Renata Adler - Speedboat

Kevin, it turned out, had climbed down from the statue of Alice and found no one. A man, probably the original lingerer in the bushes, had taken him for a walk and bought him an ice-cream cone. Kevin had not wanted an ice-cream cone especially. Having incurred enough losses in one day, he respected his obligations in the matter of adults. He returned, with his cone, to the statue, and waited to be found. The patrolman and the teacher did find Kevin. They brought him to his mother, who had behaved admirably from the first. It turned out that every single child on the school bus had known that one of their Kevins was missing. They had not mentioned it to the driver, or their teacher, or each other. They took it that Kevin had been left, forever, for some reason, which would become clear to them, with patience, in the course of time.

Here’s who, of course, is out there in this city: all those Kevins (the class also includes four Wendys), the teacher, the mother, our staff at the paper, Myrnie, Lothar, the Cardinal, the committee, Lewis the barber, Mel, the unions, Bernstein, O’Malley, Garcia, Jones.

Lothar was on the board of a museum, two projects in urban renewal, a television network, a public utility, a college, a film institute, and a foundation, which, after several disheartening experiences with projects that became “controversial,” confined itself to very expensive, highly critical studies of other foundations’ work in dealing with the problems of the poor. Lothar knew, and was consulted by, many politicians, whom he numbered among his closest friends. When, not infrequently, two such politicians were running against each other, Lothar was asked which one he favored. “All I can tell you,” he would say, “is that they are both among my closest friends.” If, however, there was a considerable difference in age between two friends running for a single office, Lothar gave one to know that, consistent with his openness to ideas, he preferred the younger man.

Lothar permitted — in fact, encouraged — his wife to take an interest. Myrnie liked to travel in the South. She took part in almost all of Lothar’s public-service projects. Sometimes, rarely, she had occasion to worry about Lothar’s state of mind. Lothar’s early upbringing had been religious, fundamentalist. He was high-church now, and had not been, in forty years, devout. An office building that he owned distressed him. It was vacant. It had been vacant for a long, long time. Myrnie noticed that Lothar was sleeping badly. It was not so much the money. Creative problem-solving had been the pride of Lothar’s youth and middle age. There was, of course, the money question, too. Myrnie gave the matter thought. One evening when Lothar was at his health club, Myrnie invited the Cardinal for a drink. Myrnie and the Cardinal had met at board meetings of one sort or another. They had weathered scandals. They had been relieved, together, when the museum scandal was so rapidly replaced by the Equity Funding scandal, the Queens District Attorney Ponzi racket scandal, the famous restaurants with sanitary violations scandal, the Boy Scouts of America local chapters padded enrollment scandal, the Biaggi testimony before the grand jury scandal, the Soap Box Derby scandal, the firemen’s union strike-vote scandal — in fact, so many scandals, local, personal, and national, that it was hard to sustain attention to any single one.

Myrnie was not certain, in the case of the vacant building, what she expected the Cardinal to do, exactly. With some idea that he might levitate the building, or dissolve the spell upon it, or simply exercise his metaphysical authority in its direction, she waited for him. The Cardinal arrived, urbane, interested, but not, thank heaven, prying. He settled easily with his bourbon. With her characteristic delicacy and frankness, Myrnie outlined the problem to him. Over his second drink, he had it solved. A syndicate, of doubtful rectitude but of unquestioned financial stability, was run by an inhabitant of the diocese, who, though he had not specifically mentioned any need for an office building, most probably had such a need. One more drink, and the Cardinal departed. One more week, and the building was bought — as a headquarters for enterprises in jukebox rental, private garbage collection, and parking lots.

Lewis was an excellent barber. His customers — Lothar, Jim, Dennis, the Dean, and the Cardinal among them — held him in high regard. There was also an eight-year-old boy whose hair Lewis had been cutting once every three weeks for five years. Last week, Lewis, having completed his haircut, removed the towel from the boy’s shoulders and said, “You know, you’ll have to pay me.”

The boy stood with his hands in his pockets. “I can’t,” he said. “Dad’s meant to pay.”

“Hasn’t paid me in six months,” Lewis said.

“He won’t,” the boy said. “Ever since he moved out, he says it’s Mom’s business.”

“Your ma will have to pay, then,” Lewis said.

“She says, under the settlement, Dad’s got to pay.”

“Please don’t come back, then,” Lewis said, “until somebody pays.”

I was sitting next to the chairman of the committee, our renowned biographer. The dinner was, as it is quite often, at his club. The club is for men who have good manners and a connection of some sort with arts and letters. Twice a year, and throughout the year in selected dining rooms, the club waives its rules and lets escorted ladies in. For two courses, the chairman had pointed out to me paintings and other objects associated with high moments in the club’s long history. By the cheese and salad, we had hit a lull. Mr. Hardemeyer, on my right, was muttering about “the wonderful insights of our African friends about nature.” On the chairman’s left, our married nun, member of the City Council, was taking down the phone number of the black psychiatrist on her left. Conversation had lapsed — definitely. The chairman and I inhaled to speak at the same moment. “You were saying?” I said. “No, please,” he said. I asked whether women’s groups had ever protested the exclusion of women from the club. “Ah, no,” he said. “No, no. Our wives and colleagues have their own club, don’t you see.” “Oh,” I said. The subject had been a mistake. There just aren’t so many subjects. “Well, I didn’t mean your wives and colleagues so much…” He looked alarmed, then inspired. He offered to sponsor me for membership in his wives’ and colleagues’ club. This involved a misunderstanding so profound that it reminded me of the time when, to surprise me on a cheerful day, Jim’s brother took me, without warning, to a full performance of Parsifal . Admitting women into his club, the chairman now said, “would be as inappropriate as,” he paused, “as introducing a trumpet into a string quartet.”

The coffee table seemed to be whale vertebrae, laminated, or enclosed in Perspex. All around the wall, there were tusks. A disagreeable cat and an old gray rag were lying on the piano. A bulldog, wrapped in a blanket, wheezed on the sofa, beside the spot where a drink had been spilled. The bachelors and divorced fathers sat, with their drinks and their girls, on the floor. It was late. Now and then, someone would get up to restore circulation. Immediately, the host’s fine, hard-breathing bloodhound would bound into the room. “Down,” Max would say as this creature attempted to wrap himself around the leg of another guest. “Albert,” I said. “Down.” There would be the sound of ice in glasses, canine panting, Max and others saying “Down,” and “Shame,” and “Sit.”

All the men in the room had drinks in both hands. They had tried to extricate themselves from conversations by saying, “I guess I’ll have another drink. May I get one for you?” The trouble with this method is that it takes people right back where they came from; it is impossible to approach with one lady’s gin and tonic another lady who may be drinking Scotch. Escape procedures, however, were in full force. Some people, in a frenzy of antipathy and boredom, were drinking themselves into extreme approximations of longing to be together. Exchanging phone numbers, demanding to have lunch, proposing to share an apartment — the escalations of fellowship had the air of a terminal auction, a fierce adult version of slapjack, a bill-payer loan from a finance company, an attempt to buy with one grand convivial debt, to be paid in future, an exit from each other’s company at that instant.