“That won’t happen.”
“No.”
“It won’t.”
“I know that.”
He was afraid she was telling him she wouldn’t see him again. It was a terrible time to press his case. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he said.
“It ain’t the romantic dinners,” she said. “It isn’t the flowers.—Oh,” she said, “that reminds me. I never thanked you.” Druff body- Englished it was unimportant, that there was nothing to thank him for. “No,” she said, “it was sweet. An orchid corsage. I might even have worn it. It’s just that I thought the prom wasn’t till next week.—Where was I, what was I saying? Oh yes, it’s not the dinners, it isn’t the flowers. It’s not even the lovemaking. It’s always that damn extra hour that gets us into trouble. You sweet-talkers with your ‘hour, up, dressed and out of here’ routines. That’s where you do us in.”
She liked him. She did. Otherwise, why would she waste time on him with her routines? She liked him, all right. Druff could tell. He guessed it was as good a time as any to get going. He let himself out, but turned first in the doorway. “I have a feeling,” he said, “I may have talked in my sleep. I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
And desperately hoped he hadn’t, that he’d dreamed his hypnagogic state, only dreamed he wasn’t entirely dreaming. It was very important now to clear the decks, get on with his grace period, be rid of his MacGuffin.
“Disturb me? Of course not. It’s that Mikey’s pants you seem to be in, who you’re giving the hard times. You’d best leave,” she said. “Your man will be waiting.”
In the lobby, Druff waited for Dick in a comfortable armchair near the night doorman’s station. He didn’t, of course, intend to rouse him—the fellow was dozing in front of a bank of closed-circuit television monitors—but for reasons he didn’t entirely understand would have welcomed his attention. He glanced about to see if there might not be one of those logs even employees had to sign when they entered or left a building after hours.
Now he was entirely alert. Really. He would probably pay for it in the morning but he didn’t see how he’d be able to sleep tonight. Indeed, he was so excited he thought he would probably wake Rose Helen when he got home. He would never deliberately hurt her or say anything which might cause her a moment’s anxiety, but he didn’t see how, after a day and night like this had been, he could be expected just to go home and get into bed as though nothing had happened. Whatever else, they were friends, even best friends—whatever happened between himself and the Avenue of the Boulevard of Margaret Glorio Street, nothing, at least so far as Druff was concerned, could change that—and best friends were there for each other. They clipped each other on the chin and rifled each other’s pants for car keys if one was sober and the other too drunk to drive. That was the nature of friendship, he thought. All real buddies were drinking buddies finally. Intoxication investigators, they stood guard, kept this hold-hand vigil at each other’s bedsides, or over each other’s sprees. They were the fail-safes of tipsy hearts. Of pie-eyed heads.
So of course he would wake Rose Helen. Of course he would. He needed the company. And out of good, simple reciprocal fellowship give her details of his evening with Scouffas and McIlvoy, the one, of all things, a clubfoot, the other, for all he’d practically invented the degree- of-difficulty device that marched around through the city with them and that poor McIlvoy had trouble adjusting in the dark whenever his clubfoot pal, Scouffas, who actually wore it, was thrown too much off the track by his hobbled leg, making the loyal companion’s loyal deferentials, resetting the damn thing, factoring in all the dipsy doodles of friendship and love. Who knew? Perhaps they were lovers. Who knew? (See? See what Druff meant? Druff meant. There for each other. Joining the divergences, the pal Scouffas’s couldn’t-be-helped, staggered meanderings, McIlvoy at pains—he had severe astigmatism, you should have seen his glasses; Coke bottles? try ice cubes, why don’t you, you want an idea—to make the fine, tight Kentucky windage corrections and allowances that crippled-up old Scouffas caused to be required to be made whenever he took six or seven steps forward and went half, or one, or one and a half steps to what wasn’t even always the side, but more often than not some even-more-difficult-to-figure bias.) Regaling her, his best friend, Rose Helen, with tales of his evening, giving as good as he got, possibly even better than he got because old Rose Helen, the wife, the best friend, rousted from sleep at whatever the ungodly hour was, maybe—possibly probably—wouldn’t even know that she was on duty.
So regaling her, giving Scouffas the clubfoot and McIlvoy—this detail a surprise because normally you’d expect it would be the other way around—the thick Greek accent you couldn’t cut with a knife. What the hell, these extra flourishes, they were what best friends did for each other. Considerations no different in kind, really, from McIlvoy’s for Scouffas when the former—not permitted, friends of that order of magnitude don’t “permit”—encouraged the latter to tramp about, pacing off the marathon with the delicate thingamajig it had taken him years to perfect attached to his old friend’s clubfoot. Regaling her—she’d be laughing along with him by now—reinventing the invention he’d invented, perfecting it for Beverly Susan because friendship was a two-way street and, after all, it was really Rachel Joanne’s sleep that had been broken into and, appearances notwithstanding, Marsha Sandra who was doing the driving; on good old Pamela Ruth’s watch that he’d had the one-too-many that sounded all that red-alert friendship in the first place.
Regaling her. Perhaps not even what you could honestly call out-and- out lying. All the best details true on one level, at least spiritually true, a sort of projected, sublimated truth. That part about the possibility that Scouffas and McIlvoy might have been lovers. This, Rose Helen’s atten- tiveness here, where Druff needed her most. Segueing from the speculation to the possibility, the possibility to the likelihood, the likelihood to the certainty it was so, and Druff portraying in the crudest but most necessary code the validity of every possible detail. Taking her into the studio apartment they kept because they were on the road so much of the year pacing out marathons. Speculating about the high-tech furniture they probably had, their stylish, red silk pajamas. Regaling. Making it clear. Regaling. Regaling and relishing.
“Hey. Hey, mister. There’s some limo outside honking his horn.”
“What? What’s that?” asked Druff, shaken from sleep by the doorman.
“Yeah, he’s been making a racket. He’s going to wake the neighborhood. I see he’s from the city, but my first duty’s to the building. Could you go out and get him to stop?”
So he was already angry, at himself for calling his spy, for the rote instincts and reflexes that lived in his hands and, independent of his intentions, pushed the buttons on his telephones for him, at the chauffeur, who, wakened from sleep, had blithely seemed to acknowledge all Druff’s troubled suspicions, at the chauffeur again for having been indiscreet with the city’s limousine.
The doorman was right. Druff could hear the chipper, almost larky soundings of the limousine’s horn. Not leaning on it, mind, which might almost have been extenuated by urgency, pressing business, perhaps—though this was a stretch—the saving of lives, but the brash, overly confident “Who, who owns this town? We, we own this town!” laid- back, boom-box musings of street punks and gang toughs. Steamed and double-steamed not because the man was out of uniform—Druff was out of uniform—or because he did not get out from behind the wheel and run around the side of the car to open the door for him, but because of the arm, thrown over the seat, across the lowered window partition, that loud arm that spoke contemptuous volumes, that, well, practically fucking smirked at him, God damn it, and which, were it longer or not too much of an effort for the chauffeur to get it to move, might have doubled itself up at the elbow and nudged him in the ribs. Was he winking? Was the son of a bitch winking? Was it some sexual high sign the brute was throwing at him off his fingers?
So, as you can see, he w
as already angry.
“I,” Druff gently reminded Dick when he’d closed the limousine door after himself, “am a public servant. You are a public servant’s servant. No, don’t start just yet. I’ll tell you when.
“Dum dum de dum dum, dum dum?” the commissioner asked. “I don’t think I quite care for your way with the taxpayers’ horn, Dicky,” he said. (Caring, despite what he’d just said, for it quite a lot, as a matter of fact.) “We aren’t hunters, kid. You didn’t pop by the trailer court to fetch some chum for a ride out to the duck blind. Dum dum de dum dum, dum dum? It’s three-thirty in the morning. You don’t wake neighbors. We ain’t fellows in the same car pool years. Dum dum de dum dum me no dum dum de dum dums, Dum-Dum,” he said so softly he knew Dick had to strain to hear him. And leaned forward and quite casually knocked his chauffeur’s arm from where it still rested along the ledge of the partition.
“Hey,” the man said. “Hey, what the…”
Druff moved the toggle switch that raised the window. “I don’t care to hear it,” he said through the intercom.
“You ready now?” the spy asked past what Druff—wondering Is he armed, is he armed? Is he licensed to kill me?—supposed were clenched teeth.
“Check the pressure in the tires,” Druff said.
“What?”
“There’s a pressure gauge in the glove compartment. Check the pressure in the tires.”
“What’s this shit?”
“Do it,” Druff said.
“The hell I’ll do it.”
“Then get out, I’ll drive myself.”
“No way,” spoke up his MacGuffin. “No way. This baby is signed out in the motor pool to me. Only me and Doug are authorized to check it out, and I’m the party that’s going to drive it.” Druff was already standing at the driver’s side. He’d opened Dick’s door. “No way,” Dick said, “no goddamn way. I ain’t turning over any fifty-five thousand dollars’ worth of equipment that I’m signed out on and responsible for to some guy who’s high because he just got his ashes hauled. No way!”
“Get out,” Druff said.
“You got a chauffeur’s license? You happen to be packing one of those? You may be a big-time City Commissioner of Streets, but I’m the cop in this deal and, honest to Christ, you make a move to drive off in this limo without a chauffeur’s license in your wallet and I’ll arrest you.”
But Druff, reaching into the limousine, already had the car phone in his hands, was already through to the sheriff’s office, was already on the line to the dispatcher, when the chauffeur pressed the “disengage” button and broke the connection. “What did you go and do that for?” Dick said. “What’s the matter with you? Do you like a showdown?” He sounded disappointed. “What’s to be gained? Nobody wins. All that can happen is that somebody’s feelings are going to get hurt and there’s blood on the other fellow’s hands. That’s no way. Ain’t you been a politician long enough to know that much at least? I’ll tell you something, Commissioner. You never asked and I never said, but all those times you ran for an office, I voted for you. I was in your corner. Maybe you didn’t know it but that’s true. I did and I was. Because I thought you were onto something. I really did. Hell,” he said, “you want to drive, drive.” He slid away from the wheel.
Druff made no move to take his place and the chauffeur looked at him expectantly.
“Check the pressure in the tires,” Druff said.
“Oh boy,” said the spy, “you’re really something. I thought we had a moment there, but you’re something. Yeah,” he said, “sure, I’ll check it.” He opened the glove compartment and to Druff’s surprise actually found a pressure gauge there. (Well, Druff thought, it was the MacGuffin. On overtime. Moving his fingers on telephones, riding his tongue, getting him laid, fighting his battles and, now, mining the rich, inexplicable ores of serendipity and golden, incalculable, long-shot, break- the-bank chance. Despite the fact that not half an hour earlier he’d wished it called off, at least suspended, so that he, together with Margaret of all the Boulevards, might make something out of what was left of his life. But it was the old story, wasn’t it? Once out of the bottle you couldn’t turn the genie off, call back a wish, rescind a fate or have ever again the boring old status quo ante. It was magic time, not Kansas anymore, and he had better learn to live with it.)
“They’re fine,” Dick said flatly. “Even the spare. Those guys in the garage,” he said. “We get the credit but they keep us flying. You want to go home now?”
In the back the City Commissioner of Streets made assent with his head and the chauffeur guided the long black limousine out into the traffic.
He can talk to me like this, mused the commissioner, because he’s civil service. But he’s right, Druff thought, push should never be allowed to come to shove. And marveled at how infrequently it did. How civil the civil service, he contemplated. How difficult it is to fire anyone in it. And, oh, the genius of men’s imaginings, and was astonished at the world’s astute behaviors, the sweet models of its arrangements and gracious systems. We take care of our own, they seemed to say. And meant it. They did. Everywhere a dependent, low-born incompetence, the slow, the dull, the stolid, the vicious, the crass. The foolish and crazy. The soft, flawed and fallible serving the fuddled. The cunning timeserver side by side with the simple drudge, sharing the planet with the sane and sober, with the dedicated, with the seers and masters. We take care of our own. Come one, come all! was life’s stirring cry. And offered its generous tit to any mouth that would have it. Sure, Druff thought, that’s why he can lip off to me like this. I can’t fire his rascal ass and the cocksucker knows it. He knows how many forms I’d have to fill out. He knows all the supporting letters I’d need to get together for his file. He knows all the hearings and committee meetings I’d be calling down on my head!
And just then felt the presence of his own body, a kind of electric thrill. He felt palpitations. His knees went weak and he was momentarily light-headed. Gee, he thought, and I won that round, and wondered how his driver must be feeling. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, but suddenly Druff felt a sort of tenderness toward his old friend, the constituent in his corner from way back when. Dick the Spy was disappointed in him, stunned. Obviously he hadn’t known it wasn’t only Druff he was up against, but Druff’s MacGuffin too, the jujitsu leverages theatrics gave a fellow. He never had a chance, the commissioner gloated, then suddenly remembered the case of nerves he’d experienced, was still, to judge from the dryness of his mouth and the trembling hands folded in his lap, experiencing. If the chauffeur should come at him now it was Druff who wouldn’t stand a chance. The MacGuffin was gone. He was forsaken, abandoned. If he could only get some rest it might return. (Having a MacGuffin took it out of you. It certainly wasn’t for the fainthearted, and Druff realized it was a good thing Dick had backed down about the tire pressure thing. Because if he hadn’t it would probably be the City Commissioner who’d be driving now, and he knew this was exactly the wrong time for him to be operating heavy machinery.) My God, he thought, returned from his parenthesis and in the world again and, picking up on an idea he’d had in this same limousine that very morning—well yesterday, actually, but since he’d last been home—not only am I going stupid, I’m getting crazy!
He wondered if he shouldn’t attempt some rapprochement with the driver, at least lower the window which separated them. Then thought no, it was a bad idea, a sign of weakness, the worst thing he could do. Let Druff sit in aloof luxury, distant, behind bulletproof glass, pulled along his streets like a Caesar in a Triumph. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the dirty son of a bitch could plot to his traitorous, mingy little heart’s content. It would keep him occupied.
So, feigning indifference, Druff sat back, inappetent, a commissioner most high, vaguely colonial, almost military, a visiting fireman, a “Guv,” any touring, pidgin-English’d muckamuck and grand panjandrum, in fact, who ever showed the flag or put a dinner jacket on in the jungle. Reviewing his Streets and—
What’s this? What’s this? What’s wrong with this picture?
Amazed. Flabbergast. Astonished.
Maybe they’d gone five blocks. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. It could have been rush hour. Well, not rush hour but the nervous edge of it, rush hour’s fuzzy, fish-nor-fowl atemporal margins. The traffic of people who want to beat the traffic. And drove with the same jumpy, tailgating, lane-changing abandon. These people might have been refugees, the first to hear news of a disaster on the Emergency Broadcast Band. Were enemy planes on their way to drop the Big One? Had there been an “event” at the nuclear power station? Was it meltdown? Had a freight car been derailed, was it bleeding toxic waste? Druff, attempting to switch the radio on, fumbled with some controls. He touched the eject button on the tape deck. He pressed “open” and the drawer on the compact disc player slid out. Perhaps the driver controlled the radio. Druff lowered the window between them. “Quick,” he said, “turn on the radio.” Music from an easy-listening station filled the car. “No,” Druff said, “change the station. See if there’s news.”
“News on the hour,” the chauffeur said.
“Just see.”
It was all music on FM. On AM it was mostly music with an occasional talk or call-in show.
“What’s happening?” Druff asked. “Where’s all this traffic coming from?”
“Which traffic?”
“What do you mean ‘what traffic?’ This traffic! Just look at these streets. If it isn’t bumper-to-bumper yet, it’s damn near. I’ve never seen it like this.”
Dick said nothing.
“I wonder where the traffic came from,” the commissioner muttered and almost pressed his face against the window. It was as if he were in some principal city he’d heard about but never seen. It was as if he were taking in the sights. He stared in wonder at lines of automobiles stopped at cross streets waiting for the lights to change, at individual cars jimmying their way into the flow, from curbs, from alleys and parking garages. On either side of him he could see drivers and passengers in other vehicles glance his way as they pulled alongside him and tried to make out who was riding in the important-looking limo. He stared back as curiously. It was the middle of the goddamn night. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “What’s going on?”
The MacGuffin Page 14