What's The Worst That Could Happen?

As the original Earl came into the cottage behind Max, shutting the door on the dairy herd, Brandon Camberbridge stepped forward, looking worried, pleased, attentive, nervous, and weepy. Such an excess of emotion seemed unwarranted—even Max wasn’t that concerned about himself—but then all became clear when Camberbridge wailed, “Oh, Mr. Fairbanks, we so hope nothing will happen to you here at our beautiful hotel!”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Max said, as he realized that Camberbridge cared more for the hotel than he did about his employer. By God, he thinks it’s his hotel!

Max smiled on the man, while deciding in that instant to have him transferred at the earliest possible moment to some other territory within the TUI empire. There was, for instance, an older downtown hotel in Boston; that might be good. It isn’t acceptable for employees to think of Max’s properties as their own, it encourages the wrong kind of loyalty. “Good to see you again, Brandon,” Max assured him, and, the man’s fate sealed, pleasantly shook his hand.

“I want you to meet Wylie Branch,” Camberbridge said, “head of security here at the Gaiety. I sometimes think he worries about the place almost as much as I do.”

“I don’t think I could,” Wylie Branch said, with a western drawl. “I don’t even think it would be fitting.”

Branch and Max eyed one another, understood one another in an instant, and both of them smiled as Max shook the rangy man’s hand, saying, “So you’ll be keeping an eye out for me.”

Branch gri

“We’ll get along,” Max assured him, then turned aside to yawn largely in Camberbridge’s face. “Sorry,” he said, “it was a long flight.”

“Yes, of course,” Camberbridge said. “We should leave you alone to unwind. What time should we send the chef to prepare your di

“Nine, I think. A lady chef, I believe?”

Camberbridge blinked. “Yes, certainly,” he said, with a brave smile.

“Have her phone me at seven,” Max said, “to discuss the menu.”

Camberbridge would have said something more, but Max yawned at him again, giving the man a full view of his long-ago tonsillectomy, and at last Camberbridge took the hint and, with the security men Earl and Wylie in tow, departed.

It wasn’t for sleep that Max had wanted to be alone—he’d just, after all, awakened after a long and peaceful slumber on the plane—it was for The Book. Since he’d made the decision to use himself to snare the bothersome burgler, Max had avoided the I Ching, almost afraid to know what The Book might think of his idea. In the two and a half weeks since that impetuous moment at the now-lost house in Carrport, Max had found doubt creeping into his mind, insecurity, no matter how hard he fought against it, misgivings, a sense that somehow, in taking the damn burglar’s ring, he had not made a coup, but a mistake.

Not that he had done wrong, or, more accurately, not that he would care if he had done wrong. Many’s the time in Max’s eventful life he had done wrong, serious wrong, and never lost an instant’s repose over it. No. What he felt somehow was that he had made an error, he had exposed himself to something unexpected, he had leaped before he had looked.

That wasn’t like him. He was known for his impishness, for his surprising moves, but they were always grounded in his awareness of what was safe, safe for him. He didn’t, because he no longer had to, risk all.

He hadn’t known, in truth, that when he’d boosted that burglar’s ring he was risking anything.

In any event, the time had come. He was here now, in place, waiting for the burglar. The die was cast, it was too late to change his mind. Now he could consult The Book.

His luggage had been brought here when his plane had first landed, while he breakfasted, so that his clothing was now neatly stored in closet and dressers, and the briefcase containing The Book awaited him on the pass-through counter between the cottage’s living room and kitchen. Opening the briefcase there, Max took out The Book and the small leather Hermès cuff-link box in which he kept the three pe

These he carried to the conversation area of the living room, where he sat on the sofa, readied hotel pen and hotel pad on the coffee table, and tossed the coins six times onto a copy of the in-hotel magazine, to lessen the clatter they made.

The lines in a hexagram are built from the bottom up, and this time Max threw 8, 7, 8, 9, 7, and 8. And there was his personal trigram again, Tui, at the top. With what below?

He consulted The Book, and the trigram below was K’un, the Abysmal, or Water, and the name of the hexagram was Oppression (Exhaustion), and Max’s heart sank as he looked at that name. So The Book really didn’t approve.

Well, he might as well get on with it, read what The Book had to say. He did understand, somewhere below the level of belief, that much of the interchange between the I Ching and himself was dependent on his own interpretation of often ambiguous statements, so what could he find for The Book to say about his current situation?

K’UN—OPPRESSION (EXHAUSTION)

The Judgment

Oppression. Success. Perseverance.

The great man brings about good fortune.

No blame.

When one has something to say,

It is not believed.

Well, that’s not so bad. Is it? Success and perseverance and the great man bringing about good fortune; it certainly sounds as though The Book approves his current scheme. It even says there’s no blame for Max’s little peccadillo that got him into this situation.

On the other hand, what’s this business about having something to say, and not being believed? What could he want to say to anybody in this matter? And who is it who refuses to believe?

And why should Max give a damn if anybody believes him or not?

Well, let’s move on to the Image, and see if it gets any clearer.

The Image

There is no water in the lake:

The image of EXHAUSTION.

Thus the superior man stakes his life On following his will.

Yes, of course! Nothing ambiguous there. Max had always staked his life on following his will. And on that special night, not quite three weeks ago, in Carrport, on Long Island, it had been Max’s will to possess this ring. Yes! The Book approves.

Is there more? In the second half of the I Ching there are further comments and explanations; Max turned to that part and read:

Miscellaneous Notes

OPPRESSION means an encounter.

So. This time at last we will meet, the burglar and I. And . . .

Appended Judgments

OPPRESSION is the test of character.

OPPRESSION leads to perplexity and thereby to success. Through OPPRESSION one learns to lessen one’s rancor.

And even that made sense. Rancor was certainly an accurate word—if an odd one—to describe Max’s feelings toward the burglar who had stripped the Carrport house and reduced Lutetia’s New York home to bare bones and made off with fifty thousand dollars from the Watergate apartment, and it was certainly true that once Max had the son of a bitch in his grasp, that once the burglar was well and truly on his way to prison for the rest of his u