Ричард Стерн - The Tower

God, he thought, if only we could take on their problems, their pain. But, of course, we can’t. “You sound just like a nagging wife,” he said.

Patty’s eyes were very bright, too bright. “And you,

Daddy, sound—” She stopped. Tears appeared. She got Kleenex out of her purse and swabbed viciously. “Oh, damn!” she said. “Damn, damn, damn! I wasn’t going to cry!”

“Sometimes,” McGraw said, “it’s that or break something. I’ll order for you, honey.”

Zib took a cab from the restaurant back to the magazine. In her office she plumped down in her chair, kicked off her shoes, and ignoring the pile of manuscripts on her desk, stared unseeing at the wall.

She did not for a moment really believe what Paul Simmons had said about Nat: that he was a character out of the Wild West she would do well not to push too far. She had her own view of Nat.

On the other hand, how well did she really know her husband? How well could anyone know another? The question recurred constantly in the fiction she had to read, and there just might be something to it after all.

She had lived in married intimacy with Nat for almost three years now, and while that wasn’t long as some marriages went, it was certainly long enough to develop familiarity with at least the man’s approach to the more common daily activities, and were not these indicative of basic character traits?

Nat emptied his pockets carefully each night and hung up all of his clothes. He put trees in his shoes. He squeezed the toothpaste tube from the bottom instead of the top, and Zib was convinced that he counted silently to himself as he brushed his teeth for exactly thirty seconds, or was it forty-five? One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee …

Zib was a restless sleeper. Nat, on the other hand, settled himself on his back and did not stir. Nor did he snore. And although he was not one to sing in his morning shower or otherwise behave in a manner abominably ebullient so early in the day, he was cheerful over fruit juice, egg, and coffee, and in the preparing of them never seemed to have things go perversely, maddeningly wrong.

His morning run in the park and his walks to and from the office plus a regimen of daily floor exercises kept him in splendid physical condition. The running and the walking Zib supposed she would in any case have been able to bear, but the floor exercises would have been just too much if Nat had not explained that they were necessary because of an old spine injury sustained when he was thrown from a horse on some monster mountain out in the West.

He was even-tempered and did not swear at waiters or cab drivers. He was punctual. He preferred bourbon to martinis, which at first had seemed odd, but now seemed quite ordinary. He looked with approval and an artist’s eye at pretty women, but Zib would have wagered heavily that looking was as far as it went. Their own sex life, was pleasant, varied, and without the compulsions some seemed to have these days.

Where in all that, was the character Paul Simmons pictured?

And why was she so suddenly concerned anyway? Could she actually imagine Nat in the outraged-husband role, confronting her with the fact of her infidelity and, if Paul wen to be believed, taking some kind of retaliatory action? The kind of thing that turned up in the Daily News or, for that matter, in probably half a dozen of the manuscripts sitting right here on her desk? Nonsense.

If then was one quality Nat lacked, it was aggressiveness. She remembered talking about that lack one night. She had said, “You’re better than you think you are. Ben Caldwell knows it. Why else would he have pushed you along the way he has?”

“Nobody else around.” Nat smiled. “Next question?’* “That,” Zib said, “is one of the most annoying things about you. You won’t be drawn. You know, I’ve never seen you lose your cool.”

“It happens sometimes.”

“I don’t believe it.” And then, groping for words to clothe the idea, “Respect,” she said. “That’s the thing that counts.”

“Important,” Nat said. “Agreed. So?”

“How can you respect somebody who doesn’t have even a trace of bastard in him?”

Calmly, “Or bitch?”

“Right.”

“Would you rather I had temper tantrums? Threw things?”

“That isn’t what I mean. But in this world either you push or you get walked on, don’t you see that?”

“It’s a big-city attitude.”

“This is a big city.” She paused. “Why did you ever come here?”

“Because I don’t belong, you mean?”

“That isn’t what I mean and you know it. All I’m asking is why you came here in the first place.”

“To find you.”

“Be serious.”

“All right.” Nat was smiling again. “Because Ben Caldwell was here, and I wanted to work with, work under the best. Simple as that.”

“And you have.” Zib nodded. “When the World Tower is all finished, wrapped up, just another big building, then what?” She hesitated. “Back to your mountains?”

“Possibly. Probably. Will you come with me?”

“I’d be out of place. As much—” She stopped.

“As much as I am here?” He shook his head, smiling again. “You will fit wherever you are. You’re a social creature.”

“And you?”

Nat shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder,” he said.

No trace of temper, Zib thought now; never a trace of temper showing. Oh, not emotionless; not that. With her he could be a passionate man, lover. But other times, in ways Paul Simmons had hinted? No way. Paul was wrong. That was all there was to it

Then why the small nagging doubt? Answer me that, Elizabeth.

Bert McGraw was back in his office after lunch, and Paul Simmons, clearly uncomfortable, sat low in one of the leather visitor’s chairs. The old man, Paul thought, was like a bear with a sore paw, and it behooved him to tread warily. He looked at his watch. “One-thirty,” he said, “on the dot.” He paused and, daring, added, “As specified.”

“I had lunch with Patty,” McGraw said. He had himself under control, but how long the temptation to hammer on his desk and shout could be restrained he had no idea.

“I was busy for lunch,” Paul said. Along with his chameleon abilities went an actor’s voice. “Business is good.”

“Is it now?” Deliberately the old man picked up the manila envelope of change-authorization copies, looked at it, and then, with a sudden flipping motion, scaled it to land accurately in Paul’s lap. “Have a look,” McGraw said, and heaved himself out of his chair to walk to the windows, his back to the room.

In the big office only the faint whispering of the papers in Paul’s hands disturbed the silence. Paul said at last, “So?”

McGraw turned from the windows. He stood square, his hands behind his back. “Is that all you have to say?”

“I don’t understand. What else is there to say?”

“Did you make those changes?”

“But of course.”

“Why of course ?” The old man’s voice was rising.

Paul scratched an eyebrow. “I don’t know what to say. Why wouldn’t I make the changes?”

“Because,” McGraw said, “you’re not some dumb working stiff. If somebody says, ‘Do this,’ you don’t just do it without question. You—” McGraw stopped. “Say it,” he said, “whatever it is.”

Simmons’s voice had taken on a faint edge. “I’ll try not to make it irreverent,” he said, “because you don’t like that.”

“Say it however you goddam well please.” The old man was back in his big chair, holding tight to the arms.

“All right,” Paul said. “It goes like this. Most times if somebody says, ‘Change this,’ I want reasons. But when Jesus Christ Ben Caldwell or his anointed disciple Nat Wilson give me the Word, then I tug at my forelock and say, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ and the change is made. Not for me to question why. Does that answer the question?”