‘Can’t you?’ he said angrily.
‘No. Because you are better than that. Oh dammit, let’s not go on with this. It seems we’re always fighting lately, and I don’t want any more arguments.’ She bent her head and took a sip of the creme de menthe. ‘How did we get sidetracked like this?’
‘Did we get sidetracked, Faye?’ he said more evenly.
Slowly she met his gaze, and then she frowned. ‘No, maybe we didn’t. All right. I’ll tell you why I had to see you. You had called me back at noon, and you had mentioned Isabel Vogler. Well, Dad was still home, and maybe he overheard some of my conversation with you, before I told him about your latest witness. I thought I should tell him, because I wanted to know how he would feel about it. You know very well that Dad and Frank Griffith have had a long and rewarding business relationship. They respect one another and they’re fond of one another, and Mr Griffith is responsible for placing a large amount of his clients’ advertising in prime time slots on Dad’s television stations. So, naturally, you can understand how Dad felt when he heard that you were going to use a witness to malign Frank Griffith.’
‘And how did Dad feel ?’ he said, mimicking her.
Her features had become rigid. ‘Are you being sarcastic?’
Dad’s daughter, wow, he thought. He had stepped in where angels fear to tread. He changed his tone. ‘I just want to know how your father felt about that.’
‘That’s better. I’ll tell you how he felt. He felt concerned enough to pay a visit to Mr Griffith and to reveal to him what you were up
to - to forewarn a friend, to prepare him for any libel Mrs Vogler might be spouting forth. Then Dad called me from Griffith’s office, and he made it clear to me that Griffith was furious with Mrs Vogler and just as furious with you for even considering using that harridan publicly in court. Dad was convinced, after his talk with Frank Griffith, that Mrs Vogler is a psychopathic liar, a really dangerous person to have around - unreliable, fishwifey, a troublemaker, resentful of every employer who’s ever fired her for having those faults, and, like all those domestics who are forever brooding about their lot in life, a paranoiac who just wants to have revenge on her betters.’
‘I see,’ said Barrett. He was beginning to see a good deal, and he was beginning to see that this was an important meeting between Faye and himself. ‘So your father believes Frank Griffith, and you do, too?’
‘Don’t you, now that you’ve heard this? If it’s that wretched woman’s word against the word of someone with Mr Griffith’s integrity, can there be any choice?’
‘Because he’s one of her betters?’
‘What did you say, Mike? I didn’t hear you.’
‘Nothing, it was nothing.’
‘Anyway, after Dad saw Mr Griffith and called me, he asked me to call you. He wanted me to speak to you about the whole thing. Then, when I phoned Dad back to say you’d agreed to delay your trip to see me, Dad said he wanted to talk to me first before I met you. So that was at dinner and after, and that was why I was late.’
‘So now you’ve told me,’ said Barrett.
‘Not quite, Mike, not all of it. I haven’t told you yet what Dad discussed with me at dinner.’
Barrett took up his drink, almost drained the glass of Scotch, and now he was ready. ‘Okay, tell me.’
She sat perfectly erect, and she looked businesslike, as businesslike as Willard Osborn II had ever been. ‘Mike, we’re too close to beat around the bush. I’ve always been forthright with you, and I assume you’ve always been the same way with me. So I’ll simply say what I’ve come here to say, and I know you’ll take it the way it’s meant, because I know you are inherently responsible and have a strong sense of decency. And I know I can speak out frankly because Dad likes you and I care for you, and we believe you feel the same way about us.’
Us. He heard the us. All right, us, let’s have it. ‘What do you want to say to me, Faye?’
She moved the straws around the melting shaved ice in her drink.
‘It comes to this,’ she said. ‘Dad wants me to tell you that any thought you have of using Isabel Vogler on the witness stand is out of the question. He simply cannot let you go ahead with it, not only for Mr Griffith’s sake but for your own. He was positive you’d understand, and I promised him that I’d see that you did. Dad felt
that in going along with him you’d be making only the smallest compromise, the kind people in big business are used to making all the time, every day. When you’re irrthe driver’s seat, you get someone else to compromise. Then when you’re not, you compromise. It’s part of getting along, and getting things done smoothly, and getting ahead. It is part of his business, he said, and soon you’ll be an important man in his business, and so it is also to your advantage not to antagonize, let alone crucify, a friend upon whose goodwill you and Dad will often be dependent. Dad was certain you’d be reasonable about this, and I assured Dad that once I spoke to you there would be no problem.’
There it was.
And where was he ?
Memory had carted him back to his sophomore year in college, the year he had collected epigrams, aphorisms, quotations, snatches of sagacity to counsel and direct him and to make him the wiser. There had been intimations of reality when he had noted, courtesy of Juvenal, that integrity is praised, and starves. There had been a final understanding of self when he had realized that, even as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, he was
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
At last he had seen the fiend. Once more, as so long ago, he walked in fear and dread. Dare he walk on, sure that never, never again would he turn his head?
He stared at her. The composed and confident face of the betters. He revived her command, daughter’s Dad’s command, that to use Isabel Vogler on the witness stand was out of the question. Dad was certain he’d be reasonable. Daughter had assured Dad that there would be no problem.
‘But there is a problem, Faye,’ he said, and then like the Ancient Mariner he walked on and did not turn his head. ‘Because, you see, I am going to put Isabel Vogler on the witness stand.’
The moving fault beneath, the small quake, and her surface composure cracked. ‘Mike, you can’t mean it, not after what I’ve just told you. Dad said doing it is out of the question. He won’t have her on the stand.’
‘But I will.’
The seismographs of the betters shook, and the crack in Faye’s composure widened into open disbelieve. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you? If you are, it’s cruel, but if you’ll just say it’s a joke, I’ll forgive you. This is serious, Mike, I can’t tell you how serious.’
‘That’s why I’m treating it seriously.’
‘Mike, you’ve got a dozen witnesses for that trial - all you need, you said. Why is it so important to you to try to oppose Dad and destroy Mr Griffith ? That witch of a charwoman isn’t worth it.’
‘But truth is, truth is worth it, especially in this trial.’
“This trial,’ she repeated with impotent rage. ‘I’m bloody sick of this trial, that book, what they’ve done to you. I’m sick of it, do you hear?’ She grabbed hold of his sleeve. ‘Mike, you listen to me, because it’s the last time I’ll say this. From the start, Dad was dead set against your becoming involved in the case. He simply wouldn’t have it. And I knew he was right. He is always right about matters of that kind. Yet I was caught in between the two of you, and even though I knew it was wrong I wanted to help you. That’s why I talked Dad into holding the vice-presidency open and letting you fulfill your commitment to defend your publishing friend’s book. Now I regret it, I regret what I did. By going along with you, I’ve simply allowed you to sink deeper and deeper into muck. I should have put my foot down at the beginning, agreed with Dad, and we’d have prevented all this abrasion, and we’d have all been happier. But there’s still ti
me. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t act on your behalf. Mike, please do as I say. Don’t allow that character assassination on Frank Griffith. Drop the Vogler woman from your case, and I promise you everything will be as it was between you and Dad.’
He continued to stare at her. When he spoke, his words were measured. ‘I appreciate what you want to do for me, Faye. I appreciate why your father wants you to make me back down about Griffith. But I’m afraid he’s wrong -I know he’s wrong - and I believe you’re wrong. I’m not going to subvert the truth to give aid and comfort to two business cronies, and I’m not joining any cabal to undermine a defense of free speech.’
Her cheeks had reddened. ‘I hate it when you sound like a boy scout flaunting his merit badges. I don’t like the snide way you referred to my father and Mr Griffith.’
“That’s your problem, Faye, the way you feel about your father.’
‘And your problem is the way Dad feels about you, once I step aside and stop protecting you. I’m stepping aside right now, Mike. You’ve just graduated from boy scout, and you’d better be ready for what’s out there in the grownup world. If you don’t know, I’ll tell you, because you’ve forced me to be blunt. I’m going to tell you what I’ve refrained from telling you up to now. I mean, the rest of what Dad told me tonight.’
‘You can spare me that.’
Til spare you nothing,’ said Faye. ‘Dad told me if you refused to be sensible and cooperative about the Vogler matter, then you just weren’t the kind of person who could possibly fit into Osborn Enterprises.’ She paused meaningfully. This time, Mike, I’m agreeing with Dad.’
Fear had passed. He had left the fiend far behind. ‘Perhaps I’m not the sort of person who should ever have become involved with Osborn Enterprises,’ he said calmly.
‘Mike, do you know what you’re saying, doing? If you are bull-headed enough to reject Dad’s request, to throw away the position he’s held for you, then you are plainly rejecting me also. You are making our relationship, and any future we might have had, impossible. If you are going to be stubborn and turn down Dad and Mr Griffith, then I’d better tell you that I am part of that package. I simply couldn’t go on with you.’
‘I’d always hoped I was going with a girl, not a girl and her father.’
‘I meant what I said. I couldn’t go on with you.’
‘I’d be sorry about that, Faye.’
Then you refuse to change your mind?’
‘I refuse to be coerced. If I surrender my independence, my privilege to think and perform as I believe I should right now, if I compromise to please Faye and father right now, I’ll be doing just that for the rest of my life with both of you. That wouldn’t be much of a life for any man, would it ?’
Faye had become livid. ‘Any man? You call yourself a man? Why, you’re behaving like a fool, a child and a fool, and you’re diminished in my eyes. But I still won’t accept it. I can’t believe you’d give up everything to defend your little house of filth and slime. I won’t accept it.’
‘You’d better, because that’s the way it’s going to be. I can’t meet your terms, Faye.’
‘You are a fool.’ She gathered up her purse and gloves. ‘If you’re through with my father, I’m through with you. And you won’t win that trial, you know. You’ll be left with nothing. You’ll just be a shabby frayed-cuff ambulance chaser because once, when you had the chance, you didn’t have the guts to think big and be big. I never saw it before, but I see it now. You’re second-rate, Mike, and I have time for only what’s first-rate.’ She stood up, but she did not leave. She looked down at him. ‘I’m going, Mike. Once I’m gone, I’m never coming back. If you want one last chance to come along, I might give it to you. I’m not sure I would, but I might. Do you have anything more you want to say?’
He half rose, and offered her a mock bow. ‘Darling, the defense rests.’
‘You can go to hell.’
Later, after he’d had one more drink for the road, and paid his bill, he realized for the first time how utterly liberated he felt, liberated and relieved. He was glad to be done with Faye. About Osborn Enterprises, and his aborted future, he was less certain. But of one thing he was absolutely certain. He was no longer afraid.
He had turned his head.
The fiend was gone.
He was ready for New York and whatever lay before him.
Then, as he continued walking up Fifth Avenue, caught in the shadows of the mammoth skyscrapers, jostled and stopped and hurried and slowed by the frenetic movement of foot and vehicle traffic, Mike Barrett realized what was happening to him.
It had been defined by Emerson, who had not even seen the towering General Motors Building or the Seagram Building or Rockefeller Center or the careening taxicabs or the fuming buses or the lumbering trucks or the crush of hastening pedestrians. Emerson describing it. Great cities give us collision, and a city like New York takes the nonsense out of man. It was in that moment that New York took the nonsense out of Mike Barrett.
And it was then that the impact of Manhattan hit him fully, as if from behind, catapulting him toward his destination on Fifty-fifth Street, driving him to quicken his pace and alert his senses, revitalizing him with an awareness of the significance of his immediate mission.
Since the moment, last night, when Faye Osborn had left him for good, he had found himself liberated, yet liberated only to float in an inner vacuum.
Throughout most of the long, dark night, reclining in his seat in the jet airliner that was hurtling him from Los Angeles, late village of hope, to New York, old city of failure, he had reconsidered his behavior with Faye and Willard Osborn II and wondered whether he had been rash. Of course, there could always be the shingle reading ‘Zelkin and Barrett, Counselors at Law,’ but the promise of that, career flickered low and offered too little light for a brighter tomorrow.
Faye had not been right for him, he had subconsciously known, at least not perfectly right, but she had been someone exciting, glamorous, amusing, her very presence in his life a flattery, and he had become accustomed to her and the rose paradise she symbolized, and now she was gone, too. And he possessed no antidote against loneliness. In those hours on the plane, he had thought of Maggie Russell, of course, and he had enjoyed envisioning her, yet he had not been able to grasp and hold her fully. She had been evasive, elusive, refusing to join him, always returning to the camp of the enemy, where he was forbidden to follow. He supposed that he must have dozed on the plane to have evoked all those confused and uncertain imaginings.
But the point was, during the entire flight, he had not once given
a thought to the purpose of his mission or to the courtroom trial in which he was to be a leading player.
In the taxi from Kennedy Airport to The Plaza hotel he had been unable to think of the trial. Of course, he had been sleepy, but even the early-morning daylight in New York and the vitality of the city arousing around him had not awakened him. He had ridden up in the elevator of The Plaza to the seventh floor, gone to his room, undressed, set his alarm, and fallen on the bed like a log. Perhaps the alarm had rung, or perhaps he had forgotten to wind it. But he had not heard it and he had overslept. He had meant to nap for an hour to be at Olin Adams Autographs by nine o’clock, but then he had slept until a few minutes after ten.
Showering, he had told himself that there was no real reason for haste. He had purchased the Jadway letters, and he could read them at his leisure on the return trip to Los Angeles this day. Except he had wanted to get back to the battleground early, to have plenty of time with Isabel Vogler, and enough time for final pretrial preparation with Abe Zelkin over the weekend, before Judge Nathaniel Upshaw and the bailiff opened the trial on Monday morning. Still, going west, he would have the advantage of regaining three lost hours. And so, more relaxed, after showering, shaving, dressing, he had gone down into the lobby, bought The New York Times at the tobacco stand, and continued into the Edwardian Room for a breakfast of orange juice, b
uttered toast, and coffee. His only concession to haste had been to skip his usual bacon and eggs.
He had skimmed the newspaper, read carefully only the prominent story on page three which reported the selection of the jury in the case of the People of California versus Ben Fremont, and which summarized the issues at stake in the case and misspelled his own name twice. What dismayed him most was not the quotation from Christian Leroux on Jadway’s commercialism or the one from Frank Griffith on the necessity for the impressionable young like his son to be shielded from vicious literature, but the fact that there was not a single quotation from Zelkin or himself. This omission, which reflected their lack of powerful defense witnesses, was glaringly evident in the news stories. Yet Barrett remembered that they had a strength which had remained unannounced and secret. There was now Isabel Vogler to offset the Griffith boy - and there was Jadway speaking for himself in the packet of letters five blocks away. Despite these thoughts, by the time he had turned to the sports page the trial had no more reality than a dream. Between the box scores of yesterday’s baseball games he saw only the ruin he had made of his Main Chance, and he saw only a future of time payments and loans and being forever the fourth at bridge.
At a quarter to eleven, he had emerged from The Plaza into the peculiarly stifling humidity of this antagonistic city and headed toward Fifth Avenue, and along it to wherever he was going.
And then it was that the impact of the city had hit him. For it was that very quality of the place, which at first, as always, he had found oppressive - the too muchness of it, the not caring of it, the inhumanity of it - that had suddenly regenerated and stimulated him. This was New York’s other peculiarity, and its wonder, finally. That here, in the superday, there was no time for nonsense or trivia or introspection. To survive its cold bigness, you had to move, to go, to achieve. If you did not come alive and fight the city, and overcome it, grow as large as it was and larger, you would be buried under it and lost. Once it had buried him under. Now he knew its trick. Suddenly he had reacted to its challenge, and there was no more nonsense in him. He was a man with identity, with purpose, with a cause, and he had someplace to go.
(1969) The Seven Minutes Page 34