Next day Charley went by early for Andy Merritt and sat with him in the big antisepticlooking diningroom at the Yale Club while he ate his breakfast. “Will it be bumpy?” was the first thing he asked. “Weather report was fine yesterday.” “What does Joe say?” “He said for us to keep our goddam traps shut an’ let the other guys do the talkin’.”
Merritt was drinking his last cup of coffee in little sips. “You know Joe’s a little overcautious sometimes… He wants to have a jerkwater plant to run himself and hand down to his grandchildren. Now that was all very well in upstate New York in the old days… but now if a business isn’t expanding it’s on the shelf.” “Oh, we’re expandin’ all right,” said Charley, getting to his feet to follow Merritt’s broadshouldered tweed suit to the door of the diningroom. “If we weren’t expandin’, we wouldn’t be at all.”
While they were washing their hands in the lavatory Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square serious face to him: “But we might have to go out… I’ve engaged a small suite for us at the Waldman Park. You know in Washington those things count a great deal.” “Well, if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a soup an’ fish.”
As the porter was putting Merritt’s big pigskin suitcase and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would be too much weight. “Hell, no, we could carry a dozen like that,” said Charley, putting his foot on the starter. They drove fast through the empty streets and out across the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bill Cermak had the ship out of the hangar and all tuned up.
Charley put his hand on the back of Bill’s greasy leather jerkin. “Always on the dot, Bill,” he said. “Meet Mr. Merritt… Say, Andy… Bill’s comin’ with us, if you don’t mind… he can rebuild this motor out of old hairpins and chewin’gum if anythin’ goes wrong.”
Bill was already hoisting Merritt’s suitcase into the tail. Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and Fitch. “Do you think it will be bumpy?” Merritt was asking again. Charley gave him a boost. “May be a little bumpy over Pennsylvania… but we ought to be there in time for a good lunch… Well, gents, this is the first time I’ve ever been in the Nation’s Capital.” “Me neither,” said Bill. “Bill ain’t never been outside of Brooklyn,” said Charley, laughing.
He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put on his goggles and yelled back at Merritt, “You’re in the observer’s seat, Andy.”
The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine. “What do you think of that, Bill?” Charley kept yelling at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across the slatecolored squares of Brooklyn. The light northwest wind made a million furrows on the opaque green bay. Then they were crossing the gutted factory districts of Bayonne and Elizabeth. Beyond the russet saltmeadows, Jersey stretched in great flat squares, some yellow, some red, some of them misted with the green of new crops.
There were ranks of big white cumulus clouds catching the sunlight beyond the Delaware. It got to be a little bumpy and Charley rose to seven thousand feet where it was cold and clear with a fifty-mile wind blowing from the northwest. When he came down again it was noon and the Susquehanna shone bright blue in a rift in the clouds. Even at two thousand feet he could feel the warm steam of spring from the plowed land. Flying low over the farms he could see the white fluff of orchards in bloom. He got too far south, avoiding a heavy squall over the head of the Chesapeake, and had to follow the Potomac north up towards the glinting white dome of the Capitol and the shining silver of the Washington Monument. There was no smoke over Washington. He circled around for a half an hour before he found the flyingfield. There was so much green it all looked like flyingfield.
“Well, Andy,” said Charley when they were stretching their legs on the turf, “when those experts see that starter their eyes’ll pop out of their heads.”
Merritt’s face looked pale and he tottered a little as he walked. “Can’t hear,” he shouted. “I got to take a leak.”
Charley followed him to the hangar, leaving Bill to go over the motor. Merritt was phoning for a taxi. “Christ amighty, am I hungry?” roared Charley. Merritt winced. “I got to get a drink to settle my stomach first.”
When they got into the taxi with their feet on Merritt’s enormous pigskin suitcase, “I’ll tell you one thing, Charley,” Merritt said, “we’ve got to have a separate corporation for that starter… might need a separate productionplant and everything. Standard Airparts would list well.”
They had two rooms and a large parlor with pink easychairs in it at the huge new hotel. From the windows you could look down into the fresh green of Rock Creek Park. Merritt looked around with considerable satisfaction. “I like to get into a place on Sunday,” he said. “It gives you a chance to get settled before beginning work.” He added that he didn’t think there’d be anybody in the diningroom he knew, not on a Sunday, but as it turned out it took them quite a while to get to their table. Charley was introduced on the way to a senator, a corporation lawyer, the youngest member of the House of Representatives and a nephew of the Secretary of the Navy. “You see,” explained Merritt, “my old man was a senator once.”
After lunch Charley went out to the field again to take a look at the ship. Bill Cermak had everything bright as a jeweler’s window. Charley brought Bill back to the hotel to give him a drink. There were waiters in the hall outside the suite and cigarsmoke and a great sound of social voices pouring out the open door. Bill laid a thick finger against his crooked nose and said maybe he’d better blow. “Gee, it does sound like the socialregister. Here, I’ll let you in my bedroom an’ I’ll bring you a drink if you don’t mind waiting a sec.” “Sure, it’s all right by me, boss.” Charley washed his hands and straightened his necktie and went into the sittingroom all in a rush like a man diving into a cold pool.
Andy Merritt was giving a cocktailparty with dry martinis, chickensalad, sandwiches, a bowl of caviar, strips of smoked fish, two old silverhaired gentlemen, three huskyvoiced southern belles with too much makeup on, a fat senator and a very thin senator in a high collar, a sprinkling of pale young men with Harvard accents and a sallow man with a gold tooth who wrote a syndicated column called Capitol Small Talk. There was a young publicityman named Savage he’d met at Eveline’s. Charley was introduced all around and stood first on one foot and then on the other until he got a chance to sneak into the bedroom with two halftumblers of rye and a plate of sandwiches. “Gosh, it’s terrible in there. I don’t dare open my mouth for fear of puttin’ my foot in it.”
Charley and Bill sat on the bed eating the sandwiches and listening to the jingly babble that came in from the other room. When he’d drunk his whiskey Bill got to his feet, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and asked what time Charley wanted him to report in the morning. “Nine o’clock will do. You sure you don’t want to stick around?… I don’t know what to say to those birds… we might fix you up with a southern belle.” Bill said he was a quiet family man and would get him a flop and go to bed. When he left it meant Charley had to go back to the cocktailparty.