had worn off Harry Reilly. And the late fall and winter seemed now to have been spoiled by room after room with Harry Reilly. You could walk outside in the summer, but even though you can walk outside in winter, winter isn’t that way. You have to go back to the room soon, and there is no life in the winter outside of rooms. Not in Gibbsville, which was a pretty small room itself.

Well, what was the use of trying to build up Harry now as having been a swell guy last summer. Last summer Julian had needed money, and Harry Reilly had money, so he had asked Harry. And Harry had said: “Jesus, I ain’t got that much cash
at this present minute. Do you need it right away?” Julian had said he needed it pretty soon. “Well, I don’t see how I can get it for you before tomorrow…. Oh, hell, sure I can.” Julian had almost laughed in his face: in one minute the little worry that Harry wanted to have a month to think it over and raise the cash had come and gone. Julian had had a lot more trouble in college, trying to borrow forty-four cents to go to the movies…. Harry had been no different then from the Harry he knew today. Might as well face that. As for the Caroline angle, Julian believed in a thought process that if you think against a thing in advance, if you anticipate it—whether it’s the fear that you’re going to cut yourself when you shave, or lose your wife to another man—you’ve licked it. It can’t happen, because things like that are known only by God. Any future thing is known only to God; and if you have a super-premonition about a thing, it’ll be wrong, because God is God, and is not giving away one of His major powers to Julian McHenry English. So Julian thought and thought about Caroline and Harry, and thought against them, against their being drawn to each other sexually, which was the big thing that mattered. “By God, no one else will have her in bed,” he said, to the empty office. And immediately began the worst fear he had ever known that this day, this week, this minute, next year, sometime she would open herself to another man and close herself around him. Oh, if she did that it would be forever.

Julian reached in the second drawer of the desk and took out a Colt’s .25 automatic and got up and went to the washroom. He was breathless with excitement and he felt his eyes get the way they got when he was being thrilled, big but sharp. He sat down on the toilet, and he knew he was not going to do it that way. But he wanted to sit down and look at the pistol. He looked at it for he knew not how long, and then snapped himself to without changing his position in the slightest degree. He put the barrel in his mouth and some oil touched the inside of his lower lip. He made a “Guck” sound, and took a long breath, and then he put the pistol in his pocket and got up and washed his mouth with cold water and then he took off his upper garments, except his undershirt, and washed himself all
over the head and face and arms to the elbow. He used four towels, drying himself. Then he put on his clothes again, wiped stray drops of water off his shoes, and went back to the office and lit a cigarette. He remembered a bottle of whiskey he had in the desk, and he had a long-lasting drink of one whiskey glass of it. “Oh, I couldn’t,” he said, and he put his arms on the desk and his head on his arms, and he wept. “You poor guy,” he said. “I feel so sorry for you.”

He heard the first of the mechanics’ post-luncheon sounds: the thump of a baseball in a catcher’s mitt. That meant the mechanics were through lunch, because one of the men pitched on a semi-pro team, and he kept himself in shape all winter. Julian held his head up and the phone rang. “Hello,” he said.

“I just tried to get you at the club. Where’d you have lunch?” It was Caroline.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Well, I don’t suppose you felt much like it. Now listen, Julian, the reason I called is, if you talk the way you did to Mrs. Grady again, we’re through. Do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“I mean it this time. I’m not going to have you take your hangovers out on any servants. Mrs. Grady should have slapped your face.”

“Say!”

“It’s about time someone slapped your face. Now I want you to understand this, old boy. If you come home drunk this afternoon and start raising hell, I’ll simply call up every person we’ve invited and call off the party.”

“You’ll simply, huh?”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, and ended the call.

“She’ll simply,” he said, to the telephone, and gently replaced the handpiece in the cradle. “She’ll simply.” He got up and put on his hat. He stopped and debated, a very short debate, whether to leave a note for Mary Klein. “Naa, who’s Mary Klein?” He struggled into his coat and drove to the Gibbsville Club.

The usual crowd was not in the club this day. “Hello, Straight,” said Julian to the steward.

“Good afternoon, Mr. English. I hope you had a merry
Christmas. Uh, we all want to thank you for your, uh, generous, uh, subscription to the club employes’ Christmas fund. Uh.” Old Straight always spoke as though he had just been sniffing ammonia.

“Well, you’re very welcome, I’m sure,” said Julian. “Have a nice Christmas?”

“Quite nice. Of course, uh, well, of course I have no family that you’d, uh, really call a family, uh. My nevview in South Africa, he—”

“Mr. Davis in the club? Who’s here? Never mind. I’ll go look.”

“Not many members here today. The day, uh, day after—”

“I know,” said Julian. He went into the dining-room, and at first glance it appeared that it was occupied solely by Jess, the Negro waiter. But there was a small table in one corner, by common consent or eminent domain, the lawyers’ table, at which sat a few lawyers, all older men and not all of them Gibbsville men, but residents of the smaller towns who came to the county seat when they had to. You did not have to speak to the men at the lawyers’ table. In fact, some of the men who sat there did not speak to each other. Julian had hoped Carter Davis might still be in the club, but there was no sign of him. He sat down at a table for two, and he no sooner had given his order than he was joined by Froggy Ogden.

“Sit down and eat. I just ordered. Jess’ll take your order and serve it with mine if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” said Froggy.

“Well, then, sit down and take the load off.”

“You’re feeling pretty snotty today,” said Froggy, sitting down.

“Snotty isn’t the word for it. Cigarette?”

“No, thanks. Listen, Julian, I didn’t come here for a friendly chat.”

“Oh, no?”

“No,” said Froggy. You could see he was getting angry.

“Well, then, come on. I’ve been hearing the anvil chorus all day, so you might as well join it. What kind of a fig have you got—”

“Now listen, I’m older than you—”

“Oh, it’s going to be one of those. And you have my best interests at heart? That one? Jesus Christ, you’re not going to give me that.”

“No. I’m not. I’m older than you in more ways than one.”

“What you’re trying to say is you lost your arm in the war. Do you mind if I help you? You lost your arm in the war, and you’ve suffered, and that makes you older than me, and if you had both arms I guess you’d thrash me within an inch of my life.”

Froggy stared at him until they heard the wall clock ticking. “Yes. I have a notion to bust you one right now. You God damn son of a bitch, Caroline is my cousin, and even if she wasn’t my cousin she’s one of the finest girls there is, Caroline is. You want to know something? When she told me she was going to marry you, I tried to stop it. I always hated you. I always hated your guts when you were a kid, and I hate you now. You never were any damn good. You were a slacker in the war—oh, I know how old you were. You could of got in if you’d tried. You were yellow when you were a kid and you grew up yellow. You chased around after that Polish girl till she had to go away or her father would have killed her. Then you put on some kind of an act with Caroline, and God help her, she fell for it. I tried to stop it, but no. She said you had changed. I—”