T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

Of course, since Iris and I were to set up our household a few weeks later, our need for a car wasn’t quite as urgent as it once was, but still I think I wanted an automobile of my own at that time as much as I’d ever wanted anything. On Sunday afternoons Iris and I would bundle up and walk across town — and sometimes even out into the nether areas where the houses gave way to farms and open land — just to have a look at this or the other ancient collapsing Tin Lizzie we couldn’t have afforded in any case. But we looked, because you never knew. Every time I saw an ad—“1929 Model A, good tires, needs work, best offer; 1934 Chevy, clean”—I built something in my mind, and every time, without fail, I was disappointed. I wasn’t a mechanic. Didn’t, in fact, know the first thing about spark plugs or flywheels or transmission oil. I had hope, though. I was looking for something reliable, something cheap and efficient, with a sound engine and rust-free chassis, and I didn’t care about make, model or year. Because, as I’ve said, the road out of town always beckoned to me and I sometimes felt — as both student and married man — that I was stranded in Bloomington, surrounded and given up for dead. There were buses, the train and my trips with Prok, sure, but if I had four wheels under me I could be my own master and go where I liked, when I liked.

It must have been toward the end of February, and I can’t really recall whether it was before or after our little farewell party for Dick and Ezra, when Corcoran came to Bloomington to stay. There had been a break in the weather — clear skies and daytime temperatures that climbed up into the forties — and I remember I was just leaving Biology Hall to run an errand for Prok when a horn tooted and a car pulled up to the curb in front of me. It was a yellow Cadillac La Salle convertible with crisp whitewall tires and chrome hubcaps, and the top was down. At the wheel, in a tweed jacket and with a pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth, was Corcoran. He thrust both arms up over his head and waved them in transect as if he were lost at sea. “John,” he called, “hey, John! I’ve arrived!”

I don’t know what I said to him in response, something about the car, I suppose. It was the sort of thing you came across in magazines, hands down the sportiest vehicle Bloomington had yet to see.

“You like it?” he crowed, sliding out the door and pumping my hand. “Just got it a week ago. And you should have seen the thing cruise on the way down here, my hand on the horn the whole way because all you cows and you farmers in your hay wagons, just look out, here I come.”

I made admiring noises, traffic passing by on the pavement, students pausing to gawk, the barren trees jammed into the ground up and down the street like so many gibbets. There was a suitcase on the passenger’s seat and a new tan fedora atop it. I was wondering how Corcoran could have afforded such a car on a social worker’s salary (his wife’s people had money, as I was later to learn), and wondering too how much Prok had offered him to come work with us — more than I was getting, that was for sure — when he looked from me to the suitcase and back again and said, “You think this’ll be okay here? The suitcase, I mean. Just for a minute?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess, well, sure—”

“You wouldn’t want to keep an eye on it, just for a minute, would you? See, I wanted to dash up and let Prok know I’m here — the apartment I can find afterward, that’s no problem … and by the way, I wanted to thank you, and Prok, I guess, for finding me the place.”

This was the first I’d heard of it, and my face must have showed my confusion, because he added, “Or whoever was responsible. It was kind. It really was. See, I’ll need the next couple of months, while I’m batching it, to find something suitable for Violet and the kids, and this is really — well, I know how hard it is to find something in the middle of the semester…”

As it turned out, I must have stood there at the curb for half an hour while flocks of students, townspeople and the odd professor ambled by, watching over the car and maybe even pretending it was mine. I did inspect the thing pretty thoroughly, even looked into the engine compartment and the trunk (tennis racket, a set of golf clubs, a pair of two-tone shoes and another suitcase), and toward the end of my little wait I sat at the wheel, just to get the feel of it. I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy — Prok would be wondering where I was — when I saw Corcoran and Prok emerge from Biology Hall and start up the walk toward me. Prok was moving along at his usual stiff pace, and Corcoran was keeping right up with him, stride for stride. They were both smiling, gesturing, deep in running conversation. Guiltily (though I don’t know why I should have felt guilty — I had been asked the favor of minding the car and suitcase, after all), I slid out from behind the wheel and eased the door shut. When they got to the car — to me, that is — both men looked up as if surprised to see me there, and Prok went immediately to the passenger’s side, lifted out the suitcase and handed it to me. He climbed in and shut the door without a word, then looked up at me and said, “See if you can fit that in down behind the seat, Milk, will you?” And then to Corcoran: “Very impressive, Corcoran, I must say. But a bit flashy, isn’t it?”

I could see that Prok was getting a very high reading on his frugality monitor, not to mention his concern over any of his employees drawing undue attention to himself. The look on his face told me everything: A yellow convertible, he was thinking. And what next? No doubt too he was calculating how Corcoran’s layout for expenditure could have been more propitiously budgeted to the project, though that wouldn’t have been fair, but still —

Corcoran was oblivious, as he so often was — this was one of his talents, as I was soon to learn. He coasted through life on greased wings, and he took what he wanted and gave what he liked in return. If the situation was oppressive or difficult in any way — and as the project took off and the public descended on us there were any number of occasions that caused me to squirm, to say the least — he simply ignored it. I don’t think it was because he was insensitive, quite the contrary, but just that he didn’t care. He was blithe. He was insouciant. He was Corcoran — and the world had better look out. All he said to Prok now was: “V-8 engine, Prok, runs like a dream. And does it have power. ”

I managed to fit the suitcase in the space behind Prok’s seat, and then Prok gave my hand a pat and said, “Go on back up to the office, Milk — I’m just going to take a few minutes here to settle Corcoran in at his apartment, just to get it over with. We’ll be back inside of an hour, and then”—with a glance for Corcoran—“then we’ll get some real work done.”

Corcoran put the car in gear, revved the engine and took off with a squeal, Prok already beginning to gesticulate, no doubt giving him the first in an unending series of driving instructions. I stood there and watched the car recede down the block, then I turned round and went back up to the office in Biology Hall, the errand — whatever it was — all but forgotten.

There was a dinner party that Saturday evening, then a musicale the following Sunday for a select group of Prok’s colleagues, including the Briscoes and President Wells (Prok was showing off his newest acquisition, this handsome, shining, confident young man with the yellow convertible, and that was only to be expected), and then the three of us were off on our first collective trip in the streamlined shell of the Buick. Prok drove, Corcoran in the passenger’s seat beside him, while I sat in back and gazed out on the countryside. As usual, Prok never stopped chattering from the moment he and Corcoran swung by the apartment to pick me up till we arrived at our destination, Corcoran, as new man, doing his best to punctuate some of Prok’s fluent observations with thoughts of his own, and I just leaning back with half-closed eyes and letting it all drift over me. Was I disillusioned over having my place so immediately and completely usurped? Yes, of course I was, at least at first. But I quickly began to see the advantage in it — I now had someone to divide Prok’s attention, absorb some of his excess energy as well as his criticism, his rigidity and, not least, his sexual needs. And so, as I sat back against the seat in the relative luxury of the Buick, half-listening to the conversation up front and replying with a nod or grunt when I was directly drawn into it, I began to feel that things were definitely looking up and that some of the pressure I’d been under was bound to lift.