The MacGuffin (27 page)

Those guys, he thought, Ham ‘n’ Eggs, Jerry Rector, the Dan guy, couldn’t have known I was coming.
I
couldn’t have known I was coming! I overslept. So much had happened. I woke up confused. I didn’t even know what day it was. I dressed for the office. Downstairs we had words. I stormed out of the house. I don’t go for walks, I don’t have routes. No one, no one ever, really set their watch by me. What’s the deal? I happened by. I just happened by. No one could know. How could anyone know? So life goes on, so character does, so we brush, floss and tune in to catch the news on the hour. So time marches on, tra la. So what’s the deal? So I didn’t know I even
had
a MacGuffin until yesterday. So I didn’t have spies or a girlfriend, either. There’s always the random. There’s always absentee ballots, late returns, and another county heard from. Things happen at sea while stars fall on Alabama. Who’s to say that isn’t a cooperation, a conspiracy of engaged, invisible gears? There’s chance, back channels and fucking farce. There’s this and there’s that—stuff going on all over the place, at all hours of the day and night, rough-hew them as we may. Why
shouldn’t
those boys have been waiting for me? She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes,
n’ est-ce pas?
So don’t tell
me
hold your horses, old fella. Yes, yes, I know. I appreciate the powers of paranoia. They are surely considerable. But before you go rushing off to find a shrink, consider, I’m a politician. Trained in the random, in the chance remark and glancing blows of everybody’s mouth news, in on all the late returns and other counties heard from, in absentee ballots and the planetary swing vote, in the graciousness of concession speeches lived through twice, once on the phone from my hotel, then in the ballroom. Trained, when it comes down, in the thick skin of the professional politician, his water-off-a-duck’s-back bathing habits and almost Christian bygones-be- bygones vision. So, sure, I’d have spies. Of course I’ll have enemies. An odds-on favorite, for God’s sake, a hell of a bunch more likely to have a MacGuffin of my own than that there’d ever be, now I see its tight weave and, to judge by the Chinese water torture it’d probably have to put up with in here, the colorfast qualities of its terrific, mysterious dyes, its rich fringe and intricate design and peculiar shape, what is almost surely a Muslim prayer rug right in the rabbi’s crapper!

So coincidence?
Coincidence?
You tell
me,
what’s more outrageous, that someone like myself should go along, la de da, minding what he’s still got left for business in what he’s still got left for life, doing, dum dum de dum dum, his job, suddenly stumbling over conditions’ cooked books, or that, as anyone with an ounce of sense will tell you, it’s in the nature of books to be cooked, the nature, Christ, maybe even the
duty,
like evolution or natural selection, for people to wear themselves down and wear themselves down to a point where they have an actual edge, some in-tooth-and-claw arrangement which not only enables them to pull the shit they pull but actually drives them to do it! What’s more outrageous, eh? That I should step in a mess in the street or that so many messes should be left in the street that I can’t help but step in one?

“Oh, Su’ad, oh oh! Su’ad, Su’ad oh,” conjured and softly moaned the City Commissioner of Streets, as unready and ill-prepared to step out of the holy sanctuary crapper as when he’d first stepped into it.

But determinations had been made.

He let himself out of the toilet. (Thinking precisely that way now—as one who “let himself out” of things, leaving bathrooms as you’d slip ropes, negotiating ordinary rooms as if they were obstacle courses, some land-mined aspect to the scenery, some
scenery
aspect to the scenery!), thinking of his life as having a “look” to it now, all the authentic fine detailing of a movie set, his clothes, Dan’s, Rector’s, Ham ‘n’ Eggs’, even the colored shammes’s, as real and up-to-date as on the first day of principal photography. It was, all of it, faithful to Druffs times and circumstances, everything
le dernier cri,
organized, arranged as an illusion of environment in a zoo, Druff preserved in the perfect poisoned amber of his ambience.

All right then, he had thought, upon unlocking the door to the W.C. and peering cautiously out.
Action?

He moved to the desk and tapped Margaret Glorio’s number, which he had called only once before but hadn’t forgotten, into the phone. She picked up on the first ring.

“Margaret, darling, it’s Bob Druff. I have to talk fast because under certain circumstances a fellow in my position not only has to be on his toes at all times but has to have eyes practically in the back of his head. Without going into detail, suffice it to say this may be one of them.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to tell you I haven’t forgotten last night.”

“For a man your age you’ve a remarkable memory.”

“Ha ha, Margaret darling.”

“Where are you calling from? Are you calling from home?”

What was left of the decent man in him told him there was no harm in the question, but the fellow straining tiptoe with his eyes practically in the back of his head warned otherwise. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right.”

“I’m glad your wife gave you my message.”

“My wife?” Druff said, alarmed. “No no, my wife and son were out when I got back from my errands. We didn’t have an opportunity to speak. Er, what, um,” asked the City Commissioner of Streets,
“was
your message, Margaret dear?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you have crabs?”

“That was your message? You said I had crabs?”

“You don’t think she has a right to know?”

“Ha ha, Margaret Glorio, you had me going there for a minute. That’s probably one of the reasons I like you so much, you playful devil scamp, you. You didn’t even call my house, I betcha. Well well.”

“Look,” Margaret Glorio said, “I’m expecting a call. You said you’d make this fast.”

“You’re expecting a call? There’s someone else?” said Druff with great feeling. The City Commissioner of Streets was astonished. If he sounded even half as melodramatic to her as he did to himself he must indeed have seemed the fool. It was because she’d picked up on the first ring. Well, he’d been there, hadn’t he? Had seen all there was to see of her studio apartment, its cunning furniture and unusual lamps, all that experimental decor, her buyer’s bold environment, the strange matte finish of the furniture, of the walls and carpets, the drapes and slipcovers, the designer telephone on the designer table of exotic wood. He’d been there, knew she’d have to have been sitting with the phone practically in her lap to have answered so quickly. Was that kind of anticipation ever
not
love-related on a day not part of the workweek? “Not, I mean, that you haven’t every right, of course. Of course you have. Certainly. Hey, I don’t own you. What makes me think I
own
you? I don’t own
anybody.
I’m not some jerk who has it in his head that just because he sends a girl a bucket of flowers on the night of the big dance or shares a crown rack with her, that that gives him some right—Maybe the guy whose call you’re waiting for thinks that way, maybe
he
feels he owns a piece of you, but not me. I’m just a lowly public servant. Where would I ever get off?

“No no, I’m just calling to pass the time of day. As I might with any close personal friend I don’t particularly own. Hell no. You’re free, white and twenty-one, as we used to say in the old days. I just called because I promised I would after our one night of love, and to shoot the shit.”

“Well,” Margaret said, “it was good hearing from you.”

“Well,” said the City Commissioner of Streets, at a loss. “Look,” he said, “I know I caught you at a bad time. I just wanted to tell you what a swell time I had last night, and how much I admired your pad, how you fixed it up.”

“My ‘pad’?”

“Did I misspeak? You think I’m talking above my station, age-wise? No no, you misunderstand. I meant it as a compliment. You’ve your whole life ahead of you, young lady. You go call real estate whatever you please. But hey, I’m the old-timer in the outfit, what do I know? You don’t like ‘pad’? Showplace, then. How much I admired your showplace.”

“Thanks,” Margaret Glorio said, “I hope next time you see it you still like it.”

“Next time I see it,” Druff said. “Hubba hubba.”

“ ‘Hubba hubba,’ ” Miss Glorio said. “Where do you get this stuff?”

“Me? This stuff? I’m a gentleman of the old school. I speak a sort of gabardine, like a man in a hat.”

“I don’t exactly understand why,” she told him, “but it’s kind of cute. Charming.”

“Like your lovely pad.”

“What’s with you, Commissioner? Why do you keep bringing the conversation around to my apartment? What are you enamored of, me, or the fact I’m convenient to the good schools, churches, transportation, water and shopping? It’s my
business
to have nice things.”

“That’s right,” said the man with the MacGuffin. “I forgot. You’re this buyer, you have important contacts with wholesale. You get the urge, you call you want the furniture moved, and interior designers do you for nothing. You don’t lift a finger.”

“More or less.”

“Boy oh boy,” he said, “what perks! Oh, hey,” he said, “would that go even for Oriental rugs?”

“Oriental rugs?”

Because he was trying to remember if he’d seen one last night. A little like the rabbi’s, bigger than a throw rug, smaller than a flying carpet.

“What are you—”

“I’ll get back to you,” Druff said.

“Hey there!” said Jerry Rector.

“Will we see each other again?” Miss Glorio asked.

“I’ll get back to you. No, really. I will,” he said, and replaced the telephone.

“An offer is on the table here,” Dan said.

“Are you giving me to understand I can’t leave? That I haven’t your permission?”

“No, of course not,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said.

“What, are you kidding us, you big lug?” said Jerry Rector.

“Jerry’s right,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs told him. “Aren’t I the party who warned against conducting business on the Sabbath?”

“Ham’s got something there, bub,” Jerry Rector said. “There are certain things that just aren’t done.”

“Which reminds me,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs, switching sides, “there are psychiatrists in this town who’ll write you prescriptions for dinette sets, bedroom suites, expensive cars.”

“For custom-made suits,” said Jerry Rector. “Bespoke trousers of cavalry twill.”

“For ’round-the-world cruises,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said. “You take it to your travel agent to be filled. She sells you a ticket, and you just take it off your taxes.”

“There are bugged confessionals,” Dan said, joining in. “Certain priests will sell you tapes.”

“And lawyers,” said Ham, “who go into the tank for the sake of the look on their clients’ faces when the jury counts them out.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, “they love that look.”

“Will you listen to us? We’re giving a City Commissioner of Streets civics lessons.”

“What you can get away with,” Ham said. “What the traffic will bear. Testing the limits. Pushing the envelope. When there are no more frontiers, you make them up. You strive, you stretch, you reach for the stars.”

“I heard him say ‘rugs,’ ” Dan said. “I distinctly did. Clear as a bell. He could have been in the next room.”

“He
was
in the next room, silly. That’s when we walked in on him.”

“But I can leave,” Druff said, just checking. “I’m free to go.”

“Dan,” Jerry Rector said, “there’s still an offer on the table.”

“Table it,” Dan said generously.

“Where’s his hat? Did he have a hat? Did you have a hat?”

“No.” (Feeling humiliated now, glad his girlfriend wasn’t there to see this, glad Rose Helen wasn’t, Mikey, Dick the Spy, Doug the Passive- Aggressive, his cronies and cohorts, the loyal opposition. More than a little downcast, in fact, to be himself on the scene. Well, he was outgunned. Three against one. Four, if you counted the black beadle with his keys to the closets where the brooms were buried, the mops and pails and wringers. Wondering where his powers had fled, the old MacGuffin confidence, backed, he would have thought, by just ages of tradition. Or perhaps
his
MacGuffin was merely magical, of the self-limiting kind, subject to conditions, stipulations, 5/50 arrangements like a warranty on a car. Subject, that is, to a commitment never to abuse the privilege of just
having
a MacGuffin, honoring his obligations to it, holding up his end. Maybe he wasn’t worthy of one. Maybe he wasn’t noble enough. Maybe Miss Glorio was a test he had failed. Having sweet truck with her not only a betrayal of his wife but, in a way, advantage taken of one already on her uppers physically, a little old lady practically, hoary-haired, a woman who almost couldn’t
keep
a battery in her hearing aids, of recent oddball speech patterns and edgy, jumpy attitudes and with a touch, too, of this just perceptible chronic limp. So a question of honor, finally, a matter of morals, of having—quite literally—been found wanting.

(But whatever. His courage was gone. He felt the absence of his breezy insouciance, the wisecracks and eloquent sort of gabardine he’d claimed to speak—and that they spoke better than he did. The universal language of toughs: “Where’s his hat? Did he have a hat? Did you have a hat?” Well, he wasn’t surprised. “No,” he had told them. They’d taken it from him. Ball in their court now, hat on their head.)

So what was he supposed to do with the leftovers? (That’s about what he asked himself now, that’s how he felt, as if he’d completely overestimated the appetites of guests at a party.) What
was
he to do with the leftovers, the leads and clues and flashy circumstantials, if he’d come to the part where his energy flagged?

Ol’ Bob Druff. Livin’ the Tammany life now. Routine, laid back, MacGuffinless. Yet what a way he’d come!

Here it ain’t been but a day, he thought, since he’d first surmised the MacGuffin and just
look
where it had taken him. His first tentative suspicion confirmed, connected to his second tentative suspicion, that one to a third and that to a fourth and so on. By God, he might have been hooking a rug! Because everything was linked, everything. If he had a sidekick (just about all that was missing here) he would tell him so. Begin with an initial observation. Make an observation, would tell him, any observation, any observation at all. Like one guy leading another through a card trick. Everything inevitable and conjoined in the vast, limitless network of things, merged in the world’s absolute ecology. There was, it seemed, no such thing as a loose end. Not in this life, there wasn’t. The universal synergy. In the end, thought our City Commissioner of Streets,
all
roads led.