Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

Druff nodded.

“Hey,” Edgar said, “speak of the devil, lookee there who’s coming.” Druff followed the fellow’s arm as he uncurled it once more from his shoulder, flourishing it like a magician’s assistant.

A third man in a suit, maybe two or three years Hamilton Edgar’s senior — ballpark figures — came down the wide temple steps toward them.

“Who?” Druff said.

“Is that who I think it is? Is it? Is it?” the other suited man was saying. “Is that City Commissioner of Streets Druff that Ham ‘n’ Eggs’s been telling me so much about? He said you two were thick, he said he took meetings in your office, but darned if he mentioned he was inviting you. Ham ‘n’ Eggs,” the fellow scolded, “you really should have said something about this. Listen,” he addressed Druff, “you’re too late for services. You’re even too late for the kiddush. The aunts and old uncles were mopping up the last of the wine and sponge cake when I came out to fetch Ham.” He turned back to Hamilton Edgar. “We’re starting lunch up soon. The klezmers have gathered. Don’t you think it would be nice if you got with the program? I mean if you’d said something. Now — excuse me, Commissioner — I don’t know where we could even fit him in.”

“Dan, he’s City Commissioner of Streets. These are his sawhorses closing the street off to traffic. How do you think B’nai Beth Emeth got them? How do you think it ever got its one-way street? Who gave us yea and nay over the flow-control patterns?”

“I know,” the Dan one said, “I know, but tell it to the caterers. You don’t draw blood from a stone, Ham.”

“Isn’t this ridiculous?” Hamilton Edgar, winking at the commissioner, said. “What are we talking about here, an extra place setting? No big deal, I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. Here,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs, pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet.

“Twenty dollars?” Dan scoffed. “You think twenty dollars would even begin to cover it? Filet mignon? Fresh vegetables? Wine? Strawberries out of season? Klezmerin with embouchures on them that go back before the sounding of the first shofar? You’re living in the past there, kiddo. Rosebird! Rosebird!”

“It’s not enough? It isn’t? Here.” The Jazz Ager held out his wallet. “Take whatever you need.”

“An extra place setting,” Dan said scornfully, taking the twenty and lifting additional tens and fives from Edgar’s billfold.

“Look,” said Druff, finally intervening, “there’s been a mistake. He didn’t invite me to your son’s bar mitzvah.”

“My son’s bar mitzvah, my son’s? Is that what he told you?”

“What’s going on?” Druff said.

“What I’d like to know,” Dan muttered, pouting.

“Speak of the devil,” Hamilton Edgar said and looked again in the direction of the temple steps.

“Oh yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah. This is a guy,” he told the commissioner out of the side of his mouth, “you really have to meet him. Wouldn’t you say so, Ham?”

“A ‘must.’ A definite ’don’t miss.’ ”

“Don’t let on, Ham. See if the commissioner catches it.”

“Even money says he names that tune in three.”

Were they high? It occurred to the commissioner these two were high. They sounded high. Amused by their own rash slapdash. Into the wine and sponge cake deeper even than the aunts and old uncles. (A judge in these matters, a fine distinguisher — the ground-up coca leaves, he supposed, white against his gums as toothpaste, the fine, frothy hydrophobics of his own hooked rabidity.) And turned to where a new man, another, Druff, who was no judge, judged, baby-boomer came coming — a man (this one suited too, but in a style more deliberate, the belted back of his suit coat seeming to flourish material, throwing out pleats like a kind of sprayed fabric, vaguely reminiscent of the accordion reserves and expanses of backpacks, garment bags) with a raised, forward-thrusting smile he seemed to carry balanced on his chin like a Roosevelt.

“Jerry,” said Dan, “do you know who this is here?”

“It’s City Commissioner of Streets Robert Druff,” Hamilton Edgar said.

“Gosh, is it? No fooling?”

“Pleased to meet you,” Druff” said.

“Jerry Rector,” said the baby-boomer and took the commissioner’s hand. He pumped it. “It sure is swell to meet you, sir.”

“Yeah, well,” said Druff, “I got in late last night. I set the alarm but slept through it anyway, wouldn’t you know? When I finally got up I was totally disoriented. I shaved, showered and dressed just as if it were an ordinary workday. That’s why I’m wearing this suit and tie instead of the more casual clothing you might expect someone to have on on a day City Hall is closed.”

“What I think,” Jerry Rector said, “is he looks mighty yar.”

Hamilton Edgar, giggling, politely covered his mouth.

“Well, he does,” Rector said. “Doesn’t he Dan?”

Now the two of them were giggling, covering their faces like conscientious coughers.

“Just ignore them, Commissioner. My chums are a couple of stinkers.

Druff shrugged.

“That’s just bunk, Ham and Dan,” Rector said. “That’s just bunk and hooey.”

“Oh Christ,” Hamilton Edgar said. “The man breaks me up. With his yars and bunks and hooeys. He sounds just like Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story.”

“More like Katharine Hepburn, you ask me,” Dan said.

“Very nice,” Jerry Rector said, “very nice indeed.” Then he grinned. “I happen,” he explained to the commissioner, “to be an admirer of the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties. It was a more gracious time. I mean anyone can say fuck or call some asshole a cocksucker. I’m sorry,” he said, “but that’s just not my style.”

Him too, Druff thought. High as a kite. The drugged Jews of B’nai Beth Emeth. It was a good thing the street was closed to traffic. Otherwise it could have been all chaos and fender benders. Like in an ice storm before the salt trucks responded.

“Well,” Ham said laughing, wiping his eyes, his amusement damp now, run to mucus, settled in his chest and nasals, “I say it’s about time we tucked in to that filet and those berries. Commissioner?”

“Ham has to have his grub.”

“Grub!” Dan exploded. “Did you ever? This is some guy, this guy.”

“Commissioner?” Ham said, taking his commissioner’s arm.

“Is he joining us?” Jerry Rector wanted to know.

“That’s very kind,” the commissioner told Hamilton Edgar, “but I guess I’ll take a rain check. My compliments to… the guest of honor.”

“That might be you,” Hamilton Edgar said levelly, all traces of his moist hilarity gone.

“You told him guest of honor?” Dan said. “Guest of honor?”

“Come on, fellows,” Jerry Rector prompted, “let’s get going. It isn’t as if we had all the time in the world.”

Gently, the commissioner withdrew his arm. “Please,” he said, “let’s have a little separation of church and state here.”

Jerry Rector laughed.

“Hey,” Druff said. “Israeli lobby or no Israeli lobby, Bobbo Druff wears no man’s beanie. There ain’t an ecumenical ounce in my entire body.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, “we respect that in you.”

There wasn’t, he thought. (Who couldn’t really have been thinking. Their high must be contagious.) That ounce of the ecumenical. Or of the ethnic, either. Not for Druff scamorza, lox, green beer. All the holies and high masses, kissing this one’s prayer shawl and that one’s ring. If these Jews had his sawhorses in their pockets, they must have gotten them as out-and-out gifts, his perfectly civic charity, his skimmed, no-strings, up-front influence. (In this way he must, over the course of a year, have saved a week, a week and a half of his precious time. Just yesterday, who was it Dick told him had died? Marvin Macklin? He’d already dictated the condolence letter. What had it taken him, ten minutes, fifteen? And the family had gotten a letter out of it. Signed by the commissioner on his office’s official stationery. If he’d gone to the chapel or called on the family at home he could have been tied up for hours. And who, in all that grief and distraction, would even remember he’d come? No, a letter was better. The solace that kept on giving. The separation of church and state wasn’t just sound public policy, it was good business.) So spare him the lunch invitations, please. Though there were lunch invitations and lunch invitations. He was, he had to admit, drawn to these guys. There was something about them. They seemed very yar guys. Even old Ham Edgar, whose first impression on the commissioner, let’s be frank, hadn’t exactly been a good one. Druff thought: I believe I thought he was a bagman. And he was hungry. (Denied his All-Bran, his fresh-squeezed oranges, the pancakes and maple syrup of his just desserts. Nothing to show for his quarrels all day but toast and a cup of coffee on his belly. He could almost smell it, his hosts’ catered goodies — the fruits out of season, their mignon, fresh veggies and wine.) And, well, he was in the mood. (High, anyway, peckish and primed by his special Andean mouth appetizers.) And they seemed like folks from whom it was possible to learn a thing or two. If only they didn’t stick him at the head table with the heavy-duty relatives, the parents and grandparents, the bar mitzvah kid, his brothers and sisses. (Although no one, come to think of it, had actually ever said bar mitzvah. For all Druff knew it could have been a wedding going on in there.) He’d mention his head-table aversions, make it the condition of his attendance.