The Towers of Love (23 page)

Hugh chuckled softly. “I remember that,” he said. “But what's that got to do with you and me?”

Joe snapped forward in his chair again and put his hands on the top of his desk. “Just this, buddy,” he said. “Just this. I've always had to work for everything I got. You, and a lot of other guys I know, didn't. You had it handed to you, you were born with it. Not that I blame you for being born with it, mind you. More power to you, I say. But that's what I mean when I say I wonder if you'd even understand what I want to get out of this business. Stay small, stay small—that's your philosophy. Well, why
should
you want to grow? Why
shouldn't
you have modest aims? You've got your fortune already. You're a rich guy, and you're married to a rich girl. Well, Hugh, I want to get married some day when I'm ready, and some day I want to have children. And I want to leave my children a fortune of their own, just as big as your fortune, or even bigger. Can you understand that kind of ambition, Hugh? Because that happens to be what
I
want to get out of this business.”

Hugh studied Joe's wide, good-looking face—heavier now, but still the same face that he had known at school and college. He had never realised before that, in a funny way, Joe had always resented his family's money. “Just another rich brat, eh?” he said. “Is that what you think of me? Well, Joe, the family may have some money, but don't forget that you had to lend me money to buy into this business. So I'm not as rich as that.”

“Look,” Joe said, “don't get me wrong. Please don't get me wrong. All I mean is that you've been lucky, in ways that I haven't. I've worked, and you've had things handed to you on a silver tray. That's why maybe you have less ambition than me—and maybe that's a lucky thing. Ambition's a hard taskmaster, Hugh. And you've been lucky in other ways.”

“In what other ways, Joe?”

“Well, you're lucky to be lame,” Joe said. “Being lame, everybody has always done things for you. Sometimes I wish I was lame!”

Hugh stood up.

“Now don't get me wrong,” Joe said quickly. “Please don't get me wrong, Hugh. I didn't mean it quite that way.”

“I think your meaning was clear,” he said.

“No, look, don't get mad. My God, Hugh, you're my best friend, my oldest friend. I value your friendship very highly. It's the most important thing in the world to me, Hugh, one of the most important. I guess I was just trying to be frank with you, Hugh, when you asked me what it was I wanted—”

“You've always got what you wanted, too, haven't you, Joe? You've got your apartment on Park Avenue, you've got your fancy car, you've got—”

“I want more than that! That's all.”

“Well, good luck to you.”

“Sit down, Hugh. Please. Let's not fight, old man. Let's—”

“Don't you think the discussion's over?” Hugh asked him.

“Look, I apologise,” Joe said. “I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean it, honestly. I was upset. Don't you see, Hugh? I need you. I really do. This agency needs you, and so do I. We couldn't have come the distance that we have without you, don't you see? So it's the thought that we're disagreeing on something that upsets me. Hugh, I want to expand this business, and I want you to be a part of that expansion. I want you to help me expand. I need you to help me. What do I have to do to show you that this business needs you and I need you? Get down on my knees?”

“No, you don't have to do that, Joe.”

“And so, when you asked me what I wanted—”

All at once Hugh felt very tired. “I guess I just wasn't talking about things like that,” he said.

“Then what were you talking about?”

“I wasn't talking about material things so much as about the kind of service this agency gives, the intimacy we've established with the people we work for—”

“We can keep all that stuff, as we expand. That's why I need you—for just that sort of thing.”

“I can't be a part of a programme that I don't believe in,” he said. “I can't, and I won't be.”

“Why don't you believe in it, for Christ's sweet sake?”

“Because I feel we'd be sacrificing our integrity,” he said, “just for money.”

“You talk about integrity—” Joe began.

“I mean that our size, our very workable and manageable size, is part of our reputation. It's our whole reason for being. It's what gives us our identity, our uniqueness, our personality—” But he knew that he was defeated already.

“You talk about personality—” Joe had begun, when the phone on his desk rang. “Just a sec,” he said, and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said in his crisp, executive voice. And then, in a suddenly softer tone, “Oh, hallo. How are you? Yes. Yes, he's right here in fact. Yes, we were just now discussing—yes. Yes, I will. O.K. Sure I will. Good-bye.” He hung up the phone.

“That was your wife,” Joe said. “That was Anne.”

“Oh? What's she calling you about?”

“She's very upset, too, Hugh,” Joe said. “She's very upset about this attitude of yours—very upset. She's called me a couple of times, trying to get me to persuade you to change your mind. She feels you're dead wrong, Hugh. She feels you're about to make a major mistake.”

“Well,” Hugh said. “I'm really getting the pressure from all directions, aren't I?”

Joe had laughed softly, sympathetically. “But don't forget she's got a stake in this too,” he said. “She's got a stake in your future. She wants you to do the right thing.”

“Well, let me think about it, Joe,” he said.

“Good. You think about it. But don't think too long, Hugh. We've got to get moving—got to get started. And remember that I'm going to need your help.”

“I won't take too long deciding, Joe.”

“Good. Just remember it's the pattern of the times, Hugh. We're in an era that worships bigness. Bigness is God.”

“I'll let you know,” he said.

And, of course, he had let him know.

And on the evening of the day he had let Joe know, he had come home to the apartment to tell Anne about it.

They had gone into the little study that she always called “Hugh's study,” and which she had decorated for him in a hunting motif. The wallpaper, which she had picked out, depicted a series of hunting scenes—brown Irish setters flushing partridge from clumps of brush, hunters in tall stands of cat-tails, with guns raised towards dots of geese that flew in V's across the sky, rabbits peering from autumn brambles, mallards settling about decoys on a lake. Hunting prints also hung on the walls, against the paper, creating hunting scenes on top of other hunting scenes, and king pheasant flew across the shades of plump copper-bottomed lamps. She fixed him a drink in one of the assortment of glasses on the leatherette bar—glasses that went with the room, all painted with more miniature mallards, geese, cat-tails, setters, and partridge—and sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs opposite him.

“Anne,” he said, “I told Joe to-day that I couldn't go along with his project. I'm selling him my share of the business.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. She picked up her drink and started walking slowly back and forth across the room on the flowered rug, carrying the drink.

“Anne,” he said, “I know what you think. You think I've simply been stubborn about this—about something that really isn't very important, stubborn about some rather silly principle. But—and I don't expect you to understand this, Anne—it isn't silly to me. It's important. And Anne, do you know something? Now that it's over, I'm terribly glad. I'm terribly happy, Anne, because I know I've done the right thing. And I'm terribly excited. My God, I'm so excited my heart's pounding. I came home—my God, so excited that I was walking seven feet off the pavement! I can't remember when I've ever felt so excited about a thing, so
sure
about a thing. I feel—well, as if a whole new world were opening up for me! That's an original expression, isn't it? But no kidding, that's exactly how I feel, Anne. Anne, this is the most thrilling moment of my life—a whole new beginning, Anne—for us, Anne.” He stood up and crossed the room, stood behind her and put his arms around her. “Anne,” he said, “listen. I know things haven't gone too well for you and me lately—I know it. But do you know what the trouble has been? It's this damn' New York City life, Anne, that's been getting us—pressing in on us all around. Anne, this is going to be a whole new beginning for us. A whole new beginning. I just know it. We're just going to start fresh, Anne. Like—like just taking a big deep breath, and starting over again. Are you excited, Anne? Because I am. I've got so many plans for us. Do you know what we're going to do? We're going to go to San Francisco. You know how you've always loved San Francisco. And I'm going to get a job on one of the papers there. I've got a few contacts lined up already, Anne, and I'm going to start right in to-night, writing letters. With my advertising experience, I shouldn't have any trouble. It's something I've wanted to do all my life, Anne, and now I'm going to do it—we're going to do it. We're going to get a house—oh, maybe way up on top of Russian Hill or some place like that—with a view of that beautiful, big, god-damned bay, and the bridges—and we're going to sniff that beautiful, clean, San Francisco air, and—” He laughed suddenly. “My God, just listen to me!” he almost shouted. “But it's true—we're going to do it, Anne. And everything's going to change for us, because we're going to begin again.”

She stood, with his arms around her, unmoving.

He went to the leatherette bar and put down his drink. He spread his arms wide. “Listen,” he laughed, “it's daybreak! The sun is climbing up over the Berkeley Hills. You—you appear,” and he gestured towards her. “You appear—all in white—among the geraniums, and—”

She turned to him. “Are you out of your mind?” she asked him in a flat voice. “Have you gone totally out of your mind? I'm not going to California or anywhere else. I'd rather die first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go pick geraniums if you want to,” she said. “I made up my mind months ago that if you were going to do this thing, I was going to leave. And now you tell me you've done it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'm leaving. If you want to contact me, I'll be at Mother and Daddy's.”

And she had walked out of the room, leaving him alone in the wilderness of the wallpaper, surrounded by its furred and feathered population. For a moment he had the insane sensation that he had begun to dissolve into it, that he was disappearing, being swallowed within the wallpaper's patterned and endlessly repeated depths.

Though he no longer had much spirit for farewells, he had promised Ellen Brier that he would have a farewell lunch with her. They had had many lunches together in the past, usually at the Algonquin because it was right around the corner from the office. Of the hundred-odd people who worked at Wallace and Carey, Ellen had always been one of his favourites. She was a slim girl with short, dark hair and large, dark, grave eyes, and she was a commercial-writer in the Television Department. He liked her for her dry, quiet humour, and her easy and direct manner. In her spare time, she had told him long ago, she was writing a musical comedy. Everyone in New York, she had confessed, was writing musical comedies, and of course she had no idea whether hers would be better than anyone else's, or whether it would ever be produced, or even finished. But it was something to do in the evenings, and she liked the idea. It was about a fashion model and her agent said—well, one day if he liked she would show the script to him. And, one day, she had. One evening, when Anne was away for a regional meeting of the Junior League, Ellen had invited him up to her apartment for supper. Then, in her little apartment on Central Park West, in front of her fireplace, they had eaten spaghetti, and he had read her script. Though he knew nothing about musical comedies, he had liked the few scenes that she had finished, and he told her so. She had smiled wryly. “Well, you see what it is,” she had said. “It's just a crazy little dream of mine. And it's fun to think about.” He had told her then about the dream he had had, of working on a newspaper, and she had said, “You see? It's important that we each have our little dreams, isn't it? It doesn't matter at all whether they ever come true or not. The important thing is that we
have
them. I'm glad you have a little dream, too.”

And so, to-day, they had gone to the Algonquin again for lunch, and she had raised her cocktail to him and said, “Here's to you, Hugh, and to your future.”

“Thanks, Ellen,” he said.

“How does it feel to be one of the great unemployed?” she asked him, smiling.

“Well, it feels a little strange,” he said. “I admit it does feel a little strange. But I don't intend to have it last for very long.”

“Of course,” she said. “Of course it won't last long. Barely a minute. I just wish I were doing what you're doing.”

“Do you, Ellen. Why?”

“Because I think you're doing exactly the right thing—exactly.”

“Well, I hope I am,” he said.

“I know you are. And, in case you care, there are quite a few others at the office who think you are, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” She lit a cigarette. “And I'll tell you something else,” she said. “Joe isn't going to make it.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked her.

“I see it,” she said. “I see it in little Miss Brier's crystal ball. Joe Wallace won't ever quite make it to the place he wants. He'll try, but he'll never make it.”

“Well,” he said, “I don't wish any ill of Joe.”