Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

  After what seemed to be to John Kemp an utterly childish exchange of powerful handshakes, the man said reasonably, “I am Gambel Torrigan, Mr. Kemp. Usually called Gam. Mr. Drummond sent me up to meet this plane. I am the head instructor for the session this summer. A Mrs. Kilmer is supposed to be on the same flight. Did you meet her?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  As three more people emerged from the customs room, Torrigan said, “Mrs. Kilmer, Mrs. Kilmer.”

  John Kemp felt his heart give a little joyous leap as the tall ash-blonde with the black brows and the dark-blue eyes turned and came toward them. It was the girl he had watched at the counter in New Orleans. He moved quickly forward to help her with her two heavy suitcases, one step ahead of the porters who suddenly appeared.

  John Kemp felt that Torrigan held onto the girl’s hand too long as he made the same speech he had made to John, and he sensed that the girl was not pleased by it. He was glad to know she would be one of the group. He had had numerous misgivings about what he might be getting into. For a time he had been tempted to give it up, write off the five hundred as a bad and impulsive gesture. Torrigan had made a bad impression on him. The rest of the group might be impossible. But at least there was one other student to whom he would be able to talk. But he guessed from her manner that it would be unwise to try to move too quickly.

  They all got into a red VW bus that, in spite of a fresh coat of paint, looked as though it had seen better times. The driver was a cretinous-looking young man who, when introduced as Fidelio, responded with a remote and surly nod. Torrigan sat in front beside the driver. John Kemp sat behind the driver, with Barbara Kilmer beside him.

  When Fidelio started the motor, Torrigan reached over and turned the key off. Fidelio gave him an enraged look which Torrigan ignored. He turned in the seat and said, “Friends, we have a small problem. This so-called driver is a madman. He very nearly finished both of us off on the way down the mountains into Mexico City. He has no English and I have no Spanish.”

  “I have a little Spanish,” John Kemp said.

  “Good. The trip back takes an hour and a half. There is another student arriving by air today.” He took a piece of paper out of the pocket of his corduroy shirt. “Name is Monica Killdeering from, honest to God, Kilo, Kansas. But she gets in at six-twenty this evening. So I can leave it up to you people as to whether we go on back right now or kill time in Mexico City and meet her plane. I will tell you one very certain thing. If I get back across the mountains alive with this party, I am not going to be the one who comes back after Miss Monica.”

  “Can’t you drive us back?” John asked.

  “I can’t do anything with this Fidelio. He wants to drive. It’s obsessional with him.”

  “If we wait, we’ll be going over the mountains at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then by all means let’s go now. Do you agree, Mrs. Kilmer?”

  “It really doesn’t matter to me,” she said in a subdued voice.

  “Ya vámonos a Cuernavaca, por favor, Fidelio,” John said, “Y, por favor, despacio en las montañas.”

  “Sí, señor,” Fidelio said with a quick glance over his shoulder.

  “That certainly sounded fluent, John,” Torrigan said.

  “It isn’t fluent, Mr. Torrigan. It isn’t even grammatical. But it’s serviceable. I’m an architect. I’ve worked in Peru and Cuba. I’ve picked up a little.”

  There was little opportunity for conversation as Fidelio fought the Mexico City traffic. They were too busy helping him watch the other cars. But once they were through the toll gate and grinding up the mountain with a slowness that obviously depressed Fidelio, Torrigan turned around again and hooked a big hairy arm over the back of the seat and said, “I’d like to give you nice people a briefing on the situation you’ll find at the Hutchinson. We’ll have thirteen students. The first two arrived yesterday, and there are probably more there by now. This Miles Drummond is a nice enough little fellow, but this is his first venture in this sort of thing. I was going to spend the summer on my own work, but I got a cry for help from a friend of Drummond’s and an old friend of mine, Gloria Garvey, to come down and keep it from turning into a complete farce. The only other instructor is a horrible, tiresome old biddy named Agnes Partridge Keeley. She turns out sickening little post-card scenes by the hundreds. She even paints sunsets, by God. The way it is arranged, all students will spend a half day with Agnes and a half day with me for the first week. And then the group will split. This satisfies me completely. I’ll get those students who have the capacity and imagination to look upon painting as emotional and artistic expression rather than trying to make a cow look like a cow. And Miss Agnes will get those dull little people who want to paint burros and Mexicans leaning against a wall.”

  “Maybe I’m one of those people who want to paint burros,” John Kemp said gently.

  Torrigan swallowed and said, “I took a chance talking so frankly because I sized both of you up as intelligent, imaginative people. This Keeley woman should be painting pansies on the sides of teapots.”

  “How is the housing?” John Kemp asked.

  Torrigan seemed to be off the hook. “Grim,” he said. “Utterly grim. And the food is foul so far. But don’t you think that the important aspect of the environment is the intellectual one?”

  John nodded and began to look out the window at the scenery. Torrigan tried to talk to Barbara Kilmer and, after receiving nothing but monosyllables, gave up and turned around.

  “Are you a painter, Mrs. Kilmer?” John asked in a tone low enough to discourage Torrigan from turning around again and rejoining the group.

  “Oh, no. I haven’t tried to do anything in years. I took a Fine Arts degree at the University of Ohio, but I never did anything with it.” And she turned away from him with the same finality that he had used on Torrigan.

  John Kemp wondered why she had signed up for the Workshop. And he wondered what he would say to her if and when she should ever inquire why he had done so.

  Perhaps, he thought, he could say, It is because I am a very slow-witted, slow-moving man. Had I the ability to make snap decisions about important things, I would not be here.

  At thirty-three John Kemp was half owner of the New Orleans architectural firm of Jenningson and Kemp. A very young and childless marriage had ended in divorce, and he had been wary of marrying again. Six years ago, he and Kurt Jenningson had resigned their positions with two large architectural firms and started their own firm. They had expected lean times, but to their mutual surprise and pleasure, it had been a success from the very beginning. They complemented each other perfectly. Lean, balding, high-keyed Kurt Jenningson was very sound at structure, and adept at achieving and maintaining splendid relations with the contractors who bid their jobs. John Kemp, a bigger, slower, milder man, had a genius for design, and a comfortable knack of keeping the customer happy during construction. Both men were personable and likable, and brought in new business on that basis alone, aside from their high order of competence.

  Mary Jenningson was the perfect wife for an architect. She was a redhead with almost frightening energies, and great managerial ability. She ran their showplace home on the lake with taste and style and an apparent minimum of effort. She dressed like a model, entertained graciously, was raising two well-mannered children, and yet had time for a lot of civic and charitable activity.

  The three of them made a good team. Mary and Kurt often kidded John about it being time for him to marry. And Mary did not seem to tire of trying to make a match. John assumed that he would marry. He did not know when, or to whom, but the years were beginning to add up. Kurt’s kids were beginning to get tall.

  And quite suddenly, quite without intent, three months ago, Mary Jenningson had fallen deeply and helplessly in love with John Kemp. She was a decent and not a devious woman. She tried to conceal what had happened. She knew that it meant pain and heartbreak. She wanted desperately not to be in love with Jo
hn Kemp. But somehow, over the years, over the hundreds of hours the three of them had spent together, the little accretions had taken place, and had that spring reached their critical mass, and blown up three lives. One rationalization as to how it could have happened was that Mary had married Kurt on the rebound from an earlier romance. She knew that she had never felt toward Kurt as she now felt toward John Kemp. She knew what it could do her children, to the firm, to Kurt. She told herself that she was a grownup. But at last she told them, told both of them.

  Both men were stunned and bewildered. John Kemp knew that he loved Mary Jenningson, but not in that way. He loved her as a friend, as a loyal and amusing and generous woman. He found her physically attractive, but not any more so than a dozen other women of his acquaintance. But his regard for her was not of that order which would enable him to consider a divorce and remarriage.

  He said to Kurt, “I swear by everything that means anything to me, that I’ve never consciously done anything to bring this about. I’ve kissed her on New Year’s Eve, yes, but I haven’t …”

  I know that! I know that, God damn it. Neither of you are sneaks. You don’t have to … tell me that. It’s like a sudden sickness with her. I thought everything was fine. I thought she was happy. I know I was happy. And then … this.”

  After John Kemp had made it desolately clear to Mary that he could not and would not marry her, she still persisted in talk of divorce. She said she could not live a lie. She said she could no longer live with Kurt as his wife, and Kurt was not certain he wanted her to try to do so. It was arranged that she would go to San Francisco with the kids and put them in school there and stay there through the summer, and when autumn came, they would discuss it again.

  By the time that arrangement had been made, it had become clear to the two men that the partnership could not endure. Even though Kurt held John blameless, there was the constant tension of knowing that John, all unknowingly, had been the factor which had broken his marriage. And there was the blow to his pride of having his woman prefer this other man. John, in turn, could not avoid a constant feeling of guilt.

  The partnership agreement was so written that should they desire to split it up, either man could have the option of buying the other person out. There was no subsidiary clause, because at the time the papers were drawn up, they knew they could always reach an agreement amicably. The sale price was to be one-half of current net worth, with the allowance for good will to be determined by an impartial committee.

  Kurt and John spent a long time talking it over. Kurt felt that if Mary came back to him, which did not seem likely, he would want to continue with the business, but without John as a partner in the firm. If she did not come back to him, he was not particularly interested in continuing with it, or even staying in the same city. John, for his part, felt that the wise thing to do economically was to buy out Kurt’s share. He could get bank credit to do so. Yet he did not feel that he wanted the heavy responsibility.

  They decided to wait, and John knew that he wanted time to gain that perspective that would enable him to make the best decision. But it was obvious to both of them that they could no longer work together. So John agreed to go away for the summer. Two weeks later he saw the advertisement for the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop and sent in his fee. He had been a hobby painter for many years. During the last few years he had been sending his work to local shows at the Isaac Delgado Museum and had had them accepted and hung. One was sold out of a show and another won an honorable mention in a juried show.

  Now he glanced over at the quiet woman beside him, looking at the line of her cheek and brow as she looked out the window, looking at the slim hands which lay clasped and quiet in her lap.

  Yes, Mrs. Kilmer, the reason I am here is because a woman fell in love with me. I rather suppose I should feel flattered, feel a bloat of the male ego. But, Mrs. Kilmer, I remember Mary and the look of shame and bafflement in her eyes, and I feel a little ill. And who fell in love with you, Mrs. Kilmer? Who slipped those rings on that delicate finger? And where is he now, by the way?

  The red bus passed the small white sign that proclaimed they were three thousand and forty meters above the level of the sea, and started down the slope.

  Two minutes later John Kemp spoke sharply to the driver. The youth made no sign that he had heard. So John Kemp clasped the brown nape of the neck in his big right hand and bit down hard with thumb and fingers and repeated his instructions in Fidelio’s ear.

  After the gasp of pain, they proceeded safely and sedately down the road, around the hairpin turns, with Fidelio pouting and looking very close to tears.

  Chapter Five

  Colonel Thomas C. Hildebrandt rattled into the front courtyard of the Hutchinson at exactly eleven-thirty on Friday morning in a ten-year-old Dodge station wagon containing all his worldly possessions. He was a tall, spare man in his seventy-second year, erect, with deep folds in his cheeks and fierce bright eyes and a white brush cut. He had a hawk nose, a hearing aid, khaki walking shorts and lean, exceptionally hairy knees. He took out his compass and observed that the hotel was set a few points off a true north-south line. He wished it was perfectly in line.

  A fussy little man, a sort of elderly company clerk, checked the colonel’s name off on a roster and showed him to his ground-floor room. The colonel inspected it carefully, and then went out to the station wagon and laid out a great pile of suitable articles. Fifteen minutes after they had been carried into his room, Colonel Hildebrandt had made himself entirely comfortable. He had blocked the bed level and spread his pneumatic mattress and sleeping bag there. The water with which he would soon shave was bubbling on his primus stove. His folding camp chair was in place. His easel was assembled.

  A fat woman with hair the color of a shell casing came in and shook his hand and said, “I’m Agnes Partridge Keeley, and I’m delighted to welcome you as one of my students, Colonel.”

  “Thank you,” he roared, with a stiff bow.

  She looked at the easel and said, “I see you paint.”

  He stared at her. “By Gad, woman, of course I paint! What in the bloody hell would I be doing here if I didn’t?”

  “Well … what sort of work do you do?”

  “Terrain.”

  “What?”

  “Terrain, woman. Configuration of the earth. Cover and concealment. Most essential part of all tactical considerations. I’ve painted every major battlefield in the United States. Oh, other artists have painted them too, but they get the landscape all crapped up with soldiers in period costumes. I just paint the terrain, the way it is. I look at it from the military eye. Why the hell would anybody send a platoon up that defile? Where would you place your artillery? Where would you mass your cavalry for an assault? By Gad, I’ve read up on this Zapata that operated around here and by Gad I’m going to paint the places where he operated.” He had slowly backed Agnes to the door, roaring at her in that great hollow voice that echoed much more faintly in the deafened corridors of his mind. “You understand me?”

  “Y-yes,” said Agnes Partridge Keeley, hand at her plump throat, and fled.

  The Wahls, Gil and and Jeanie, arrived shortly after lunch in a black, three-year-old Chevrolet. They were both twenty-two, they had both just been graduated from Syracuse University. In September they would both join the faculty of a small private school up the Hudson from New York, he to teach English and art, she to teach Spanish and art appreciation. They had been married now for nineteen days and nights. The Cuernavaca Summer Workshop was the result of their having decided to do something “practical” with their wedding checks.

  There was something unformed about them. Hand in hand, they looked like one of those posters that extol the benefits of an international youth conference with some religious motif. They were both of medium height, both blond with rather round faces, and they looked rather like brother and sister. As Drummond checked them off the list they stood looking at each other with such a tender intensity, such a humid,
blinding sexuality that Miles Drummond felt slightly breathless himself.

  After Alberto and Pepe had been roused out of their early-afternoon stupor to carry in the Wahl luggage, Jeanie Wahl directed them in clear Spanish so perfectly grammatical and spoken with such a nasal Indiana accent that neither Pepe nor Alberto understood a word of it. But, because she pointed as she spoke, the task was made possible.

  Their room was like the single rooms except for the additional narrow bed, the mismatched extra bureau. Once they were in the room with their luggage, and the door to the corridor closed, Gil said, “Gosh, this isn’t much of a room.”

  But Jeanie was holding him tightly around the waist, her mouth an inch below and an inch away from his, and she looked up into his eyes and breathed, “It’s a gorgeous room, darling.”

  “Uh … yeah, it’s a fine room, Jeanie.”

  “Just gorgeous, darling,” she whispered.

  “Sure, darling,” he said, and fastened his mouth on hers and they shuffled sideways, locked together, with perfect instinct, toward the nearest bed.

  “Darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling,” whispered Jeanie Wahl, the happiest girl in the world.

  Parker Barnum drove down to Cuernavaca in a new green-and-white Ford station wagon. He drove too fast and he drove too slow, and sometimes he frowned at the road ahead and sometimes he smiled, and in the mirrors of the motel bathrooms he would make faces at himself, a smirk, a sneer, a look of compounded lechery, or an open, honest grin that looked as if it had been tattooed in place.

  It was difficult for him to believe there was such a thing as a Parker Barnum. A Barker Parnum. A Barkum Parner. A Parkum Barner. They gave you a designation, like a code. And this little Barnum we will name Parker after his mother’s folks, and all his thirty years they will call him Park Barnum which has an odd ring, like a memorial to a circus.

  And it believes with all its heart it is good ole Park Barnum, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t know what the hell it is.