Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (28 page)

“Either Edward or your grandmother lied!” Betsy said suddenly, as Tom stopped the car in front of the house. “I know it was Edward! Everything’s going to turn out all right!”

“Don’t count on it, baby,” he said.

For some reason he didn’t want to go into the dim old house. Instead, he walked alone into the tall grass toward the distant row of pines. In the distance the smooth surface of the Sound glittered. The children bounded after him until Betsy called them back. “Leave your father alone,” she said.

It’s funny, he thought. I’m always sure things are going to turn out badly, and, damn it, they usually do.

“Everything’s going to turn out all right!” Betsy always said.

Sure, he thought, we’ll live here a year or so while this case is being decided, and then Edward will get the house and slap a bill for back rent on us. And we’ll have lawyers’ bills and court costs to pay. And the only job I’ve got now is sitting all day behind a desk doing nothing.

What will happen if we lose this place, and run up a lot of bills, and I get fired? he thought. What will we do? And what will happen if Maria makes trouble?

I can always get a job, he thought. Dick Haver would give me a job again. I can always get a job somewhere.

Maybe, he thought. If Hopkins fired me six months after I was hired, people would want to know why. And if there were any publicity about Maria–if she made any charges–none of the foundations would touch me. And what the hell other kind of work am I trained for?

I could go back in the Army, he thought. They’d make me a major. Good pay, travel, education, and security. Grandmother could look
down from heaven and be real proud of me–she could talk to the angels about the family major and be honest.

Grandmother, he thought–by God, what kind of woman was she? Did she promise Edward her estate just to make sure she would have service the rest of her life? And was she afraid to tell me, unwilling to suffer the slightest unpleasantness? Did she play it both ways, getting the fun of telling me she was leaving me everything and at the same time wringing the last drop of ease out of life? Was she, when you come right down to it, only an evil, pretentious, lying old woman who could be expected to beget nothing but evil, a suicide, and a . . .

This is ridiculous, he thought–that’s one thing I won’t do. Money isn’t that important. I’m tough. I can always get a job. I can go back to the Army. Travel, education, security. Times like these are made for me–a tough bastard who knows how to handle a gun. And I wouldn’t even have to do that. If worse came to worst, I could dig a ditch, I could operate an elevator like Caesar, and in heaven Grandmother could say, “My grandson is in the transportation business.”

It’s absurd to think of these things, he thought. I could get a job in an advertising agency. I’ll write copy telling people to eat more corn flakes and smoke more and more cigarettes and buy more refrigerators and automobiles, until they explode with happiness.

I shouldn’t get excited, he thought. It doesn’t really matter. Here goes nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Maybe it will turn out all right, he thought; maybe it really will. Betsy says you have to believe everything will turn out all right, even if it doesn’t. You can’t go on worrying all the time; it has to stop someday. You can’t really believe the world is insane; you have to believe everything’s going to turn out all right. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. I shall grow old gracefully, and my children will all grow up happily and healthily, and everything’s going to be fine; it is ridiculous that optimism should always sound false.

He wondered suddenly whether the young German in the leather jacket who had stood negligently holding his rifle and coughing had been an optimist. And he wondered whether the girl or woman who had written the man in the leather jacket the letter on thin, blue, faintly scented stationery had had faith that everything was going to turn out all right. And how about the other men he had killed? How about the man who had run zigzagging across the beach, while Tom
moved the machine gun up on him, the bullets kicking up the sand behind him, until the man had sagged with the blood pouring out of his mouth like a long tongue? Had he had faith? In what? And how about Mahoney? And Maria, who right now, perhaps, might be trying to raise her son alone?

Maybe they had no faith, Tom thought. Maybe they were like me, always expecting disaster, surprised only when it doesn’t hit. Maybe we are all, the killers and the killed, equally damned; not guilty, not somehow made wise by war, not heroes, just men who are either dead or convinced that the world is insane.

He felt someone pulling his trouser leg and looked down. Janey was there, telling him that lunch was ready. She had a worried expression on her face. Her hand was soft as a dove in his as he led her into the house.

T
HE IMPORTANT THING
is to make money, Tom thought as he took the train into New York on the following Monday. The important thing is to create an island of order in a sea of chaos–somebody very bright had said that, somebody whose name he had forgotten, but whose writings he had studied at college. And an island of order obviously must be made of money, for one doesn’t bring up children in an orderly way without money, and one doesn’t even have one’s meals in an orderly way, or dress in an orderly way, or think in an orderly way without money. Money is the root of all order, he told himself, and the only trouble with it is, it’s so damn hard to get, especially when one has a job which consists of sitting behind a desk all day doing absolutely nothing.

On his way up to his office in the elevator that morning, he did not see Caesar–he was grateful for that. And he hadn’t been sitting behind his desk doing nothing for more than fifteen minutes when the interoffice communication box crackled and buzzed. He switched it on.

“Rath?” Ogden’s voice whispered hoarsely.

Tom turned up the volume control. “Good morning,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Can you fly down to Atlantic City this afternoon–the Stockton House Hotel? I’ve just heard that the place is filling up with conventions, and I want to make sure we have the proper accommodations for Mr. Hopkins on the fifteenth.”

“Sure I can go,” Tom said. He was so grateful to be given something to do that his voice sounded ridiculously eager.

“I want you to make all the arrangements, both for the rooms and the speech. Check the speaker’s platform. Find out just what room his speech is scheduled for, exactly where it is, and what door he should enter.”

“I will!” Tom said. He found himself speaking with exclamation points, like Ralph Hopkins.

“Check the amplifying equipment, and if it isn’t good, make the hotel fix it. Be sure there’s a lectern–Mr. Hopkins likes to stand behind a lectern with enough space on it to open a ten-by-twelve-inch notebook. Are you taking notes?”

“Right!” said Tom, scribbling furiously.

“He likes the lectern four feet five inches from the floor,” Ogden continued, “and he likes the mike the same height, to the right of the lectern, not in front of it. There will be only the mike for the loudspeaker–this won’t be broadcast.”

Tom was not surprised at that. For the president of a broadcasting company to have his speech broadcast, even if he wanted maximum publicity, would be shooting fish in a barrel. The executives of broadcasting companies yearn for space in magazines and newspapers, and the publishers of magazines and newspapers yearn for radio and television coverage.

“I’ve got it,” Tom said.

“Now about his rooms. Get a suite of three. He likes a hard mattress. Try out the mattress–he hates a soft one.”

“Right,” Tom said.

“But it shouldn’t be lumpy. Don’t hesitate to make the hotel get you a good one–hard but smooth.”

“Check,” Tom said.

“Immediately after the speech, a bartender should be on duty in the living room of Mr. Hopkins’ suite, and he should be equipped to
serve fifty people anything they want. He should remain on duty for the rest of the evening if necessary.”

“Got it,” Tom said.

“Now about flowers. Mr. Hopkins sometimes gets hay fever, so be sure there’s no goldenrod or anything like that around–sometimes they put it in fall decorations. And he detests chrysanthemums. He likes roses–long-stemmed roses. Be sure there are several dozen around his rooms.”

“Right,” Tom said.

“And be sure he gets a good bedroom suite. Mr. Hopkins’ rooms all should be facing the sea. Three rooms, with the living room big enough to hold fifty people comfortably–he detests crowded rooms. We’ll also need single rooms for you, me, and Miss MacDonald on the same floor, all reserved for September 15th.”

“Fine,” Tom said.

“Another thing. Mr. Hopkins will want an electric refrigerator and a few bottles of Scotch in his bedroom. He doesn’t like to have to keep calling room service.”

“I’ve got it,” Tom said.

“There should be a large-screen television set and a radio in his bedroom.”

“I’ll get them.”

“We’ll want a man with a wire recorder to record Mr. Hopkins’ speech–he likes to hear it played back.”

“Will do.”

“Make sure the local press is alerted. Our public-relations department will be sending them advance releases, but it helps to drop in and chat with them.”

“I’ll do it,” Tom said.

“I guess that’s about all–in general, make sure everything’s set for Mr. Hopkins. Call me when you get back. Tell the travel department to get you a plane ticket.”

Before Tom could say “Right” again, Ogden snapped off his voice box. Tom started to telephone Betsy to say he wouldn’t be home that night, but before he got the call through, the voice box sputtered again. This time it was Hopkins. “Tom,” he said, “could you come up to the apartment for dinner tonight?”

“Bill Ogden just asked me to go to Atlantic City to arrange hotel accommodations for your speech,” Tom said.

“Oh, fine, but see me when you get back, will you?”

“Sure,” Tom said, hoping Hopkins would tell him what he wanted. Instead, Hopkins said cheerily, “Have a good trip,” and the voice box was silent.

That afternoon Tom boarded a plane and sat down in one of the comfortably upholstered seats. As the plane gunned its engines and began the familiar headlong, all or nothing, rush down the runway, he fastened his safety belt and leaned back, still wondering what Hopkins wanted to see him about. Anyway, I won’t have to jump this time, he thought–this time I’m on my way to test a mattress and arrange for long-stemmed roses. He started to laugh. I’ll get roses with the longest god-damn stems in the whole world, he thought.

The hotel was a large one, twenty stories high, without a room to rent for less than twenty-two dollars a night, and please make reservations well in advance. Tom looked up the manager and found him eager to co-operate in making things satisfactory for Ralph Hopkins. The right sort of lectern was procured, and the loud-speaker system proved suitable. The manager felt that a bridal suite, ornately furnished with pictures of French courtiers on the wall, was just the thing for Mr. Hopkins. Ceremoniously Tom lay down on the large double bed and pronounced the mattress too soft. Four housemen quickly brought another. Feeling like Goldilocks in the house of the Three Bears, Tom pronounced it too lumpy. Grumbling, the four housemen brought a third mattress, which Tom decreed just right.

“I want the stems
really long
,” he said to the hotel florist. “There ought to be about four dozen roses on a table in the living room and two dozen in the bedroom.”

“You can rely on me,” the florist said.

By seven o’clock in the evening Tom had completed his arrangements. He went to the hotel bar and ordered a Martini. It was an ornate circular bar, in the center of which a lighted pyramid of bottles revolved slowly. Somewhere in a near-by room an orchestra was playing dance music. Suddenly a group of young people in evening clothes swept into the bar and sat down at tables near Tom. “I don’t
really
believe you, Harry,” a young girl not more than twenty said to her escort, “but I thank you just the same.”

The sight of the young couples and the sound of the dance music made Tom feel suddenly old. He looked at the couple nearest him.
They’re not more than twenty, or at the most twenty-one, he thought. My God, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, they couldn’t have been more than ten years old! And when Betsy and I met, back in 1939, they were seven years old!

The band in the next room began to play a waltz. It had been in a hotel that Tom had met Betsy, a hotel in Boston with a big bar and a dance band and crowds of young people in evening clothes. It had been in the fall of 1939, just a few weeks before the Christmas holidays, in the best hotel in Boston, in the grand ballroom of which Betsy had had her coming-out party.

“When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls . . .” That had been the song that year. He had never liked it much at the time and could never have expected that his mind would choose it as one of the things to remember, probably for the rest of his life.

Nineteen thirty-nine! My God, the world has changed since then, he thought–it’s enough to make a man feel a million years old! In the fall of 1939, Hitler had just invaded Poland. The experts had been saying that the Polish Lancers and General Mud would stop him, but by the time Betsy had had her coming-out party, Poland had fallen, and the experts had turned to saying that now France would stop Hitler, the French Army was the finest in the world. The experts had also been saying that the United States would not get into this war. It had been then Tom had started to acquire a permanent disrespect for all experts and to equate pessimism with wisdom. Almost ever since he could remember, he himself had been sure there would be a war, and that the United States would get into it. At Covington Academy, way back in 1935, the boys had even had an organization called “The Veterans of Future Wars” which had demanded soldiers’ bonuses before death instead of after. The pacifists had been printing pictures in magazines showing a wounded soldier, and the caption had said, “Hello Sucker!” But the boys had not been confused. They had known for a long while that regardless of what anyone said, war was coming. They had been offended by the picture of the wounded soldier with the caption calling him a sucker, and they had also been horrified at a picture book in the library with, the grim and then prophetic title, “The First World War,” but they had not talked about it much. They had played football and baseball, they had organized a mandolin club and gone to see Ginger Rogers in the movies, and
they had waited without any confusion at all. Only the experts had been confused.