Nothing Serious

by Daniel Klein

  And that does it. Robbie instructs Digby on how to save and print the court documents and then, after promising his grandfather to drop by during summer break, signs off.

  Baskerton pours out two brandies. “Smart boy, our Robbie,” he says. “What did that take—ten minutes?”

  The two men clink glasses.

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect LeFevre to be that bad. Or that obvious,” Digby says.

  “I did. The minute I laid eyes on him. A larcenous gigolo, head to foot.”

  “You must have a better eye for these things than I do,” Digby says. “So, what do we do with this?”

  “What do you think we do? We have a talk with Felicia Hastings.”

  Without a hint of forewarning, a cringe creases Digby’s brow. “I’d hate to break Mrs. Hastings’ heart,” he says. To his surprise, he genuinely means it.

  “You’re talking about the woman who wants to put you and your magazine out of business, Maxwell. And by devious means.”

  “I guess I’m a romantic.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  “Listen, every relationship is full of quid pro quos. So LeFevre is a grifter, he’s still giving the old girl the first good shagging of her life.”

  “Overrated!” snaps Baskerton. “A squirt in the dark doesn’t hold a candle to a Louden sunset. Anyhow, she can do better than that chub.”

  “Maybe not. She’s not a young woman.”

  “I’m an old man.”

  The relevance of Baskerton’s status as an old man escapes Digby. The reason for his own reluctance to inform Felicia about her lover’s unsavory track record also escapes him. Could his own late-in-life throbbing of the heart have altered his character so much that he is morphing into a wuss?

  “Let’s just think this through,” Digby says. “What if we just get a hold of LeFevre alone, tell him we’re wise to him, and offer him a chance to disappear quietly.”

  Baskerton gazes at Digby for a moment, then drinks down a slug of brandy before responding. “You’re talking nonsense,” he says. “You do know that, don’t you, Maxwell?”

  The elocutionary manner in which the lawyer delivers his question suggests that he is entertaining some serious doubts about Digby’s compos mentis. His question is, in effect, a psychological test.

  Digby has generally found it advantageous to deny that he is crazy, so he nods in agreement to Baskerton, but he cannot help himself from saying, “I just wonder if there’s a delicate way to let her know.”

  “Jesus Christ, I’ll do it myself!” Baskerton barks. He shakes his head back and forth and mutters, “A pussycat from New York—now that’s a new one.”

  On a scale of put-downs Digby has borne, Baskerton’s ‘New York pussycat’ rates low in both wit and weight, yet it rankles Digby all the way back to Hastings Towers, possibly because he, like many men, has always feared that truly falling in love is a severely emasculating experience. For ballast, he feels that he needs to do something masterful, if not altogether manly. In his office, he immediately dials up Clive Bosnoglian at Saatchi & Saatchi.

  “Clive Bosnoglian.”

  “Digby Maxwell here.”

  “Maxwell, I was starting to give up on you.”

  “I’ve just been a little overwhelmed, doncha know?”

  “Have you got those figures?” Bosnoglian asks.

  “Yes. Right. Here they are. I’ve got ten thousand for the back page, full color. And six thousand for the insides. We could package it at fifteen.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Maxwell.”

  “Clive, I’m going to let you in on a little something that’s going on here. We’re already seeing our subscriptions skyrocketing. Like more than a thousand percent. Buzz is as buzz does, you know? And my people tell me these subscribers are highflyers. The hundred-and-eighty-grand-and-up bracket.”

  In the bathroom of Digby’s upstairs suite, a pile of old copies of Cogito sits in a wicker basket next to the toilet. Usually, a cursory look at the table of contents is enough to relax a recalcitrant sphincter, but on occasion Digby has found himself reading an entire article. One such was titled, “Situational Ethics and Moral Relativism: The Dilemma of ‘Dilemmas.’ ” Digby detected a rare spot of wordplay in the words following the colon, so he read on.

  According to the three authors, all professors of philosophy at Dartmouth College, since the question of a priori first moral principles can never be resolved satisfactorily, the only problem left to the philosophy of ethics is how to apply the principles we nonetheless believe in—say the Golden Rule—to real situations. Not always easy, they say, because in real situations there can be competing claims to the same principle.

  The colorful example that the professors cited was of a woman who can only obtain a lifesaving medicine for her sick husband if she sleeps with this real cad of a doctor. This woman believes in the Golden Rule; and she certainly would not want her husband to be unfaithful to her, therefore she should not sleep with the doctor. Yet she also believes that she would want her husband to do whatever was necessary to save her life if he were in the same situation. What to do, what to do.

  Understandably, the article starts to get murky at this point, but Digby was relieved to see that in the end the professors opted for sleeping with the cad because “the competing principle is ultimately void in projected time”; by this they apparently meant that you cannot be unfaithful to a dead man.

  What Digby took away from “The Dilemma of ‘Dilemmas’ ” was that it was a good idea to always maintain a certain amount of moral flexibility. So, even though he had recently pledged himself to improving his character, he is certain there are valid competing reasons for laying some serious bullshit on Clive Bosnoglian. Digby cannot say exactly what these competing reasons are, but why else would he be feeling so put upon lately? (Philosophically speaking, the fact that said bullshit departs Digby’s lips effortlessly is morally irrelevant.)

  Bosnoglian remains silent for a count of five, then says, “I’ll see if I can swing it. What’s the damage for all six issues?”

  “Eighty thou,” Digby says. “Maybe seventy-five if we can work out a decent payment schedule.”

  “No problem with my client list, I gather,” Bosnoglian says.

  “Apple? Dewar’s? Gap? We’ll be honored, Clive.”

  “I’ll have my people draw something up,” Bosnoglian says. Goodbye, goodbye.

  There are now more wrenches careening around in his universe than Digby can keep track of. But what is most troubling is that he has the uncomfortable suspicion that they are not wrenches at all, but boomerangs.

  CHAPTER 19

  Out his office window, Digby sees some ant-like busyness in the Louden College quad. From this distance, the figures also appear ant sized, but squinting Digby is just able to make out that they are wearing familiar lavender T-shirts. They scurry thither and yon; clearly, June and Elliot have set these folk afoot.

  The setting sun is now slipping behind the highest dormer of the Administration Building, casting a spear-like shadow that—just for the moment—reaches all the way to the tulip beds of the Hastings Towers garden. Madeleine and Rosti’s game of hide-and-seek apparently went into overtime, and June and Elliot were already gone when Digby returned from Baskerton’s, so he is alone in his office. He finds himself in a John Calvin state of mind: he needs to keep busy. Either that or his disquieted brain will start to fragment. Perhaps that is why the Reformist Friar, Brother Calvin, saw work as a ticket to salvation: it kept a fella from going to pieces. Being one whole person is probably a good condition in which to be when starting out on the path to redemption.

  Although laying out the heaven issue of Cogito is officially Madeleine’s responsibility, Digby takes the task upon himself. He has no definite idea how Felicia will respond to the news that her boyfriend is a scoundrel—for all Digby knows, she may find sleeping with a cad a reasonable trade-off after forty years abed with an Aristotelian; e
specially considering that, as Digby recently read in Bonner’s book collection, Aristotle once declared that a woman’s body and sex organs were a corrupt version of a man’s. But on the chance that Mrs. Hastings bows out of her relationship with LeFevre and along with him his scheme for fizzling out the magazine, Digby thinks he should be ready to go to press the moment Saatchi & Saatchi’s ads come in. Even if in the stunningly unpredictable world Digby currently inhabits the idea of being prepared seems counterintuitive at best, so does being unprepared.

  Happily, Digby still knows his way around the InDesign layout software and, truth to tell, he is enjoying himself tremendously, distraction being a gratifying end in itself in spite of Kierkegaard’s dictum that all distractions from one’s Ultimate Fate turn one into a automaton.

  Digby starts off with Rosti’s epigrammatic enigma, setting it in a Christy biblical font inside a scrolled box surrounded by Tommy Gasparini’s Hogarth print of St. Jerome gazing at heaven. Open with class and scholarship, then turn the page and—Bang!—an illustration from the Kacho Oji animé of The Legend of Lost Heaven, where Digby begins the piece about St. Peter’s immigration policy in Times Roman. He pulls Chuck’s first line and uses it as the headline: “Keep Them Darkies Outta Here!” Social commentary with edge and a wink. Yup, threading Tommy’s graphics through the book is the way to go. It will keep the reader off-balance, alternately pondering and snickering and, above all, thinking he is sophisticated.

  Digby needs to go next with his franchise player, Binx Berger, but Binx’s manuscript isn’t in yet so he texts his iPhone telling him that he needs it ASAP as he’s their cover story—which, of course, may or may not be true—and Binx texts Digby back in real time that he’ll have it for him by sunrise.

  Then it’s the old bait and switch, Tommy’s panel from the religious comic strip, Heavens to Betsy, followed by what has turned out to be the issue’s most substantive philosophical piece, Reverend Mary Bonavitacola’s take on Paul Tillich’s ‘Eternal Now,’ complete with some thoughtful background on from whence the idea of the eternal soul came. (The Greeks.)

  Digby works his way to the last pages where, in a flash of inspiration, he sets off the MacLane & Goldenfield column (which he retitles from “In Dissent” to “Get Serious!”) between two ghoulish panels from Tommy’s prize find, the Lady Death: Between Heaven and Hell graphic novel. Perfetto! By God, Cogito now has more wry sophistication than New York Magazine ever had. Bring on the Jaguar account, Bosnoglian!

  Other than Binx’s article, the only gap remaining is Digby’s piece on heaven in the cinema that he has been diddling at for weeks now. He has already requisitioned the photo stills for it—a murky, Brueghel-like heaven shot from F. W. Murnau’s 1926, black-and-white masterpiece, Faust; a dry-ice mist heaven frame from Here Comes Mr. Jordan; and a garish shot of Sensory-Overload Heaven from What Dreams May Come. All that is missing is Digby’s text. But now, pressed on by his self-imposed and arbitrary deadline, he calls his notes up onto his screen and sets to it, leading off with the immortal Monty Python line from The Meaning of Life—Part VII: “Do get Mr. Death a drink, dear.” On it flows, effortlessly striking a delicious balance between snark and sapience.

  Digby leans back in Bonner’s cozy oak chair and peers again toward the dark Louden campus. No movement in the quad. He shuts down his computer, douses the lights, and lumbers upstairs to his room over the store. He pulls a Trout River from the fridge, uncaps it, and swallows a cool mouthful. By God, his little suite here feels more like home than any place he can remember.

  Something flickers in the oriel window across from him. He stands and tries to take a closer gander at the flickery, but from this angle it vanishes from view, so he climbs up on his chair to try to locate it. Yup, there it is at the very far end of the campus—the president’s cramped residence, if he is not mistaken. And that flicker? It appears to be a bonfire surrounded by pinpoints of arcing lights—flashlights wielded by a sizeable crowd. In a burst of athleticism that would make Kim Herker green-eyed, Digby jumps off the chair, beer bottle in hand, and heads for the phone. He is inspired to loft one last wrench into the cosmos.

  He dials up the night desk of WCAX-TV in Burlington. An adolescent male voice answers.

  “I’m calling from Louden,” Digby says. “There’s a big ruckus on campus. Burning the president in effigy.”

  “Obama?”

  “No, Herker. President of the college. In front of his house. A mob scene. Looks menacing.”

  “Jesus. It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “I guess I called the wrong station,” Digby says.

  “Wait a minute. We’ve got a mobile unit, you know. All I have to do is call them.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “But, hey, how do I know this is legit? These guys’ll kill me if I pull them away from their La-Z-Boys for nothing. Like, who are you?”

  “Reggie Phelps,” Digby answers. “You know, from the football team. They’ll remember me from the Johnson State game. I’m the one who tackled that big motherfucker in the last minute.”

  Fluent bullshit. As it happens, a kid named Reggie Phelps sat in front of Digby in American History at Passaic High; at the time Reggie was a superb football player. Digby feels good about keeping Reggie’s name alive, wherever he is.

  “I’ll tell them to look for you, Reggie,” the young journalist says.

  Digby then offers the same exclusive story to WFFF-TV in Burlington and WNNE-TV in Windsor, before calling all the daily newspapers in a hundred mile radius—that is, both of them. He leisurely finishes off his beer, showers, combs back his mouse-colored locks, dresses collegiately in chinos and blue Oxford shirt, and heads downstairs and over to Louden Clear where he takes a stool at the bar in front of the television set. There is only one explanation for any of Digby Maxwell’s actions this evening: he never matured properly.

  It’s quarter to twelve and there’s no one in the place except Ada, the magnificent, almond-eyed bartender, and Digby. Louden Clear officially closes at midnight on Tuesdays, but Ada is allowing Digby to linger over his fourth Dewar’s while she cleans up, a daunting task due to tonight’s unprecedented traffic.

  The heavy customer flow began at about ten-thirty when the first TV satellite truck rolled up Brigham Street, its rooftop beacon flashing. Locals, young and old, in shorts and in Talbots leisure wear, suddenly appeared, every one of them as charged up as a Louden middle schooler on a field trip to Burlington. Before heading out to the action at the Herker residence, apparently a drink was required to put it all in proper perspective. The sole Louden police car and its surreal siren brought in the next wave, then a second TV truck brought in the next cohort of gawkers. Digby was surprised at how many folks he recognized filing in and out—the Hastings Towers weekend surveyors, Winny and her professor friends, the hyper waiter from the Moroccan restaurant, and even a bevy of Thursday Morning Club matrons, one of whom offered Digby a meaningful wink, the meaning of which escaped him. If nothing else, this wrench-toss of his was definitely providing a festive night in Louden, Vermont.

  Digby makes a big show of sliding a twenty dollar bill to Ada’s side of the bar, payola to let him remain in place for the local news midnight sign-off.

  And finally here it is: the lead piece on WCAX-TV. A young man who appears no older than Sylvie, undoubtedly the telephone recipient of Digby’s hot tip, is standing in front of Herker’s cottage, the fire smoldering at a tasteful distance over his right shoulder.

  “Greg van Stoot here, on location at Louden College, in Louden, Vermont,” he says. He can barely contain his giddiness; Digby half expects him to blurt out, “Hi, Mom! It’s me, Greg!”

  Ada turns up the volume and leans against the bar, watching with Digby.

  “A riot broke out on this campus late Tuesday night,” Van Stoot continues breathlessly. “What began as a peaceful demonstration by the gay community ended with twelve arrests and one student hospitalized for cuts to his head.”

&
nbsp; “Assholes,” Ada murmurs.

  The boy journalist goes on to report that Louden College president, Miles Herker, had been heard referring to gay students as ‘faggots’ and was apparently planning to expel one of their number on unfounded charges. Digby couldn’t have scripted Greg better himself.

  The station now cuts to recorded images of the bonfire (alas, no effigy), students with rather lame placards reading “Herker Jerk” and “Expel this!”, and then onscreen appears none other than the pregnant philosopher, June MacLane. Ada abruptly sets down the beer mug she has been swabbing and gazes at the television set. Some ruby redness rises on her tawny cheeks.

  “This behavior by a college president is inexcusable and unacceptable,” June begins, gazing urgently, yet also maternally into the camera. Here the cameraman pulls back to a two-shot of June that reveals her bulging middle. For reasons Digby does not even want to puzzle over just now, June is wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend, “Baby on Board” with an arrow pointing down toward her swollen womb.

  “Bitch!” snaps Ada.

  “Beg pardon?” Digby says.

  “MacLane,” says Ada. “She’s all talk.”

  “And no what?”

  “What do you think?” snaps Ada, bitterly.

  Digby does not think, so he says nothing as he listens to June demand Herker’s immediate resignation. “I am calling for a strike of all faculty and students beginning immediately. We are waiting, Mr. Herker.”

  Then the denouement. Just as June finishes up, the camera jerks to the front door of the president’s residence where a figure has just exited and begun pacing with a regal gait toward June. It is Muffy and she is wearing a gown from some bygone era, all lace and filigree. Her hair is fastened with tortoise combs into a bun with tendrils of scarlet hair flouncing against her neck. As she pulls into the frame, she immediately makes June, by comparison, look common, a local unwed mother which, in a sense, she is. Muffy has a piece of stationery in her hand.