Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (6 page)

 
          
 
"We didn't get to bed till four
o'-fuckin'-clock."

 
          
 
Don't say it, Burnham told himself. He could
hear his pulse thrumming behind his ears. Don't say anything about whose car it
is, or what right do you have, or any of those nice middle-class things. You
are dealing here with an alien. So what he said was, "I gotta go to
work."

 
          
 
"Yeah, well I work all fuckin' night, is
what."

 
          
 
Again Burnham spread his hands: That's the way
it goes. He wondered what he would do if the man rolled up the window and lay
back down on the front seat. Find a cab, that's what he would do. And be late.
And explain to the President of the
United States
, the Leader of the Free World, the most
powerful and preoccupied individual since the dawn of time, why he had been
unable to prepare last-minute jokes for this morning's Leadership Breakfast.
"Y'see, there was this couple crashed in my car . . ."

 
          
 
But the man did not go back to sleep. He
reached over the back of the seat and shook the woman awake. She sat up, tucked
her breast back inside her shirt, scrubbed the hair out of her eyes and yawned.

 
          
 
Burnham felt he should look away, that he was
intruding upon the matutinal ablutions of this couple. But he was fascinated,
and they paid him no heed at all.

 
          
 
The man opened the glove compartment and
withdrew four hamburger-sized glassine bags of white powder. One he dropped
down inside his shirt. Three he held out to the woman, who, to Burnham's
horror, hiked her ragged, stained batik skirt over her hips. She wore no
underwear, and for a three-beat Burnham was sure she was going to pee in the
back seat of the car. But no. There were pockets with zippers sewn into a
lining of the skirt where it would fall down the front between her legs, and
she stashed the three bags in them.

 
          
 
Detachedly, Burnham admired the hiding place.
No police officer would dare shake the woman down in public. Not only would he
be aware that the cache was in such proximity to the woman's naughty bits that
he would run a real risk of being slapped with a charge of sexual
fiddle-de-dee, but once he approached within whiffing distance of the harpy,
horrid visions would come alive in his mind of wasting diseases and running
sores, and he would touch her with nothing shorter than his nightstick. By the
time they reached the station house, zippers would be zipped and the skirt
would be empty.

 
          
 
The couple got out of the car on the street
side, left the front and back doors open, and shuffled off up 33rd Street.

 
          
 
He never saw them again.

 
          
 
The Burnhams had been able to move to
Georgetown only because Sarah had met Muffle Cogan at a Kennedy thing, and
Muffle dabbled in real estate and knew that her office was about to list an
off-beat rental, a tiny Georgetown house that was available for a piddling
$1,750 a month because (here was the catch) it was for twenty-one months, no
renewal, which happened to be the precise number of months left in the President's
term. No matter who was elected next, Burnham would be out of a job, and he had
no intention of remaining in
Washington
. Three-and-a-half years was quite enough,
thank you very much, particularly for a person who had no business being in
government—let alone in the White House—in the first place.

 
          
 
He walked to the end of
Prospect Street
, turned right onto
Wisconsin
and headed for M Street and the bus stop.
An empty cab was idling at the comer of
Wisconsin
and M, and he veered toward it. But the light
changed, and the cab began to roll away. Burnham made no effort to pursue it.
He told himself that his reluctance was economic: To spend five dollars just to
avoid a fifteen-minute bus ride was profligate. In fact, his reluctance was
purely neurotic: He could not make a spectacle of himself, running down a
public thoroughfare, waving and shouting to attract the attention of a surly
Kenyan (or so he envisioned the driver) who would, he was convinced, wait until
he was two steps from the cab and then ram the pedal to the metal and squeal
away, leaving this Anglo-Saxon relic in his rumpled seersucker to be the butt
of sneers and snickers from the world at large.

 
          
 
He would surely have taken the cab if the
light hadn't changed, because he disliked the bus with a visceral loathing. It
was not only that buses were hot and crowded and dirty, but being on a bus
constituted a kind of invasion of his privacy. When he boarded the metal
container, he was thrusting himself into contact, and sometimes confrontation, with
people he was not equipped to deal with, who did not play by his rules. They
babbled and squabbled, their children squawled, they sweated, they smelled,
they pressed against one another and stared out the tinted glass as if
everything was perfectly normal. Now and then, one of them would address him,
which—even if the address was as innocuous as "Is this seat
taken?"—could unnerve him and trigger a stammer that could evolve quickly
into an anxiety rush that could, if unallayed, mushroom into a full-blown panic
attack.

 
          
 
This morning, the bus arrived promptly and
took Burnham down M Street, across the bridge and down
Pennsylvania Avenue
without incident. A waif from, say, the
Cots wolds might have felt threatened by the two black teenagers who played a
cassette deck at peak volume and said to any passenger who glanced their way,
"Loud enough for you, muhfuh?"; or by the slender man in black suit,
black shoes, black tie and starched white shirt who was running a column of
figures on a calculator but kept making errors every time the bus joggled, and
as he started the column anew sang atonally, "Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so"; or by the elderly man in hat and raincoat who
clutched between his knees a sign with which he was going to picket the White
House:

 
          
 
HUSBANDS UNITE

 
          
 
You have nothing to lose

 
          
 
but your

 
          
 
BALLS

 
          
 
Throw off those apron strings!

 
          
 
BEAG.L

 
          
 
(Gynophobes International)

 
          
 
But to the urban sensibility, even one as
finely tuned as Burnham's, these were phenomena to be noticed and avoided but
not feared.

 
          
 
Burnham and the man with the sign got off at
the same stop,
17th Street
and
Pennsylvania Avenue
, the comer just to the north of the White
House complex. Burnham held the door until the man could angle his big placard
free of the bus.

 
          
 
By way of thanks, the man looked into Burnham's
eyes and whispered fervently, "Beware! They're following you."

 
          
 
Startled, Burnham took a step backward and
said, "Who?" And then, seeing the psychotic glow in the man's eyes,
Burnham was embarrassed that he had been suckered into even momentary
discomfort.

 
          
 
"You've got the wrong man." He
laughed uneasily. "I'm not worth following."

 
          
 
The man's eyes widened—in surprise or umbrage,
Burnham didn't know which—and he hoisted his sign and spun around and marched
off.

 
          
 
Ivy Peniston felt like kicking the old rummy,
she was so angry. He slumbered on the sidewalk beneath a blanket of yesterday's
Post's sports section and beside a brace of Thunderbird empties. But kicking a
rummy wouldn't do any good, wouldn't help Jerome, wouldn't even make her feel
better for more than about ten seconds.

 
          
 
Jesus wept, Jerome! Typing! How could you do
this to me? How could you do this to you? How could you flunk typing?

 
          
 
Typing can't be any big thing, just one letter
after another till they make a word, then one word after another till they make
a sentence, and so on till you do the right number in the right amount of time.
I even bought you lessons!

 
          
 
She stepped around the rummy, and the lateral
movement shot a twinge of pain through her bad knee and reminded her to remind
Jerome to borrow an Ace bandage or one of those basketball kneepads for her
from the gym.

 
          
 
She turned the comer onto N.E. 12th Street.
There was no bus in sight, so she reached inside her shopping bag and felt
around for her watch. You never wore a watch in this neighborhood, that was the
law. A watch, displayed, was fair game. And you never carried a purse. Same
law. But a shopping bag was all right—a shopping bag was out of bounds. It said
you were a poor person, and nobody but the real bottom of the barrel of junkies
would knock over a truly poor person. Especially a truly poor black person.
Especially a truly poor black female person with a limp. If one of those scum
did go after you, usually someone would pop out of a doorway or from a store or
a parked car and pummel the junkie away, which no one would think of doing if
you wore a watch or carried a purse.

 
          
 
Ten o'clock, the secretary had said. It was
twenty of. She could wait for a bus that would drop her in front of the school,
or she could walk. A bus was quicker once you got on it, but at this time of
day you could wait half an hour for one to come by, and for this appointment
she could not afford to be late. Four years of Jerome's life were tied up in
this appointment. Maybe more. Maybe his whole life. And a big piece of hers. So
she walked.

 
          
 
George Washington Carver High School had been
built of red brick which, with age and dirt, had darkened to the color of dried
blood. It had turrets and gables and grime-gray windows, and it had always
seemed to Ivy to be less suited as a temple of learning than as what folks back
home called a “funny house"—an asylum for the criminally insane.

 
          
 
There was a mirror in the principal's office,
and Ivy stopped to run a check on herself. She licked a couple of hairs down
and tucked away a bra strap and was pleased: The edifice showed age and hard
use—the shoulders were weary, and maybe there was a bit too much padding on the
trunk— but none of that could conceal the woman of good breeding and proud
bearing who lived within.

 
          
 
The principal impressed Ivy right away by not
keeping her waiting. She was on time; so was he. The signs were good.

 
          
 
He was a round, jocund, black M.Ed, from the
University
of
Pennsylvania
named Luther Joslin, and he wore bifocals
that kept trying to escape his ears and slide off the plateau of the end of his
nose. He offered her a seat, closed the door, sat at his desk and opened a file
folder.

 
          
 
"You come from Bermuda?"

 
          
 
"Way back when," she replied,
politely but briefly enough (she hoped) to discourage small talk.

 
          
 
"Why did you come up here?" Mr.
Joslin would not be denied.

 
          
 
"My husband worked here," she lied.
The truth was, she had been impregnated by a lieutenant (JG) stationed at the
U.S. Naval base in Bermuda, whom she had bullied into marrying her so their
child could have the option of choosing American citizenship—an option she
exercised on behalf of the fruit of their loins, ne Jerome, as soon as it
became apparent that he was destined to outgrow the capacity of the Bermuda
school system to instruct him in the subjects in which he was gifted. ,

 
          
 
My mind, Ivy had decided, may not be a
terrible thing to waste, but Jerome's is.

 
          
 
"What does your husband do?" asked
Mr. Joslin.

 
          
 
"Did." She lowered her eyes.
"He's gone now."

 
          
 
"I'm sorry. Why don't you go back?"

 
          
 
What is this man? Ivy wondered. A schoolmaster
or an immigration officer? "I'm an American citizen. So's Jerome. There's
no going back."

 
          
 
"But don't you miss the climate? The
flowers? Bougainvillea. Oleander." Mr. Joslin sniffed the stale air.

 
          
 
She didn't miss them, so she said,
"No."

 
          
 
"I've always wanted to go there, to live
there, where we—black people, that is—are the majority, can make our own laws
and respect our own culture and live lives of natural. ..."

 
          
 
The man's slipped a gear. Ivy concluded. He
thinks
Bermuda
's some kind of nigger heaven.

 
          
 
"... and every man can pluck papaya from
his neighbor's tree."

 
          
 
And get his fingers chopped into itsy-bitsy
pieces. . . .

 
          
 
"Ah well, perhaps when I retire."
Mr. Joslin smiled dreamily, but his smile faded as he saw Ivy looking at him as
if he was a fungus growing between her toes. "Yes. Well. Enough about me.
What seems to be the problem?" He consulted the file folder on his desk.

 
          
 
"The problem is that someone told Jerome
he isn't going to graduate."

 
          
 
Mr. Joslin hesitated, following his finger
down a sheet of paper in the folder. "Yes. Apparently so."

 
          
 
"Because he didn't pass typing."

 
          
 
"Correct."

 
          
 
"Typing."

 
          
 
"Yes. Typing."

 
          
 
"Jerome has three A's, a B-plus and a
B-minus. He took an extra-credit half year of mechanical drawing and got an
A-minus."

 
          
 
"True. A good student all around. But he
failed typing."

 
          
 
"Mr. Joslin, look at Jerome's grades in
his computer courses. All A's. How do you program a computer? By typing in
information. Jerome can type. He just can't type on a dead machine, a machine
that won't answer back and take the game the next step. A typewriter's a baby
toy for Jerome. It doesn't interest him; he can't concentrate on it."

 
          
 
"I see. What you're saying is, he lacks
discipline."

 
          
 
Ivy took a deep breath, to swallow the
"Bullshit!" that wanted to escape, "No, sir, he doesn't. He does
all his school work, he works after school and on weekends programming
computers—typing on computers. He doesn't lack any discipline."

 
          
 
"Then let's just say," Mr. Joslin
smiled a smarmy smile, "that he lacks the discipline for typing."

 
          
 
"So you won't give him a diploma."

 
          
 
"I can't. The rules say every student
must pass a term of typing. The board considers it a necessary skill, like
reading."

 
          
 
"But suppose you have a higher skill,
like programming computers. Jerome'll never have to be a typist."

 
          
 
Mr. Joslin folded his hands and leaned forward
on his desk and began, with patronizing serenity, "Mrs. Peniston.
..."

 
          
 
That's right. Ivy thought, look down on me.
Motherfucker.

 
          
 
"... educational theory is based on the
concept of building blocks. You must build a foundation on which the rest of
the structure can stand. One or two weak blocks, and the entire building falls.
The board considers typing one of those essential blocks." He paused,
waiting for the great weight of his wisdom to penetrate. "But don't
worry."

 
          
 
"Don't worry! That Jerome's not gonna
graduate? That after four years he's not gonna have a diploma? Don't
worry?"

 
          
 
"Please, Mrs. Peniston." Mr. Joslin
held up a hand, as if to calm her with his aura. "There's a solution to
everything. All Jerome has to do is repeat his typing course this summer and
pass the test in September. He'll get his diploma then."

 
          
 
Ivy squeezed the fingers of her left hand with
the fingers of her right so hard that she made the joints crack. She felt a
strange battle going on in her head between the forces of reason and the
gremlins of recklessness. She had to fight to keep from calling Joslin a stupid
twit.

 
          
 
"Mr. Joslin," she said with strained
calm, "have you heard of a company called DTCo.?"

 
          
 
"Of course. Used to be DataTech."

 
          
 
"DTCo. has a few jobs open in what they
call their affirmative-action program. They'll take a computer whiz like

 
          
 
Jerome and pay him ten dollars an hour for the
summer. That's four hundred dollars a week, Mr. Joslin. About twice what I
make."

 
          
 
"That's great."

 
          
 
"Then, in the fall, they'll send Jerome
to college and train him for four years and pay for everything, and all he has
to do is agree to work for DTCo. for the first three years out of college. It's
like ROTC. Maybe he can become a systems analyst, then maybe a senior systems
analyst, and maybe make forty thousand dollars every year."

 
          
 
"That's what it's all about," Mr.
Joslin said.

 
          
 
"But you see"—soon, Ivy knew, she
would either weep or scream—"they won't take Jerome, they won't even let
Jerome compete for the job, without a high-school diploma."

 
          
 
"Oh."

 
          
 
"And by the fall, the jobs'll be
full."

 
          
 
"I see."

 
          
 
"So what I'm asking you is, you have this
boy's life in your hands, you have his ticket, I'm just asking you if you'll
bend the rules."

 
          
 
Joslin looked uncomfortable, sweaty. He said,
"I can't."

 
          
 
"I beg you. Pass him in typing."