The MacGuffin

by Stanley Elkin

  “Look…” she objected.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Fire Chief, Sewers and Mains, Chief of Police,” Druff said, taking her arm and indicating these various public servants as he nodded to them and steered Margaret Glorio toward the door. “Assemblyman, assemblyman, head of the zoo,” he said. “You may be an arbiter of taste, but these fellows are the knights and paladins.—Our town,” he said. He brought her to the curb where Dick, in his twin capacity of chauffeur and spy, was illegally parked in the limo, and waited while the man came out from behind his driver’s seat, touched his hand to his cap to the lady and held the door open for them, crisply shutting it when they were seated. “Women don’t usually go for a street commish,” Druff confided. “Nine times out of ten they’d rather have an alderman. Blunt, visible power’s the aphrodisiac in this trade.”

  “I’d rather have an alderman,” Miss Glorio said.

  “There’s a cellular telephone in this limo,” Druff said. “Want to call the dealer, see what’s what with your transmission?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here. What do you mean you’re married, that I ought to know that going in? I’m not going in anywhere, you’re not sweeping anyone off her feet.”

  “Look, I’ll show you.” He picked up the handset and called Time and Temperature. “It’s seventy-one degrees,” he reported to the woman, “it’s two-sixteen.” He proposed ringing it again and letting her hear for herself. “Boy that gives me a kick,” he said. “Look, I even have call waiting. I don’t care, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’m old enough to be from a generation that still marveled that there were car radios. The clarity of long-distance calls astonished us. ‘Gee,’ we’d say to the people of our time one and two thousand miles across the country, ‘you sound like you’re right next door.’ But this is even better. We’re in a moving car, for goodness sake. I can call long-distance, I can call long-distance to someone in another moving car.”

  “Why? What would you say?”

  “I don’t know, that they sound like they’re right next door. It’s the idea of the thing. I don’t know, maybe I just have a lower awe threshold than the next guy, maybe that’s what keeps me feeling young,” lied the City Commissioner of Streets, who felt neither awe nor youth, who’d heard—and at once had registered—Margaret Glorio’s remark that he wasn’t sweeping anyone off her feet, and whose insistent, meaningless, imperturbable charm rolled off his tongue as casually as a campaign promise and who, by engaging her in conversation in the restaurant in the first place, and paying her check, and by saying outlandish things to her and practically hijacking her into his municipal limousine, had merely meant to keep the MacGuffins coming, though he realized, of course, that it was alien to the form to volunteer, even to intercede, that one didn’t go prancing after a fate or it wasn’t a fate anymore, only one more misplaced obsession. Still, the commissioner reasoned, adding his driver’s admission earlier that morning that the city was talking about transferring him (and Dick’s being there, in the outer office, standing in for the regular security guy, soaking up Druff’s interoffice communications with Mrs. Norman) and the man’s unaccustomed solicitousness (the chauffeur’s buttered bushwah about Druff’s Fourteen Points) to the coincidence of his son’s having kept company with the hit-and-run-over Su’ad, and the city’s and university’s nervousness about the incident, even the usurpation of his table at Toober’s (what had he been, fifteen minutes late? twenty?), even the restaurateur’s little hesitation step when Druff had offered to sit at the bar and even (though here, Druff had to admit, he was probably stretching) the treatment he’d received when he went to claim his suit, there was enough circumstantial affront to warrant Druff’s aroused suspicions. Well, worse cases had been made. Though, if only to be fair to the rest of them—to Toober, to Dick, to Mrs. Norman, to Hamilton Edgar, to his son and the unnamed co- conspirator hustling alterations at Brooks Brothers—didn’t Druff have to wonder that if a little mid-life crisis might not be entirely unwelcome, then how much more agreeably might a bit of actual, flat-out Sturm and endgame Drang strike his fancy? (And wasn’t this the true reason most guys didn’t hit their tragic stride until they were old?)

  And just look who was still sitting there beside him. Who, despite her mild protestations and her delayed take about his being married notwithstanding, and all the usual disclaimers—he supposed usual, but what did he know, a guy on Inderal years?—and the fact of her size—the unswept feet remark, for example, might just as easily have been a simple physical observation as a boast or metaphor—had permitted him to guide her into his car anyway, even if, once she was there, she’d been unimpressed by all the mod cons and was apparently indifferent to his offer to let her use his car phone. Well, she’s a buyer for major department stores, Druff thought, a sophisticated lady, a woman on an expense account, a Frequent Flier.

  “I know people,” Druff said, returning the phone to its housing, “who use these to call home and ask what’s for dinner.”

  “Me too,” Miss Glorio said.

  “Yes, well,” said Druff, discomfited, looking up to catch Dick, his spy, spying on them in the limo’s rearview mirror and covering for himself by grinning away like some hovering, hand-rubbing Dutch uncle in films, for all the world as if Dick were Druff’s senior and not the other way around, as if, thought age-innocent Druff, Dick were love’s advocate, that avuncular, that European. And suddenly remembered the force of his intimate augury in the restaurant. Then and there deciding to test it, willing to let their affair stand or fail on the accuracy of his presentiments.

  “Say,” he said, “ask you a personal question?”

  “Depends.”

  “Depends. Fair enough. Depends.”

  “What is it?”

  “I was wondering,” Druff said. “How old are you?”

  “I’m forty-four, I’ll be forty-five in three months.”

  “Ah,” said Druff, and thought, as though their liaison were already assured, this is going to be a sea change made in heaven. And added, as though what was already assured were already over, “Where would you like us to drop you?”

  Glorio referred him to the business card in his suit jacket and, when he pulled it out and held it at arm’s length to read, she reached over and took it away from him. She folded the card between her fingers, slipped it into her purse, leaned forward, and called out the address to Dick. “What,” the commissioner said, “I’m a little farsighted? Because I’m not twenty-twenty and have a granddad’s vision you’re cutting me loose?” He wasn’t daunted, didn’t think he sounded daunted. He was perfectly aware of how feeble he must appear to the woman, a buyer of men’s sportswear, a lady with a gift for inseam, pocket, crotch, detailing, who knew the demographics of taste, the secrets of fashion, what certain colors hid or enhanced, who took men’s weights and measures as easily as Barney or Tony the Tailor, was probably as knowing about their bodies as a nurse. He took his fragility in stride. He discounted it, discounted it for her, meant his remark about his eyesight to tell her as much, and was assured, moreover, by what he was about to offer her—his inspired proposition.

  Dick, who knew the city at least as well as its Commissioner of Streets, who might, had he wished, have driven them through any of its ancient, gerrymandered neighborhoods without ever hitting a light or stop sign, seemed, old Cupid’s hand-wringing fuss-and-ditherer, to want to draw out the ride, to aim them at traffic, scenery, affable and smug as a hackman with newlyweds. Though they rode in silence, and the glass that separated the front of the limo from the back was shut, Druff felt covered in lap robes by the man, and he leaned forward and tapped on the window with his wedding band. “Step on it. Don’t spare the horses, please, Dick.”

  “Oh, aye, Commissioner,” Dick said, and in minutes they were there. Then came around, opened the door for Druff’s lovely passenger. “Mademoiselle,” he said, inviting her into the world, a faint smarm on his middleman’s lips, and would have closed the door on his bo
ss had not that frail, feeble old man pulled something out of his buried old alacrity reserves and reached the pavement at almost the same moment Miss Glorio did.

  “Wait for me,” he told his chauffeur and grasped the lady’s arm, drawing her apart from the entrance to her office building. “Will you be my mistress?” he asked her suddenly.

  “What? No, of course not. I don’t know you. You’re old, you’re crazy. You’re married, you’re not a sharp dresser. What do you mean, will I be your mistress? My share of that check came to just over five dollars. Tell me the truth, are you really a public servant? I mean I saw the seal on the side of that ridiculous car, but maybe that’s what people are into nowadays, renting police cars, fire trucks, limousines with official- looking seals. So yes or no, are you the street commissioner? Because if you are, I’ll tell you something, mister, it’s the decline and fall all over again. No, I won’t be your mistress! I never heard anything so nuts.” She was furious with him, not actually shouting, too furious for rage, and Druff took advantage of what was still a lull in the noise levels to ask his question a second time. “Do I look hard up?” she demanded. Druff turned and waved Dick back into the car. “Look, I’m no spring chicken, I admit it, but I’m probably twenty years your junior.”

  “Fourteen,” Druff said.

  “Fourteen, right. I stand corrected. Fourteen. How could you, how could you? Do I, do I?”

  “Do you what?”

  “Look hard up?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Because I’m not. I do okay. I have a job that takes me all over the world. My passport has stamps in it from the four corners. I meet men. Even married men. Where do you get off? You don’t even know me. I certainly don’t know you.”

  “Ah,” Druff said.

  “What?”

  “Just listen to what I’m suggesting. You don’t know me. I intend to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing,” she said.

  “Wait,” he said, “hear me out. Give a guy his day in court a minute. Hear me out. Didn’t I hear you out when you said I was old and crazy and that I’m just a little married nutso old slob who doesn’t know how to dress? Didn’t I listen patiently to your side of the story when you questioned my credentials as a civil servant and stuck an additional half dozen years onto my age and called an official, bona fide limousine of this city a ridiculous gimmick and accused me by veiled allusion of trying to buy you for an outlay of something less than six bucks? Well, didn’t I? Fair’s fair.”

  “Fair’s certainly fair. You sure did.”

  “All right,” he said, “here’s the story. I won’t try to kid you. I am old, I am married. And I know my clothes hang on me. Even expensive Brooks Brothers. To tell the truth, I dress above my station, and would probably look better in open hospital gowns than I do in street clothes, but I’m City Commissioner of Streets all right and the limo’s legit. That’s the absolute truth, a matter of public record. You could look it up.

  “Listen,” Margaret Glorio said, checking her watch and edging toward the entrance of the office building, “this is ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Druff said. “I hope not. I hate looking foolish and haven’t much patience with loonies or even time to be silly. I’m not physically attractive but I’m not a particularly stupid man. I don’t look it, I know, but I’m something of a man’s man, actually. Men enjoy my company, I mean, and from what I understand that’s supposed to be a plus with the ladies.”

  “You’re annoying me.”

  “All right,” Druff said, “forget all that. You’re a busy person and none of this is part of my pitch anyway.”

  “What is your pitch? I’m curious to know.”

  “That you could do worse.”

  “That I could do worse? That’s your pitch? That I could do worse?”

  “Of course. Sure. You spelled most of this out yourself. I’m married. That protects you, you’re protected.”

  “Oh, right,” Margaret Glorio said.

  “Boy, you don’t know beans about blackmail, do you? Well,” he said, “call me old-fashioned, but I find that attractive in a woman.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “No, of course not. Your innocence of it. I guess what’s slowing you down is your suspicion I’m not really a public man. Well, you have my card, but that could be counterfeit. There are dozens of ways to check me out. Find out who authorizes snow removals in your neighborhood. You drive a car in this city, next time you come to a detour look at the chap’s name on the bottom of the legend apologizing for the delay and thanking you for your patience. I know. Are you on the tax rolls? The city sends out a calendar with the names of its officials and little photographic insets of what we look like.

  “Listen, Margaret, I know you’re anxious to get back to work, I don’t want to hold you up. Check me out. If I’m who I say I am, you’ll know it’s all right for us to get it on. Once we start sneaking around together I’ll be buying you gifts, we’ll be checking into motels. I’ll be laying down a paper trail Hansel and Gretel could follow out of the woods in the dark better than crumbs. Oh, way better. (Birds peck up crumbs quick as snap.) Don’t you see? I love public life. You’d have me over a barrel. You’d have my old ass.”

  “Why are you standing here saying these things to me?”

  “I’ve reason to believe,” Druff said reasonably, “that my limousine is wired, that my car phone is tapped.”

  “They keep a record of your calls to Time and Temperature?”

  “They stoop at nothing.” She laughed, Druff taking her hilarity as the first good sign for his suit’s success since his confirmed presentiment about her age. Then and there he would have pressed her to make an assignation with him but she continued laughing. “What,” Druff said, “what?”

  “Nothing,” she managed. “I was just wondering, what are they going to make of your telling some guy with a car phone in Massachusetts or Texas that he sounds like he’s just next door?”

  “That was a heart’s confidence, Margaret,” he said, pretending offense. “I was letting you in on something,” he said stiffly, stooping at nothing in his own right and, then, drawing himself up, asked again if she would be his mistress.

  “No.”

  “To me you’re beautiful, Margaret, well above the usual normal, but face it, you’re a woman of a certain age. All right, it’s no secret. I’m not exactly your customary foot-sweeper, but you think I don’t have needs? If not, tell me, what do you think dirty old men are for?”

  “Please,” she said, not smiling anymore, though forced to maintain a sort of ceremonial cheerfulness by the proximity of the various men and women, colleagues, supposed Druff, coming in and out of her building, an early cast-iron skyscraper in what was left of the city’s garment district, with huge windows and even more fretwork ornamenting it than the iron script that ran along the sides of City Hall like a kind of reductive Arabic.

  “Tell me, yes or no, will you be my mistress?”

  “No.”

  “I mean to pursue you then, Miss Glorio. You haven’t heard the last of Bobbo Druff.”

  “I’ll report you,” she warned as Druff turned and walked away from her. “I’ll turn you in.”

  “Hah!” Druff barked without looking back. “You haven’t got the goods on me yet.”

  This is what he thought about while he went up to the limo and climbed in: that he’d come on. That he’d come on strong. Like a fool, but strong. That however ineffective he may have been, he had come on. That was the thing. He discounted his foolishness, his ineffectuality, his age and marital status, his awry, skewed dress, as, earlier, he’d discounted his fragility. He had come on. His cards on the table. On the table? All over the place. It was the strength of his appeal that mattered, that gave at least a little of the lie to what he’d felt in the changing room at Brooks Brothers, before his devastated reflection in their three-way mirrors, within hearing of other people’s kibitzing, other men’s flatterers. And how a
bout that quickstep when he hopped out of the car, when he scooted after Margaret in double time—double time—drawing off energy from those threatened old alacrity reserves? He meant it when he said what he’d said about the paper trail, about buying back a little relented life at the expense of scandal. Do all men feel as innocent as me, he wondered, when they’ve had it with their honor? Do they strain so against the laws of their MacGuffins? And I wonder, he wondered, if it’s love, time or only the threat of death that’s got me hopping?

  And now, back in the limousine (which was ridiculous—and why hadn’t he acknowledged that one when she was drawing up her bill of particulars against him and he was conceding to her accusations right and left; what would it have cost him?—and not only ridiculous but an environment whose charms he’d tired of long ago, charms that had, quite simply, worn off, worn out: the mystery of the controls, the appeal of the electric toggles for the windows and door locks, of the sunroof, the lights and air-conditioning and heat; the novelty jump seats he couldn’t remember anyone ever having sat in, the recessed armrests and all the straps and sequestered little lamps, all the hidden niches where the ashtrays went, the substantial, cumulative candlepower of the concealed cigar lighters, the tucked-away speakers for the radio, the secret drop-down desktop, and all the rest of the wet-bar, cable-TV-ready built-ins, the whole thing bristling with as much expendable latency as a hotel room or a compartment on a train), Druff contemplated old Dick suspiciously, trying, as neutrally as he could, to stare the man down in the same rearview mirror in which his driver had bullied him earlier, spying and smiling down on the cute couple they made, in his old-timey all-the-world-loves-a-lover mode.

  “Women,” Dick offered as if the word were the concluding point in some telling, elegant argument.

  Druff determined to stay the course, decided to stare him down by drawing him out.

  “Women?” Druff repeated as if he were unfamiliar with the term, as though Dick had called out the name of some strange creature spotted in the road, the commissioner actually turning his head for a moment.