Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“He published the guest list, he published the menu.”

“The kid sounds like a go-getter. Why do you suppose he’d stop there?”

“Shit, I don’t know, George. That’s not even important. They can come down pretty hard on these kids if they have to. What you have to understand is power, campus politics. Take my word for it, George. I’m the professor here.”

“I’m the butler,” Mills said. “No,” he said, “all you have to understand is that guest list. He wasn’t there.”

“Who?”

“The paper boy.”

“Of course he was there.”

“For the meat and the fish. For the soup for dessert. He wasn’t there then. ”

“When?”

“When he was asked to resign. When he did whatever it was Claunch said he did and then nailed him for. Practically nobody was.”

“Some butler,” Messenger said. “No one may leave before the king. A lot you know.”

“The king gave the party. It was the king’s own house.”

“Yes?” Messenger said.

“Because it works in reverse. Because that’s protocol too. Ask, what’shisname, Grant.”

“So the students would have left first? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s right,” Mills said.

“Then the chairmen and coaches?”

“That’s right.”

“Then the lesser deans. The dean of the night school, the dean of the—”

“That’s right.”

“No,” Messenger said. “The provost outranks him. According to your own protocols he’d have been on his way out before the provost, before the trustees and all those wives.”

“That’s right,” George Mills said. And felt as Wickland must have felt when he’d shown him his sister in the square in Cassadaga during their seance forty years earlier. As he’d felt himself when he’d shown Wickland Jack Sunshine’s father and the fourteen-year-old girl with the withered body of an old woman who’d given Jack Sunshine his height.

“But if he’d already gone home …”

“I didn’t say that,” George Mills said.

Messenger looked at him. “Been on his way out?”

“That’s right,” Mills said.

“All right,” Messenger said impatiently, “been on his way out. What difference does …” He stared at Mills.

“That’s right,” George said.

“You know you’ve got a nasty mind?” his friend said. “You know you’re one heavy-duty son of a bitch?”

“What?” Louise asked. “What? Are you following any of this, George?”

“Following? Shit, Lulu honey, he’s leading the goddamn band.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “Nothing like this is in the black buzz,” Messenger said. “I mean this isn’t the way they’re talking on the Rialto. What they’re saying up there is much milder. ‘Offered to resign’ is the worst of it.”

“What are they saying?”

“Well, it’s a joke really. It started when it got out that Max and Ruth had taken their car away from the front of his house.”

“Yes,” Mills said.

“Max and Ruth? You’re crazy. You actually think they were invited?”

“No,” George Mills said.

“They’d have been thrown out. They’d have called the cops on them if they dared crash that dinner party. And don’t tell me they helped serve. They don’t have uniforms. Even if they did, do you think the chancellor would let them? Run a downer on his guest by having those two characters get close enough to pass out actual food? People who live in a fucking jalopy, a beat-up, stale-aired old clunker that probably looked used when it came off the goddamn assembly line? Who take baths in the rest room sinks of gas stations? Moochers with freeload cookie crumbs in their scalp and bits of old poetry-reading cheese stuck to the creases of their clothing? With Gallo like mouthwash on their breath? Jesus, George, they’d be lucky if they got as far as the back door for a handout.”

“That’s right,” George said.

Messenger was stunned. “Is that what you think? Jesus, is that what you think?”

“Is what what he thinks?” Louise said.

“Your husband just said they were in the kitchen eating above-their-station leftovers when it happened. He says the chancellor’s residence is so huge that they had to have been shouting loud enough for Max and Ruth to hear every word all the way in the back of the house. He says that whatever it was they heard must have been so damning it scared even them off, that they just climbed into their house and drove it away and never returned.”

“He said that?”

“That’s right,” Mills said. “Yes,” he said, and turned back to George, “but how would they even know about that dinner party?”

George Mills smiled at him.

“All right,” Messenger said, “so he was dressed to kill, so he had on his best bib and tucker. All right, so it was the dinner party hour when they saw him come out of his front door and get into his car. All right, so they followed him. That still doesn’t explain what he was supposed to have done.”

“You never told me what they say he’s done.”

“Well they don’t know, ” Messenger said. “The usual stuff when a dean offers his resignation.”

“Is told to resign.”

“You said ‘asked.’ ”

“You said ‘disgrace.’ ”

“All right, all right. That he’s made some mistakes, been highhanded with tenure, let good people get away, worked the buddy system, kept people on that he likes, allowed salary discrepancies between favored and unfavored departments to get out of hand, not been aggressive enough raiding other schools, made too many enemies.”

“Has he done these things?”

“I don’t know. Some. Any dean does some. It’s not an easy job. Sam’s record is as good as most. He’s only been in the job a year. He wouldn’t have had time to do all of them.”

“He lost his wife,” Mills said. “They’re gentlemen. They wouldn’t have been shouting if he had.”

“They’re princes of industry,” Messenger said. “Soft-spoken guys.”

“That’s right,” Mills said. “They’d have had to be outraged.”

“It was the last week of August for God’s sake. A mild, beautiful night.”

“That’s right.”

“He wouldn’t have had a topcoat with him. He wouldn’t have had a raincoat. So what did he put it in? Tell me that.”

George Mills looked disgusted.

“I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” Louise said.

“Damn it, Lulu,” Messenger said, “haven’t you heard a word he’s been saying? Your husband thinks Sam is a thief.”

“He likes souvenirs.”

“What do you suppose it was?”

“I don’t know. Houses like that,” Mills said dreamily, “it could be almost anything. Something with the university’s crest, I suppose. A slim gold lighter. A pen. A letter opener. A paperweight or ashtray. Sugar tongs. Stationery even. Anything.”

“And Claunch fingered him?”

“He never took his eyes off him,” George Mills said. “He counted his drinks. He toted up the hors d’œuvres he ate.”

“That’s right,” Messenger said.

“He hates him.”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me about the will, Cornell.”

“Jesus, George,” Messenger said, “I have some loyalties here. I—”

And that’s when Mills chose to play his China card. He stormed out of the house.

Leaving Louise and Messenger staring after him on the couch next to each other.

Because it wasn’t a will she signed in Mexico but an inter vivos trust. Because she’d left no will. Because if she had there’d have been an instrument for the widower to set aside, renounce, by simply filing a paper, a paper, not even anything fine-sounding as an instrument. He could have written it on a scratch pad, on the back of his marriage license, and been awarded his widower’s aliquot third. It was that inter vivos trust. Because if she left no will and had had the grace or just simple good conjugal sportsmanship to die intestate he wouldn’t even have had to trouble himself about the scratch pad. Half the hereditament would have come to him by sheer right of descent and succession. Half, not a third. It was the numbers, it was the arithmetic.