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He enjoyed the ride. The whole day, in fact. He was glad his mother’s talk about church had driven him out of the house.
At the outskirts of Whitby, as they were passing the university, he slowed down, to ask Miss Soames where she lived. It wasn’t far from the campus and he zoomed down the familiar streets. It was still fairly early in the afternoon, but the clouds overhead were black and there were lights to be seen in the windows of the houses they passed. He had to slow down at a stop sign and as he did so, he felt Miss Soames’s hand slide down from his waist, where she had been holding on, to his crotch. She stroked him there softly and he could hear her laughing in his ear.
“No disturbing the driver,” he said. “State law.”
But she only laughed and kept on doing what she had been doing.
They passed an elderly man walking a dog and Rudolph was sure the old man looked startled. He gu
He came to the address she had given him. It was an old, one-family clapboard house set on a yellowed lawn. There were no lights on in the house.
“Home,” Miss Soames said. She jumped off the pillion. “That was a nice ride, Rudy. Especially the last two minutes.” She took off her goggles and hat and put her head to one side, letting her hair swing loose over her shoulders. “Want to come inside?” she asked. “There’s nobody home. My mother and father are out visiting and my brother’s at the movies. We can go on to the next chapter.”
He hesitated, looked at the house, guessed what it was like inside. Papa and Mama off on a visit but likely to return early. Brother perhaps bored with the movie and coming rattling in an hour earlier than expected. Miss Soames stood before him, one hand on her hip, smiling, swinging her goggles and ski cap in the other.
“Well?” she asked.
“Some other time, perhaps,” he said.
“Scaredy-cat,” she said, and giggled. Then she ran up the front walk toward the house. At the door she turned and stuck out her tongue at him. The dark building engulfed her.
Thoughtfully, he started the motorcycle and drove slowly toward the center of the town along the darkening streets. He didn’t want to go home, so he parked the machine and went into a movie. He hardly saw the movie and would not have been able to tell what it was about when he got out.
He kept thinking about Miss Soames. Silly, cheap little girl, teasing, teasing, making fun of him. He didn’t like the idea of seeing her in the store next morning. If it were possible he would have had her fired. But she would go to the union and complain and he would have to explain the grounds on which he had had her fired. “She called me Mr. Frigidaire, then she called me Rudy and finally she held my cock on a public thoroughfare.”
He gave up the idea of firing Miss Soames. One thing it all proved—he had been right all along in having nothing to do with anybody from the store.
He had di
He slept badly and he groaned at a quarter to seven Monday morning, when he knew he had to get up and run with Quentin McGovern. But he got up and he ran.
When he made his morning round of the store he was careful to avoid going near the record counter. He waved to Larsen in the ski shop and Larsen, red sweatered, said, “Good morning, Mr. Jordache,” as though they had not shared Sunday together.
Calderwood called him into his office in the afternoon. “All right, Rudy,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about your ideas and I’ve talked them over with some people down in New York. We’re going down there tomorrow, we have a date at my lawyer’s office in Wall Street at two o’clock. They want to ask you some questions. We’ll take the 11:05 train down. I’m not promising anything, but the first time around, my people seem to think you got something there.” Calderwood peered at him. “You don’t seem particularly happy, Rudy,” he said accusingly.
“Oh, I’m pleased, sir. Very pleased.” He managed to smile. Two o’clock Tuesday, he was thinking, I promised Denton I’d go before the board two o’clock Tuesday. “It’s very good news, sir.” He smiled again, trying to seem boyish and naive. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it—so soon, I mean.”
“We’ll have lunch on the train,” Calderwood said, dismissing him.
Lunch on the train with the old man. That means no drink, Rudolph thought, as he went out of the office. He preferred to be gloomy about that than gloomy about Professor Denton.
Later in the afternoon, the phone rang in his office and Miss Giles answered. “I’ll see if he’s in,” she said. “Who’s calling please?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Professor Denton.”
Rudolph hesitated, then stretched out his hand for the phone. “Hello, Professor,” he said heartily. “How’re things?”
“Jordache,” Denton said, his voice hoarse, “I’m at Ripley’s. Can you come over for a few minutes? I’ve got to talk to you.”
Just as well now as later. “Of course, Professor,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He got up from his desk. “If anybody wants me,” he said to Miss Giles, “say I’ll be back in a half hour.”
When he came into the bar, he had to search to find Denton. Denton was in the last booth again, with his hat and coat on, hunched over the table, his hands cupped around his glass. He needed a shave and his clothes were rumpled and his spectacles clouded and smeared. It occurred to Rudolph that he looked like an old wino, waiting blearily on a park bench in the winter weather for a cop to come and move him on. The self-confident, loud, ironic man of Rudolph’s classrooms, amused and amusing, had vanished.
“Hello, Professor.” Rudolph slid into the booth opposite Denton. He hadn’t bothered to put on a coat for the short walk from the store, “I’m glad to see you.” He smiled, as though to reassure Denton that Denton was the same man he had always known, to be greeted in the usual ma
Denton looked up dully. He didn’t offer to shake hands. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was gray. Even his blood has surrendered, Rudolph thought.
“Have a drink.” Denton’s voice was thick. He had obviously already had a drink. Or several. “Miss,” he called loudly to the lady in the orange uniform, who was leaning, like an old mare in harness, against the end of the bar. “What’ll you have?” he asked Rudolph.
“Scotch, please.”
“Scotch and soda for my friend, miss,” Denton said. “And another bourbon for me.”
After that, he sat silently for awhile, staring down at the glass between his hands. On the way over from the store, Rudolph had decided what he had to do. He would have to tell Denton that it was impossible for him to appear before the board the next day, but that he would offer to do so any other day, if the board would postpone. Failing that, he would go to see the President that night and say what he had to say. Or if Denton disapproved of that, he would write out his defense of Denton that night for Denton to read before the board when they considered his case. He dreaded the moment when he would have to make these proposals to Denton, but there was no question of not going down to New York with Calderwood on the 11:05 tomorrow morning. He was grateful that Denton kept silent, even for a moment, and he made a big business of stirring his drink when it came, the noise a little musical barrier against conversation for a few seconds.
“I hate to drag you away from your work like this, Jordache,” Denton said, not lifting his eyes, and mumbling now. “Trouble makes a man egotistic. I pass a movie theater and I see people lined up to go in, to laugh at a comedy, and I say, ‘Don’t they know what’s happening to me, how can they go to the movies?’” He laughed sourly. “Absurd,” he said. “Fifty million people were being killed in Europe alone between 1939 and 1945, and I went to the movies twice a week.” He took a thirsty gulp of his drink, bending low over the table and holding the glass with his two hands. The glass rattled as he put it down.