I liked my work, and I had intended to take my time in coming up with a way to ruin Stillman and Chase. Being human, I probably would have taken fifteen or twenty years, by which time I would have retired to East Hampton and Palm Beach, with a large belly, horn-rimmed glasses, a lemon-yellow blazer, and fifty cases of Laphroaig sitting in the cool of each basement. I can see myself waddling into the Maidstone Club on astonishingly skinny legs, a monogrammed sterling silver cigar tool hanging from my waist, a mashie niblick in one hand and a copy of The Singapore Business Digest in the other.
The clerk at the Hassler saved me from this, or, rather, he was the instrument of my salvation. He handed me a bill. Of course, I gave it right back to him without even looking at it.
"That will be taken care of by Stillman and Chase, in New York," I said, with a sparkle in my voice that came from knowing what I was going to do to them. "We have an account here." I resisted the temptation to add, "and the economic health of your nation depends upon us."
I knew something was wrong when a look of tremendous pain crossed his face. It was generated by the conflict between his obligation to be obsequious and his duty to collect the money.
"Absolutely, sir," he said. "The room charges will be paid directly from New York, but the additionals are now on your account."
"My account?"
"Yes sir."
"My personal account?"
"Yes sir."
"I don't have a personal account."
"We opened one for you, sir, when the letter of instruction came from Signor Piehand."
"Signor Piehand? In New York?"
"Yes sir."
He was referring to Dickey Piehand, the managing partner, a malicious, alcoholic, glorified concierge who had married a suppository heiress from a rotted branch of the Edgar family.
"What did it say?"
"It said, sir, that you would take care of the additionals."
"That prick," I said. "He's just a Scarsdale maggot who married a suppository heiress."
"Yes sir."
The clerk was Italian, and did not understand idiomatic English. I decided to get on with it.
"What are the additional ?" I asked.
"I can read them for you, sir." He read in a magnificent Northern Italian accent, pronouncing each and every syllable gloriously and incorrectly. "Din-ner in the café. Min-er-al wa-ter. Min-er-al wa-ter. Breakfast. Telephone Call. Telephone Call. Telephone Call. Min-er-al wa-ter. Min-er-al wa-ter. Pistachios. Telephone Call. Laundry. Min-er-al wa-ter. Telephone Call. Telephone Call. Breakfast. Telephone Call. Pistachios. Min-er-al wa-ter. Min-er-al wa-ter. Pistachios...."
Never had I had so objective a view of my habits, and I meekly paid the additionals, which, for a five-day stay, came to more than $800. At first it seemed like one of Dickey Piehand's moronic inefficiencies, or perhaps one of the Edgar practical jokes.
How could Stillman and Chase, I thought, be so formidable as to have known my decision of last night and closed me down today by means of a letter written a week ago? It was impossible, so it was either a mistake or a coincidence. A coincidence of what? On the one hand, I had my new resolution. On the other? Was it possible that, purely by accident, they had opened the battle just as it had occurred to me in my most private thoughts to do the same?
I finished my work in Europe, flew from London to New York, and went straight from Idlewild to the firm, where nothing seemed amiss until I reached my office. My secretary was gone and so was her desk. My reception room had no furniture whatsoever, not even a telephone. The only thing left was the rug.
"Where's Mrs. Ludwig?" I asked the fiendishly attractive Bryn Mawr girl who helped Byron Chatsworth track pork jowls, and who hated me because I had once told her point-blank that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, but that she would never find love as long as she continued to drink coffee. She was offended because she thought that I was saying that only women should not drink coffee. No one should drink coffee. It makes both sexes equally disgusting.
"She moved to muni's," I was told.
I trod to muni's with indignant steps, and there was Mrs. Ludwig, lording it over the younger secretaries, her glasses hanging from a navy-blue cord that failed to match her sweater.
"Why are you in muni's?" I asked, like a husband who confronts his wife in the arms of another man.
"I was transferred," she replied. "I thought you knew." That ... was a lie.
"Who transferred you?"
"Mr. Piehand."
"We'll see about Mr. Piehand." But I knew already that the cause was lost. No way exists for a rational human being (or even an irrational human being) to fight a bureaucracy. Even when the country of the bureaucrats is conquered, they flourish, effortlessly traversing from the arteries of war to the veins of peace. Huge bureaucracies are simply invincible. Nonetheless, I throttled Dickey Piehand and pushed him up against the paneling in his office. Red with rage, glottals pouring from my throat like a professional gargler, I shook his porcine body.
"You transferred Mrs. Ludwig without asking me!" I screamed. "I've been here since 1918, and you've been here since 1951, you filthy little suppository!"
"It was decided in the administrative committee," he said in a death squeak. "Talk to Mr. Edgar if you have a complaint!"
He knew that was impossible. Eugene B. Edgar was so ancient that he would no longer speak to anyone but his stunning 'nurses.' In fact, very few people could tell if he were alive or if he were dead. What a tragedy that this man, who once had known almost everything, had come so far that he had forgotten it. But he still owned. He owned so much that though he could not walk, refused to speak, and could hardly hear, he was still treated like a prince even by those who hated him. The hundred or two hundred other human beings in the world who were born in the same year and still had not died were wrapped in shawls and looked upon as hamsters. People walked past them as if they were pieces of decaying wood. But Mr. Edgar, who was as physically alluring as a June roadkill in the middle of October, commanded more attention than would have the Bryn Mawr girl had she come to work in a strapless dress and with a tiara in her hair.
Mrs. Ludwig's replacement, I was told, was not yet hired. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she would be. Translated, this meant that as long as I remained at Stillman and Chase I would not have a secretary.
The administrative committee had also disallowed my expenses while traveling. They explained that though this reflected a general change in policy, it was confined to me. I felt, somehow, that my star was declining.
I went home. I was powerless and alone, and I slept for three days.
When I awoke I was no less powerless or alone, but I was well rested and hope had returned. It was a Friday evening in June, one of those evenings in New York when the air is sweet and the light is soft. In the sunset, all the glass turned gold. The breeze was as gentle as in a dream, and when the wind rose it was warm and reassuring. I knew I would be up all night and that I would watch the birds take to the air with the winds of sunrise, that I would see the change in the sky, the five o'clock powder blue.
I was finished at Stillman and Chase not because I could not do my job—I was really very good at my job—but rather because Constance had left me, and Constance had left me because of coffee.
My way had been clear as I had worked steadily and meritoriously, but then, after I met her, I rose like a rocket. As soon as I was associated with her immense wealth, success gravitated to me like cat hair. Investment bankers dream in billions, and everyone wanted to sit with me at lunch or in the boardroom. I was rapidly headed toward the inner circle that, more and more, did the thinking for Mr. Edgar and would emerge after the storm of his death with its hairy hands full of blood and money.
I took this for granted. I didn't need success at Stillman and Chase, as I was fully able to buy or begin my own investment bank. In those days I thought that no matter what I did my heels would click across polished marble for the rest of my l
ife. But when Constance and I separated, I was culled from the herd.
After three days' sleep, I was hungry. I decided to take a long walk and have a good dinner. Having faced the reality of my situation, I was actually happy—in the way that you are happy when you pay a debt, even if it leaves you impoverished.
Dressed in khaki and white, I headed out into the perfect evening and walked diagonally through the park. I hoped I would not see Constance doing some sort of coffee dance in the sheep meadow, and I didn't. The air carried the scent of blossoms and billowed warmly over lakes and fields. By Columbus Circle I was walking fast, and by the time I arrived at the restaurant almost an hour later I was ready to confront my destiny.
And I did, although not right off. In those days no one except swamis and biochemists knew about the perils of fat, and I ate accordingly. At the Blue Mill you ordered from a chalkboard menu that the waiter placed near your table, and that evening the only thing on it was rack of lamb. I didn't protest. It was served with tiny, crisp, roasted potatoes, a salad with a (perhaps literally) heart-stopping Roquefort dressing, and a glass of Santa Maddalena. To be safe, I ordered two dinners, even though I knew that after the meal I would undoubtedly debauch myself on a tour of the bakeries.
Hudson Street was filled with courting couples—girls in their summer dresses and their beaus in whipcord suits and navy-blue ties. It was Friday evening, when Saturday and Sunday lay ahead for correcting the mistakes and addressing the sorrows of the week.
I saw a very beautiful woman at a near table. She must have come in from the Hamptons, for a new sunburn gave to her youthful face the color of life and strength. She wore a sundress that exposed her gorgeous shoulders and arms and the roseate plain between her throat and chest in a way that paralyzed every man around her. And I had the wonderfully disconcerting experience of discovering that, though she was with someone else, she was looking at me.
I was never much to look at, but for one reason or another I was always involved in love affairs, perhaps because I loved so strongly. Marlise has a different opinion. According to her, "Womens love you because womens loves crazy peoples." Any way, I had become infatuated with the beauty from the Hamptons, and I found myself oblivious of everything around me except what I was eating.
This blimp ride came slowly to an end as I realized that the object of my infatuation had become distinctly uncomfortable. She had ceased staring at me, stopped talking to the jerky college boy who tried to be her dinner companion, and was shooting apprehensive glances over her shoulder as she nervously touched her exquisite auburn hair.
I became more alert watching her react to a disturbance unfolding at the far end of the dining room. I hadn't noticed it at first, but soon the sound of tense, adrenaline-boosted, breathless argumentation filled the restaurant. Everyone grew silent and stopped moving.
Three waiters had gathered around the table of a lone man who was making a lot of trouble. Just a drunk, I thought. But he didn't sound drunk. A young vagrant, I thought. But he was dressed much as I was, and he was about the same age. And, though he was heavier and a bit shorter, our coloring was the same and our voices similar, except that I could hear very distinctly that he had been educated by Jesuits. They have a characteristic pacing, rhythm, intonation, and tone that are as easy to spot as a style of dancing peculiar to a famous samba school.
This Jesuit was involved in hot dispute. A waitress charged out of the kitchen, followed by a man whose pencil mustache signified that he owned the restaurant. She was dressed like the waiters but wore a skirt rather than pants underneath her apron. A white napkin hung from her left arm, just as in Paris.
"He threw it at me!" she whined—hurt, amazed, and frightened—in a voice that was like a missile homing in on Bensonhurst. "He took it from my hand, and he threw it at me. Call the police."
Her apron had a huge wet stain on it. What had he thrown? Wine? Coca-Cola?
"He could have scalded me to death!" she yelled, her anger building. "He could have scarred me!"
Even though my mouth was full, I stopped eating. My eyes went from side to side, although what I was looking at I do not know.
The Jesuit didn't just sit there. Jesuits never do. His left hand pointed at her, index finger extended, arm cocked close to the body in the manner of a warrior or a street fighter, a gesture that I have never seen in anyone of good upbringing and normal proclivities. "She," he said, accusingly, and his words carried Jesuitically throughout the room, "put a cup of live coffee right on this table, right in front of me, as I was eating."
I stood. My napkin fell to the floor.
"So what?" one of the waiters asked.
The Jesuit rose from his seat explosively. "So what?" he asked. "How would you like to have a river of sewage blown into your face?"
As they stepped back, I stepped forward.
"This satanic substance," the Jesuit boomed, "was the ruin of Adam, the ruin of Eve, and has always been neither more nor less than the devil's lubricant. If I don't ask for this filth," he bellowed, "then by God, don't set it down before me!"
"Let me pay for his dinner!" I said, approaching the Jesuit, but my mouth was full, and no one understood me. I swallowed, nearly choking, and repeated myself.
"Why?" the owner asked.
"Because," I said slowly, "he's my brother."
***
Of course, he was not really my brother. I never had a brother. I was an only child, but you can have a brother in more ways than one, the most important being perhaps the feeling of having been thrown down by the same omnipotent force after having failed at achieving the same noble aim. We walked out into the night, thinking about the fight against a common enemy.
Although I did not know why, he was strikingly familiar and I had the sense that I had met him before.
"She put a cup of live coffee right in front of me," he said, still amazed. "I didn't ask for it. She said, 'Here's your coffee.'"
"They do that," I told him.
"I didn't actually throw it at her, I just shooed it off the table, like a snake, and she was standing in the way. I might have thrown it at her. The smell makes me violent.
"The whole world has been overtaken by that disgusting stuff," he continued. "It's like a virus from outer space, sent to enslave humanity not in chains but by beans. Did you know that at the zoo when they want hippos to vomit they stuff a handful of coffee grounds into their garage-mouths, and the hippos retch so hard they practically turn inside-out?"
"Yes, I know that," I answered. "Everyone knows that, but people forget."
"Coffee makes them think alike. They find it hard to imagine that someone actually might have the courage to say that it's immoral.
"You know," he offered, as we sat down on a concrete slab next to a loading platform, "there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well just kill yourself. The power of coffee is far too strong." He squinted at me. "Haven't we met?"
"I was thinking the same thing. Were you in the army?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Air Corps?"
"Railroad troops."
"Italy?"
"Northern France and Germany."
"Where did you do your officer's training?"
"In sergeant's school."
"Did you go to Harvard?" (He looked so very familiar.)
An expression of uncontrollable disgust seized his features. "Did you?"
"Yes. Class of Twenty-Six."
"Twenty-six what? Assholes?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I haven't met very many people from Harvard," he said, "but every single one that I have met is distinguished by one very brilliant thing."
"Brilliance is a prerequisite for admission," I mouthed.
"I didn't mean it that way."
"What, then, is the one brilliant thing that you think distinguishes them?"
"They think they're better than everyone else. And do you know what? They're barely distinguishable. And if they are, it's because they'r
e actually worse. Early on they get coated with a kind of intellectual gel, and, as they go through life, it turns to glass.
"Then their buck-toothed children go to Harvard, and they really think they're something special, but the cycles of breeding and posturing have emptied them into nothing. I hate people who went to Harvard even more than I hate other arrogant sons of bitches like fighter pilots and investment bankers."
"How do you do," I said, and introduced myself.
"How do you do, I'm Paolo Massina," he said. "It was nice to know you. I hope you keep up the good work with the coffee, but we were never meant to march side by side." He began to walk away from where we had been sitting.
I followed, speaking to him in Italian, but it was clear that he understood not a word of what I was saying. "You don't speak Italian," I said, suspiciously.
"So what?"
"Paolo Massina?"
"I changed my name because of my wife's parents. It was bad enough that I wasn't from Brooklyn. They would have died had their daughter become Angelica Smedjebakken."
He disappeared around a corner. I knew him. I knew that I knew him, but I just couldn't place him.
Slow defeat in seemingly inconsequential affairs is more painful than may at first be apparent, because nature does not compensate for a bank clerk's sneer as it does for, let us say, being hurled over Niagara Falls. No adrenaline comes to the fore when you place last in the office popularity polls (as I had begun to do, consistently), and mysticism cannot comfort you when your stocks go down steadily in a booming market or when you are bitten by a dog whose owner then reviles you and carries it off to get a tetanus shot. Day after day,' like someone with a vicious skin disease, I sank lower and lower in the esteem of my fellow men—every single one of whom, I might add, was a coffee drinker.