Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

“I’m glad to hear it,” Chancre says brightly. “You have a great future ahead of you, I can see that. If only you don’t misstep. And it’s easy to take a wrong step.”

“This your way of trying to win my vote?” Lila Mae asks. “A one-on-one campaign speech?” Where will Chancre be without his elevator industry endorsement money, his grilled porterhouse steaks soft in blood, tumblers of whiskey. Where will he be when the black box emerges from the silt, breaks the surface, and utters Fulton’s final curse against him and his ilk?

Chancre smiles and sits back in his chair. It complains of his bulk and Lila Mae would love to see it crash down, dash Chancre to the floor. Chancre says, “I don’t need your vote. Not at this point. There’s no way Lever is going to cinch this election. I’ve seen to it.”

“And what happens when Lift comes out tomorrow and your constituency reads about the black box?”

He smiles again. “ Lift isn’t running anything about Fulton. They’ve changed their editorial stance on the issue, you might say.”

Lila Mae doesn’t respond to that. She hears screaming from the next room, a door slamming shut and Shush’s cronies laughing out in the hall. Keep her here, let the accident scandal grow, hurt Lever even more. He is a thorough man, she thinks.

“What did you talk about with the maid?” Chancre redirects.

This next bit is something new for the usually taciturn Miss Watson: sarcasm. She says, “The new helicals coming out next month from United.” Not much, really, but sass does not come easily to her.

“I know you don’t have it on you because they searched you. Do Reed and Lever already have it?”

“So who did you get to monkey with the Fanny Briggs stack? Pompey?”

“I suppose if you had it,” Chancre considers to himself, “Reed wouldn’t have sent you out to the Institute.”

“Total freefall — that’s overdoing it a bit, isn’t it? That’s not a natural accident. Even IAB will figure that out.”

Chancre shakes his head. He says with amusement, “I don’t know what line that Reed has been feeding you to get you in on his scheme, but we didn’t do anything to the elevators in the Fanny Briggs building. I don’t have to. The Chair is mine — right now we’re just taking care of details.”

Lila Mae smirks. “Just as you didn’t have Shush’s men search my place.” Look at him. Chancre bullied his way up the ranks of the Department, expert in the currency of deal, the Old Dog of Old Dogs. Slapping the backs of his comrades in good fun, guffawing, chasing whores with the Mayor when he was still Assistant District Attorney and as hungry as Chancre. She remembers he defeated the previous Guild Chair, “Boss” Holt, by default when the old bastard withdrew the night before the election. Chuck’s collection of lore describes certain pictures: Holt in an assignation with a long-limbed chorus girl. A setup.

“Reed really has you turned around, doesn’t he?” Chancre says. He folds his handkerchief in half, and half again. “A frame job, then? Why would we wait until after this accident of yours before searching your house? If we had, according to your theory, sabotaged Fanny Briggs, why would we wait until you’d been tipped off we were out to get you? Now, let’s say by some strange turn of events you were in possession of the blueprints. You would have handed them over to Reed and Lever like a good little girl, and there would have been no need to go to your house.” The handkerchief is in his pocket, right where he wants it. “You didn’t even enter into things until the accident on Friday, and even then, you weren’t a concern until you went over to that swami shack you guys call a clubhouse and they sent you to talk to Fulton’s woman.” Chuckling now. “You Intuitionists really are crazy. Maybe instead of ‘separating the elevator from elevatorness’ you should separate paranoia from fact.”

She sits back and makes a fist in her lap, under the table, where the smug old cracker can’t see it. Why is he feeding her this line? The elaborate abduction scene, the trip through the industrial graveyard, making her sit in the dungeon to accelerate her fear. “You certainly made the most of the accident in your press conference,” she says. Watch his eyes through all this palaver.

“There’s an election on, isn’t there? I’m supposed to make the most of it.” Chancre drops his politician game and looks deep into Lila Mae’s eyes, switching tactics as if he knows what Lila Mae is thinking. “Look, Lila Mae Watson: those friends of yours have got you into a heap of trouble. Two weeks from now, where will you be? In my Department, that’s where. The boys give you grief, I know that. But you’ve been spared. You should have seen what they did to Pompey to break him in. Now he’s my boy. I’m not like the rest of the fellas, though. I’m all for your people. You might not think so, but I am. I’m all for colored progress, but gradual. You can’t do everything overnight — that would be chaos.” His fingers fiddle the air between him and Lila Mae. “I want to make you an example. Of what your people can achieve. That’s what makes you run, right? To prove something?”

Lila Mae says, “In exchange for what?”

Chancre pauses a moment, savoring, responds: “Do your job. Serve the Department. Reed’s got you running around looking for Fulton’s little box — well, if you happen to find it, you give it to us. What good is it going to do them in the long run? They may sway some of the undecideds, but the Empiricists have always been the party of the Elevator Inspectors Guild, and always will be. You believe what they tell you and think that Lever and them are ‘friends of the colored people’ or some such, but they’re the same as anyone else. They want to get what they can out of the system. Just like me. And just like you.” He shouts, “Joe — open it up, will you? We’re done here.”

Back to Lila Mae: “We’re done here, right?”

“I can go?”

“We’ll even give you a ride. Aren’t a lot of buses around here.”

She hears the door open behind her. Chancre stands. “So we understand each other, right?”

Lila Mae says, “And if I don’t go along?”

Chancre stretches and sighs. “I thought I was clear. I pride myself on making myself understood. Especially around election time. I want you to find Fulton’s box and give it to me. Because no one cares about a nigger. Because if you don’t, the next time you come down here, you won’t meet with me. You’ll talk to one of Shush’s boys, and they are never misunderstood.”

* * *

Lila Mae has forgotten this incident. But no matter. It still happened. It happened like this:

It was a night in late August, a night that rekindled in rattling windows and tree branch palsy that lost recollection of autumn, misplaced for the succession of bright summer distractions, trapped heat in small rooms and sweaty underarms. But it was always there waiting. Autumn always comes, and that first night late in summer is a reminder, a small hello, dear, that it is coming. That night toward the end of her sixth summer was the night of the annual visitation.

She couldn’t sleep for the wind’s tiresome argument with the house. A minor player in that argument, almost a bystander, was the scraping of dry leaves across the field behind the house — it was to Lila Mae that it spoke, recommending a glass of water for her parched throat. It was silent downstairs, and late; this realization pit itself against her mother’s quite firm instructions that she be in bed by nightfall. And stay there. Here it was, a good ways into nightfall, and she was indeed in bed as instructed. And thirsty. Her parents must be asleep — she hadn’t heard a sound since that last sound, that loud hinge-squeaking of her parents’ bedroom door as they retired for the night. At the usual time, when they always went to bed. She had contemplated this larceny many times before and always persuaded herself against it: to steal a glass of water. The possibility of a spanking hand invariably convinced her against that course of action, so rebellious, going for a glass of water when she should be in bed. But not tonight. Tonight fall had happened by, and that meant another summer had passed. More or less — there would still be a hot day or two, but hot days under the brown pall of autumn. Another summer had passed. She could count summers and that meant she was older, or so her persuasions whispered. Old enough, her dry throat urged, to hazard discovery while on a late-night adventure for a glass of water. She pulled back the quilt with a dangerous flourish. So be it: a glass of water.