He was still feeling so shaky when he started south that he took Parker along to drive the car. He sat glumly in his new camelshair coat with his hands hanging between his knees staring ahead through the roaring blank of the Holland Tunnel, thinking of Margo and Bill Edwards the patent lawyer he had to see in Washington about a suit, and remembering the bills in Cliff’s desk drawer and wondering where the money was coming from to fight this patent suit against Askew-Merritt. He had a grand in bills in his pocket and that made him feel good anyway. Gosh, money’s a great thing, he said to himself.
They came out of the tunnel into a rainygrey morning and the roar and slambanging of trucks through Jersey City. Then the traffic gradually thinned and they were going across the flat farmlands of New Jersey strawcolored and ruddy with winter. At Philadelphia Charley made Parker drive him to Broad Street. “I haven’t got the patience to drive, I’ll take the afternoon train. Come to the Waldman Park when you get in.”
He hired a drawingroom in the parlorcar and went and lay down to try to sleep. The train clattered and roared so and the grey sky and the lavender fields and yellow pastures and the twigs of the trees beginning to glow red and green and paleyellow with a foretaste of spring made him feel so blue, so like howling like a dog, that he got fed up with being shut up in the damn drawingroom and went back to the clubcar to smoke a cigar.
He was slumped in the leather chair fumbling for the cigarclipper in his vest pocket when the portly man in the next chair looked up from a bluecovered sheaf of lawpapers he was poring over. Charley looked into the black eyes and the smooth bluejowled face and at the bald head still neatly plastered with a patch of black hair shaped like a bird’s wing, without immediately recognizing it.
“Why, Charley ma boy, I reckon you must be in love.” Charley straightened up and put out his hand. “Hello, senator,” he said, stammering a little like he used to in the old days. “Goin’ to the nation’s capital?” “Such is my unfortunate fate.” Senator Planet’s eyes went searching all over him. “Charley, I hear you had an accident.”
“I’ve had a series of them,” said Charley, turning red, Senator Planet nodded his head understandingly and made a clucking noise with his tongue. “Too bad… too bad… Well, sir, a good deal of water has run under the bridge since you and young Merritt had dinner with me that night in Washington… Well, we’re none of us gettin’ any younger.” Charley got the feeling that the senator’s black eyes got considerable pleasure from exploring the flabby lines where his neck met his collar and the bulge of his belly against his vest. “Well, we’re none of us getting any younger,” the senator repeated. “You are, senator. I swear you look younger than you did the last time I saw you.”
The senator smiled. “Well, I hope you’ll forgive me for makin’ the remark… but it’s been one of the most sensational careers I have had the luck to witness in many years of public life.”
“Well, it’s a new industry. Things happen fast.”
“Unparalleled,” said the senator. “We live in an age of unparalleled progress… everywhere except in Washington… You should come down to our quiet little village more often… You have many friends there. I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that there’s been considerable reorganization out with you folks in Detroit. Need a broader capital base, I suppose.”
“A good many have been thrown out on their broad capital bases,” said Charley. He thought the senator would never quit laughing. The senator pulled out a large initialed silk handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and brought his small pudgy hand down on Charley’s knee. “God almighty, we ought to have a drink on that.”
The senator ordered whiterock from the porter and mysteriously wafted a couple of slugs of good rye whiskey into it from a bottle he had in his Gladstone bag. Charley began to feel better. The senator was saying that some very interesting developments were to be expected from the development of airroutes. The need for subsidies was pretty generally admitted if this great nation was to catch up on its lag in air transportation. The question would be of course which of a number of competing concerns enjoyed the confidence of the Administration. There was more in this airroute business than there ever had been in supplying ships and equipment. “A question of the confidence of the Administration, ma boy.” At the word confidence, Senator Planet’s black eyes shone. “That’s why, ma boy, I’m glad to see you up here. Stick close to our little village on the Potomac, ma boy.”
“Check,” said Charley.
“When you’re in Miami, look up my old friend Homer Cassidy… He’s got an iceboat… he’ll take you out fishin’… I’ll write him, Charley. If I could get away I might spend a week down there myself next month. There’s a world of money bein’ made down there right now.”
“I sure will, senator, that’s mighty nice of you, senator.”
By the time they got into the Union station Charley and the senator were riding high. They were talking trunklines and connecting lines, airports and realestate. Charley couldn’t make out whether he was hiring Senator Planet for the lobbying or whether Senator Planet was hiring him. They parted almost affectionately at the taxistand.
Next afternoon he drove down through Virginia. It was a pretty, sunny afternoon. The judastrees were beginning to come out red on the sheltered hillsides. He had two bottles of that good rye whiskey Senator Planet had sent up to the hotel for him. As he drove he began to get sore at Parker the chauffeur. All the bastard did was get rakeoffs on the spare parts and gas and oil. Here he’d charged up eight new tires in the last month, what did he do with tires anyway, eat them? By the time they were crossing the tollbridge into Norfolk Charley was sore as a crab. He had to hold himself in to keep from hauling off and giving the bastard a crack on the sallow jaw of his smooth flunkey’s face. In front of the hotel he blew up.
“Parker, you’re fired. Here’s your month’s wages and your trip back to New York. If I see your face around this town tomorrow I’ll have you run in for theft. You know what I’m referrin’ to just as well as I do. You damn chauffeurs think you’re too damn smart. I know the whole racket, see… I have to work for my dough just as hard as you do. Just to prove it I’m goin’ to drive myself from now on.” He hated the man’s smooth unmoving face.
“Very well, sir,” Parker said coolly. “Shall I return you the uniform?”
“You can take the uniform and shove it up your…” Charley paused. He was stamping up and down red in the face on the pave ment at the hotel entrance in a circle of giggling colored bellboys. “Here, boy, take those bags in and have my car taken around to the garage… All right, Parker, you have your instructions.”
He strode into the hotel and ordered the biggest double suite they had. He registered in his own name. “Mrs. Anderson will be here directly.” Then he called up the other hotels to find out where the hell Margo was. “Hello, kid,” he said when at last it was her voice at the end of the wire. “Come on over. You’re Mrs. Anderson and no questions asked. Aw, to hell with ’em; nobody’s goin’ to dictate to me what I’ll do or who I’ll see or what I’m goin’ to do with my money. I’m through with all that. Come right around. I’m crazy to see you…”