The Institute

by James M. Cain

  “How about your apartment?”

  Well, how about my apartment? How much homework had this woman done before today? Hortense was practically living at my apartment. Had she been seen even once coming or going from there?

  I had to take a chance. “She has never been there.”

  “But I have!” Teddy chimed in.

  “That’s right,” I said. “She’s my weakness now.”

  “And mine, too,” Mr. Garrett said.

  “I’m Dr. Palmer’s packhorse,” she explained, “because I’m as strong as a bull. I also do back handsprings.”

  She did a back handspring in the space between the folding chairs and the door. There was a stampede by those with cameras to get a shot of her doing it. But as she straightened up, she shied off.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” she called; “not so fast with them pop-ups. You take a picture of me, I must have my patches showing. It’s my sorority rule. Okay, on my face, if you want it—but the patches have to be in.”

  “Darling,” said the woman who had been badgering me, “one earthshaking gadget has not been invented yet—one permitting the camera to take your front end, where your face is positioned, and your hind end, where your patches are, at one and the same time. Do—”

  “Aw? Then earth, stand by to get shook.”

  She turned to the table, moved piles of stuff to one side, then climbed on and did a hand stand, facing the cameras. But, of course, that put her shapely bottom just above her face.

  “Okay,” she said calmly, “shoot!”

  They shot.

  She hopped down, telling them: “That’ll be fifty cents, please. Four bits from one and all.”

  Nobody moved to pay her. “Well, there’s their trouble right there,” she announced with an airy wave of her hand. “The media, I’m talking about. They’re mean, they’re chincy, they’re cheap. Making cracks about a wife right in front of her husband, and on top of that, not paying the human packhorse who’s posing for her picture. I do a handstand and what do I get? Nothing!”

  “Teddy.”

  “Yes, Mr. Garrett?”

  “Have a Kennedy half-dollar.”

  “You mean, shut up?”

  “I’m too polite to say it.”

  “O.K.”

  She was quite meek about it. She pulled his face down and kissed him. They seemed to get on very well.

  When Mr. Garrett had returned to his chair and Teddy was tucked away at the end of the table, the same woman reporter resumed with me.

  “Dr. Palmer,” she asked, “have you actually written a biography?”

  “It so happens that I haven’t.”

  “Aw!” Teddy yelped once more. “Dr. Palmer, why don’t you tell her? Why do you let her run over you?” Then to the reporter: “You’re damn right, he’s written a biography—William Shakespeare’s! He wrote his dissertation on Shakespeare for the Ph.D. he has. He gave us a free copy—some of us, anyway—in his English poetry class, and it’s wonderful to read! All about the sonnets! And the Dark Woman; he indemnifies her! It’s like a detective story, only real.”

  That doesn’t sound like much of a time bomb, but it caused me more trouble than any other thing that happened that day. I had intentionally not mentioned Shakespeare, because that’s one thing you learn: Lay off him. Don’t bring up the subject unless, for some reason like teaching a poetry class, you have to. Because you’re just opening a can of worms. There’s an expert on every block who knows more about it than God, all ready to show you up, and no matter how sharp your research is or how silly the previous research, you’ll get a drumming out of town that will make the Lion and the Unicorn sound like a moment of silence.

  I ignored Teddy, but Mr. Garrett called her name. When she answered, he said it this time: “Shut up.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Who was the Dark Woman?” another reporter asked.

  “For that,” I told him, “send three dollars and fifty cents, plus postage, to the Lord Baltimore Press and ask them to send you Shakespeare and the Sonnets, A New Look at an Old Subject, by Lloyd Palmer.

  “Who’s the outstanding American biographer?” asked one of the women reporters, at last bringing the discussion back to the reason for our being there. And on that, I decided to talk.

  “The list is so long,” I told her, “you’d be helpless to pick out one name. For my money, James Parton’s Life of Andrew Jackson has had a greater effect on biographical writing than anything else I know of. He got away from the literary style of Prescott, Parkman, Sparks, and the other early writers and introduced the simple, easy, intimate, colloquial way of writing that later writers followed, such as H. H. Bancroft, Sandburg, Leech, Tuchman, The New Yorker “Profile” writers, and a host of others. You have to remember, when you’re talking about American biographers, that the roster runs into the thousands. Then there are the wholesale biographers—Sparks with his Library of American Biography; Bancroft, with his Chronicles of Builders; Marquis with his Who’s Who in America, and Sammons and Martindell who followed Marquis as publishers; and very importantly, Adolph Ochs, of the New York Times, who bore the expense of the Dictionary of American Biography, that prodigious trove of biographical information in twenty volumes. We should also honor Dumas Malone, the Jefferson scholar and dean of our biographers. But let us never overlook the first American biographer, Mason Lock Weems, whose preposterous Life of George Washington, the one with the cherry tree in it, went through seventy-one editions and is kept in print by the Belknap Press of Harvard University.”

  “He can talk all night if you have all night,” Garrett said. “Personally, I’ve heard enough. Are we finished? Is there anything else you want to know?”

  There didn’t seem to be, so he signaled to the girls who began serving refreshments and cocktails. Then he called: “Come on, Teddy, we have to be running along.”

  “I want something to eat.”

  The girl with the tray of canapes wrapped some in a paper napkin and tucked them in Teddy’s bag. But she still wouldn’t go. She was rubbing her thumb with her finger at me, meaning pay me. Garrett said: “I’ll take care of her, Lloyd.” Then he smacked her on the patches, saying: “Get going!”

  15

  AT LAST THE NIGHTMARE of an afternoon came to an end and I was left alone with my pamphlets and a boy the head bellhop had lent me, who helped gather the stuff together, pack it into the suitcases, and carry it to the car. I drove to the Royal Arms where Irene gave me dinner, and then on home. I went in the front way to pick up any messages, but there hadn’t been any. Then, when I opened the apartment door I caught the smell of perfume. I set the suitcases down, closed the door, and went to the living room. There in the dark, on one of the sofas, was Hortense, her eyes black and big as saucers.

  “Well!” I said. “Hello. Didn’t expect you so soon.”

  She jumped up, raced to the door, yanked it open, and peered out into the hall. “Where is she?” she snarled.

  “Where is who?”

  “That girl. That floozy.”

  “If you mean Teddy, your husband took her home—or at least, I hope he did. That’s what he said he was going to do. She’s a sweet girl who wants to get laid.”

  “And you laid her, didn’t you?”

  “So happens, I didn’t.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes, I do, and I’ll prove it.”

  “You mean you’ll make her tell me, and that will—”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  I took hold of her, lifted her, and carried her into the bedroom. When I had dumped her on the bed, I started taking her clothes off. Her dress, the one she’d had on at the hotel, was no problem, but the pantyhose were. She kept fighting me off when I tried to peel them down. I’d spank her on the tail and in between make a grab for the pantyhose, and at last I had them off. Then I raped her, if you can call it that when you get full cooperation. When it was over I said: “Okay, that proves it, I think.
Even a studhorse has only one of them in him per day. If Teddy had got it, I couldn’t have given it to you.”

  She didn’t answer. Then, after a moment, she asked: “Lloyd, what do we do now? That crazy girl spilled it.”

  “You spilled it, Hortense.”

  “I was furious. I could smell her on your clothes.”

  “And what you spilled can’t be poured back in the bottle. As you’ve said so often, ‘He may be many things, but he’s not dumb.’ ”

  “What did he say after I left?”

  “He said, We’d better be getting ready’ ”

  “That was all?”

  “Yeah, that was all.”

  We talked about it awhile, then the phone rang. It was Mr. Garrett. After asking if anything had happened after he left that he should know about and after I had said no, he said: “Lloyd, I finally persuaded Teddy that if you had a blonde reason for making her wait downstairs, that reason wasn’t my wife. So that source of gossip is under control—or so I hope. But what I don’t understand is why you brought her in the first place. My wife, I assume, is no vainer than the next woman. Just the same, women hate it when other women muscle in on their act, whether romance is involved or not, especially pretty ones like Teddy who do handstands for the cameras. Didn’t you have any more sense?”

  “Sir, I never gave it a thought, I wasn’t guilty of anything with her, and since romance wasn’t involved—”

  “You mean with my wife?”

  “Yes, of course that’s what I mean.”

  He harangued me for another minute or two—about Hortense, about women in general, about using good judgment—but all I could think of was that at last I had lied to him—head on, direct. It always seemed that I couldn’t have any more reason for feeling like a rat, but then it turned out that I could. He switched back to Teddy. “All I can say is, I envy you your willpower, giving her a brush—if you actually did. If it had been me, I’ll freely admit, I would have been tempted.”

  “I was tempted.”

  “What a sweet kid.”

  “Yes, Mr. Garrett, she’s all of that.”

  I had no sooner hung up than a wallop hit my cheek, and the hot venom poured in my ear. “So! ‘I was tempted’! Then take that! And that! And that!”

  The wallops kept coming, but I had had enough. I whipped the cover off and let her have it on her bare bottom. Of course she screamed bloody murder. The next morning she was snoozing away in my arms when all of a sudden, she woke up and, leaning on one elbow, said: “Lloyd, when was my last period?”

  “I haven’t been keeping track.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “But aren’t you on the pill?”

  “Some kind of way, I guess. I hate it.”

  16

  I ALMOST JUMPED OUT of my skin around sunup at the sound of the phone ringing. When I answered, a man said: “Dr. Palmer? Dr. Lloyd Palmer?”

  When I said it was, he said his name was Dennis or Henderson or Henson, or something like that, that he was doing a biography of John Adams, “one of my American patriot series, which, no doubt, you’ve heard of. They’re school texts all over the country, standard for eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. And I wish you would put me down for a grant-in-aid from the Hortense Garrett Institute.”

  I suppose he said more before I could slow him down, put away the receiver, get up, go to the closet, get a pen from my coat, come back, and ask him to repeat what he had said. By this time, Hortense was awake, leaning up on one elbow and staring at me, baffled.

  I started him up again and made some notes on what he said. I told him that his application would have my serious consideration, but before hanging up, I couldn’t resist the temptation to tell him that if he really wanted a grant-in-aid, calling me at such an ungodly hour was a poor way to get it. He seemed surprised, even insulted.

  “I assumed,” he said, “that in a fairly run organization, things go on a first-come, first-served basis.” By this time I was not only annoyed but curious, so I asked him how he had got my name in the first place.

  “In the Republican. I’m looking at it as I sit here.”

  The Republican, it turned out, was the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, and he had got my number from Information.

  I climbed back in bed but had hardly got under the covers when the phone rang again. This time it was a woman doing a book on Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy. She lived in Newark, New Jersey. Again I made notes. When the phone rang for the third time, I just banged it down and didn’t answer. Then I took the receiver off the hook.

  We lay looking at each other. By that time, of course, sleep was out of the question. I dressed and went down to the lobby for the paper. What it contained was enough to curdle your blood. At the top of one of the inside sections was a four-column shot of Teddy doing her handstand, face to the camera and backside just above it, with both patches showing. The caption read: WHERE WAS MRS. GARRETT?

  But the main story made sense. It was mostly about me and what I had said about American biography, with quotations from my brochure and flanking photos of me looking oily and Mrs. Garrett looking annoyed. Then I called Western Union. When I told the girl who answered who I was, she said: “Oh yes. Dr. Palmer, we have some messages for you—three telegrams and two night letters. Will you hold on a minute? I’ll read them to you.”

  I yelped: “No, no, no! Don’t read anything. They’re what I called about. Will you mark them and anything else that comes: Mail—Don’t Phone!” When she had that straight, I hung up, left the receiver off again, and let Hortense make me some breakfast. Then I said: “I have to go to town—into the District. If this is how it’s going to be by wire and phone, the mail will be twice as bad, and I have to do something about it, make some arrangement with the Post Office.”

  “What about this phone?”

  “I’ll call the phone company and ask them to take over.”

  Dialing once more a number which the operator gave me, I got the business office. Their suggestion was to have the number changed to an unlisted one. I asked how long that would take, and the woman said a couple of days. When I asked what to do in the meantime, she said: “Well, can’t you leave the receiver off the hook?”

  “That’s what I’m doing now.”

  “Then you’re doing the right thing. ... Oh, I almost forgot. The charge for switching you over will be ten dollars on your next bill.”

  “I’d pay a hundred.”

  The main post office in the District of Columbia is on North Capitol Street. There I talked with a Mr. Stone in one of those rooms at the end of an endless corridor covered with green linoleum. He listened, then talked into a hushaphone thing that he cradled on one shoulder. Then he said: “I would say that your institute’s main problem is that it lacks an address. We have boxes at various rates. I would think the seven-fifty size would be right for you. That’s seven dollars and fifty cents a quarter. Or, if you prefer, we can give you a pouch. But I think the box would be best.”

  “I’ll take the box.”

  I paid him. He got up, took some keys from a rack, gave them to me, saying: “In a moment, I’ll show you where it is.” He sat drumming his fingers, apparently waiting for something. In a moment a messenger came in and dropped a half-dozen letters in front of him. He glanced at them and then gave them to me. “You’re right,” he said, “you have quite a crop already.”

  The letters were addressed to me, the Hortense Garrett Institute, the Hortense Garrett Foundation, Hortense Garrett, and some other variations. I picked them up and put them in my pocket, then went with Mr. Stone to a place on the first floor where there was an entire wall of boxes, all with numbers on them. He let me unlock mine. He asked if that would be all, and when I said it would and thanked him, he waved his hand and left.

  I had taken care of wires, phone calls, and mail, but that was just the beginning. I had no more idea than the man in the moon what to do about the deluge of applications or, except in a general way, what
the reason for it was. I had to have help, and I knew only one place to get it: headquarters. I went to the Garrett Building to phone Mr. Garrett in Wilmington. To my surprise, instead of being appalled at the turn things had taken, as I was, he was pleased, on the basis on what had come out in the Wilmington papers. The Associated Press, instead of playing it cute, had carried a straight story about the Institute, with an account of what I had said, quotations from the brochure, and a few formal words from Mr. Garrett. It hadn’t occurred to him yet that it was this straight story that was causing the trouble. It was an open invitation to anyone who might be interested to put in for a lump of the sugar. When I pointed this out to him, he began to laugh and told me I’d better come see him. So, without waiting around (it wasn’t yet twelve noon), I got in my car and drove up.

  He sat there in his office and listened very closely. “It seems to me,” he said, “we have to make up our minds what we’re trying to do. Is it to discover new talent and then encourage it? Or reward talent already proven? Or what?”

  “On talent,” I said, “let’s forget it. There’s so much talent for biography in this country that encouraging new talent is like encouraging fish in the sea to swim.”

  “What, then?”

  “We have to check on talent, that we take for granted. But the main thing is the project an author has in mind. Is it worth our support?”

  “And who will decide that?”

  “I will, I should think. But my problem is, I don’t know where to start. As things now stand, I’m swamped, utterly snowed under.”

  “Let me give it a mull.”

  So he mulled. Then he said: “I think you need a staff.”

  “Of researchers?”

  “Of investigators, would be more like it—gumshoes like those I have down there in Washington. Not guys who dig into books, but who dig into people. Who’ll get on the tail of these writers, find out who they are, what they’ve done, what they’re up to now—and report. Then you can make up your mind.”

  “The staff will add to our overhead.”