Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

“I see.”

“She says what do you want.”

“What,” Druff said, “you think I’d tell you and blow my cover?”

“You’ll just have to wait then,” he said. “You can sit over in that armchair you fell asleep in last night.”

“I wasn’t here last night.”

“Got ya,” the doorman said, and winked.

“Well, I wasn’t,” Druff said.

“Right.”

He was probably supposed to tip him but had no notion of what was appropriate in these circumstances. He had no clue what these circumstances even were exactly. “You know,” Druff said, “for a man my age, I have no idea what’s proper here. I mean, what are you? A working stiff, same as myself.” He glanced at the fellow’s elaborate uniform, at his epaulets and ornate, cursive braid. “Just another gold-collar worker doing his job the best he knows how. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” he said. “I mean, you’re the expert here. Tell me. What’s fair? I want to be fair.”

“Forget it,” he said. “My treat.”

“Well, I appreciate that. I do. But just for the record.”

“Well,” said the doorman, “just for the record, it depends on who’s being protected, some married party, or bachelorette number one.”

Druff casually placed a hand over his wedding band and leaned in toward the doorman. He was going to ask about Margaret Glorio’s visitor when someone, moving past his peripheral vision, waved to the doorman, who called, “See you, sir. Thank you very much, sir,” and waved back.

“That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Who?”

“Miss Glorio’s visitor.”

“Was it?”

“Come on,” Druff said. “I didn’t get a good look.”

The fellow shrugged and Druff produced a twenty, which he extended toward him. Well, produced. Which he fumbled out of his wallet. Which he was first at some difficulty to remove from the rear pocket of his pants, and was then at some more to unfold and open (the exact amount having been determined in advance, in an instant, less than an instant, and even then not really determined, finally, so much as known, almost — had he believed in such things — inspired), and then tried to hand over. (He was new at this: not bribery, not the fix; he was a political after all, he knew his baksheesh, the cost of doing business; but this kind of business? intrigue business? after years on Inderal?) And, well, for that matter, a twenty. A five, a ten, and five singles, actually, which, even at that, he had to practically fucking study, for Christ’s sake, looking into the wallet, examining it at close range, reading the goddamn bills like some auditor going over the goddamn books!

“Sorry,” the Supreme Allied Commander — looking chap, declining Druff’s seven pieces of paper currency, told the City Commissioner of Streets, “that one’s under my protection.”

“Everyone seems to be under your protection.”

“I got de whole worl’ in my hands.”

(And doing comedy, Druff thought, this happens. Comedy is what they do to you when there’s nothing you can do, when there’s nothing doing.)

“May I go up now?”

“Who’s stopping you?”

“Aha!” Druff, a beat or so behind the rhythm of the conversation, said, meaning it had too been the guy, forgetting he already knew as much, and had since the doorman told him the man who’d just brushed past his peripheral vision was under his protection. He felt a sort of pity for Miss Glorio at this moment. Being ridiculous, he made her look bad. It was a good thing the doorman had her in his hands.

“Announce me,” he said, chastened, and a little resentful, too. Even angry. Because the guy wouldn’t take Druff’s fistful of dollars, because no promises had been made, and the commissioner was high and dry in the lobby. It was as if he’d been denied membership in a not very exclusive club. “Tell her Druff’s on his way up. Give her a chance to put her face on, fix her hair. Maybe slip into something a little more uncomfortable.”

And stepped into the elevator and pushed “I1,” vaguely proud of what he anticipated would be Margaret’s view: of the park, of the city, Druff’s streets. And for the second time in as many days struck his temple with his open palm. He wouldn’t get to see it. Any more than last night. It was dark out. Here, in the elevator, atemporal as Las Vegas, the lateness of the hour so abruptly revealed to him — Druff’s vaudeville truths, his dunderhead dumb show — was oddly disconcerting. He was frightened of this particular dark, of Margaret’s eclipsed views. What, he wondered, am I doing here? What in hell’s going on, just? It isn’t enough, he added obscurely, I have no friends in the lobby? It was Saturday night. Now you’d be able to find suits all over the place. But he’d been wearing his all day. It was no longer fresh. There was fear in its cloth. It could use a press. He cursed his bollixed timing. In various pockets, Rose Helen’s expensive batteries, not in use, drained ever so slowly. Near the eleventh floor he seriously considered going back down again, skipping Margaret, dropping all charges, returning home. And held his course only because of the vagrant, concupiscent itch in his used, fearful pants.

Or something like that.

And then Margaret, like a landmark, was standing outside her open door in the carpeted hallway when the elevator doors opened, and Druff was lured out. Something hospitable about her presence, gracious, old-fashioned, by-the-book. She could have been his hostess, welcoming him to a dinner party.

“I thought you’d show up.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“I expected you earlier.”

“A contributing factor is potholes,” Druff said. “Potholes slow a guy down.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I came,” he said, “about the one-night stand.”

“You came about furniture?”

“What? Oh, right. Very funny.”

“You never heard that one before?”

“No.”

“It’s buyer humor.”

They were inside her small apartment. Druff didn’t recognize it. “You’ve done something to the furniture,” he said.

“They came today to dress the windows,” Margaret Glorio said.

Druff nodded. “So I see.”

“You like it, though?”

“It’s different.”

Margaret Glorio belly-laughed.

“What?”

“You topped me,” she said.

“What?”

“Guy walks into a flat he’s been in it can’t have been fourteen or fifteen hours earlier. Overnight all the furniture’s been replaced. He’s asked what he thinks. Guy says ‘It’s different.’ You topped me.”

“Well,” Druff said, “that was unintentional.”

“Sure sure,” Margaret Glorio said.

He couldn’t get over what had been done to the place. Overnight. As she’d said herself. It could have been a sting operation, or early evening, a week later, a parlor suite in a luxury hotel in a large city, in the second act of a play. He was looking for the bed. Surely Margaret’s pricey brocade sofa did not open out.

Miss Glorio, darting her eyes everywhere Druff’s settled, matched him glance for glance. Except for the fact that her face registered a certain amusement, it could almost have been a tic, as if she were one of those people whose lips move with your own, silently repeating everything you say.

“Come here,” she said, “I’ll show you something.”

She took Druff’s hand and led him up to a mahogany highboy, opening one drawer, then another, in the tall chest.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” she said.

“The drawers are empty?”

“Come over here,” she said.

Behind a high, silken, vaguely Japanese folding screen was a small Pullman kitchen. She pulled open the cupboards and cabinets.