by Packer, Vin
“Yes, Plangman … still and all … well, it’s been real fine!” “How do I get to Lambertville from here?” said Harvey. “Go all the way down to the end of this street. You’ll see a sign pointing that way.” “Goodbye then, Lake.” “Ta, ta, old chap!”
“Thanks for the drink,” said Harvey, “and thanks for the decent way you informed me that everything I’m wearing is all wrong.”
“Don’t mention it,” Lake Budde said sourly. He started his Sprite with a roar, backed out, extended Harvey a quick, bored salute, and drove off.
FIVE
AT THE gas station in Lambertville, Robert Bowser heard the door of the Men’s open and close; then open and close again.
“I’m through here!” he called out, but whoever it was had gone on.
Robert dried his face and hands on the paper towels, shoved them in the disposal can, and then took his glasses from the utility shelf and put them on. As he turned to retrieve his jacket from the chair, he glanced down at a wallet lying on the floor.
It was a light blue wallet made of some sort of plastic material; a new wallet, still shiny and stiff. Robert flipped it open and read the identification card. It belonged to a Harvey Plangman, from 702 Wentwroth Avenue. Columbia, Missouri. After “In Case of Accident Please Notify” was “Sophie Plangman, Kappa Pi House, Columbia, Missouri.” The card had been made out in an ornate handwriting with circle-i dots, flourishes, and elaborate capitals, all in purple ink. There was a Missouri driver’s license behind one of the celluloid shields, and next to it, a Woolworth employee’s identification card. The next shield contained a photograph of a woman in a full skirt and peasant blouse, leaning on an arrow-shaped sign which said Toluca de Lerdo. Across the photograph was written: “Yo te amo! -Gert”. Under a third shield was a piece of paper with a list of things scribbled in the same purple ink:
Jaguar XK -140 Sports Roadster
Old Smuggler Scotch
Fortune Magazine
Trumper’s Coronis Hair Preparation
Olive green moccasins by Battaglia
Dry Fly Sherry
Gubelin turning globe World-Time clock.
Glove-tanned natural cowhide Kent travel scuffs.
Steerhide, hand-painted game bird den accessories.
Beneath that list was a penciled list headed Vocabulary.
à propos de rien (appropos of nothing)
à propos de bottes (phrase used to change subject)
jejune (dull, insipid)
gerent (one who rules)
sursum corda (Latin toast: lift up your hearts)
In the money compartment was a letter, four or five ten-dollar bills, and a book of matches from Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. Robert took all of this in very quickly, not bothering to examine the side pockets. He placed the wallet on the utility shelf above the sink, wondering vaguely if he should wrap the wallet and mail it to the address, or simply leave it with the gas station attendant. It had obviously been dropped by whoever had come into the Men’s while Robert was washing up. It was a strange wallet, its contents puzzling. In the mirror above the sink, Robert saw his own reflection momentarily. He had a distinctly owlish look; a very distinct one. He studied himself for a second or so, his lips wide and firm and straight, his brown eyes serious behind the whirls of thick glass — firm jaw, a slightly large, masculine nose, and large ears, close to his head — a thick crop of wavy black hair, with the slight silver-gray tinseling — and now he was frowning. His features would be readily identifiable; the glasses clinched it. Why had he not thought to buy new frames? That would have been little enough help, but with the same old frames anyone who saw his photograph in a newspaper would know he was Robert Bowser. He had done so very little in the way of planning, little more, really, than to arrange for the flight to Brazil, and for the $25,000 in cash. He stared at himself in the mirror, his lips tipping in a bewildered, halfhearted grin of disbelief. No, he could not back down now; on Tuesday the Baker account would show a shortage of three thousand shares, plus the exaggeration of the original King & Clary investment. He was all the way into it now, and he was so unprepared! What crazy bravado had ever sustained him? A silly, sick-sounding chuckle escaped his throat, accompanied by a sudden chill, and a futile and terribly intense wish that he were anyone in the world, anyone but Robert Bowser — that he were, say, Plangman, an employee of Woolworth’s. He picked up the wallet and held it in his hand, as though by doing it he would gain something. But he gained nothing and as he turned around to pick up his coat off the men’s room chair, he realized he had lost something. He had lost his coat. It was gone, was all. In its place was a white cotton jacket, thrown across the chair so that the blue wallet must have fallen from its pocket. Someone had taken his coat, and with it, his letter to Margaret.
SIX
“AREN’T YOU glad to see me, Harvey?”
“Of course I am!”
“Then why don’t you relax? Who do you have to call anyway?”
“Just someone. I’m relaxed, honestly.” “Weren’t they home?”
“No, they weren’t home,” said Harvey. He set his elbows up on the table. The sleeves of the suit coat were almost to his knuckles, so that whether he stood or sat, he had to keep his arms slightly higher than his waist.
“Don’t you like it here?” Lois Cutler said. “We could go to the Canal House or Odettes, but the Logan is a more ‘fun’ place. The local people drink here. Besides, it reminds me of some of the barrooms in Columbia, n’est pas?”
“Oui.”
“It’s sort of musky, that’s it! Musky! It has a sort of musky old beery smell that is both divine and da-voon! Nelson Case was in here the other night. Do you know Nelson Case, the announcer?”
“Yes, I guess I’ve seen him on television.”
“Yes, he’s on television a lot. He lives here in New Hope. A lot of celebrities do. Is your call a local call?”
“Sort of local,” said Harvey. He had memorized the number. Ax-tel 4-3251. He was good at memorizing things. He memorized this number by thinking of a man named Axtel who was forty-three and had just inherited two-hundred-and-fifty-one thousand dollars.
“Sort of local!” Lois Cutler giggled. “How can a call be sort of local! Maybe I even know the people. Who are they? I bet Daddy knows them if I don’t!”
Harvey said, “Oh, they’re just some friends I met a while ago in Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico.” He raised his glass of Old Smuggler to change the subject. “Sursum corda!” he said.
“Sursum corda!” she said, “My, you are mysterious. A propos de rien, Monsieur Plangman, daddy says he never heard of a Colonel Plangman, not in World War ?, anyway. Daddy was in Washington then. He knew a lot of military personnel and …”
“You want to know something amusing, Lois?” Harvey interrupted. “I just had drinks with a frat brother. Lake Budde. Well, we were sitting around on the terrace of the Princeton Inn, and Lake was asking my opinion on a good sherry. I prefer Dry Fly, but that’s beside the point. The point is — suddenly he said what you just said, only you know how he pronounced it? He pronounced it a prop-puss de ry-en!”
“A prop-puss de ry-en! Oh, how ridic! Weren’t you embarrassed?”
“I was too embarrassed to correct him,” said Harvey.
Lois repeated the phrase and laughed and laughed, and Harvey looked at the clock. He thought: A man named Ax-tel who was forty-three inherited two hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars. He did not like leaving his name with the woman who answered the phone; he simply said he would call back, and then hung up. Already he had tried Robert Bowser’s number three times. The address was River Road, Lumberville, Pennsylvania. Lois had explained that Lumberville was like a suburb of New Hope. It was a piece of luck that he was that close to Bowser’s home. It made up for the clumsy mishandling of his impulse to pick Bowser’s jacket off the chair in the Men’s at Lambertville. He had not gone in there with anything in mind but to discard the waiter’s jacket. When he had seen the man
in shirtsleeves, bent over the wash bowl, his suit coat across the chair, he had acted fast. It was a beige-colored linen suit coat, single button. Frantically, Harvey had grabbed it, dropping his own jacket in its place, moving as quickly as he could, out the door and across to the MG. He raced down the hill into Lambertville, his heart banging under his shirt, his mind whirling. When he collected his wits, on the 15 m.p.h. ride across the bridge to New Hope, he realized his wallet was still in his jacket. Until he found sanctuary in another Men’s, at the Logan Inn, he did not know what the contents were of the jacket he had stolen.
• • •
“… are you going to be around?” Lois Cutler was saying. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“You seem so nervous, Harvey. I said, how long are you going to be around?”
“I’m not too sure. I’d certainly like to meet your father.”
“Poor dumkins is in New York today. Maybe you can come to dinner tomorrow. Do you mind driving back and forth from Princeton?”
“I may stay here tonight.”
“Here?”
“Not here. In New Hope.”
“I’d ask you to stay at our place, but with Daddy gone….”
“No, no, no,” said Harvey. “I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“I didn’t think you did, but …”
“No, of course not! Not in the absence of the gerent, after all.”
“You know, Harvey, I honestly think you have one of the best vocabularies of any man I’ve ever met. Are all the Kappa Pi’s like you?”
“Very few Kappa Pi’s are like me,” said Harvey. “Lois, look, would you mind if I tried that number again?”
“Pas de tout, cheri.”
“I’ll be right back,” said Harvey rising, making sure to keep his arms above his waist.
The same woman answered the phone.
“I’m not the maid, you know,” she said. “This is the fourth time you’ve called, without leaving your name. For your information, sir, this is Mother Franklin. Anything you have to …"
Harvey let the arm of the phone drop back in its cradle. From the inside pocket of the linen jacket, he removed the envelope-sized billfold. From the money compartment, he took out the letter. Then he reread it
My dear Margaret,
By the time you receive this, I will be out of the country.
Shortly after you receive this, the police will be around with questions. You won’t have any answers to those questions. The facts will simply have to speak for themselves.
I have embezzled exactly $100,043.77 from King & Clary in the last five years.
After your initial shock, I believe you will probably find it not too hard to believe, after all. Our marriage began on this note, and now it ends on it.
I will supply you with the answer to one question you will undoubtedly be asked. What did he spend the money on?
The answer to that is around you, on you, and above you. (I trust you are reading this letter in the solarium, where you always open your mail, directly under Mother Franklin’s room).
You, Margaret, are certainly not to blame for any of it. I exaggerated my income — the directorships, all of it, as you’ll undoubtedly soon learn.
Several times (the two instances you know of — this, and the first, are not the only ones) I was quite successful. As Dryden very accurately put it:
“Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
As brooks made rivers, rivers run to seas.”
Now there is a sea around us, and very little else I can say to make things either worse or better.
Robert.
Along with the letter in the money compartment of the billfold, was twenty-two dollars. There was no photograph in the billfold; there were six credit cards, a Pennsylvania driver’s license, and a registration card for a new Lincoln Continental. On a slip of paper was the address of a man in São Paulo, Brazil, and a notation of a flight number on Varig Airlines, leaving Idlewild at seven-thirty on this coming Sunday night. There was also a bank book, showing a withdrawal of $25,000, across the face of which was stamped Account Closed.
It was now Friday — nine-thirty, by the clock outside the phone booth.
SEVEN
CHEZ ODETTE was on the River Road, just outside New Hope. As they approached it, Margaret was saying, “… because now I’m out of the mood to fix something from the freezer. And there isn’t a single thing you can do about your coat or your wallet! We’d just go home, and you’d brood.”
“I can’t eat dinner in my shirtsleeves, and I can’t wear this idiotic jacket!”
“I’ve seen men in Odette’s in short-sleeved sports shirts, Robert. It’s summer and this is a resort town. Besides, I’ll tell Odette myself that someone picked up your jacket by mistake.”
“I don’t see how it could have been by mistake. There was no one in there when I went in, and the door just opened and closed. When I turned around …"
Margaret sighed. “You weren’t carrying more than twenty dollars, and that coat is three years old. It’s not as bad as you’re making it seem.”
“Oh, no! It isn’t that bad at all.”
“Well, it isn’t! Robert, I feel like having a good dinner. It’ll do you good, too.”
“All right,” Robert said. “We’ll have to charge it.
“So we have to charge it!” Margaret answered; she shrugged her shoulders as though the whole matter was an irritating bore.
Robert let her off at the entranceway, and drove around to the side to park. Margaret was right; there was nothing he could do about it. The worst part was that he could not remember whether or not he had sealed and stamped the letter to Margaret. If he had, there was a slim chance that he was safe — that whoever had picked up his coat (stolen it? what?) would simply deposit the letter in a mailbox, as Robert would do if he were in the same situation. Nothing about the incident tallied. If it were Plangman who had taken his coat, why would he have left his behind, with his wallet still in it? The only answer Robert could come up with was that perhaps the fellow was drunk; perhaps he had not known what he was doing. The attendant at the gas station could not remember seeing another car pull in. There were simply no clues, not a one. Either Robert Bowser was ruined, right now at this very moment, or things were still at the same head.
His headache was much worse now; accompanying it was a feeling of castastrophic indifference, as though a numbness had set in, and while he could appreciate the imminent danger, he could not feel it, nor bring himself to assess its outcome.
Odette greeted him with a big smile, “Darling, I’m zo zorry about ze coat, but na-vair mind now!”
He smiled back, then spotted Margaret at a table in front by the bar. Edith and Arthur Summers were finishing dinner a few tables away, and the moment Robert joined Margaret she said, “I’ve asked the Summers over for a drink, dear. Buy them a Remy Martin or something. Edith wouldn’t let me pay for my lunch when we ate at the Logan last week.”
Robert nodded, sighed.
“Well, I had to, Robert,” said Margaret.
“It’s all right.”
“They’ll cheer us up.”
Arthur and Edith Summers were always depressingly cheerful, filled with small talk which they engaged in with zestful enthusiasm, as though there were nothing in the world as fascinating as the fact that it might rain tomorrow. Arthur Summers owned Arpedia Swimming Pools, in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, and Edith was one of the many Bucks County matrons who fell into the category of being “interested in the arts.” This could mean almost anything: that she had taken the adult class in ceramics at the high school last fall, that she had purchased an abstract Ent-whistle from Charles IV gallery three weeks ago, or that she was a committee chairman for the Book Review Hour of The New Hope Ladies’ Lawn Improvement Guild. Arthur and Edith were both tall and thin and graying; both wore rimless glasses and looked more like brother and sister than man and wife. At cocktail parties, Edith could be relied on to explain that s
he never drank gin martinis because gin made her break out, and Arthur was predictably solicitous toward her after her third drink of anything, his admonishments invariably beginning, “Now, now, Mommy, we’d better go easy.”
“Robert wants to buy you a brandy,” said Margaret as they sat down. “We’ve just come in from New York.”
“Mommy’s had enough, I think. I’ll have a quickie. Then we have to run along.”
“Daddy’s going to New York tomorrow,” said Edith Summers, “and I have to drive to Chalfont for the Sautersly auction.”
Was it all as simple as it sounded? Were there undertows in the Summers’ life? The waitress appeared and Robert ordered two martinis and a brandy. What if he were simply to give in all the way now? To say simply, “I suppose I ought to tell you something, Arthur and Edith, and you too, Margaret.” He imagined himself giving in to this impulse, wondered if just that much control kept him from ruin, or if already the wheels of his ruin were in motion — if the letter he had written Margaret was right now spread out on someone’s table. He played with the idea of Arthur Summers having a similar letter somewhere, or Arthur thinking about it as they were all sitting there chatting. He looked carefully at Summers. Summers’ eyes met his for a brief instant. Brothers or not, Robert thought?”
“I had lunch at the Drake this noon,” Margaret was saying, “and everyone in New York calls very dry martinis white martinis. They charge 10¢ extra for them.”
“Of course they’d have to,” Arthur Summers chuckled. “They’re probably all gin.”
Edith Summers smiled like a child receiving a colored gum drop. “White martinis! I’ve never heard them called that before.”
“You better forget you ever heard it,” Arthur chuckled again.
“Oh, Daddy’s right. I get the hives from gin. My doctor says I’m allergic to gin, and that’s all there is to it! Now, it’s very peculiar, because I can drink vodka. I’ve had vodka screwdrivers, vodka martinis, vodka and tonic — anything with vodka. I can handle vodka, but not gin. Gin gives me hives the size of half dollars, all over my body.”