“I saved your life,” Preminger told her, “I think that entitles me to an explanation of how Milton, Sherman’s grampa, Paul’s partner’s father-in-law, is a genius.”
“Hey, you,” Jack Jacobson said.
“No, Jack, he’s right. You want to know why he’s brilliant? I’ll tell you why he’s brilliant. He’s brilliant because he’s got brains.”
“What sort of brains? What does he think about?”
“He’s retired. He’s eighty-four years old. He’s retired.”
“I see. He’s retired,” Preminger said, “does that mean he isn’t brilliant anymore?”
“He’s just as brilliant as he ever was.”
“How?”
“He’s got a house.”
“He’s got a house? That makes him brilliant? That he’s got a house?”
“He’s got fifteen rooms.”
“So?”
“It’s on a hill. In the Hollywood Hills. On a steep hill. On the top of a steep hill in the Hollywood Hills. They call it a hill. It’s a mountain.”
“Then why do they call it a hill?”
“With a private road that winds up the mountain. And when you get to the top there’s his house. With a patio. Beautiful. With a beautiful patio.”
“How is he brilliant?”
“I’m telling you. In the patio there are marble slabs. Slabs of marble. Like from the most beautiful statues. And the truck that brought them to set them in the patio broke down on the hill. On the mountain. And the old gentleman was so impatient he couldn’t wait. The driver went back down the hill to get help, but Milton couldn’t wait. Eighty-four years old and he picked up the slab from the back of the truck and put it on his shoulder and carried it by himself up the mountain. It weighed ninety pounds.”
“Oh,” Preminger said, “you mean he’s strong. You don’t mean he’s brilliant. You mean he’s strong.”
“I mean he’s brilliant.”
“How? How is he brilliant?”
“When his wife saw what he was doing she nearly died. ‘Milton,’ she yelled, ‘you must be crazy. Carrying such weight up a mountain. Wait till the truck is fixed.’ But he wouldn’t listen and went down for another slab. And for another and another. He must have carried eight slabs up the hill. A thousand pounds.”
“That makes him brilliant? An eighty-four-year-old man carrying that kind of weight up a mountain because he wasn’t patient enough to wait for the truck to be repaired?”
“Ah,” Lena said, “it was an open truck. He thought people would steal the marble before the driver came back. He worked five hours, six.”
“What makes him brilliant? How’s he a genius?”
“Wise guy,” Lena screamed, “when the driver finally got back with the part for the truck Milton couldn’t straighten up. His neck was turned around from where the weight of the slabs of marble had rested on it and he couldn’t move it. He was like a cripple. He couldn’t straighten up. He couldn’t turn his head. They had to put him to bed!”
“What makes him brilliant?” Preminger was shouting.
“What makes him brilliant? I’ll tell you what makes him brilliant. He was in bed five months. Paralyzed. The best doctors came to him. They couldn’t do a thing. It strained him so much what he’d done he couldn’t even talk it hurt his neck so. He had a television brought into his bedroom. He watched it all day. Everything he watched. If his family came to him he waved them away. He watched the television all day and late into the night. And his favorite program was Johnny Carson. He stayed up for that. And one night Johnny had on a — what do you call it — a therapist, and the therapist was talking about how arthritics could be helped by exercise and she had this gadget it was like a steel tree. It was set up on the stage and there were bars and like rings hanging from it, and the therapist showed how a person could straighten out a crooked limb or a bad joint by hanging from a ring here and a bar there and stretching like a monkey.”
“So?”
“So? So he ordered one and had it set up in his living room. Jack, you remember, you saw it. In the middle of his living room like it was a piece of furniture, and every day he’d practice a little. Then a little more. He’d pull this way and he’d pull that way. And even though it hurt him this brilliant man didn’t give up. He practiced pulling and hanging — eighty-four years old — and finally it began to work. And Milton can turn his head today. He can nod and shake it as good as a person half his age. He can even straighten up a little. So now you know. Wise guy! Now you know why he’s such a brilliant genius. There, are you satisfied?”
The dinner party changed nothing. He still reported for duty at the pool every morning, and though he rarely climbed the high platform any more, he was able to survey the pool from where he sat beside them gossiping.
Harris went in for a dip one day. He swam five or six strong laps and took a large bath towel from Preminger’s stack.
“Mr. Harris,” Preminger said.
“That felt good. You got it made here, you know that? This is the life.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Gee, I’ve got to get back to the office. Talk to me in the shower.”
In the men’s shower room Harris turned on the cold tap and stood under it.
“What I wanted to know,” Preminger said, “was why you wanted me as lifeguard? Salmi was against me, you said, yet he practically rammed the job down my throat.”
“Ain’t you having a good time? You want to quit? You’re looking better every day. Terrific tan. I put a tan like that at a thousand bucks, low season. Some muscle coming out in the shoulders, too. You were sick, this sort of exercise must be opening up your arteries like the Lincoln Tunnel. What’s the matter, can’t you stand prosperity?”
“No, no, I enjoy it. Until I get going on my thesis again when the weather breaks. It’s good for me. I just want to know why you picked me.”
“Why you winklepicker, ain’t you figured that one out? Who else was there? Peckerhead, seventy-two percent of these guys still go to business. It’s in the minutes. What have you got to do? Who else was there? How’d it look if I left a vegetable in charge of my pool? If something happened you think that ‘Swimming at Your Own Risk’ shit would be worth boo? You at least look like a man. Dunderbone! What’s wrong with your kopf, my dear young putz?”
He wants me out, Preminger thought. He wants my apartment for a few cents on the dollar and that’s why he speaks to me like this. I’ll smile. I’ll thank him for his information. I’ll be polite. He wants to get my goat. He wants to get my goat for a few cents on the dollar.
There was a personal letter for him, the first he’d had since coming to the condominium. As there was no return address, the envelope told him little more than that it had been mailed from Chicago. He waited until he got upstairs to open it.
It was from Evelyn Riker.
Dear Marshall (I knew your father so well. We were such friends. I can hardly call his son Mr. Preminger),
Perhaps you’re wondering why I’ve been so remiss in not writing sooner. Since that day of your father’s funeral I’ve hardly seen you. At the pool, of course, the few times I’ve been there (I’ve been reluctant to be seen at the pool for reasons you will be quick to understand without my going into them here), you’ve seemed so busy that I hesitated to interfere with your duties, or to do more than nod pleasantly, as acquaintances will. I had nevertheless determined to speak to you at the earliest occasion, but each time something has held me back. My bourgeois modesty, you will say, or, less kindly, my petty bourgeois regard for even the faintest blush of scandal. It may be, as anyone who takes the trouble to keep up must know, a permissive society, but not at Harris Towers. For all its underground garages and Olympic size pools and master antennae, Harris Towers has not yet entered the twentieth century. But I digress. I had started to say that I had determined to speak with you at the earliest opportunity, first to clear up any misunderstandings that may have developed between us, and secondly to go on from there to form a firmer relationship based on mutual trust, common interest and, I confess it, the fact that I feel a wide gulf between myself and many of the people here.