The MacGuffin

by Stanley Elkin

  “Well, it’s common knowledge. Everything’s common knowledge these days. Hey, no offense. I mean to take nothing away from anyone, but there’s child porn stars on Phil, cousins of drunks on Geraldo. It’s as if everyone feels he has a duty to open up everyone else’s eyes—girls who make it with ponies, with ectoplasm in the fruit cellar.

  “I think, you want to know, that everywhere there’s less than meets the eye. All that fooling around, all that graft, it’s only business. Making a living, enterprise. Somehow, well, frankly, there ought to be something personal, something malevolent.”

  “Well, Commissioner,” Rector said, smiling widely, “sometimes there is.”

  “You’re really something, Jerry. You know that? Wouldn’t you say so, Ham?”

  “An absolute ‘must,’ a definite ‘positively,’ ” Hamilton Edgar said. Then turned to the commissioner. “It’s wonderful you came along today,” he said. “That you happen to have happened by.”

  “It is. I did,” Druff said. “That’s how it happened.”

  “Sure,” Jerry Rector said, “pure serendipity. This could be a breakthrough here. We could almost be discovering penicillin, finding AIDS serum.”

  “We’d like to clear up this Su’ad business,” Dan said suddenly, startling the commissioner. “There might be some new terms for you to consider.”

  “Oh, Dan,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said, “shame on you. You’d trouble the man with business on the Shabbat?”

  “Bunk and hooey,” Jerry Rector said. “Bunk, bunk, bunk. He’s the one talking malevolent. Dan was just reminded, is what.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.

  “Just hold on a darned minute,” Druff said. “Let’s just hold our horses. You,” he said, indicating Hamilton Edgar, “I thought you were the one authorized to speak for the university. How many of you guys are there? You’re all lawyers?”

  “Ham’s the lawyer,” Jerry said.

  “I’m a banker,” Dan said.

  “Well, I am too,” said Jerry Rector.

  “Bankers,” Druff said. “What bank are you associated with?”

  “You don’t have to tell him anything,” said Hamilton Edgar.

  “Hey, I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “We’re with the Bank of B’nai Beth Emeth,” Dan said, giggling. “We’re bankers in the temple.”

  “Money changers,” Jerry Rector said, winking.

  “You guys,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.

  “Yar,” Rector said, “I’m yar.” If this were an era other than the one in which he pretended to hang out, he could have been saying I’m cool. Beyond that, Druff had an impression that all these guys, but particularly Dan and Rector, would hate themselves in the morning.

  “All right,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said, “but you’ll see. You’re just making him nervous.”

  “That’s silly,” Dan said. “You said it yourself, he’s a trained politician. You heard him carry on about the rabbi. Shock a with-it guy like the commish? There’s just no way. You think he was born yesterday? This old man? He’s got bodies stashed in high places. He knows where the bimbos are buried.”

  “New terms?” Druff said, who, to be frank, had only an unclear memory of the old ones. Not, as you may imagine, because—this he did recall—nothing had been in it for him—he really was a civil servant and executed, within the decent parameters of sanity, all the functions of his office without thought to private gain or personal favor—but because he hadn’t been able to make much sense of what he remembered of Ham ‘n’ Eggs’ earlier proposition. Druff’s impression, post-M. Glorio and all the knockdown, drag-out of a MacGuffin with which he’d lived on and off (counting from lunchtime to lunchtime) going on two days now, was that the university had made rather a point of its indifference to matching the expensive, distinctive campus limestone in the covered walkway Druff’s department was to build (this rather a point, too) above Kersh Boulevard. The poor old city’s point was that while it would pay its share of the costs, it refused to pay for anything put up on university property.

  “Anything we can do,” Dan said, “to give the Su’ad kid’s soul some peace, a little belated quality time.”

  “Dan!” Ham ‘n’ Eggs scolded.

  “Steady there, Dan,” even Jerry Rector put in, “steady as she goes.”

  Now he was alert. Perhaps he’d given Dan the wrong impression, shooting off his mouth, sending his with-it type signals, merely extending a tongue, which Dan, at least, had mistaken for a hand. Showing off for him, for all of them, not out of hubris—hubris? him? what did he have to be hubrid about?—but from mood and nervousness. But how were they to know? He’d been led by his doubts to meander along the margins of entrapment. It was good strategy.

  “Funny your talking new terms,” said the City Commissioner of Streets. “Mr. Edgar practically blamed us for the accident. He said the city’s pedestrian-activated signal was an attractive nuisance.”

  “Darned attractive,” said Jerry Rector, wriggling his eyebrows and pretending to tip an ash off an imaginary cigar.

  “I guess I can only hope,” said Druff, “that you folks aren’t wired and that this ain’t some kind of sting operation. New terms?” he repeated.

  “Well, he’s right,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said. “We would like to clear things up.”

  “I’m all ears,” the commissioner said. “Where’s the TV cameras? Is my hair all combed, is my tie straight? What do I look into?”

  “You think we need cameras?” Dan demanded angrily. “You think we keep our goodies in a safe-deposit box? Live it up for once. Throw caution to the winds. Political scientist! Big public man! Go public, why don’t you?”

  “Sight unseen?” Druff inquired coolly.

  “What’s he mean now, I wonder,” the one playing Jerry remarked to the others.

  “Quid pro quo, I guess.”

  “The terms of the terms.”

  “If he’d get out from behind that desk for a minute he’d practically be standing on them. Jeesh!”

  “Dan?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Hey, he’s the one suggested there should be something personal, that something’s missing from your average evil.”

  “You argue like a child! I suppose if he told you to jump off the roof you’d go out and do it.”

  “Of course not. I’m only pointing out.”

  “Well, just be careful where you point,” Ham said.

  “I am,” Dan said. “I am careful. Hey, if he thinks this is about devil worship or anything like that, he’s got another think coming. Profits, incentive. It’s still America, what do you think?”

  “That’s what I say.”

  “Right on.”

  “Don’t he know that blood’s been spilled, don’t he understand there’s a girl dead out of this? Ain’t that good enough for him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I say.”

  “Gents,” offered Druff, who knew when he was being triple-teamed, “I’m elsewhere expected.” And, rising, came out from behind the desk.

  “He’s warm.

  “He’s very warm.”

  “Very warm? He’s very hot!”

  “You’ve got to give him credit,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.

  “Credit, hell,” Jerry Rector said, “you’ve got to bribe him outright.”

  “See,” said Dan, “what did he tell you? Downtown isn’t just fixing tickets, moving the dates around on your court calendar like three-card monte, or getting the man from the Health Department to look in the sink but not under the stove. It ain’t only always money changing hands.”

  “Of course not.”

  “No way,” said Rector.

  Druff walked over the Oriental rugs scattered through the rabbi’s study, moving across one and onto the next as though they were beautiful stepping stones in a gorgeous river.

  “The U pays the costs on its own property. What the hell, it picks up the tab at t
he city’s end, too.”

  “To get the unpleasantness over with.”

  “To put the nastiness behind.”

  “To sweep,” said Dan in a low, meaningful, carefully inflected voice which stopped Druff cold, “it under the rug.”

  “Come on, boys,” Jerry Rector said, “let’s leave the commissioner alone a few minutes. Let’s give him a little time to consider the bank’s latest proposition.”

  They filed past him and were heading out the door before Druff knew what was happening. Hamilton Edgar paused and turned in the doorway. “I’ll shut this for you,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t lock it. We’ll be just down the hall if you need us.”

  “Ham?” Druff said.

  “Yes, Commissioner?”

  “Is there a washroom? I have to pee.”

  “Just in there,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said. “Behind that door. It’s the rabbi’s. Help yourself,” he said, and walked out with the others.

  Druff sat on the toilet (because peeing was the least of it) and thought: Now isn’t this just what I’ve been telling myself? And wondered he hadn’t, at the time hadn’t, understood the implications of what was now so apparent. All this pursuant (grunt, squeeze, release) to his observation the evening previous that life goes on even in the chase scenes. Even character did, its old autonomics. Wasn’t his lie to Hamilton Edgar about needing to pee a testament to his system’s urgent modesty? The body had its own agenda and would not be caught up in the desiderata of even an engaged will. Hell, it couldn’t even be bothered. Brushing and flossing and following—he recalled, among his other meds, the stool softener he’d taken between the time he’d committed adultery and the time he’d gone to bed—doctor’s orders. Even as you, even as me. Your Juicy Fruit in one pocket, your stamps for your letters in the other. He recalled thinking that no matter how hot the pursuit, people with MacGuffins would still need batteries for their transistor radios, and suddenly remembered the zinc batteries for Rose Helen’s hearing aid, making a mental note to pop into a store, if he got the chance, to see if he could pick some up. Life goes on. Speaking of which, hadn’t he told Margaret he’d call? He’d do so now, as soon as he finished his business. While he still had the chance. Amazing, thought Druff, his notions borne out. And the upshot (what he hadn’t realized) was this: that if something as fragile as one’s life could go on, if one, even under duress, could continue to count calories, why then how much more procedural were the general comings-and-goings and business-as- usuals of the universe, all its tidals and opportunities, all its knockabout upheavals and the explosive, piecemeal degradation of the earth and subordinate stars?

  Thinking, as he washed up and examined himself in the mirror: This rabbi has some terrific deal going. Not only a swell study in which to do the holy contemplatives of his trade, but a private, humdinger john any fellow could really be proud of. The latest fixtures and even a nifty, beautiful Oriental rug.

  Now why, wondered the City Commissioner of Streets, would that be?

  This particular question catching him off guard. Quite rocking him. So much so, in fact, that although he’d heard no one reenter the rabbi’s study he was a bit chary about going back in there quite yet, lest they return before he was ready for them. He pulled the lid down over the toilet seat and sat. Dizzily, he contemplated the figure in the carpet. Contemplated having (and in something under thirty-some-odd hours) rediscovered his old, idling intelligence. (Idling no longer. His bright ideas sudden and received, as ready-to-wear and off-the-rack as Commandments. “Call Margaret,” he’s commanding himself.) In the rabbi’s toilet of the rabbi’s study contemplated, fearfully, his brand-spanking- new braveries. Not least, he contemplated Coincidence.

  Those guys, he thought, Ham ‘n’ Eggs, Jerry Rector, the Dan guy, couldn’t have known I was coming. I couldn’t have known I was coming! I overslept. So much had happened. I woke up confused. I didn’t even know what day it was. I dressed for the office. Downstairs we had words. I stormed out of the house. I don’t go for walks, I don’t have routes. No one, no one ever, really set their watch by me. What’s the deal? I happened by. I just happened by. No one could know. How could anyone know? So life goes on, so character does, so we brush, floss and tune in to catch the news on the hour. So time marches on, tra la. So what’s the deal? So I didn’t know I even had a MacGuffin until yesterday. So I didn’t have spies or a girlfriend, either. There’s always the random. There’s always absentee ballots, late returns, and another county heard from. Things happen at sea while stars fall on Alabama. Who’s to say that isn’t a cooperation, a conspiracy of engaged, invisible gears? There’s chance, back channels and fucking farce. There’s this and there’s that—stuff going on all over the place, at all hours of the day and night, rough-hew them as we may. Why shouldn’t those boys have been waiting for me? She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes, n’ est-ce pas? So don’t tell me hold your horses, old fella. Yes, yes, I know. I appreciate the powers of paranoia. They are surely considerable. But before you go rushing off to find a shrink, consider, I’m a politician. Trained in the random, in the chance remark and glancing blows of everybody’s mouth news, in on all the late returns and other counties heard from, in absentee ballots and the planetary swing vote, in the graciousness of concession speeches lived through twice, once on the phone from my hotel, then in the ballroom. Trained, when it comes down, in the thick skin of the professional politician, his water-off-a-duck’s-back bathing habits and almost Christian bygones-be- bygones vision. So, sure, I’d have spies. Of course I’ll have enemies. An odds-on favorite, for God’s sake, a hell of a bunch more likely to have a MacGuffin of my own than that there’d ever be, now I see its tight weave and, to judge by the Chinese water torture it’d probably have to put up with in here, the colorfast qualities of its terrific, mysterious dyes, its rich fringe and intricate design and peculiar shape, what is almost surely a Muslim prayer rug right in the rabbi’s crapper!

  So coincidence? Coincidence? You tell me, what’s more outrageous, that someone like myself should go along, la de da, minding what he’s still got left for business in what he’s still got left for life, doing, dum dum de dum dum, his job, suddenly stumbling over conditions’ cooked books, or that, as anyone with an ounce of sense will tell you, it’s in the nature of books to be cooked, the nature, Christ, maybe even the duty, like evolution or natural selection, for people to wear themselves down and wear themselves down to a point where they have an actual edge, some in-tooth-and-claw arrangement which not only enables them to pull the shit they pull but actually drives them to do it! What’s more outrageous, eh? That I should step in a mess in the street or that so many messes should be left in the street that I can’t help but step in one?

  “Oh, Su’ad, oh oh! Su’ad, Su’ad oh,” conjured and softly moaned the City Commissioner of Streets, as unready and ill-prepared to step out of the holy sanctuary crapper as when he’d first stepped into it.

  But determinations had been made.

  He let himself out of the toilet. (Thinking precisely that way now—as one who “let himself out” of things, leaving bathrooms as you’d slip ropes, negotiating ordinary rooms as if they were obstacle courses, some land-mined aspect to the scenery, some scenery aspect to the scenery!), thinking of his life as having a “look” to it now, all the authentic fine detailing of a movie set, his clothes, Dan’s, Rector’s, Ham ‘n’ Eggs’, even the colored shammes’s, as real and up-to-date as on the first day of principal photography. It was, all of it, faithful to Druffs times and circumstances, everything le dernier cri, organized, arranged as an illusion of environment in a zoo, Druff preserved in the perfect poisoned amber of his ambience.

  All right then, he had thought, upon unlocking the door to the W.C. and peering cautiously out. Action?

  He moved to the desk and tapped Margaret Glorio’s number, which he had called only once before but hadn’t forgotten, into the phone. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Margaret,
darling, it’s Bob Druff. I have to talk fast because under certain circumstances a fellow in my position not only has to be on his toes at all times but has to have eyes practically in the back of his head. Without going into detail, suffice it to say this may be one of them.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to tell you I haven’t forgotten last night.”

  “For a man your age you’ve a remarkable memory.”

  “Ha ha, Margaret darling.”

  “Where are you calling from? Are you calling from home?”

  What was left of the decent man in him told him there was no harm in the question, but the fellow straining tiptoe with his eyes practically in the back of his head warned otherwise. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right.”

  “I’m glad your wife gave you my message.”

  “My wife?” Druff said, alarmed. “No no, my wife and son were out when I got back from my errands. We didn’t have an opportunity to speak. Er, what, um,” asked the City Commissioner of Streets, “was your message, Margaret dear?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you have crabs?”

  “That was your message? You said I had crabs?”

  “You don’t think she has a right to know?”

  “Ha ha, Margaret Glorio, you had me going there for a minute. That’s probably one of the reasons I like you so much, you playful devil scamp, you. You didn’t even call my house, I betcha. Well well.”

  “Look,” Margaret Glorio said, “I’m expecting a call. You said you’d make this fast.”

  “You’re expecting a call? There’s someone else?” said Druff with great feeling. The City Commissioner of Streets was astonished. If he sounded even half as melodramatic to her as he did to himself he must indeed have seemed the fool. It was because she’d picked up on the first ring. Well, he’d been there, hadn’t he? Had seen all there was to see of her studio apartment, its cunning furniture and unusual lamps, all that experimental decor, her buyer’s bold environment, the strange matte finish of the furniture, of the walls and carpets, the drapes and slipcovers, the designer telephone on the designer table of exotic wood. He’d been there, knew she’d have to have been sitting with the phone practically in her lap to have answered so quickly. Was that kind of anticipation ever not love-related on a day not part of the workweek? “Not, I mean, that you haven’t every right, of course. Of course you have. Certainly. Hey, I don’t own you. What makes me think I own you? I don’t own anybody. I’m not some jerk who has it in his head that just because he sends a girl a bucket of flowers on the night of the big dance or shares a crown rack with her, that that gives him some right—Maybe the guy whose call you’re waiting for thinks that way, maybe he feels he owns a piece of you, but not me. I’m just a lowly public servant. Where would I ever get off?