The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  Hutt sat down behind his desk again, playing with the blue pencil. “Well,” he said, “that’s that. You heard what he said, Archer.”

  “I heard.”

  “Are you going to sue?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Archer said. He knew he wasn’t going to sue, but, maliciously, he wanted Hutt to worry about it.

  “We’ll kill you,” Hutt said calmly, twirling the pencil in both his hands. With a gesture of his head he indicated the newspapers on the floor. “Those’ll seem like love notes in comparison by the time we get through with you.”

  “You don’t need me any more, do you, Lloyd?” O’Neill said, starting toward the door. He looked tortured and pent-up, and Archer knew that he didn’t want to have to listen any more. “I have a desk full of work and …”

  “Stay here, Emmet,” Hutt said. “I’d like you to listen to what I have to say to Mr. Archer. It might be instructive.”

  O’Neill dropped his hand from the doorknob and went back to his station along the wall.

  “I warned you,” Hutt said to Archer, and there was the flicker of triumph in his voice. “I warned you a long time ago not to fight me. You should have listened to me.”

  Archer stood up. “I think I’ll go now,” he said quietly.

  “You’re finished, Archer,” Hutt said, whispering. “I told you you would be and I’m glad to see it happened so soon. It’s going to cost me a considerable amount of money, but it’s worth it. I don’t begrudge a penny of it. Before you leave I’d like to tell you that I had a good deal to do with what happened to you last night.”

  Archer stopped at the door, puzzled at what Hutt had said. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “When you went down to see Mr. Sandler in Philadelphia,” Hutt said, “breaking one of the oldest and strictest rules of this organization, I decided it was about time I found out more about you. In self-defense. You’ve had two detectives investigating you for more than a month, at my own expense, and I must say I feel it was money well spent.”

  The telephone tap, Archer thought. That’s where it came from. Incongruously, he felt a sense of relief. At least it wasn’t the Government.

  “You miserable sonofabitch,” Archer said clearly.

  Hutt shrugged and even smiled a little, mechanically, although he flushed. “I ignore that, Archer,” he said, “because you’re of no importance to me any more. I tried to save you. I gave you a lot of time and I used all the arguments and all the eloquence I was capable of. They weren’t wasted, though.” He smiled more widely, his wedge-face splitting frostily. “I got them in good order, trying them out on you, and when I had to use them again, they worked charmingly. Frances Motherwell was not quite as deaf to the claims of patriotism and reason as you were and from all reports she put on a very good performance last night, didn’t she?”

  “I suppose,” Archer said, “you’re proud of that dirty scene you put her up to last night.”

  “I told you you can’t make me angry, Archer,” Hutt said. “This was something that had to be done publicly, without warning, and without giving anyone any chance to wriggle quietly away. For educational purposes. From now on, people who work for me will be very careful about what they say or whom they endorse or how they oppose me. And Frances Motherwell was ripe anyway. She comes of an excellent family. She’s fundamentally a decent, honest girl. She was ready to leave her old friends, anyway. She told me herself she was disgusted with them. If you’d had any sense you would have expected something like this. After all, she told you herself that she was a Communist. Did any of the others ever do that? Of course not. She’s a straightforward American girl and it was only a question of time before she’d turn away in disgust from the Oriental plotting she saw all around her.”

  “She’s a straightforward psychopath,” Archer said, “and she’ll probably wind up in a straitjacket, getting the shock treatment three times a year. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’ll find yourself keeping her company on the next table.”

  Hutt chuckled. “I’ll tell her that,” he said. “I’m having lunch with her this afternoon to celebrate. I expect it to be a very merry lunch. Because we really accomplished something last night. We really hurt you, all you soft-headed orators with your shady friends skulking behind you. All your wild-eyed, filthy immigrant friends whose families haven’t been here long enough to learn to speak the language without degrading it, all you misfits and spies and conspirators trying to drag their betters down to their own stinking level.” Hutt stood up. His face was very red now and his eyes were almost colorless and raging as he gave up all control over himself. “And don’t think I’m stopping here,” he whispered. “I’m going to drive everyone of you out of the industry, out of the city, out of the country, if I can. I’m going to tell you something. Three men put up the money to start Blueprint and I was one of the three, and I never made a better investment in my whole life. We’ll starve you out and we’ll raise the country against you, and we’ll hound you and defame you and we won’t stop until you’re all behind bars or swinging from trees, as you ought to be.”

  Archer sprang across the room and hit him. He only hit him once, because O’Neill grabbed him and held him.

  “Stop it, Clem!” O’Neill whispered. “Don’t be a God-damn fool.”

  Hutt didn’t do anything. He didn’t fall back. He didn’t even put his hand up to his face, which had grown pale, except for the mark high on the cheek where Archer’s clumsy blow had landed. It was the first time Archer had hit anybody since he was fifteen years old. He was ashamed of himself for the outburst and dissatisfied that it had been so ineffectual. “Let go,” he said thickly to O’Neill. “It’s OK.”

  Cautiously O’Neill released him. Hutt was staring at him, breathing heavily, his eyelids narrowed, as though his mind was racing over the possibility of doing further harm.

  “I’ll take you out of here,” O’Neill said. “Come on.”

  Archer walked slowly across the room toward the door, stepping on the newspapers that were strewn over the carpet. O’Neill held onto his elbow as they went past the desks, with the pretty, busy girls, the sound of typewriters, the fragrance of perfumes. In O’Neill’s office, Archer put on his coat in silence. It was still wet. He and O’Neill refused to look squarely at each other.

  “Everything,” O’Neill said after a moment, looking down at his shoes, “everything turns out to be a lot dirtier than anybody ever expected, doesn’t it?”

  Archer didn’t answer. There was a mirror on one wall and he went over and looked at his face. It was just his face. There was no sign of what he had gone through. Curiously, he was a little disappointed. He didn’t know what he had expected to find, but he felt that something should be different. He shrugged under the wet cloth of his coat.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve got to be going.”

  “I’ll give you a call,” O’Neill said. “We’ll go out for a drink.”

  “Sure.”

  The phone rang and O’Neill picked it up. “O’Neill speaking,” he said. He looked at Archer. “It’s for you,” he said. He handed Archer the phone.

  “Hello,” Archer said.

  “Daddy.” It was Jane’s voice, and she sounded frightened and hurried. “Is that you, Daddy?”

  “Yes, Jane,” Archer said. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m calling from the corner,” Jane said. “The phone in the house doesn’t work any more.”

  “Yes, Jane,” Archer said impatiently. “What do you want?”

  “You’d better come right home, Daddy,” said Jane. “Mother’s not feeling very well and she asked me to call you.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know exactly. She won’t tell me. She just said to call you. I think …” Jane’s voice broke a little and she hesitated. “I think it’s started. I think it’s labor … Gloria’s been in there and she says there’s some bleeding …”

  Archer tried to speak, but
his mouth was dry and he couldn’t seem to get anything out.

  “Daddy,” Jane said, “are you still there?”

  “Listen, Jane,” Archer said, wetting his lips with his tongue. “When you hang up there, call the phone company and tell them we want the service connected immediately. Tell them it’s an emergency and they have to do it right away. Have you got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then call the doctor and tell him to come right down.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “When you speak to the doctor ask him if there’s anything that you can do before he gets down,” Archer said. “Then go home and see if you can help your mother …”

  “Daddy …” Jane’s voice was hesitant and strange. “Something funny’s happening. Mother doesn’t want me in the house.”

  “What?” Archer asked incredulously.

  “She’s not angry at me or anything,” Jane said swiftly. “She just says she doesn’t want me around now. For this. She says this is private. Between you and her, she says. It’s awfully queer …” Archer could tell that Jane was struggling to keep from crying in the telephone booth. “Cathy Rooks invited me up to her place for the weekend and Mother made me promise I’d go. I didn’t know what to do. Mother was so—so determined. She said she wanted me out of the house before you came home. Everything’s so upset. What should I do, Daddy?”

  Archer sighed. “Darling,” he said wearily, “I guess you’d better do whatever your mother wants just now.”

  “Will you call me?” Jane asked. “Will you let me know when she wants to see me again?”

  “Of course.”

  Jane was frankly crying now, the anguish remote and mechanized over the wire. “Is it my fault, Daddy?” she sobbed. “Is this happening account of me?”

  “No,” Archer said. “Never think that. Now, listen, baby.” He was conscious of O’Neill staring at him, puzzled and apprehensive. “You go home,” Archer said into the phone, “and tell Mother I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. And tell her …” He hesitated. He wanted to give Jane a message that would tide Kitty over the next quarter hour, a word, two words, a sentence that would carry reassurance, love, confidence. Jane waited at the other end of the line, but no words came. “Just tell her,” Archer said lamely, “not to worry. I’ll be right home.”

  He hung up. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. He started out of the office toward the elevators. O’Neill trailed beside him.

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

  “Kitty. It looks as though labor may have begun already.” Archer rang for the elevator.

  “Oh, Christ,” O’Neill said. “Wait a second. I’ll get my coat and go down with you.”

  “Thanks,” Archer said. “It’s not necessary. I’ll be able to handle it.”

  O’Neill hesitated. “Will you call me if you need anything?” he asked.

  Archer looked gravely at him. Then he said something he was going to regret for a long time. “Just what do you mean by anything?” he asked.

  O’Neill took a step back. Then the elevator came and Archer got in and the door slid shut, blotting out O’Neill’s baffled, shamed, rejected face.

  26

  HE SAT IN THE AMBULANCE, GOING UPTOWN. IT WAS DARK BY NOW. Kitty had said she was feeling better when Archer got home from O’Neill’s office, and the bleeding hadn’t been bad until about six o’clock. The doctor, who hadn’t been able to come in person, had told Archer over the phone that it probably was only false labor and merely to keep Kitty quiet and give her a couple of sleeping pills. But then the bleeding had begun again, and regular pains, although not too severe and not too closely spaced, and Archer had called for the ambulance and phoned the doctor’s office (he was still out) and left word, rather roughly, that they were going to the hospital immediately and that he wanted the doctor to put in an appearance in the next half-hour.

  The interior of the ambulance was dim, and Kitty was almost buried under the blankets: The two large, gentle attendants had wrapped her head in a wool scarf, so that only the pale small glimmer of her face, occasionally reflecting the lights of a shop window, could be seen. Archer remembered a black puppy he had had when he was ten years old. His mother, who was a fanatic on the subject of cleanliness, whether for small boys or small dogs, used to wash the puppy in the tub, then wrap him in towels and old blankets, leaving only his mournful, soap-betrayed muzzle sticking out, and put him on a chair to dry. The puppy, Archer remembered, had had distemper later in the summer and had to be killed.

  “Really, Clement,” Kitty said, her voice dreamy from the sleeping pills, “we didn’t have to go to the hospital. I feel fine. Really I do. And we didn’t have to take an ambulance. It’s so expensive and here’re so many nicer ways of spending the money.”

  “How do you feel, Kitty?”

  “Fine. Honest. A little sleepy, that’s all, only I don’t want to sleep. “Clement …”

  “Yes?”

  “Are we passing red lights?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nice. I know how you always yearn to pass red lights. You’re so impatient.” She chuckled. “You always cheat a little, when you’re driving. You never quite wait for them to change. Did you lave dinner?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You can have dinner at the hospital. You can even have a drink. It’s a very fancy hospital. I inquired especially. They’ll even send up a Martini. Do you feel like a Martini?”

  “I think it’d be tempting fate to ask a hospital bartender to make a Martini,” Archer said.

  Kitty moved under the blankets and she closed her eyes and the lines of pain bit around her mouth. It took nearly a minute; then she was all right again.

  “You feel so important riding in an ambulance,” she said. “What’re the initials they used for big shots in the war?”

  “VIP,” Archer said. “Very Important Personage.”

  “VIP Kitty Archer,” she murmured. “Passing all the red lights.” She was silent for a moment and he thought she was falling asleep again. “Clement,” she said. “Yes?”

  “Is it still raining out?”

  “No. It’s turning cold.”

  “Did you ever ride in an ambulance before?”

  “No.”

  “VIP. You’re not worrying, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “There’s really no reason to worry. A lot of women go through this in the sixth month. A little bleeding, a few pains. Just a warning to take things easy. You mustn’t worry.”

  “I’m not at all worried.”

  “I’m going to hold on, you know,” Kitty said. “I’m absolutely sure.”

  “Of course.”

  “And it’s going to be a boy. I’ve told you that, haven’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve always wanted a son. You never said it, but I knew. We’ll start a whole new life with a son. Would you like to move to the country? Some place where there are a lot of fields and he can run around and not worry about traffic or about having his mother watch him all the time? I think it’s about time we moved to the country, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Archer said.

  “New York …” Kitty’s voice almost trailed away. “New York’s nice, but it’s sort of all used-up, isn’t it?”

  “Kitty, darling, why don’t you try to sleep? Then when you wake up you’ll …”

  “What street are we on, Clement?”

  Archer looked out the wide, clean window over Kitty’s head. “Sixty-seventh street.”

  “We’re going so slow. It’s taking so long.” There was the grimace of pain again, and the twitching under the blankets. She sighed once, then opened her eyes again. “Look away, Clement,” Kitty said. “Please. When that happens.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Archer said.

  They rode in silence for awhile. The driver wasn’t using the siren now and there was only the muted, careful hum of the tires in the ambulance
, and the slight creaking of the jump seat on which Archer was sitting, near Kitty’s head.

  “You know what would be nice, Clement?”

  “What?”

  “If Jane would get married and come and live near us. In a house in the country. A nice man that we all could like,” Kitty murmured. “And we would have time to get to be friends again. There are so many things I never had time to tell her …”

  Archer closed his eyes momentarily. Jane had been gone when he got home that morning, and they hadn’t mentioned her name all day.

  “You don’t mind that I sent her away, do you, Clement?” Kitty asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “You understand, don’t you?” Kitty pleaded. “This is just between you and me. I—I didn’t want us to be—divided—at a time like this. It’s—it’s more like when we were young, this way, when you took me to the hospital when I had Jane—what kind of car was it we had then?”

  “An Essex,” Archer said. “A 1928 Essex.”

  “It worked out so well, then,” Kitty said, ramblingly. “It was so easy … And there was no family, nobody else, just you and me. For luck. Am I superstitious, darling?”

  Archer made himself smile at her. “Yes, dear,” he said.

  “Just you and me,” Kitty said. “The Essex had plaid seat covers. It smelled of apples, because we’d brought home a basket of apples from my mother’s place the week before.” She looked around her vaguely, her head moving uncertainly in its swathing of wool. “A 1950 ambulance,” she said, “going uptown. Oh, I give you so much trouble,” she whispered. “So damn much trouble.”

  “Sssh. Sssh.” Archer put out his hand and touched her forehead. It was hot and dry. They rode that way until they reached the hospital.

  “The chances are three to one that she’ll abort,” Dr. Graves was saying judiciously, making Kitty sound like a bomber turning home before reaching the target because of engine failure. Graves and Archer were walking slowly down the corridor after the doctor had examined Kitty. Graves hadn’t been able to come for almost two hours, but he had left word to have Kitty given morphine to quiet her. Unfortunately, the morphine had made Kitty vomit again and again, and the pains were coming more and more regularly now and with greater severity. “These things happen, Mr. Archer,” Graves said, professionally resigned. “There is always a certain irreducible percentage of cases.”