Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Caesar glanced up. “You knew she had a son?” he said. “She had a son a little while later.”

“No,” Tom said. “I didn’t know that.”

“She’s got a boy,” Caesar said, “and things weren’t going well for them. You know Louis had a bad leg, and it’s given him a lot of trouble.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tom said.

“He was in the hospital for a long while trying to get that leg fixed and they lost the store.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tom repeated.

“Gina’s folks helped them out for a while,” Caesar said. “I don’t know how you feel about these things, Mr. Rath, but when I saw you, and found you were doing so well and all, I got to thinking about Maria and her boy, and I wondered whether you could do anything for them.”

Tom said nothing.

“Of course, I haven’t heard from them lately,” Caesar continued, “but if you wanted, I could find out about them — Gina’s mother could tell me easy. Maria is a cousin of Gina’s.”

Still Tom said nothing.

“What I mean is,” Caesar continued earnestly, “things are so much easier for us here than they are for them. Gina and I manage to send a little back every month. And I thought the way things worked out for you and Maria. ”

“I’ve got a wife here!” Tom said. “A wife and three kids!”

“I’m not trying to make any trouble for you,” Caesar said hastily.

“I just thought that if you had a little money you didn’t know what to do with. ”

“But. ” Tom began.

“I’m just trying to say it would be a blessing,” Caesar interrupted. “Anything you could do would be a blessing.”

“But I don’t even know whether Maria would want me to do anything!” Tom said. “Maybe Louis wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m not even sure Louis is still alive,” Caesar said. “The last I heard, he was pretty sick. And even if he is alive, it’s hard for a sick man to get work in Rome.”

“You don’t really know, though, do you? For all you know, they might be doing fine.”

“I haven’t heard for over a year,” Caesar said, “but I could find out.”

“You don’t understand,” Tom said. “I’m practically broke. And I never could send Maria much of anything without my wife finding out about it, and how could I ever expect her to understand a thing like that?”

“I’m not trying to make trouble for you,” Caesar said. “I just thought I’d talk to you about it. You ought to know that things are pretty tough back there.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Tom said. “I’d like to hear how they’re doing, but I can’t promise anything.”

“I’ll write a letter,” Caesar said. “It may take a little time to hear. ”

“All right!” Tom said. He was breathing hard. “Let’s not talk about it any more now. Let’s have something to eat.”

“Okay,” Caesar said.

Tom beckoned to the waiter, and they ordered hot Mexican chile con carne which burned their tongues. Hank Mahoney’s name was in Tom’s mind constantly, but Caesar never mentioned it. Maria was obviously his only concern.

An hour later Tom returned to his office, feeling exhausted. “Mr. Ogden called while you were gone,” his secretary said. “He asked you not to do anything more now.”

“What?” Tom asked.

“He said he’d just gotten your memo, and he wanted you to know right away that he doesn’t want you to talk about the mental-health committee with anybody. Not now, he said.”

“All right,” Tom replied. “Thank you.” He sat down at his desk and stared out the window. After a few moments he got up and went to the library. In spite of everything, it was necessary to succeed at his job, he thought — maybe it would be more necessary than ever now.

“HOW DID IT GO TODAY?” Betsy asked when she met him at the station that night.

“Fine,” Tom said, just as he always did. There’s no point in carrying your troubles home with you, somebody had said. You’re supposed to leave them in the office.

“There’s a man named Bugala coming to see you,” she said. “He’s a contractor. He spent all morning looking at the carriage house.”

“Bugala?” Tom asked. “He’s not one of the contractors I wrote to.”

“I don’t know about that,” she replied, “but he wants to see you. And he looks to me like a man who can get things done.”

When they got back to the house, Antonio Bugala was waiting, sitting in a battered Chevrolet pickup truck. He was stocky, dark-haired, and had once been told by a girl that he looked like pictures of Napoleon as a young man. This was a compliment he had never forgotten — he much preferred it to the dubious distinction conferred upon him by his nickname, which was “Buggy.” “Buggy” Bugala had been brought up in South Bay and for the past five years had been astonishing everyone by becoming almost as successful as he had always predicted. Already, at the age of twenty-eight, Bugala was a contractor with thirty-four men, including his father, on his payroll.

Now Bugala jumped out of his pickup truck and walked cockily over to Tom. “I’m Tony Bugala,” he said. “I hear you got some building and road work to be done.”

“How did you hear about it?” Tom asked.

Bugala glanced at him sharply. There’s no use in giving this guy a lesson in business, he thought. In point of fact, Bugala had cultivated the affections of a secretary in the office of the leading contractor in South Bay, and she obligingly told him about all jobs on which her boss was asked to bid, but obviously this was a trade secret which could not be divulged.

“Friend told me,” Bugala said honestly. “Said you wanted that old barn made into a house.”

“I just want some estimates,” Tom said. “I won’t be in a position to do anything about it for some time”

“I looked at it this morning,” Bugala said. “You can’t do much with it — it’s just a shell. You could build a house from the ground up for what it would cost you to make anything out of that place.”

“Are you sure?” Betsy asked.

Bugala thought, You figure I go around discouraging business for the fun of it? Aloud he said, “There’s no basement — just a dirt floor. That stone is only a façade, and the wood under it is rotten.”

Well, there goes what we thought would be a sure initial profit, Tom thought. He said, “If we divided this land into one-acre lots, how much would it cost to run in a road that would give access to all of them?”

“You figuring on doing that?”

“I’m just looking into it.”

“You got permission from the Zoning Board?”

“I haven’t even asked. I don’t have title to the place yet.”

“Your land go to that row of pines over there?”

“That’s right. The stone fence marks the other boundaries.”

“Let me take a look at it,” Bugala said. He wanted time to think, for he had immediately perceived there might be more to do here than run in a road or convert a barn into a house. The light was fading, and the row of pines was dark against the sky. Bugala plunged into the grass, which was growing knee high, and walked rapidly toward the pines, darting quick glances in all directions. He took in everything — the astonishing view of the Sound, the gradual slope of the land which would provide a view from every lot, and the outcroppings of rock, which probably would mean expensive blasting, but no drainage problems. Putting in a road would be easy, he figured — the driveway to the old house could probably be continued right along the west boundary of the property. With a view like that, why sell acre lots? There was no place else in South Bay, almost nowhere else within commuting distance of New York, where a man could buy such a view of the Sound. Bugala’s imagination, which was always at a slow simmer, suddenly began to boil over. Why not put up a whole housing project on quarter-acre lots? All right, you’d have to jump over the Zoning Board somehow, but if it could be done — the prospect was fantastic!