Going Down Fast (18 page)

“It's all that charisma you've been building up.”

“Sure, Georgie. She really is after me, though. I hope she keeps her mouth shut. I got enough trouble upstairs. We got enough trouble all over. I went to a meeting of that big central renewal wingbat, the mayor's planning and housing council, and I looked around very careful waiting to make my little appeal. And I saw that one guy sitting on the board is the president of the alumni association of Inland, and another is on the board of trustees, and another is a politician they gave an honorable degree to last June, and another is vice-president of Curtis Brothers. When I finally got to make my little presentation, I couldn't get much oomph in it.”

Why didn't he tell Harlan about Vera? Since Harlan married they hardly talked about women. Still he had the feeling he was keeping something back. Come on now, nothing had happened. Tell him about what? The jazz threw mandala patterns shifting and slowly turning on the air between them. Sitting a few feet apart and sharing the third roach, they were close and easy in their fatigue, and it seemed pointless to bring up a thing that could scratch the skin of a good, rare moment.

Asher

Sunday, November 9

Asher woke taut, clenched. His gums felt sore, as if he had been grinding his teeth. He was not sure who he had been confronting across the desk, Sheldon Lederman or Boss Tweed. Someday he would slip and call Stan that to his face. Funny that he couldn't be sure which man it was making him squirm in the dream, they were so different. Stan had the professorial manner, softspoken, pipe smoking, big boyish, how-are-you-smile.

Whereas Lederman. Should never agree to go see him at his office. That enormous desk like a decapitated racing car, broad dully gleaming expanse of lustrous designer plastic. Then the view of the city: almost all of that wall. Sketches of garden cities and double helix skyscrapers on two walls. They waded in through his carpet, gingerly fitted themselves into the arty molded plastic chairs. He had them already. Out of their depth. Even Muriel had kept tugging at her skirt, uncertain about the angle.

He had headed the UNA delegation to argue the matter of school expansion with Lederman. But Lederman had thrown them all off balance by starting out so sympathetically, delighted to see them (beaming at Muriel of course), subtly flattering them about their expertise in neighborhood matters and then landing the punch about UNA not being the real grassroots. Chiding them gently for calling their group of professionals a grassroots organization, oh come now. Catching them smack in the middle of their class shame, of course, liberals who are afraid they aren't as real as blacks or workers. Should have challenged Lederman directly, instead of letting him operate by innuendo and nudge. Pointed out they were the people the neighborhood was being renewed to keep and to attract, and thus they damn well were the neighborhood's grassroots. How had he let Lederman catch him offguard, when Lederman's position was statistically unsound? He could prepare a case that would blast Lederman's sly aspersions to kingdom come.

Button off his pajamas. New too. Planned obsolescence. They didn't care about bachelors, sewing buttons on by two threads. He pinched his belly folds meditatively. Got up and went to brush the sweaters off his teeth. Could never decide if the electric toothbrush represented technology in the service of hygiene or his weakness in the face of gadgets. Pleasant sensation. Maybe worth it on the animal level. Buzz in the mouth. Insect noise.

He put the water on to boil and toasted Friday's bread. Tomorrow he would find out if they had landed the transistor quality control contract. Could he charge some of Schmidt's time to it? Expensive man to ride on overhead. Boss Tweed was watching his overhead. What was he supposed to do when the research money dried up? Freeze half his department? Thaw them when the money thawed? Give Mavis two more weeks and if she didn't start producing, he'd have to ax her. If the contract didn't materialize, how would he get through Monday afternoon with Boss Tweed? A bullshit line, but what? He spooned sugar into his instant coffee. The difference between the bachelor and the married man is that the bachelor gets instant coffee and an imaginary quarrel for breakfast, while the married man gets both in their true form.

Not bad. He had a dry sense of humor. “Not dry, dried!” she had screamed at him. Lederman dropping that hint about the place for a good statistician in demography studies at the University. Um, to do research again. He had been, he was twice as good as Schmidt, and here he was reduced to worrying about how to support a department like a family without birth control. Demography indeed. Get out of the ratrace and do some work again. But publish or perish, and could he still?

Letting Lederman outmaneuver him. Vulgar old swinger. Vain, posing around, giving Muriel the leonine profile. Old fraud, old gouger, speculator and board room policitian. He, Asher, had his competencies and his fields of interest or knowledge, but he never thought of himself as exceeding the sum of his parts. Which is why an ambitious manipulator like Lederman could run circles around him. But Muriel wasn't impressed with that old tomcat.

Yesterday's mail still lay on the kitchen table, including a notice that the maintenance in his co-op was going up. Again. Where did the money go? He spent as much as he had when he was spending for two. Maybe if he could get an offer from the University, he could use it to raise his ante at the office. Best to go slow, feel his way. It was a good building anyhow, architecturally interesting and comfortable, even if the central poured concrete hall did act as an echo chamber. Money, money, where it went. Down and out. Dissolved. Taxes punished the bachelor. Sometimes he thought he should start his own consulting company, but the trouble. The capital.

Asher drove to Muriel's as much to give his car a little run as to avoid walking through the snowpiled streets. If he left the car too long the engine might not start Monday. A car in the city was madness: if only there were clean efficient public transport, silent Unirails as at the Seattle Fair or bus-sized helicopters. A car was a joy briefly while new: like a wife. He studied the
Consumer Reports
roadtests for he hated being cheated, hated the idea of buying with his eyes and being manipulated by his weaknesses. Whether he was buying a car or a watch or a camera, he wanted the object to be dependable, clearly the best and biggest of its class, a New York
Times
among merchandise.

On Sunday he went to Muriel's because that day her ex-husband had the children and she was lonely. With the children away they could make love conveniently. Finally, Muriel cooked a nice Sunday dinner.

The French provincial livingroom smelled of the roast. He felt his hunger, enjoyably. They sat on the blue couch while Muriel spread the redevelopers' prospectus over the marble top of the coffeetable. He turned over the glossy pages. “They made a goodlooking job of it this time.”

“I've been on tenterhooks to see the proposals.” Her delicate perfume tickled his nostrils. Her soft pale brown hair lay sleekly against her faintly concave cheek. Muriel was a tiny graceful woman with something always tinkling at wrist or earlobe, dressed well but severely except for that flutter. They were both on the planning committee of UNA—not the usual reactionary neighborhood falange but liberal, full of professionals and dedicated to a balanced interracial community, and effective—at times. He sighed. Though a little too addicted to studies and at times a little too redolent of group therapy. Last Thursday's meeting had run till eleven thirty, with all sorts of people not even active in UNA up in arms about the renewal effort in their blocks.

“Let me tell you, I have my suspicions who was behind that attempt to pack the meeting.” At her throat an antique cameo rode with profile clear as her own. “The same reds who tried to take over the school committee are behind this.”

“Muriel …” he protested mildly. Rhetoric of her ex-husband, a Nixon man. Tedious but she was growing out of it. In time.

“I could have died for poor Dr. Palmer. Imagine that man getting up to say the doctor couldn't speak for local Negroes. As if he isn't one of our finest community people.”

About two thirds of the way through any project those people turned up objecting, indignant, ready to shout. Who are you? their eyes challenged, but if in return you asked one, Where were you at the preliminary meetings? where were you when we were sweating over plans and knocking heads with officials? he would look at you as if you were crazy. If you asked him why he hadn't joined UNA if he was so interested in his neighborhood, he would say,
Them?
What would I want with them? I work, I got no time. A blank wall.

“If you knew what that big house looked like when Dr. Palmer bought it, the money he's put in. He told me the sweetest thing. He's so pleased with the grounds and the big elms that he's taken up feeding birds—with seeds? He's fed them until he has a flock of sparrows like little butterballs, almost too fat to fly.”

“If we could have persuaded the families who fled how well men like Dr. Palmer would fit in.”

Muriel's small princess face looked wistful. “The panic! Real estate sharks going door to door, telling people, ‘They're moving in nextdoor, the neighborhood's turning. Sell while you can get your money!'”

The white inhabitants who had stayed all liked to recall the harassment, almost in ritual terms. It was a remembrance of battle and a mutual reinforcement of purpose. Staying was an act, after all, but he grew tired sometimes of congratulation.

Muriel nodded at the bay window on the street where two old frame houses dripped ugly carpentry. “If those roominghouses don't go! I was talking to the head planner yesterday. A little park would be perfect, like the one you got for your old block. He said Netty Fox was pushing the site for some of that scattered public housing she's always steaming about. Well, I said, put the public housing on
her
corner, then, right in her front window!” She turned her tiny firm chin to him, leaning closer with a subdued rustling.

“The banks won't permit it, never mind Mrs. Fox.” He patted her hand. After dinner, must. “The planners write it in, but they know it will be cut.” He had mixed feelings. When he drove past a cleared slum, chaos formed into clean towers, he was impressed by how reason and moderate expense in the public sector could improve the city. But he knew all the arguments against the building of cleaner ghettos. And everybody said, not on my corner, and every alderman said, not in my ward.

Muriel gave him a trusting smile as if he had fixed the banks for her. She had cute ways: every flick of her wrist or tilt of her head were bouquets for him. He liked that. Together they bent over the prospectus. Towheaded girls with doll buggies and freckled boys with catcher's mitts played on spanking white sidewalks under big shade trees. Crystal towers set in a park of dewy lawns. A fenced playground where slides and swings and a jungle-gym invited. Some woman had got up to ask the planner whether neighborhood kids would be allowed to use the playground. “Oh yes,” he had assured them, “until the first incident.” A suburb in the city. He did not know.

He did not like the idea of putting people out of their homes, and those at the meeting had been emotional. The University was not exactly a liberal force in the neighborhood. Its administrators had opposed UNA many times, preferring white covenants and real estate deals. Now with the University working with them instead of against them, doors opened, businessmen listened and contributed, city officials were helpful. In the past, what a roundabout course he had had to pursue when trying to get something as simple for his neighbors as a stop sign for a corner where two children had been struck. To keep that working relationship, one had to make compromises sometimes.

“I have to decide not only how to vote at the next meeting, but whether to sign a consent. My co-op is in the area.”

“But your block isn't
blighted
.”

“We're not scheduled for any demolition. We're just part of the planning area.”

Muriel beamed at the wide lawns. “I'm sure you won't have much trouble deciding.”

“I wish they'd go at things in a more democratic way.”

Muriel's potroast reminded him of his mother's and he told her so. She kept passing dishes. “The children will be sorry they missed you. They adore you. Mikey said the other day, Why does Uncle Asher have to go home? You can give him my room and I can sleep in Judy's. Isn't he a riot?” Her delicate face pinked to match the cameo at her throat.

He was embarrassed for her and forced a chuckle. “Mikey's a little devil. But a good boy.” He had thought of marrying her. Taking more potroast, he thought of it again. She had a nice house and Mikey was right: there was room for him. She was truly interested in the same things that he was. She was a good woman, settled, not about to jump out the window or rave about Relationships or start staying out late at night. “Oh yes,” he said elegiacally. “If my marriage had not … I'd have a son of my own. But dreams break as well as bones, Muriel, and no doctor knows how to set them.” A fanning of humidity disturbed his sinuses. He took more potroast and asked for bread.

Pie and icecream for dessert. The pie was warm. “So you made this yourself! Wonderful.” Even as he spoke he was surprised at himself. Actually he was sure it was from the Co-op, where just yesterday he'd almost bought the Dutch apple.

“Well.” She hesitated. “So glad you like it.”

He finished the piece with dismay. Besides, two of another man's children. After one such mistake.

As they sat on the couch she turned to him with soft warmth, but he had overeaten. Fortunately she never hinted around. They discussed the next meeting. He was mounting a slow campaign for the chairmanship. They counted his votes, and this time he lacked only one. they went through the committee looking for their next conquest and worrying how they could hold their weakest votes against the blandishments of Netty Fox. Muriel was a real helpmate, and she knew how to argue a point without antagonizing. Even that scoundrel Lederman always asked after her and perked up when she was on a delegation.