And Clyde Schermer stood and watched the girl who sat alone in a booth, watched her slide her eyes across him until he was absolutely sure, and then dropped his cigarette and turned his foot on it and started for the booth, taking in that moment the image of Ellen and forcing it back and down and out through a convenient trap door in the back of his mind, and giving the girl the hard practiced smile.
And Thomas Marin Griffin sat alone in his apartment. It was a hotel apartment uptown, just far enough off Madison so he could hear the more hurried sound of the uptown-downtown traffic. In the long day many things had come to his attention. As there had been no time to consider them, he had filed in his memory those factors he considered significant. Now he took them out. Assorted facts of many varieties. A court decision on a minority stockholders’ suit. Discovery of a new natural gas field. A serious and expensive bug in a new transmission out of Detroit. A cut in the import duties on small motors.
He had learned long ago that creative thought is largely the discovery of relationships. In industry the most sensitive and accurate gauges are themselves gauged by metal blocks machined to an almost incredible accuracy of dimension. They are kept in a specific temperature and humidity range so that expansion and contraction will not prejudice their accuracy. So perfect are their mirrored surfaces that when two of them are pressed firmly together, the dry metal surfaces cling and they cannot be pulled apart but must instead be slid apart to break the molecular bond between them.
And in Thomas Marin Griffin’s mind were those facts, the new ones of this day, and all of the known facts from all the rest of his days. And he sat in silence and sought relationships between these facts which were like the mirror surface blocks with which the gauges are tested. He turned them this way and that, pressing the surfaces together, seeking creative and profitable relationships. When two facts stuck together in the illumination of an inevitable relationship, he felt a warmth and satisfaction. When he could make three or more cohere, he felt a flush in his cheeks and a rippling flutter of excitement that seemed to start under his breastbone and spread both up and down. And when the inventiveness of his mind began to stale, he filed away the newly discovered relationships, setting himself a schedule of the action he would take on them. It was not greed that moved him, nor the need of power so much as the hard flutter of excitement, better than a woman, that came when surfaces matched, when corners were lined up, when two unrelated things became related and hence profitable by the strength of his disciplined mind.
He was forever setting up and arranging things that other men thought of just a bit later.
And in the studio David Delevan’s thoughts crawled through his mind like small random animals which crawled under a dusty rug, making little places over their furry backs that moved with them. And when two of the moving places would converge and touch, there would be a moment of strain and motionlessness and they would diverge and move about again, in furry, dusty aimlessness.
Bobby Rawls rode the rattling coach, drinking from a bottle with a sailor while the night hurried by outside, the signal bells of the crossings bursting and fading into minor key, quickly lost in the rushing night. He wept inside for Norma while he and the sailor leaned red-faced at each other and talked boldness. And after a while the rye turned sour in him and when he threw up, holding his foot on the water pedal of the train toilet, the train lurched and he bumped his head and spotted his knee. He went to his berth and left the shade up and watched the wheeling night. A train exploded by, going in the other direction, shocking him, making his heart pound for a few moments. Its diesel bray challenged all the still things, all the quiet things, and Robert Rawls thought of all those who lay in each others’ arms and heard that beast sound in the flatland night. And that way managed at last to make the tears come. They did not sting. They were round and bland and warm, feeling like oil on his face. The train plunged west.
Chapter Thirteen
There is an old airport at Stockton, but the commercial airlines do not use it anymore. It was started back in the days of struts and wing-walking, of lumpy grass and voices thin across the field from the temporary stands the day of the jump from five thousand feet. A mile up.
Later, in the late twenties, there was a time when all civic organizations began to talk about the airport improvements. New runways were laid out and paved. Hangars went up. The air age was here. Lindberg had flown to Paris. So on Sunday the cars would drive out and park by the fence, and families would watch the takeoffs and the landings. It was a magical time. A carnival time, with men selling ice cream and whirring, little airplanes tied to the ends of sticks.
But the hills nudged in too close, and the area was too populated and the runways could not be extended. So now it is a place where you can keep your aircoup or cub in a dilapidated hangar for a small monthly charge, where the wind rattles old signs, where students wait in overcasual nervousness for their next lesson. Sometimes, at night, the hot-rodders get out onto the old cracked runways and drag race until the cops come. It is a sad place now, and the improvement bonds clutter the deposit boxes of the die-hards, the hopefuls.
The new airport is a tri-county project, far out on lonely land, actually closer to Clayton than to Stockton. There rises the building of blond stone, glass, and driftwood-gray trim, with restaurantlike operating rooms, bored chant of the tower, arrival-and-departure board, electric baggage trucks, magazine racks, red gas trucks, NO SMOKING BEYOND THIS POINT. It is a trackless railroad station, a wondrous and alarming thing turned now into dullness and routine, into a sort of bored civil-service efficiency. A man stands in the super-conny aisle, reading his newspaper while waiting to file toward the wheeled stairway with his eighty-seven fellow passengers. And in that gesture there is the end of all high glory. Subway in the air, it is. No more dope and struts and fabric and the exposed cylinder ends. No more the tiny figure on the high wing, and the great crowd’s aaaah and the drop through sunlight until the chute blooms. It is now a matter of credit cards and confirmed reservations and, if you are sick, there is a special paper bag—if you don’t get the Dramamine in time.
Flight 707 was scheduled for arrival at 2:08. Susan felt the plane letting down. Robbie, excitement on his face, was trying to see across her, and he pointed out things. She felt a pang of jealousy that here she saw for the first time an excitement in him that was not of her making. The signs about smoking and seat belts came on and the stewardess went up and down the aisle awakening those who slept. The earth tilted at an angle against the wing, with a toy group of buildings and toy runways below for a time then gone, and then they were down, Susan tensing for a jar of landing, waiting and waiting, then finding they were turning, taxiing, she unsnapped the belt.
“Nervous, honey?”
“Sort of, I guess,” she said.
“They’re harmless. They’ll love you anyway. Hey, there they are. See? Behind the fence there to the left of the gate. Wilma and George and Alice. I don’t see anybody else.”
Susan had seen pictures and she at last spotted them. At last they went down the long stairs, Robbie carrying her small travel case, hurrying, taking her arm and hurrying her along once they were down on the concrete. Again she felt that twinge of annoyance with him. Yet, after all, it was his family.
There was the confusion of introduction, with all the right words said, and a forthright kiss from Wilma, who seemed matronly and pleasant and proper, and a shy, cool kiss from Alice, and a walloping, let’s-kiss-the-bride smack from hefty, club-joining George, who punched Robbie in the arm and told him he had gotten himself a nice dish, and then being left with the two women while Robbie and George went off to see about the bags. Yes, it was a very nice trip. No, not rough at all. Oh, I got this in Mexico. I’m glad you like it. I’m dying to meet all of Robbie’s family. Yes, Washington was dreadfully hot, but we were lucky enough to get an air-conditioned room. Coming up we changed planes in San Antonio, and then had I think it was an hour and half to wait. Then the flight sto
pped in New Orleans, then Nashville, then Washington. [Trying all this time to find the right balance, enough warmth, enough shyness, enough brideness, and seeing in their faces that she was doing it correctly, seeing the general look of relief hidden by the politeness.]
They went to the car and George put the bags in the trunk compartment and with the three women in back and the two men in front they drove out of there, and Susan wished that Robbie had made more of an effort to sit beside her, because she needed to feel that he was close. He didn’t understand that these were strangers. They were so familiar to him.
The guest annex on the Furmon house was new and pleasant. It had a connecting door into the main house and also a private entrance. There was a tiny kitchen alcove, with combination stove and refrigerator and a sink nearby. Alice Furmon said, “There’s breakfast things in the refrigerator, and more towels in this cupboard. And, let me see, I guess that’s all you have to know. We won’t run everybody at you at once, Susan. Suppose you relax for a while and freshen up. The rest of the tribe will be over for drinks about five thirty, and then we’re all going to the club for dinner. There’ll be a lot of people to meet there, so maybe you ought to take a nap or something.”
Then after Susan had protested about everything being so nice, about being so much trouble, she was at last able to close the door and lean her back against it and stick her underlip out and blow her hair off her forehead.
“That bad, honey?”
“Just sort of confusing. Hey, this is very nice, you know it? Private.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Delevan at home.”
“That still sounds crazy. How would you like it if all of a sudden you had to become Mr. Walton?”
“Do you like them?” he asked, suddenly earnest.
“They’re nice, Robbie. They really are.”
“Come here.”
“Uh-uh. I’ve got to unpack so things will hang out. How will the women dress, Robbie?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. The club isn’t what you’d call a very formal operation. A sort of a cocktail-dress deal, I’d say.”
“Go ask Alice and borrow an iron, darling. Ask her what sort of thing she’s wearing.” He kissed her and went off. And while he was gone she sat on the bed and suddenly felt small, forlorn, and very much alone in a world of strangers.
When Ben Delevan got home at five thirty on Saturday evening he found Wilma waiting—all dressed, ready and indignant. “The children have gone over already. What possessed you, Ben, to be so late?”
“Couldn’t be helped. Sorry. Something came up.”
“Something always comes up. Now hurry just as fast as you can. I’m going on over.”
“Plane on time?”
“Right on the minute.”
“What’s she like?”
“I’d say she’s no fool, Ben. I think she knows what she’s doing every minute. But they seem very much in love. I mean that’s something you can sense. Now do hurry. I laid out everything for you.”
He showered and dressed with just enough leisureliness to retain a sense of independence. And just enough haste to avoid too cold an eye from Wilma. He knotted his tie carefully and patted it into position and looked at himself with a proper measure of approval. As he walked across to George’s place he could hear the chatter of the party. He stopped, out of sight, tasting the wind. There was a new flavor to it, a gusty humidity. The June leaves flapped over, exposing their pale undersides. And quick little winds flapped at his pants cuffs.
The party had a colorful look. His own children and Wilma, and the Quinn Delevans, and the George Furmons, and the Robbie Delevans. And Sandy, with a barometric awareness of weather change, running in silent, tireless, solemn circles on the wide, green lawn, curls bouncing, legs thin and brown and fleet.
They looked toward him as he approached, smiling, and he made a smiling half salute and went directly to the pale-haired bride, who looked up at him out of gray eyes, pupils made tiny by the terrace sunlight, late out of the west, and started to raise her hand toward his and then, as though on impulse, stood up and shook his hand.
“Nice to have you aboard,” he said, wishing he could think of something better.
“Nice to be aboard, captain,” she said, and something quick danced for a moment in her eyes, giving him the impression that she and he were for some inexplicable reason close, even in that first moment of meeting. Yet he had met many who had this knack and used it all the time with everyone and it meant nothing. So in caution he smiled and turned to Robbie and congratulated him and gratefully accepted bourbon from George, who knew enough to have something other than cocktails at a cocktail party. And, from the side, he watched Susan with the others and felt pleased out of all proportion when he saw that what he had seen in her was not something turned on for the others too, but had been a quick and valid affinity between them. He knew he would like this girl. He knew her strength would be welcome.
Reassured, he turned his attention toward Quinn. He felt guilty and uneasy at not having talked to Quinn since the Thursday scene. And though Brock had warned him about the loss of the mustache, he was still shocked at the way the change enfeebled Quinn’s face. At the way it changed an ersatz strength to a look of uncertainty. What had been bored appraisal was now shown to be a compressed shyness. He went over and sat next to Quinn and said in a low voice, “Sick yesterday?”
Bess, overhearing, said rather shaply, “He was out of sorts yesterday, Ben. This morning, too. I didn’t think he ought to come tonight, but he keeps saying he’s fine. He doesn’t look fine. Would you say he looks fine?”
Bess’s habit of talking about Quinn in his presence as though he were a child or deaf always made Ben uneasy. “You’ll be okay by Monday, Quinn boy. Hope you will. Things piling up a little. Got some stuff I want you to handle.” Saying it, Ben knew it was a feeble and awkward attempt to make amends for the things he had said on Thursday.
Quinn turned his head slowly and looked directly at Ben for the first time. He frowned as though puzzled. “Monday? I’ll be fine on Monday. I’m fine now.”
“He keeps saying that, but he doesn’t look it,” Bess said. “The cat’s got his tongue. He just sits like that. And he gets so cross with me.”
Ben gave up. He looked over at Susan and saw that his own children were monopolizing her. Brock, sitting on one heel, talking with low-voiced enthusiasm; Ellen just sitting and looking at Susan with warm love and admiration in her eyes. If the kids were any indication, Susan was in.
George took his empty glass and said, “You need more, bub. Back in a flash.”
Ben watched George go over to the table where the bottles were. Alice was there, putting hot things on a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and Ben nearly gasped aloud when he saw George give her a quick caress that was furtive and direct and anything but subtle. He half expected Alice to bash him with the plate of hors d’oeuvres, and when she didn’t, he thought that what he had seen had been imagined. Then he saw Alice’s face and throat darken and saw her touch her cheek against George’s shoulder for the barest fraction of a second.
Ben felt as though he had been peering under a drawn curtain. He marveled that he had been so wrong about them for so long. That he had so definitely decided that Alice, cool and withdrawn in all things, would insist on restraint and circumspection in all matters of love. Yet here was a sudden and unexpected key to a relationship that was apparently a good deal more earthy than anything he could have guessed. And was, amazingly, reciprocal rather than being merely endured by Alice. And was, even more astonishingly, progressing briskly after many years of marriage. He had to turn his head to keep from staring at Alice. He felt guilty, and at the same time he felt as though he had been cheated in some obscure way. He resented being proved wrong about people he thought he had known so well. And he began to look around at his other relatives with dim suspicion.
As the shadows began to grow longer it slowly became apparent to all of them that Quinn Delevan might very p
ossibly ruin the evening. When the drinks had not come fast enough, he had gone and made his own. And now he had taken up his station near the bottles, looking through everyone. Drinking with metronomic efficiency. Conversation began to get too loud and too brittle, and everyone laughed too often, laughed in uncomfortable awareness of Quinn and not knowing how to stop him. Not with the bride present.
His face was masklike in the fading light, and his movements were wooden-toy, wind-up movements, almost audible the crinkling of coil spring, the brass biting of the little gears. And turned, saying nothing, empty glass falling on the grass at the edge of the stone, and walked away on stilt legs, back rigid, feet feeling for the grass and for the mechanical balance. In the silence of his leaving, his shadow moving long across the grass, Bess called out to him, called his name, trying to make her voice casual. But he did not turn and her voice, a flat cry, seemed to reecho among them, and then was covered with the conversation which dismissed him with its jauntiness, yet underlined his adsence with the little edges that showed through.
Here was a new daughter brought from a far tribe, and they wanted to show her the solidities, the huts staunchly thatched, the crops tended, the good washing-stones by the river, the boldness of warriors, the fertility of women, the grace of their dancing, and the respect for taboos. But one of the greeters had violated taboo and shamed the tribe.
Contrary Pleasure Page 23
