Renata Adler - Speedboat

“What you say is true,” the professor said, staring through his study window at the sky, “but not so very interesting.”

He ran up the stairs and they were after him. He fumbled with his keys, opened the door, slammed it behind him and listened for their breathing and for their steps. He heard their steps first, heavy feet on the carpeted stairs; then, he heard breathing. He looked through the peep-hole in his door and saw, as usual, nothing. He turned suddenly, caught his own reflection abruptly in the mirror, and nearly scared himself to death.

“I have a collect call for anyone from…”

“Yes, operator. That’s fine.”

“Miss Fain in Wash…”

“That’s fine, operator. I accept the…”

“…ington, D.C. Will you accept the charges?”

“Thank you. Yes.”

Sometimes cooperation impedes the gist. Someone, many people probably, had urinated in the phone booth. That is common. Many things serve something other than their original, unarguable purpose. The left lane, for example, on the highway. Some people use it because they prefer it. Some people use it because it looks like any other. Some people use it for some other reason. But the thing is, you are supposed to be driving faster if you use that lane.

“Hello, Jim?”

“Hi.”

“Just a moment, please. I have a collect call for anyone from…”

“Yes, operator. That’s fine. I accept the charges. ”

“Hello, Jim. I’m…”

“Go ahead, please. Your party is on the line.”

The slowest-talking man I know tends to loom in elevator doors, in hallways, booths, and other narrow places. He coughs, nods to himself, begins a sentence, continues nodding to himself in all the pauses along what he has to say. Eating with him is a problem. He chews so thoroughly. He raises his fork, speaks, pauses in midsentence, nods, takes what is on his fork, meditates, chews. When he swallows, one thinks he is about to say his sentence to the end. But no, he loads his fork again, eats, nods in silence, has a little sip of coffee and another mouthful before going on. One tends to drink a lot on these occasions. Agreement stalls him. Sometimes, when it has been clear for several phrases just what Moe is going to say, when one has been standing, for example, in the rain beside a taxi one had hailed at the very instant Moe loomed, one tries to complete his sentence for him. It slows him down. He waves his hand irritably, as though warding off a swarm of gnats, before his face. He moves his head like a pitcher shaking off a signal that he does not like. Then he starts again, nodding, waving, pausing, finishing his sentence in his own good time.

“Hello, Jim. I guess they’ve fired me.”

“They have?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it just isn’t our day, then. I’ve just been chased all the way up the stairs from the hallway, by what looked like two crazies.”

“You ought to call the police.”

“No. They’re gone. I heard the outside door shut.”

“Well, then. How are you?”

“O.K. And you?”

“Fine, I guess. Unemployed.”

“Oh, well. You can always…”

“The number you have dialed is not in service at this time. Please place your call again or dial your…”

“…teach or something.”

“I guess so. This isn’t…”

“…operator, and she will be able to help you.”

“…much of a connection.”

“No.”

“The number you have dialed…”

“Hello, hello. Ida. Will you drop it?”

“And my client feels that unless there has been substantial compliance by…”

“…Rotunda. Thank you, Ron. WCBS Newstime is four…”

“…and Muriel. Overnight. Enough. Never, frankly, have I…”

“Jim, I think we better…”

“Is this Washington 225-8462?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Could I speak with Ramón.”

“…but the highest respect for him close quote, paragraph.”

“Iss no here.”

“Would you read me that again, please? Beginning…”

“ Allo, allo. Ramón? ”

“Iss no here.”

“Jim, I’ll try…”

“…and costly litigation. Moreover, there is nothing…”

“…on hold for twenty-two minutes. I don’t call that stepped out. I call that…”

“…or anybody else. I won’t drop it. Let him drop it. If they…”

“…freezes over close quote, paragraph. Do you get the…”

“…such rudeness. Well, she hung up. But I made the…”

“…in the second sentence?”

“No, I don’t.”

“ Ramón? Ramón? Allo …”

“Iss no here.”

“…simple question. Is it dead, or isn’t it? I have been…”

“Jim, this connection is really…”

“Mark you, Mr. Ambogewe. We will not subscribe to any such…”

“…awful.”

“Yeah.”

The restaurant on Jim’s corner has three pillars, one at the back, one near the entrance, one in the middle of the wall behind the bar. On the pillar nearest the entrance, there is a dart board. You have to pass behind that pillar to enter or to leave the restaurant, to use the phone, to hang and to pick up your coat. In front of the pillar, people throw their darts. The pillar, it is true, is broad. The dart board has now been on it for six months. Nobody seems to mind or mention it. I try not to look in that direction when we’re there. The owner of the restaurant, who used to be an editor on night rewrite, is an extremely literal-minded man. He would be reluctant, for example, to infer from rabbit tracks in a forest that, not just four rabbit’s feet, connected in a manner yet to be established, but, in all probability, an entire living rabbit has passed by. This made working with him, when he was still at the paper, a little slow. It also means that he will not move that dart board until he has hard evidence that is what he ought to do.

“Don’t dwell on it,” the shuffling man is now saying to himself. “Don’t dwell on it.”

Jim works for the candidate just about full time now. I’m surprised that I hate it, but I do. For a time, our people used to mill about, saying “The system works. The system works”—the way kids used to run off the field shouting “We won. We won. We won,” when the game had been called on account of rain, or darkness, or because somebody had decided to take his baseball home. I am sure it does work, or I hope it does, and I used to think it did; but I was glad when we could all stop saying that.

I am the Paul Revere of the morning phone call. There are social ladies one may call at 8:45 a.m.; their lines are busy. Two minutes earlier, one wakes them up. Most people at the paper sleep till eleven or noon. Jim has breakfast at six. When I used to go to Washington, I took the first morning shuttle. In phone calls, I am somehow always, always on the early side.

“My daughter, you see,” said the drunk man, who had not yet quite mastered the idiom, “is a Jesus creep.”

“Freak,” said the girl on his right.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Jesus freak,” the girl said, politely.

“Yes. That’s what they call it. So I said to my wife, Look here. Saint John was a Jesus creep. Saint Paul was a Jesus creep. Saint Fran cis was a Jesus creep.” (He sent these italics bravely leaning off into the wind.) “Why, everyone doing God’s work is a Jesus creep. It’s a new way of saying Christian, that’s what it is. Mother said, Be that as it may. I don’t care for it.”

There is a flower shop in the arcade under the Pentagon. A whole floor of the Pentagon is filled with stores, clothing and camera shops, bookstores, boutiques. In the days when our staff resignations began, I sent Phil Eisen, our boss, and his girl African violets from that flower shop, after a dinner at their house. Since it would be awkward to call and ask, Did you or did you not receive those Pentagon African violets, I guess I’ll never know whether they received them or not. Then Phil resigned. I had a drink with him the night he left. When I first met him in Washington, Phil was the fattest man I’d ever seen. That night, he was extremely thin. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I said, “Phil, you’ve lost weight.” He said he had gained ninety pounds in fifty days, he had been so very angry in his work. Then, he had become angrier still, and lost a hundred thirty-two. The change had come when he began to write a book. Every piece of news, any turn of events at all, had this quality: it depressed him utterly. I asked whether his book was done. He said it was. I asked how long it was. “Eight hundred and ninety-seven pages,” he said. Then he added, earnestly, “You don’t suppose they’ll think I wrote it in a fit of pique.”