“Some of the noblest Romans of them all are creepers.”
“Go on.”
She made a sweeping gesture with her hand and her glass went flying; the ice cubes bounced back from the wall like dice.
“Lover boy had a stroke last week. When he cools, the checks stop. I’m old and lazy and I’m scared. I set you up as a backlog, but I don’t trust you. You might break the rules. You might turn honest. I tell you I’m scared.”
I stood up and found my legs were heavy, not wavery—just heavy and remote.
“What have you got to work with?”
“Marullo was my friend too.”
“I see.”
“Don’t you want to go to bed with me? I’m good. That’s what they tell me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“That’s why I don’t trust you.”
“We’ll try to work something out. I hate Baker. Maybe you can clip him.”
“What language. You’re not working on your drink.”
“Drink’s for happy times with me.”
“Does Baker know what you did to Danny?”
“Yes.”
“How’d he take it?”
“All right. But I wouldn’t like to turn my back.”
“Alfio should have turned his back to you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only what I guess. But I’d make book on my guess. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. Marullo is my friend.”
“I think I understand; you’re building up a hate so you can use the sword. Margie, you’ve got a rubber sword.”
“Think I don’t know it, Eth? But I’ve got my money on a hunch.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Might as well. I’m betting ten generations of Hawleys are going to kick your ass around the block, and when they leave off you’ll have your own wet rope and salt to rub in the wounds.”
“If that were so—where does it leave you?”
“You’re going to need a friend to talk to and I’m the only person in the world who fills the bill. A secret’s a terribly lonesome thing, Ethan. And it won’t cost you much, maybe only a small percentage.”
“I think I’ll go now.”
“Drink your drink.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Don’t bump your head going downstairs, Ethan.”
I was halfway down when she followed me. “Did you mean to leave your stick?”
“Lord, no.”
“Here it is. I thought it might be a kind of—sacrifice.”
It was raining and that makes honeysuckle smell sweet in the night. My legs were so wobbly that I really needed the narwhal stick.
Fat Willie had a roll of paper towels on the seat beside him to mop the sweat from his head.
“I’ll give you odds I know who she is.”
“You’d win.”
“Say, Eth, there’s been a guy looking for you—guy in a big Chrysler, with a chauffeur.”
“What’d he want?”
“I don’t know. Wanted to know if I seen you. I didn’t give a peep.”
“You’ll get a Christmas present, Willie.”
“Say, Eth, what’s the matter with your feet?”
“Been playing poker. They went to sleep.”
“Yeah! they’ll do that. If I see the guy, shall I tell him you’ve went home?”
“Tell him to come to the store tomorrow.”
“Chrysler Imperial. Big son of a bitch, long as a freight car.”
Joey-boy was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Foremaster, looking limp and humid.
“Thought you were going into New York for a cold bottle.”
“Too hot. Couldn’t put my heart in it. Come in and have a drink, Ethan. I’m feeling low.”
“Too hot for a drink, Morph.”
“Even a beer?”
“Beer heats me up.”
“Story of my life. When the cards are down—no place to go. Nobody to talk to.”
“You should get married.”
“That’s nobody to talk to in spades.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Damn right I am. There’s nobody as lonely as an all-married man.”
“How do you know?”
“I see ’em. I’m looking at one. Guess I’ll get a bag of cold beer and see if Margie Young-Hunt will play. She don’t keep hours.”
“I don’t think she’s in town, Morph. She told my wife—at least I think she did—that she was going up to Maine till the heat is over.”
“Goddam her. Well—her loss is the barkeep’s gain. I’ll tell him the sad episodes of a misspent life. He don’t listen either. So long, Eth. Walk with God! That’s what they say in Mexico.”
The narwhal stick tapped on the pavement and punctuated my wondering about why I told Joey that. She wouldn’t talk. That would spoil her game. She had to keep the pin in her hand grenade. I don’t know why.
I could see the Chrysler standing at the curb by the old Hawley house when I turned into Elm Street from the High, but it was more like a hearse than a freight car, black but not gleaming by reason of the droplets of rain and the greasy splash that rises from the highways. It carried frosted parking lights.
It must have been very late. No lights shone from the sleeping houses on Elm Street. I was wet and I must somewhere have stepped in a puddle. My shoes made a juicy squidging sound as I walked.
I saw a man in a chauffeur’s cap through the musty windshield. I stopped beside the monster car and rapped with my knuckles on the glass and the window slid down with an electric whine. I felt the unnatural climate of air-conditioning on my face.
“I’m Ethan Hawley. Are you looking for me?” I saw teeth in the dimness—gleaming teeth picked out by our street light.
The door sprang open of itself and a lean, well-tailored man stepped out. “I’m Dunscombe, Brock and Schwin, television branch. I have to talk to you.” He looked toward the driver. “Not here. Can we go inside?”
“I guess so. I think everyone’s asleep. If you talk quietly…”
He followed me up our walk of flagstones set in the spongy lawn. The night light was burning in the hall. As we went in I put the narwhal stick in the elephant’s foot.
I turned on the reading light over my big sprung-bottomed chair.
The house was quiet, but it seemed to me the wrong kind of quiet—a nervous quiet. I glanced up the stairwell at the bedroom doors above.
“Must be important to come this late.”
“It is.”
I could see him now. His teeth were his ambassadors, un-helped by his weary but wary eyes.
“We want to keep this private. It’s been a bad year, as you well know. The bottom fell out with the quiz scandals and then the payola fuss and the Congressional committees. We have to watch everything. It’s a dangerous time.”
“I wish you’d tell me what you want.”
“You’ve read your boy’s I Love America essay?”
“No, I haven’t. He wanted to surprise me.”
“He has. I don’t know why we didn’t catch it, but we didn’t.” He held out a folded blue cover to me. “Read the underlining.”
I sank into my chair and opened it. It was either printed or typed by one of those new machines that looks like type, but it was marred with harsh black pencil lines down both margins.
“What is an individual man? An atom, almost invisible without a magnifying glass—a mere speck upon the surface of the universe; not a second in time compared to immeasurable, never-beginning and never-ending eternity, a drop of water in the great deep which evaporates and is borne off by the winds, a grain of sand, which is soon gathered to the dust from which it sprung. Shall a being so small, so petty, so fleeting, so evanescent oppose itself to the onward march of a great nation which is to subsist for ages and ages to come, oppose itself to that long line of posterity which springing from our loins will endure during the existence of the world? Let us look to our country, elevate ourselves to the dignity of pure and disinterested patriots, and save our country from all impending dangers. What are we—what is any man—worth who is not ready and willing to sacrifice himself for his country?”[79]
79
What is an individual… his country?: Delivered on July 22, 1850, Henry Clay’s speech on the Compromise of 1850.