Institute

by James M. Cain

  Then I slept. I knew what I was going to do.

  In the morning I spent ten minutes finding keys to give her—to the back door and to the apartment—and putting the keys on a ring. Then I went downstairs and stood under the marquee, feeling like a fool, sure that she wouldn’t come.

  A bright-green Cadillac turned the corner and came to a stop beside me, and then she was leaning over, unlocking the door so I could get in. She played it straight, saying “Good morning” and commenting on a “beautiful day.” I played it the same way, making a point of the car and how nice-looking it was. She said: “It’s just a car my husband runs around in.” And that seemed to exhaust the subject.

  We had gone through the tunnel under Baltimore Harbor before she brought up the call, and when she did, she made it quick: “I simply couldn’t say that I had changed my mind. It would have sounded so phoney. I said that you had hinted that you had some idea—an inspiration, you called it, that you would tell him and, of course, me—which would make me change my mind, or at least, so you thought. Then I spent half the night trying to think what your idea was—or is. Whatever. Anyway, I called him at home just now to say that curiosity was killing the cat, that I would bring you back with me to let us hear it in person. Now all you have to do is think up an idea. But if you can’t, it’s all right with me. You can just get out, thumb a ride back, and forget the whole thing.”

  “Afraid I couldn’t do that.”

  “I did, it so happens, come up with something myself.”

  “I’m holding my breath.”

  “You could name this thing after me.”

  “Well, of course; I love that idea.”

  “Then I could realize it would make me a pretty big frog in a puddle not too small—and that would be that.”

  “I would say that’s it; we’ve got it.”

  “Stop we-ing me.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, at that.”

  She stomped on the brake, brought the car to a sudden stop in the breakdown lane, and hauled off and gave me a slap that stung for ten minutes. Then she started again. “That may be it,” she said. “The question is not what it is, but whether he believes it.”

  We drove on, two people miles apart. At the river she stared straight ahead, paying it no attention. When we crossed the Delaware line she pulled over and stopped. “Now,” she began in a stilted, self-conscious voice; “we’re within twenty minutes of Wilmington, and I’ve stopped here to plead with you to give up this idea of yours, if you still have it, that I recommend to my husband that he accept your proposal that he endow some institute with you in charge. Dr. Palmer, I assure you that if you force me to do this, it can only lead to disaster. What do you say?”

  “Give me a minute to think.”

  “Take as long as you want.”

  So I thought, or I suppose I did, but as I remember, nothing much went through my head. At last I said: “The idea’s not mine; it’s yours.”

  “You’re wrong. The idea is yours.”

  “Have it your way. I won’t argue. But it’s you, don’t forget, who’s afraid. And it’s you who’s trying to cap that fear, stuff it back in the pipe by neutralizing me. Whatever I say to you now, whatever I promise to do, will leave you still afraid, except for this one thing you thought of first, that I be bought off with the institute. I want him to start. Well, so be it. Drive on.”

  “Rat is flattery.”

  “Self-deception is worse.”

  She was to take me to his office, so we drove to a building in downtown Wilmington, which had ARMALCO chiselled over the entrance. She had barely stopped when a doorman in a maroon uniform was opening the door for her. He bowed and smiled and called her by name. I got out, but by the time I’d walked around, he had handed her down and was saying “Yes’m” when she told him to lock up because her coats and bag were inside. I followed her into the lobby, into a big elevator, then into a reception room where the girl at the desk jumped up and said a bit breathlessly: “Mrs. Garrett, Mr. Garrett’s expecting you”—and with a glance at a card—“and Dr. Palmer.”

  Hortense answered her pleasantly. Then a secretary came out and spoke to her and ushered us into an office. It was an office such as I had never seen—large, with a handsome desk at one end and a fireplace at the other, cocktail table, an oriental rug, copper ashtrays, and gigantic, leather-upholstered sofas in between. But the main items in the room weren’t in it, strictly speaking; they were around it, on the walls. They were covered with shelves, of redwood, apparently with indirect lighting to illuminate scores of exhibits, scale models of the products ARMALCO made. There were motorbikes, trucks, tractors, trailers, mowers, radios, TVs—and boats. Boats and more boats. Most of the boats—the cruisers, sloops and skiffs—were no more than twelve inches long; but three of them, of regular ships, were six feet long and possibly more, exact to the smallest fitting. I went around peering at them, gasping in astonishment, while Hortense, stretched out on a sofa, listened.

  Presently she explained: “My husband has a passion for things, as he calls them. The Nutting stuff in the apartment is just the beginning. He says this is what’s made him rich. He imagines himself a psychic.”

  “Some of my best friends are.”

  “Do you know what psychic means?”

  “So? What?”

  “It means you know the truth without knowing how you know it. There’s still time, before he comes in, to pull back from this Rubicon.”

  “Can’t let Caesar skunk me.”

  I struck a pose, my fingers in my lapel. She winced. “Oh for God’s sake, Lloyd, that’s Napoleon, not Caesar!”

  “Can’t let Boney skunk me either.”

  I didn’t notice at first that she had used my given name, the first time all morning. Under my coat my fingers suddenly touched the keys I’d put on the ring for her, which I’d dropped into my shirt pocket. I took them out and offered them to her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Keys. One to the back door of the building, one to my apartment. So the next time you come—”

  “The next time I come! As funny as you are, you should be on television. Do you seriously think there will be a next time for me after the way you’ve—”

  “We said we were hit by a truck, and the truck I was hit by has no reverse gear. All I know is, God willing, I’ll hope for a next time. And perhaps—”

  I reached over and dropped the keys down the front of her blouse, into the V below her neck. Her hand slapped to stop them from slipping down, but in spite of her slapping and grabbing, they slipped down anyway. Suddenly she stopped trying to fumble them out, and lay there staring at me.

  “Lloyd,” she whispered, “when you said what you did just now, about the truck with no reverse, your eyes didn’t lie to me.”

  “I hope to tell you, they didn’t.”

  “It gives me an idea!”

  “Well, Hortense, please—not here!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, if it’s the idea I have—”

  “My sweet, there can be only one idea—one real idea.” She smiled. “It all depends on the way it’s put into effect.” Her eyes narrowed until they were slits, glittering as though hornets were crawling on them.

  6

  WHAT THOSE HORNETS MEANT I found out soon enough. Mr. Garrett came in a few minutes later, wearing slacks and lounge coat this time. He nodded amiably to me and bowed in a courtly manner to Hortense.

  “Hello,” she crooned in a low voice, waving him closer. He went over to her and sat down as she moved to give him room, responding when she pulled him down for a kiss. “... and hello,” he growled, obviously shaken.

  Suddenly I knew what it felt like to suffer.

  “Be with you in a minute,” he flung over his shoulder to me, bending over her again. I walked to the window and stared out at Wilmington—which isn’t much to look at when viewed under such circumstances.

  “Now,” he said. When I turned, he was sitting beside her, ho
lding her hand and patting it. “My wife,” he went on, “says you have an idea, something you think will change her mind. I’m listening.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to regain my wits, “I had no idea before—when I was here yesterday, I mean—why she felt as she did—”

  “Feel as I do,” she corrected me.

  “But she let something drop as we were driving to Washington which put me on the track of a way to work things out so that she can have what she wants—except better and more of it—”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Mr. Garrett, it seems she’s a frog—”

  “But a great big beautiful frog—”

  “Yes sir, in the biggest puddle on earth.”

  “My boy, Wilmington’s big, I promise you—bigger than I am by far. In some other place, I’d be quite a guy. Here I’m just a piker.”

  “Dr. Palmer, he’s not telling the truth.”

  “I know that, Mrs. Garrett.”

  “Richard, when he and I are alone, he calls me Hortense. He’s a cheeky son of a bitch.”

  “I like cheeky guys. They can sell.”

  He motioned for me to go on. It didn’t help matters that she snuggled to him, responding to his pats. But I gritted my teeth and said as if by rote. “However, big as Wilmington is, it’s not as big as the earth, and that’s the side of the puddle I’m offering her—you and her, but mainly her.”

  “The earth? What do you mean?”

  “Biography is international. The subjects aren’t all American, not by any means. One man writes about Caesar, another chooses Napoleon, another Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Yesterday, when I spoke of the American preeminence in the field, I may have given the impression that it was a national thing. It isn’t. It’s international, just as the writers of it are. In other words, if Mrs. Garrett were to take charge of this thing, she would be not a more beautiful frog—as that, of course, is impossible—but a much bigger frog, provided, that is, that you take one obvious step. Provided that you name it for her.”

  “But I intended to!”

  He looked down at her and asked: “Dear? Does Dr. Palmer’s idea appeal to you?”

  “Your idea, if it was your idea, does.”

  “Well, I did intend to, Hortense.”

  “Then I’m shook to my heels, Richard. Yes, it does appeal to me, that you lay this wreath at my feet.” She waited for a moment, while he waited, too, sensing that more was coming. “Richard, I’ll be in Who’s Who.”

  “You are in Who’s Who.”

  “Yes, but in my own right, not just as your wife.”

  “You’ll be in Who’s Who in the World,” I said.

  “I never heard of Who’s Who in the World.”

  “You have now.”

  She still hadn’t quite said yes but seemed about to, when she shied away all of a sudden, I suspected to torture me. Anyway, she did. “Oh, I don’t know,” she burst out. “Isn’t it going to look funny? I mean, queer the thing from the outset, to have a woman in charge? After all—”

  “Why is it?” I asked in a hot, argumentative way. “Women are great in this field. Look at Fawn Brodie and her sensational biography of Jefferson. Look at Anita Leslie and the fresh stuff she dug up on the Edwardians. And Barbara Tuchman and her book on China, which is primarily a biography of Stillwell.”

  “What was that name?” Mr. Garrett asked.

  “Tuchman, Barbara Tuchman.”

  “Hold everything.”

  He got up and went out, leaving us alone for a few minutes.

  “Lloyd,” she said cordially, “I can’t thank you enough for that idea you gave me. It’s going to work out fine—though, of course, not with you. That’s the part you forgot. It’s the kind of idea that’s not restricted at all in how it’s put into effect. So I’ll have that. I’ll be a still larger frog. I’ll swim in the puddle you found me—and then I’ll kick you out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bitch, I still have you over a barrel.”

  “That’s what you think, Buster.”

  “I knew I’d heard that name,” Mr. Garrett said as he came back in and sat down with a copy of Who’s Who in America in his lap. “Barbara Tuchman. Did you know, dear, that she was Maurice Wertheim’s daughter?”

  “Who is Maurice Wertheim?”

  “Banker, big shot. The main angel of the old New York Theatre Guild. But I knew him—not well, as a boy knows a man, but that well. He was a friend of my father’s, and I had enormous respect for him. Friendly, considerate, a little pompous, a bit overfond of the I-cap, but basically decent. And to think that his daughter—”

  “She’s very eminent,” I put in.

  “I can see she is. It’s in here.”

  All of a sudden, we agreed that a woman in charge would help, rather than hinder, and he asked: “Well, dear? Is it settled?”

  “Richard,” she said in a stage whisper, “do you know what we could do if Dr. Palmer weren’t here?”

  “I guess that means me,” I gulped.

  “I guess it does,” he said without looking up. “I’m due in London next week, but you’ll be hearing from me as soon as I get back.”

  The horrible, jealous twinge that shot through me told me that if torture was her idea, it was working, and well. I was still atremble when I reached the street, walking along in the sunlight, wondering where I was. It was several minutes before I had it: I was on my way to the bus stop to ride back to Baltimore and then change for College Park. But I still wasn’t quite through. I was stumping along when I heard running footsteps behind me, and I realized that someone was calling me. I turned, and there was the secretary. Miss Immelman, she now said her name was. “I called as you went out the door,” she said breathlessly, “but when I went out in the hall, you were gone. I was to give you the apartment number, so you can call there in case. Mr. Garrett told me to when he came out to get that book.”

  She handed me a card with a phone number written on it in a woman’s hand, area code 302. “He wasn’t sure you had it,” she said, still out of breath.

  “Thanks ever so much. I didn’t.”

  “The senator has, but—”

  “I’m not the senator, am I?”

  7

  THE NEXT THREE DAYS were bad, worse than I had thought they could be: I had what I wanted. I had used her to put it across, and I had put it across. That being the case, it didn’t seem inevitable that I would suffer much, after only one day with her, from the fact that he was back in her bed. I went through hell. I’d think of her eyes, her attachments and how they shook, the way her bottom twitched. A hundred times I owned up to the fact that it wasn’t an afternoon’s fun I could forget and go on with my life. It was as big as I’d told her it was. The worst of it was that even on fundamentals, I wasn’t sure it would stick, because there was that remark she’d made, that after becoming a frog in a larger puddle, she would throw me out. I kept telling myself that on that point, at least, I was safe, that she couldn’t throw me out without risking my revenge, which I could take any time simply by calling Mr. Garrett at the number Miss Immelman had given me and telling him. I thought, at least that stops her from talking; but then: if he charged her with what I said, she could simply say that I raped her, that she had meant to spare him the truth; but since I was playing dirty, the truth was all she had left. When I got that far with the thought, I can tell you, it hurt.

  On the third night I turned to misery’s companion, a deck of playing cards, and dealt them out on the cocktail table for a game of solitaire. I had been at it for some time when I heard the freight elevator. I wondered who would be using it at that hour of the night. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor. Then I heard footsteps on the other side of my door. A key clicked in the lock. My heart almost stopped beating. The only people who had ever had keys were my mother before she died, Eliza, the cleaning woman, and Hortense. For some reason, it was my mother I thought of now as the door be
gan to open slowly.

  It was Hortense. She closed the door and stood in the foyer, looking at me.

  “Well?” she said. “You gave me the keys, didn’t you?”

  I went clumping over to her, gathered her in my arms, and kissed her—just once. Then I stood back and said: “O.K., I’m glad. I can’t pretend I’m not. Now suppose you get the hell out.”

  “Suppose I what?”

  “You heard me. Get out.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “You know why: you don’t shack up for two days with him and then start up with me again. Out. Beat it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “And suppose I don’t want to?”

  “Then I’ll throw you out.”

  “I don’t believe it. Want to bet?”

  “Okay,” I said, grabbing her, “you’re going—now!”

  “And taking the institute with me?”

  I was so angry that I had forgotten about the institute. Suddenly a lump came in my throat and my heart skipped a beat. She came close, her lips skinned back from her teeth.

  “Dr. Palmer!” she exclaimed as though greatly concerned. “Are you all right? Oh my! You turned the color of chalk. Should I call a physician? Or administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? What do you wish me to do?”