The MacGuffin

by Stanley Elkin

  So they didn’t lie to each other. They never made excuses for Mikey, or for each other. If anything, Rose Helen was even more honest with Druff than Druff was with Rose Helen. She told him, for example, that she’d rarely voted for him. Only in three of the elections in which he’d stood for office. She wasn’t even of Druff’s political persuasion. More than once, if she felt strongly enough about his opponent, she’d shown up at his rival’s campaign headquarters on election night to help him celebrate if he’d won, to console him if he hadn’t. And maybe it was something about their disparate franknesses—perhaps both were politicians finally, though of different orders; Rose Helen, at sixty, a Young Turk; Druff, two years her junior, this, well, pussy-whipped City Commissioner of Streets—which bleakened the prospects for the phone call he was so reluctant to make. She would see right through him. Even over the telephone she’d be able to tell he was blushing, hear his voice toeing in with lame excuse. He couldn’t think of a thing to tell his wife. Better forget it, he thought, he hadn’t a hope and, deciding to cancel, looked up Margaret Glorio’s number which he’d been at such pains to obtain only hours before. He slipped a coin into the slot—because she’d been right, he’d called from a pay phone the first time, too—and, looking at the number he’d so carefully copied down, he started to dial.

  Rose Helen picked up on the second ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Howdy, Miss Kitty. I hope you haven’t gone to the trouble of baking my favorite pie or doing up some difficult recipe you’ve been meaning to try for years only the ingredients were always out of season when you finally found the time,” the commissioner said breezily.

  “I thought we’d eat out,” Rose Helen said.

  “Yeah, well,” Druff said, “that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “What’s wrong? Is something wrong?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Your voice sounds funny.”

  “I’m at the airport, I’m at a pay phone.”

  “At the airport? What are you doing at the airport?”

  “Well, I’m meeting a plane.”

  “Who’s coming in?”

  “Bert McIlvoy. Irwin Scouffas. But their plane was over an hour late getting out of Denver. It isn’t scheduled to arrive for another twenty minutes yet. I got here at four-thirty. Can you imagine holding a plane because the heating element in the galley isn’t working? Airlines, Jesus!”

  “Who are Bert McIlvoy and Irwin Scouffas? I never heard of them.”

  “They’re from the marathon. They reached me in the limo this morning. I finally actually got to take a long-distance call in the limo! They sounded like they were right next door.”

  “Well, who are they? Why are you meeting their plane?”

  “I told you. They’re from the marathon. You know how long I’ve been trying to get a marathon going in this town. Well, if they approve the routes I’ve marked out—it’s a big if—and if the city’s willing to meet their terms—another big if—these two guys can make it possible. I’m going over the routes with them tonight.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Certainly in the dark. Of course in the dark. In the daytime there’d be much too much traffic. They can get a better idea on a relatively empty street.”

  “When will you be getting home?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Not till late, I guess. Long past your bedtime. Hell, long past mine. A marathon is twenty-six miles three hundred eighty-five yards. I’ve drawn up three possible routes for them. This McIlvoy character is supposed to be a real stickler. We’ll probably have to go over each of them. I only wish they’d have come two or three weeks from now when the potholes will all be filled in.”

  “Well, have fun,” Rose Helen said.

  “Yeah,” Druff said. “Oh, and Rose Helen?”

  “What?”

  “You know what they’re bringing with them?”

  “What?”

  “Well it seems there’s this brand-new gadget that not only measures linear distance but gives you the precise gradients, and then totals the whole thing in feet and inches. This was specifically designed for marathons. That way they can tell whether a Cincinnati marathon is longer than a New York marathon. The damn thing factors the basic twenty-six miles three hundred eighty-five yards and determines the exact degree of difficulty.”

  “That’s really something,” Rose Helen had to admit.

  “Yeah. Irwin Scouffas was telling me about it. He says it isn’t any bigger than an ordinary stopwatch,” said the man who couldn’t lie to his wife.

  They met at the agreed-upon restaurant at the agreed-upon time. Druff hadn’t been at all sure she’d show up, but there she was in the bar waiting for him, big as life, beautiful, and, just for a moment as she rose up off the stool and called out to him in greeting, totally unrecognizable, someone he not only could not remember ever having seen before but a person whose name he knew he would not recognize even if she were to say it for him. He began to go through his City Commissioner of Streetsmarts grab bag of ploys to please, his airy, insubstantial token talk.

  “Maggie Glorio,” she interrupted. “Your dreamgirl?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your date for the evening?”

  “Sure,” he said, “don’t you think I know?”

  “You’re at a loss,” she said.

  “Well I am,” he admitted, “I am at a loss.” And took her into the dining room—he had selected a restaurant in a small, “continental”- style hotel; it was already nine o’clock; this was the second seating—making conversation, explaining Rose Helen, finding his theme in his family, neither boasting nor complaining, merely giving away the store, talking to the woman as if she were already the one person in the world to whom he could bring his life, at ease, almost offhand, no more self-conscious, really, than if she had been a professional, his doctor, say, his tax accountant, someone accustomed to peering at his private parts, having inside info on his bottom lines. Shipboard romance was written all over his conversation, some no-holds-barred, strangers-on-a- train immediacy to their—well, his—speech. It was as if they had been in combat together or knew—well, Druff; Meg gave away nothing—that they would never meet again. (Well, he was at a loss, set adrift. This was merely a reckless hand-over-hand he was doing, some Theseus/ Ariadne routine to locate himself for her, to locate himself for himself. There was, he thought, nothing personal.)

  “For example,” he said, continuing now that the waiter had gone off to fetch their drinks, “from time to time I’ll talk in my sleep. Nothing very interesting, nothing of much importance. Nothing compromising, I mean. No secrets divulged or lives jeopardized—just this old, aging guy small-talking in his sleep.

  “Where’s the harm? What damage do I do? But, you know? It drives Rose Helen crazy. No kidding, it’s the cause of some of our biggest fights. I don’t know why she gets so upset. It can’t just be because I woke her up. Hell, you think it would interest her to tune in. It would interest me. It does interest me. That’s why I get so mad at her when she cuts into one of my monologues. Because once she starts shaking me I lose my place and it’s all over, you can forget it. There I am trying to find out why I’m so exercised about whatever it is I’m so exercised about, and Rose Helen is swinging on my pajamas telling me I’m asleep, I’m sleeping, and to wake up, I’m talking like a fool.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something. I’m not talking like a fool. Dreams are nature’s way… Well, any psychiatrist will tell you. Besides, I enjoy it. Some of my best speeches occur in dreams.”

  “She’s probably a light sleeper,” Margaret Glorio said.

  “Wake up, I’m talking like a fool?”

  They were eating their steamed mussels now, the commissioner going on (when he was not going on about his wife) about his city’s elaborate appetizer arrangements, the ancient New Orleans trade routes. “It’s important that a town’s restaurants have some juice with the established Gulf Coast shellfish interests,” he told her. �
�I mean, take away prawns, take away shrimps, crabs, clams and lobster tails, and what have you got? You’ve got bush league wineries and dineries, that’s what you’ve got. You’ve got a strictly one-horse, non-starter sort of a town where no one entertains and there’s half an inch of dust collecting on the credit cards and nobody knows what to do with a wedge of lemon except set it down in a cup of tea. You can forget all about your Astrodomes and zillion-square-foot convention centers. You can forget about your combination concert hall—cum—opera house slash shopping mall—performing arts centers. All that shit’s for naught if nothing’s cooking with the influential dory-and-trawler water interests. It all starts with crustaceans and mollusks,” said Druff, speaking of dreams, speaking of dreamgirls, and plying his date with all the inside info he could think of.

  “Well,” she said, “you seem to have it down to a science.”

  They were eating their greens. They were eating their roast potatoes. They were eating their crown rack of lamb for two.

  And now he’d stopped talking. Had said almost nothing since he’d asked the waiter if he would check with the chef to see how their fruit soufflé was coming. It took forty-five minutes to do a soufflé, he explained to Ms. Glorio. If it didn’t go into the oven at just about the time the diners were served their main course it could be a disaster.

  “Yes,” Margaret said, raising the side of a fist to her mouth and lightly tapping it against her teeth by way of a yawn. “I’d heard that.”

  “Then there’s nothing more I can teach you,” the commissioner said.

  “I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  He pooh-poohed the notion with a wave of his napkin.

  “I have,” she said.

  He brushed away the idea with his knife and fork.

  “Well, I mean,” she said, “why are you so nervous? What do you think you have to be talking for all the time? What are you so afraid of? I don’t bite. You didn’t act like this this afternoon. Oh, you were out to impress me, but that was cute—a little. I mean if all you want is to get laid, there’s no reason to go through all this rigmarole. Just get on with it. My place or yours, Commissioner?”

  “I’ve always had this heavy sense of decorum,” the commissioner said.

  “Oh, decorum,” Margaret Glorio said negligently.

  “It’s what separates us from the bears and giraffes,” Druff said.

  “It’s what pries us from where our bread is buttered,” said Margaret Glorio.

  Again with the love? the commissioner thought. Again with the thing for the interesting ladies? Aiee, aiee, thought Druff, and—you can imagine how he felt, you can just imagine—helplessly, once again began, though even less at ease now, to bring Rose Helen into it. (As if she’d ever been out of it. Indeed, she might, gone off to the powder room or to make a phone call, have just left the table. Margaret Glorio might just as easily have been an old pal, not seen in years, in town on business, Druff filling her in on the flora and fauna of his married ways, his picturesque local color, the tricky state of their life’s economy.)

  “Oh yes,” he said fondly—they were over their coffee now; Margaret had taken out a cigarette, Druff two or three coca leaves which he slipped into his mouth like after-dinner mints—“she claims she hardly ever voted for me. She says she did it out of principle, but I tell her I regarded it as good luck. That’s true, I’d become almost superstitious about it, like a ball player who keeps using the same handkerchief to blow his nose in because the team’s been winning.

  “Well, that’s not felicitous, but you know what I mean. Still, a wife shouldn’t vote for her own husband when he stands for office? Come on.

  “I’ll tell you something though. I don’t care. I really don’t. Well, I’ve never been particularly ideological, and I had a pretty good winning record, election-year-wise. I don’t suppose I had to deliver my own wife’s vote, though it’s something my opponents picked up on. But, you know,” he said, “in the long run I think it actually helped me. Well, you can see where it would. It’s good for the image. What the hell, it humanized me—that I couldn’t even get my own wife to vote for me. I’d be willing to bet that in a close election—believe me, they’re never that close; this is pretty much, at least on the local level, a one-party town—something like that could actually make the difference. And Rose Helen’s pretty sharp. Now I think about it, I’m not entirely certain she didn’t do it on purpose. Of course, now I serve at the mayor’s pleasure, but I don’t really think it makes any difference. I mean what are we talking about? City Streets Commissioner? How much could she care? Rose Helen doesn’t even drive!”

  “So what do you say,” Margaret Glorio said, “my place or yours?”

  “I guess,” Druff had to admit, “mine’s pretty much out of the question.”

  “I guess,” said the buyer. “I mean those are some heavy burdens you’ve got on you there, Commissioner. Rose Helen, your statecraft. And I only have this little studio apartment.”

  “That’s because you’re out of town so much,” Druff said.

  “Why yes,” she said, “it is.”

  “That’s good,” he said earnestly. “It is. That helps us out. Oh, shit,” he said, “I’m not good at this. I’m like some dummy kid.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not good at it,” she said. “What was that you put into your mouth? Coca leaves?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Yes,” she said, “they were coca leaves.”

  “No,” Druff said.

  “Don’t try to swallow them, for heaven’s sake. You’ll gag and ruin your beautiful dinner.”

  Druff, coughing helplessly, eyes watering, nose running, choking on all the acids of his contraband, was ruining his beautiful dinner, his ancient, comfortable marriage, his brilliant career. Margaret Glorio had come around the side of the table. She pressed a glass of water into his hands. Diners rose at their different tables, waiters came running from their various stations. “No CPR,” he managed, sputtered. “I’m fine, I’m fine now,” he said, fiercely waving them off. “A bone,” he explained, recovered, “a bone in the fruit soufflé. My fault. I should have seen it. I did see it. I thought it was a stem. It looked delicious. Well,” he said, “no harm done, praise God, thank you Jesus. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Rue Glorio?” Margaret said when everybody had returned to their places. “Margaret Street? The Boulevard de Margaret Glorio is a bit grand, but it has a ring. What do you say, Commissioner? They’re your streets.”

  “This would be about the blackmail then? A little to-do about the little to-do when I scarfed down what you apparently thought were coca leaves?”

  “If I blackmail you,” Margaret said, “it won’t be over the coca leaves so much as the soufflé bones.”

  It turned out to be her place after all. They were in bed now, over their brandy snifters, over Meg Glorio’s astonishing—to Druff astonishing, who’d never seen anything like it—clinging, red—silk? satin?—nightgown. (Anyway glowing, flushing anyway, some bright raddle of soft, luxurious, idealized skin, of flesh perfected beyond the condition of flesh, of flesh transcended, raised to some new plane—to Druff new—of tidy, sweet, unappurtenanced harmony—realized, hypostatic lovematter.) Just looking at her now he almost fainted. And the thought that they’d just made love near killed him. She had finished him, he was a goner, some polished-off shell of his former self. She would blackmail him? She wanted streets named after her? He would give her esplanades, parades, entire arrondissements! He’d been a politician more than thirty years. He’d call in his markers, see to it they changed the name of the city.

  “Margaret Town,” the commissioner said. “Gloriville. Meg Glorio City.”

  And wasn’t entirely kidding. At least a part of him serious, at least in his inclinations, in his good will serious. If not in his baggy boxer shorts. Oh, but they were mismatched (he’d be the first to admit it), he in his big boxers, she in her red silk or satin, flesh-transcended, lovematt
er nightgown.

  And even if the actual lovemaking, though fine, and even several steps up from his usual performances, hadn’t been anywhere near the standard of your normal, average blockbuster, history-making, place- namer fucks, face it, it was plenty good enough and, for Druff, better than good enough, something which at fifty-eight, or even at forty-eight, or at thirty-eight even, he would never have expected to have happen to him again. (Or he might even name a street after that nightgown, he thought.)

  “You know what would be okay in my book?” the commissioner said. Ms. Glorio ran a finger around the bottom of her glass and raised its sweet, bronzy dregs to her mouth as one might lick frosting from a pan. “Sleeping over tonight.”

  “Oh, but wouldn’t Mrs. Druff worry? And the fuss and bother you’d be putting her to with all those cold, tired policemen.” He had spoken of Rose Helen’s conscientiousness, how she often greeted visitors with mugs of coffee in her hands. “Anyway,” she said, “you’d never get away with it.”