The 40s: The Story of a Decade (108 page)

“Well, those things happen,” said the rich man.

Simmons cut into his beefsteak. He held his fork prongs downward on the plate and carefully piled on mushrooms with the blade of his knife. “He’s crazy,” he repeated. “He gives me the creeps.”

All the tables in the dining room were occupied. There was a party at the banquet table in the centre, and green-white August moths had found their way in from the night and fluttered about the clear candle flames. Two girls wearing flannel slacks and blazers walked arm in arm across the room into the bar. From the main street outside came the echoes of holiday hysteria.

“They claim that in August Saratoga is the wealthiest town per capita in the world.” Sylvester turned to the rich man. “What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the rich man. “It may very well be so.”

Daintily, Simmons wiped his greasy mouth with the tip of his forefinger. “How about Hollywood? And Wall Street—”

“Wait,” said Sylvester. “He’s decided to come over here.”

The jockey had left the wall and was approaching the table in the corner. He walked with a prim strut, swinging out his legs in a half-circle with each step, his heels biting smartly into the red velvet carpet on the floor. On the way over he brushed against the elbow of a fat woman in white satin at the banquet table; he stepped back and bowed with dandified courtesy, his eyes quite closed. When he had crossed the room he drew up a chair and sat at a corner of the table, between Sylvester and the rich man, without a nod of greeting or a change in his set, gray face.

“Had dinner?” Sylvester asked.

“Some people might call it that.” The jockey’s voice was high, bitter, clear.

Sylvester put his knife and fork down carefully on his plate. The rich man shifted his position, turning sidewise in his chair and crossing his legs. He was dressed in twill riding pants, unpolished boots, and a shabby brown jacket—this was his outfit day and night in the racing season, although he was never seen on a horse. Simmons went on with his dinner.

“Like a spot of seltzer water?” asked Sylvester. “Or something like that?”

The jockey didn’t answer. He drew a gold cigarette case from his pocket and snapped it open. Inside were a few cigarettes and a tiny gold penknife. He used the knife to cut a cigarette in half. When he had lighted his smoke he held up his hand to a waiter passing by the table. “Kentucky bourbon, please.”

“Now, listen, Kid,” said Sylvester.

“Don’t Kid me.”

“Be reasonable. You know you got to behave reasonable.”

The jockey drew up the left corner of his mouth in a stiff jeer. His eyes lowered to the food spread out on the table, but instantly he looked up again. Before the rich man was a fish casserole, baked in a cream sauce and garnished with parsley. Sylvester had ordered eggs Benedict. There was asparagus, fresh buttered corn, and a side dish of wet black olives. A plate of French-fried potatoes was in the corner of the table before the jockey. He didn’t look at the food again, but kept his pinched eyes on the
centrepiece of full-blown lavender roses. “I don’t suppose you remember a certain person by the name of McGuire,” he said.

“Now, listen,” said Sylvester.

The waiter brought the whiskey, and the jockey sat fondling the glass with his small, strong, callused hands. On his wrist was a gold link bracelet that clinked against the table edge. After turning the glass between his palms, the jockey suddenly drank the whiskey neat in two hard swallows. He set down the glass sharply. “No, I don’t suppose your memory is that long and extensive,” he said.

“Sure enough, Bitsy,” said Sylvester. “What makes you act like this? You hear from the kid today?”

“I received a letter,” the jockey said. “The certain person we were speaking about was taken out from the cast on Wednesday. One leg is two inches shorter than the other one. That’s all.”

Sylvester clucked his tongue and shook his head. “I realize how you feel.”

“Do you?” The jockey was looking at the dishes on the table. His gaze passed from the fish casserole to the corn, and finally fixed on the plate of fried potatoes. His face tightened and quickly he looked up again. A rose shattered and he picked up one of the petals, bruised it between his thumb and forefinger, and put it in his mouth.

“Well, those things happen,” said the rich man.

The trainer and the bookie had finished eating, but there was food left on the serving dishes before their plates. The rich man dipped his buttery fingers in his water glass and wiped them with his napkin.

“Well,” said the jockey. “Doesn’t somebody want me to pass them something? Or maybe perhaps you desire to reorder. Another hunk of beefsteak, gentlemen, or—”

“Please,” said Sylvester. “Be reasonable. Why don’t you go on upstairs?”

“Yes, why don’t I?” the jockey said.

His prim voice had risen higher and there was about it the sharp whine of hysteria.

“Why don’t I go up to my god-damn room and walk around and write some letters and go to bed like a good boy? Why don’t I just—” He pushed his chair back and got up. “Oh, foo,” he said. “Foo to you. I want a drink.”

“All I can say is it’s your funeral,” said Sylvester. “You know what it does to you. You know well enough.”

· · ·

The jockey crossed the dining room and went into the bar. He ordered a Manhattan, and Sylvester watched him stand with his heels pressed tight together, his body hard as a lead soldier’s, holding his little finger out from the cocktail glass and sipping the drink slowly.

“He’s crazy,” said Simmons. “Like I said.”

Sylvester turned to the rich man. “If he eats a lamb chop, you can see the shape of it in his stomach a hour afterward. He can’t sweat things out of him any more. He’s a hundred and twelve and a half. He’s gained three pounds since we left Miami.”

“A jockey shouldn’t drink,” said the rich man.

“The food don’t satisfy him like it used to and he can’t sweat it out. If he eats a lamb chop, you can watch it tooching out in his stomach and it don’t go down.”

The jockey finished his Manhattan. He swallowed, crushed the cherry in the bottom of the glass with his thumb, then pushed the glass away from him. The two girls in blazers were standing at his left, their faces turned toward each other, and at the other end of the bar two touts had started an argument about which was the highest mountain in the world. Everyone was with somebody else; there was no other person drinking alone that night. The jockey paid with a brand-new fifty-dollar bill and didn’t count the change.

He walked back to the dining room and to the table at which the three men were sitting, but he did not sit down. “No, I wouldn’t presume to think your memory is that extensive,” he said. He was so small that the edge of the table top reached almost to his belt, and when he gripped the corner with his wiry hands he didn’t have to stoop. “No, you’re too busy gobbling up dinners in dining rooms. You’re too—”

“Honestly,” begged Sylvester. “You got to behave reasonable.”

“Reasonable! Reasonable!” The jockey’s gray face quivered, then set in a mean, frozen grin. He shook the table so that the plates rattled, and for a moment it seemed that he would push it over. But suddenly he stopped. His hand reached out toward the plate nearest to him and deliberately he put a few of the French-fried potatoes in his mouth. He chewed slowly, his upper lip raised, then he turned and spat out the pulpy mouthful on the smooth red carpet which covered the floor. “Libertines,” he said, and his voice was thin and broken. He rolled the word in his mouth, as though it had a flavor and a substance that gratified him.
“You libertines,” he said again, and turned and walked with his rigid swagger out of the dining room.

Sylvester shrugged one of his loose, heavy shoulders. The rich man sopped up some water that had been spilled on the tablecloth, and they didn’t speak until the waiter came to clear away.

August 23, 1941

T
he car turned in at the brief, crescent-shaped drive and waited until the two cabs ahead had pulled away. The car pulled up, the doorman opened the rear door, a little man got out. The little man nodded pleasantly enough to the doorman and said “Wait” to the chauffeur. “Will the Under Secretary be here long?” asked the doorman.

“Why?” said the little man.

“Because if you were going to be here, sir, only a short while, I’d let your man leave the car here, at the head of the rank.”

“Leave it there
anyway
,” said the Under Secretary.

“Very good, sir,” said the doorman. He saluted and frowned only a little as he watched the Under Secretary enter the hotel. “Well,” the doorman said to himself, “it was a long time coming. It took him longer than most, but sooner or later all of them—” He opened the door of the next car, addressed a colonel and a major by their titles, and never did anything about the Under Secretary’s car, which pulled ahead and parked in the drive.

The Under Secretary was spoken to many times in his progress to the main dining room. One man said, “What’s your hurry, Joe?,” to which the Under Secretary smiled and nodded. He was called Mr. Secretary most often, in some cases easily, by the old Washington hands, but more frequently with that embarrassment which Americans feel in using titles. As he passed through the lobby, the Under Secretary himself addressed by their White House nicknames two gentlemen whom he had to acknowledge to be closer to The Boss. And, bustling all the while, he made his way to the dining room, which was already packed. At the entrance he stopped short and frowned. The man he was to meet, Charles Browning, was chatting, in French, very amiably with the maître d’hôtel.
Browning and the Under Secretary had been at Harvard at the same time.

The Under Secretary went up to him. “Sorry if I’m a little late,” he said, and held out his hand, at the same time looking at his pocket watch. “Not so very, though. How are you, Charles? Fred, you got my message?”

“Yes, sir,” said the maître d’hôtel. “I put you at a nice table all the way back to the right.” He meanwhile had wig-wagged a captain, who stood by to lead the Under Secretary and his guest to Table 12. “Nice to have seen you again, Mr. Browning. Hope you come see us again while you are in Washington. Always a pleasure, sir.”

“Always a pleasure, Fred,” said Browning. He turned to the Under Secretary. “Well, shall we?”

“Yeah, let’s sit down,” said the Under Secretary.

· · ·

The captain led the way, followed by the Under Secretary, walking slightly sideways. Browning, making one step to two of the Under Secretary’s, brought up the rear. When they were seated, the Under Secretary took the menu out of the captain’s hands. “Let’s order right away so I don’t have to look up and talk to those two son of a bitches. I guess you know which two I mean.” Browning looked from right to left, as anyone does on just sitting down in a restaurant. He nodded and said, “Yes, I think I know. You mean the senators.”

“That’s right,” said the Under Secretary. “I’m not gonna have a cocktail, but you can.… I’ll have the lobster. Peas. Shoestring potatoes.… You want a cocktail?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll take whatever you’re having.”

“O.K., waiter?” said the Under Secretary.

“Yes, sir,” said the captain, and went away.

“Well, Charles, I was pretty surprised to hear from you.”

“Yes,” Browning said, “I should imagine so, and by the way, I want to thank you for answering my letter so promptly. I know how rushed you fellows must be, and I thought, as I said in my letter, at your convenience.”

“Mm. Well, frankly, there wasn’t any use in putting you off. I mean till next week or two weeks from now or anything like that. I could just as easily see you today as a month from now. Maybe easier. I don’t know where I’ll be likely to be a month from now. In more ways than one. I
may be taking the Clipper to London, and then of course I may be out on my can! Coming to New York and asking
you
for a job. I take it that’s what you wanted to see me about.”

“Yes, and with hat in hand.”

“Oh, no. I can’t see you waiting with hat in hand, not for anybody. Not even for The Boss.”