by Packer, Vin
The officer in the front seat moved over for the man who got behind the wheel.
As the motor started, the older man said, “Listen, you shouldn’t arrest her. She’s very respectable. She’s a male nurse!”
“Sure, she is, Mabel,” the man said. “And we’re all on our way to Niagara Falls. This is your honeymoon.”
Basescu’s cheeks burned.
He said, “Won’t you listen to me! Won’t you give me a chance to explain! I just wandered into that bar! I didn’t even know — ”
“Come and hear my fairy tale,” the man said, swinging the car out into traffic.
“Listen to me, please!” Basescu said.
The older man said, “They never listen at the first of the month, Mary. Their quotas, you know, Mary. No one to arrest but the girls.”
The blond boy began to sob audibly.
“It’s all right, honey,” the older man said. “They’ll let you off. It’s your first offense.”
“Sure,” the man said as they headed downtown, “and besides, she’s very respectable. She’s a male nurse.”
Then, when the policeman laughed, Basescu heard the sound of other laughter from years and years past, and unconsciously, trancelike, his clenched fist unrolled, and he held his palm open for the money he would not receive this time.
• • •
Wally Keene liked the feeling of success, and though in his own mind he was — as he thought of it — ”on the middle rung working up,” he was acquainted with the feeling, adjusted, he believed, to its inevitability — for he had, not always, but certainly more often than not, gotten what he set out to get.
As a boy, he had vied with his brothers — three of them — for his father’s favor. He had vied and been rewarded, and he could still remember how, as a not completely innocent four-year-old, he had won the highest praise from adults gathered in the family’s parlor, their charmed and captivated laughter at his remark: “Sometimes I wish the Keenes had only one boy, and that he was I.” He could remember the almost worshipful sparkle to his father’s eye amidst the laughter, as son and father regarded one another then. And it seemed the elder Keene in that moment promised Wally that so it would be, if not in reality, in his heart; and so it was.
Yet the boy had worked for that reward. He had, with the instinctive determination which he seemed to possess even then, found ways to woo his father away from the other three, memorized the cunningness that pleased his father, and sought to imitate it and dress it anew before presenting it. He knew somehow, with the deceivingly sly ingenuousness of a child, that a big word won approval, that demonstrativeness won approval (so that he alone among the four boys was called the affectionate one, the way he ran always to his father and kissed and hugged the man, waiting for the, “There now, that’s daddy’s boy,” while he thought, My brothers aren’t — I am) and knew, too, how to provoke his mother so terribly that in a fit of temper she would reprimand him severely, and he would have a wound to show his father, who was adamantly opposed to physical punishment for the children.
As a boy, he knew success and its feeling, both at home and later in prep school.
It was easy for him to say things quite frankly, because the things he said he did not necessarily mean. He said them for their effect. So that he could walk up to another lad quite confidently and allow: “You know, you have a damn nice pitching arm. I think you’ll go places,” or “Good comment in Lit this morning, Bill. You’re a brain. I envy you,” (said to a duller student than he was) or “You’re more mature than most around here,” (said to some bullheaded nitwit) until eventually, through his outspokenness and his self-confidence (he never let it seem to be the cocky kind, but tempered it with a faint suggestion of humility), he gained the stature of mediator, counselor, non-academic philosopher. In short, leader.
College found him accepted in the best clubs, dating the most beautiful girls, and having the good sense in his senior year to become engaged to one who was not as beautiful as she was potentially valuable. Susan Keene’s father had the best kind of wealth, the inherited kind, and though he was Spartan enough in temperament to admire anyone who started “from the bottom,” he was not at all averse to financing a son-in-law who could prove he more appropriately deserved the milieu at the top.
Wally Keene liked the feeling of success and he counted on it, counted on a rapid rise within Cadence, which would ultimately take him beyond his present goal — Charlie Gibson’s position — on to complete control of the Cadence Corporation.
In his daydreams, there was the speech: “Look, Bruce, no reason at all why you can’t stay on. Hell, we want you to stay on!”
Yet while he dreamed this dream, Wally Keene did not sit back and taste success not yet accorded him. Instead he planned, planned everything. Even his psychoanalysis was part of that plan.
“It’s better to get the kinks out now,” he would tell Susan.
And Susan would say, “But what are the kinks, Wally?”
“Everyone has kinks,” would be his answer — fortified with the offense, “Don’t pretend!”
And just as he had planned it, the retort would shut her up.
Susan was convinced that her husband, since he had entered analysis, knew everything she was thinking.
To Susan’s mind, something which had happened one afternoon on a Madison Avenue bus symbolized everything about her husband and his psychoanalysis.
They had been jerking along the avenue in the front of the bus, and the driver, a fearfully gruff and rude fellow, had been snapping at all the passengers. When the bus reached Fourtieth Street, where the Keenes were going, Wally and Susan attempted to get off the bus at the front, just as new fares attempted to get on.
The driver turned and bellowed at Wally: “You stupid ass! You a hick or something? Get off ina back! You shouldn’t be on buses, you dope!”
Susan was horribly embarrassed. Everyone was staring at them. She always became embarrassed and humiliated under such circumstances, even though it was not her fault, and that afternoon she was doubly mortified because it had happened to her husband. Publicly, she felt, he had been made a fool of; called “stupid” by a bus driver.
But Wally, poised before the resultant laughter and smirks of all beholding their situation, quite calmly led Susan to the rear, remarking in a mild tone to all who listened — in a mild, sincere, and quite serious tone, “That man is very sick.”
When she thought about it, Susan believed that Wally had reacted almost like Bernard Baruch would have, or Nehru, Gary Moore, or Norman Vincent Peale. And she knew that Wally’s psychoanalysis had done that, and she hung on to his arm proudly, as though she were walking with Bernard Baruch, or Gary Moore or Norman Vincent Peale. Somehow she had reservations about walking with Nehru.
She had even sent it into The Saturday Evening Post’s “Perfect Squelch” column, but nothing had come of it. Only an acknowledgment.
• • •
That evening of 6 March, Susan Keene felt even more in awe of “this psycho thing,” as she had come to phrase it in her mind.
She and Wally were having their coffee in the living room of their modest ranch home, seated around the coffee table, which was an antique, and had once been a cobbler’s bench.
Wally had his tie undone, and it was hanging around his collar.
She was fingering it affectionately as he talked, fingering it and thinking how clever he was, and wondering vaguely if he thought she needed psychoanalysis. He had never mentioned it.
“… so you see,” Wally was saying, “you need more than a good record business-wise. Sure, Cadence knows I’m on the ball business-wise. If he never knew it before, he knew it today. I mean, after all, Charlie just — ”
“You’ve got a spot on your tie, honey.”
“I took the trouble to stop in at the library and look Bruce up. You know he’s in Who’s Who In America too. Not just New York. You can learn a lot about a man, looking him up. Golf, for example. He’s
a golfer. I’m going to bone up on my golf. Wouldn’t do any harm for us to join a club. His club. Your dad can help us out there.”
“Daddy used to recite a poem about golf,” she said. “See if I can remember it. Umm. I know:
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And watch the men at play.”
Wally shot her an angry look. “Oh for Chrissake!” he said.
“Well, it isn’t my poem, darling.”
“It’s just like him! Archaic and sentimental! The mill children, f’Chrissake!”
“What else did you find out?”
“Quit pulling at my tie … His favorite charity is The Lighthouse. Wouldn’t hurt you to take a couple afternoons off and read to the blind.”
“And hire someone for Billy and Alice? That’s not in our budget.”
“Well, it’ll be in our budget. Honey, I’m shooting for long-range things. Now, I think I’ve got Cadence on my performance business-wise, but now we go beyond that. That’s where Charlie Gibson missed out. He never realized that in the business world you’re a whole man, not just a nine-to-five man, and you’ve got to sell yourself right down the line. You’ve got to make yourself over, if necessary. You’ve got to take into consideration the psychological factors. Figure your top man out, and then shoot for him. Quit pulling at my tie, Susan!”
“Do you think I need analysis?”
“Oh, Christ!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m trying to tell you something and you interrupt me!”
“I’m sorry, dear.”
“You do it purposely. You can’t stand any competition!”
“I’m sorry, dear.”
“And fingering my tie is your way of overcoming that competition. The old female resort.”
“It has a spot on it.” He said sarcastically, “Sure, it does!”
“Well, it does. Look!”
“In blunt words,” Wally Keene said, “I’m too tired tonight.”
She stared at him, not understanding for a moment. Then she said, “Is that what I meant?”
“That’s what you meant, baby,” he answered.
Often, since his analysis, situations like this had come up, in which he convinced her of some ulterior motive she was unaware of. It amazed her, even when she could not quite accept it. It fascinated her.
“Really?”
“Really!”
“I suppose I’m like that awful Marge Mann. Am I?”
“Never mind,” he said impatiently, adding, “I fired her today … Now, where was I anyway — ”
“She’s fired, Wally?”
“That’s right That’s one of the things I’m teaching Bruce. To clear out the weeds so the grass can grow. Another weed is Charlie Gibson, and that’s what I’m getting at now. Bruce is so goddam sentimental. He won’t let Gibson go because he’s sentimental about the guy. That’s all there is to it. Well, Gibson has got years and years of association with Bruce in his favor. I haven’t! So I’ve got to make up for lost time, sort of get the wheels in motion for a transference, to use a psychological term. That’s why — ”
“How did she take it?” Susan asked.
Wally Keene tossed the pencil he was holding in his hand to the table. “Damn, God damn!” he shouted.
“W-what?” she said, startled.
“I’m sick of sentimental mish-mosh!” he said. “I’m sick of every woman in the world identifying with that C-cup bitch! I’m sick of everyone thinking I’m some kind of goddam monster! I’m sick and tired of it!”
“I didn’t say — ”
“Listen,” Keene said, “I’m on my way up and I’m going to get there! A lot of guys in my game are like the hunchback girl in the old story. She met her boyfriend in the park one night and he didn’t feel like making love. ‘But you’ve got to,’ she told him. ‘I’ve already dug the hole.’“
Susan giggled at that, but Wally went on.
“Listen,” he said, “a lot of guys in my game think because they’ve been in the business since the year one, and they fit in a certain slot, that slot’ll always be theirs. They think small; they think narrow; they get fat; they get accustomed. Not me! I think big! My dad used to tell me that the day I could name the sum of money I’d be satisfied with for an annual salary, I’d be dead as a businessman. He was right! I don’t know my limitations. I don’t have any! I’m on fire. But listen to me, there are other guys on fire — not the hunchbacks like Charlie Gibson, but the others — the ones I have to outsmart at the top. Have to and will! Will because I’m not going to be afraid to get rid of people in my way! A giant can’t walk without stepping on some ants!”
Susan Keene smiled. “Look out, all ants,” she said, “there’s a giant in our house.” She was very proud of him.
Wally settled back on the couch, stretching his legs before him, his hands behind his head. “That’s right! Look out ants!” he murmured.
MARCH 6, 1957
CHAPTER TWENTY
DRIVING ALONG Merritt Parkway that evening, Bruce Cadence remembered a conversation he had had with Barton Townsend, the mustard tycoon, down in the locker room at the club a couple of weeks ago.
Townsend had stood there in his lime-shaded silk shorts, sucking on an Uppman and splashing 4711 across his bare shoulders, shouting above the hissing of showers behind them: “Hell, Bruce, I don’t give a hoot in hell what the differences are between the publishing game and the food game, personnel problems are the same anywhere. Business is just beginning to grasp this, just beginning, bigod, to realize that a hell of a lot that’s wrong with the way things are going can be traced right back to a basic personnel problem. God sake, I can remember when I hired the production manager for my plant — just hired him; didn’t give a damn if he was married, what his wife was like, what the hell kind of American he was, where the hell he went to school; just went and hired him — bang — like that. Just hired him because he seemed to have all the goddamn qualifications.”
“I still hire men that way,” Bruce said.
Townsend had wagged a fat finger at Bruce’s nose and grunted, “‘At’s just your mistake, mister. This day and age a man’s got to know everything about the fellow he’s asking to play on the team. And not just that either, God sake, a man’s got to keep on the qui vive about the men he already has playing on his team, got to know the score. Maybe fellow in outfield worried about a goddam neurotic daughter, something. Maybe pitcher’s got trouble with the other woman, God sake. Left field needs new car, right field wants to get his boy in Princeton, something … Man’s got to keep on the qui vive about them all. ‘At’s the modern way. ‘At’s the new look in the world of business. The streamline trim, Bruce. You oughtta know that by now, God sake, Bruce. What the hell kind of penny-ante organization you running?”
Bruce Cadence remembered that he had sloughed it off as simply more routine locker-room palaver, the kind of palaver certain executive types reiterated endlessly, and which Bruce himself reacted to with faint amusement, striped with slight boredom. It was the kind of palaver Mildred always called “cigar smoke” whenever she heard their guests start such discussions. Yet seldom was there “cigar smoke” in the Cadence house, for neither were very enthusiastic entertainers. For the most part, they entertained only when they had to — relatives, or on rare occasions, couples from the club with whom they were able to have moderate and pleasant rapport, or the few time-tested “old friends” they had always known and seen at infrequent intervals.
The thought of entertaining business associates irritated Bruce Cadence. He believed — and he had always believed it — that when he left Cadence at five in the afternoon, that world was behind him. He had no interest in reviving it until nine the following morning.
Charlie Gibson seemed to feel the same way. It was one of the traits Bruce admired in Charlie. He remembered what Charlie used to say about the people who left
the office with work crammed in their briefcases, and manuscripts under their arms.
Charlie used to say: “They couldn’t have done much during the day if they have to do homework.”
When Bruce tried to think back and remember how many times he and Charlie had met outside the office, he was unable to recall any other instances than the annual Cadence outings, in the summers, up in Greenwich, when all Cadence employees got together on the golf links, in the pool, on the lawns and terraces and dance floor of the club. He had never met Charlie’s wife, and Charlie had never met Mildred. They had never had a drink together, and the only times they had had luncheon dates with one another were those times when it was necessary for a group of the executives at Cadence to meet with men from sales, circulation or advertising.
Bruce had always believed his and Charlie’s association was just about the most perfect business relationship he could ask for. It was the way both seemed to want it.
Keene was not like that. From the moment Bruce had hired him, Sandy’s buzzer had rung persistently to announce that Keene was on the wire, eager to pin Bruce down for a luncheon date. When finally Bruce gave in to Wally’s persistence, and they faced one another across the table at The Blue Ribbon, Wally announced: “Now, absolutely no shop talk. Agreed?”
Warily, Bruce nodded; then watched Keene produce a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket.
Keene said, “Draw a house,” and passed the paper to Bruce.
“What for?”
“Just do it,” Wally said. “It’s a little psychology. It’ll interest you.”
“Why a house?”
“Just draw a house,” Keene insisted. “You’ll see.”
Somehow Cadence suffered through the lunch without showing visible signs of his annoyance. He sat munching the German pancakes tiredly while Keene speared Bratwurst with one hand and held the picture of Bruce’s house with the other, advising Bruce that the lack of a chimney on the house showed a lack of warmth in Bruce’s early childhood; that the lack of a doorknob indicated a feeling of rejection; that the wide picture windows proved a tendency (“probably latent”) for exhibitionism; and on and on, until Brace’s appetite was decimated, and his eagerness to finish the luncheon as quickly as possible so intense that he passed up coffee and dessert and mumbled some feeble excuse about a long-distance call back at the office.
