Stanley Elkin: George Mills

Cornell figured Sam figured it had to be enmity. She was essentially a lazy woman. Cornell figured Sam figured she was jealous of his health. Hadn’t it been held up to him on more than one occasion not that he was free of cancer while she carried hers to term like some malignant pregnancy, but that he’d been sane the whole eleven years she’d been nuts? So it had to be enmity. She was lazy. Intestacy wouldn’t have caused her to lift a finger. But there were those numbers to deal with, the difference between that half and that third she was screwing him out of by lifting the finger, by painfully crabbing all her suffering fingers around the uncongenial Mexican motel pen and laboriously writing out the inter vivos trust that either her father or brother — Cornell figured Sam figured — had dictated to her over the phone and that left everything to the girls with Harry as trustee, and that she had to be at pains just to get the handwriting right, probably working from actual memory to recall the once free-flowing cursive, the idiosyncratic flights and loops of her own signature.

“I feel sorry for the guy,” Cornell told Mills on the telephone. (He hadn’t seen him since the night George had walked out of his home leaving Messenger alone with his wife.)

“Yes?”

“She put him through hoops. The hoops were on fire. There were prenuptial agreements, did you know that?”

“Prenuptial agreements,” George Mills said evenly.

“He didn’t have a pot to piss in. What was he? Some poor graduate student. Maybe he had a typewriter and a ream of paper to do his assignments on. Maybe he had a few dollars’ worth of dictionaries and a handful of those composition manuals and examination copies they hand out to TA’s to look over.

“The poor bastard was marrying big bucks. I told you. There were prenuptial agreements. He had to sign to go the distance. If the marriage broke up before they got through the first fifteen years he wouldn’t get a penny. He was on probation, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes,” George Mills said.

“They were married seventeen years,” Messenger said. “She did him anyway.”

“Yes,” George Mills said. He sounded distant even to himself. “What does he have to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“To fight it. To break the trust.”

“I don’t know, George. I’m no lawyer.”

“Victor’s a lawyer,” George Mills said. “Find out. Call me back.”

“He says he’s got three ways to go,” Messenger said when he called back the next day. “If he can prove fraud, undue influence or mental incapacity.”

“There was no undue influence,” George Mills said.

“No,” Messenger said slyly, “but there may have been fraud.”

“I don’t see it,” Mills said.

“The prenuptial agreement, the numbers. If she left everything to the girls in a will he could set aside, he’d have taken a third, half if she left no will at all. He thinks it could be fraud because she didn’t leave him anything to set aside. Not a bad will or a nonwill either. There was malice and intent. He served more than his time, those fifteen-year articles of apprenticeship. Those fifteen-year articles of apprenticeship and then some. He was entitled to his expectations.”

“Thank you for your trouble,” he said. “She was crazy,” George Mills said flatly.

“It’s good I’m enhanced,” Messenger said. “I don’t owe you shit. I never fucked your wife.”

“I know that,” George Mills said. “All you ever did was want to.”

Messenger called again instead of coming over.

“You might as well have all the facts,” he said.

“Yes?” George Mills said.

“Grant’s dead.”

“Mr. Glazer?” Mills said.

“Who’s this?”

“George Mills,” George Mills said.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Yes?”

“It’s my back, sir. I’m afraid what might happen to it this winter.”

“Yes?”

“If that job in buildings and grounds is still open, I wouldn’t be out in the weather.”

“I’m not sure it’s available,” Sam Glazer said.

“That’s too bad,” Mills said. “Oh, Mr. Glazer?”

“What?”

“That senior partner called. After I spoke to you last? But I’m doing just what you said.”

“Oh?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”

“I’m keeping an open mind.”

“Look,” Sam Glazer said, “I want to be frank.”

“Sure,” George Mills said, “me too. Absolutely.”

“I’d be looking around for something else if I were you.”

“I’m hanging in there,” Mills said, hoarsely rushing the message into the mouthpiece. But at the other end the line had already gone dead.

He decided he would go in person. He wore his suit, the one he had worn to the funeral. He was going to take a hat he could hold in his hands but decided that would be too much. A receptionist passed his name in and in five minutes a young man Mills had never seen came out to greet him. The young man walked briskly over to where George was seated on the edge of a deep leather couch and stuck out his hand. Mills started to rise, but by pushing his handshake at him the young man managed to keep George off balance and shoved him further back into the couch.

“Good to meet you, sir,” the young man said. “What can I do for you?” George Mills realized that the kid meant for him to state his business there in the outer office. He hesitated and the young man’s smile became even wider. He’s going to sit down next to me, George Mills thought. That’s what happened. The young lawyer leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “They’ve painted my office,” he said. “It’s a relief to get away from those fumes for a minute.” Mills smelled cologne. The receptionist smiled.

“I asked to see your boss,” George Mills said. “My business is with your boss.”

“Hey, pal, give me a break,” the kid said. “Harvard ’80, editor of the Law Review, two summers clerking at the Supreme Court. Why do you want to make me feel so bad? Don’t you think I can handle it?” The receptionist was grinning.

“This isn’t a law thing,” George Mills said. “It’s about a car.”

The young man looked at the receptionist, who shook her head.

“This is the automobile department,” the kid said.

“Give him a message,” Mills said, speaking past the young man to the receptionist huskily. “Tell him the price of the Buick Special is negotiable.”

“I’ll let him know that, George,” the receptionist said.

“Tell him,” and now he was standing, “tell him I just heard about the terrible tragedy and …”

“The terrible tragedy, George?” the receptionist said.

“Grant’s death,” George Mills said.

The receptionist and the guy exchanged puzzled looks.

“Ask him to extend my condolences to the Claunches, and to tell Mr. Claunch Sr. that if there’s anything I can do …” But he couldn’t finish. He walked past the snotnose kid and the girl at the desk and out the suite into the hall.

It was a good building but not a new one. An operator was still required to drive the elevator. He wore a uniform like a doorman’s but much more subtle. He called George “sir” and greeted many of the passengers personally as they got on at their floors. About George’s age, his name was George too, and several passengers passed the time of day with him while they descended.

“How’s it going, George?” a tall gentleman said. “Your wife’s cold any better?”

“She’s fine, Mr. Brooks.”

“Get that yard work done this weekend?”

“No ma’am, Miss Livingston,” the elevator operator said. “My brother-in-law never brought my mower back.”