What did he say?
Nothing. He’s entirely too selfish to write a letter. If Rita is the most unselfish person I know, Sutter is the most selfish. That was the real trouble all along, that Rita did all the giving and Sutter did all the taking. Do you know what he said to me? “Blankety-blank on unselfishness,” said he. “I agree with Val and the Christers, it’s a fornication of spirit.” But that’s not right either. That’s not what Christ said.
Blankety-blank?
Crap.
Don’t talk like that.
I’m sick. Take me home.
The next morning he called Kitty from Macy’s. “Today,” he told her, “I’ve got to get this business settled one way or the other.”
“Don’t speak to me,” she said, her voice faint and cold.
“Eh?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.” But he thought he did — though, as it turned out, he was wrong.
“You took advantage of me.”
“Ah, dearest—” he began. His heart sank: she was right.
But she broke in quickly (he was not right). “I have been out of my mind with worry the last few days, about this whole business, Jamie and Europe and everything. Then on top of everything I was allergic to the paint fumes and it was too much.”
“Paint fumes,” said the engineer. He looked up in time to see his old friends the Ohioans punching in at the time clock, bound for sportswear and lingerie, a lusty clear-eyed crew who had no trouble understanding each other.
“We painted Rita’s attic yesterday and I turned out to be allergic to the benzene or whatever it was. I went completely out of my head. What did I say?”
“Nothing much.”
“But I remember enough to know that you took advantage of me, barging in like that.”
“Barging in?”
“Rita tells me that you didn’t call her, you just showed up.”
“Yes,” he said contritely, willing, anxious to be convicted of a lesser crime. What foulness had he committed? It was not enough to lie with Kitty in Central Park like a common sailor: he must also take his pleasure, or almost take his pleasure, with a nice girl rendered defenseless by paint fumes.
“I really think it put me in a terrible position for you to come to Rita’s like that. You know better than that! And then to leave without so much as a fare-you-well to Rita and walking me clear to New Jersey or wherever it was.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“What?”
“You called me, remember?”
“Oh yes,” said the engineer, shaking hishead to clear the cobwebs. “I’ve got to, ah, get this business settled.” But he had lost his resolution.
“What business?” said Kitty coldly.
“Whether I am working for Rita or your father. But in either case—”
“Working for Rita?” she asked sharply.
“Rita wants me and Jamie to take the camper while you all go to Europe.”
“I see.”
“The point is,” he said, gathering strength, collecting his wits at last, “I don’t want you to go.”
“Oh, you don’t want me to go.”
“No, I want you to stay here and either go south with Jamie and me or—”
“You’ve got your nerve.”
“Kitty.”
“What?”
“Do you remember that I asked you to marry me last night?”
“Oh Lord,” said the girl nervously and hung up, not so much he thought, on him as on herself.
Later, after shower and breakfast, he called Jamie from the Y.M.C.A. It was time to settle things one way or another.
Jamie surprised him by answering the phone himself.
“Why didn’t you keep the telescope?” the engineer asked him.
“We’re leaving, aren’t we? Thanks, by the way.”
“Rita spoke to me today. Do you know what she wants us to do?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Again he heard the slight break in breathing, the little risible and incredulous sound he seemed to call forth from people.
“What would you do?” asked Jamie after a silence.
“I’d do what the doctor said.”
“Me too. But in any case you’re going to bum around with me for a while?”
“Sure.”
“Then call Poppy and see what’s what. After all, he’s the boss.”
“You’re right. I will. Where is he?”
“At the Astor.”
“How extraordinary.”
“It was the only hotel they knew.”
“Yello, yello.” Mr. Vaught answered the telephone as eccentrically and routinely as a priest reciting the rosary.
“Sir, this is BillyBarrett.”
“Who? Billy boy!”
“Yes sir. Sir—”
“Yayo.”
“I would like to know exactly where we stand.”
“You ain’t the only one.”
“Sir?”
“What is it you want to know, Bill?”
“I would like to know, sir, whether I am working for you or working for Rita or for both or for neither.”
“You want to know something, Bill.”
“Yes sir.”
“It would be a crying shame if you didn’t turn out to be a lawyer. You sound just like your daddy.”
“Yes sir. But—”
“Listen to me, Bill.”
“I will,” said the engineer, who had learned to tell when the old man was not fooling.
“You got your driver’s license?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right. You be standing outside on the sidewalk at nine o’clock in the morning. We’ll pick you up. Then we’ll see who’s going where.”
“Yes sir.”
“All yall be ready,” he said, like Kitty, somewhat aside from the telephone, to the world around.
It was not a good sign, thought the engineer as he hung up slowly, that Mr. Vaught spoke both broadly and irritably.
The next morning he resigned his position at Macy’s — the chief engineer, who had heard this before and was something of a psychologist himself, nodded gravely and promised the job would be waiting for him when he felt better — checked out of the Y.M.C.A. and sat on his telescope at the curb for three hours. No one came to pick him up. Once he went inside to call the hospital, the hotel, and Kitty. Had he got the directions wrong? Jamie had been discharged, the Vaughts had left the hotel, and Kitty’s telephone did not answer.
Only then, three hours later, did it occur to him that there must be a message for him. He climbed the steps again. Already the Y reentered was like a place he had lived in long ago with its special smell of earnestness and breathed air and soaped tile, the smell, as he had always taken it but only just now realized, of Spanish Protestantism. Two yellow slips were handed him across the desk. Superstitiously, he took pains to return to his perch on the street corner before reading either. The first was a garbled note, evidently from Mr. Vaught. “If plans are not finalized and you change your mind a job is always waiting. S. Vote.” “Vote” could only be Vaught.
The second was from Kitty and he couldn’t see for looking. “Europe out,” he finally made out. “Jamie more important.Please change your mind and catch up with us at Coach-and-Four Motel, Williamsburg. Know you had cause to lose patience but please change your mind. Did you mean what you said? Kitty.”
Change my mind? Mean what I said? What did I say, asked the engineer aloud. He blinked into the weak sunlight. Screwing up an eye, he tried mightily to get the straight of it. It follows, said he, diagramming a syllogism in the air, that they think I changed my mind about going with them. But I told them no such thing. Then it follows someone else did.