Buddy Keene minutes the recommendations from the committee and puts them in an orange envelope. He sets the orange envelope in a tray marked “Action Up” and moves on to sanitation and water. This is, if anything, more problematic than housing. I nod my way through it and wish I hadn’t come. The Lubitsch Project. Damn, damn, damn.
“How was it for you?” Buddy Keene asks, when it’s over and I can stop nodding.
“Fascinating, Buddy,” I tell him warmly. “Really great. I owe you.” And this is the right thing to say. Buddy Keene nods back. Service rendered, debt accepted, between guys who want to be Guys. The members of the committee make polite goodbyes and wish they’d seen me first.
I am shaking hands with Mae Milton when I hear a rustling behind me. An old man in a maroon V-neck is collecting the Action Up tray and putting an empty one in its place. I did not see him come in, and I realise now that there is a low concealed door, like a servant’s entrance in a country house, just behind the chairman’s place at the top of the table. Over his heart there is a narrow metal badge: “Robert Crabtree.”
“Hey,” says Mae Milton, “it’s the boss man!” She grins.
I look at him. Clearly, she’s making with the funny. Milton holds up a warning hand.
“Don’t be deceived. Mr. Crabtree is our secret master, right, Robert?”
Dark eyes rise slowly from his cart and peer at me from beneath heavy, folded lids.
“I just move the paper,” he says firmly. In the world of Mr. Crabtree, moving the paper is a trust. You don’t make jokes about the paper. On the other hand, Mae Milton is moderately charming, and even Robert Crabtree is not immune. She offers him a broad, genuine smile. It occurs to me that Mae Milton will not last long as a pencilneck if this is how she carries on.
“Mmph,” says Robert Crabtree. He moves the corners of his mouth a bit to indicate that he’s seen the smile, and wheels the cart around me. Mr. Crabtree has seen a hundred of my kind come and go. He is not impressed. By next year I will be promoted or fired. I will be erased or eulogised, and the only memory of my presence on this floor will be my initials carved into the back of a cubicle door in the executive women’s washroom. Fair enough. But Robert Crabtree is important. I don’t know how, but Mae Milton has shown me something significant, if I have the wit to grasp it.
I wave to her and wander after him. He makes no objection. I watch him walk the halls of Jorgmund with his cart, piling up orange envelopes. No one speaks to him. No one even really looks at him. He’s just there, cog in the machine. Finally he walks into a big round room with an expensive table in it. Some ferns (what is it with ferns?) make his passage to the head of the table more difficult, and he’s almost blocked by a display case with some high-echelon bric-a-brac inside.
“Senior Board room,” says Mr. Crabtree. He looks around as if seeing it for the first time. More likely it’s just the first time today. He sneers a bit at the bric-a-brac. Mr. Crabtree does not approve of fripperies. They get in the way of the paper. He dumps the whole cartload on the table, and lines the envelopes up so that they’re in piles, ready to go. Waiting for him is a smaller stack of yellow envelopes stamped “Forward to Core.” He takes them, and moves off down the corridor again. Maps and charts, Ronnie Cheung said in the dark outside K’s circus. Know your enemy. Follow the paper. I follow. Mr. Crabtree is my guide in a strange land. So, Robert, where are the maps and charts? Just curious, don’t want to be a bother.
“Pleased to meet you,” Robert Crabtree says, without looking up. I glance around. He is talking to me. He is saying goodbye.
We are coming to the edge of the building. At the end of this corridor there is a window looking out over Haviland City and a small, halfsize construction clinging to the side of the Jorgmund office. Robert Crabtree pushes his cart into a small service lift and turns to face me. There is only room for him.
“Core,” says Robert Crabtree flatly. The doors close.
I listen to the lift. It goes down a long way. Probably, it goes to the top floor of the other building, the one nudging up against Jorgmund. It might go to an office in this building which looks out over their roof. I stand at the end of the corridor, gazing out at the city, hoping no one sees me and thinks to ask why I am here. Ten minutes later the lift doors open again. Robert Crabtree emerges. His cart is covered in green envelopes marked “Execute.” He looks at me for a moment, wondering what the hell I am doing waiting around for him. He decides he doesn’t care.
“If you’re going to follow me like a bloody baa-lamb,” Robert Crabtree says abruptly, “you can put your hand on the front there, because otherwise the buggers fall off and get creased and there’s no end of bother.”
I hesitate. He takes my hand in his clumsy arthritic grasp, angry already, and settles it painfully hard on the front of the trolley. He wraps my fingers around the sharp-edged envelopes using his palm, because his own fingers don’t bend that well, and we make his round. We deliver thirty executive decisions. We are messengers of God, invisible, inevitable, ignored.
When we’re done, I go to the party to find Dick.
PINEMARTIN HILL is long and green. It is a genuine hill, quite a steep one, although the road runs along the side of it. Presumably part of the charm is having a view which tumbles away at your feet. The street lights are old-fashioned. There’s a big modern house on the left full of happy people having fun—a stilt house. My car pulls up by the topiary. It isn’t really my car; it was booked for someone else, but I stole it and its impassive chauffeur, and if the person it was booked for figures out what happened, he or she will almost certainly invite me to use it until I get settled in. The Brandon Club were so delighted to have my patronage that they gave me a free room for the night and a spa treatment, so I went to sleep for an hour while a matronly woman exfoliated me and talked about her family. Dressing, I chose the second shirt, the one softened in the mouth of a trained and perfumed albino hippopotamus and made entirely of pigeon’s wool, because it goes better with the shoes than the one stitched with baby hair. The cuffs gave me some trouble until I remembered that the button isn’t supposed to wrap your arm like an ordinary shirt, but to clasp the two parts of the sleeve together like a cuf link. Smooth.
The door to number one five four is open, and a lot of people are shrugging out of coats and shedding scarves. Jorgmund’s children—or maybe its myrmidons—do themselves well enough for clothes and rocks. I go in. The hallway curves round into a wide open living room with an alpine vibe, and, sure enough, beyond the garden terrace there’s a long drop to the ground. The decor features muted colours with lush, unmatched furniture, and low tables occupied by little bits and bobs of stuff like armadillo shells—used as olive bowls—or pufferfish skins with gilded spines, which have no discernible purpose and are very sharp. It’s a model of a home.
In any given situation there are myriad forms of attack. (Actually, there aren’t. A myriad is ten thousand in the Greek arithmetical system, which was based on their alphabet and made Archimedes’ life impossibly difficult. If he’d had decimals, he might have done remarkable things, and we’d all be driving flying cars and heating our bathwater with home fusion, or perhaps speaking Latin and living in the ashes of the Graeco-Roman Nuclear Winter; in any case, there are usually several ways of dealing with any given situation.) I could walk up to Dick Washburn and stick out my hand. Buddy Keene and Roy Massaman and Tom Link would all be there, and Dick would almost certainly have to take it. But I have worked hard to make Buddy & Co. think of me as a big fish, even a man-eating shark, and I might still need that. If I let them see me right next to Dick—if I walk up to him and shake his hand, Gonzo-style—reality will assert itself. I will be in direct conflict with Dick’s dominance, and he’s had longer to bruit it about and can actually back it up by firing people and buying expensive things. In a direct, mano-a-mano hard-form conflict, I will lose. By the criteria of Haviland City, Dick Washburn is infinitely bigger and meaner than I am.
I could
seek an introduction, but since I’ve given the impression that I already know Dick Washburn, that might confuse people and lead to the same unfortunate awakenings as option one. Fortunately, I am devious. The problem of how to say hi to a powerful, confident executive you have never met but whom you are supposed to know is a very difficult one. I have considered from all angles and decided that there is almost no way to do it which doesn’t make you look smaller than he does. Having this problem both sucks and blows. Thus, I have arranged for it to be Dick Washburn’s problem.
This is the room, from above. It is irregular but roughly oval. It is lined with tables and chairs for receiving. Later tonight it will be cool and dark, and smell of cigars and spilled mojitos. The carpet will hold the marks of a hundred pairs of elegant shoes, and the lead crystal glasses will carry traces of designer lipstick and executive DNA. The writing desk, pressed into service by the entrance to the breakfast room, will still have perfume on it, because the woman with the penetrating laugh is leaning all the way forward to adjust her interlocutor’s tie and (her mother taught her this when she was seventeen) she sprays scent into her cleavage before she goes out. Right now, though, the room is bustling and alive. If you speeded it up, you would see twisting patterns like clouds and pressure lines, and at the very centre of the biggest one is Richard Washburn, Esquire. His presence defines the play of forces in the room; the flutter of his wings causes tremors by the bar and tidal waves at the chaise longue in front of the patio doors. On most nights Richard Washburn is the eye of the storm. But today he is not alone. There is something wrong, a perturbation in the smooth carriage of his life. Another weather centre, a zone of high pressure, small but very hot, is moving across the shag-pile floor. Perhaps it’s a tornado. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a hurricane. Will it bounce off him, or swallow him up? Most likely it will swell his power, increase his domain, but it just might be a danger to him. Whatever, he cannot ignore it. Which is why he is, even now, moving through the throng towards me. He sticks out his hand and prepares to say hi in a big, dominant way.
And then Dick Washburn’s eyes widen. I can feel the change too; I know roughly what’s happened before I turn round. If my presence here is like a tropical storm closing in on Dick’s island paradise of warm weather and regular rainfall, this is like the arrival of Moses at the Red Sea. The flow of wind and water slows, then stops altogether. A momentous thing has happened. And behind me there is a strange, familiar noise. It is the sound of shoes with little metal cleats tapping on the wood boards of the hallway.
“Hi, Humbert,” Dickwash says a bit squeakily. “So glad you could come.” I wonder if Humbert Pestle has ever shown up to one of these soirées before. I wonder why he is here now. Maybe Dickwash is up for promotion. Maybe Humbert’s about to eat him alive.
“Richard,” Humbert Pestle says jovially, “I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. But I’m taking you away from your guest.” Not guests, plural, just me. Humbert Pestle sticks out a muscular hand. The other one (the possible prosthetic) is tucked, genial old-fart style, into his trouser pocket. This makes him uneven and a bit rumpled, but his clothes are so perfect (no doubt Royce Allen cut and stitched every bit himself, from the purest milk-washed brontosaurus foreskin) that he just looks terribly relaxed. Which he is.
“I’m Pestle, call me Humbert—”
I recognise the line from his briefing at Harrisburg, and give him the next bit: “Pestle like mortar . . .”
He stares for a moment then says, “Mortar like in a wall—”
“And ain’t that ever a regrettable name?”
Now I have Humbert Pestle’s full attention, and the power of his gaze, when he switches it on, is like a weight on my chest. There is absolute quiet, except for someone, somewhere in the room, who chooses this moment to finish a sentence with the words “ludicrous cocksucker!” and then goes very quiet and hides behind an urn. I’d feel sympathetic, but I’m busy exuding bonhomie and harmless, cheeky, up-and-coming pencilneckhood.
Dick Washburn changes colour a few times, and looks as if he may faint. I remember belatedly that Humbert Pestle is an Übermann, a major player. He probably doesn’t hear his own material parroted back at him, ever. Probably the last guy who did that is now a janitor, with only one eye, and speaks in a series of burps because Pestle-call-me-Humbert tore out his larynx. Breathe. Check the exits. Too much mouth too soon, and now it’s over. But Humbert Pestle lets out a huge bark of laughter and claps me on the back. “You’re damn right,” he says. “You are absolutely right.” His craggy eyes peer at me, sparkling.
“I need a drink, young Richard, so why don’t you show me to the bar? And then I need a proper introduction to this gentleman because he reminds me of a kid I used to know—with an awful name.” Still chuckling, he leads the pencilneck away as if this were his house and his party, and when he reaches the bar, with its tiled surround, his shoes make that weird little tink, tonk, which I take to mean Daniel Prang’s signature footware has shed its cleat, as Royce Allen told me it would.
“Balls of steel, man,” says Tom Link.
“Epic,” agrees Roy Massaman. They make that annoying sun-god worship gesture you used to see in movies about California, hands up in the air, bowing at the belly. I look away, hoping to see something I can pretend to find interesting and thus leave them behind. I am looking clear across into the garden, where Dick Washburn’s swimming pool is lit with dark pink underwater lights. I have never seen that before. Granted, I haven’t seen a private pool in twenty years either, but somehow I just assumed it was a natural law: pool lighting is plain, or blueish. The pool has deep purple shadows and looks like a venue for insane flirting and trysting rather than actual swimming. Doing your laps in it would be a bit prim, sort of like wearing an anorak to a toga party. The garden doors are—for the moment—closed, but there’s enough steam coming off the water that it’s apparently at a pretty good heat, and there are those elongated metal mushrooms with gas burners in them making it warm out there, so sooner or later, when the drink is flowing, the daring and the beautiful will presumably strip down and jump in. And at the very edge of the pool, on the far side from the house, is the ghostly figure of Dr. Andromas, sitting cross-legged on the diving board.
Just discovering him like that, in plain sight, scares the shit out of me. There’s nothing supernatural about his being here. He has come in over the wall. Presumably he has followed me here. And he’s on my side (or I’m on his, perhaps) but still, Dr. Andromas is just wrong. He is the most unnatural man I have ever met. Also, if he chooses to come in here and advertise our previous acquaintance, my best-laid plans will look a bit like chopped liver. No one else has noticed him yet (I can tell because there is no screaming) but the moment Sippy Roehunter decides it’s time to show the board members what she’s got, or Dan deLine gets a hankering to bare his musculature for the benefit of the Jorgmund Ladies’ Lacrosse Team, it will be hard for anyone to ignore a top-hatted H. G. Wells–looking lunatic sitting in the lotus position on the edge of Dick Washburn’s giant pink sex pool. I will him to disappear. It doesn’t work. I grind my teeth. This doesn’t help either.
“You okay?” Tom Link is concerned.
“I’m fine. New bite plate. Leaves me a bit rocky in the evenings.” Cosmetic dentistry excuse, all men together. Link nods. Damn those orthodontic torturers and their perfect smiles. Andromas appears to be fishing for imaginary fish. Or maybe real ones, who knows? But he’s using an imaginary rod.
Wallop. Something hits me between the shoulder blades. It’s about the size of a human hand, but it seems to be made of rock, and it is powered by some kind of pneumatic press. It doesn’t hurt, but it shocks me, and my muscles all freeze up.
“Hey there, stranger! Let’s talk turkey!” Humbert Pestle. I hope he really does want to talk turkey. If we’re going to roister now, if he’s got some line-up of corporate houris we need to check out while drinking some faux-frontiersman drink he got to like back in the day, he’s going t
o kill me. He’s about twice my weight and he spends way too much time in the executive gym. On the other hand, if he’s going to fall into the mystery of who is this bright young executive and why haven’t I seen his file, I may be able to find out where he and Dick Washburn fit into the screw-up which has become my life, and maybe what he intends for Gonzo, my idiot brother, progenitor, pal and would-be murderer.
“Let’s walk the parapet,” Humbert Pestle says, and then glances at Dick Washburn. “You do have a parapet, don’t you?”
“Only the terrace,” says Dick. And he points out to the pool, and Dr. Andromas. Everyone looks.
“Now that is a pool, Richard,” says Humbert Pestle after a moment. “Pink as hell.” I open one eye (apparently I had shut both at some point) and find that Andromas has gone. Of course. “Can we have the terrace a moment, Richard?” And Dick Washburn says of course, and it turns out there’s a magic button which makes the glass opaque. Very space age. Humbert Pestle makes a noise which might be “I haveta git me some o’ those fer mah own place” or it might be “Boys and their toys” and then points me out onto the terrace. We walk out. It’s cool, but warmer than I expected because the steam from the pool is hanging over the terrace.
“You made me laugh back there,” murmurs Humbert Pestle gently, “and that is a rare, rare thing. Now maybe that’s because I rule too much with a rod of iron or maybe it’s just I have a low sense of humour and so do you. But I don’t know your face, young sir, and so I have to ask you where you heard me say that before we get to the meat.”