The Husband (10 page)

She wished magazines weren’t so full of articles about satisfying your husband sexually. There must be interest in the subject or the magazines wouldn’t keep running the articles. Those letters-to-the-editor from women brazen enough to put their initials to thoughts about their marriages.

She reached over for Peter.

For as long as possible, Peter tried to ignore Rose’s hands, to feign deep sleep.

But it wasn’t possible and finally, with sadness, he turned to pay an installment on his wedlock bargain.

Chapter Five

Peter let himself into Elizabeth’s office and closed the door behind him. He was leaning against it when she looked up.

“Paul’s taking me to Chicago with him,” he said.

“Oh?”

Couldn’t she give him more than that? Yet there was a fascination in her giving so little. He gave too much. Talking, he put all the details on the line. Better her way. Left a touch of mystery.

“When?”

Good, she had spoken again; he hadn’t been forced to fill the void. Man, you’re grabbing at straws.

“Now. Paul says we’ll be stuck through tomorrow, and I don’t have a thing with me. I’ll have to buy a pair of pajamas in Chicago. Look, will you call Rose for me and tell her?”

She looked at him as if he were insane. “I think your secretary’d better phone.”

Elizabeth call Rose? What was going on in his head?

He felt the door in back of him moving and eased away from it just as Big Susan poked her head in.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, interrupting.

Peter was rather fond of Big Susan. She was five feet ten or so, which wasn’t so gargantuan, just that her method of attack, her presence, was so formidable. No one called Big Susan that to her face, partly out of courtesy and partly because of her position. She had been Paul’s right hand as long as anyone in the agency could remember. She had once been his secretary, but hardly anyone remembered that. Big Susan had a secretary of her own, as had Paul, and if you wanted to get the word on anything to Paul, you didn’t drop it to Paul’s secretary but to Big Susan’s. That was the line of communication to the top.

Big Susan lived well. It was said her salary was higher than most of the account executives, though no one knew exactly because her check, like Paul’s, was made out by the comptroller himself, not by the bookkeeping department. When Peter came to the agency, his first impulse was to dislike Big Susan, but he was won over by her wit and charm. Naturally he had wondered if she was a dike, but had decided not, mainly because he found her attractive despite her size and couldn’t imagine being attracted to a girl who wasn’t straight. “Girl” was a term one had to stretch these days when thinking of Big Susan because she was surely forty, maybe forty-five. One sometimes had the sense that she governed the agency, though her suggestions were always transmitted in Paul’s name.

“I hate to break this up,” she said, “but Paul’s almost ready.” She passed an overnight bag around the edge of the door. “I’ll brief you on the plane. Between drinks.” Winking, she said, “You’ve got thirty seconds,” and left.

Peter put the overnight bag up onto Elizabeth’s desk. Inside were a pair of size “C” pajamas, a pair of stretch socks, two white shirts, one size 15-34 and the second size 16-35, undershorts sizes 34, 36 and 38, one medium undershirt, a toothpaste, toothbrush, and razor kit. Inside the top bag was a Scotch-taped note scrawled with a felt marker in green: YOU LOOK LIKE A 15-34 AND A 34 WAIST TO ME, BUT I’M ENCLOSING OTHER SIZES IN CASE I’VE GUESSED WRONG. KEEP WHAT YOU WEAR, LEAVE THE OTHERS ON YOUR DESK. MY GIRL’LL PICK UP. RETURN THE CASE WHEN WE GET BACK. CHEERS. SUSAN.

“That’s what I call a perfect office wife,” said Peter.

“Paul’s. Be careful.”

“I’ll call you tonight from Chicago.”

He left without a further word, hurried to his office, took out the bigger shirt and the two pair of larger shorts, thought they looked awfully silly on his desk and stuffed them on top of the out box, slipped a paperback off the shelf into his briefcase and there was Susan at the door, saying, “Time.”

He followed seven or eight steps behind her toward Paul’s office, and as they passed Elizabeth’s she was at the door and whispered to him, “Don’t fight with Paul. Unnecessarily.” Big Susan turned around and said cheerfully in what Peter thought was much too loud a voice, “He’ll only be gone one night!”

The elevator behind Paul’s office dropped all three of them nonstop to the basement garage, where Paul’s chauffeur took their bags, and in seconds they were limousining through New York traffic toward Kennedy Airport. The Chrysler Imperial rode beautifully, which had one disadvantage: the silence inside was excruciating. Somehow Peter had gotten between Susan and Paul, and for a moment he wanted to shift to one of the jump seats, then thought the better of it; let it pass.

He cleared his throat.

“Chicago must be the Bermar account.”

“Right,” said Paul. And nothing else.

Peter wished he could turn and look at Paul, but that would have been impossibly awkward, so he tried to reconstruct Paul from memory. How little one remembers the specific features of someone known for years. A craggy face, visible cheekbones, a larger than average face, conspicuous ears, eyebrows thick like wild black weeds, a strong face. Did the skin sag at the jawline? Paul was past fifty now.

“Yes?” Paul was saying.

Idiot, he had actually turned to look at Paul. Make up something quick.

“What about Bermar?”

Susan put her hand on his arm. “I’ll brief you on the plane.”

It was unlike Paul to be so silent. The Bermar account was in trouble, but why was Peter going along instead of Coolidge? Coolidge was probably in Chicago already; maybe Coolidge had sent for Big Daddy to help. Big Daddy took Big Susan. Why Peter? He knew about Bermar mainly from a few quick words at meetings and from the ads themselves, which weren’t the agency’s best, but what could you do with a car rental system that was third when the number one and number two were playing cutsy with each other in the public prints and had five or six times the money to spend?

Why was Paul so damn silent?

While they were checking in at the airport, Paul went off to the men’s room for a moment, and Peter quickly asked Susan what the hell was up with Paul.

“He takes two Marazines,” she said, “which he shouldn’t, and two Miltowns, which he shouldn’t, but flying still frightens him, and the combination turns him off long enough to get there.”

So pills accounted for Paul’s silence! Peter had thought Paul was angry at him, that Paul was worried about the Bermar account or some mysterious agony. The answer was so simple, reasonable, and yet—he looked at Susan. She was lying. There was something else on Paul’s mind.

They entered from the front of the plane, where some faded stretch of red carpet led to the stairs. Some promotion man, somewhere long ago, had thought of that. He was probably working somewhere else, maybe for another airline, trying to come up with something to sell in the ads because fares were the same, and if you couldn’t buy price, what else could you buy except destination and some gimmick?

The first-class seats were much wider than the ones Peter was accustomed to. He was struck by how easily Big Susan had managed to get Paul into the seat in the row behind them so that Peter and Susan would sit together. So Paul could eavesdrop? It didn’t make sense. What could Peter give away? He didn’t even know why they were going.

First class really didn’t make sense either, considering the price difference. A short time in a wider seat, a bit more attention, drinks served faster, off the plane a bit faster, not much really.

It wasn’t money they were spending, Peter thought. You didn’t build equity in an advertising agency. An agency sold service, ideas, built nothing solid that could go on independently of the people who created the ideas, performed the services. An agency was as good as its people, who played musical chairs because you got ahead by switching agencies, not climbing within one, and after a while the money didn’t matter, only the power, the freedom, and there wasn’t much of either because power was really in the client’s hands. An agency was as affluent as its clients, but they could leave quickly, one, two, all, and how many had a sense of loyalty or even habit strong enough to resist the Pied Pipers from other agencies, the new fads, the “in,” the chic, the popular? And so if an agency made money, it spent it on such things as first-class fares because it gave the beneficiaries a brief sense of importance as they headed toward their clients, where deference was expected.

The plane was starting to move, and Peter was suddenly startled by Big Susan’s hand terribly close to his lap. Then she pointed up. He hadn’t observed the seatbelt sign. He quickly buckled his, thanking her, and wished the hostess would hurry the first drink.

It was early to be drinking. Thank God it was customary in airplanes.

The jet engines were now at a maximum; he knew the sounds well enough. And then they were hurtling down the runway, gathering speed as they went past the point of no return, and he had the sudden feeling that everything he knew about flying had come from stories and that planes loaded with nearly a hundred passengers, as this one was, couldn’t possibly get off the ground, and yet the speed increased and it would only be seconds before they’d smash into the barriers at the end of the runway, and what would be left for Rose and the children? He had not bought insurance at the airport and it was now too late, the tail elevated, the impact inevitable, and suddenly the ground outside the window started to fall away and he knew that they were airborne.

How many generations would it take before a man felt natural in the air? In the thirties, when Peter was a boy, the infrequent sound of an airplane overhead was always cause for the kids to stop, even in the middle of a ball game, and look up until the plane had passed. Kids no longer looked up unless a jet was particularly noisy or a helicopter flew particularly low. Would Jonathan and Margaret fly with greater ease? The statistics were in favor of flight; mile for mile cars were more lethal, and yet cars, like trains, traveled on the ground. The fear of flight was in the mind, impervious to statistics, resistant to fact.

The suburbs of New York were now game-sized rectangles of row houses laid in parallel lines, neat as the fields would be farther west.

“Good morning,” said the loudspeaker, “this is your captain. We will be flying at twenty-three thousand feet against a slight head wind and should be landing at O’Hare in two hours and five minutes. There’s a drizzle in Chicago but it may be gone by the time we get there.” The sound clicked off. Bored voice, the captain’s. Flying for him, thought Peter, once held the greatest excitement; now a taxi driver, New York to Chicago, Chicago to New York. Planes were metal, clouds were weather, and what waited at the end of the line was not adventure but retirement.

“Same,” he said to the stewardess when Big Susan ordered Scotch.

“Before you get sotted,” said Susan, “let me fill you in.”

“Fill,” said Peter.

“In Chicago, Paul will refer to you as Dr. Carmody.”

When Peter was still in school, before the war headed off his Ph.D., he had looked forward to being called “Doctor,” not as a learned title but as an appellation likely to be mistaken for its medical equivalent. Years of exposure to doctors tarnished the effect. Turning his sudden title over in his mind, he found none of the old pleasure in it.

“Hey, come back,” said Big Susan.

“Sorry.”

“H. Q. Wilson, who—”

“I know who.”

“Okay. He’s the reason we’re going to Chicago.” She turned to see if Paul were listening. Peter wished he could turn, too.

“H. Q. Wilson runs Bermar with two tight fists. Bermar’s doing all right, thank God, but H. Q. owns a big slice of a semiconductor business on the side in Texas, and the competition in semiconductors has been ferocious. All the competing semiconductors have about the same quality, and haggling is all on price or payoffs. H. Q. doesn’t run the Texas Company, he just counts on it for his biggest money. And so now he takes it out on Bermar, which means us. He also takes it out on his wife and kids and has been going to a headshrinker for nearly two years. It’s one of those late-in-life loves when a noneducated, nonintellectual like H. Q. gets involved with Freud after fifty and becomes completely shrink-oriented. He discusses our proposed campaigns on the couch and admits it. It’s like going to a fortune teller, you know? H. Q. is Coolidge’s account, but Coolidge told too many headshrinker jokes to H. Q. before H. Q. got the bug. Coolidge hasn’t any face left. That’s why Paul is flying out with an industrial psychologist like you.”

Peter looked at Big Susan as if she were nuts.

“Why are you looking at me like I’m nuts?” she asked.

“What the hell do I know about industrial psychology? I couldn’t open my mouth.”

“Paul doesn’t want you to open your mouth. He’ll introduce you, make his pitch, and every question he asks you will have an obvious yes-or-no answer. You can even shake or nod your head if you’re shy about one-word answers. Look, all you are on this trip is a warm body that happens to look like an industrial psychologist.”

“Why couldn’t Paul just hire one?”

“Too risky. He might say something.”

She patted his hand. “Leave it to Paul.”

Peter couldn’t help it He turned around. Paul was fast asleep, a half-finished drink in his hand.