The urge to expose to his co-workers the hidden reasons for his leaving Longevity Life had clashed with his pledged word to hold has tongue, and the resulting tension had so tautened his muscles that he could not have endured any more of that ceremony without actually collapsing temporarily. His sitting there at his table so quietly and knowing that within an hour a thirty-years’ relationship would, against his will and in spite of his protest, irrevocably terminate had been like watching a knife whose sharp edge of blade was nearing a bared nerve....
To avoid meeting his erstwhile associates, he sought to leave the hotel by a side entrance. He came to the head of a rear stairway and paused, gazing broodingly down at the descending sweep of wide, carpeted steps. He was alone. Slowly his left hand reached inside his coat and his fingers touched the tip ends of a row of four automatic pencils—black, red, blue, and green—clipped to an inner pocket. Whenever he was distraught or filled with anxiety, he invariably made this very same compulsive gesture which he had developed in some obscure and forgotten crisis in his past; his touching those pencils always somehow reassured him, for they seemed to symbolize an an inexplicable need to keep contact with some emotional resolution whose meaning and content he did not know....
Yes; his leaving that banquet had been indefensible and irrational. He had not only broken his promise to Warren to stick it out, but he had revealed himself as a man who could not keep a grip upon himself. Yet he knew that his running out had another and deeper meaning. In fleeing from that banquet room, he had been really trying to flee from himself; that banquet room had been but an objective symbolization of a reality which he, at that moment, had wanted more than anything else on this earth to avoid. And the reality that had so frightened him was so completely himself and his own past life that he could only feel it, suffer it; he couldn’t know it, master it...
Squeezing the flat box in his right palm, he crept down the stairs like a criminal. He’d been discarded, scrapped; he was outdated, no longer of any use to the company he’d helped to build. Sure; he could easily get another job; he was known far and wide in the insurance world as an A-1 executive, as a cracker-jack who always delivered the goods. But that wasn’t the point. He knew Longevity Life from A to Z, better than he knew himself, and to see his own company toss away a man of his value—he was sure that he’d have felt the same way about it if it had been someone else!—made him furious. He wanted to spit as he recalled those lying, oily phrases spewing from Warren’s thin lips—Warren, who had wanted him out of the way more than any of the others! He was deadwood that they’d gotten rid of; he’d been pensioned off. True; he’d drawn a handsome batch of dollars as severance pay; but they’d wanted him out of the way just the same.
But, by God, he’d show ‘em! They thought that he was old-fashioned, a washout. He’d find another position; no; not right away; he’d look around first; and when he did find another job, he’d make such a name for himself, he’d be such a whizz that Longevity Life would wish that they’d never let him go....They made me take a bribe, he told himself bitterly. But they’ll regret it. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if, after a year, they called him back...
Even though that bylaw, which had enabled the Board of Directors, at its own discretion, to compel the retirement of any employee who had thirty years or more of service, had been enacted more than two years ago, his obsessive conviction of having been unfairly dealt with, unfeelingly lopped off, made him now suspect that they had had him especially in mind when they had voted it.
But what had stung his ego most of all was that Miss Cramer, his loyal ex-secretary, had told him this morning at the office—making him swear on his honor that he’d never breathe a word of it to a living soul—that Robert Warren, President Albert Warren’s youngest son—just turned twenty-three years of age!— (Young enough to be my son! Erskine had exclaimed to himself) was taking over his work as the district manager for Manhattan....So it was not only because they thought him inefficient, not because he wasn’t liked and respected by everybody, that he was being dumped; it was to make a place for his son that Warren was giving him the air! Robert Warren was going to be married and old man Warren was making Robert the district manager of Manhattan as a wedding present!
Erskine remembered having seen the kid, Robert, a few times, sometimes on the street and sometimes around the office; and had not seen, on those occasions, anything distinctive or exceptional about him. Just a good-looking, jolly youngster flashing up and down the avenues in his sport model, convertible Buick with a tall, blonde girl...Once or twice he’d read in the gossip columns about young Warren’s being at this or that nightclub. But never would Erskine have thought that such a harmless, money-spending brat would have been selected to replace him...And that hare-brained girl he was marrying...A fumigated tart, no doubt...The injustice of it made him want to vomit.
All afternoon before the banquet he had sat in his apartment by his telephone, fuming, trying to summon up enough courage to phone Warren and have it out with him. But, despite his raw anger, he hadn’t been able to act. He had thought of sending Warren a wire and calling off the banquet, but he hadn’t been inventive enough to think of iron-clad reasons for such an action—reasons that could be made public...Night had found him still seething and undecided.
But when he’d reached the hotel, knowing that within an hour his last chance to protest would be gone, he’d taken the bit into his teeth and had demanded a short conference with Warren and the crusty, acid-tongued vice president, Ricky. The showdown had taken place in a tiny room off the banquet hall behind closed doors, and no sooner had Erskine looked into their grim and determined faces than he had become swamped with doubts and had regretted his rashness.
“Well, Erskine, what’s on your mind?” Warren had broken the ice, speaking through a lying smile.
Erskine had swallowed and wished to God that he’d not asked for such an audience. But what had he to lose? By the living God, he’d let them know what he thought of such cowardly deception! He had to protest their abandonment of him...
“Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted me out to make a place for your son?” he had demanded of Warren with more bluntness than he had intended.
Warren had paled, his lips parted, and he looked at Ricky and turned away, shaking his head. It had been Ricky who had taken up the fight.
“Fowler, aren’t you stepping just a bit outside of your little track?” Ricky had asked with cool insolence.
“Look, don’t play games with me,” Erskine had said. “I know what the score is. And this is a cheap, sickening way to treat a man who’s given his life to this company...”
“We’re not interested in your opinions, Fowler,” Warren had said.
“I think you are interested,” Erskine had put in. “Or else you’d have been man enough to have told me what was up. No; you wanted to ease me out—”
“Fowler, are you mad, man?” Ricky had bawled at him. “We’ve settled this! You promised you’d go! The hell with the reasons...Now, why do you bring up this matter half an hour before the banquet...?”
“Because I found out the trick you’re playing on me,” Erskine argued. “You didn’t dare tell me—”
“So what?” Warren had demanded. “Fowler, you’re off balance, boy! Don’t overestimate yourself!”
“Look here, Fowler.” Ricky had let his voice drop to a neutral, almost kindly tone. “You’ve got severance pay. You own some stock in the company. To all intents, so far as the public is concerned, you’re being retired with your consent You’re being kept on as an advisor. You’re drawing a pension...We’re giving you a public banquet. What in hell more do you want?”
“Honesty!” Erskine had shouted. “I just want you to be straight with me, just as I’ve been with you!”
“Fowler, the banquet room’s filling up...People are waiting...You can’t back out now...Be honorable—“ Warren had argued gently.
“Where’s your honor?” Erskine had asked in
a frenzy.
“Look, I’ll help you get another position,” Warren had said. “Be reasonable, man. Nobody’s disputing your loyalty—”
“Who told you about Robert Warren’s taking your place?” Ricky had asked pointedly.
“Never mind,” Erskine had said. “So, this is how you felt all along, hunh?”
“All right,” Ricky had snarled. “You’re asking for ft, by God, and I’m going to give it to you. You’re through, Fowler; hear? You’re out of date, behind the times; get it? We want live wires with gray matter upstairs; see? Maybe we ought to have put you wise long ago....All right; you’re good, Fowler. But, goddammit, you’re not good enough! You just ‘don’t have what we want! Do you want me to spell it out any clearer? Now, go out there and do what you promised! If you back out now—”
“WE’LL FIRE YOU!” Warren had shouted in a brutal rage. “We’ll kick you out! Embarrass us tonight, after we treat you like a right guy, and we’ll...” Warren’s face had tinned a deep red. “Don’t you cross me, Fowler. We’ve been damned good to you. Now, you play straight.”
Humiliation had choked Erskine and he’d known that he’d been licked. He’d burned his bridges; the gulf that had yawned so nakedly between them would never have been so glaring had he kept his mouth shut. Ricky’s thin lips had been shut tight, like a trap; and Warren’s China-blue eyes had gleamed as cold and blue as twin icebergs. And at that moment the nervous, discordant sounds of the musicians’ instruments being timed up in the banquet room had come to him. Erskine’s legs had trembled. Ricky had reached out suddenly and had clutched hold of Erskine’s arm and had pushed him roughly against a wall.
“If you don’t go through with this, you’re out without even a recommendation,” Ricky had said. “Do you want to fight Longevity Life?”
“No,” Erskine had breathed, wilting.
“That’s just what you re doing, and I warn you!” Warren had told him.
“But...but...” Erskine’s voice had stuck in his throat.
He’d longed to send his right fist smashing into Warren’s face; instead, as though performing a ceremonial gesture of penance, his left hand had nervously reached inside his coat and felt the tips of the four pencils clipped there...For almost five minutes the three of them had stood wordlessly in the tiny, closed room, fronting one another but avoiding one another’s eyes, and in the background there was that faint, discordant plunking of a violin, the insistent sounding of the keys of A, B flat, and C on the piano...
“Well, dammit, what re you going to do?” Ricky had demanded.
Impulsively, Erskine had moved toward the door; he’d not known just where he was going; he’d just wanted to get out of their presence. Tall, strong Ricky had grabbed his shoulder and had spun him round.
“Don’t strike me, Ricky,” Erskine had muttered, his eyes narrowing.
“You’re not walking out of here without giving us an answer,” Ricky had said, taking his hand from Erskine’s shoulder.
Erskine had hung his head. For twenty years he had worshipped these men, and now they were hating him.
“Okay; I’m through,” he had mumbled, swallowing.
“If you want to put it that way,” Warren had said. “You’re going to play your part?”
“Okay. Ill play my part,” Erskine had said with a sigh; he had not looked up.
There wasn’t anything more to be said. The harmonious strain of a waltz wafted to them.
“All right; let’s get going,” Ricky had said. Erskine had marched slowly out of the room between Warren and Ricky; he’d felt that he was an animal being flanked by its two trainers. They were leading him toward the circus ring and, though he would snarl, bare his fangs, he was going to go through his paces....
Erskine reached the bottom of the stairs and let his eyes rove over the crowded rear lobby. Yes; that scene of degradation would live in his heart to his dying hour. They hadn’t even been sympathetic enough to say: “We know how you feel, Erskine...” They were streamlining and modernizing the organization and they had replaced him with young Warren who was from Harvard and had studied insurance scientifically...
“They’ve gone hogwild and haywire over new ideas and methods,” he mumbled to himself. “And they don’t know what insurance really is...”
Erskine was unalterably convinced that there was nothing that any university could instill in anybody that could remotely match his own superb, practical knowledge of insurance. Insurance was life itself; insurance was human nature in the raw trying to hide itself; insurance was instinctively and intuitively knowing that man was essentially a venal, deluded, and greedy animal...
Yes; insurance was a shifty-eyed, timid, sensual, sluttish woman trying, with all of her revolting and nauseating sexiness, to make you believe that she’d been maimed for life in an automobile accident, and you wouldn’t, couldn’t believe her or take her word for it, or take her doctor’s word for it, and you’d smiled at her and led her to believe that you believed her and you easily beat her at her crooked game by just looking into her eyes and letting her fool herself into thinking that maybe you were falling for her, and, in the end, you’d trapped her into admitting that she was lying and you settled her claim for one-tenth of what her itchy palms had been wanting...
Yes; insurance was a small-time, stupid, greasy-faced Italian grocery-store keeper who had amateurishly set his dingy, garlic-reeking place ablaze hoping that he’d collect enough insurance money to start all over again under another name and in another state, and you’d talked to the dope for fifteen minutes and had caught him in such a tangle of contradictions that he’d gotten frightened and had confessed and was eventually sent to prison for five years...
Yes; insurance was an old, sweet-looking woman of seventy-odd who’d insured her new daughter-in-law for a huge amount of money and then had, with a stout hatchet, killed her one night in her bed and had told a seemingly plausible tale of having awakened from her sleep and having seen a tall, dark man (Erskine was convinced that all “tall, dark men” were but the figments of guilty women’s imagination!) fleeing down the dark hallway of their frame house and of immediately afterwards hearing groans in her daughter-in-law’s bedroom and of finding her daughter-in-law in bed hacked to pieces and soaking in blood, and you had from the first doubted the sweet-looking old woman’s sobbing story and a few days later, while rummaging about the house with an inspector from the company, had found the old woman’s bloody nightgown wrapped around a brand-new hatchet and balled stiffly and stuffed into a corner of her clothes closet, and you had confronted the old woman and had argued gently with her for hours and had made her sob out her crime and had, moreover, made her see and know that she had sinned...
Yes; insurance was something you just couldn’t learn out of books, no matter how thick and profound they were. You just had to know in your heart that man was a guilty creature...
“But, how do you know, Erskine?” his astonished colleagues used to ask him.
Erskine would wag his head, smile, and mumble: “There’s just something in me that listens to a person when he talks and it tells me when he’s guilty.”
“You’ve got a lot of horse sense,” they’d said.
But he knew that it was something infinitely more mysterious than horse sense that made him so knowing. In fact, his uncanny shrewdness was an odd side of him, bringing blessings as well as bane, shoring him with confidence as well as sapping his sleep at night, exerting its influence over a far wider area of his life than just the insurance business. His knowing intuitions not only made him uncommonly profound in detecting the pretenses of others, but sometimes it created odd situations in which he became incredibly obtuse, stupid almost.
His unsteady legs carried him across the lobby to the hotel door. So, it was over—this night which he had dreaded for so long. He sighed and stepped to the sidewalk; a wall of humid heat hit his face and his breathing became shallow as he stood uncertainly amid the passers-by. That infernal air-condit
ioning was now making him dizzy as he tried to adjust himself to the sudden rise in temperature. Why didn’t people leave natural things alone? Why were they forever tinkering and changing things? Yeah; they’d always regarded him as a little queer in the office because he wouldn’t exclaim and wax slobberingly enthusiastic over every new gadget. Well, at least I’m free of their taunting me behind my back....And they’d miss him; of that, he was sure. Why, things’d get so snarled up in the office that in a week they’d phone him and beg him to come back and straighten them out. Ah, and just wait until the next quarterly dividends were declared! He’d bet a cool, even hundred bucks that they’d be somewhat lower. They couldn’t help but be lower with his not being there to spot the phonies and cut comers...Bad business! Erskine pronounced his judgment as he plodded through the Saturday-night crowd.
He knew, however, that his bitter tirades against his former colleagues were but a crude camouflage covering his real dilemma. What was fundamentally fretting him was that—now that he’d retired and was free—he didn’t know what to do with himself. His hated freedom was simply suspending him in a void of anxious ignorance that was riveting his consciousness with self-protective nostalgia upon the familiar atmosphere of the Longevity Life Insurance Company.
What, for example, did he want to do at this moment? Go to a movie? No. A movie would only distract him and he didn’t want to be distracted. Read a book? No; no; God, no! He would have resented some novelist’s trying to project him upon some foolish flight of fantasy. He could, of course, visit his favorite bowling alley; but he was not inclined to sweat out the poisons of his tired body tonight...The alien thorns that were nestling in him went far deeper than the flesh...Then, what was he to do...?
Savage Holiday Page 2
