They walked at an easier gait on the return leg past the dark statues that inhabit each block of the Mall: Hamilton, then Glover, then Patrick Michael Collins, an early Irish mayor whose bust glowered from between two goddesses, then William Lloyd Garrison sitting in a huge bronze chair, then Samuel Eliot Morison sitting on a rock. Just before the Hereford Street crossing they walked carefully across the grass avoiding mementoes of other walks, cut across the eastbound lane of Commonwealth, and descended the steps to the door of their basement apartment. As he dug for the key in his trouser pocket, Owen glanced in surprise at the mailbox by his front door. BORGO it said in paint still moist enough to reflect the light from his front window. “Bastards,” said Owen.
Chapter 3
The skinny old man trotted along, through the cellar of the Charles Club, muttering to himself. This dark, damp, cavernous maze extended well beyond the walls of the clubhouse. Rooms had been excavated from the mud which originally filled Back Bay beneath the Ladies’ Entrance on Hereford and under the broad sidewalk on Commonwealth. With hasty, scuffling tread Nilson headed for his workbench behind the oil furnace. This monument to the engineering which made America a world leader in the nineteenth century had been converted in the golden year of 1925 from hot air to steam. Beside the fire chamber with its tangle of internal pipes extended a massive iron boiler. Nilson paused to tap the pressure gauge. The needle bounced and returned to sixty pounds. Although it was early November, the furnace ran more or less continuously, providing scalding tap water and copious amounts of steam which ascended the iron capillaries of the Charles Club to the slate roof, five stories above. The club was in fact overwarm in most seasons. A member unlucky enough to be forced to spend a night in one of the guest rooms on the fourth floor invariably began the evening by flinging open the window. Nilson ignited the furnace in October and shut it down in May. During this period an oil truck arrived once a week to replenish the massive tank. Only Miss Ontos, who operated the computer, ever spoke to Nilson about oil. He stared back impassively when she remarked in the pantry one day how little sense it made to her that as much money was spent on oil as food or drink in a club the size of the Charles. Cost weighed lightly among Nilson’s responsibilities. His life at the Charles Club was a series of skirmishes. Like an elderly but still agile jungle fighter, he darted from tree to tree. Furnace firing, pressure up, no problem here. He jerked a string above the cluttered bench and light flooded down on his narrow head, heavily but irregularly thatched with iron-colored hair. Quickly he grabbed a crescent wrench, a short prybar, a ballpeen hammer, a huge screwdriver, and an electric drill, throwing them into his wooden tool carrier. As an afterthought he added a coil of heavy wire, a disk of electrician’s tape, and a toothbrush. He pulled the light cord and plunged the cellar again into semi-darkness. As he scuttled past the oil burner it faltered for an instant. He kicked it hard with a mailed boot, grunted as it picked up the cadence again, then ran for the stairs up to the back hall.
His urgency was prompted as much by fear as by the debacle which had again befallen the elevator. He stopped short of the wooden steps as a gray torpedo shot past his foot. With a cry he dropped his tool container and, snatching the ballpeen, hurled it like Wotan’s hammer at the departing shape. It struck with a gratifying clatter. Hearing nothing but his own harsh respiration and the echoing roar of the furnace, Nilson approached with silent steps. There, in the angle of the cement floor and the granite foundation, lay his victim. Skulled but not squashed, observed Nilson with satisfaction. He picked it up by the tail and deposited it with the tools. A good foot and a half from tip to tip. Now, they’ll listen, he exulted as he pounded up the stairs. His passage through the pantry was punctuated by a shriek of outrage from Old Jane. “Serves you right for sticking your nose in,” panted Nilson as he entered the front hall, dodged his way through a gaggle of concerned members and headed up the front stairs to the disaster on the second floor.
One of the amenities added by the club in 1925 to the already handsomely equipped townhouse was a diminutive elevator which travelled in a shaft circumscribed by the main staircase. The most decorative small model in the Otis line, the elevator moved in a channel of brass filigree, its cage a bower of rods, leaves and branches interwoven to afford the occupant glimpses of his ascent. Only the floor of the car was solid. From within and without the elevator in use suggested nothing so much as a bird being lifted in its cage to be hung on a hook somewhere at the top of the house. The elevator alone had not been converted to alternating current, which now animated the rest of the building. A Westinghouse motor in the attic had functioned without failure since its installation. Years of use, however, had worn the brass hardware and the copper contacts of the controls and switches in the cage itself. The floor-selection buttons in the ornamental panel had acquired a comfortable concavity from millions of jabs by thousands of impatient Yankee digits. Least trustworthy were the switches and latches on the doors. A sad story had repeated itself.
Well launched on the cocktail hour with several friends in the Library, Roger Dormant was possessed with an important desire to visit the lavatory. His most obvious choice lay just off the entrance hall. Spacious, comfortable, warm, this chamber was a Back Bay landmark. The plumbing fixtures, unequalled for their originality in Boston, included a fine set of oak water boxes activated by brass chains with porcelain pendants. A commodious shower bath with a bench, loffas, and an English back brush beckoned. The line of sinks, a full half dozen, boasted German silver water spouts, massive valves, various levers and plungers, suggestive of the control bridge of a zeppelin. Reflected in the mirrored wall was a matchless array of aids to masculine beauty, including hair oil, talcum, combs soaking in a glass of mild antiseptic, cologne from Cologne, glycerine soap from London, jojoba oil soap from Paris, and stacks of large soft towels. The massive urinals stood like porcelain buttresses, proudly stamped “American Standard,” glacial, spotless, a sanctuary of rest and relief to kidneys whose production sometimes demanded haste, sometimes patience. Finished in white hexagonal tile, its wooden stalls many times painted, the great room offered every comfort except privacy. Men often walked blocks out of their way to enjoy the elegance of the Charles Club’s grande salle de bain.
Other than the Ladies’ Room, inaccessible of course to Dormant, the ground floor offered one alternative. This small chamber adjacent to the front door resembled a coat closet, which in fact it had once been. Refitted in the early years of the club, it contained a marble seat with one hole shaped in the country fashion, a chamber pot beneath. A discreet card bore the legend, “For emergency use only.”
Dormant, however, sought neither the camaraderie of the large bathroom nor the Spartan convenience of the closet in the foyer. He felt a little rocky and decided to use the toilet on the second floor, a facility with no particular distinction except a lockable door. Unsure of his balance, he elected to take the elevator rather than risk the stairs that curved up from the marble lobby. As he boarded his eye passed unseeing over the card affixed by Nilson to the inside of the door:
IMPORTANT!
CLOSE DOOR TIGHT.
DONT PRESS BUTTON
UNTIL DOOR IS LATCHED.
ALL THE WAY. REALLY SHUT.
The outer door banged. The pantographic door shot home with the authority of a guillotine blade. The huge rocker switch above the door crashed down, sending a surge of direct current into the magnets of the motor high above. The old cables stretched a bit then jerked mightily. The birdcage rose, momentarily staggering its occupant. Dormant was a small, unprepossessing man who nevertheless often reminded people of someone else. On numerous occasions friends and acquaintances, of whom he had many, asked him if he had recently shaved off his moustache. This puzzled him since he had never worn a moustache, but he had come to accept it as one of the vagaries of the restless, contentious, uncertain time in which he lived. Dormant watched the cornice and the graceful ornament of the ceiling approach, then passed into the ope
ning confident that he would arrive with time to spare. At that moment the front elevator door, not latched, popped open. The circuit broken, the rocker switch sprang up. The motor, drained of life, slowed and stopped. The birdcage bounced. Dormant, his legs and feet visible in the ceiling—attributed by some to a pupil of Bulfinch—let out a wail. Nilson, sitting in the pantry, dropped his copy of the Boston Sphere and headed for the cellar.
By the time he had the man’s head in sight Dormant’s cries had subsided. Not unfamiliar with this problem, Nilson called down to him, “What do you need?”
“My topcoat. And a stiff bourbon and soda.”
Nilson turned to Old Jane, who had followed him, avid to add another to the lexicon of Charles Club stories with which she entertained the inner circle of her favorite bar in Allston. “Get his coat. Abel knows which it is. And bring the booze.”
“Should I bring up some hors d’oeuvres?”
“God damn right. Bring the menu too. This is going to take a while.” He reached for the prybar and the bloody hammer. “Maybe you’ll walk up next time,” muttered the jungle fighter.
Chapter 4
In a sense, Owen reminded himself as he scraped the chin of his reflected image, Seymour saved my life. The thought of being beholden to Gland was repugnant enough, but the realization that he had fallen so far so fast after the divorce made him wince. He lifted his razor and stared curiously at the face whose grimace confronted him. The tiny bathroom enfolded his lean frame in a grasp of pink plastic tile. He was clad in pyjama bottoms, leaning over the little sink which as usual had produced water which was hot, but not very hot. Was I so dependent on her, he wondered.
Ten years of marriage had fractured in ten weeks. Try as he might, he could not remember specifically what had caused the first crack. Perhaps it had been the dog. She had never liked the dog, never had a dog, even when she was a child. A dog had always been an essential element of his own life. He remembered events in association with the dog which was present at the moment; the brown bitch named Emma, for instance, who waited with him for his father to return. He saw himself and the dog sitting together on the worn wooden step in the shadows of the portal watching the road. He didn’t have a strong sense of how the boy looked, but Emma was a clear, complete image: narrow muzzle, yellow eyes, lop ear, feathered tail. The two of them had studied the empty dirt road for two days until his father had returned. Em’s single sharp bark preceded the sight of the old Chrysler by three minutes.
Another dog watched him from the open bathroom door, her black eyes regarding him from behind a white mask. Tasha rarely barked, but whenever she did in the five years since Owen had brought her home from the Animal Rescue League his wife covered her ears. “Why is the dog barking?” she asked. No answer seemed to suffice. Each bark took her by surprise. So did white fur on the carpets of their house in Weston, the need for a kennel whenever they travelled, the dog walk that always ended Owen’s day. Maybe she was keeping score, he thought.
His lawyer was a classmate who warned Owen that he never took divorce cases unless his friends insisted. When he learned that the case would be heard by a certain judge in the Norfolk County Court Owen’s counsel signed. “It’s all over, Champ. I know this one. She’s got an agenda.” His prognosis was correct. By the time Owen had begun to school himself in phrases like ex-wife and former residence, the house, the furniture, the Volvo, the summer cottage in Mattapoisett, his modest portfolio, and the fourteen-foot catboat had sailed out of his life. The boat was sold as a package with the beach house which was put under a sales agreement a month after the decree became final. Owen had been able to claim a few furnishings out of the cottage. Now he felt like a badger holed up under the tree roots in a tiny basement apartment which had been described in the listing as a studio. Studio sounded right for a place in which he would begin to learn about his new life, but it lacked the north light he might have hoped for. In fact, its front windows opened on the street six inches above grade with a view of the blue mailbox, the green pedestal which supported the traffic light on the corner, a prickly bush, and the feet and legs of passersby. The apartment’s other pair of windows stared at the furnace room. If he parted the lank curtains above his kitchen sink, Owen was confronted with a naked bulb burning beside the fuse box flanking the furnace. The rumble of the furnace and the clank of steam in the pipes were not uncomforting, however, and masked the sounds of the street as he slept.
The Mattapoisett cottage had yielded several birch log chairs and a matching table. An old Navajo blanket covered his bed. Books overflowed shelves arranged from boards and bricks. A wrought-iron floor lamp peered over the largest of the log chairs. On a wicker table a black-and-white television set, near the end of a long career, rested quietly. The table, which had existed on the front porch of the cottage, smelled of the sea. A shallow fireplace framed in iron with a narrow marble mantel proved, after careful investigation with spills of burning newspaper, to be unencumbered. If he was careful Owen could burn the sticks Tasha brought back from their walks and Presto Logs from the market at four ninety-nine each.
If the living space of his studio had become, through a process of random acquisition, comfortable and welcoming, the kitchen remained a grisly chamber. Sink and drainboard seemed designed for sinister medical purposes. The small gas stove and half a refrigerator crouched under open shelves. The room was decorated with cans of dog food, ketchup, a box of cereal. Glassware and crockery had been collected in a cardboard carton before bidding good-bye to Mattapoisett. The mushroom anchor from the catboat propped the kitchen door so Tasha had access to her bowl and water dish under the sink. Owen felt the open door added dimension to the living room. He could see the electric clock above the stove without difficulty from his birch chair in front of the fire. The clock told him when it was time to eat, a signal no longer issued by his stomach. Not a bad badger hole, Owen thought as he towelled his face, but it’s unfortunate that I owe it all to Seymour.
When they met in a hardware store on Charles Street five months ago Owen was, in fact, wondering how he was going to pay his rent. As he waited for the clerk to finish a telephone call, Owen twisted his MIT ring, which seemed to have become larger, on his left ring finger. The second thing he had accomplished after his divorce decree, on the day he returned from Mattapoisett, was to quit his job with Portman and Sells, Consulting Engineers. An undemanding position, it paid $78,000 a year and offered the prospect of steady employment with regular small salary increases. Working with an assortment of clients in research and manufacturing companies around New England provided enough variety to help Owen postpone his ambitions of creating a company someday. Certainly the problems and disasters of his clients offered him a continuing seminar on the mismanagement of American industry. His last act on the day he quit was to explain again to the owner of a laser printer patent that his principal competitor, by negotiating a manufacturing agreement with a Korean conglomerate, had achieved a potential price advantage that might be difficult to overcome. Owen left the client hoping that the Olympics might be a disaster, went into his father-in-law’s office, and resigned.
“What do you need?” asked the hardware clerk, downing the telephone with a sigh. The answer momentarily overwhelmed Owen. As he struggled to find his list, which he remembered included bathtub caulking and D-Con, a familiar voice intruded.
“I am looking for an elegant mailslot. Heavy brass. The sort that is affixed in the panel of one’s door. A pivoting flap. Wide enough for large envelopes and periodicals. One that speaks of …” the voice paused in full flow, then erupted in a giggle. “Owen? Owen Lawrence?”
Owen had not seen Seymour Gland since a party after their graduation from Harvard. That evening had begun badly and ended in the middle of Garden Street at three in the morning. Gland could not find his car. Owen walked many blocks with him searching fruitlessly for it. When he remembered that a girl had driven him to the party, Gland sank to the curbing in front of the Widener Library cry
ing softly.
“Don’t be sick on my shoes, Seymour.”
“Of course not,” said Gland between sobs and promptly ruined his own. They wandered into the Square together, had eggs, and persuaded a reluctant cabbie to take them to Gland’s house on Beacon Hill.
“It’s been sixteen years,” said Owen.
“I hope you’ve spent them productively.”
Owen grimaced. “So do I. Two years for an engineering degree at MIT. Ten years of marriage. A job with Portman and Sells here in town.”
“Well why haven’t you called me? Children? No? Well, I’m sure that dog intimidating the people outside is yours. You’ve always had some hound trailing you. Whom did you, ah, choose?”
“It hardly matters. We were divorced two months ago. Quit my job as well. Only a step ahead of a pink slip. I was working for her father.”
“Portman?”
“No, Sells.”
“Oh, Abbie Sells; then you’re well out of it. An engineer? What sort of engineer?”
“The electrical sort.”
“Beaver signet and all. Why don’t you come work for me?”
“What do you do?”
“Venture capital. I need a smart engineer. We’re constantly evaluating new technology.” As he uttered several of his favorite words, Gland’s voice rose a notch, causing a couple in the paint department to look up from the color chips. “There is an ocean of money to be invested in technology, you know, several oceans, in fact, since we manage three distinct funds. We can’t find enough good ideas to pour them into.” Then, turning to the clerk, “Yes, yes, the perfect receptacle,” Gland cried, bouncing several times on his small feet shod in gleaming penny loafers, “a wide opening, the pivoting flap.” He snatched the proffered mailslot and tucked it under his arm like a relay runner receiving the baton. “Put this on my bill. You are a smart engineer, aren’t you?” This to Owen. “If I were to guess, you graduated third or fourth in your class, only because you were always pig lazy.”
The Last Bastion Page 2