“ ‘One more time. The last. Please, Dad, I promise.’
“ ‘I’ve already told it twice.’
“ ‘Go ahead. Ask me.’
“ ‘What’s the difference, Harve, between a rooster and a whore?’
“ ‘I know, I know,’ he said. He was waving his hand.
“ ‘Harve?’ I called on him, Mills. I called on the kid.
“ ‘The whore say——’
“ ‘The rooster says, Harve.’
“ ‘The rooster says——’
“Mills, I was praying. I swear to you. Praying. I was holding my breath.
“ ‘—cock-a-doodle-doo. The whore says—’
“My mouth, my lips were moving. The way they move when you’re feeding a baby, the way you might breathe by the guy that they work on that they pull from the sea.
“ ‘—any cock’ll do!’
“I screamed, I howled, I doubled over with laughter. There were tears in my eyes, snot ran from my nose. The kid thought he was Bob Hope, the Three Stooges. I thought so myself. I praised his delivery. I made over his timing.
“ ‘Again,’ he said, ‘let me try it again.’
“I let him try it again. He was letter perfect.
“ ‘Letter perfect,’ I told him.
(“Because they’ve got to have confidence. Isn’t that what they say? Because they’ve got to have confidence, believe in themselves? Because they must be encouraged, ain’t that the drill?”)
There were tears in Messenger’s eyes now too. And now he was weeping openly. Snot ran from his nose.
“ ‘I want to tell a different one this time.’
“ ‘Go ahead, Harve.’ “
George Mills could barely understand him.
“ ‘Once more?’
“ ‘Not that one again. Tell another.’
“ ‘Please, Dad, I promise.’
“ ‘All right, but this is the last time.’
“ ‘Can I tell it again?’
“ ‘Harve, you promised.’
“ ‘Claude Balls,’ he snickered. ‘Mister Completely,’ he roared. ‘Do I have to go to sleep now?’
“ ‘Of course not,’ I said. But I got into bed. I turned off the bedlamp.
“I could hear him giggling. ‘Will you tell me more jokes, Dad?’ Harve asked in the dark. ‘Please?’
“ ‘Wouldn’t you rather watch television?’
“ ‘I’d rather tell jokes.’
“ ‘All right,’ I told him, and waited till he’d calmed down. ‘Knock knock,’ I said.
“ ‘Who’s there?’ Harve asked me.
“Shit, George, you pass on what you can.”
Again Mills had difficulty understanding him.
“I said it’s the confidence,” Messenger said. “I’m crying for the confidence, all that Special Olympics confidence, all that short-range, small-time, short-change, small-scale, short-lived, short-shrift, small-potato, small-beer fucking confidence. I’m weeping for the confidence.”
“Hi, Lulu,” Messenger said, pecking her cheek. He’d taken to kissing her when he greeted her, giving her hugs. Mills knew Cornell was attracted to his wife. He’d seen him negotiate proximity, caught him watch her do housework, wash windows, scrub the floors on her knees. He touched her arm when he spoke, he patted her shoulder. Mills knew he had some vagrant fix on her, that she popped into his head, that he speculated about her as he soaped himself in showers, as he jerked off in bed, as he came in his wife. The Louise of Messenger’s imaginings who might finally actually have had a thing or two to do with the real Louise. She may have appealed to him as a woman of great sexual reserves, the farmer’s grown daughter, the unsatisfied wife. There was much talk of needs. Women spoke openly on radio call-in shows of their sexuality, asking the experts, showing, even proclaiming, a side of their natures that had not been known. Mature women, ordinary women, the women you saw in supermarkets, the women you saw in discount department stores, the women you saw in the streets. Not theatrical beings, not movie stars, glamor girls, chippies in bars. Not great beauties whose beauty was only some cautionary flag of the genital—Mills had always had his theories—but housewives, mothers and matrons you’d have thought had calmed down. It was this sense of her energies, undepleted and compounding, that attracted Cornell. He could probably have had her. She probably would have let him, though he doubted she had. He was glad of his grace.
“The horror, the horror, hey Mills?” Messenger greeted George cheerfully. And Mills had forgotten whose turn it was, who was up for today. Because they might almost have been in his repertoire now, his bumper crop company, his cache of familiars. They could have been in the inventory, the muster, the record. Not forebears but precursors. Not that fat trousseau of antecedents, that thick portfolio of kin, but a sort of harbinger. They might have been Millses, but cousins, say, in-laws this or that many times removed. Grateful for the information he could take in with no view of ever having to render it. And if he asked questions, how they were making out, what they were up to, he asked with an expansive detachment, a loose, uncommitted laze. As you might question a barber or talk on a train. He wasn’t indifferent. He was just glad of his grace.
“Well,” Messenger said, dropping down on the sofa, “it’s gone, the car’s gone. I was over there yesterday, I drove by today. It’s gone. The little puddle of litter has been swept away. I think something’s up.”
“Max and Ruth,” George said. “The ones who live in that car.” They might have been Millses. He was that certain of whom Messenger was speaking.
“You know they take a paper?” Messenger said. “I don’t know how they got the guy to agree to deliver it, but they take the paper. They keep up.”
“Are you going to tell us about people who live in a car, Cornell?” Louise asked.
“Max and Ruth? I don’t know a thing about Max and Ruth. No one does. Max and Ruth are a mystery. All I know is their car’s gone. Something’s happening. I’d bet on it. They keep up.”
Two days later he was back. “He’s in disgrace,” Messenger said pleasantly from his unreachable enhancement, the fleeting grace that made him kin.
“Sam Glazer,” George Mills said.
“Look,” Cornell said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff. I know George has an interest, that’s why I do it.”
“I’m interested, Cornell,” Louise said.
“No, I mean he has to make up his mind. Decide which way to go. It’s only rumors anyway. No one’s talking, least of all Sam. Even the Meals-on-Wheelers are in the dark about this one. It’s very hush-hush. You’d need a fucking clearance to get to the bottom of this thing. Actually, I wasn’t the first to notice the car was gone. Jenny Greener mentioned it last week. I was in the neighborhood so I checked it out. Hell, it’s all neighborhood anyway, ain’t it? Three or four blocks or the next county over. The way I figure it’s all neighborhood.”
Yes, Mills thought. Yes.
“Probably nothing will happen till the end of the term. But nobody’s talking. This is just, you know, dispatches, news from the front. Buzz and scuttlebutt. You’ll have to take it from there, George. You’d have to start from that premise.”
“What does he mean, George?” Louise said.
George hadn’t heard her. He was watching Cornell.
“What’s known for certain is that the chancellor gave this party for the board of trustees. What’s known for certain is the guest list. The trustees of course, the higher-ups in the administration—the provost and deans, a handful of chairmen from the important departments. All the wives and husbands. One or two coaches, even some students——the editor of the campus newspaper, the president of the student council, kids like that.”
“Harry Claunch Sr.,” George Mills said.
“You heard this story, George?” Messenger said.
“Go on,” Mills said, not just interested now but, as Messenger had said, with an interest.
“What’s known for certain is the menu.”
“The menu?”
“Melon and prosciutto,” Messenger said. “Salmon mousse. Sorbet. Provimi veal with artichoke sauce. Fiddlehead fern as a veggie and cold fresh lingonberry soup for dessert. Piesporter Gold Tropchen was the white wine, a ’70 Cheval Blanc was the red. They didn’t sit down to dinner, you understand. This was buffet the servants brought round.”
“How do you know all this?” George Mills asked.
“The editor of the student paper ran an editorial. He won’t be asked back but what the hell, he’s graduating.”
“We used to serve fiddlehead,” Louise said. “We used to do salmon mousse.”
“In the school cafeteria?” Cornell said.
“Sure,” Louise said, “at the end of the month. We did all sorts of gourmet meals. It’s how we saved money. The dietician would spend thirty or forty dollars on this fancy food. She knew darn well the kids wouldn’t touch it.”
Messenger shook his head. “That’s truly astonishing, Lulu.”
“It was a trick of the trade,” Louise said modestly.
“What happened? What’s known for certain?” Mills asked impatiently.
“I’ve got George’s attention,” Messenger said.
“You’ve got my attention too, Cornell,” Louise said.
“I hope so, Lulu,” Messenger said. “All right,” he said. He turned to George Mills. “Nothing’s known for certain. I already told you.”
“The car is gone. Where’s it parked now?”
Messenger shrugged.
“Did you think to call the paper boy?”
“Hey,” Messenger said, “that’s an idea. No,” he said, “he delivers to a license plate. We’d never be able to track them down.”
“What’s all this about?” Louise asked.
“Sam Glazer’s been fired,” George Mills said. “He’s lost his job.”
“Offered to resign,” Messenger said.
“Asked to resign,” Mills said.
“You could be right. His friends say offered.”
Because they were bargaining now, haggling. Negotiating over fact like a rug in the bazaar.
“None of this came from that other paper boy,” Mills said, “the one that edits the student paper?”
“He published the guest list, he published the menu.”
“The kid sounds like a go-getter. Why do you suppose he’d stop there?”
“Shit, I don’t know, George. That’s not even important. They can come down pretty hard on these kids if they have to. What you have to understand is power, campus politics. Take my word for it, George. I’m the professor here.”
“I’m the butler,” Mills said. “No,” he said, “all you have to understand is that guest list. He wasn’t there.”
“Who?”
“The paper boy.”
“Of course he was there.”
“For the meat and the fish. For the soup for dessert. He wasn’t there then.”
“When?”
“When he was asked to resign. When he did whatever it was Claunch said he did and then nailed him for. Practically nobody was.”
“Some butler,” Messenger said. “No one may leave before the king. A lot you know.”
“The king gave the party. It was the king’s own house.”
“Yes?” Messenger said.
“Because it works in reverse. Because that’s protocol too. Ask, what’shisname, Grant.”
“So the students would have left first? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s right,” Mills said.
“Then the chairmen and coaches?”
“That’s right.”
“Then the lesser deans. The dean of the night school, the dean of the—”
“That’s right.”
“No,” Messenger said. “The provost outranks him. According to your own protocols he’d have been on his way out before the provost, before the trustees and all those wives.”
“That’s right,” George Mills said. And felt as Wickland must have felt when he’d shown him his sister in the square in Cassadaga during their seance forty years earlier. As he’d felt himself when he’d shown Wickland Jack Sunshine’s father and the fourteen-year-old girl with the withered body of an old woman who’d given Jack Sunshine his height.
“But if he’d already gone home …”
“I didn’t say that,” George Mills said.
Messenger looked at him. “Been on his way out?”
“That’s right,” Mills said.
“All right,” Messenger said impatiently, “been on his way out. What difference does …” He stared at Mills.
“That’s right,” George said.
“You know you’ve got a nasty mind?” his friend said. “You know you’re one heavy-duty son of a bitch?”
“What?” Louise asked. “What? Are you following any of this, George?”
“Following? Shit, Lulu honey, he’s leading the goddamn band.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “Nothing like this is in the black buzz,” Messenger said. “I mean this isn’t the way they’re talking on the Rialto. What they’re saying up there is much milder. ‘Offered to resign’ is the worst of it.”
“What are they saying?”
“Well, it’s a joke really. It started when it got out that Max and Ruth had taken their car away from the front of his house.”
“Yes,” Mills said.
“Max and Ruth? You’re crazy. You actually think they were invited?”
“No,” George Mills said.
“They’d have been thrown out. They’d have called the cops on them if they dared crash that dinner party. And don’t tell me they helped serve. They don’t have uniforms. Even if they did, do you think the chancellor would let them? Run a downer on his guest by having those two characters get close enough to pass out actual food? People who live in a fucking jalopy, a beat-up, stale-aired old clunker that probably looked used when it came off the goddamn assembly line? Who take baths in the rest room sinks of gas stations? Moochers with freeload cookie crumbs in their scalp and bits of old poetry-reading cheese stuck to the creases of their clothing? With Gallo like mouthwash on their breath? Jesus, George, they’d be lucky if they got as far as the back door for a handout.”
“That’s right,” George said.
Messenger was stunned. “Is that what you think? Jesus, is that what you think?”
“Is what what he thinks?” Louise said.
“Your husband just said they were in the kitchen eating above-their-station leftovers when it happened. He says the chancellor’s residence is so huge that they had to have been shouting loud enough for Max and Ruth to hear every word all the way in the back of the house. He says that whatever it was they heard must have been so damning it scared even them off, that they just climbed into their house and drove it away and never returned.”
“He said that?”
“That’s right,” Mills said. “Yes,” he said, and turned back to George, “but how would they even know about that dinner party?”
George Mills smiled at him.
“All right,” Messenger said, “so he was dressed to kill, so he had on his best bib and tucker. All right, so it was the dinner party hour when they saw him come out of his front door and get into his car. All right, so they followed him. That still doesn’t explain what he was supposed to have done.”
“You never told me what they say he’s done.”
“Well they don’t know,” Messenger said. “The usual stuff when a dean offers his resignation.”
“Is told to resign.”
“You said ‘asked.’ ”
“You said ‘disgrace.’ ”
“All right, all right. That he’s made some mistakes, been highhanded with tenure, let good people get away, worked the buddy system, kept people on that he likes, allowed salary discrepancies between favored and unfavored departments to get out of hand, not been aggressive enough raiding other schools, made too many enemies.”
�
��Has he done these things?”
“I don’t know. Some. Any dean does some. It’s not an easy job. Sam’s record is as good as most. He’s only been in the job a year. He wouldn’t have had time to do all of them.”
“He lost his wife,” Mills said. “They’re gentlemen. They wouldn’t have been shouting if he had.”
“They’re princes of industry,” Messenger said. “Soft-spoken guys.”
“That’s right,” Mills said. “They’d have had to be outraged.”
“It was the last week of August for God’s sake. A mild, beautiful night.”
“That’s right.”
“He wouldn’t have had a topcoat with him. He wouldn’t have had a raincoat. So what did he put it in? Tell me that.”
George Mills looked disgusted.
“I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” Louise said.
“Damn it, Lulu,” Messenger said, “haven’t you heard a word he’s been saying? Your husband thinks Sam is a thief.”
“He likes souvenirs.”
“What do you suppose it was?”
“I don’t know. Houses like that,” Mills said dreamily, “it could be almost anything. Something with the university’s crest, I suppose. A slim gold lighter. A pen. A letter opener. A paperweight or ashtray. Sugar tongs. Stationery even. Anything.”
“And Claunch fingered him?”
“He never took his eyes off him,” George Mills said. “He counted his drinks. He toted up the hors d’œuvres he ate.”
“That’s right,” Messenger said.
“He hates him.”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me about the will, Cornell.”
“Jesus, George,” Messenger said, “I have some loyalties here. I—”
And that’s when Mills chose to play his China card. He stormed out of the house.
Leaving Louise and Messenger staring after him on the couch next to each other.
Because it wasn’t a will she signed in Mexico but an inter vivos trust. Because she’d left no will. Because if she had there’d have been an instrument for the widower to set aside, renounce, by simply filing a paper, a paper, not even anything fine-sounding as an instrument. He could have written it on a scratch pad, on the back of his marriage license, and been awarded his widower’s aliquot third. It was that inter vivos trust. Because if she left no will and had had the grace or just simple good conjugal sportsmanship to die intestate he wouldn’t even have had to trouble himself about the scratch pad. Half the hereditament would have come to him by sheer right of descent and succession. Half, not a third. It was the numbers, it was the arithmetic.
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