(1969) The Seven Minutes (18 page)

They had entered Beverly Hills, and he lapsed into silence.

Her hand had reached out, and he felt it touch his arm. ‘Mike, dear…’

He glanced at her. Faye’s flawless brow was marked with concern, strange, like a delicate porcelain plate with a crack in it.

‘Mike, what is it ? You’ve been locked inside yourself the entire evening. What’s troubling you ? Is it Dad ? Did he upset you?’

She was her father’s daughter, and he was always careful about Dad. Not that he’d had much reason to be critical of her father before. Willard Osborn had always treated him graciously. But, on a personal level, he had known Osborn only as father of the fiancee, as host, as career patron. The rest of Osborn, the human Osborn, he had divined only through the conductor that was Faye. Sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - he wondered. For maybe that wasn’t Osbom, but Faye alone. It was difficult to strain a bloodline and separate it into two identities. That was why, on the few occasions when Faye had made remarks or shown prejudices that annoyed him, providing no evidence as to whether the biases were her own or parentally derived, he had always been careful.

But tonight he had lived with Osborn throughout the evening, and his resentment had not lessened. He wanted to speak his mind, to rid it of Osborn, and he determined to do so now. He would not be careless. He would simply be forthright. After all, there was an intimacy between Faye and himself, even if they were not yet close. Intimacy counted for something.

‘Well, did he?’ Faye asked. ‘Is that what’s on your mind?’

‘Yes, I guess it is,’ he said. T guess I’ve been thinking of what he said after dinner. And that made me think of other things. So it’s not just your father.’

‘Well, what about my father?’

‘I don’t think I expected an ultimatum from him. Either or else. When I spilled out my whole dilemma, my friendship and debt to Phil Sanford, I thought he would understand my position. But he didn’t. Or at least he chose not to.’

‘Be fair, Mike. I was there. Despite his feelings about that book, the trial, his own sorrow for Frank Griffith, Dad was sympathetic to your own problem. He was ready to relax his terms, give in a little. That’s because he does like you and wants to see you achieve the success you deserve. Mike, he did ask you how much time you wanted for the trial.’

‘Exactly the point,’ said Barrett. ‘He was ready to give me only the time that he thought I required. Had the trial been over some other matter, I’m sure he would have been more flexible. Because it was this trial, about this book, he placed a limit on his magnanimity. He made the gesture. Yet he made the terms as impossible as they had been from the start. He knew very well one can’t prepare for a trial and go to court and get it over with in a few days or a week. He knew I’d need a month or more. When I said so, he pulled back and said no. Why ? If he really needed me on Monday, and in Chicago a week later, he wouldn’t have been prepared to release me from the negotiation at all. But he knew, and I know, that you don’t make a man a vice-president simply because of one immediate project. If a man is really valuable, then he is valuable to you for years, for a lifetime, and you take the longer view. That’s why I say, if I’d asked him for time off to help a friend over some civil matter, a tax case, a corporation suit, some clean, businesslike, red-blooded, Waspish American litigation, he’d have been considerate and given me a break. What he disliked was the issue I wanted to become involved in. So he made it impossible for me to contest that issue - unless I was prepared to give up the position he’s offered me.’

Faye had heard him out, biting her lower lip, and when he was through she spoke immediately. ‘Mike, you’re torn, and therefore angry, and that’s making you distort the whole thing. No one knows Dad the way I know him. You can believe me, he wasn’t trying to bludgeon you into standing for what he stands for. He was looking out for you, for your future. He knows how people use people, and he could be more objective than you can and see more clearly how Sanford was manipulating you. He didn’t want your reputation hurt by his allowing you to associate yourself with a dirty book.’

‘Well, I’m not -‘ Careful, Barrett, careful, he told himself, you’ve spoken your piece. Now easy does it. ‘Well, maybe you’re right, Faye. It’s not fair to guess at someone else’s motives. Let’s say what disturbed me was his strong prejudgment of a book he’s never read, knows nothing about, except what a publicity-minded District Attorney sees fit to release in the press.’

‘Mike, what about you ? You admitted you hadn’t read the book, yet you’re also making a prejudgment of it, aren’t you? You’re making a prejudgment in its favor.’

He doffed an imaginary hat to her. ‘Right you are, my dear. I eat my words, although only some of them. Anyway, your father

knows nothing about the book, and through Phil Sanford I’m at least familiar with -‘

‘Mike, reading it or not reading it shouldn’t be the issue. I’m surprised at you. We’re warned off certain things by the reputation that precedes them, or because people we trust tell us they’re bad. If people who know label a bottle “Poison,” isn’t that enough? Does everyone have to sample the poison to be convinced he should stay away from it?’

‘Not the same thing,’ said Barrett. ‘Poison can be scientifically tested and classified as dangerous beforehand. A work of literature cannot, at least not so simply.’

‘Oh, please, Mike. This polluted book has been scientifically tested right under our very noses. A human guinea pig was used in the experiment. Jerry Griffith. And he was poisoned.’

‘You say Jerry Griffith. Let’s look at Jerry Griffith more closely. I’m an attorney, Faye. I’ve been taught not to take people and their actions at face value. You probe, you question, and more often than not you find motives that are quite different from those that first appeared on the surface. Maybe The Seven Minutes was solely responsible for Jerry’s crime. Again, maybe there were other reasons for his behavior, and the book was only the final thing that tripped the trigger. If it hadn’t come along, there would have been something else to trip the trigger. How do we know, how does even Jerry know, unless we look deeper ? I’m not prepared to judge the book, condemn it, because of this one piece of evidence. And what surprises me, and upsets me, is how many educated people, like your father, yourself, thousands of others around town, are ready to curb freedom of speech without conclusive evidence.’

Faye took her gold holder and a cigarette from her purse. ‘Well, you’re surprised at us, and frankly, Mike, I’m surprised at you. I thought your main motive in wanting to defend that dirty little book was to do a favor for an old friend. That was something I could comprehend. Now, all at once, it’s not friendship but freedom of speech.’

‘I guess I was turned on tonight. I’d long since forgotten I was once an idealist. I didn’t believe I had those feelings any more.’

‘Well, I wish you’d have them over something more deserving, something worthwhile. Not over a piece of incendiary trash.’ She held up her cigarette holder. ‘I know, I know, I’m not supposed to say that until I taste the poison.’

He tried to contain his pique. ‘Or at least until you’re sure, Faye dear, that the bottle hasn’t been mislabeled.’ An acid tone was creeping into his voice, and he hastened to sweeten it with reasonableness. ‘Faye, one thing for sure, as you’ve pointed out, none of us has read the book. You haven’t. Your father hasn’t. I haven’t. So none of us knows first hand whether it is a work of hard-core pornography or a work of erotic art. So how can we discuss it further?’

‘A work of art. Ha. You can read it, not me. You read it and tell me. Subject closed. The ballet was more fun.’ She sat back low, smoking. Then, as Barrett turned the car off Sunset Boulevard, she suddenly craned her neck and sat upright. ‘Hey,,-where are you taking me, Mike?’

‘Home.’

She swung around. ‘Isn’t this something new? Weren’t we going to your place? Don’t tell me you’re peeved with me because I disagreed with you?’

‘Of course not. You know me better than that, Faye.’

‘Then why aren’t we going to be together longer?’

‘Because tonight I’m going to have other company. Tonight I’m going to bed - with a book.’ He guided the car into the Osborn driveway. ‘I’m going to practice what I’ve been preaching. I’m going to find out whether the poison was mislabeled or not.’

‘Well, if that’s all.’ She seemed relieved, and suddenly cheerful. ‘Just remember, if it overstimulates you, you don’t have to go galloping out to waylay and rape some poor child. I’m ready, willing and available.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ He drew up before the impressive Spanish structure, set the shift in ‘Park,’ stepped on the emergency brake, but allowed the engine to idle. He was starting to get out, to see her to the door, when she stopped him with a question.

‘Mike, are you even considering turning down Dad’s position to take on Sanford’s case?’

‘I don’t know what I’m considering. No, the odds are I won’t sacrifice your father’s job. I probably wouldn’t have the guts any more. Besides, I wouldn’t want to lose the chance to keep you in the manner to which you’re accustomed.’

‘But you haven’t turned down Sanford yet, either. And you are going to read the book.’

‘That’s right, darling,’ he admitted. ‘Because I don’t want to grow rich and fat and old always carrying the niggling and perhaps romantic regret that I once didn’t do something important that I should have done. A sage long ago said - there is nothing as futile as regret. Another sage, namely me, said - there is no burden heavier than regret. I want to anticipate and put down that albatross and join the team Monday morning, guiltless and vigorous.’

‘Silly,’ she laughed, and then she sobered. ‘No, seriously, Mike -‘

‘Very well, seriously. I’m afraid I don’t have much choice about what I can do. Still, there’s a little bit of my conscience, frightened at an early age by Qarence Darrow, that demands explanations of me for certain moves I make. It’s not vociferous, that little bit, but it is there, and it niggles. Before I turn down Phil Sanford tomorrow, before I close the book on that book, I feel it deserves one hearing, one chance to speak for itself, one opportunity to be fairly judged. Then my bit of conscience will be satisfied that I’ve awarded the defendant due process. When I’ve read The Seven Minutes tonight,

and convinced myself that it is indeed pornographic, written merely for the purpose of exploiting obscenity, and for no other reason - when I’ve decided that, then there’ll be no difficulty about turning down Phil Sanford.’

‘What if you read it and believe it to be something more than pornography?’

‘I won’t let that happen.’ He smiled. ‘If it does happen, I’ll have to wrestle with my bit of conscience and try to see if I can make it shut up.’

He left the car, briskly went around to the other side, and helped Faye out. She took his hand, and they walked silently to the imposing oak door. She sought her key, opened the door partially, and then let go of it and turned back to him.

‘Mike, I’m sure you won’t do anything foolish about that book. But if… if for some irrational reason - if you can’t overcome your guilt about not helping Sanford, if you find yourself wrestling your bit of conscience and losing - well, I thought I’d better tell you, I’ll stick with you.’ Her arms had gone around him, and her head lay against his chest. ‘I can always force Dad to do anything Pwant. If I have to, I can force him to hold that vice-presidency open for you -until you’ve had your day in court.’

He kissed her, and heard her heart, and felt his own desire rising. Quickly he disengaged himself, whispering, ‘Thanks, darling.’ Then he pointed her toward the doorway and started her inside.

After her door had closed, and he was alone, he lingered, peering up at the night’s blue sky, illuminated by an infinity of stars, shining gemlike, as dazzling as the pure crystal prisms of a priceless chandelier. Up there, somewhere, was where all bits of conscience were born. Their journey downward to this habitat of man made them fragile, and the protective armor they assumed was so fleshly weak and frail, and they were so susceptible to extinction, that it was a miracle any bit of human conscience survived on earth.

It had shocked him this night to discover that the still small voice of his surviving conscience could demand equal time alongside his lustier, more dominating ambition. And it had shocked him that he had given in to the demands of that squeaky fragment of conscience.

He had promised it a hearing, and now the hearing must be held.

Barrett started for his car.

He would read the goddam book and get that over with, once and for all.

The electric clock on the lamp table beside his bed showed the time to be four o’clock in the morning, and Mike Barrett was almost done.

In his pajamas and flannel robe, propped up by the two large pillows behind him, Barrett turned the last page of The Seven Minutes, read the anal paragraph, and slowly closed the book. He stared down at it incredulously for a few moments and then

reluctantly placed it on the blanket.

He was shaken to the very core of his being.

Only once before could he remember having been affected in this way by a book, and then it had been a work of nonfiction. As a youngster in high school, he had read A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, by Sigmund Freud. While he had not comprehended every word in the Freud book, he had understood enough to know that he had experienced a revelation. Until the Freud book, Barrett had accepted the attitude of Freud’s more conservative contemporaries that there was something faintly shameful and indecent about sex. In a single stroke, by giving him a new understanding, Freud had almost succeeded in liberating him from neurotic feelings about sex. At the time, he had been unable to define precisely what he had learned. Only later, in a study of social anthropologists by H. R. Hays, had his youthful revelation been clarified: ‘A society that modestly draped the legs of pianos was to learn from Freud that the innocence of childhood and the purity of women, two of its favorite illusions, were pure myth. This concept was as shocking as Darwin’s assault upon the Garden of Eden.’