Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

“Carl?”

“Miss Whiting?” He did not take his eyes from the road.

“I expect you’ll think this is silly, but I wonder if you could take me anywhere else but to Worry. The nearer we get, and we’re so near now, the more unable I feel to cope.”

“I’ll go where you like, Miss Whiting, but there aren’t all that many places to go.”

“A restaurant, somewhere away from Amesville? You haven’t had dinner, have you?”

“No, Miss Whiting. But your folks will be expecting you.”

“My father’s in Chicago, and as to my brother and sister, I doubt that either of them has gone to any personal expense of energy on account of my arrival. I’ll simply phone and say that I stopped in Des Moines to do some shopping — it’s what Alethea would do — and that I’m not equal to driving on to Amesville till I’ve had dinner. Do you mind?”

“Whatever you say, Miss Whiting. I could do with a bite to eat, I guess.”

She studied his blunt profile in silence, marvelling at his impassivity, the quiet fixity of his driving, which could not, on these monotonous roads, require such unwavering attention.

As they were approaching a cloverleaf, he slowed, and asked, still without looking at her, “Somewhere quiet? There’s a pretty good Vietnamese restaurant over in Bewley. At least, that’s what they say.”

“I think, actually, I’d prefer somewhere noisy. And a steak. I’m starved for the taste of rare midwestern beef.”

He did, then, turn to look at her. His cheek dimpled with the inception of a smile, but whether it was a friendly smile, or only ironic, she couldn’t tell, for his sunglasses masked his eyes. In any case, they were not, she would have supposed, especially candid eyes.

“Aren’t there places people go,” she insisted, “up by the border? Especially on Saturday nights. This is Saturday night.”

“You’d need ID,” he said.

She took out a plastic packet of cards and handed them to Carl Mueller. There was a Social Security card, a driver’s license, a Reader’s Digest Subscription Library card, an Iowa Women’s Defense League Registration card, a card declaring her to be a tithing member of the Holy Blood Pentecostal Mission Church (with a laminated photo), and assorted charge cards, all of them identifying her as Beverley Whittaker, age 22, of 512 Willow Street, Mason City, Iowa.

The Elmore Roller-Rink Roadhouse combined wholesomeness and elegance in a manner archetypally midwestern. Under a glowing greenhouse ceiling lattices of pipes supported an aerial meadow of herbs and houseplants in hanging pots and tiers of terracotta planters. Beneath the greenery a great many antique kitchen tables of oak and pine (all tagged for sale, as were the plants) were grouped about an implausibly large dance floor. It really had been, long ago, a roller rink. Two couples were out on the floor dancing, with lively unspectacular competence, to the Chocolate Doughnut Polka. It was only seven o’clock: everyone else was eating dinner.

The food was wonderful. Boadicea had explained the exact nature of its superiority to anything they might have eaten in Switzerland, had explained it into the ground. Now, with dessert still to be chosen, she had to think of something else for them to talk about, since Carl seemed perfectly prepared to sit there and say nothing. Even with his sunglasses off, his face was unreadable, though handsome enough, considered simple as sculpture: the broad brow and blunt nose, the massive muscles of the neck tapering into the simple geometries of his crew cut, the emphatic carving of the lips, nostrils, and eyes, which yet, for all their distinctness, yielded no meanings of a psychological order. If he smiled, it was that mechanical sort of smile that suggested gears and pulleys. Clank, screek, snik, and then a little card emerges from the metal slot with the word SMILE on it. Sitting there, facing him across the little spray of bachelor buttons and petunias, she tried it herself — tightening the corner of her lips, and lifting them, notch by notch. But then, before he’d noticed, the pendulum swung back and she felt the sting of guilt. What right had she to expect Carl Mueller to be forthcoming with her? She was nothing to him but the boss’s daughter, and she’d taken every mean advantage of that position, commandeering his company as though he had no life or feelings of his own. And then blaming him!

“I’m sorry,” she said, with an utter sincerity of contrition.

Carl crinkled his brow. “For what?”

“For dragging you off like this. For taking up your time. I mean—” She pressed her fingers to the sides of her head just above the cheekbones, where the flux of various miseries was beginning to take the form of a monster headache. “I mean, I didn’t ask , did I, whether you had other plans for this evening?”

He produced one of his clockwork smiles. “That’s okay, Miss Whiting. I didn’t exactly plan on coming here to Elmore tonight, but what the hell. Like you say, the food’s great. You worried about your folks?”

“My feelings are pretty much the opposite of worry. I’m thoroughly pissed off with all of them.”

“That’s what I’d gathered. Of course, it’s none of my business, but I can say for a fact that your father didn’t have much choice whether or not to go to Chicago.”

“Oh yes, I learned long ago that business is business. And I don’t — I can’t — blame him. But Serjeant could have come. He is my brother.”

“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting—”

“Beverley,” she corrected. Earlier she’d made a game of making him call her by the name on her false ID.

“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting, because it didn’t seem my place to, but the reason your brother couldn’t come for you is that two weeks ago he got his license suspended for drunk driving. He was driving home from Elmore, as a matter of fact.”

“He could have come along with you then. So could Alethea.”

“Maybe they could. But I don’t think either of them cares that much for my company. Not that they’ve got any kind of grudge against me. But after all, I’m just one of the operations managers, not a friend of the family.” With which — and with, it seemed, no sense at all of its being a questionable act — he poured the last of the wine in the carafe into his own glass.

“If you want to take me home now, that’s all right.”

“Just relax, Miss Whiting.”

“Beverley.”

“Okay, Beverley.”

“There actually is a real Beverley Whittaker. She was in Switzerland, hiking. We met in a hospice about halfway up Mont Blanc. There was the most incredible lightning storm. Once you’ve seen lightning in the mountains, you can understand why the Greeks put their most important god in charge of it.”

Carl nodded gloomily.

She had to stop chattering, but the long silences, when they developed, panicked her equally.

Another couple had gone out on the dance floor, but just as they started dancing the music stopped. The silence enlarged.

She had a rule of thumb for such situations, and it was to take an interest in other people, since that was what they were interested in.

“And, uh, what are you in charge of?” she asked.

“Pardon?” But his eyes connected just long enough to let her see that he’d understood — and resented — the question.

Which, nevertheless, she must repeat. “You said you were an operations manager. Which operation do you manage?”

“Whatever has to do with the work crews. Recruitment and housing primarily. Transport, payroll, supervision.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a job that has to be done.”