The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “I know that too. It never mattered that you were older than other parents. You weren’t really.”

  “I don’t know,” McGraw said. “The young days were gone, and there you were.” He smiled. “We wanted you bad, honey. I went down on my knees and thanked the good Lord when you arrived healthy and whole.” He picked up the glass again. “Let’s order a meal.”

  It was as if Patty had not heard. “What happened to them, Frank and Jimmy and O’Reilly and—was it McTurk?”

  “It was. A big black Irishman with shoulders like a truss bridge.” McGraw was silent. “What happened to them? I don’t know, honey.” Today was filled with confessions and reminiscences. “I had a dream once. I was climbing a mountain with friends. Up and up we went, into the mists. I lost the sight of them, and even the sound of their voices, and there was nothing to do but climb on.” He paused, looking far beyond the girl, beyond the walls of the restaurant, into the past. It took an effort to bring himself back to the table. “At the top of the mountain,” he said, “I came out into bright sunshine. I searched, but I was all alone. I never knew what happened to the others. I don’t think you ever know. At the top of the mountain you are always alone.” He started to beckon the waiter and then stopped. “What was that you said?”

  “I’m leaving Paul, Daddy. Or I was. But if he’s in trouble—” She smiled, mocking herself. “I don’t mean to sound noble. I detest noble women. Their—nobility spoils everything they do.” Pause. “It’s just that if Paul’s in trouble, then this isn’t the time to walk out on him, is it?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know what the reason is.” McGraw hesitated. “Do you want to tell me?” How many times had he asked that question, knowing that the answer was yes or the subject, whatever it was, would never have been brought up? He watched the girl quietly and waited.

  Patty smiled again. “I guess I’m transparent too. Maybe we’d better not play poker together.”

  McGraw said nothing.

  “The reason,” Patty said, “is the usual sordid reason. Or maybe it isn’t usual these days. Maybe to most people a little wife-swapping doesn’t matter. But it does to me.”

  McGraw sat quiet, fresh anger under tight control. He said at last, “It does to me too, honey. And to your mother.”

  “I know.” Patty was smiling gently. “You gave me old-fashioned standards. I’m glad.”

  McGraw was silent for a time. He said at last, “Do you know who it is?”

  “Zib Wilson.”

  “Does Nat know?”

  “I haven’t asked him.”

  There was silence. “Maybe,” McGraw said slowly, “if you’d had children. I know that’s old-fashioned too.”

  “We can’t, Daddy. That’s another part of it. Paul had a vasectomy. He didn’t bother to tell me about it for a long time, but there it is.” Patty picked up the menu. She smiled brightly. “As they say, so what else is new? I think some food for you, McGraw. Unless you’re going to drink your lunch, you drunken lout?”

  God, he thought, if only we could take on their problems, their pain. But, of course, we can’t. “You sound just like a nagging wife,” he said.

  Patty’s eyes were very bright, too bright. “And you, Daddy, sound—” She stopped. Tears appeared. She got Kleenex out of her purse and swabbed viciously. “Oh, damn!” she said. “Damn, damn, damn! I wasn’t going to cry!”

  “Sometimes,” McGraw said, “it’s that or break something. I’ll order for you, honey.”

  Zib took a cab from the restaurant back to the magazine. In her office she plumped down in her chair, kicked off her shoes, and ignoring the pile of manuscripts on her desk, stared unseeing at the wall.

  She did not for a moment really believe what Paul Simmons had said about Nat: that he was a character out of the Wild West she would do well not to push too far. She had her own view of Nat.

  On the other hand, how well did she really know her husband? How well could anyone know another? The question recurred constantly in the fiction she had to read, and there just might be something to it after all.

  She had lived in married intimacy with Nat for almost three years now, and while that wasn’t long as some marriages went, it was certainly long enough to develop familiarity with at least the man’s approach to the more common daily activities, and were not these indicative of basic character traits?

  Nat emptied his pockets carefully each night and hung up all of his clothes. He put trees in his shoes. He squeezed the toothpaste tube from the bottom instead of the top, and Zib was convinced that he counted silently to himself as he brushed his teeth for exactly thirty seconds, or was it forty-five? One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee...

  Zib was a restless sleeper. Nat, on the other hand, settled himself on his back and did not stir. Nor did he snore. And although he was not one to sing in his morning shower or otherwise behave in a manner abominably ebullient so early in the day, he was cheerful over fruit juice, egg, and coffee, and in the preparing of them never seemed to have things go perversely, maddeningly wrong.

  His morning run in the park and his walks to and from the office plus a regimen of daily floor exercises kept him in splendid physical condition. The running and the walking Zib supposed she would in any case have been able to bear, but the floor exercises would have been just too much if Nat had not explained that they were necessary because of an old spine injury sustained when he was thrown from a horse on some monster mountain out in the West.

  He was even-tempered and did not swear at waiters or cab drivers. He was punctual. He preferred bourbon to martinis, which at first had seemed odd, but now seemed quite ordinary. He looked with approval and an artist’s eye at pretty women, but Zib would have wagered heavily that looking was as far as it went. Their own sex life was pleasant, varied, and without the compulsions some seemed to have these days.

  Where in all that was the character Paul Simmons pictured?

  And why was she suddenly so concerned anyway? Could she actually imagine Nat in the outraged-husband role, confronting her with the fact of her infidelity and, if Paul were to be believed, taking some kind of retaliatory action? The kind of thing that turned up in the Daily News or, for that matter, in probably half a dozen of the manuscripts sitting right here on her desk? Nonsense.

  If there was one quality Nat lacked, it was aggressiveness. She remembered talking about that lack one night. She had said, “You’re better than you think you are. Ben Caldwell knows it. Why else would he have pushed you along the way he has?”

  “Nobody else around.” Nat smiled. “Next question?”

  “That,” Zib said, “is one of the most annoying things about you. You won’t be drawn. You know, I’ve never seen you lose your cool.”

  “It happens sometimes.”

  “I don’t believe it.” And then, groping for words to clothe the idea, “Respect,” she said. “That’s the thing that counts.”

  “Important,” Nat said. “Agreed. So?”

  “How can you respect somebody who doesn’t have even a trace of bastard in him?”

  Calmly, “Or bitch?”

  “Right.”

  “Would you rather I had temper tantrums? Threw things?”

  “That isn’t what I mean. But in this world either you push or you get walked on, don’t you see that?”

  “It’s a big-city attitude.”

  “This is a big city.” She paused. “Why did you ever come here?”

  “Because I don’t belong, you mean?”

  “That isn’t what I mean and you know it. All I’m asking is why you came here in the first place.”

  “To find you.”

  “Be serious.”

  “All right.” Nat was smiling again. “Because Ben Caldwell was here, and I wanted to work with, work under the best. Simple as that.”

  “And you have.” Zib nodded. “When the World Tower is all finished, wrapped up, just another big building, then what?” She hesitated. “Back to y
our mountains?”

  “Possibly. Probably. Will you come with me?”

  “I’d be out of place. As much—” She stopped.

  “As much as I am here?” He shook his head, smiling again. “You will fit wherever you are. You’re a social creature.”

  “And you?”

  Nat shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder,” he said.

  No trace of temper, Zib thought now; never a trace of temper showing. Oh, not emotionless; not that. With her he could be a passionate man, lover. But other times, in ways Paul Simmons had hinted? No way. Paul was wrong. That was all there was to it.

  Then why the small nagging doubt? Answer me that, Elizabeth.

  6

  1:30P.M.-2:10P.M.

  Bert McGraw was back in his office after lunch, and Paul Simmons, clearly uncomfortable, sat low in one of the leather visitor’s chairs. The old man, Paul thought, was like a bear with a sore paw, and it behooved him to tread warily. He looked at his watch. “One-thirty,” he said, “on the dot.” He paused and, daring, added, “As specified.”

  “I had lunch with Patty,” McGraw said. He had himself under control, but how long the temptation to hammer on his desk and shout could be restrained he had no idea.

  “I was busy for lunch,” Paul said. Along with his chameleon abilities went an actor’s voice. “Business is good.”

  “Is it now?” Deliberately the old man picked up the manila envelope of change-authorization copies, looked at it, and then, with a sudden flipping motion, scaled it to land accurately in Paul’s lap. “Have a look,” McGraw said, and heaved himself out of his chair to walk to the windows, his back to the room.

  In the big office only the faint whispering of the papers in Paul’s hands disturbed the silence. Paul said at last, “So?”

  McGraw turned from the windows. He stood square, his hands behind his back. “Is that all you have to say?”

  “I don’t understand. What else is there to say?”

  “Did you make those changes?”

  “But of course.”

  “Why of course? ” The old man’s voice was rising.

  Paul scratched an eyebrow. “I don’t know what to say. Why wouldn’t I make the changes?”

  “Because,” McGraw said, “you’re not some dumb working stiff. If somebody says, ‘Do this,’ you don’t just do it without question. You—” McGraw stopped. “Say it,” he said, “whatever it is.”

  Simmons’s voice had taken on a faint edge. “I’ll try not to make it irreverent,” he said, “because you don’t like that.”

  “Say it however you goddam well please.” The old man was back in his big chair, holding tight to the arms.

  “All right,” Paul said. “It goes like this. Most times if somebody says, ‘Change this,’ I want reasons. But when Jesus Christ Ben Caldwell or his anointed disciple Nat Wilson give me the Word, then I tug at my forelock and say, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ and the change is made. Not for me to question why. Does that answer the question?”

  McGraw said slowly, “Don’t be flip with me, young fellow.” Automatic response. He sat quiet, thoughtful, puzzled still. He said at last, “You’re sayin’, are you not, that it was Nat Wilson himself who signed those changes?”

  Paul’s face showed surprise. “I never thought different. Why would I?”

  “And,” McGraw said, “because the changes, as far as I’ve seen, stand to save you a little money here, a little there, all of it adding up to quite a bit, then you had even more reason to take what was handed you without question, is that it?”

  “I think I recall you suggesting,” Paul said, “that the teeth of gift horses are best not examined.” He tapped the papers in his lap. “If this was the way they wanted their building wired, and as you say, I saved money by doing it their way, why should I raise any kind of a fuss?”

  McGraw said slowly, “Nat Wilson says he didn’t issue those changes.”

  Paul’s face altered, but he said merely, “I see.”

  “And what, goddammit, do you see? Will Giddings doesn’t believe Wilson issued those changes either. Neither does Ben Caldwell.”

  “And what do you think, Father-in-law?”

  The office was silent again. McGraw looked at his hands spread flat on the desktop. “What I think,” he said slowly, “would call down penance in confession.” He was looking straight at Simmons now. “I’m thinking that the knave-or-fool judgment applies. You’re carrying on with the man’s wife—”

  “Patty told you that?”

  McGraw sat silent, watching still.

  “Okay,” Paul said at last. “That’s how it is.” He spread his hands. “You can’t understand it—”

  “That I cannot. Nor can I forgive.” The black fury was rising, irresistible. “I’m an old-fashioned working-class fool, and you’re young, bright, educated, decently bred, and all—and the stench of you is in my nostrils like the stench of something dead that’s been out in the sun too long.”

  “Look,” Paul said, “I’ve taken enough—”

  “You haven’t begun to take,” McGraw said. “Move from that chair before I’m done and I’ll break your back.” He paused. His breathing was audible now. With effort he forced his voice down. “Why would Nat Wilson issue those changes? Tell me that. They gain him nothing. He is the architect. He and Ben Caldwell, Ben mostly of course, but that changes nothing. Between them they approved Lewis’s electrical drawings, his design. Why should Wilson make any attempt at change?”

  Simmons sat silent. He wanted to stand up and walk out, and was afraid. The old man behind the desk was, as he had told Zib, a fearsome old man, quite capable of the physical violence he had threatened.

  “I asked you a question,” McGraw said.

  “You asked several.”

  “Then answer them all.”

  Simmons took a deep breath. “Nat Wilson is a subtle man,” he said.

  “And what, goddammit, is that supposed to mean?”

  “He resents me.”

  McGraw was frowning now. “Why?” And then, “Because you’re carrying on with his wife, is that what you mean?”

  Simmons nodded. It was better, he thought, not to speak.

  “I don’t believe it,” McGraw said. “I know the man. If he knew you were sneaking behind his back, he’d brace you with it and take a few teeth out of that Pepsodent smile. He—”

  “And he is playing with Patty,” Paul said.

  McGraw opened his mouth. He closed it again, but it reopened despite him. And then it closed once more. And opened. No sound emerged. His face had lost its color and his breath came now in great gasps that were not enough. His eyes protruded as he tried to make a gesture with one hand, and failed. He slumped deep in his chair, gasping still like a fish on the bank.

  Paul got up quickly. He stood for a moment indecisive and then walked to the door and threw it open. To Laura outside he said, “You’d better call an ambulance. He’s—I think—he’s having a heart attack.”

  Grover Frazee took a cab back to his Pine Street office after his lunch with the governor. He had known Armitage a long time, and in the usual meaning of the words they were, he supposed, good friends.

  But in the governor’s world, and as far as that went in Frazee’s too, friendship was a fine-sounding word that had very little to do with business. Business was conducted on its merits, period.

  If a man produced you backed him; if he failed, you did not.

  Oh, he hadn’t failed. Not yet. But in the foreseeable future the building was going to be damned near empty. There was the rub.

  You could lay the blame to general business conditions or that administration down in Washington with its three-steps-forward-and-two-and-a-half-steps-back policies.

  But placing the blame accomplished nothing. Explanation rarely helped, and in this instance, today at lunch, explanation hadn’t even softened the governor’s attitude.

  “You’re the man in charge, Grover,” the governor had said, “which means that y
ou get the brickbats as well as the bouquets. I know the feeling and the position.” He grinned bitterly as he stirred sugar into his coffee and watched the liquid swirl. He looked up at last. “How bad is it? Give me some figures.” He watched Frazee steadily.

  Frazee gave them to him—percentage of rented floor space, and of possible new rentals, certain and hoped-for income versus basic maintenance and carrying costs. Discouraging. “But it can’t last,” he said.

  “The hell it can’t.” The governor’s voice did not rise, but it had taken on a new note. “Unemployment hasn’t dropped and inflation hasn’t been whipped. I don’t think there’s a chance of our going into a thirties-type depression, but neither do I think that all of a sudden everything is going to be ginger-peachy, particularly in the big cities.”

  “Bob Ramsay—”

  “Bob Ramsay hears voices. It’s a wonder to me he hasn’t come down from the nearest hill with new tablets. He thinks we’re going to put the whole state to work for his city, and we aren’t. He thinks maybe he’ll make the city into the fifty-first state, and he isn’t going to. He thinks Congress is going to roll over and wave its paws in the air after giving him a blank check, and it isn’t going to work that way either.”

  Privately, Frazee entertained similar views, but he said nothing.

  “He loves this city,” the governor said. “I’ll give him that. And he’s held it together almost with his bare hands. But the fact of the matter is that too much business is moving out, into the suburbs, more than is coming in. The big time, the big apple, the place where it’s at—that concept has lost its appeal. What is left here is turning rapidly into a place for the very rich and the very poor, and neither group rents office space in big buildings.”

  Well, Frazee thought now in the quiet of his own office, Bent Armitage was probably right. He usually was.

  The phone on his desk buzzed quietly. He opened the switch. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Giddings to see you,” Letitia’s voice said. “He says it is urgent.”

  First Armitage at lunch, now Will Giddings obviously with some kind of trouble; there are times when they seem to come at you from all sides. “All right,” Frazee said in resignation. “Send him in.”