The Inner Circle

by T. C. Boyle

  I remember one candidate by the name of Birdbright. He was forty-five, happily married, father of a well-adjusted and grown daughter, just decommissioned from the Navy and in the process of submitting his doctoral thesis at Harvard in the field of Physical Anthropology. He came to campus and Prok quizzed him late into the night. Corcoran and I took him on the rounds of the taverns, and though he seemed a bit stiff—his military bearing, I suppose, or perhaps it was just academic rigor—we could find nothing to disqualify him. He was a scotch man, smoked Camels, hated sports. He wasn’t particularly easy to draw out in conversation, but he wasn’t sex shy either and seemed to have few biases against any number of sexual behaviors that were, technically speaking, against the law. The day after his visit the three of us sat down to compare notes. “I find nothing objectionable in the man,” Prok said, the candidate’s file spread open on the desk before him, and Corcoran and I had to agree. There was a pause. “Yet I don’t sense any real enthusiasm either.” Prok gently closed the folder and let his eyes roll back in his head. “But Birdbright—is anybody going to want to disclose sensitive information to a man with a name like that?” He let out a short, chiming laugh. “Birdbright, really!”

  There was another man disqualified along similar lines. Again, he was unobjectionable, if not particularly exciting, and he did have an acceptable wife and the proper academic background, but he was burdened with a long, hyphenated name—Theodore Lavushkin-Esterhazy—that set Prok to fretting. Prok put it to him directly: Would he consider shortening his name to the less imposing Theodore Esterhazy, or even, for the purposes of interviewing lower-level subjects, simply Ted Ester-hazy? The candidate replied that his was a venerable family name of several centuries’ standing and that under no condition would he consider editing it. That was the term he used, “editing.” Prok tented his hands on the desk before him, gave the candidate a long tunneled look, and thanked him for his time.

  Yes. And there was one other man rejected because of his wife, who had a drinking problem, as we learned through inquiries among the staff at his previous place of employ and discovered firsthand at a Bryan Park picnic held in his honor. The wife was loud, sexually showy, with muscular calves and protuberant breasts, and she hung on one man after another, quaffing Planter’s Punch as if it were carrot juice. She didn’t create a scene, not exactly, but it was enough to warn us off. Prok had no use for drunks because drunks were unreliable and couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut (and he was to lecture me about my own alcohol consumption on more than one occasion, but that’s not relevant here, or at least not at this juncture). This is not to say, incidentally, that he was ruthless, as the rumormongers might have you believe, nor that he chose the members of his team based on his ability to control and dominate them, but only that he was preternaturally sensitive to the needs of the project. There were secrets to keep. There was work to be done. Who could blame him for being particular?

  Rutledge, of course, as the whole world knows, was the man we finally settled on. We all liked him from the start. Despite his Ivy League credentials and a sheaf of laudatory letters from some of the biggest names in the field, Robert M. Yerkes among them, he seemed down to earth, equally at ease with President Wells and Prok’s colleagues in the Zoology Department as he was with the waiter who brought us our chops at Murchison’s or the barman who mixed us highballs at the tavern, and from the start he treated Corcoran and me as his colleagues and equals. His wife, Hilda, was a tall asthenic blonde who talked out of the corner of her mouth as if everything she said was a wisecrack—and more often than not it was. She was relaxed and informal, a breath of fresh air after the wives of the majority of the other candidates, who might as well have been auditioning for a part in one of those robot pictures that seem to be infesting the theaters these days. Another plus, to my mind, at least: she took to Iris right off. Prok arranged for us all to have drinks with the Rutledges one afternoon—the Corcorans, the Milks and the Kinseys—and before Prok had even handed me my first Zombie cocktail, she and Iris had their heads together. And the children, never forget the children, because as Prok says they’re perhaps the best reflection of the parents, in this case two solemn boys of eight and nine, who seemed well-adjusted and polite enough.

  After the preliminary round of interviews, Rutledge was the sole candidate we invited back for a follow-up, and if he passed muster this time, it was understood that Prok was prepared to offer him the job. I met him at the bus station and together we walked up to the Institute. It was autumn—the autumn of ’46 now, and I remember distinctly for reasons that will soon become apparent—and the day was unseasonably warm, a taste of Indian summer before the cold weather set in and the leaves turned and the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun for yet another long season of contrition. Rutledge was wearing a tweed jacket over a long-sleeved shirt, he’d pushed his hat back to get a little air on his brow and loosened his tie so that it canted away from his open collar like a lolling tongue. He had a briefcase in one hand and a traveling bag in the other, his raincoat thrown carelessly over his shoulder. I asked if I could give him a hand with anything, and he broke into a smile. “Sure, John,” he said, “that would be kind of you,” and passed me the traveling bag.

  We walked on in silence a moment. The sidewalks had been dampened by a fleeting rain, and every yard we passed seemed well tended and tranquil, with picket fences, overspilling flowerbeds and glistening lawns. Butterflies drifted over the blooms, birds soliloquized in the trees. “You know, I really do like this town,” he said. “It has character. And charm too. It’s not quite Princeton, maybe, but it’s got plenty to offer as far as I can see. What do you think? You like it here?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, “sure. It’s quiet, of course, but we make our own society.”

  “With Dr. Kinsey?”

  We were stopped at a corner, waiting for a bus to move off across the intersection. I was conscious of Rutledge’s eyes on me. He was sounding me out, and that was all right with me—it wasn’t as if he were asking me to reveal anything he didn’t already know. It just meant that he was confident Prok would offer him the job—and further, that he was leaning toward taking it. “Prok’s a big part of it,” I admitted.

  “You’re very close, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “we are.”

  He let that rest a moment and then the bus moved on and we crossed the street. His gait was easy, the briefcase swinging, tie stirring in the breeze our progress generated, and we fell into step, in rhythm, and I felt a kind of communion with him then, as if we were two athletes moving across the field of play. “You were his student, weren’t you?”

  I told him that I was, or had been, and then I laughed. “But I guess you’d have to say I still am, because with Prok the learning process goes on every minute of every day.”

  “He certainly has energy, Prok,” Rutledge said.

  “Yes, he does. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

  “But I like that. I like the whole project, what you and he and Purvis are doing here. It’s very exciting. Groundbreaking, really.”

  We were striding right along, a block from the university now. It felt good to be out of the office and under the sun, if only for half an hour, and I was glad Prok had appointed me to be the one to go to the station. I didn’t get out enough. None of us did. I made a mental note to see if Iris might not like to go for a picnic over the weekend before the weather turned.

  “I’d like to be part of it, I would,” Rutledge went on, as if I’d been contradicting him. “And I love this town, did I mention that? Seems like a terrific place to raise kids.”

  I had nothing to say to this, but he was just talking to hear himself in any case. There was a proposition on the table—should he or shouldn’t he?—and he was trying very hard to convince himself that he should. “By the way,” he said, just as we were coming up on the campus, “do you and Iris have any kids?”

  “No,” I said, “but we’d lik
e to. We’re, well, we’re trying, that is.”

  He gave me a grin. “Trying, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I grinned back.

  “When you come down to it”—two fingers went to his mustache—“it’s all just another facet of the research, isn’t it?”

  Prok spent most of the day cloistered with him, then we had dinner at a restaurant—just the four of us, spouses not invited—and Prok must have peppered Rutledge with a thousand questions, and this after both he and his wife had given up their histories. There was drinking, though Prok abstained, and Rutledge, either out of temperance or calculation—he knew he was still on trial here—stopped after two highballs and tucked into his dinner with real appetite, Prok’s third degree notwithstanding. I had enough to drink so that I could feel myself drifting out of my body for whole seconds at a time, but nothing excessive, nothing that would draw attention to myself, and Corcoran, who could hold his liquor as well as anyone I’d ever met, imbibed pretty steadily throughout the meal, almost as if he were conditioning himself for some test of endurance. Which, as it turned out, he was.

  No one had clued me in, but I could guess from Prok’s expression that there was to be some further test or demonstration yet to come, and when Corcoran excused himself before dessert with a wink for the company and the promise that he’d see us in just a bit, my suspicions were confirmed. “Well,” Prok said, as we spooned up ice cream and sponge cake and the waitress lurked in the background, “it’s been quite an evening. Quite a day, in fact, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, Oscar”—and here he used Rutledge’s given name for the first time, a clue that something was afoot, because he made a point of addressing his team by surname only—“as much as I have. And, I’m sure, Milk has. Haven’t you, Milk?”

  I answered in the affirmative, as did Rutledge. “It’s been grand,” he said, “and I have to say I’m impressed, Dr. Kinsey, with everything you’ve showed me here—”

  Prok had set down his spoon and was staring across the table at Rutledge over the bridge of his intertwined fingers. His face showed nothing—Prok the impassive, Prok the interviewer, the open and accessible and nonjudgmental—but his eyes flashed with excitement. “Call me Prok,” he said.

  Rutledge ducked his head, put a hand to the back of his neck and came up smiling. “Yes, sure,” he said. “It’ll be a pleasure. Prok.”

  “Good, good, good,” Prok murmured, and he called for the check then and spent the next several minutes looking it over and carefully counting out the exact change plus a three-percent tip, while Rutledge and I exchanged small talk in a collegial way. “All right,” Prok said finally, pushing the neat pile of bills and coins away from him, “and now let’s just retire to my place for some more talk and some good strong coffee, if you think you can stand it at this hour”—he paused, grinning now—“because I’ve got something arranged for your benefit, Rutledge, and yours too, Milk, a demonstration, actually, that should prove more than interesting. Shall we?”

  When we turned in at the familiar winding path to Prok’s house, there were two figures waiting for us on the porch, their silhouettes visible against the glow from within. One of them was Corcoran, quickly withdrawing a cigarette from his mouth and grinding it under his heel; the other was a young woman I’d never seen before. Introductions were made on the porch—“This is Betty, Prok, the girl I was telling you about? Betty, Dr. Kinsey. John Milk. Oscar Rutledge”—and then we were in the vestibule, Prok singing out “Mac, we’re here!”

  I barely had time to steal a glance at the young woman—she was a tall brunette with girlish features, high cheekbones and dark darting eyes that all but vanished when she smiled, and she was smiling now, nervously, her teeth sharp-edged and vaguely predatory—before Mac was on us. Mac must have been waiting just behind the kitchen door, because there she was, in a plain shift, barefooted, with a tray of coffee accessories and a plate of oatmeal cookies she’d baked fresh for the occasion. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick or makeup and though she’d brushed her hair the curl didn’t seem to want to hold. She looked tired. Looked old. “But come in, come in,” she urged, ushering us into the living room even as Prok excused himself and disappeared through the door to the kitchen. I wondered about that for a moment—he seemed preternaturally excited, like a boy on the eve of his birthday, and what was he up to?—until he came hustling back into the room a moment later with the coffeepot and his tray of liqueurs.

  We took seats around the coffee table and chatted about this and that while Mac poured coffee and Prok offered the liqueurs to each of us in turn. Aside from the hesitant murmurs of our conversation—Care for cream? Yes, thank you—it was very still. Moths threw themselves at the screens in soft, arthropodal explosions. From the yard, there was the sound of crickets, dense and sustaining. The girl, I noticed, selected one of the least palatable of the liqueurs and downed it in a single gulp as if she were standing at the rail in some back-alley bar, and Prok immediately poured her another. She was wearing a thin silver chain at her throat, and when she threw her head back to drain the second glass, I saw a flash of silver and the miniature cross with its miniature Jesus riding up her breastbone.

  Prok took a seat in the armchair beside the girl, his elegant, tapered fingers gripping and releasing the bright black loops of the bentwood as he eased himself down. “Splendid,” he said. “Isn’t this splendid?” But he was too excited to sit back and relax, and he leaned forward almost immediately, hands splayed across his knees. “Betty,” he said, dropping one shoulder and leaning in confidentially, “I can’t begin to tell you how pleased we are—pleased and honored—that you’ve agreed to this.”

  The girl looked to Corcoran as if she were lost, then bowed her head and offered a demurrer, sotto voce. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “But you are discreet—at least that’s what Corcoran told me. You are, aren’t you?”

  She began to say yes in a voice that got lost in her throat, and then she repeated herself, in a firmer tone. “Yes,” she said. “I’m discreet.”

  “We can rely on you, can’t we?” Prok was giving her his sternest look. “What happens here in this house is strictly between those of us present, is that understood? And that no gossip, no mention of your assistance here with the research tonight is ever, ever, I repeat, to go any further than these rooms?”

  “She’s all right, Prok,” Corcoran put in.

  Rutledge, all but forgotten—wasn’t he the main attraction here?—sat over his urine-colored liqueur and tried for an anything-goes sort of smile that withered on his lips. He was nervous suddenly. And, frankly, so was I.

  “But I want to hear it from Betty’s lips. Betty?”

  “I understand,” she said, and her eyes dodged away from Prok’s to fix on Corcoran. “But are we going to sit here and gab all night? Because if we are—” She got to her feet then, a tall girl, anything but frail, the lineaments of her figure discernible in a sudden sweep and release of movement beneath her clothes. She never finished the thought, or threat or whatever it was, but just stood there glaring at us now, as if she’d thrown down a challenge we were loath to accept.

  Prok rose now too. “You’re quite right, Betty,” he said, “and while it’s been pleasant to sit here and have a little chat, we do have business to get to, don’t we?” And here a look to Corcoran, then to Rutledge (a significant pause) and finally to me. “Well, shall we?” His voice faded into an echoing hollow, and I saw in that moment that he was anxious too. We all got to our feet. “Corcoran, why don’t you show Miss—Betty—upstairs?”

  My heart was hammering. I’d already guessed at what was coming, but then I couldn’t be sure because we’d never done anything like this before, or to this degree, that is, not as a demonstration certainly, not live, not in public, and I couldn’t believe Prok was prepared to go this far. Watching a prostitute from a closet was one thing, but—but my gaze was fixed on Betty’s hips and rump as she ascended the stairs, her calves flexing and releasing
as the hem of her dress rose and fell above them. I could smell her perfume, something I didn’t recognize, rose water, lilac, and it went right to my groin. “Yes,” Prok was saying, “just up at the top there, that door to the left, Corcoran, that’s right—we really haven’t done much to the attic, a bit warm up there, I’m afraid, but it’s cozy. And private. You’ll have to admit that.”

  And then we were all milling round the attic room, all but Mac, that is—she’d elected to stay downstairs, to “tidy up,” as she put it. The room was stuffy and there was a smell of sawdust and varnish, as if the carpenters hadn’t got round to completing what they’d begun, the ceiling low and unfinished, the walls constructed of pine boards indifferently nailed to the studs. It hadn’t changed much from the first time I’d been there, just after Prok took me on—there was the single bed up against the wall under the slant of the roofline, the fishing rod in the corner and the children’s outgrown toys and athletic equipment. The only difference, as far as I could see, was that the Ping-Pong table had been removed and replaced by half a dozen wooden chairs arranged in a semicircle facing the bed.

  There was an awkward moment, the girl’s presence overwhelming us all, even Prok, till Corcoran took charge. He was in a light summer suit, sportily cut, and he’d loosened his tie against the heat. His hair had been bleached by the summer sun—he was a great one for tennis, and, when he could find the time, for golf too—and his face was deeply tanned. He looked good. Very good. Almost as if he’d stepped out of a Hollywood picture about polo-playing swells or playboys cruising the Riviera. “Why don’t you all just have a seat and make yourselves comfortable,” he said, taking the girl by the hand, “while Betty and I get down to business.” And to the girl: “Are you ready?”

  Rutledge gave me a look that was meant to convey perplexity, but I could see what his surmise had led him to and that he was excited. There was a scraping of chair legs as we sat—Prok, Rutledge and I—and adjusted the position of our seats and crossed our legs, trying to act casually and failing, all three of us. Corcoran, in the meanwhile, had begun kissing the girl, deep kissing, tongue to tongue, and he let his hands roam over her body, descending to her buttocks and rising again to massage her breasts, and she gave back in kind. Her hands moved like quick white animals over the terrain of his jacket and trousers.