T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

He moved toward the sideboard and the enameled tray that was already laden with the little glasses and the varicolored bottles. “The grants are in for the year, have been in for some time now, so don’t you worry.” (In fact, as I was later to learn, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation, had ratified the significance of our work with a $40,000 grant for each of the next three years, nearly doubling their previous commitment.) I listened a moment to the music of the little glasses as he rearranged them on the tray. “And there’s more on the way, you can be sure of it. So come here, come to me here and say thank you in a proper way—”

I embraced him again, and we kissed, but just for a moment — the quickest brushing of the lips — before I pulled away. I wanted to find Iris, tell her the news, ring up every real-estate agent in the county. “Can I tell Iris?” I said. “Can I give her the good news?”

“Go,” he said, and I couldn’t read his face. I was halfway to the door when he called me back. “But wait, wait, I didn’t tell you the best part,” and he’d recovered himself now, all smiles. “I found the prettiest little place, not six blocks from here.”

“I’ve got to tell Iris,” I said, so excited I could barely breathe. I was at the door now, no thought of holding it open for him and his liqueurs, only to push through, to find my wife before I burst with the news. “But thank you,” I called over my shoulder, “thank you a thousand times over,” and then the door swung open and the noise of the party hit me and I heard him cry out, “And it’s got a big yard for the boy!”

Next morning, early, there was a knock at the door. I was sitting at the kitchen table, reading about the upcoming Bowl games in the newspaper and spooning up cornflakes and milk, heavily sugared. It was seven-fifteen by the clock on the stove. Iris was still asleep. I couldn’t imagine who it could be — it was the day after Christmas, the world snowbound, nothing moving, no sound anywhere — and I pushed myself up from the table and went to the door. Prok was standing there on the doorstep, blowing steam through his nostrils. He was in his belted winter coat, galoshes, knit gloves and the old drooping southwester he favored in inclement weather. “Glad to see you’re up, Milk,” he said, “but it’s cold, isn’t it? The thermometer read minus three Fahrenheit when I left the house.” Behind him, at the curb, the Buick sent up discontinuous plumes of blue smoke.

I was in my robe and pajamas still, a pair of new felt-lined slippers — a Christmas present from Iris — on my feet. I don’t mind admitting I was a bit befuddled, my head still thick with the residue of all that Christmas cheer. I tried to read his expression. Had I forgotten something? Were we scheduled to leave on a field trip? Was that it? “Yes,” I said, “well, yes, very cold, but please come in, because, well—”

“You’re going to have to get dressed,” he said, pausing to kick the snow off his galoshes before striding through the door. “We’ve got an eight o’clock appointment. And Iris — where’s Iris?”

I don’t think Prok had been inside the apartment more than once or twice before, and then only briefly. He glanced round him as if he were entering one of our lusterless hotel rooms, his eyes appraising and keen. And then he was pacing the undersized front room in his brisk, long-legged way, snatching off his hat and gloves in two quick jerks and pushing through the bead curtains to cast a suspicious glance round the kitchen as if he were a building inspector come to assess the quality of the plumbing. I felt a surge of shame. The place was small, though as I’ve said Iris had a real knack for interior decoration, and it was — or had been — sufficient to our needs, but with Prok there, looming over the furniture, everything seemed shabby suddenly, and I felt I’d somehow failed him, as if I should have risen to something grander at this stage of my life.

“Interesting piece on the coffee table there — the Aphrodite,” he said. “Is that the thing you picked up for Iris in New York?”

“Yes. At that shop I was telling you about.”

“Mother of Eros, sexuality unfettered. Nobody could call the Greeks sex shy, now could they?”

“No,” I said, “I guess not.”

“Very nice. I’d say your taste is improving, Milk, definitely improving.”

I was just standing there in my robe, three feet from him, in the confines of the kitchen that might have been cleaner, brighter, grander, and I didn’t know what to say or do. I thought of offering him coffee, of settling him down in the armchair for a moment, of waking Iris and getting dressed, but then I found myself numbly echoing what he’d said a moment earlier, as if it had just managed to sink in: “Appointment? What appointment?”

He was frowning at the cupboard, pulling open each door in succession till he found himself a cup, and then he lifted the coffeepot from the stove, giving it an experimental shake. “With the realtor,” he said, pouring, “or actually the owner. I spoke with him myself, at half past six this morning. Iris is up, isn’t she?”

The house was conveniently located, as advertised, two blocks closer to campus than Prok’s own, but in a neighborhood that was struggling to keep up appearances while the grander homes spread in a formal march to the south and east. Which was fine with me. I didn’t expect a palace, and if there was a heavy concentration of boardinghouses and student rentals there, that was testimony to the desirability of the location. Iris wasn’t so sure. Prok and I had sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and nibbling at a fruit cake Hilda Rutledge had given us the day before while we listened to the muted call and response of Iris’s gagging and the cascade of the toilet, Prok tapping his foot impatiently and checking his watch every two minutes, but she’d emerged from the bedroom at ten of eight, in her best dress and with the hair brushed back from her brow in a black silken wave. She was pale, though, and didn’t have much to say as I eased her into the backseat of the Buick while Prok and I climbed in up front.

The first thing she did say, beyond the usual pleasantries, was when we pulled up at the curb in front of the place. “It looks odd somehow,” she said, and I could tell already that she wasn’t going to like it. “Out of balance. Too narrow across the front.”

Prok shut down the ignition and turned to look over his shoulder. “Built to fit a narrow lot,” he said. “But it goes quite a bit deeper, as you’ll see, to make up for it.”

“And the color,” she said, her breath steaming the window, her face drawn down to nothing round the critical oval of her mouth. “Who would ever paint a house mauve — that is mauve, isn’t it?”

“Looks more brown to me,” Prok put in.

“Or blue,” I said.

“I don’t know, I was hoping for something older,” she said, even as Prok was sliding out of the car to pull open the rear door for her. “Made of stone or brick maybe, and with more of a porch.”

“Older? This was built in ’24,” Prok said, “and that’s plenty old enough. Believe me, you do want the modern conveniences. Some of these antique houses, while they may look charming from the street, are nothing but a headache for the homeowner, substandard plumbing, antiquated electric, all sorts of structural problems, buckled floors and the like. No, what you want is something newer, like this. Take my word for it.”

But Iris wouldn’t take his word for it. She was as strong-willed as he was, and while she’d come to feel a real kinship for Mac she never really warmed to Prok, though she was always, or almost always, polite enough, out of her own innate civility and an awareness of the awkwardness of my position, but deep down I think she resented the influence he had over me. Over us. And, of course, there was Corcoran, the whole sad humiliating affair that lay between them like an open wound, Corcoran, always Corcoran.