Cabot Wright Begins: A Novel (13 page)

Miss Watkins retired, and the two men sipped the weak brew she had prepared for them.

“Coffee all right?” Mr. Warburton inquired after they had sat some time listening to the motor of the air conditioning unit.

“Fresh tasting,” Cabot nodded.

“Strong brew wreaks havoc with the liver, I’m told,” Mr. W. solemnized. “Let me tell you something then,” he continued in Presbyterian elder tones, and suddenly snorting. “It’s better to lose sleep at your age, laddie, than get too much. Americans sleep and lolligag around too much for their own good. Sow the wild oats if anything,” Mr. Warburton advised.

“Don’t forget, sir, I’m a married man,” Cabot yawned briefly.

“You kids today all get married too young!” Mr. Warburton was indignant. “Before you know what life or people are about. It’s nauseating.” He mumbled over his coffee. “When I was your age, I hardly ever got more than four or five hours sleep at a stretch. Out every night. Poker, this, that, the other,” he was suddenly vague. “And I’ve always laid it to keeping awake long hours that I’ve made for myself the berth I’m occupying today!”

Mr. Warburton relaxed then, laughing, and Cabot mused over the fact that the old bastard considered himself without a grain of doubt one of the eminences of the great metropolis of New York.

“Of course I sowed my wild oats damned near a half-century ago,” the old man reflected. His mouth turned down until his lips were a thin white line. “Isn’t that scary, Cabot? A half-century ago! By George, the passage of time is one thing that can frighten a fellow into running right out of here, without his hat, down to the river, if he let it. But, by God, laddie, I don’t let it, and I won’t. Keep the mind and hand occupied, that’s the ticket.

“Now speaking of that,” Mr. Warburton placed the fingers of his hands in the shape of a tepee, “Cabot, my lad. Of course you know how highly I esteem your father. Your foster-father, that is,” he plunged into thought then, and Cabot knew he was in for something more serious even than the Sermon. Perhaps, who knows, he was going to be fired after all, despite Mr. W.’s long indebtedness to Cabot Wright Senior.

“Cabot, I’ve got my eye on you for the future,” Mr. Warburton managed to say, but he avoided Cabot’s eye. “The somewhat distant future right now, but coming as sure as sunrise.”

Mr. Warburton closed his eyes as he might have done when he was an elder.

“I’ve had our good Sue of Short Hills prepare you a little something,” Mr. Warburton now faced Cabot and rang the buzzer.

Cabot felt the color drain from his face.

“Miss Watkins,” Warburton said when his secretary entered. “That envelope I spoke to you about, please.”

The sound of the expensive air-conditioning unit nearby contrasted in Cabot’s mind with the unoiled defective electric fan he had listened to last evening in that room in the branch library.

“We’ve prepared you a little something, my fine General Partner,” Mr. Warburton spoke in a manner peculiar even for him, “and we hope you will want to accept it.” As if surprised at his own use of the word “we,” Mr. Warburton fell back on his habit of placing his fingers before his mouth in tepee-shape. He whistled mournfully through his fingers.

“Now, Cabot,” Mr. Warburton studied the envelope Miss Watkins had brought. “I want you to take this in the spirit in which it is offered. And by the bye, both your parents have been informed of what I am doing.” He handed Cabot the envelope.

Tearing it open, he saw of course that it was a check. “Christ, Mr. Warburton, two thousand five-hundred dollars!” The young General Partner next got out in a kind of ghastly whisper “Severance pay?”

“Nothing of the kind, not by the remotest suggestion,” Mr. Warburton bellowed but Cabot’s phrase, it was easy to see, had touched a nerve.

“You’re a valuable fellow around here,” Mr. W. intoned, “and, by God, I reward valuable fellows.” Wheeling about then in his chair, Mr. Warburton continued: “But the situation is, Cabot, and the fact is: you’re tired!”

Cabot rose from his chair, about to cry, “Who told you?” but Warburton was going ahead:

“Probably, Cabot, you’re one of those, as I hinted a moment ago, a modern American who sleeps too much. I don’t know your habits, of course, nor do I intend to pry into them like the goddam Government. But facts are facts. In my generation nobody was tired. God damn it. The word was unknown, not allowed in decent company. But that was then. This is now. Cabot, I want you to go away and rest, or do something you feel like doing, don’t rest, God damn it. Explode maybe. And your parents wish this too. By the way, do you walk the Brooklyn Bridge to work?”

But on the word
explode
Cabot swallowed the weak coffee the wrong way down, and some of the liquid painfully went through his nose, simulating hemorrhage for a moment, which caused additional irritation and loss of time on the part of Mr. W.

In dismay, Cabot let the check slip from his finger to the carpet, and Mr. Warburton picked it up at once with the professional proprietary grasp of the banker, and handed it back to his young executive.

“You’ve gone stale in your work! I’ve already told your father!” Mr. Warburton thumped Cabot on the knee. “In my day nobody got stale, because, by Christ, we didn’t dare to. But I know times and periods change. I learn that lesson every hour. We live in a less vital world today, Cabot. But I’ve got my eyes on you and I feel you are one of the ones who
may
go on. It won’t be my world, of course, not by a damned long shot, I’m resigned to that, but I think, I believe, you are one of the ones who may go on up and onwards. Were you a football player in college by the way?” Mr. Warburton inquired suddenly, an expression of desire and hope in his expression.

“The second team,” Cabot said, irritated that the swallowing of the coffee through his nose had imparted an unwonted lachrymose flavor to his tone, which he did not at all feel or desire.

“I see,” Mr. Warburton replied, and assumed his habitual tepee pose with his fingers. “Well, that hasn’t got a good goddam to do with what we’re talking about. Let me close with this thought. I believe in you as I believe in no other man in this organization but, Cabot, by Jesus Christ, I’m waiting for results!”

Mr. Warburton had gone white.

“Mr. Warburton,” Cabot said, standing up, “I believe I am your man, sir.”

Cabot wondered later how he had made this statement. He decided that he must have heard it on his Japanese portable radio, when it was advertising, while he was partially asleep.

But the statement worked. It electrified old Mr. Warburton, brought the color back to his lips, and made him stand up and pump Cabot’s hand.

“That’s the ticket now, laddie,” Mr. W. exploded, wreathed in smiles. “That’s my Cabot… Go away and have a hell of a time, laddie… One hell of a one… Do you hear, you good-looking son-of-a-bitch… And what is this talk you are worried about being a supposititious child? Don’t you know your father Cabot Wright Senior has implicit confidence in you? Implicit. As do I. Now go away and explode! Explode, my boy.”

Mr. Warburton punched Cabot in the ribs and then in the solar plexus, which was the way, Cabot realized, these things are done.

“And for the sake of God and these goddamned United States, don’t come back with that sleepy look. Give up sleep for the good of the nation, Cabot!” And Mr. Warburton roared with laughter as Cabot left.

Downstairs, in the Alexander Hamilton bar, Cabot ordered a double brandy and fingered the check from Mr. Warburton. He was almost sorry that the old bastard had not fired him at once because he knew the two thousand five-hundred dollars, yes, those little embossed figures, were the first step down, if not out. He could see Cynthia already halting in her application of her Princess Gray cold cream when he told her they were “required” to take a vacation. Cynthia hated vacations, never liked to leave New York and never went away unless the trip could be combined with some “connection” with her career, business with pleasure.

Having been potlatched by Mr. Warburton, Cabot Wright remained on in the Alexander Hamilton bar until he was too drunk to walk the Brooklyn Bridge back to his apartment, and took the subway at the Bowling Green stop. Later that day at home, looking out over the confluent waters of the Hudson and East Rivers, he gazed at the Wall Street towers, and had the distinct impression he had flown in over the water and the Bridge.

Mixing three kinds of vermouth, all bitter, with an immense shot of rum, he began thinking of Mr. Warburton’s icy wrath of the preceding weeks:

“See here, Cabot,”
the old man had said at that time,
“I’ve put up with your goddam nonsense about long enough. We are here to get things done. Right? as the New York Hebrews say. All right then, we won’t worry about our feelings and our personalities, our motivations or our own little aspirations. Work, Cabot, that’s the ticket, work, and get on the winning team. The team, Cabot, goddam it, the winning team. What does the geography of Down Town stand for, my boy? I told you the day your Dad and Mother sent you fresh in here. The winning team will decide, goddam it, and you’re a member of it.”

“The winning team is you, you old white-haired crud,” Cabot mixed himself a second pitcher of rum-vermouth, and then sat down at Cynthia’s typewriter, and began writing a letter to Mr. Warburton. Not knowing the touch system, the typewriter under his fingers sounded like an old-fashioned sewing machine making a false hem. Cabot was scarcely aware what he was saying in his letter of resignation, and after signing it in swooping letters, he put it on a table nearby.

As dusk fell over the edge of the Wall Street towers, Cabot’s day-long depression warmed itself into a kindling triumphant sense of victory. He imagined having wrung from Mr. Warburton both a speech of apology, and a testimonial in praise of Cabot’s “performance,” together with a statement in which the old man said he would resign for the good of the firm, that is, the team. At the last moment, however, Cabot had insisted old Warby stay on, but with fewer responsibilities, no decision-making powers, no authority to hire or dismiss personnel, a considerable reduction in salary, and a diminutive office facing the powder rooms and the freight elevator shaft.

“What are you looking at out the window this time of day?” Cynthia quavered, coming unexpectedly into the room. She touched her hair-bow gingerly.

“The job and man I left behind, lover,” he replied, and he raised his face and his glass to her.

“Have you been home all day drinking?” she leaned over him, but on whiffing the air did not kiss him. “Bloodshot as a St. Bernard,” she examined him. “Well, give me a taste,” she took his drink, and sipped a bit.

“What kind of a concoction do you call that?” she wondered, still tasting.

“Mr. Warburton gave us two thousand five-hundred dollars to go away on,” Cabot said loudly, holding one hand over his eye as he gazed in the direction of Down Town.

“Let’s not have any of your sick jokes today,” Cynthia cautioned. She began folding the fresh linens she had picked up from the laundry on her way home. “And please don’t joke about money tonight. I’ve had a day.”

“Here’s the check, dear girl,” he extended it to her.

She peered at it.

“You’ve been fired,” she said. “Dear God, that’s all I needed.”

“Oh, this is only the first step to my getting the sack,” he informed her. “They’re firing me when I go back.” He bristled, and looked brave, as perhaps he might have looked had he been on the first football team.

Just then as she closed one of the drawers the letter Cabot had written to Mr. Warburton fell directly at her feet. Stooping to pick it up, her eyes were riveted to the irregularly margined triple-spaced words, giving the effect of having been branded on the paper by an iron.

Dear Gray Forks,

I have decided that rather than accept your crummy two thousand five hundred dollars which all men on or off the team know how you came by, you can take same and apply as poultice to your piles. How about giving some to your alum-pussed wife so she can go out & hang one on for a change? I take it, Gray Forks, you won the goddam money at either poker or recent market swindle. It will be one hell of a relief not seeing you or the frog-throated eunuchs of either sex. Am having a hand-carved marble stool with cherry colored throw of General Ike and Dick the Nix to replace the wooden seat where you park your old sagging white cheeks so many hours of the winning day. Am also forwarding to your home 80 foot mural of General Mac conquering Asia with his hat on.

Cabot W.

“Did you send this?” Cynthia kept staring at the paper.

“Why don’t you take your clothes off, silly,” Cabot replied. “It’s nearly dark out.”

Turning, she slapped him smartly over the mouth.

Rising very much like a star half-back, Cabot picked her up and carried her writhing vigorously into their bedroom in order, as he told her, to make her distinguish between a paid vacation and severance check.

10

TWO CATASTROPHES

C
abot Wright, in addition to that long hard nineinch sword he wore from then on all the time at the left side of his shorts (“Wounded by my own blade again! Condition brand new, never misses a volt!”) until he was restored to equilibrium by police brutality and his prison stretch, now underwent two tragic events that, together with his state of permanent erection, made his coming return to Wall Street a mere anticlimax.