The MacGuffin (6 page)

“Oh,” Druff said, “the little unassuming fella in the corner?”

“That one?”

“That
one.”

“Oh.”

“Curator of the art museum.”

“Really?”

“They’re cold. What you have to understand is I’m happily married thirty-six years. Nothing that happens between us is going to change that. You ought to know that going in. Want some more fries?”

“No thank you.”

“As it happens, I’ve just come from doing some shopping myself. Brooks Brothers? Oh, I suppose you get weary of hearing that after you’ve just told folks you’re a buyer for the major chains, but do I look like someone who’d lie about his haberdashery? Besides, it’s not sportswear I’ve been looking at anyway, it’s a suit. Not even your field.”

“Are you really the street commissioner?”

“Sure as Langello there’s the county coroner,” Druff told her, indicating the man Toober had placed at Druff’s table.

“He’s county coroner?”

“Like to meet him? Want to shake his hand?”

“I see no need,” Miss Glorio said, adding she’d never been much of a voter in the local elections and that if a suspicious transmission on her automobile hadn’t caused her to bring the car back to the dealer she’d never have discovered this restaurant or known it was a hangout for local politicians.

“Local elections, local politicians,” Druff said, “you make us all sound like the Great Gildersleeve. See Superintendent of Schools Carlin? No, over there. Right, that one. You wouldn’t think it to look at him but he’s in charge of a budget of over a hundred million dollars a year.”

She was trying to catch the bartender’s eye. Druff, a little belligerent, tendered one superbly inflected cough and the fellow came at once. He presented Druff the checks. She started to object but the City Commissioner of Streets overrode her and handed the man money for both their bills. He wouldn’t even let her get the tip, Druff said.

“Look…” she objected.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Fire Chief, Sewers and Mains, Chief of Police,” Druff said, taking her arm and indicating these various public servants as he nodded to them and steered Margaret Glorio toward the door. “Assemblyman, assemblyman, head of the zoo,” he said. “You may be an arbiter of taste, but these fellows are the knights and paladins.—Our town,” he said. He brought her to the curb where Dick, in his twin capacity of chauffeur and spy, was illegally parked in the limo, and waited while the man came out from behind his driver’s seat, touched his hand to his cap to the lady and held the door open for them, crisply shutting it when they were seated. “Women don’t usually go for a street commish,” Druff confided. “Nine times out of ten they’d rather have an alderman. Blunt,
visible
power’s the aphrodisiac in this trade.”

“I’d
rather have an alderman,” Miss Glorio said.

“There’s a cellular telephone in this limo,” Druff said. “Want to call the dealer, see what’s what with your transmission?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here. What do you
mean
you’re married, that I ought to know that going in? I’m not going in anywhere, you’re not sweeping anyone off her feet.”

“Look, I’ll show you.” He picked up the handset and called Time and Temperature. “It’s seventy-one degrees,” he reported to the woman, “it’s two-sixteen.” He proposed ringing it again and letting her hear for herself. “Boy that gives me a kick,” he said. “Look, I even have call waiting. I don’t care, I don’t think I’ll
ever
get over it. I’m old enough to be from a generation that still marveled that there were car radios. The clarity of long-distance calls astonished us. ‘Gee,’ we’d say to the people of our time one and two thousand miles across the country, ‘you sound like you’re right next door.’ But this is even better. We’re in a moving car, for goodness sake. I can call long-distance, I can call long-distance to someone in
another
moving car.”

“Why? What would you say?”

“I don’t know, that they sound like they’re right next door. It’s the idea of the thing. I don’t know, maybe I just have a lower awe threshold than the next guy, maybe that’s what keeps me feeling young,” lied the City Commissioner of Streets, who felt neither awe nor youth, who’d heard—and at once had registered—Margaret Glorio’s remark that he wasn’t sweeping anyone off her feet, and whose insistent, meaningless, imperturbable charm rolled off his tongue as casually as a campaign promise and who, by engaging her in conversation in the restaurant in the first place, and paying her check, and by saying outlandish things to her and practically hijacking her into his municipal limousine, had merely meant to keep the MacGuffins coming, though he realized, of course, that it was alien to the form to volunteer, even to intercede, that one didn’t go prancing after a fate or it wasn’t a fate anymore, only one more misplaced obsession. Still, the commissioner reasoned, adding his driver’s admission earlier that morning that the city was talking about transferring him (and Dick’s being there, in the outer office, standing in for the regular security guy, soaking up Druff’s interoffice communications with Mrs. Norman) and the man’s unaccustomed solicitousness (the chauffeur’s buttered bushwah about Druff’s Fourteen Points) to the coincidence of his son’s having kept company with the hit-and-run-over Su’ad, and the city’s and university’s nervousness about the incident, even the usurpation of his table at Toober’s (what had he been, fifteen minutes late? twenty?), even the restaurateur’s little hesitation step when Druff had offered to sit at the bar and even (though here, Druff had to admit, he was probably stretching) the treatment he’d received when he went to claim his suit, there was enough circumstantial affront to warrant Druff’s aroused suspicions. Well, worse cases had been made. Though, if only to be fair to the rest of them—to Toober, to Dick, to Mrs. Norman, to Hamilton Edgar, to his son and the unnamed co- conspirator hustling alterations at Brooks Brothers—didn’t Druff have to wonder that if a little mid-life crisis might not be entirely unwelcome, then how much more agreeably might a bit of actual, flat-out Sturm and endgame Drang strike his fancy? (And wasn’t this the true reason most guys didn’t hit their tragic stride until they were old?)

And just look who was still sitting there beside him. Who, despite her mild protestations and her delayed take about his being married notwithstanding, and all the usual disclaimers—he supposed usual, but what did he know, a guy on Inderal years?—and the fact of her size—the unswept feet remark, for example, might just as easily have been a simple physical observation as a boast or metaphor—had permitted him to guide her into his car anyway, even if, once she was there, she’d been unimpressed by all the mod cons and was apparently indifferent to his offer to let her use his car phone. Well, she’s a buyer for major department stores, Druff thought, a sophisticated lady, a woman on an expense account, a Frequent Flier.

“I know people,” Druff said, returning the phone to its housing, “who use these to call home and ask what’s for dinner.”

“Me too,” Miss Glorio said.

“Yes, well,” said Druff, discomfited, looking up to catch Dick, his spy, spying on them in the limo’s rearview mirror and covering for himself by grinning away like some hovering, hand-rubbing Dutch uncle in films, for all the world as if Dick were Druff’s senior and not the other way around, as if, thought age-innocent Druff, Dick were love’s advocate,
that
avuncular,
that
European. And suddenly remembered the force of his intimate augury in the restaurant. Then and there deciding to test it, willing to let their affair stand or fail on the accuracy of his presentiments.

“Say,” he said, “ask you a personal question?”

“Depends.”

“Depends. Fair enough. Depends.”

“What is it?”

“I was wondering,” Druff said. “How old are you?”

“I’m forty-four, I’ll be forty-five in three months.”

“Ah,” said Druff, and thought, as though their liaison were already assured, this is going to be a sea change made in heaven. And added, as though what was already assured were already over, “Where would you like us to drop you?”

Glorio referred him to the business card in his suit jacket and, when he pulled it out and held it at arm’s length to read, she reached over and took it away from him. She folded the card between her fingers, slipped it into her purse, leaned forward, and called out the address to Dick. “What,” the commissioner said, “I’m a little farsighted? Because I’m not twenty-twenty and have a granddad’s vision you’re cutting me loose?” He wasn’t daunted, didn’t think he sounded daunted. He was perfectly aware of how feeble he must appear to the woman, a buyer of men’s sportswear, a lady with a gift for inseam, pocket, crotch, detailing, who knew the demographics of taste, the secrets of fashion, what certain colors hid or enhanced, who took men’s weights and measures as easily as Barney or Tony the Tailor, was probably as knowing about their bodies as a nurse. He took his fragility in stride. He discounted it, discounted it for her, meant his remark about his eyesight to tell her as much, and was assured, moreover, by what he was about to offer her—his inspired proposition.

Dick, who knew the city at least as well as its Commissioner of Streets, who might, had he wished, have driven them through any of its ancient, gerrymandered neighborhoods without ever hitting a light or stop sign, seemed, old Cupid’s hand-wringing fuss-and-ditherer, to want to draw out the ride, to aim them at traffic, scenery, affable and smug as a hackman with newlyweds. Though they rode in silence, and the glass that separated the front of the limo from the back was shut, Druff felt covered in lap robes by the man, and he leaned forward and tapped on the window with his wedding band. “Step on it. Don’t spare the horses, please, Dick.”

“Oh, aye, Commissioner,” Dick said, and in minutes they were there. Then came around, opened the door for Druff’s lovely passenger. “Mademoiselle,” he said, inviting her into the world, a faint smarm on his middleman’s lips, and would have closed the door on his boss had not that frail, feeble old man pulled something out of his buried old alacrity reserves and reached the pavement at almost the same moment Miss Glorio did.

“Wait for me,” he told his chauffeur and grasped the lady’s arm, drawing her apart from the entrance to her office building. “Will you be my mistress?” he asked her suddenly.

“What? No, of course not. I don’t know you. You’re old, you’re crazy. You’re married, you’re not a sharp dresser. What do you mean, will I be your mistress? My share of that check came to just over five dollars. Tell me the truth, are you really a public servant? I mean I saw the seal on the side of that ridiculous car, but maybe that’s what people are into nowadays, renting police cars, fire trucks, limousines with official- looking seals. So yes or no, are you the street commissioner? Because if you are, I’ll tell you something, mister, it’s the decline and fall all over again.
No,
I won’t be your mistress! I never heard anything so nuts.” She was furious with him, not actually shouting, too furious for rage, and Druff took advantage of what was still a lull in the noise levels to ask his question a second time. “Do I look hard up?” she demanded. Druff turned and waved Dick back into the car. “Look, I’m no spring chicken, I admit it, but I’m probably twenty years
your
junior.”

“Fourteen,” Druff said.

“Fourteen, right. I stand corrected. Fourteen. How could you, how
could
you?
Do
I,
do
I?”

“Do you what?”

“Look hard up?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because I’m not. I do okay. I have a job that takes me all over the world. My passport has stamps in it from the four corners. I meet men. Even married men. Where do you get off? You don’t even know me. I certainly don’t know you.”

“Ah,” Druff said.

“What?”

“Just listen to what I’m suggesting. You
don’t
know me. I intend to do the right thing.”

“The right thing,” she said.

“Wait,” he said, “hear me out. Give a guy his day in court a minute. Hear me out. Didn’t I hear you out when you said I was old and crazy and that I’m just a little married nutso old slob who doesn’t know how to dress? Didn’t I listen patiently to your side of the story when you questioned my credentials as a civil servant and stuck an additional half dozen years onto my age and called an official, bona fide limousine of this city a ridiculous gimmick and accused me by veiled allusion of trying to buy you for an outlay of something less than six bucks? Well, didn’t I? Fair’s fair.”

“Fair’s certainly fair. You sure did.”

“All right,” he said, “here’s the story. I won’t try to kid you. I
am
old, I
am
married. And I
know
my clothes hang on me. Even expensive Brooks Brothers. To tell the truth, I dress above my station, and would probably look better in open hospital gowns than I do in street clothes, but I’m City Commissioner of Streets all right and the limo’s legit. That’s the absolute truth, a matter of public record. You could look it up.

“Listen,” Margaret Glorio said, checking her watch and edging toward the entrance of the office building, “this is ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Druff said. “I hope not. I hate looking foolish and haven’t much patience with loonies or even time to be silly. I’m not physically attractive but I’m not a particularly stupid man. I don’t look it, I know, but I’m something of a man’s man, actually. Men enjoy my company, I mean, and from what I understand that’s supposed to be a plus with the ladies.”

“You’re annoying me.”

“All right,” Druff said, “forget all that. You’re a busy person and none of this is part of my pitch anyway.”

“What
is
your pitch? I’m curious to know.”

“That you could do worse.”

“That I could do worse? That’s your pitch? That I could do worse?”

“Of course. Sure. You spelled most of this out yourself. I’m married. That protects you, you’re protected.”

“Oh, right,” Margaret Glorio said.

“Boy, you don’t know beans about blackmail, do you? Well,” he said, “call me old-fashioned, but I find that attractive in a woman.”