“And a pot of tea with—” I looked at her.
“Lemon,” she said.
“With lemon,” I said.
“This is extremely kind of you, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said as he patted a few curls into place.
“My Southern upbringing,” I said as I took a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Necessary.
Orcutt waved his right forefinger at me as if I’d said something naughty. “You were born in Montana, Mr. Dye. In Moncrief, Montana.”
I didn’t bother to answer and I suppose it was the girl that kept me from kicking them all out. It had been a long time since I’d been near a woman, more than three months, and Carol Thackerty seemed to be as pleasant a prospect as I could hope to encounter. Carmingler, flushing a little and staring out the window, had once offered to run a whore into Letterman General for me, although he’d said that she was an Army nurse. I’d passed it up, more out of pique than moral squeamishness.
After the bellhop came and left, the one who looked as if he cried whenever they played “Melancholy Baby,” I served Carol Thackerty her tea, handed Orcutt a glass of Dr Pepper, and mixed two Scotches with water for Necessary and myself. They all said thank you, even Necessary.
“Now then,” Victor Orcutt said as he wriggled around in his chair to make himself more comfortable. “Let me tell you something about me. I won’t tell all, of course. No one does that, not even to their very best friends. But I will tell you quite a bit because I know you’re curious and I just love talking about myself, don’t you?”
“Not especially,” I said, “except when I’m drunk.”
“Do you get drunk often?” he said.
“Probably not often enough. It’s one of my failings.”
“You’re teasing!” Victor Orcutt said. “I like that. But now let me give you a little personal background and then we’ll talk about the proposal.”
I was looking at Carol Thackerty. She was looking out the window at either the fog or the insurance company tower. “All right,” I said.
“Well, I was born in Los Angeles twenty-six years ago. Not Los Angeles exactly. It was actually in the San Fernando valley. You know where that is.”
It wasn’t a question, so I said nothing.
“Now then, I was graduated — summa cum laude I might add, if you don’t think it’s boasting — from the University of Chicago Law School seven years ago—”
“That would make you nineteen,” I said.
“That’s right. I was nineteen.”
“And summa cum laude.”
“He was nineteen,” Necessary said. “I checked it out. The laude stuff, too.”
“Really, Homer, you don’t have to—”
“You want another drink?” I said to Necessary. He drank fast.
“Why not?” he said and handed me his glass.
I got up and went over to the bottle and the ice. “Go on,” I said to Orcutt.
“After graduation I went to Europe and studied international law at the Free University in Berlin for a year and was awarded my doctorate degree, again with honors.”
“In a year,” I said.
“I checked that out, too,” Necessary said. “He’s a fucking genius.”
“I do wish you would do something about your language, Homer, especially when a lady is present.”
Necessary glanced at Carol Thackerty, who was still staring out the window. He said, “Huh,” and took a long swallow of his fresh drink. I followed suit.
“After Berlin,” Orcutt went on, “I came back to the States and toyed with several positions that were offered to me at the time.”
“He got thirty-two job offers,” Necessary said. “None of them for less than thirty grand a year.”
Orcutt preened a little at that and forgot about admonishing Necessary. “Well, as I said, I toyed with them, but they really didn’t interest me. It was all big corporation law and that can be terribly boring. So for a while I even thought that I might join the Peace Corps, but, well, you know—”
“I know,” I said.
“So I simply sat down and made a list of things that I really thought I could become interested in and which, by the way, would enable me to earn a comfortable living. Well, I had this list of about twenty things that ranged from undersea exploration to diplomacy. I narrowed that down to just three things. You know what they were?”
“I wouldn’t even guess.”
“The three areas I finally selected were the practice of law, the problems of our metropolitan areas, and politics. Now guess which one I chose.”
“Private practice,” I said because I had to say something.
Orcutt seemed delighted that I’d guessed wrong and squirmed pleasurably in his chair. “I almost did. Almost. But I decided that I was too young and it would take too long. Not mentally too young, mind you, but chronologically. It would have prevented me from having the kind of clients I would like.” When he talked he supplied his own italics, like a bad editorial writer.
“The kind of clients you wanted were the kind with money,” I said.
“Precisely.”
“What about those thirty-two corporations who wanted to hire you?”
“That’s just it. They wanted to hire me. They wanted me on their payroll at X number of dollars. It would have been most confining.”
“What did you choose, politics?”
“No, I chose to become an expert consultant on the problems facing our fair city. Or cities. You know, Mr. Dye, cities are fascinating microcosms of the world we live in. We’re destroying them, of course, and they in turn are destroying us. Oh, I don’t mean literally, although smog and traffic and fire and riots do take their toll. But the role of the city has changed drastically in the last thirty years — within our lifetimes.”
“So have we,” I said.
“Quite true. But now we flee the city to the suburbs to regain exactly what the city formerly offered — a sense of community, if you will. A sense of belonging, of having some voice in the affairs of the day. The city at one time offered all this, plus a sense of safety, brought about, quite probably, by what was once called the herd instinct, before the term went out of style. Now it offers nothing of the kind. The city is the enemy. And most of those who still live in it, really don’t. They have set up their own private enclaves. Not neighborhoods, mind you, but enclaves from which they rarely stir — except to go to work, usually in neutral territory, or to another friendly enclave. It’s all really quite feudal, if you think about it. People who live in cities are actually afraid to venture into what they quite frankly regard as the enemy camp. Some of this is based on race, some on income, and also on such things as resentment, hate, prejudice, greed, and all the other seven deadly sins. It’s really most depressing if one has a liking for what cities have traditionally provided.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s say that our cities are sick and that some of them are almost terminal cases. What cure do you suggest other than faith healing?”
“You’re teasing again. Oh, I do like that! No, Mr. Dye, I don’t propose to cure all of the ills that afflict our metropolitan areas. I specialize. You see, the fears of those who continue to live in our cities often prevent them from taking an active role in their community. They become apathetic, indifferent, and spend most of their time staring at television or drinking or wondering whether they shouldn’t really move to the suburbs — for the children’s sake, of course. A climate of such apathy is a perfect breeding ground for civic corruption. And that’s where Victor Orcutt Associates come in. We cure civic corruption and we’re paid handsomely to do it. Of course, all we cure is the symptom, not the disease. But most of our clients cling to the belief that if the symptom disappears, the disease will shortly follow. They’re wrong, of course, and sometimes out of sheer deviltry, I tell them that they’re wrong, but they usually smile knowingly and thank me for a job well done and then hand over a fat check. Over the last four years, Victor Orcutt Associates have been moderately successful.”