The MacGuffin

by Stanley Elkin

  “All right,” Druff said, “do I need a lawyer? Am I a target of a grand jury investigation? What do you have on me?”

  “Oho.”

  “You owe me that much, Frank.”

  “Sure, sure. Tell me another.”

  “You do. You owe me that much. Whatever you may think of me personally I’m still an important player in this town. I’m a prominent official. Even Doug said as much. I control a few hundred thousand square acres of street. That was your estimate.”

  “And just how much of that acreage is gutter, Mr. City Commissioner? How much runs over sewer?”

  “Listen to me, Frank, I had nothing to do with that girl’s death.”

  “Are we there yet, Doug?”

  “Just about, Your Honor.”

  “Well, step on it then.”

  Druff listened for a siren. He hoped there’d be a siren. He wished Doug would slap a Mars light on top of the car. He wanted to see whirling red light ignite the houses and trees. He wished Doug would step on it. He wanted to feel speed press against his back. Anything, any spoor of ostentation that might compel a witness’s attention.

  But there was nothing. Doug moved it along at the same careful, defensive driver’s pace Druff had noted earlier.

  Fearfully, the City Commissioner of Streets raised his head and dared to look out the window.

  They were not in the woods. They were in Druff’s neighborhood. Relieved, astonished, he said so.

  “I knew this shortcut,” Doug said.

  They were on Druff’s block. They were at his house. Doug pulled the big machine to a stop.

  “Thank you,” Druff said. “Thank you for the lift.”

  “My pleasure,” said Mr. Mayor.

  “Hey,” Druff said, “if I said anything out of line—”

  “Forget it,” the mayor said airily, “you were shitfaced.”

  “That’s right,” Druff admitted. “I’m not much of a drinker. Well, the pressure of the situation. I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses. Well, I am making excuses, I know that, but I get nervous around people’s grief. I don’t know what to say. I’m at a loss, so I drink too much and get so comfortable I don’t behave well.

  “Say,” Druff said, “I heard you mention you might see Paula tomorrow? Would you do me a favor? If you see her, would you offer my apologies? If I embarrassed her and her guests in any way—it’s just I felt so bad about Marv, about missing his funeral. I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong impression.”

  And on and on like that. Getting in deep. Deep, deeper, deepest. Until Doug actually got out of the car and, just as if it were the City Commissioner of Streets’ own limo, walking behind the car (this being the protocol, never to pass in front of the windshield where the mahatmas in the back might see them), came around to the passenger’s side and opened Druff’s door for him, the poor man still talking, clipping along in a cloud of verbiage, like a magician. Just so, like a magician trying to distract his audience, bullying it with broad misdirection. And Doug, posed in a position of attention at the door he holds for him as if, had Druff any decency or at least conscientiousness left in him at all, he’d shut his mouth at once and scurry out of the car. Druff knows this but can’t stop jabbering, hoping that the words he’s so far spoken will cover over and perhaps bury the ones he can’t bring himself even to take back. The brief, passing reference to his innocence and that by- now-for-sure-he-thinks little murdered girl.

  Outside the limousine now and still filibustering even as Hizzoner rolls his window up.

  “Oh, hey,” says the City Commissioner of Streets, “I see you never went electric. With your car windows, I mean. That was a smart move. Well, hell, just another thing to go wrong. I’ve got them on mine and, knock wood, so far so good, but you never know. They get pretty temperamental I’m told, particularly in cold weather. As I say, I haven’t had much trouble but my neighbor up the street drives, I don’t know, one of those upscale Japanese luxury sedans, I forget which one, and his electric windows went out on him. It was only a fuse. Well maybe not a fuse exactly, but something relatively insignificant. Anyway, by the time it was working again it was like six or seven hundred dollars for parts and labor. They see you coming, those guys. Of course it’s an altogether different story with the kind of machinery this is. Yours is more like a ‘classic’ car. I guess a limousine like this one, they probably charge the city extra for manual handles.

  “Well,” Druff says, holding his tongue, actually almost biting down on it for fear, perfectly capable of it as he is, of again blurting out the hideous non sequitur perched on its tip like irresistible candy. “Well,” he says. “Well.”

  The mayor stares impassively out the window at him, then abruptly raises his jaw with an abrupt, quick little snap of his head, indicating to Druff to step closer. As if he has some confidence to impart to his streets commissioner that no one else may hear. More often than not it’s a political thing, this gesture. Druff’s used it himself on the customers, hundreds of times, inviting them into the squeezed, tight quarters of his confidence. Sharing his opinions (as if they were state secrets) about a particular dessert on the rubber-chicken circuit anyone in public office was obliged to travel. Or telling them in strictest, ears-only hush- hush that it seemed to him that this one or that one had put on or lost too much weight, and how—no, don’t look now—does it strike you, could something be wrong, do you think? What goes around comes around. Is that all this will amount to? Druff wonders. He certainly hopes so.

  He still hasn’t moved. The mayor purses his lips, shrugs his eyebrows. It’s not just an invitation, it’s a direct command. Druff is drawn in.

  “Yes?”

  The mayor cracks the window about an inch and a half.

  “You like my limousine?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “It is nice.”

  “It is.”

  He turned on a soft interior light. “All the comforts of home.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “All the comforts.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice appointments.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Not too flashy?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” said the mayor, “you must be tired. I know I am.”

  “Thank you for the lift.”

  “You’re welcome. No problem.”

  “To the Mansion, Your Honor?”

  “Whenever you’re ready, Doug.”

  And they were off, the limousine very quiet, almost silent, in fact, for a car so large. Perhaps, Druff thought, some of the sound was muffled by the small Oriental rug at Hizzoner’s feet.

  Yeah, the MacGuffin goes. How about that?

  Jesus, Druff goes, why didn’t you stop me?

  Me? Stop you? You’re a force, you are. Once you get going. A force.

  Some force.

  Right down there with gravity.

  Hold it. Where do you think you’re going?

  You live here, don’t you? Ain’t this the place?

  You stay outside.

  Don’t be like that.

  A man’s home is his castle. You stay outside.

  Suppose it rains?

  Mr. Mayor, Druff goes to himself, why haven’t we been better friends? Is it because I had nothing to do with that girl’s death? Christ, he must think I’m some jerk. He shoots a look at the MacGuffin. The MacGuffin made me do it, he goes.

  The City Commissioner of Streets enters his castle. Leaving MacGuffin to fend for itself on his streets.

  “Rose Helen, I’m back,” Druff calls out in the Mikey mode. He waits a moment. “I’m back,” he calls again. The lights were on but the house was quiet. “It’s me,” he repeats. “I’m back.”

  He has a hideous premonition of disaster, of, well, retribution, revenge; and pictures Rose Helen in intimate, compromised positions of slaughter, of savage, indiscriminate massacre. Her pubic hair singed, her nipples cut off, switched and reversed and pushed back
into her breasts like plugs, the distinctions blurred between crime and ostentation. He punishes himself with images of depravity so far beyond depravity it’s no longer depravity but business, nothing personal, her execution only someone seeking to send him a message.

  Then he grinned. “It’s her batteries,” he said. “Poor kid, they must be as dead as a doornail.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Rose Helen! Oh, Jesus, you scared hell out of me.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Look,” Druff said. He fished around in his pockets. “Look, I went out and got you these. They’re zinc oxides.”

  “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “Not everyone carries them.”

  “Michael had no trouble.”

  “Mikey got you batteries? All right, Mikey!”

  “I didn’t wait supper for you. The rest of the turkey is already back in the freezer.”

  “Gee, Rose, I’m hungry as hell. I could eat a horse. Well, never mind. I’ll poke around in the refrigerator. I’ll find something.”

  “Do you want me to defrost a drumstick? Do you want me to make you a sandwich? I could slice up some white meat and make you some toast.”

  And then Druff, quite gently, was sobbing. Just like that. One minute he’s talking about dining on horse, the next he’s dissolved in tears of gratitude and thinking how genuinely splendid his wife is, how easily women can shift gears from put-upon and pissed-off back to nurture and duty.

  “What’s wrong, have you been to the doctor? Is that where you’ve been all day? Have you been having angina again? What did he tell you?”

  “Curse me, why don’t you, Rose Helen? No I haven’t been having angina. Angina, my God, that’s all I need! You think I’d let them have another go at me? After what I’ve been through? Their fucking tests. Their so-called options. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time, Bob. You could be managed medically. Or you might be a candidate for an angioplasty.’ An angioplasty! That’s a laugh. Do you personally know anyone who’s ever been a candidate for an angioplasty? I don’t. Hell no. They talk medical management and angioplasty at you, and all the time they’re sharpening up the long knives and prepping their chain saws so they can open you up to the air and oxidize your heart like an apple. No, thank God. There hasn’t been any angina to speak of.”

  “To speak of.”

  “That was only a little tightness in my chest. It wasn’t heart attack pain, and it never developed into angina. I lay down too soon after eating. I gobbled my food too fast.”

  “And chewing all that coca has nothing to do with it.”

  “No.”

  “You think that junk is Juicy Fruit? Does it come with pictures of baseball players? Promise you’ll quit. It’s not good for your circulation.”

  “Is that your scientific opinion?”

  “It cuts off your circulation. That’s why you get that tightness.”

  “It relaxes me. It’s my one pleasure.”

  “Reality isn’t pleasant enough for you?”

  “You think it gives me visions? You think it makes my colors brighter or brings out the music? It relaxes me. It makes it easier for me to deal with Mikey.”

  “Don’t put it off on Mikey. Mikey has nothing to do with it.”

  Druff was touched. He was many things at once. He was moved and hungry and exhausted and cranky. He might be coming down with something. Not eating. All that running around. Lying buck naked—all right, half-a-buck naked—on what was practically Meg Glorio’s floor. He could feel a little tickle in his chest, the beginnings of what might be a sore throat. He’d feel better once he’d eaten. He hoped there’d be fixings. Turkey wasn’t turkey without fixings—stuffing, cranberry sauce, a little candied sweet potato. He was supposed to be this big-deal cynical politician, the big daddy of the city streets, and got all choked up at the thought of turkey dinner. Well, that was the clincher, maybe. It put him right smack in the middle of the tradition. A direct descendant. The pilgrims were politicians first or they were nothing. What was Thanksgiving, anyway, if not a sort of open-air version of the smoke- filled room, doing a deal with the Indians?

  He followed his wife into their kitchen. He took off his suit coat. He loosened his tie. He rolled back his sleeves and opened his shirt at the collar. Pouring a little dishwashing detergent over them, he washed his hands under the faucet at the sink. Rose, dressed for bed, has been padding about, retrieving the turkey from the freezer, removing its remaining drumstick, carving a few stiff slices of meat from its breast, wrapping Druff’s dinner in aluminum foil on which she’s placed a spoonful of congealed gravy that she spreads like a sort of turkey butter over the meat with a knife. She places this package into their toaster oven to defrost.

  “What did you set that at?”

  “Three hundred fifty degrees. Why?”

  “No. I mean the timer.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Druff dried his hands on a dish towel. “You know,” he said, “this is kind of cozy.”

  Rose Helen looked at him closely.

  “No,” Druff said. “It is.”

  “For you. For me it’s overtime.”

  It was cozy. Druff, safe, snug in his kitchen, was thinking of blizzards, of cold, stormy evenings. He was thinking of MacGuffin locked out in the street like a wolf.

  He couldn’t remember when he’d felt closer to his wife. How intimate they’ve been. Not the screwing, not even the two or three times she’d gone down on him. Certainly not the squeamishness he felt about her body, foreplay, occasions he’d had to stick his finger inside her to make her wet. But how intimate! When she’d brought him back from the hospital. If it hadn’t been for Rose Helen he might have died just from the humiliations of his body. She’d sat on the lip of the tub and stooped to retrieve the greasy suppositories he’d too timidly inserted into his behind to loosen the stalled, compacted bowels he’d been unable to move in the hospital. Feeling himself still too weak to walk into the bathroom when he first came home, he’d used a urinal at night. More than once, with his cock not properly inserted down its oddly angled plastic neck, he’d had sleepy, inattentive accidents. While he sat naked on a towel on a chair, Rose Helen had changed their sheets, gone for a washcloth and basin, warm, soapy water, washed down his thighs, his unstirred privates—all the more intimate, Druff felt, for his lack of response, his limp indifference to the contact, less aroused than if he’d been touching himself—and offered fresh pajamas. (Even his impotence, his open secret.) Intimate. As reconciled as the insensate organs of his own body—his tripes and kidneys, his liver and glands.

  There, in the kitchen, chewing his turkey sandwich, eating the flesh off his drumstick, gnawing its bone, sucking its marrow, he wished he could tell Rose Helen what was happening. How Mikey figured in. But he didn’t see how he could do that without bringing Margaret Glorio into it. In a way, Druff thought, he and Rose Helen had been through far too much for that, had been far too intimate.

  On the other hand, if anything happened… He was thinking of the mayor, of surprises waiting for them in the morning papers, of impaneled grand juries, of the fallback fall guy Druff suspected he was all too rapidly becoming. He was guilty of nothing, nothing. But these days it wasn’t enough to be innocent. They cared nothing for innocence. Besides, if you were innocent of one charge chances are you couldn’t be innocent of two. In politics as in life there was no statute of limitations. All they had to do to bring you into the conspiracy was to have you show up somewhere on some arbitrary table of organization, demonstrate how you made a blip on the screen even as a statistical or demographical cohort. Show the most tenuous linkage, the long, complicitous, breathtaking genealogy of sin. Guilt by association was still guilt. All one could do was demand how it could still be counted as a conspiracy if so many were in on it. Is it a cult? Was it a covenant? A convention, another political party altogether? Perhaps it was a movement. Maybe it was history.

  He coul
d hear the MacGuffin howling at the door.

  Not now, not now, Druff pleaded.

  I’ll huff and I’ll puff, goes MacGuffin.

  Not now. Not now.

  “You know,” Druff said experimentally to his wife, “that girl, Mikey’s friend, Su’ad, I think she may have been a smuggler.”

  “A smuggler? Su’ad? Do you think so? Oh, but that’s terrible. You think Michael’s on dope?”

  “Mikey on dope? Mikey’s body is a holy temple. Oh, you mean am I saying was she Mikey’s connection? No, I don’t think so. Of course not. Su’ad’s body was a holy temple, too. The kid was a devout, respectable Muslim lady. Dyed-in-the-wool Shiite. She wouldn’t even take cocoa with us.”

  “That’s right,” said Rose Helen, “I remember. She turned down a candy bar.”

  “Sure, that’s the one.”

  “Then I don’t see how you can call her a smuggler.”

  “Rugs. She smuggled rugs. Oriental carpets.”

  “Oriental rugs,” Rose Helen said. “Well, but how do you know?”

  “Someone accused her.”

  She said, “What an interesting piece of gossip.”

  “Well, but that’s just it, Rose, this isn’t gossip.”

  “Did Michael tell you this? He’s a dear man but he has an overactive imagination. I wouldn’t set much store by…”

  “He never said a word.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said it isn’t gossip. What do you mean?”

  She was a smart cookie, Rose Helen. She made the fine distinctions. He’d probably failed her. Who could have been a contender. Who should have been a contender. Who’d settled for City Commissioner of Streets in a relatively out-of-the-way, not much more than middle-sized city with no major league baseball franchise. A kind of Indianapolis. A sort of Memphis, Tennessee. City Commissioner of Streets a thousand years in a sort of Memphis. Not fair to a First Lady manqué. Not fair to a girl with her eye on the statehouse or even just a mayor’s little mansion. She could have done better. She could have done better even with old Edward R. Markey, the waiter at Rose Helen’s sorority and Druff’s former roommate, the one with a name like the clerk of the court or the fellow who signs the driver’s licenses, and of whom, now a congressman from the state of Ohio, they’d been hearing such good things lately. She could have done better. He’d stood in her way with his bland ambition. He’d stood in both their ways—his fearful big- fish, little-pond heart (and which even at that had gone soft on him, had brought him to death’s door in the emergency room, had left him damned-near-for-dead on the operating table, as-good-as- in the recovery room, and practically so in intensive care, and not-much-better-than- in the at-last private room to which he’d been sent like some prisoner granted special, experimental privileges during the first stages of a long convalescence). And which, a non-starter, had somehow failed to kick in for him—even when he’d been successful—out on the hustings. Hizzoner was right. There was something rotten about his campaigns. “VOTE FOR BOB DRUFF! VOTE FOR BOB DRUFF ON APRIL EIGHTEENTH!” had been, from the first, almost all there was to it—the centerpiece of his positions, his platform. He’d had no record, and made none. He had no overarching vision. He had grounded himself in no particular principle. Give him that lever that could have moved the world and he would not have known where to set the fulcrum. He’d never been moved by party. One seemed as good to him as another. The broadest divisions—all the fors, all the againsts—were all the same to him. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He was not unfeeling, this most civil of civil servants, but he felt, and thought he understood, that almost anything in more or less the right hands could be made to work. If he believed in anything it was a bureaucracy. His Fourteen Points had been a joke, merely his Inderal kicking in at the time of a confluence of his energy and an opponent’s boorish failure to recognize a joke.