Something Happened

"Nothing," I tell him.

"Didn't he say anything?"

"No. Nothing important."

"About me?"

"Not a word."

"You mean that?"

"I swear."

"Well, I'll be damned," Kagle marvels with relief. "What did he talk about? Tell me. He must have wanted to see you about something."

"He wants me to put some jokes in a speech his son has to make at school."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"And he didn't say anything about me, anything at all?"

"No."

"Or the call reports or the trip to Denver?"

"No."

"Ha! In that case, I may be safe, you know. I might even make vice-president this year. What did he talk about?"

"Just his son. And the speech. And the jokes."

"I'm probably imagining the whole thing," he exclaims exultantly. "You know, maybe I can use those same jokes someday if one of my kids is ever asked to make a speech at school." He frowns, his face clouding suddenly with a distant distress. "Both my kids are no good," he reminds himself aloud abstractedly. "Especially the boy."

Kagle trusts me also. And I'm not so sure I want him to.

"Andy," I call out to him suddenly. "Why don't you play it safe? Why don't you behave? Why don't you start doing everything everybody wants you to do?"

He is startled. "Why?" he cries. "What's the matter?"

"To keep your job, that's why, if it's not too late. Why don't you start trying to go along? Stop telling lies to Horace White. Don't travel so much. Transfer Parker to another office if you can't get him to stop drinking and retire Ed Phelps."

"Did somebody say something?"

"No."

"Then how do you know all that?" he demands. "Who told you?"

"You did," I bark back at him with exasperation and disgust. "You've been telling me about all those things over and over again for months. So why don't you start doing something about them instead of worrying about them all the time and taking chances? Settle down, will you? Control Brown and cooperate with Green, and why don't you hire a Negro and a Jew?"

Kagle scowls grimly and broods in heavy silence for several seconds. I wait, wondering how much is sinking in.

"What would I do with a coon?" he asks finally, as though thinking aloud, his mind wandering.

"I don't know."

"I could use a Jew."

"Don't be too sure."

"We sell to Jews."

"They might not like it."

"But what would I do with a coon?"

"You would begin," I advise, "by finding something else to call him."

"Like what?"

"A Black. Call him a Black."

"That's fu

"Yeah."

"I've always called them coons," Kagle says. "I was brought up to call niggers coons."

"I was brought up to call Negroes coons."

"What should I do?" he asks. "Tell me what to do."

"Grow up, Andy," I tell him earnestly, trying with all my heart now to help him. "You're a middle-aged man with two kids and a big job in a pretty big company. There's a lot that's expected of you. It's time to mature. It's time to take it seriously and start doing all the things you should be doing. You know what they are. You keep telling me what they are."

Kagle nods pensively. His brow furrows as he ponders my advice without any hint of levity. I am getting through to him. I watch him tensely as I wait for his reply. Kagle, you bastard, I want to scream at him desperately as he meditates solemnly, I am trying to help you. Say something wise. For once in your mixed-up life, come to an intelligent conclusion. It's almost as though he hears me, for he makes up his mind finally and his face brightens. He stares up at me with a slight smile and then, while I hang on his words hopefully, says: "Let's go get laid."

The company has a policy about getting laid. It's okay.

And everybody seems to know that (although it's not spelled out in any of the perso

Getting laid (or talking about getting laid) is an important component of each of the company conventions and a decisive consideration in the selection of a convention site; and the salesmen who succeed in getting laid there soonest are likely to turn out to be the social heroes of the convention, though not necessarily the envy. (That will depend on the quality of whom they find to get laid with.) Getting laid at conventions is usually done in groups of three or four (two decide to go out and try and take along one or two others). Just about everybody in the company gets laid (or seems to), or at least talks as though he does (or did). In fact, it has become virtually comme il faut at company conventions for even the very top and very old, impotent men in the company — in fact, especially those — to allude slyly and boastfully to their own and each other's sexual misconduct in their welcoming addresses, acknowledgments, introductions, and informal preambles to speeches on graver subjects. Getting laid is a joking matter on all levels of the company, even with people like Green and Horace White. But it's not a matter for Andy Kagle to joke about now.

"Andy, I'm serious," I say.

"So," he says, "am I."

I close the door of my office after Kagle leaves, sealing myself inside and shutting everybody else out, and try to decide what to do about my conversation with Arthur Baron. I cancel my lunch appointment and put my feet up on my desk.

I've got bad feet. I've got a jawbone that's deteriorating and someday soon I'm going to have to have all my teeth pulled. It will hurt. I've got an unhappy wife to support and two unhappy children to take care of. (I've got that other child with irremediable brain damage who is neither happy nor unhappy, and I don't know what will happen to him after we're dead.) I've got eight unhappy people working for me who have problems and unhappy dependents of their own. I've got anxiety; I suppress hysteria. I've got politics on my mind, summer race riots, drugs, violence, and teen-age sex. There are perverts and deviates everywhere who might corrupt or strangle any one of my children. I've got crime in my streets. I've got old age to face. My boy, though only nine, is already worried because he does not know what he wants to be when he grows up. My daughter tells lies. I've got the decline of American civilization and the guilt and ineptitude of the whole government of the United States to carry around on these poor shoulders of mine.

And I find I am being groomed for a better job.

And I find — God help me — that I want it.