Reinhart in Love (23 page)

Reinhart nodded. He was genuinely sorry he hadn't worked out in real estate, without for a moment understanding why he had not. He felt as alien in America as he had in Europe, and it was silly to suppose he would make a hit in Asia even if he got a chance to go there: he had heard that the Japanese, for example, fertilized their vegetables with human excrement.

Humbold sat down again, plucked up a pen, and ran it under his nose, as if it had a bouquet. Then he pounded his desk blotter with two fists carrying three rings.

“Durn it, bud, you don't feel no real humility before God Almighty. That takes the form of sarcasm and lack of drive. I'd say you were an atheist, didn't I know your daddy and mom had sent you to Sunny School. But why don't we ever see you at the Masons? What are you doing for your fellow man? ‘For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He writes not that you won or lost but how you played the game.'“

In one of his desk drawers Claude found a wallet-sized card on which were printed the same sentiments, and on the other side a blurb for Humbold Realty. “Carry this at all times in your billfold, bud.” He skimmed it across the desktop to Reinhart, and sank both arms into the drawer. Shortly a heap of souvenirs rose before him high as his second chin: a 1946 calendar, mechanical pencil, plastic wallet, tin cigar-holder, lighter the size of a lipstick; a vial of Alphonse de Paris cologne, two pocket notebooks, a key chain with toy-Scottie charm, a Chinese back-scratcher, a combination nail file and corkscrew, a flashlight no larger than a cigarette; a cigarette big as a cigar, in a glass tube; a cigar big as a banana, in a kind of coffin of redwood; a miniature cedar barrel marked
BOOTLEG
ROOT
BEER
; and a rubber dog who lifted pneumatic ears when his tail was manipulated. Somewhere on each of these was the legend “See Humbold Realty.”

Claude shoved the lot at Reinhart. “Take ‘em and blow, bud.” His eyes suddenly welled with tears, and he honked into a handkerchief that matched his tie. “Durn it, bud, there is a helplessness about you that gets me here.” He indicated his sternum. “I just can't shove you out in the street, you'll be run down like a rabbit.”

Anticipating his being rehired, Reinhart grew desperate: “No, I won't, Claude. My God, I was all through Europe in the war.”

“Yes, but this is serious, bud. That's what you just can't get through your coconut. This is bidniss, not them silly games like plugging Fachists, or Commonists, whatever them Heinies was at the time, not to mention the goofy Japs, who had a good thing going in novelties and should of stuck to it instead of grabbing the Philistine Islands where there ain't been a loose dollar since little David licked them with a peashooter, according to the Good Book. What's your opinion of Paul, bud?”

“Paul who?” Reinhart asked, his visions of liberty fading, his hand groping for the giant cigarette-under-glass.

“Why, Paul the Epistle. Turns out he was a Jew who made tents. You would know that if you was a Mason, along with various other shenanigans. Ever think of improving the old mind? History ain't the bunk, bud. Some of the finest bidnissmen ever lived were named the Phony Sheeans. Sounds micky, don't it? … I can't give you no more straight salary than twenty a week, and don't try to bleed me for better. But I'll pay you in green from the petty cash without writing your name on a payroll, so you can also draw another twenty in unemployment insurance and nobody the wiser. Now what happens is Vetsville is full of ex-servicemen who want to do bidniss with one of their own kind.”

Claude rose, came to Reinhart, and began to stuff his protégé's pockets with souvenirs. “Take ‘em, boy. But don't let me catch you using the smokables.” He snatched the great cigarette from Reinhart's hand. “Now as manager of Veterans' Division, Humbold Realty, you will need wheels. What happens is the Caddy dealer, who owes me a favor, throws away his waiting list to furnish yours truly with a new four-door. Wait'll you see it, bud! Wop Red, white sidewalls, Futuramic, and the radio's got three speakers, one in the trunk so's you can have music while you change a tire. Bud, come here, I want you to try on this desk for size.”

He led Reinhart to his own swivel chair and forced him into it.

“How you feel in the catbird seat, boy? Spin it! … You know how it is with cars these days. I have to give that dealer enough to send his punk kid through college, and he'd sooner cut his throat than let you off without a trade-in. But I fought him, bud. No sirreee, I held onto my old Gigantic for my pal. No, fellow, don't offer me eight hundred clams! That car goes to Bud!”

“All right, Claude. What will it cost me?” Reinhart asked skeptically.

Claude squeezed Reinhart's shoulder. “Bud, during the gas rationing I never used that heap but to run my sainted mother to the Methodist covered-dish suppers. She used to sit there holding, God bless her, a casserole of cheese fondue, saying [he went into falsetto]: ‘Claudy, you're goin' fifteen m.p.h.! I won't have it!' So I'd back-throttle to ten.”

“I just hope,” said Reinhart, “that my promotion doesn't mean I'll have to pay
you
a salary.” Claude's chair was not that thrilling, considering that it would have to be given back when he agreed to buy the car. Nor was Reinhart exactly elated over his new post. He had begun to suspect that nine-tenths of every job however grand was humdrum. Not even Claude made sales every day; even Churchill exuded more sweat than blood and tears; and Michelangelo, he read in a popular weekly, had lain on his back four years to paint the Sistine ceiling. The problem was to survive that nine-tenths of banal drudgery. This was another color of horse from what he had described to the Negro audience as the dreariness they should love. What he had meant then was misery and what he said platitudinous: nobody need be told that unpleasantness was interesting: hence that audience were criminals and his parents were hypochondriacs.

He emerged from his reflections to hear, rather than feel, Claude's index finger tapping on his crown.

“Oh bud!” the boss was calling. “Come back, bud. Face the music.” His initialed belt buckle was at the level of Reinhart's eye: a great C, with a little H inside, giving priority, American style, to the Christian name, to private enterprise and rugged individualism.

“But if I take this new job will I get stuck?” Reinhart asked, giddy with apprehension. “Can I stay available for better offers? Maybe somebody will call me from New York. I was in the Army, you know, and made certain contacts.” He stood up, passing Claude's nonplused face en route. “Oh yes, I did. Always grabbing the initiative as you do—and I'm not criticizing you for it—you assume I am a fool. I never before had so many people who wanted to tell me what to do. You civilians could stand better manners, for one thing. For another, none of you have ever been out of Ohio. What do you know of the purple fog that rises at twilight from the Devonshire moors? That's just one example, but it makes the point.”

From astonishment Claude progressed rapidly into a sort of heart attack. He clutched himself pectorally, fell into the just-vacated chair, and from a mouth that threatened to froth, called weakly: “H
₂
O!”

Reinhart galloped into the outer office, where Genevieve blocked him before he could get to the bathroom and fill a tumbler. She had undoubtedly been listening at the intercom: Claude kept his transmitter open at all times, in what now proved to be a destructive exhibitionism—for the disloyal secretary whispered: “He's faking. Demand thirty a week with the car thrown in. The tires are bald, the heater's on the Fritz, and besides he's getting the new Cad at twenty per cent below list.”

Reinhart could hardly make himself heard; he had a rather thin voice for so thick a thorax; besides, from the inner room Claude was trumpeting like a herd of elephants charging Tarzan's tree-house.

“I just realized,” he replied, “after a false start, that I'm not cut out for business. I'm going to get out of town and take up something exciting.”

Genevieve shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

She was an arrogant little person, and had not, for whatever good reason, been to college. Nowadays Reinhart was constantly surrounded by inferiors, in terms of cultivation and experience, though Genevieve did have the prettiest neck, a supple ivory column that never showed a tendon or a crease, suggesting a like condition of thigh. Her leopard vest swelled and trembled like a living pelt. He fought a compulsion to put his hands inside it and still what was jiggling there. She arched her back in further provocation.

“Well, I've got to get Claude a glass of water.”

“Uh-uh.” Genevieve inexorably stalked him into the corner beyond the washroom door. “You see, I know your secret.”

“Oh,” said Reinhart, “I was afraid you might find out.” He despaired of making her understand, for women were notoriously disloyal to friends and hysterically afraid of Negroes. Nevertheless, he bravely waded in: “The whole thing is relatively easy to explain, preposterous as it would seem.”

“Preposterous?” she said. “If I thought you meant that, and weren't just saying it because you're embarrassed, I'd slap your face.” She opened her teeth and ran her tongue along the biting surfaces. The inside of her mouth was exquisite, a pink-satin hollow ringed by an ivory picket fence. If Reinhart had to characterize Genevieve with one word, he might have chosen “clean” over “pretty,” and there was no doubt that in a skin-to-skin relationship she would be very savory.

“Oh, you don't know about Dr. Goodykuntz.” He suspected they were talking at cross purposes, as a man is condemned to do with a woman, for Genevieve here showed mock shock and shaped her mouth as if to breathe on hot soup.

Claude's sudden quiet frightened Reinhart, and he whispered: “Have you no pity? How can we take a chance on whether or not he's faking? What always makes you so certain?”

“That's just the way I am,” said Genevieve. “And I never asked you to fall in love with me. If my fiancé finds out, I can't answer for your safety.”

There, presumably, was his secret. The girl was mad. He moved as fast as he could towards the washroom, but she beat him out by a shoulder, and went inside and locked the door. Only after all that did he remember the water cooler standing there like a transparent-domed invader from outer space. So can a woman distract a man that he will forget mortal obligations. He filled a paper cone and rushed back, spilling half, to the boss.

“Gloop,”
Claude swilled the drink. “Twenty-five a week, bud, and the car for five hundred.” He looked perfectly all right; indeed, while he clutched his heart with one hand, he had been making memos with the other.

“I haven't got five hundred,” said Reinhart. “And really, Claude, I don't see how I can go on working for you if you think I'm so naïve. In the modern world if you have good manners everybody thinks you're stupid. Now to show you I'm not, here's my idea. Assign the Gigantic to Humbold Realty as a company car, thus getting a tax exemption for it. Besides, it'll save wear and tear on the new Cad.”

Claude considered that for a moment, then let his features collapse into the old anguish. He fled from chair to closet and stuck a great tongue into the mirror on the back of the door there. “You're killing me, bud. It hurts me when I laugh. You're malignant, but you don't savvy bidniss one little bit or you'd know I can't let the firm be represented by a four-year-old heap.”

“Why not? You've used it up till now.” Defiantly, Reinhart took the giant cigar from the redwood coffin and lighted it. He was making his stand here and now, and belched a great mushroom of smoke towards the boss.

Surprisingly, Claude made no objection. He explained patiently: “I was skating on thin ice, bud, and I fell through on my tokus. This firm ain't been conspicuous for sales in the last few weeks. If it ain't my old car, then it's you who jinxed me. With my big heart, though, I'm willing to try anything before I turn you out like an old dog. Always keep a positive face towards life, bud. When you're losing money, up your buying. If you get beat up once, start a fight with a bigger fella. That's the way of Jesus Christ, bud, who got out and walked on the water when his boat leaked. Nothing stopped that tough little guy, because his sainted mother was behind him all the way.”

“So was the devil,” Reinhart noted sarcastically. “Don't you remember, he said: ‘Get thee behind—'” He was interrupted by a piercing whistle from the cigar, and a second later it exploded towards the lighted end and there was a manifestation of excess smoke, very white.

Maintaining his composure, Reinhart looked over the boss's shoulder into the mirror and said nonchalantly: “In the movies a victim's face is covered with black and the cigar peels back like a banana.”

Humbold was clutching himself again, this time at his domed gut. He staggered across the room as if in a final seizure, emitting the cries of sundry jungle birds, bounced off the far wall, and caromed back to the closet, where the door was still open and Reinhart stood aside, so that Claude spun right into the hanging clothes therein. When he emerged, he was fully dressed for outdoors in a belted raincoat the color of an unborn calf; there were epaulets at his shoulders, cartridge loops on his chest, and chromium rings at intervals along the belt: he could attach law-enforcement gear in imitation of Officer Capek, or canteens of brandy if he wanted to climb Everest. He wore a rain cap to match. He was still laughing.

“Poor bud,” he bellowed. “You'll have to get up earlier in the morning to outfox Claude Humbold. You got the raise, sidestepped the car, and thought you had one on me. But I got
the laugh!
Get the point, bud?”

“No,” Reinhart answered aggressively, because he in fact did. Somehow Humbold had won.