"Let's drink to our sons," said the man with thick glasses suddenly. His voice was surprisingly high for so resonant-looking a man. Several glasses were raised this time. When the toast was done, the man turned to Paul with the friendliest of smiles and said, "My boy's just turned eighteen, Doctor."
"That's nice."
"He's got his whole life ahead of him. Wonderful age, eighteen." He paused, as though his remark demanded a response.
"I'd like to be eighteen again," said Paul lamely.
"He's a good boy, Doctor. He isn't what you'd call real bright. Like his old man - his heart's in the right place, and he wants to do the most he can with what he's got." Again the waitful pause.
"That's all any of us can do," said Paul.
"Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National General Classification Tests. He just about killed himself studying up for them, but it wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them." He shrugged. "I can't afford to send him to a private school, so now he's got to decide what he's going to do with his life, Doctor: what's it going to be, the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks?"
"I suppose there's a lot to be said for both," said Paul uncomfortably. "I really don't know much about either one. Somebody else, like Matheson, maybe, would . . ." His sentence trailed off. Matheson was Ilium's manager in charge of testing and placement. Paul knew him slightly, didn't like him very well. Matheson was a powerful bureaucrat who went about his job with the air of a high priest. "I'll call Matheson, if you like, and ask him, and let you know what he says."
"Doctor," said the man, desperately now, with no tinge of baiting, "isn't there something the boy could do at the Works? He's awfully clever with his hands. He's got a kind of instinct with machines. Give him one he's never seen before, and in ten minutes he'll have it apart and back together again. He loves that kind of work. Isn't there someplace in the plant -?"
"He's got to have a graduate degree," said Paul. He reddened. "That's policy, and I didn't make it. Sometimes we get Reconstruction and Reclamation people over to help put in big machines or do a heavy repair job, but not very often. Maybe he could open a repair shop."
The man exhaled, slumped dejectedly. "Repair shop," he sighed. "Repair shop, he says. How many repair shops you think Ilium can support, eh? Repair shop, sure! I was going to open one when I got laid off. So was Joe, so was Sam, so was Alf. We're all clever with our hands, so we'll all open repair shops. One repairman for every broken article in Ilium. Meanwhile, our wives clean up as dressmakers - one dressmaker for every woman in town."
Rudy Hertz had apparently missed all the talk and was still celebrating in his mind the happy reunion with his great and good friend, Doctor Paul Proteus. "Music," said Rudy grandly. "Let's have music!" He reached over Paul's shoulder and popped a nickel into the player piano.
Paul stepped away from the box. Machinery whirred importantly for a few seconds, and then the piano started clanging away at "Alexander's Ragtime Band" liked cracked carillons. Mercifully, conversation was all but impossible. Mercifully, the bartender emerged from the basement and handed Paul a dusty bottle over the old heads.
Paul turned to leave, and a powerful hand closed on his upper arm. Rudy, his expansive host, held him.
"I played this song in your honor, Doctor," shouted Rudy above the racket. "Wait till it's over." Rudy acted as though the antique instrument were the newest of all wonders, and he excitedly pointed out identifiable musical patterns in the bobbing keys - trills, spectacular runs up the keyboard, and the slow, methodical rise and fall of keys in the bass. "See - see them two go up and down, Doctor! Just the way the feller hit 'em. Look at 'em go!"
The music stopped abruptly, with the air of having delivered exactly five cents worth of joy. Rudy still shouted. "Makes you feel kind of creepy, don't it, Doctor, watching them keys go up and down? You can almost see a ghost sitting there playing his heart out."
Paul twisted free and hurried out to his car.
Chapter Four
"DARLING, you look as though you've seen a ghost," said Anita. She was already dressed for the party at the Country Club, already dominating a distinguished company she had yet to join.
As she handed Paul his cocktail, he felt somehow inadequate, bumbling, in the presence of her beautiful assurance. Only things that might please or interest her came to mind - all else submerged. It wasn't a conscious act of his mind, but a reflex, a natural response to her presence. It annoyed him that the feeling should be automatic, because he fancied himself in the image of his father, and, in this situation, his father would have been completely in charge - taking the first, last, and best lines for himself.
The expression "armed to the teeth" occurred to Paul as he looked at her over his glass. With an austere dark gown that left her tanned shoulders and throat bare, a single bit of jewelry on her finger, and very light make-up, Anita had successfully combined the weapons of sex, taste, and an aura of masculine competence.
She quieted, and turned away under his stare. Inadvertently, he'd gained the upper hand. He had somehow communicated the thought that had bobbed up in his thoughts unexpectedly: that her strength and poise were no more than a mirror image of his own importance, an image of the power and self-satisfaction the manager of the Ilium Works could have, if he wanted it. In a fleeting second she became a helpless, bluffing little girl in his thoughts, and he was able to feel real tenderness toward her.
"Good drink, sweetheart," he said. "Finnerty upstairs?"
"I sent him on over to the club. Kroner and Baer got there early, and I sent Finnerty over to keep them company while you get dressed."
"How does he look?"
"How did Finnerty always look? Awful. I swear he was wearing the same baggy suit he wore when he said goodbye to us seven years ago. And I'll swear it hasn't been cleaned since then, either. I tried to get him to wear your old tuxedo, and he wouldn't hear of it. Went right over the way he was. I suppose a stiff shirt would have been worse in a way. It would have showed how dirty his neck is."
She pulled the neck of her dress lower, looked at herself in a mirror, and raised it slightly again - a delicate compromise. "Honestly," she said, talking to Paul's image in the mirror, "I'm crazy about that man - you know I am. But he just looks awful all the time. I mean, after all, a man in his position, and not even clean."
Paul smiled and shook his head. It was true. Finnerty had always been shockingly lax about his grooming, and some of his more fastidious supervisors in the old days had found it hard to believe that a man could be so staggeringly competent, and at the same time so unsanitary-looking. Occasionally, the tall, gaunt Irishman would surprise everyone - usually between long stretches of work - by showing up with his cheeks gleaming like wax apples, and with new shoes, socks, shirt, tie, and suit, and, presumably, underwear. Engineers' and managers' wives would make a big fuss over him, to show him that such care of himself was important and rewarding; and they declared that he was really the handsomest thing in the Ilium industrial fold. Quite possibly he was, in a coarse, weathered way: grotesquely handsome, like Abe Lincoln, but with a predatory, defiant cast to his eyes rather than the sadness of Lincoln's. After Finnerty's periodic outbursts of cleanliness and freshness, the wives would watch with increasing distress as he wore the entire celebrated outfit day in and day out, until the sands and soot and grease of time had filled every seam and pore.