Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

“Well, that brought their Chamber of Commerce into it, which was just what I hoped would happen. I took the issue away from him, the pol’s pol guy, and now they were issuing actual denials, putting out that they hadn’t had an out-and-out hurricane in thirteen years, putting out they didn’t expect one for another ten years. They’re quoting the goddamn Farmer’s Almanac, for Christ’s sake, and I’m out of it and live to fight another day.

“Well, it’s the tourism thing of course, their bread and butter. Come back to Jamaica, mon.

“It’s not farfetched,” Druff said. “This is the way they think. What would be water off a duck’s back in any other country changed in ours to landscaping, fountains, the dancing waters.

“Are we there yet? Are we even on the right floor?”

What he’d told them true, never mind he was stalling. Already contemplating other of his mouth campaigns. His newsmaker’s noisemaking. Bobbo Druff’s Greatest Hits. Willing to feed them to them, who would not, he finally understood, be feeding him. (Appetite whetted, peckish as ever.)

Wafted through — because he couldn’t keep track, was loose, without landmark — these featureless halls, at once burdened and more light than was his ordinary nature. Airy, breezy, dangerously glib. And spotted the congregation’s Negro shammes (recognizing him even if he didn’t know the word for him), identifying by the number of keys he wore on his belt who must have been the factotum here, recognizing him for what he was by the little Hebe beanie, the whaddayacallit, yarmulke, on his spiky hair, which, except for the black man, only Hamilton Edgar was wearing.

“Shabbes,” said the black man, greeting them, talking through his hat for Christmas gifts a mile off, and in a different theological venue.

“Shabbes your own self, Richard,” Jerry Rector said.

Druff, edgy, punchy still with his glibness, his touch of fear, having to admire him for that, admitting as much. “That’s right,” he told Jerry Rector when the man had passed them, “I see you’re no pushover. I’ll tell you the truth. Any workman can strike fear into my heart. Whenever one comes to the house it throws me off. I feel I have to justify myself or something. Whatever it is, I don’t care what it is. It could be anyone. Anything. Telephone repairmen, the guy who reads the meter, the gas, the electric, the man who works in the garden or puts in special trees. It’s emasculating, it pulls on a fellow’s balls. ‘ I work,’ I want to tell them. ‘ I work. I have a job.’ ”

“You do,” the Commissioner of Streets heard Dan humor him. “Doesn’t he, Hamilton?”

“I’ll say.”

“Are we there yet?”

“We’re just now pulling into the station,” Jerry Rector said, and with a key he took from the breast pocket in his suit coat, he opened the door to what Druff supposed was the rabbi’s study.

Which was, well, really something. Better, oh far better, he could see, than his own dusty accommodations — the little theatrical agent’s office beyond the low wooden fence around his own poor municipal digs. Druff, catching Hamilton Edgar’s grin, just perceptibly lowered his head, a submission signal, a vague acknowledgment to a man who’d seen the commissioner’s offices firsthand, that, nerve center for nerve center, the rabbi outclassed him — Druff’s empty good sportsmanship.

“The private sector,” said City Commissioner of Streets Druff, nodding and swallowing (who might have anticipated the trim modern furniture and spiffy light fixtures but never the crisp, rich Oriental rugs), a little miffed that a man of God, under, presumably, all the renunciative vows and dictates of the spiritual, could lord it over a man of Caesar like himself. Someone, Druff figured, was not living up to his end of the bargain. Not bothering to wait until the others arranged themselves — Druff, awarded pride of place, shown to the rabbi’s chrome and leather chair behind his big glass and wood desk, still in a mood and not, removed as he was from the streets he commissioned, yet rid of his nervousness, anxious to make a good impression before men who hadn’t known him when and despising himself for it, despising them, not just for their vigorous primes but for their blatant mockery, Ham ‘n’ Eggs’ languid Jazz Age impressions, Rector’s odd profanity — the commissioner began to speculate, idly to make more mouth news.

“Impressive,” he said. “He’s political, your rabbi? A captain of industry? He knows about downtown, I betcha, the colorful tantrums of Mafia and all the haunted houses where the bodies are buried? He knows who is in whom’s pocket? What the grand jury said?

“Is he up on all he needs regarding the other guy’s gridlock and monkeyshines, the kickbacks and setups and inside jobs, who was it hijacked the salt truck?

“Well, it’s common knowledge. Everything’s common knowledge these days. Hey, no offense. I mean to take nothing away from anyone, but there’s child porn stars on Phil, cousins of drunks on Geraldo. It’s as if everyone feels he has a duty to open up everyone else’s eyes — girls who make it with ponies, with ectoplasm in the fruit cellar.

“I think, you want to know, that everywhere there’s less than meets the eye. All that fooling around, all that graft, it’s only business. Making a living, enterprise. Somehow, well, frankly, there ought to be something personal, something malevolent.”

“Well, Commissioner,” Rector said, smiling widely, “sometimes there is.”

“You’re really something, Jerry. You know that? Wouldn’t you say so, Ham?”

“An absolute ‘must,’ a definite ‘positively,’ ” Hamilton Edgar said. Then turned to the commissioner. “It’s wonderful you came along today,” he said. “That you happen to have happened by.”

“It is. I did,” Druff said. “That’s how it happened.”

“Sure,” Jerry Rector said, “pure serendipity. This could be a breakthrough here. We could almost be discovering penicillin, finding AIDS serum.”

“We’d like to clear up this Su’ad business,” Dan said suddenly, startling the commissioner. “There might be some new terms for you to consider.”

“Oh, Dan,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said, “shame on you. You’d trouble the man with business on the Shabbat?”

“Bunk and hooey,” Jerry Rector said. “Bunk, bunk, bunk. He’s the one talking malevolent. Dan was just reminded, is what.”

“Gentlemen, please,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.

“Just hold on a darned minute,” Druff said. “Let’s just hold our horses. You,” he said, indicating Hamilton Edgar, “I thought you were the one authorized to speak for the university. How many of you guys are there? You’re all lawyers?”

“Ham’s the lawyer,” Jerry said.

“I’m a banker,” Dan said.

“Well, I am too,” said Jerry Rector.

“Bankers,” Druff said. “What bank are you associated with?”

“You don’t have to tell him anything,” said Hamilton Edgar.

“Hey, I’ve nothing to hide.”

“We’re with the Bank of B’nai Beth Emeth,” Dan said, giggling. “We’re bankers in the temple.”

“Money changers,” Jerry Rector said, winking.

“You guys,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs.

“Yar,” Rector said, “I’m yar.” If this were an era other than the one in which he pretended to hang out, he could have been saying I’m cool. Beyond that, Druff had an impression that all these guys, but particularly Dan and Rector, would hate themselves in the morning.

“All right,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said, “but you’ll see. You’re just making him nervous.”