Americana (11 page)

“I’m not supposed to tell,” she said.

“Binky baby.”

“Hallie Lewin told me about Reeves. Penny Holton told me about Mars.”

“Who’s Penny Holton?”

“Carter Hemmings’ secretary.”

“The one with stereophonic tits?”

“David. Don’t be crappy now.”

“Her breasts point to opposite ends of the room.”

“Isn’t it something though?” Binky said.

“That’s not all,” I said. “Carter Hemmings may be next. It’s just a rumor right now so don’t say anything.”

“I won’t.”

“Also I noticed that Chandler Bates had his door closed when I went by his office just a minute ago. I mentioned it casually to Jody and she said it’s been closed all morning.”

“What do you think it means?”

“He’s either firing somebody or getting fired himself.”

“It can’t be that Chandler’s getting fired,” she said. “He’s buddy-buddy with Livingston. He’s Livingston’s fair-haired boy. Livingston’s the one who hired him away from the CBC.”

“I heard Livingston’s being phased out.”

“That’s too much.”

“Like an obsolete medium-range bomber,” I said. “Keep it under your hat.”

“You’d think they’d have some kind of Christmas spirit. What a lousy time for a purge.”

“Enough chitchat. Get Carter Hemmings in here and tell him to step lively.”

She went out and I called Sullivan. The phone rang eight times and she didn’t answer. I let it ring some more.

(“Dear God, I have to get out of here,” I said into the mouthpiece.)

Finally I hung up. Carter Hemmings came in then. He made his way to the sofa, moving sideways and in a very tentative manner, hunched slightly, feudal and obsequious.

“Carter, I thought we agreed that you were going to see Weede this morning with some kind of progress report on the laser beam thing.”

“The way I understood it, Dave, I was supposed to see you first thing in the morning. But when I came by your office, Binky said you weren’t in yet. I came back ten minutes later and she said you had just gone to Weede’s office for the meeting.”

“Your name came up during the drone-fest, Carter. Weede said he’s going to put your ass in a sling if you’re not careful. What do you hear from B.G. Haines? She told me she had a rotten time that night. I haven’t been hearing good things about you, Carter. Everybody has to pull his weight. You’ll find that Weede can be ruthless when the occasion warrants. Your secretary is a fucking blabbermouth. I have work to do now.”

He left. I tore up the notes I had taken during the meeting. I took a box of paper clips out of the middle drawer and began fitting one clip inside another, making a chain. In ten minutes or so I fastened about one hundred paper clips. Then I fitted together the two at each end. This gave me a circle, which I spread before me on the desk. I put nine pencils inside the circle, arranging them in three triangles of three pencils each. I put an eraser inside each triangle. Then I took the torn note
paper, dropped it into an ashtray, lit a match and set the paper on fire. I placed the ashtray with the burning paper at a point roughly equidistant from the nearest corner of each triangle and at the approximate center of the circle. When the fire was about to go out I tore up more paper and tossed it into the ashtray. I kept doing this until Binky came in to get her coat, which she always hung behind my door.

“Lunchtime already?”

“What’s that?” she said.

“Demonology.”

She came around to my side of the desk for a closer look. I slumped in the chair, leaned over and put my hand on her calf, making slow figure eights with the tips of my fingers.

“It’s weird, David.”

“Works quite well, I think. Note the circular ashtray. Circles within circles. Like the pain in my head. The erasers don’t do much for it though. Next time you’re in the supply room see if they have any triangular erasers. This is serious stuff.”

“What’s it supposed to mean?”

“It’s a calling forth of the powers of darkness. Is Hallie Lewin pregnant or was she just kidding?”

My hand was at the soft cove behind the knee which, when the leg is bent, has always seemed to me one of the very best places on a woman’s body; then, as if obliging my bias, she shifted her weight to that leg, the left, so that her knee, answering the shift and in complete control of it, buckled slightly, creating that scooped-out and supremely tender indentation for the rent-free pleasure of my hand. Weede Denney was standing in the doorway.

“Come on in, Weede,” I said. “Say, how’s your wife these days?”

Binky edged away from me. I could see the doors opening in the dark room in my mind, three, four, five doors opening, and fresh light planking down across the floor. In the past I had always been able to control the doors but now they
seemed to swing open freely, wind-driven, banging the walls. Control was still possible but I did not try to attain it. Light began to fill the room and I thought I might reach eight doors, a new record.

“Didn’t mean to disturb you,” Weede said, flushing somewhat. “Just wanted to see you for a moment or two; it can wait.”

“Binky, I don’t know if you’ve ever met Mrs. Denney. She’s an absolutely intrepid woman. Weede, tell Binky about the time Mrs. Denney walked right up to a family of hippos during your camera safari in Kenya. She just had to have that picture and she didn’t care a whit about her personal safety. Weede told us about it at lunch yesterday. I can’t wait to see those slides, Weede. Binky, I think you should see them too. Weede has promised to invite us up for a showing some time soon. Binky’s a photography buff, Weede. Weede has quite a collection of photos, Binky.”

“I’d love to see them,” Binky said. “Well, I’ve got a lunch date with Jody Moore and she hates to be kept waiting.”

She left, putting on her coat as she walked out, and Weede moved clear of the doorway as she made her exit. One touch, he seemed to fear, would reduce them both to a state of nervous collapse. I tried to close the doors. They would not close. He walked up to the desk, put both hands flat on the far edge and leaned toward me.

“I want to ask you something,” he said. “It concerns a matter of some delicacy. I understand you’re tuned in to many of the undercurrents. What either of us says here mustn’t go any further than this office. Is Reeves Chubb a homosexual? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“There have been rumors to that effect. Somebody wrote something to that effect on the wall in the thirty-seventh-floor men’s room.”

“I’d like to take a look at that.”

“It’s not there anymore,” I said. “This was last week. It was written with a red crayon above the urinals. It looked like
Quincy Willet’s handwriting. Those two don’t exactly hit it off, you know.”

“What precisely did it say? This may be important.”

“I don’t think I care to repeat it, Weede.”

“Was it rough?”

“The roughest.”

“We’re two mature people, Dave. I’ll tell you why I brought this up in the first place. I know I can trust you to keep any privileged material within the four walls of this room.”

“Shall I close the door?” I said.

“By all means. I should have thought of that myself.”

As I swung the door shut Quincy passed my office and gave me a questioning glance. Weede went over to the sofa and I returned to the chair behind the desk.

“As you know, Dave, we hire people on the basis of ability alone. This has always been the network’s policy. Personally I have no interest in a man’s private life. What a man does in his free time is no concern of mine, within reason.”

“I can attest to that, Weede.”

“But there’s another issue at stake here. The State Department doesn’t want any queers working on the China thing. Far be it from me to challenge the thinking of people whose most vital concern is our own national security. A meeting was held in a midtown hotel last week. For the most part it was inconclusive. Reeves is a married man, you know.”

“Sometimes that happens,” I said.

“Exactly, Dave. Those people at State are sharp. They tell some amazing stories. We spent a whole afternoon discussing it.”

“It’s a shadow world. It’s a sickness. It can happen to anyone.”

“Did you know that Reeves sleeps in his office two or three nights a week? Something like that makes you wonder. What does his wife think about something like that?”

“There’s a rumor going around that Jones Perkins might be bisex. I don’t necessarily mean he goes both ways. It’s just
that some of his secondary sexual characteristics are thought to be a bit suspicious. He might actually
be
both ways if you get the distinction. But it’s just a rumor at this point.”

“I give no credence to stories like that.”

“Only a fool would.”

“Well, I just wanted to get your thinking on the subject, Dave. I hope it turns out to be nothing at all.”

“Weede, one of the very best ways to arrive at some kind of conclusive determination in a situation like this with a man’s whole future at stake is simply to think back on it. Think back on Reeves. Think of small incidents, anecdotes he’s told, his reactions to certain words or phrases, the way he holds those little cigars of his, favorite expressions he uses, his sensibilities, his literary preferences, the amount of time he spends in the john, the kind of shoes he wears. It all has a bearing. Now then. Can I work on the Navaho thing on my own?”

“Quincy giving you trouble?”

“He has marital problems. His mind is preoccupied.”

“I’ll take it under advisement, Dave.”

“Thanks much.”

“Let you know more when I get back from the Coast,” he said.

“Maybe we can break bread.”

All the doors were open. I felt I was going insane. The entire conversation seemed to be taking place in a dream and I truly could not believe what we were saying to each other. The headache had become a ringing numbness, like that caused by a shot of Novocain. I had ceased to exercise the slightest control over my remarks and I didn’t care anymore. It was neither a good nor a bad feeling. It was hardly a feeling at all. My head seemed to be a telephone delivering an endless busy signal.

“Are you sure you can’t tell me what the red crayon said in the bathroom? It may be important.”

“Reeves Chubb climbs palm trees to suck off sleeping apes.”

I took the elevator down and walked the two blocks to the
Grand Prix. I didn’t wear a coat. I never wore a coat when I went to lunch, no matter how cold it was. JFK.

The restaurant’s decor was automotive. My father was already there, sitting at a corner table. His stocky figure, in fine British tweeds, seemed to dominate that part of the room. He was shouting friendly abuse to someone at a nearby table. I watched for a moment. He ran his hand over his head, over the thinning hair, then toyed with the cutlery. He had a new pair of glasses, I noticed, black-rimmed and intimidating. His face did not have the strength of sharp definition, being fairly anonymous, but there was a blunt authority in his eyes which could not be ignored. We did not look at all alike.

My father had just turned fifty-five, a fact which seemed to have transformed him, virtually overnight, into a role of elder statesman. Prior to our meeting in the restaurant I had seen him just once since his birthday. On that occasion, a drink after work, he had seemed very conscious of his elbows. When he spoke he would pivot on the barstool and lean toward me with both elbows flung out and up like delta wings. At other times, head hanging loosely over his drink, he would raise his right index finger and then use it to tap his left elbow, which lay bent on the bar. He did this only when making an important point and I wondered whether the significance of his remark might be fully uncovered only by opening up the elbow and picking with a delicate surgical instrument among its connective tissues. That evening he had made me think of John Foster Dulles and Casey Stengel, two elder statesmen who knew how to use their elbows.

“Sorry I’m late, dad. Merry Christmas.”

“I hear Stennis is in trouble,” he said. “I never liked that son of a bitch. How much does he make? Squatez-vous, kid. We can have only one drink. I’ve got a two o’clock client meeting.”

“I didn’t know you knew Stennis.”

“We’re agency-of-record for the mental illness series everybody’s talking about. Stennis told us the ten-second spots
we’ve been running are in bad taste considering the subject matter of the program. He said the network has been getting complaints. You know what I’m talking about, the animated jingles. We’ll have two dry martinis on the rocks, waiter. Then wait ten minutes and bring us the boeuf Bourguignon. We won’t have time for dessert or coffee.”

“What are your plans for Christmas day?” I said. “I thought I might drive up to the house.”

“Fine, sport, do that. Bring a girl along. We’ll have a few drinks and drive up to the Admiral Benbow for some turkey. Your mother used to make a swell turkey. I should sell that house but I can’t. How’s Merry these days? I miss that girl. Damn sweet kid.”

“She’s fine, dad.”

“Listen, I don’t deny I’ve done some screwing around in my time. Man’s not worth much if he doesn’t get the urge now and then. But how can I marry some big-hipped peroxide bitch after all those years living with your mother? I married your mother when I was twenty-two years old. We lived in a cold-water flat on upper Broadway. When Mary was born I went out and got drunk. Forget the nostalgia. Those were rotten days, pally. Now I’ve reached the age when a man feels he has to make some kind of summing up. But screw golf. It’s sure death for someone like me. Everybody wants me to go out and play golf with them. The last seven, eight years, since your mother’s death, all I hear is golf. I work all weekend, either home or in the office. Work is better than death. Look, I’ve got a little thing going with my secretary. What good does it do? Can I depend on something like her for the long haul? I said on the rocks, waiter.”

“How old is she?” I said.

“I don’t know, about twenty-four. When you get to be my age, they all look the same. If you want to go out with her, I’ll fix it up.”

“What’s she like?”