Instead he was thinking of wars and death at home. On the days of bad news there was the same clearing and sweetness in the air. Families drew closer. Azaleas could be seen. He remembered his father’s happiness when he spoke of Pearl Harbor — where he was when he heard it, how he had called the draft board the next morning. It was not hard to see him walking to work on that Monday. For once the houses, the trees, the very cracks in the sidewalk had not their usual minatory presence. The dreadful threat of weekday mornings was gone! War is better than Monday morning.
As his sweat dried, the fleece began to sting his skin.
“—fact number two. Jamie has the best mind I ever encountered. Better even than Sutter, my charming ex-husband. It’s really quite funny. His math teacher in New Hampshire was glad to get rid of him. ‘Get him out of here,’ he told me. ‘He wants to argue about John von Neumann’s Theory of Games—’”
It was her silences, when they came, that he attended.
“So what is the problem?” he asked.
“He’s remitted on prednisone. Poppy and Dolly refuse to admit that he is going to die. Why not give him another pill, they say. Well, there are no more pills. He’s been through them all.”
He was silent.
She regarded him with a fond bright eye.
“Somehow you remind me of the lance corporal in Der Zauberberg. Do you mind if I call you lance corporal?”
“No ma’am.”
“What would you like to do if you had your choice?”
“I do have my choice. Go with Jamie.”
“No, I mean if Jamie hadn’t showed up.”
“Oh, I’d go see Kitty.”
“Leave all of us out of it. And suppose, too, money is no object.”
“I guess I’d finish my education.”
“In what?”
“Oh, metallurgy, I expect.”
“What school would you pick?”
“Colorado School of Mines.”
“You’d like to go out there?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Suppose Jamie would want to go too.”
“That’s up to him.”
“Take a look at this.”
He found himself gazing at a curled-up Polaroid snapshot of a little white truck fitted with a cabin in its bed. The truck was parked on a stretch of meager shingly beach. Kitty, in long shorts, leaned against the cabin, wide-brimmed hat in hand in a burlesque of American-lady-on-safari.
“What is this?”
“Ulysses.”
“Ulysses?”
“He was meant to lead us beyond the borders of the Western world and bring us home.”
“I see.”
“But seriously now, here’s the proposition,” she said. And he found that when she gave him ordinary directions he could hear her. As of this moment you are working for me as well as for Poppy. Perhaps for both of us but at least for me. Keep Jamie up here long enough for Larry to give him a course of huamuratl. You two rascals take my apartment here in the city and here are the keys to the shack on Fire Island. Now when you get through with Larry, take Ulysses and take off. Go home. Go to Alaska. In any event, Ulysses is yours. He has been three hundred miles, cost me seven thousand dollars, and is as far as I’m concerned a total loss. Here is the certificate of ownership, which I’ve signed over to you and Jamie. It will cost you one dollar. Jamie has coughed up. She held out her hand. “I’ll take my money, please.”
“I don’t have a dollar.”
The articles, papers, keys, photograph she lined up on his thigh. He looked closely at the snapshot again.
“What did you get it for?” he asked her.
“To camp in Europe. Isn’t that stupid? Considering that I’d have to buy gas for that monster Ulysses by the liter.”
“You’ve already told Jamie?”
“Yes.”
“And Mr. Vaught agrees to this?”
“He will if you ask him.”
“What about Kitty?”
“My friend, allow me to cue you in. Perhaps you have not noticed it, but our young friend Jamie is sick to death of the women in the family. Including me. Kitty and I made him the same deaclass="underline" the three of us for Long Island and the camper (it sleeps three) and he laughed in our faces and I can’t say I blame him. Let me put it to you straight out.”
“All right.”
“Just suppose you asked him — you said, Jamie, I got Ulysses parked outside in the street — come on now, let’s me and you hit the road. What would he say?”
“He wouldn’t like the Ulysses part.”
“Dear God, you’re right.” Her fist came down on his knee and stayed there. “You’re right. You see, you know. All right, leave out the word ‘Ulysses.’ What then? What would he do?”
“He’d go.”
“You know something: you’re quite a guy.”
“Thank you.” He plucked at his sweat suit. It came away from him like old skin. “Then you mean Kitty will go to Europe, after all?”
“My dear young friend, hear this. I do believe you underestimate yourself. I do not believe you realize what a hurricane you’ve unleashed and how formidable you yourself are. You’ve got our poor Kitty spinning like a top. Not that I blame her. Why is it some men can sit like Achilles sat and some men can’t? But I propose to you, my lordly young sir, that we give our young friend her year abroad, which is the only one she’ll ever have. Seriously, Kitty saved my life. She is the sister of that son of a bitch I married. She bucked me up when I needed it and by God I’m returning the favor. Do you have any idea what it would be like to be raised by Poppy and Dolly, who are in their own way the sweetest people in the world, but I mean — God. You have no idea what it’s like down there these days, the poor bloody old South. I’ll tell you what. Give her her year in Florence and then if you haven’t forgotten all about her, I’ll send her home as fast as her little legs will carry her. Or better still, when you and Jamie get through with Larry, come on over and join us!”
The next thing he knew, she was thrusting something into his pocket, but he didn’t have a pocket, then inside the drawstring of his sweat suit, tucked it with a fierce little tuck like an aunt at Christmas. “Your first month’s salary in advance,” she said, and was on her way.
Taking the check from his loin, he read it several times. It seemed to be postdated. He scratched his head. On the other hand, what was today’s date?
It was the first hot night. There were signs of summer. Fires had broken out in Harlem. Twice there were gunshots as close as Seventieth or Eightieth Street. Police cars raced north along Central Park West. But the park was quiet. Its public space, paltry by day, was leafed out in secrecy and darkness. Lamps made gold-green spaces in the rustling leaves.
He strolled about the alp at the pond, hands in pockets and brow furrowed as if he were lost in thought. It was a dangerous place to visit by night, but he paid no attention. He felt irritable and strong and wouldn’t have minded a fist-fight. A few minutes earlier a damp young man had fallen in step on his deaf side.
“Didn’t we take philosophy together at the Y?” the stranger murmured, skipping nimbly to get in step.
“What’s that,” said the engineer absently.
“I thought it unconscionably bad,” murmured the other.
“Eh?” The engineer cupped his good ear.
“Are you interested in the Platonic philosophy?” the other asked him.
“In what?” said the engineer, stopping and swinging around to hear better but also bending upon the other such an intent, yet unfocused gaze that he melted into the night.