The MacGuffin (4 page)

Druff enjoyed these reveries, the long stretch of his incorporeal cock-and-bull pipe-dream life. It wasn’t even wishful thinking. Not the press-conferenced, carefully worded announcement of his candidacy, or his campaign speeches, or the debates, or his acceptance speech, or even his address to the nation when he took the oath of office at his inaugural. None of it was. Indeed, it was only a sort of mental doodling, what you catch yourself doing with a pencil while the other guy is speaking. There was nothing ta-pocketa-pocketa about it. The only voice, the only sound he heard, was his own.

(And didn’t it really come down, always, to one tired man’s extinguished or diminishing capacities? Because, like he said, enough had already happened to him. If the truth were known, if nominated he would not run, if elected he would not serve.)

Now, about that dead Lebanese girl.

He didn’t actually mean kickback, not kickback as in payoff. He supposed (on closer examination) he meant something fishy, things rotten in Denmark. It mightn’t be bucks changing hands here (though money, Druff knew, along with that attenuated man’s diminishing capacities and Druff’s old rule of traffic and threats to tow, was what it almost always came down to) but the buck, some paper trail of deniability. What was all that malarkey about municipal stone and neutral architectural styles? Or the bag guy’s conditions, his objection to using any but city contractors, the dig about that traffic signal being an attractive nuisance? Druff was an old-timer, that rotten fish-stink he smelled was probably only just ass. No matter how you covered it, or what you covered it with, a little something always came through.

“By God, Mrs. Norman,” he told his receptionist/secretary over the intercom, “the thing I can’t take about this job is the machinations. I mean, I’m a politician, a political appointee anyway, you think I’d be used to it. I sure as hell ought to be, but all this cat-and-mouse gives me the headache. Look up”—he read a business card—“Hamilton Edgar, for me, will you, kid? See can you find out when his appointment was scheduled?”

“Hamilton Edgar?”

“The lawyer the university sent out. When did he go on our dance card?”

He heard male laughter.

“That you out there, Double-O-Seven?”

“It’s Dick, Commissioner.”

“Carry on, then.”

“He phoned this morning, sir.”

“Ah,” Druff said.

“Is that important, Commissioner?”

“Don’t rightly know, Dick, can’t rightly say. I’ll tell you this much—hold on a min. Who else is out there besides you and Mrs. Norman? Any armed folks?”

“No sir, Commissioner, just me and Mrs. Norman.”

“Do you want me to come in, Commissioner Druff?”

“What’s that, Mrs. Norman? No no,” the commissioner said, “it’s getting on toward quiet time.”

Now, thought Druff, about that dead Lebanese girl. About that dead Lebanese girl
really.

He knew her. Well,
knew
her. He’d met her. She’d been out to the house a couple of times. Mikey had brought her over. (His son Michael. Thirty years old his last birthday, it was Michael himself who insisted people still call him Mikey. I told you, Druff thought, enough has already happened to me.) And introduced him to Su’ad al-Najaf. (“Call her Suzy, Daddy.”) This would have been months before the accident. A woman in one of those massive, all-in veil/shawl/head-to-toe arrangements—what were they,
chadors?
—all wrapped up like the Nun of the World. She reminded him of that spokesterrorist on TV in the days of the Carter administration—the Georgian was right, RD thought; he’d have handled it about the same way himself—when Iran held the fifty-two American hostages, the one always out by the embassy gates where the demonstrators shouted their slogans. “Mary” her name was, always set off in quotes as though the networks were protecting the innocent. This one was a sloganeer, too. She had her own Fourteen Points. More, probably.

And had taken them (though Druff was certain from the way his son beamed up at her during her presentation that he’d heard it before, that he listened to her recitation as if she were his protégée and he’d had a hand in helping her prepare it, grinning, moving his lips) through the history of the Sunni-Shiite discord, telling them about Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, Ali’s kid, Hussein, the Imam’s martyrdom by the troops at Karbala, the enmity between the Shiites and Abdul Wahhab. To Druff, already lost, the whole thing sounding a little like the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys. She’d delivered the information neutrally, with a sort of willful dispassion, though Druff guessed at once—the
chador
was a clue—she was full-blooded Shiite.

“Well,” Druff said when she’d finished and looked toward him for a decision on the merits, “it all sounds to me like your typical power grab. We see it time and again down at the Hall.”

“Really?”

“Time and again. Year in, year out.”

“Is that so? Really?”

“Oh yeah. Sunrise, sunset.”

(Well, Nun of the World. She’d been standing during her discourse, backlit by a low-standing chrome high-intensity lamp. He could see her shape where it came away from her garment as if the
chador
were an X-ray photograph. She wasn’t wearing underwear. He saw Shiite snatch. Mikey beamed, and the commissioner wondered if his son might not have had a hand in that, too.)

“Perhaps you’d care for some candy, Su’ad,” Rose Helen suggested.

“No,” she said. “Thank you, but it is forbidden. There are often liqueurs in American candies. A Muslim may not eat them.”

“This is a Hershey’s,” his wife said. “All it has is almonds.”

Su’ad smiled but shook her head. Indeed, she seemed to take a sort of delight in turning down
all
the Druffs’ hospitality, declining whatever was offered as if it were a snare. She turned down their fruit, refused their supper. And, though she agreed to take tea—which she made no move to drink—with them in the living room, she rejected the comfortable armchair to which his son had shown her and sat instead on a kind of stool.

They talked (Su’ad drawing him out on the issues) about the national interest, world affairs, the big geopolitical stuff. He tried to tell the girl he was merely a humble City Commissioner of Streets. Su’ad would have none of it and dismissed his demurrers as if his modesty were only more Druff hospitality—poisoned grapes, tainted chocolate. There was just so much Druff would take, but when the young Lebanese rose from her stool and, looking like some feral Mother Courage, resumed her plantigrade in front of the lamp, he relented and agreed to take a few more questions. Druff, his mind on automatic while his glands took notes—he thought he could make out thighs, bush, and, when she turned, the heavy, flowing principle of breasts—drew upon the various white papers of his imagination for his answers, from the presidential trial balloons he’d floated on taxpayers’ time in his office, from his appearances on “Meet the Press,” “MacNeil/Lehrer,” “Face the Nation,” diplomatic, vague as the best of them, forceful as any, evasive as most. While discussing some options which might lead to a possible solution to the problem of the West Bank, he felt an unaccustomed erection stir in his pants and sit in his lap and Druff brought the press conference to an end.

Mikey was beaming at all of them now, at Su’ad for her tricky questions, at Druff for, well—who knew? It could have been anything—the hard-on insinuated into his dad’s pants or the way the commissioner had sidestepped Su’ad’s earnest inquiries. He might even have been beaming at Rose Helen for the drama he’d introduced into their living room. (All three had ringside seats at the shadow show.)

The second time his son brought her over she stayed the night, sleeping with Mikey in his bed. Druff made a mental note about the gaucheness, the erratic behavior of foreigners on the other guy’s turf. (This might turn out to be useful, he thought, the next time he scheduled a summit conference.) No, but really, he thought, there
is
something disproportionate and inept about her actions. Su’ad (maybe the kid had said something to her), so suspicious and reticent about accepting anything from them when she’d been there the first time, now made outright demands. “Excuse me,” she said, coming into the living room and passing before the low lamp—now off—where she’d paced and posed her angry questions on the occasion of her first visit, “I stripped these off Michael’s bed. Where do you keep clean ones?” She held out some sheets and pillowcases like a soiled laundry. “Tell me, I’ll change them myself.”

“The nerve,” Rose Helen told Druff later that night. “Did you hear her? ‘Where do you keep clean ones?’ I changed that bed yesterday.”

“Sure,” Druff said, “I agree with you. She calls our Mikey ‘Michael.’ ”

“Hi, Mom. Morning, Daddy,” his son greeted them, grinning, when he came into the kitchen with Su’ad for breakfast the next day.

“No coffee,” Su’ad said. “American coffee is always so weak.” And wouldn’t touch the juice Rose Helen poured because it was frozen, not fresh. Did they have Raisin Bran? Oh, good, but that was too much. Yes, that was more like it, but could Rose Helen skim off the raisins with a spoon?

Mikey beamed.

“Enjoy, enjoy. Our tent is your tent,” the commissioner wanted to tell her, if not on his own then on his wife’s poor behalf. “Just don’t push it.” But checked himself, didn’t, because he was curious, wanted to understand the sheer logistics of the thing, how she would handle it, see how it was actually done, be there when the food was brought to the veil, introduced into her mouth. (She unhooked the thing was all there was to it.) Sure, thought the City Commissioner of Streets, it attaches. I should have known. If it’d been a snake it would’ve bit me. And he marveled (who would have tested the municipal waters for safe chlorine levels and pulled the stop signs where they weren’t needed and permitted folks to pay their fines by mail, who discovered the Fourteen Points and
should
have known) at the simple savvy instincts of arrangements. And maybe ought even to have guessed, backlighting or no backlighting, the absence of underwear. As he had proposed other important political issues and instances. (Don’t hassle the constituency. Be sensible, use common sense, don’t stand on ceremony, do the right thing.) As, even distracted, and even while his speechifying was otherwise engaged, his cock had speculated a soft scaffolding of hair above her crotch, surmised nipples, and, last night, beside Rose Helen in bed, before falling away to sleep, he had overtaken his son (because she’d nothing to lose, wouldn’t have cared, the few thin, intervening walls between their rooms just so much more backlighting), still counseling caution and patience and wait until the old folks are asleep, worked at it and worked at it and finally managed to pull himself off.

(There was nothing Oedipal about it, no fancy spin, no English on his consciousness. He wasn’t jealous of the kid. Not to the point where it caused anger or pain or cost him votes or anything. When she’d thrown him into hard-on that time, it had been soft-core, an honest, old-fashioned, platonic hard-on, one he’d never have to deal with in
real
life, and which, if it came right down, would come right down.)

Only what (this part old Druff, outside his parentheses, wide awake, seeking answers) could Miss al-Najaf possibly see in his beaming boy, unless it was the beamer’s connection—God forgive me, old Bob Druff prayed sincerely, my blood heresies, for I
know
this part’s a sin—to the mayor’s own personal officially designated City Commissioner of Streets? Because if a man—this floated later, after the fact, now, in his office thrown in; Druff, in the wake of the bagman fellow, calling upon himself to think about that dead Lebanese girl, about that dead Lebanese girl
really
—could have spies, then surely he’d have to qualify for them, come equipped with all the secrets, plans, codes, microfiche, whatever the spyworthy MacGuffin paraphernalia was, whatever got slipped into Cary Grant’s pocket without his knowledge or Jimmy Stewart picked up by mistake when the girl switched briefcases on him.

But for the
life
of him…

And recalled how just then Dick had honked the horn on the limo and Su’ad, glancing up toward the sound, rushed down the last of her de-raisined Raisin Bran.

“That’s my driver,” Druff had explained.

“Oh,” said Su’ad, muffled, the little face bib reattached, her lips, teeth and jaws and other private parts decent again, only the tiny strip of self between her brow and nose visible, “you have a
driver.
Good. I’m late for class. You can drop me off. But first we’ll have to stop by my dorm.” (Sure, Druff had thought, she has to change her
chador.)

So, he thought, he’d managed to place Su’ad and his spy together, within—what?—ten or so feet of each other in the long limousine. What have we, what have we, he wondered and, when he couldn’t figure it, decided it would be a good time to break for lunch.

Stopping off first at Brooks Brothers to pick up his suit. Reminded of the errand by his driver (though he already remembered and it wasn’t necessary) as they left the office. (Well, thought Druff, what a heap of trouble it must be to know your man. Though, he thought, if they
really
knew me—Rose Helen; my spy guy, Dick—they could save their breath. I’m a politico. A politico never forgets a face or a chore.) And reflected on the streak—streak, hell, swath—of laziness that must line his being, recalling the spasm of irritation he always felt under the burden of such chores, his fettered, bothered spirit and all the mucked floors and clutter of his littered personal household.

His suit. His suit was an example.

Druff was a difficult fit. He’d never worn clothes well and now he felt a sort of physical disgrace whenever he saw himself in photographs. Dressed, he put himself in mind of some clumsy, human chimera—a gray, unformed behind and a slack, powerless belly and something off plumb about the shoulders that sloughed his right suspender—he called it his brassiere strap—and sent it sliding off his shoulder and halfway down inside his suit sleeve when he moved. His posture was shot. (It looked, his posture, as if it had taken a direct hit.) Well, he supposed it wasn’t his size or weight—he was lighter, even slimmer, than he’d been in years—so much as his time of life, living along the cusp of the elderly, his body abandoning itself and his chest caving and his torso sinking, lamed, skewed, going down like a ship—like a ship, yes; that was exactly the staved-in sense of himself he had—the cut of his cloth leaking lifeblood.