“The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn’t really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything providing it is valueless enough) but his motorcar. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the sub-rosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on. As a result of which the American woman has become cold and undersexed; she has projected her libido onto the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarrranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own. Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
“I am fifty-plus years old,” his uncle said. “I spent the middle fifteen of them fumbling beneath skirts. My experience was that few of them were interested in love or sex either. They wanted to be married.”
“I still don’t believe it,” he said.
“That’s right,” his uncle said. “Dont. And even when you are fifty and plus, still refuse to believe it.” And that was when they saw Lucas crossing the Square, probably at the same time—the cocked hat and the thin fierce glint of the tilted gold toothpick and he said,
“Where do you suppose it was all the time? I never did see it. Surely he had it with him that afternoon, a Saturday when he was not only wearing that black suit but he even had the pistol? Surely he never left home without the toothpick too.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” his uncle said. “That was the first thing he did when Mr. Hampton walked into Skipworth’s house where Skipworth had Lucas handcuffed to the bedpost—gave Hampton the toothpick and told him to keep it until he called for it.”
“Oh,” he said. “He’s coming up here.”
“Yes,” his uncle said. “To gloat. Oh,” he said quickly, “he’s a gentleman; he wont remind me to my face that I was wrong; he’s just going to ask me how much he owes me as his lawyer.”
Then in his chair beside the water cooler and his uncle once more behind the table they heard the long airy rumble and creak of the stairs then Lucas’ feet steadily though with no haste and Lucas came tieless and even collarless this time except for the button but with an old-time white waistcoat not soiled so much as stained under the black coat and the worn gold loop of the watch-chain—the same face which he had seen for the first time when he climbed dripping up out of the icy creek that morning four years ago, unchanged, to which nothing had happened since not even age—in the act of putting the toothpick into one of the upper waistcoat pockets as he came through the door, saying generally,
“Gentle-men,” and then to him: “Young man—” courteous and intractable, more than bland: downright cheerful almost, removing the raked swagger of the hat: “You aint fell in no more creeks lately, have you?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m saving that until you get some more ice on yours.”
“You’ll be welcome without waiting for a freeze,” Lucas said.
“Have a seat, Lucas,” his uncle said but he had already begun to, taking the same hard chair beside the door which nobody else but Miss Habersham had ever chosen, a little akimbo as though he were posing for a camera, the hat laid crownup back across his forearm, looking at both of them still and saying again,
“Gentle-men.”
“You didn’t come here for me to tell you what to do so I’m going to tell you anyway,” his uncle said.
Lucas blinked rapidly once. He looked at his uncle. “I cant say I did.” Then he said cheerily: “But I’m always ready to listen to good advice.”