Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“I want at this time to commend, too, Mrs. Beatrice P. Lisbon, secretary to Herbert Kronenberger of Dixie Chair, for her untiring efforts during this crisis. Not everyone knows this, but it has been chiefly Mrs. Lisbon with whom we have been in communication in Charlotte, and Miss Lane apprises me that the woman has been unstinting in her efforts to keep on top of the situation. I understand that she has put in numerous calls to the Coast Airlines people and the C.A.B. people and the Charlotte tower people, some of them during her lunch hour at perhaps her own expense. From what Miss Lane tells me, I am thoroughly satisfied that we could not have had a more selfless anchor man in Charlotte, and I mean at some not too distant date to formalize our appreciation with a small token from one of our departments.

“Now I don’t mean to extend to you here something which might ultimately turn out to be a deluded hope. We’re adults, and we must accommodate ourselves to adult reality. However , I would be finessing my responsibilities and would perhaps irretrievably undercut any future claim to candor, or claims on your candor, did I not acknowledge now one tiny morsel of possibility that Chester may not in fact have been aboard Coast Airlines’ —let’s face it — FATAL Flight Number Eighty-seven at all .” Feldman paused. “Would you close the doors please, Waiter? Very good. Thank you very much.” He leaned forward. “What I am about to tell you must go no further, ladies and gentlemen. Should it turn out to all our infinite relief that Flight Number Eighty-seven did not crash, or that it did crash but that Chester was not aboard it, the information I shall impart must remain privileged. I wouldn’t bring it up at all, save that in matters of life and death, those concerned, even only peripherally concerned, are entitled to all the facts, that they might more intelligently apprehend the dangers. Not even Chester himself — if he’s alive — must ever know you know this…Very well, then. Here’s the situation.

“On first hearing reports of the alleged crash, I had Miss Codlish in Payroll research Mr. Credit’s expense sheets. This was a routine measure, intended merely to provide us with the name of Chester’s Charlotte hotel. Many things can happen, people oversleep, people miss planes. I wanted it confimed that Chester had or had not checked out. Well — and this struck me as peculiar — there just is no record of a Charlotte hotel, not a single voucher for the last five years. I had Miss Codlish double-check — with the same result. His dinners are accounted for, mind you, his lunches are, and there were even some significantly costly breakfasts, but not a single hotel or motel bill. It was upon discovering this that I first contacted Mrs. Lisbon, or rather had Miss Lane contact her, to find out if Chester had divulged his plans for the evening. You all travel. You know the small talk that goes on between a buyer and a secretary. Evidently she at first denied any access to Chester’s confidences, but from a certain tone she took, Miss Lane suspected she was concealing something. She pressed her on this, and several things came out. It seems that on one of Chester’s Charlotte trips five years ago Mr. Kronenberger gave a party. I know Herbert Kronenberger and have always found him to be a gracious, hospitable man, not one to stand idly by while a lonely buyer fends for himself in a strange city. He would invite Chester to his party. It would be a typical Kronenberger gesture. Mrs. Lisbon was at the party too — perhaps as innocent company for Chester; that part isn’t clear. What is clear is that evidently Chester had quite a lot to drink. Let’s not mince words: Chester was drunk. Rather than let him go back to his hotel by himself, one of the guests— not Mrs. Lisbon, and it’s chiefly this which leads me to suspect that Mrs. Lisbon had been invited to the party earlier and not merely as the extra woman to Chester’s extra man — volunteered to take him back. He left with a Mrs. Charlote DeMille, a prominent Charlotte divorcée, and there is some reason to believe he spent the night with her. What happened, evidently, is that in the car on the way home, Chester vomited all over himself. (Many of you will remember his behavior during the store’s tenth-anniversary celebration some years ago.) You can appreciate Charlotte DeMille’s position. She could not enter the hotel with him, and he was in no condition to negotiate the lobby by himself. Even to discharge him into the custody of a doorman would be to compromise herself irrevocably. (Charlotte is not the biggest city in the world, and this woman is, as I say, a prominent person there.) All evidence points to the probability that she drove him directly to her own home. There, from what I can gather from Miss Lane, who pieced it together from the discreet Mrs. Lisbon, Mrs. DeMille helped the helpless Chester to the bathroom next to her master bedroom, there being only a half-bath on the main floor, and a tub, in which she must have feared he might drown, in the guest bathroom on the second floor — helped Chester to the bathroom next her master bedroom, and undressed him and put him under the shower. Then, perhaps seeing that he was still helpless and that the vomit was not coming off, she found it necessary to lather him herself, and one thing led to another and she began to lather his penis and testicles. (Mrs. DeMille is a healthy woman, ladies and gentlemen, a healthy divorcée with the appetites and needs — I say needs —of any healthy woman.) All indications are that the warm water, the creamy lather, the concupiscent silences and darknesses of the divorce-lonely house created in Chester an erection a foot and a half long, and to make a long story short — no pun intended — Chester and Mrs. DeMille have been lovers for the past five years.

“Now, I had Miss Lane urge Mrs. Lisbon to call Mrs. DeMille to check about Chester’s sleeping arrangements last night, and although she manifested some reluctance, as they are no longer friends and such a question breaches the proprieties of estrangement, she did at last agree to have Mr. Kronenberger himself make the call. I have every confidence in Mr. Kronenberger’s delicacy in such an affair, but the fact is that Mrs. DeMille hung up on him, and we know no more now — unless one interprets outrage as guilt — than we did before. Even if Chester lives, I feel that a permanent strain may have been put on the Kronenberger / DeMille relationship. But I say this . I hope he lives. Although I better understand the real justification for those exorbitant breakfasts I have been paying for for the last five years, and although he was committed to return to our Quarterly Lunch, and although in the light of these developments we must soon undergo a searching reexamination of our furniture requirements — I must say that up to now I have never fully understood Chester’s insistence on using the products of North Carolina when other, cheaper merchandise is available elsewhere — I hope he lives. I hope, in sum, that it was a lovers’ quarrel, or some happy passion, some newly discovered refinement of shower love, that has kept him from us. And while I am not of course in a position to guarantee his job, I hold his life of value.”

At this point the maître d’ approached Feldman and whispered in his ear. Feldman straightened. “Thank you very much Maître d’,” he said. “See what else you can find out, please.” He turned back to the table. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned, “I have just been informed by the maître d’ that Charlotte has confirmed the crash. Fragments of the plane and the main fuselage have been discovered in a woods thirty-five miles from the airport.” Again the maître d’ approached the table, and Feldman heard what he had to say. “Yes,” he said, “I see. Thank you.” He sighed. “A headless body that fits Chester Credit’s description, and in the suit pockets of which have been discovered some singed identification papers belonging to him, was one of the first recovered. Under the circumstances, I have suggested to the maître d’ that we probably don’t want dessert, but if I have been unduly presumptive in speaking for all of you, I would want at once to be told about it, and in that case we could call the fellow back.”