The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  “When is he getting back?” Archer asked, looking away from Miss Walsh. He always avoided looking at her when he was in the office, fearful that she would see the distaste in his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Miss Walsh said, whining. “I told him to stay away a long time. He was looking perfectly awful. Exhausted. I said to him, ‘Let the others do some work for once,’ I said, ‘You can’t carry the whole world on your own shoulders all the time,’ I said.”

  “Yes,” said Archer, patient and sourly polite, “but when did he say he’d come back?”

  “He didn’t say. When he’s thoroughly rested, I hope.” She tied the veil behind her hat with thick fingers. A thin smell of armpit came from Miss Walsh when she lifted her arms. Loyalty, Archer thought, sometimes comes rather high in a warm office building. She must be sensationally efficient.

  “He left word that Mr. O’Neill would handle whatever came up,” Miss Walsh said. By her tone Archer understood that she had little hope that Mr. O’Neill could handle anything at all.

  “Thanks,” Archer said. He left Miss Walsh to her artificial flowers, her week-end, her veil and her armpits. He walked through the empty office, past the cleared desks and the antique furnishings to O’Neill’s office. O’Neill’s secretary was gone and the door was open. O’Neill was sitting at his kidney-shaped desk, bulking over it, his eyes closed, sleeping, sitting erect. Great, Archer thought, watching O’Neill, one fishing and one asleep. He felt a surge of strong, unreasonable anger at Hutt for going off at a time like this. The least he might do, Archer thought, is hang around this week. And O’Neill might have the grace to keep his eyes open.

  “Emmet,” he said loudly, “wake up. The building’s on fire.”

  O’Neill blinked. He looked up soddenly at Archer. “What’s the matter?” he asked thickly. “What’d you say?” He shook his head, recovering from sleep. “Oh. Clem. Forgive me. Saturday afternoon—nap-time. What’s new?”

  “I want to talk to Hutt,” Archer said.

  O’Neill yawned. He had very white teeth and when he yawned Archer could see that there were no fillings in them. “Excuse me,” O’Neill said. “Some day I’m going to take a vacation. Sleep for two months.” He shook himself vigorously and stood up, rubbing his hands briskly through his hair. “Hutt’s in Florida.”

  “I know,” Archer said. “I spoke to the exquisite Miss Walsh.”

  “On a boat. Sailfishing.”

  “How do I get in touch with him?”

  O’Neill shrugged. “Beats me. Put a note in a bottle.”

  “Will he be back this week?”

  “Ask Miss Walsh.”

  “I did.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “He’s exhausted, she said. He’ll be back when he stops being exhausted.”

  “That’s what he told me,” O’Neill said. “He called me two o’clock Thursday morning from Palm Beach. The reins’re in my hands, he said, until further notice.” O’Neill extended his hands and gazed at his palms soberly. He flexed his fingers.

  “Just this week,” Archer said. “The bastard.”

  “President of the concern,” O’Neill said complacently. “One of the biggest men in the business.”

  “The reins are in your hands,” Archer said. “What did he mean by that?”

  “Depends,” O’Neill said. Archer could see that he intended to be cautious. “I don’t imagine I can sign checks for more than ninety thousand dollars or hire Lana Turner for a year or anything like that. In a moderate way, I guess you could say the reins are in my hands.”

  “What about Herres and Atlas, et cetera?”

  O’Neill yawned again. It was a nervous yawn this time. Deep wrinkles appeared around O’Neill’s eyes, making him look less youthful. “Sit down, pal,” O’Neill said. “Times’re tough enough as it is.”

  Archer sat down on the edge of the desk. “All right,” he said.

  “Want a drink?” O’Neill asked, pulling open a drawer in the desk to reveal a bottle. “To celebrate Saturday afternoon?”

  “No.”

  O’Neill closed the drawer, sighing. “Always feel sad on Saturday afternoon,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Gray weather … gray weather. …”

  “Waiting,” Archer said.

  “Clement,” O’Neill said gently, looking up, “I’m afraid they’ve had it. All of them.”

  “Hutt said he’d give me two weeks,” Archer said, trying to keep from speaking too fast. “I’ve dug up a lot of information. …”

  “Hutt’s been digging up information, too, he says,” O’Neill said neutrally. “When he called me from Palm Beach, he told me to tell you that as far as he’s concerned, his position stands.”

  “You knew that Thursday,” Archer said, standing up. “Why did you keep me on the string?”

  “Orders from the man I work for,” O’Neill said quietly. “I’m sorry, Clem. He told me not to bring it up until you did. Mine not to reason why, mine but … oh, hell.” He stood up, too. “Let’s go out and have lunch.”

  “That was a cheap thing for Hutt to do,” Archer said. “Run out at a time like this, leaving you with the dirty work.”

  “I’ll pass on your feelings in the matter,” O’Neill said formally. “I’m sure Mr. Hutt is always open to constructive criticism.”

  “Exactly what did he mean by saying that his position stands?”

  “No one of the five works next week or thereafter, to infinity,” O’Neill said. “Exactly.”

  “I threatened I’d quit,” Archer said, “when I talked to him. What’s the word on that?”

  “Lunch,” O’Neill said, “I’m dying for a large, wet lunch.”

  “Come on, Emmet,” Archer said. “Let’s have it.”

  O’Neill walked slowly toward the window, then turned and faced Archer. There was a look of troubled pleading in his eyes. “He said that if you wanted to quit, Clem, I was empowered to accept your resignation.”

  There was silence for a moment. In the quiet building, Archer could hear the faint sound of an elevator dropping hollowly in its shaft. Archer got off the desk. He rubbed his head thoughtfully. Here it is, he thought, here’s the moment again. Once more around the track and in front of the judges’ stand still one more time.

  “Clem,” O’Neill said. “That’s all for me. That’s as far as I go. My duties to the firm of Hutt and Bookstaver are discharged for the week. I won’t say another word. Let’s go and have lunch.”

  Archer hesitated. “Sure,” he said, after a pause. “Might as well eat.”

  He watched as O’Neill put on his hat and coat. “I have to meet my wife for lunch, too,” O’Neill said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Delighted,” Archer said absently, feeling blank.

  “We’ve been quarreling,” O’Neill said, as they got to the door of his office. “I’ve discovered a natural truth about marriage. The prettier they are, the more they fight. You can act as a buffer state.”

  Archer stopped before O’Neill could close the door.

  “What’s the matter?” O’Neill asked nervously.

  “Emmet,” Archer said slowly, “I have a call to make. Do you mind if I use your telephone?”

  “Of course not.” O’Neill waved toward his desk. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “I don’t think you’d better hear this call,” said Archer.

  “Sure,” O’Neill said. “I’ll wait-for you at the elevator.”

  “I’m going to call the sponsor,” Archer said. “I want to go to him and put the whole thing up to him.”

  O’Neill blinked. He looked uneasily up and down the empty outer office, at the neat, vacant desks and the covered typewriters. “The rule is, of course,” he said flatly, “that nobody but Hutt talks to the sponsor.”

  “I know all about the rule.”

  “It’s Saturday afternoon,” O’Neill said. “He won’t be in his office.”

  “I’ll call him at his home.”

  “He lives i
n Paoli,” O’Neill said. “He has an unlisted phone. You won’t be able to get him.”

  “You have his number,” Archer said. “I know that. You’ve called Hutt there when Hutt went down for week-ends.”

  “The last man who went over Hutt’s head and talked to a sponsor was fired the next week,” O’Neill said.

  “I know.”

  “Just wanted to keep you au courant with the local customs.”

  “What’s the number, Emmet?”

  They stood facing each other, very close. O’Neill’s face was serious and tight. Then it relaxed. He grinned, his face looking boyish and mischievous. “Sometimes, Clem,” O’Neill said, “I wish I was back in the old carefree United States Marines. I’m going down to meet my pretty wife, because I’m late already, and our marriage is tottering as it is. On my desk, there’s an address book. In it, it’s just barely possible you might find an unlisted number or two. Under S. Don’t tell me about it. I’ll be waiting for you at the bar, with a Martini in reserve.”

  He patted Archer’s arm with a swift gesture, and swung on his heel and walked sturdily toward the elevators, a man having trouble hanging on to his eighteen thousand dollars a year.

  Archer watched him march past the empty desks, then went into the office. The address book was of heavy green tooled leather and was standing against a leather-framed photograph of O’Neill’s wife. O’Neill’s wife had long, blond hair and she regarded the transactions on her husband’s desk with a pure, delicious, sidelong air. Under S, Archer found the name Robert Sandler, with a Paoli number. Archer sat down at O’Neill’s desk and, staring at the pretty, framed face, dialed the operator.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he joined O’Neill and his wife at the bar downstairs, he casually dropped the information that he had to get a morning train on Monday for Philadelphia.

  15

  NOBODY SHOULD APPROACH PHILADELPHIA, ARCHER THOUGHT, AS THE train sped through the outskirts of the city. It is too depressing. It was a gray morning and the clouds hung low over the stucco wastes of the suburbs. All our cities, Archer thought, peering through the necked window, are surrounded by belts of apathy. Low-priced regions for the discouraged, flimsy walls behind which people moved wearily, worrying about the rent. Even the trees looked desolate, thin and without vitality, as though they would never reach a season in which they would put forth leaves or provide a nesting place for birds, never grow large enough for a boy to want to carve his initials in their trunks.

  Archer closed his eyes, displeased with the way his thoughts were running. He wanted to be jovial and self-confident for the morning’s work. Hearty, he decided, robustly Rotarian, that’s the way to be when talking on the subject of treason to a man who runs a ten-million-dollar business. Mr. Sandler had been pleasant on the phone when they had spoken on Saturday. Clipped, but pleasant. There had been a moment’s hesitation and then Mr. Sandler had said, “Be at my office at twelve-thirty Monday.” He hadn’t asked what Archer wanted to see him about and hadn’t said a word about Lloyd Hutt or proper channels of communication. Somehow, after the call, Archer had felt encouraged. Mr. Sandler had sounded like a reasonable man.

  He took a cab from the station. The factory was on the outskirts of the city. Archer had never seen it before and he was favorably impressed with the large, trim building, set behind lawns, with the name of the company on a white sign along the road. It was a drug company which made a wide variety of patent medicines, skin preparations and pharmaceutical products, and the architect had cleverly made the building and its grounds suggest an austere and well-run hospital. Driving through the gates along a graveled road, Archer had a feeling of being involved in a dignified and public-spirited enterprise. The sponsor’s office was on the ground floor, and from the large anteroom you looked out through curtained windows at the sweeping lawn and the shrub borders. The room itself was comfortably furnished, with low chairs and sofas, and magazines on small tables. At a desk at one end sat a mulatto girl, behind a telephone. The girl was pretty, with golden skin and soft, wavy dark hair. She wore a trim blue dress with a white collar and her voice was shy and soft when she spoke to Archer. She called in immediately when Archer gave her his name.

  “Mr. Sandler says for you to go right in, please,” she said, after speaking briefly on the phone. She smiled at him and pressed a buzzer. Not a hospital, really, Archer thought, as he went through the door. More like a sanitarium for rich patients with mild and fashionable diseases.

  Mr. Sandler was a short, plump man with thinning hair. He had a rosy complexion and a large pink nose. His face looked soft and pliant and only his eyes, which were cold pale blue and almost opaque gave a hint of strength and stubbornness. Just now there was a polite, welcoming smile on his face as he stood up and came around from behind his desk to shake hands with Archer. There was another man in the room, large, stocky and about fifty, with a leathery and wrinkled face, like an old catcher’s mitt. He stood up, too, and smiled agreeably when Mr. Sandler introduced them. His name was Ferris and when he shook Archer’s hand, his palm was hard and callused, like a farmer’s.

  “I’m going, now,” Ferris said. “I’ll take a last swing around the plant and I’ll look in this afternoon, Bob.”

  “I hope it rains in Florida for the next two weeks,” Mr. Sandler said. “Hard.”

  Ferris laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s generous of you.”

  “Ferris is taking a two-week vacation,” Mr. Sandler explained to Archer. “He’s a golfer, when he isn’t busy being a vice-president. I always hate people to go off on vacation when I can’t go. Ever since I was a kid. My mother used to tell me it was a bad character trait. I guess she was right. Still haven’t gotten over it, though.” He grinned at Ferris, who was at the door by now. “Don’t tell me if you break eighty, Mike,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Ferris laughed, opening the door. “Good-bye, Mr. Archer,” he said. “Glad to have met you, after all these years.” He had a strange way of looking directly and unblinkingly at you, Archer thought, though he were making a report to himself on your strengths and weaknesses. Big business, Archer realized, as he smiled good-bye to Ferris, I am always uncomfortable in its presence.

  The door closed behind a final wave of the big, leathery man, and Mr. Sandler indicated an easy-chair near the desk for Archer. “Sit down, Mr. Archer,” he said. His voice was swift, but soft and breathy. He waited for Archer to seat himself, then went around behind his desk and lowered himself neatly into his own high-backed swivel chair. His whitish hair and pink scalp against the brown leather looked like an academic painting of a judge of a minor court. “He deserves this vacation,” Mr. Sandler said. “No matter what I say. I keeps this plant going as though it was running in oil. Been with her twenty years. Started in the shipping department.” He looked Archer as though he expected Archer to say something appropriate.

  “Oh,” Archer said, baffled by this industrial loyalty. “That’s a lot of time.” There was a flicker of the pale eyes and Archer felt that Mr. Sandler had expected something more original.

  “Some day,” Sandler said, “you ought to let us take you around the plant. See where we make the stuff you sell.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Archer said formally, not pleased at being included on the sales force of the organization, although technically that was accurate enough. Factories left him confused anyhow. No matter how closely he listened to the explanations, the machinery always seemed hopelessly intricate.

  “How’s Hutt?” Mr. Sandler asked.

  “Very well, I think. He’s in Florida, too.”

  Mr. Sandler smiled. “Everybody gets to Florida but me. I’m in the wrong end of the business, I guess. That Hutt’s a good man, though. A steel-trap intelligence.”

  “Yes,” Archer said, feeling that Mr. Sandler perhaps read the business sections of the newspapers too carefully. “A very good man indeed.”

  “That program you do,” Mr. Sandler said. “Like
it.” He nodded sturdily. “Listen every Thursday. It’s artistic, but it sells drugs, too. I keep my finger on the pulse. I asked Hutt who was responsible—and he said, Clement Archer’s the man.”

  “That’s very generous of Mr. Hutt,” Archer said warily.

  “Sign of a good executive,” Mr. Sandler said. “Knows when to give other people credit. Always mistrust a man who says he does everything himself. Know he’s lying. Small man in a big job. Finally disastrous. So when you called, I said, come on down.” He peered sharply at Archer. “I understand it isn’t customary,” he said, showing Archer that he knew this was an extraordinary occasion, “but, what the hell, you’re a big grown man, you didn’t travel to Philadelphia just to waste my time.”

  “Thank you,” Archer said, trying to wind himself up for what was to follow. “I appreciate it. The reason …”

  “Like oysters?” Sandler asked abruptly. “Fried oysters?”

  “Why … why, yes.”

  “You didn’t have lunch yet, did you?”

  “No. I came right from the train.”

  “Good.” Sandler jumped up from behind his desk. “We’ll go to my club. Best fried oysters in Philadelphia.” He was rapidly putting his coat on. He moved with bustling youthful movements, his pink hands flashing into sleeves. “Of course,” he said, picking up his hat, “you don’t have to have oysters if you don’t want to. Don’t believe in dictating a man’s diet. You might have ulcers, high blood pressure. Who knows?”