The way Ernest Hemingway has his narrator say it, it sounds as if Nick Adams and Sam the cook have more than one mouth each, which is absurd. Even cows, which have two stomachs, have only one mouth. If Ernest Hemingway had had his narrator say, “Nick Adams and Sam the cook had a towel tied in their mouth,” it would seem that Nick Adams and Sam the cook had only one mouth between them, which is equally absurd as each having more than one mouth. What Ernest Hemingway might have had his narrator say is “Nick Adams had a towel tied in his mouth, and Sam the cook had a towel tied in his mouth.” Although that construction is grammatically correct and perfectly clear, it doesn’t read as well as what Ernest Hemingway has his narrator say. Ernest Hemingway was no pedant.
In Ernest Hemingway’s story there’s no mention of the toilet where there well may be jack towels. Notice what Ernest Hemingway has his narrator leave out of his story. Almost surely Henry’s lunchroom would have a toilet, or rest room, as we euphemistically call it, perhaps two, one for Men, Georges, Jiggses, Steers, Buoys and one for Women, Marthas, Maggies, Heifers, Gulls. If there were two, there would be two roller towels, one for Nick Adams’ mouth and one for Sam the cook’s.
In most eating places people like Sam the cook and George the counterman, another character in the story, work eight hour shifts. Most human beings need to relieve themselves at least once within eight hours. Nowadays, too, most often a law requires a sit-down eating establishment to provide a rest room for its patrons. Whether such laws existed when Ernest Hemingway wrote “The Killers” I really can’t tell you. I suppose I could find out, but it wouldn’t be worth the effort. If most localities then did have such an ordinance, there’s no way of knowing whether the localities of Henry’s lunchroom was one of these.
As a matter of fact, there’s no way of knowing where Henry’s lunchroom is located. Reading the story, you have a sense you’re not in the Deep South or Southwest or up in the Rockies or out on the prairies. The atmosphere and what happens suggest the North. The way Al and Max put down the town Henry’s lunchroom is situated in lets you know it’s not in a metropolis.
The name of the town, we do know, is Summit. George the counterman tells Al or Max that when he asks what “they call” the town. It does seem strange that neither Al nor Max knows the name of the town they’ve been sent to in order to meet a certain person who is living there. You have to wonder how they found the place, even whether they’ve got the right town. It is possible that Al and Max really do know the name of the town even though they seem not to. Al and Max are actors, of a sort. Bad actors, you have to say.
That I know of there’s a Summit in New Jersey and a Summit in Illinois. There are probably a number of other Summits, as well. I believe the Summit in Illinois, being close to Chicago, a city known for gangsters during the time Ernest Hemingway wrote his story, is a likely locale. Since he came from Oak Park, which is only a few miles from Summit, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway should have a pretty good sense of what can plausibly go on there.
Actually, though, Ernest Hemingway used the name Summit not so you would look it up in an Atlas, as I have, and perhaps go there looking for Henry’s lunchroom. Or that you could find out whether there was a law in Summit at the time he wrote the story requiring sit-down eating places to provide toilets for its patrons. It seems likely that Ernest Hemingway, who often makes subtle suggestions and implications in his stories, decided to use the place name Summit because, referring to a topographical feature, as do Mountaintop, White Plains and Pleasant Valley, summit designates the highest point, the spot from which you can’t go on up as you climb the hills of the world. A character in Ernest Hemingway’s story named Ole Andreson has reached the highest point of his life, which is also the lowest, an irony of the sort Ernest Hemingway peppers his stories with. Al and Max have come to Summit to meet Ole Andreson, who is a Swede.
Except for one, I’m not going to tell you the names of the places where my story “B/Will/iam/ie and Al and Max and You and I” takes place. By the end you’ll know where you are. Maybe.
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Bill was expecting to be met by Al and Max. Having been met by them once, he didn’t relish the prospect. Another such meeting might well destroy his marriage and jeopardize his career as an architect. Through circumstances so unlikely it was most improbable they would fall out that way a second time, he’d been most fortunate to have survived relatively unscathed.
On that occasion he’d parked the Accord in the carport, picked up his attaché case from the seat, walked over to the stanchion, flicked the switch that turned on the bulb in the middle of the vinyl roof of the breezeway, taken two or three steps toward the door of the den. He’d been mulling over some problems in the Heather Hills project. Even if Denise and the suspicions he’d had of late had been at the front of his mind, it would never have occurred to him that someone might be crouching behind the arbor vitae planted between the carport and the breezeway.
Suddenly he felt an arm, Al’s or Max’s, go around his throat, smashing into his windpipe so he couldn’t cry out. A knee hit him hard in the back, between his kidneys. As a pair of fists, belonging to Max or Al, commenced punching his face, a voice hissed at him, “Fuck around with our pal’s wife, will ya.” Another voice croaked, “Know whad we’re gonna do? We’re gonna cut off yer prick and ram it down yer throat, thass whad we’re gonna do?”
Feeling himself falling backward onto the knee rammed into his spine, Bill in his terror snapped himself forward with such force that he broke loose from the stranglehold of Al or Max. Blindly swinging his attaché case, he went crashing into the body the fist belonged to, knocking either Max or Al over backward. Momentum projected Bill toward the house. All in a single motion he kicked Al or Max, stumblingly high-stepped over that sprawled body, then sprinted the five or so yards he was from the den, where he grabbed and turned the doorknob, fortunately unlocked, shoved open the door, lurched into the den, slammed the door closed, and threw the deadlock as he landed staggering inside. Half leaning, half slumped against the inside of the door, he felt his knees buckle. But he didn’t go down.
“That you, Bill?” Linda called from the kitchen at the other end of the ranch house. Sounding normal while he was in panic, his wife’s voice startled him.
“Uh huh,” he managed to get out between heaves of breath. Then, trying to sound casual, he added, “Be there in a minute, hon.”
Ear against the door, he listened. Heard nothing. Using the wall for support, he slid toward the picture window beside the entrance, poked half of his face beyond the drapery, and peeked out. Saw only the orange light in breezeway. Although he couldn’t find a car parked anywhere along Acacia Drive, he did hear an engine turn over not too far off, then roar, then fade. All at once he became aware that he was squeezing the handle of his attaché case so hard that his hand hurt. He relaxed his grip.
Still short-breathed enough to feel and hear the suck and blow of his lungs and sensing the pounding of his heart, he wobbled to the mirror hanging above the candle table on the other side of the doorway, then snapped on the lamp. The full realization of what having been met by Al and Max meant, unsatisfactory as it had to be for them, had begun settling weightily on him as he felt the subsidence of adrenaline. In the mirror his left eye showed redness and puffiness. No other mark that he could see. Immediately he decided he’d tell Linda he’d bumped into something. Not the proverbial door. Rather, the towel holder in the john of the Carstone and Dambrowski suite. Preoccupied by the Heather Hills project, he’d walked in without switching on the light.
In the three days since that meeting with Al and Max, Bill had not got in touch with Denise. Nor had she telephoned or left a message, in the code they’d devised, at his office. He wondered whether Curtis had confronted her and if so whether she’d confessed. Surely Curtis wouldn’t have hired a couple of thugs to work his wife over, no matter what. For not having been more wary, Bill cursed himself.
/> The time before last, while Denise was driving them to Laguna, a suspicion they were being followed had invaded his mind. A number of times he turned and looked behind. If Denise noticed the black Cadillac sedan in the rearview mirror, she didn’t say anything. When the Cadillac kept on as Denise swung into the motel, he dismissed his misgiving as jittery nerves.
Their next time, as he’d driven them toward a lodge on the far side of San Juan Capistrano, he’d picked up what he thought was the same Cadillac in the rearview mirror. Afterward, sitting on a private little balcony, sipping perfect Manhattans Denise had brought in a flask, he told her about his apprehensions. She expressed doubt that Curtis would do anything like hire an “eye,” he trusted her so. Besides, he had too much ego to be jealous. But Bill detected a whiff of alarm in her assurance. Because she hadn’t asked about their next rendezvous when he hadn’t asked her, he’d had to conclude she too was worried and thought it best to cool it for a spell.
Thinking back about Al and Max, as he found himself continually doing, Bill had told himself they weren’t the size you’d expect. Nor had they been adept at their business. Yet he doubted that Curtis would call them off. No matter that they’d bungled and would lie about the damage they’d inflicted, Curtis, seeing Bill on his feet next morning with only a mouse under his left eye, would want to work Bill’s nerves. In the office Bill accounted for the mouse by saying he’d been hit by the ball while playing squash, which he did every Wednesday evening. Only Curtis knew differently, and he was hardly in a position to acknowledge what he knew.
To avoid giving Linda, whom he did love, any reason to wonder and worry about what was going on and in the hope of finessing whatever might happen, Bill had rejected the possibility of involving the police. While he shrank at the thought that someone, maybe Bill himself, might end up a corpse if he were to start carrying a pistol, the next afternoon he found a sleazy pawnshop just off Pershing Square and paid outrageously for a pair of knuckle-dusters and a blackjack. If Linda or a passerby were to happen on some violence in the breezeway, he’d offer the speculation that Al and Max were a couple of muggers who’d wandered out of their territory. Then, if the police were brought into it, attempted mugging would be his story.
For two evenings now Bill had slipped the fingers of his left hand through the holes of the knuckle-dusters, then wrapped them over the brass before picking up his attaché case as he got out of the Accord in the carport. Awkward as it was to grasp the handle, he was ready to let go of it on the instant. Slamming the door behind him, he slipped the fingers of his right hand inside the strap of the blackjack lying in the pocket of his jacket and gripped the leather-covered shaft. Tight.
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By entitling his story in which Al and Max appear “The Killlers,” Ernest Hemingway was subtle and devious, two desirable qualities in politicians, lawyers, racketeers, and writers of stories. That title doesn’t give away that the story is mainly about Nick Adams, who at first as you’re reading you don’t even notice happens to be sitting at the counter in Henry’s lunchroom, where the story begins. That’s subtle.
The title “The Killers” leads, or I should say misleads you to believe the story is about a pair of bloodhounds named Al and Max, who come into Henry’s lunchroom just as the story starts. While they are very prominent in the first part of the story, which takes place in Henry’s lunchroom—and by the way, Henry never appears—they’re not in the second part at all, except in people’s minds. Where Al and Max go off to, the narrator of the story never tells us. Maybe even Ernest Hemingway doesn’t know. Or care.
On the other hand, though, since the writer can do whatever he wants with the characters in his story—including you in my story “B/Will/iam/ie and Al and Max and You and I,” as you’ll see later—he can be held responsible for what happens to them. Following this line of storytelling-thought, you might fairly conclude that Ernest Hemingway just disappears Al and Max, “disappears” like “meet” and “met by,” being a euphemism, which while anachronistic with regard to the time Ernest Hemingway wrote “The Killers,” you certainly understand. Ernest Hemingway can get away with disappearing Al and Max because in themselves Al and Max are not important in the story. Disappearing somebody is not what “The Killers” is about, unless you call Ernest Hemingway’s disappearing Al and Max eight-thirteenths of the way through the story the main event, so to speak. That would make the remaining five-thirteenths of the story an excrescence, which Ernest Hemingway, whose father was a surgeon, would surely have known to remove.
Al and Max find themselves in the town of Summit, which would seem to be off their beat, because they’ve been sent to meet someone who regularly eats in Henry’s lunchroom. The sending and the reason for it are not part of the story. The sending was done by a character or characters who live in Ernest Hemingway’s head. He chooses not to bring them out for anybody to see, which he has a perfect right not to do. You might look at it this way—what Ernest Hemingway didn’t put in his story “The Killers” makes what he did put in so interesting.
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Al and Max were always at William’s heels, dogging him. When he’d wheel around suddenly on the street, something he’d formed the habit of doing, he’d catch a glimpse of the black leather glove or black leather shoe of either Al or Max as he ducked into a doorway or behind a kiosk or into the entrance of the subway.
Every morning immediately after getting out of bed, before urinating, and each night after urinating just before climbing into bed and a number of times a day before leaving hisapartment and another half dozen after returning, William would look down from his fifth floor window. Al and Max would be standing on the sidewalk across the street staring up at him. Or pretending not to be staring at him. Or just starting to walk off as it they hadn’t stopped. Or walking by as if they weren’t about to stop. Sometimes he’d see a black Cadillac sedan standing in the NO PARKING zone in front of the entrance of his apartment building. William had no doubt who were inside.
At his desk at work William would open the door of his cubicle and peer out at the “gawks,” as to himself he called museum-goers, when Al and Max had stopped in front of or were walking away from the Kwakiutl totems across the corridor. Often he would spot them sauntering into the area, or loitering, or just leaving. Imagine, their pretending to have any interest in Kwakiutl totems!
When William ate lunch sitting at the counter in the narrow delicatessen, just a short walk from the museum, he would often pick up Al and Max in the mirror in front of him as they’d be sitting at a table against the wall behind him. All he’d be able to see were their profiles, because always they’d be pretending to be looking across the table at each other instead of watching his back on the stool. Sometimes, though, he’d catch them when they’d sneak a look at him in the mirror in which he was eyeing them.
If William were sitting at one of the tables against the wall, Al and Max, their backs hunched, would be perched on stools at the counter. They’d pretend to be sipping coffee. When he’d shoot a furtive glance at the mirror they were facing, he’d catch a glimpse of their eyes under the snapped-down brims of the homburgs they always kept on while inside the delicatessen. Al and Max never talked to each other.
When William rode the subway, Al and Max would enter the car he did through another door, then sit close to him behind newspapers they’d feign reading. In the theater where he’d be seeing a play or a film or hearing a concert or recital or taking in dance, Al and Max would be sitting a couple of rows behind him, across the aisle. How naïve did they imagine he was to think they could make him believe they had an interest in art, drama, film, music, dance?
In gentlemen’s rooms Al and Max would position themselves at urinals close to the one William was using. While pretending to be looking up at the ceiling or in front of themselves at the handle of the flusher or down at the business they were, or were not, doing, they’d eye him peripherally. If he would go into a
stall, not because he had to but to be out of view, they’d enter stalls on either side of him. If his were an end stall, either Al or Max would enter the one next to his and, as William emerged, Max or Al would be standing there as if waiting for the stall to be unoccupied.
While William was inside a stall, he was certain they were watching his feet beneath the door to see which way they were pointing. Afterward, they’d wash their hands at basin near the one he was using and would sneak glances at him in the mirror. If there were paper towels, they’d pull one out of the holder just after he did. If there were a blower, they’d dry their hands in the hot air it exhausted just after he had.
Sooner or later, William knew, Al and Max would come at him from the front. That time was approaching, William was more certain than ever, when, returning from work one evening, he unlocked the door to the foyer of his building to find Al and Max inside. They’d positioned themselves in front of the two elevator shafts. Both cars were waiting with their doors open. Al and Max weren’t entering either car.
Without breaking stride or glancing at them, William strode into the car to his right. As the door began to close itself, Al and Max gradually passed out of sight. Just before the door of his car had shut itself completely, William heard the door of the other car start to close. When his car arrived at the fifth floor, before the door could open itself, he held down the CLOSE button, then pushed the FOYER button. While the machinery beside him settle to a stop beside his. As his car began to descend, he heard the door of the other car opening itself.
When his car opened its door onto the foyer, William found himself face to face with a woman who obviously was waiting to enter. She had on a green cloth coat with a ratty looking fur collar and a purple cloche hat—in June! On a number of occasions since he’d moved into the building a little over a year before, when the woman and William had been riding up in the same car, she’d asked him to push button 7. On a number of occasions she’d already been on the descending car when it stopped at floor 5 to pick up William. She and he would ride to the foyer in silence. Ancient as she was, her face was made up startlingly, with thick white power, circles of crimson rouge, thick crimson lipstick, and violet eye shadow. Beneath the edge of her helmet-shaped hat, a fringe of gold-colored strings covered her forehead all the way to her penciled eyebrows. The woman waited for William to step from the car.