“Where is he?” Rock said.
“He went back in the taxi.”
“That’s where the game is,” Rock said to Haig. “Remember it.”
“I’ve got it,” Haig said.
“Can I use the phone?” Schwartz said.
“I’ll talk to him, too,” Rock said.
“I think he wants to fly up and see you,” Schwartz said. “He doesn’t want to talk on the telephone. He wants to see you.”
“What’s eating him?” Rock said.
“He’s got a story for you,” Schwartz said.
“I’m not interested in a story.”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you about the story, Rock. I forgot. You won’t tell him I told you, will you? He’ll get mad at me. I can’t stand P.K. getting mad at me all the time.”
“If you’ll tell me what else he asked you not to tell me,” Rock said, “I won’t tell him.”
“That’s all he asked me not to tell you,” Schwartz said. “I swear on my mother that’s all. I’m supposed to phone him the minute I find you. It’s nine o’clock and there’s a plane at ten, I think. He can just make it. You won’t tell him, will you, Rock?”
“I won’t tell him,” Rock said. “I knew it, anyway.”
“P.K. understands you like a book,” Schwartz said, “and you understand him like a book. But he’s your friend, Rock. Don’t ever forget P.K.’s your friend.”
“I won’t,” Rock said. “Take Schwartz to the phone,” he said to Haig. “If the lawyer’s out there, ask him to come in.”
“He left a few minutes ago,” Haig said.
“I was a little drunk at the table,” Rock said. “I didn’t mean to fee rude.”
“He didn’t know the difference,” Haig said.
“I’ll be getting up in a little while and we’ll go to room 606 and get in the game,” Rock said.
“O.K.,” Haig said. He went off with Schwartz.
“How do you feel?” he said when he came back.
“Not bad,” Rock said. “How do you feel?”
“I’m sorry she didn’t phone,” Haig said.
“I said I feel O.K.,” Rock said.
“Have you got it that bad?”
“I have.”
“She’ll phone.”
“No,” Rock said. “How do you feel?”
“I never felt worse in my life,” Haig said.
“Why?”
“Because human beings are such dirty crooks,” Haig said.
“Who?” Rock said.
“Everybody,” Haig said. “Especially the bright ones, not the ones I see coming into the Army every day. They break your heart. I feel lousy because just staying alive calls for so much cleverness that it bores me to death. Just to stay alive you’ve got to be a crook.”
“Maybe you do at that,” Rock said, “but don’t let it bother you too much.”
“O.K.,” Haig said. “If she doesn’t phone, are you going to phone her?”
“I don’t know,” Rock said. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Do you think her mother got in touch with her?”
“I’m thinking about that too.”
“What do you mean?” Haig said.
“I mean Myra Clewes was probably right about her.”
“Who’s Myra Clewes?”
“She produces plays,” Rock said. “I took her out a couple of times in New York. She told me to forget her. I’d planned to, but she phoned and I didn’t want to make too much of a point of forgetting her. I thought not making a point of it would be the best way to get over it, but after a month I had it worse than ever. It was time to get back to San Francisco. I wanted to drive across the country once more. I wanted to be alone. I told her it was over. I said I wouldn’t call her. That was eight or nine days ago, or six or seven. I’ve forgotten.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Haig said. “What’s bothering you about her?”
“I don’t want to marry a girl who’s been around,” Rock said. “I told her so. She swears she’s had nothing to do with anybody except me.”
“Maybe she’s telling the truth,” Haig said.
“No,” Rock said. “She’s lying. She lies all the time. If she told the truth, clean, I think I’d marry her anyway. I’ve been all over the place, so if she has too, maybe we could make a good marriage. I don’t think she can tell the truth. I mean I think it’s unnatural for her to tell the truth. I think it’s deeply painful. I think she hates the truth. I can’t imagine why, though.”
“Are you sure you’ve got her right?” Haig said.
“You don’t spend two months with a girl and get her wrong, do you?” Rock said. “The trouble is I’ve got it so bad, I don’t mind any more that she is a liar. At the same time, I’m angry at her because her mother hasn’t been able to reach her. I’m burning because maybe she is in bed with somebody. I don’t want anybody to get near her any more. I want her to tell me the truth about herself, forget it, and be my wife.”
“You want a girl to be your wife who’s been with other men?” Haig said.
“This girl,” Rock said. “I told you I’ve got it bad.”
“What’s she got?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she that good?”
“No,” Rock said. “She doesn’t know enough to be good. She fools around at being real, for me. That’s because she’s a baby. I told her long ago I liked her the way I felt she really was.”
“What way is that?” Haig said.
“The way of a truly beautiful girl,” Rock said. “It’s all there. It just needs somebody—me, of course—to notice and cherish it. There wouldn’t be much to notice and cherish, though, if she had to go on being a liar, or if she preferred being a liar, or if she just didn’t want me to have anything special to notice and cherish. She says she’s not lying. She says she wants to be what I think she really is. She says she loves me and wants to marry me and have children, and doesn’t want anything else—ever. And here I am in Fresno, wanting to believe her.”
“Maybe you’d better find a girl who can’t lie,” Haig said, “instead of a girl who can’t tell the truth.”
“I’m thinking about that too,” Rock said. “Between the two of them, the one I’m involved with, and the one I haven’t found, it looks pretty hopeless, though.”
Schwartz came back into the room.
“He’ll be here sometime tonight,” Schwartz said. “He wasn’t sure he could get to the airport in time to get the next plane, but he’ll be here sometime tonight, Rock.”
Rock got up.
“We’ll be in the game at the hotel,” he said.
“All right,” Schwartz said. “Can I come up there until it’s time to go out to the airport to meet P.K.?”
“Do you want to play?” Rock said.
“If it’s all right,” Schwartz said.
“It’s all right,” Rock said.
He went into the parlor, to his grandmother, and said, “I may not get in until morning. We’ll drive to San Francisco soon after I get in. When they go home, go to sleep. I won’t say goodbye.”
“Who is the English-speaking lawyer?” Lula said.
“He’s a member of the family,” Rock said. “Never saw him before in my life.”
“He’s no member of the family,” Lula said.
“He’s an Armenian, anyway.”
“He’s no Armenian. He neither speaks nor understands the language.”
“Well, he’s a lawyer, then.”
“Beware of lawyers,” Lula said. “Keep away from them.”
“It was a wonderful dinner,” Rock said. “I’ll see you when I get home.”
He went out and found his cousin and Schwartz standing beside his car, waiting. They got in and he drove off, thinking, “A man is no joke. No man is a joke. Having life is no joke, but wouldn’t it be nice if he went to the capitals of the world and said, One body, one soul, union, fraternity, love,’ and all the other nice things?”
Every man is afraid of something, but most of all he is afraid of death and disgrace. There are few moments in the life of any man in which there is no disgrace, and none in which there is no death. The nobler the man is the more aware he is of the disgrace in himself, the nagging absence of grace. The more alive the man is the more aware he is of the death in himself. Everything he is afraid of is himself, as he himself knows, going about his business, which is a business of deathly struggle all his life. But every man is fearless, too. He is afraid of nothing. Having fearlessly emerged from the womb, he is forever after fearless. Having fearlessly accepted his head, he can never again be afraid of anything. Having fearlessly gotten onto his feet and walked, he can go anywhere fearlessly. Having fearlessly looked into the eyes and face of his mother and father, he can forever after look into the eyes and face of any man or animal. A man is a bold fellow. He is a game fellow. He is a fearless fellow.
The only thing Sam Schwartz was afraid of was his uncle Paul Key. He was afraid of everybody else, too, but as he didn’t have time to notice, he didn’t know or care that he was. He noticed that he was afraid of Paul Key all the time. As a child his mother had spoken of no one but Paul Key, her younger brother. He was the man Sam should try to be like. This was unfair, because Sam was big and soft and heavy-laden, whereas Paul, twenty-five years his senior, was small, hard, and all nervous gristle. Still Schwartz wanted to be like Paul Key. At last, working without a contract, they reached an agreement. It happened when Schwartz was twenty-two. The agreement was as follows: Samuel Schwartz would attend Paul Keesler.
Sam would be available at all times to do anything Paul asked him to do. The young man was thrilled. He said nothing about money or hours, and nothing was ever made specific in these matters. Still, it was part of Sam’s work to take two hundred dollars and go out and have himself a new suit of clothes made to fit his new body—larger than it had been a year ago. It was also part of Sam’s work to get on an airplane and fly to New York, go to a certain address, speak to somebody there, and telephone Paul Key.
Once it was a girl who worked in a retail baker’s. Somebody had told Paul Key that the girl was Joan of Arc herself.
Sam telephoned Paul and said, “She’s crazy, P.K. She said I’m Death. She said it in Yiddish.”
“Yiddish?” Paul said. “Isn’t her name Marie Gallimard?”
“I don’t care what her name is,” Schwartz said. “She’s crazy. What do you want me to do now?”
“Did she say anything else in Yiddish?”
“Everything she said was in Yiddish.”
“Does she look like Joan of Arc?”
“What’s Joan of Arc look like?” Schwartz said.
“Well, does she look strong and fearless and like an angel?” Paul said.
“No,” Schwartz said. “She looks like a girl who works in a bakery. I’m next door to the bakery now. What do you want me to do?”
“Buy a dozen bagels and take the next plane back.”
“They don’t sell bagels.”
“Buy a dozen sugar doughnuts and take the next plane back.”
Another time it was a cellar room in the tenements, in which Sam was supposed to find a new writer. Sam found a man who lived with eight alley cats. He was sixty-five years old and had been writing all his life.
“What do you write?” Sam said. “Books?”
“No,” the man said. “Just inspirational things I get out of the air.”
“Like what, for instance?” Sam said.
“Well, here’s one I got this morning out of the air,” the man said. “I come right home and wrote it down. Here it is on this paper bag. ‘Be good to your mother. Your mother was good to you.’ How true that is. These things come to me out of the air as I walk.”
Sam listened to eight or nine of the things that had come to the old man out of the air, and then he telephoned Paul Key.
Paul had his secretary take down everything Sam remembered. A year later one of Paul Key’s biggest successes was called Be Good, Baby, and Sam believed his work had been well done.
He often told his mother about the old man with the cats.
“He was a saint,” Sam said. “A saint. It was no good hauling him to Hollywood. It would have spoiled him. We changed his idea around a little.”
Sam was in fact good to his mother, and she wasn’t in fact good to him. He was a disappointment to her.
Her brother Paul Key was the man: swift, brilliant, intelligent, dynamic.
Now, sitting alone in the back seat of the new car, Schwartz said, “What’s that nice new smell in this car, Rock?”
“That’s the leather of the seats, Sam.”
“Makes you feel good to smell something new like that,” Schwartz said.
“It goes away after about a year,” Rock said.
“Why does it do that, Rock?”
“Time,” Rock said, thinking of other things. “The same thing happens to everything else. At first it’s new and has a new smell. Time goes by and it’s no longer new and hasn’t got a new smell. How much money you got on you, Sam?”
“Three or four hundred,” Schwartz said. “You need some money, Rock? You can have all I’ve got.”
“No, but I may want to borrow some later on.”
“Any time, Rock.”
“How much money have you put away?” Rock said.
“I don’t know,” Schwartz said. “P.K. gives the money to my mother, to keep for me.”
“He does?”
“My mother keeps it for me,” Schwartz said. “My mother and I, we’ve got a fine house, nice furniture, good clothes, money in the bank. P.K.’s like a father to me. He gets mad at me sometimes, but he’s like a father. You won’t tell him I told you about the story, will you?”
“No,” Rock said. “He may not decide to mention it himself.”
There were five in the game in room 606. The room was quiet. The game was quiet. The men were at work, and it was serious work. Schwartz moved around on tiptoe. Places were made, and the three new players sat down to play. After an hour Schwartz got up to go to the airport, the game stopped a moment while everybody got a fresh drink. Everybody met and talked.
Two hours later Paul Key came into the room with his nephew Sam Schwartz.
He saw that Rock Wagram was drunk and busy, so he sat down to wait.
Half an hour later Rock counted his chips and pushed them across the table to Haig.
“I’ve got to go for a while,” he said. “Play these while I’m gone.”
“I may lose them,” Haig said.
“Lose them.”
“Cash in a hundred, anyway,” Haig said.
“No,” Rock said. “Cash in when everybody else cashes in.”
“You want to get back in the game, Schwartz?” one of the players said.
Sam looked at his uncle, who didn’t look very pleased about what he’d heard.
“You lost about a hundred,” the player went on. “You’ve got a place in the game any time you want it.”
Sam looked at his uncle again.
“Go ahead,” Paul Key said. “Sit down and play.”
Sam was sure P.K. was being sarcastic. He was sure this was nothing better than a trick. He waited patiently for the knife. Would it be the biggest knife yet? Would he be knifed to death this time?
His uncle got up, smiled, and took him by the arm. There was laughter in his voice, and it wasn’t mean laughter.
“Go ahead, Sam,” Paul said. “Sit down with the boys and play. Play until the game stops. If you run out of money—Well, here. Here’s a blank check with my signature on it. Fill it out and remember how much it was, so I can keep my records straight.”
The nephew sat down. He was stunned. He looked up at his uncle. He didn’t have far to look. There were tears in his eyes, and he wished to God he knew what had suddenly come over Paul Key, or people, or the world.
Was P.K. planning to do a picture about a poker game? Was this just another a
ssignment that Sam didn’t understand? Or did his uncle actually want him to do something Sam himself wanted to do? Sit down in a quiet poker game and play all night and not have to be scared to death every minute that his uncle would hear about it? And knife him half to death about it? His uncle seemed truly earnest and truly kind. Was it possible that, even so, he was being sarcastic, more deeply so than ever? Was he going to knife him later on? Or was it the real thing at last? Did his uncle really feel at last that it was all right for Sam not to be exactly the same kind of man that he was? That it was all right for Sam to be Sam? For Sam not to be swift and clever and far-thinking? For Sam to be fat, to sit comfortably in a chair in a quiet poker game and look at the cards and play?
Rock saw what was going on between the nephew and the uncle. He poured three straight shots, handed one to Sam, another to Paul, and lifted his own.
“Here’s to my pal, Sam Schwartz,” Rock said.
“To my pal, too,” Paul Key said.
“Good luck,” several of the players said quietly. They drank, Sam gulping his down eagerly, and smiling.
Rock and Paul Key went out and walked down the long hall to the elevator.
“He worships you,” Rock said. “I’m glad you’d rather he didn’t, though, at last.”
“Where can we go to talk?” Paul said. “What’s Fat Aram’s like these days?”
“We can go there,” Rock said.
In the street Rock said, “I’m getting scared to death I’m seeing a lot of people I like to see for the last time.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Paul said.
“I’m getting to feel something’s going to happen to them” Rock said. “I don’t mean they’re going to die. I hope Vida and the kids are well. I hope you’re O.K. Everything’s got to die, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to like it when it happens inside people I like.”
“I want to have a long talk with you, Rock,” Paul said. “It’s very important.
They walked in silence to Fat Aram’s, everything everywhere scaring both of the fearless men half to death.
Every man needs his family, but is his family his mother and father and their mothers and fathers? Or is his family his sons and daughters and their sons and daughters? Or is his family anybody’s mother and father and son and daughter? Is a man’s father his father, or anybody’s father, or is his father anybody’s son?
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