James Cain - The Institute

“It doesn’t quite add up.”

“What doesn’t add up?”

“In the first place, he knows.”

“Lloyd, how could he possibly know?”

“How could he possibly not?”

“Then, O.K., he knows. But if he’s sold on you even when he knows, what is there to have a long face about?”

“I told you — it doesn’t add up.” I told her about the hand he had injured, and she jumped up, all excited.

“But he does chop ice! He never uses cubes.”

“O.K., but then he switched.”

“I told you he did. He explained it.”

“Yeah, but in regard to you —”

“It’s simple, if you just remember that he loves me — all except in that one, just that one, way. So if he thought you were kind of a phoney and very bad for me, it could account for the first way he felt, even including that hand, if that’s the reason he had, though he told me about it, about jabbing it with the ice pick, I mean — and he wouldn’t have, if it was just something he made up and put the bandage on to pretend. So, at first, he was upset on my account, and then he wasn’t. It could be as simple as that.”

“Wait a minute. Maybe that makes sense.” I didn’t know whether it did or not, but at least I felt that it could — and anything to please her after her sweet, romantic welcome. I kissed her and pretty soon she kissed back. “I think the roast is done,” she said.

Is there any greater intimacy than a man frying eggs for his woman or her roasting beef for him? Once more we were there at the kitchen table, she letting me carve, then serving me vegetables, the boiled new potatoes with parsley butter on them and the peas on little glass plates. We gobbled our dinner down, now and then touching cheeks, and I told her how happy I was. But in the still of the night, she whispered: “I almost forgot. He’s bringing Inga back, which, in a way, is the best news of all.”

“Who’s Inga?”

“I told you — the Swedish housekeeper we had, who got a cable from Stockholm while I was in the hospital with my miscarriage. He had to pack her off, but now he’s bringing her back.”

“Why is that good news?”

“It has to mean he’s getting organized to live alone.”

“Leaving us a clear track, you mean?”

She burrowed close, and for some time nothing was said. But I knew she wasn’t asleep.

“Lloyd, there’s just one thing.”

“What is it, Hortense?”

“Listen, do you or don’t you?”

“Do I or don’t I what?”

“Love me?”

“You know I do.”

I threw back the covers, flopped her over, and fanned her backside until it sounded like pistol shots in the dark. Then her arms were wrapped around my neck.

“I’m a degenerate,” she said. “I love it when you bop me.”

My finding a building was purely by accident, and I got credit for brains I didn’t have. One day I woke up with a drawstring on my stomach — from the fact that I had a job to do and no idea how to do it. Hortense gave me my breakfast, there-thered me, and promised between kisses that something was bound to turn up. I called her Mrs. Micawber. She said: “Instead of glooming about it and feeling sorry for yourself, you could make some use of the day, like paying a courtesy call on Ralph — Ralph Hood, the senator. Except for writing him a note, which really isn’t much, you’ve done nothing about him. Why don’t you take him to lunch? Or at least invite him?”

So I called his office and a bit to my surprise got through to him at once. He said he’d check his calendar and see if he was free and call me back. He did, and he was free. I said I would pick him up in my car, as the only place I was known was at Harvey’s, and from his office, it would be too far to walk. He told me to put my car in a parking lot and he would “blow” me to the ride.

At twelve I stopped by his office and for twenty minutes had to shake hands and chat with the administrative assistant, the assistant assistants, and the secretaries — all in the outer office. Then for ten minutes I was admitted to his private office where the decorations consisted of framed pictures of him shaking hands with presidents Kennedy and Johnson, with the Queen of England, and with Smokey the Bear. At last we went downstairs. The guard at the door said to him: “Your car is waiting, Senator.” And sure enough, it was — at the curb, a Chrysler limousine with uniformed driver. We chatted as we rode, and I gave him the big piece of news, that the Institute seemed to be set, “and it’s all due to you, Senator. I can’t thank you enough.”

He held up a hand. “I like to be thanked, but it was due to you, not me. I’ve heard a little about it. Richard Garrett called me, and so did Hortense. You impressed him no end — and her even more, I suspect. Lloyd, I wasn’t surprised. You impressed me, too, in court that day. More important, you impressed the judge. I would even go so far as to say that you set him back on his heels somewhat.”

This left me slightly crossed up, that this reaction to me, Mr. Garrett’s reaction, I mean, which he had passed on to her by phone, had now become official. So it was being passed on to everyone. But I began to realize that it was the only reaction that could be maintained. If I was a guy whose wife would shortly be paired more or less publicly with the head of an institute he was underwriting, the only way he could play it would be straight, make noises that this friend of his wife’s was really some kind of genius, that Dr. Palmer had the job for that reason and not for reasons that might be inferred. But, of course, I said nothing about this to the senator. I merely listened while he talked on.

When we arrived at Harvey’s, which is a basement restaurant with underground parking for cars, I gave the driver ten dollars to go have his lunch. Then I led the way to my table which I had reserved by phone and which the girl, a rather good-looking maîtresse d’, had waiting when we got there. We ordered, and when Senator Hood asked for a martini, so did I. He resumed discussing the Institute and the future I could look forward to, “now that the Garretts have fallen for you.” But I must not have been paying attention, because he stopped in midsentence and asked: “What is it, Lloyd? What did I say?”

“It’s not you. Senator; it’s him. Mr. Garrett.”

“Lloyd, he’s big.”

“He’s been stuck with me, once I got her on my side, but he keeps blowing me up, making me bigger than I am. It makes me damned uneasy. A person knows his limitations.”

“Maybe he’s not blowing you up. You impressed me just as much as you apparently did him. That ghastly day in court, when you calmly took charge up there on the witness stand and got it into the record that the pot they found in Jack’s car must have been planted by the police, which, you thought, was most unlikely, or else stashed by someone else because it was hot and had to be gotten rid of, as to your certain knowledge that it was not in the glove compartment when you and the boys left the car to go to the basketball game. It was a cool, nervy performance, your making that judge listen, and once he listened, believe. It was a day I’ll never forget. So I’m not so sure that Richard Garrett overrates you. Perhaps, as they say, you don’t know your own strength.”

Though I certainly didn’t mean to, I had sounded cranky, so I started kidding along with the waitress as a way to save face. When she left again, the senator asked: “Lloyd, something’s bugging you more than you’ve been letting on. Come on, what is it? If you want to talk, that is.”

I didn’t want to, but I could hardly help it. I blurted out the whole thing — about the building, the law against renting yourself office space, which, it turned out, he had voted for, being ordered to find a building and soon. Senator Hood began to laugh.