Flynn's World

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Francine was putting the book back in her handbag.

  Looking at each other, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn laughed. Hard.

  Randy did not crack a smile.

  Elsbeth held out her hand to Francine. “We’re playing a joke on you, Dr. Huong!”

  Flynn said, “Satire can be cruel.”

  “I’ll be delighted to sign your book for you. Wait until I get a pin to take blood from my arm.”

  “Oh. I see.” Francine handed Elsbeth the book and her pen. “Two boys who look alike—except one boy’s eyes are a lot bigger than the other’s—” She laughed. “I love you all!”

  “You haven’t met Winny yet. He wants to put a television on top of my piano.” While signing the book, Elsbeth asked, “You got the leg of lamb, Frannie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Spaghetti tonight.”

  “Meatloaf, last night,” Randy seemed to explain to Francine.

  Elsbeth scowled at her son. “So what’s wrong with lamb on Sunday?”

  “Your word use fascinates me,” Francine said to Elsbeth. “I don’t write. Well, academic things, of course. But the publishers these days so restrict the words we use, how we use them. Sometimes I think I’m writing a manual on how to build a box.”

  Elsbeth shook her head sadly.

  “I’ve stuck some papers in the book to mark a few passages . . . Would you mind reading them to me? Just a few verses. So maybe I can hear how it sounds to you.”

  “Certainly.”

  Flynn slapped his son on his knee. “Well!” he huffed. “I know when I’m not wanted!”

  No one seemed to notice his leaving the room.

  Randy did not leave with him. He remained sitting, as if struck by a boulder.

  “Thank God,” Flynn said to himself, climbing the staircase. “If your typical teenaged American boy knew he was attending a meeting between a Harvard professor and a poet, surely he’d run right out and mug an old lady in the street, just to keep up his pride!”

  FOURTEEN

  In her pajamas, Jenny crawled into the reading light on her father’s lap.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Billy. By Albert French.”

  She took the book he was within a few pages of finishing. She looked at the picture of the ten-year-old boy on the front cover. “He looks poor. What’s it about? Racism?”

  “At the moment, I think it’s about capital punishment.”

  “Oh.” Losing track of the book in her hands, she turned more on her side in his lap.

  She smelled of soap from her bath.

  “Tell me,” Flynn said. “Has Billy yet told you who pinned his ear to the tree, and why?”

  “No.”

  “Not even whispered it to you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he’ll ever tell you?”

  “Maybe someday. After we’re married.”

  “Married! Are you going to marry Billy?”

  “Someday.”

  “I thought you were going to marry Mr. I. M. Fletcher.”

  “That nice man who sent me that beautiful ruby and diamond pin?”

  “None other.”

  She thought a moment. “Maybe I’ll just keep him as a sugar daddy.”

  Amazed she knew such an expression, pretty sure she did not know what it really meant, he laughed. “Ah! That would serve him right, my bit of fluff!”

  “Da.”

  “Yes, Ms. Fluff?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “This calling me ‘Ms. Fluff’ business.”

  “I’ve always called you ‘Ms. Fluff.’”

  “But why?”

  “Because you are my bit of fluff.”

  “I’m not fluff at all.”

  “To me, aren’t you whatever I say you are?”

  “I’m me.”

  “That’s right. You’re my marvelous Jenny.”

  “You never call Todd or Randy or Winny ‘Fluff.’”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Fluff is . . .”

  “What?”

  “A dust ball. Something useless. Soft and useless.”

  “Soft, yes.”

  “I’m not soft.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m as . . . hard as the boys.”

  “Determined, yes.”

  “Tough.”

  “Tough, of course.”

  “I get straight A’s in school.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  “I swim better than they do.”

  “Much better.”

  “I can get every one of them in a half nelson and other wrestling holds and they can’t get free. Billy’s shown me how.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You love Mother.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You don’t call her ‘Fluff.’”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Jenny blinked slowly. She was half asleep. “Then why me?”

  “Ah, you don’t understand.”

  “No.”

  “If a man is very lucky, you see, there are three women in his life he loves best of all. His mother—”

  “You found your mother shot dead on the kitchen floor when you were fourteen. With your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you think of your mother as ‘fluff’?”

  “Oh, no. A mother must give orders which must be obeyed. And with his wife a man experiences many things. Carnal love. Companionship. Responsibility. Anxiety. Childbirth. Hope. Grief. Exhaustion. Respect. In the case of your mother and me, terror, flight . . .”

  Jenny blinked again. “Who’s the third woman?”

  “A man’s daughter. Or daughters, if he’s fortunate.”

  “So why must a man think of his daughter as soft? Because he first knew her as a baby?”

  “A man doesn’t think of his daughter as soft.” His arms gave her a little squeeze. “At least this man doesn’t think of this daughter as soft.”

  “You call me ‘Fluff.’”

  “It’s that a man’s love for his daughter is soft. It’s the softest love that he has.” Jenny was thinking. “It’s not you that’s soft, Jenny. It’s my love for you that’s soft.”

  With the speed of a small bird, Jenny raised her head. She kissed his chin.

  “Now, then: Will you still permit me to call you ‘Fluff’?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her head was back on his chest. “But not in public.”

  FIFTEEN

  “Good morning, Grover. Did you enjoy your quiet day at home yesterday?”

  “I didn’t have a quiet day at home.”

  “Not?”

  “I spent it with the Lovesons.”

  Grover had called Flynn’s house very early in the morning asking Flynn to pick him up at his home. Then, he said, for reasons of protection, they should drive Professor Loveson to Harvard.

  Now, his left wrist in a cast, the blue marks on his face more blue, he sat beside Flynn in the front seat of the unmarked police car.

  “You didn’t work on the Policepersons’ Ball?”

  “There are enough people working on that,” Grover answered. “I wanted to make sure Professor Loveson was okay.”

  “I see.” Flynn eased the police car politely out into traffic. “You just went over to visit them?”

  “I called first. I brought lunch.”

  “Grover, you surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never known you to do anything good-hearted before.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me.”

  “I’ve always felt I’ve known you well enough.”

  “The professor is someone special.”

  “I see.”

  “I mean, he thinks about us. People. He’s not all the time thinking about oh, money and things, how to screw people. He wants to teach us other things, like who and what and where we are in the universe: that’s what he said to me yesterday
when we took a walk together, who and what and where I am in the universe. I never thought about all that before. He makes me feel important.”

  “Egocentric.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You took a walk with him?”

  “After lunch. I brought them Chinese take-out food for lunch. They were polite about it, but I don’t think they liked it much. They had nothing in their refrigerator! Old butter, milk, three eggs. So after lunch I took the professor to a grocery store. I don’t think he’s ever been in one before. He was amazed at the magazines he saw, you know, all about the moon baby they found in Arizona, and the lady who gave birth to a goat? I taught him about frozen dinners. For supper, I bought them some steak, and potatoes, creamed corn. Boy, they really ate that up! You’d think they hadn’t eaten in years.”

  “You made dinner for them?”

  “What’s the matter with that?”

  “Not a thing. I didn’t know you can cook.”

  “I’m a bachelor, Flynn. I have to eat, don’t I?”

  “Will wonders never cease? Where was the woman who works for them, Mrs. McElroy, while you did her job for her?”

  “He did mention a woman who works for them. He said he gave her the day off because he’d be at home with his wife. Whoever she is, she doesn’t do a very good job. That place is not clean. Only old Mrs. Loveson was there. She’s as off as the milk in her refrigerator.”

  “Yes.”

  “I like her, though. She reminds me of my granny, who brought me and my sister up. By the time we got back from shopping, she had forgotten who I was.”

  “You left her alone while you went shopping?”

  “Had to. The professor couldn’t find his keys.”

  “So Mrs. Loveson let you in, when you returned?”

  “Yeah. She doesn’t forget who the professor is. Although sometimes she thinks it’s forty years ago, or something. Maybe I’ll buy her a little television.”

  “Grover!”

  “What? They’re a nice old couple. Nobody seems to give a damn for them. Why would anybody try to run over Professor Loveson?”

  “Why, indeed.”

  “He gave me some books to read. I started one last night, when I got home. Just guys hangin’ out together, talkin’ ’bout things, you know, the way we do sometimes at Hooligan’s Bar after work? Well, no, you don’t know One of them is named Socrates. You ever read that book?”

  Flynn said, “I saw the movie.”

  “Thank you for picking me up, Richard.” Professor Louis Loveson got into the backseat of the police car. “Good morning, Inspector Flynn.”

  That was what the professor said, even though Flynn was driving, had gotten out, rung the professor’s apartment bell, waited for him, opened the car door for him.

  Driving onto Storrow Drive, Flynn was smiling broadly.

  “Did you find your keys, Professor?” Grover asked.

  “I did, Richard. Thank you for asking.” The professor was carrying a manila envelope. “They were right on my bureau where I usually leave them. I can’t guess why I didn’t see them yesterday.”

  Through the rearview mirror, Flynn noticed the expression on the professor’s face was unusually dour.

  Once on Storrow Drive, the professor kept his eyes on the sun glinting on the surface of Charles River.

  “It’s hardly my fault that the Scottish were one of the few cultures which even attempted to educate women.”

  “Sorry?” Flynn was getting used to the way Professor Loveson spoke.

  He was a lecturer.

  He lectured.

  “One has to work from documentary evidence,” the professor said. “That is all we have. What is written, in one way or another. What is discoverable from physical evidence, some form of markings, the written word, visual arts, domestic organizations. We cannot just make up history. Goodness me, one of the major things core civilization propagates is the concept of a written language!”

  Sitting straight in his seat, Grover had one ear cocked to the backseat.

  “My point is,” the professor said, “that now that we are developing means of tracing the histories of other cultures, even of other peoples among us, we are doing so. I have spent my life in various parts of the world doing so, encouraging others to do so. My wife and I have made the most horrible human sacrifice in doing so. I have rejected nothing that is valid! Why am I being so criticized for excluding the histories and cultures of other peoples when that is exactly not what I have done?”

  Flynn finally said, “I guess you have seen what someone put on the Net about you a few days ago?”

  “Yes.” The professor lifted the manila envelope from his lap and dropped it back down as if it weighed pounds. “It was delivered to me in manuscript form anonymously this morning. So unfair! You have seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t feel you had the need to see it.”

  “There are times in history, natural disasters, wars, economic conditions, that civilizations have hunkered down and asserted this ‘Us Against Them’ mentality, suppressed others to preserve themselves either rightly or wrongly. Tribes do this, societies, governments, churches, other institutions. But intellectuals? Never! Artists? Never! Scientists? Never! Not the true navigators! Without the true navigators we three would not be riding along in this car this morning, reasonably sound in mind, eyes, ears, and teeth, speaking a common language. There is and has been and will be suppression, oppression. But those keepers of tradition, who try to broaden traditional understandings on the basis of careful study of valid evidence, are not the suppressors!”

  Simply, Flynn said, “You’re being accused of excluding every idea except those that keep you in power.”

  “I’ll give you an example,” the professor said. “There have been more tons of sculptures, more reams of music, poetry, other writings, there have been more thousands of religious ideas in history than can possibly be recorded, I daresay, even on the ultimate computer. Only those that continue to exist generation after generation can be said to be satisfying some human need. That’s all that is important about them. Not that some graybeard has ordained this good and that bad in some foolish effort to keep himself on the top of some useless heap. One idea is not as good as another, chosen arbitrarily by some board of power mongers. It is the idea itself that must continue to fulfill some human need, for that idea to survive. The idea that expresses and satisfies some human need more profoundly and permanently is better than an idea that is thrown up, momentarily considered, if at all, and then discarded because it satisfies no need. Of course the object or the myth isn’t necessarily true. It is the continuing human need for it that is true. This process by which the people in each generation continually elect the ideas they need to survive is the true, eternal democracy! Why isn’t that clear? You understand that, don’t you, Richard?”

  Grover’s eyes bulged. He swallowed hard. Finally, he shrugged. “Yeah. Why not?”

  Flynn was parking the unmarked Boston Police car in a well-marked Cambridge bus stop.

  “Inspector Flynn, have you any idea who has attacked me personally and professionally on the electronic toy in this vile and virulent manner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell me who?”

  “No.”

  The professor began to let himself out of the backseat. “I still teach a class. I still keep office hours. If these people had the character tradition should have given them they would have attacked me and my work in a less anonymous manner. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said.

  Before getting out of the car, Grover whispered to Flynn, “What’s in the envelope?”

  “Cartoons.”

  “Of the professor?”

  “Yes.”

  Rage filled Grover’s face. “Someone drew cartoons of the professor?”

 
; “That’s right.”

  “I’ll pull the head off the rat who did that!”

  “Fractionalization, Inspector Flynn,” the professor said.

  They were walking through Harvard Yard to the professor’s office.

  In front of them walked Grover in sunglasses, watching the hands of everyone who approached them. As he walked along he looked behind every tree. Apparently, he was even scanning the roofs of the surrounding buildings for snipers.

  “‘Fractionalization.’” Flynn knew he need encourage the professor no further for him to continue his thought.

  “You were at the cocktail party at Dean Wincomb’s house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you notice the people there? Black people keeping to themselves, those of Asian derivation in a separate huddle, women making their own little exclusive group, people of one generation not talking to people of another generation?”

  “It was pretty obvious.”

  “Not too many years ago I could have brought those people together. Given them a sense of commonality. Of the human race, the human experience, as a whole. You know, we’re-all-in-the-same-boat-together sort of thing.”

  Flynn said, “Eric Hoffer. I’m sure you’ve read him.” Professor Loveson stared at him. “In order to bring people together you must provide them with a common enemy.”

  Staring sideways at Flynn, Loveson tripped on the edge of the sidewalk.

  Grover whipped around.

  Flynn grabbed Loveson’s elbow and steadied him. “That’s all right, Grover.”

  Loveson said, “I think you are one very strange cop, Inspector Flynn. How do you explain yourself?”

  Flynn chuckled. “I’m lying doggo. Lacking an invasion from Mars, you might consider doing the same.”

  Loveson unlocked the door to his office and pushed it open.

  Immediately, he gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Grover stepped in front of him and entered the room first.

  Flynn entered second.

  Loveson remained standing in the doorway. He looked around. “This,” he said.

  The floor was shin-high with torn paper.

  Every book and magazine from the shelves had been taken down and ripped apart. Their spines looked like the wings of so many dead birds. Drawers of the filing cabinets and desk had been turned out. Manuscript pages had been torn lengthwise and then across and apparently thrown to scatter them widely. Pictures, award citations from the walls had been smashed against a corner of the desk, and then shredded.