James Cain - The Institute

I wasn’t the first guy to get caught in the middle of by two women blowing their tops, but I felt like holy hell anyway. Mr. Garrett played it cool — adjusting the mikes, inspecting the food, conferring with the bartender, and joking with the girls. I sat on the table, watching him, trying to figure out where I stood, if anywhere. It was frightening, but I made myself own up to it, that here in just a few seconds, the whole ship had been blown out of the water. Mr. Garrett must know the truth now, whereas before he could only guess. How was he going to play it? And was he going to play it? But when he called me over, all he said was: “Lloyd, we’d better be getting ready.” Which meant that he wasn’t going to play it; he was just going to ignore it. I suppose for the moment it eased my mind, yet deep down inside, it left me more nervous than ever, because I didn’t know where I stood. How can you ignore something like that? But if he could, I had to.

As I passed Teddy, I asked her: “Would you take charge of the press stuff? See that each reporter gets a release from every pile?”

“Okay, Dr. Palmer. I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you bring a stink bomb?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t bang at Teddy.”

It was Mr. Garrett, who had come over to give her a pat. “We all make mistakes,” he said, “especially when provoked.”

That seemed to end the subject.

It didn’t end Hortense, though. Pretty soon the reporters came, fifteen or twenty of them. Some I knew, at least by sight, and some I didn’t, though on about half of them, I had done some background study. The two Washington papers sent men, and so did the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Women’s Wear, and the Associated Press.’ But the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin sent women, and for some reason, they took us over the jumps. The show got off to a lefthanded start when one of them pressed Mr. Garrett as to where Hortense was and why she wasn’t there. “If the Institute is named for her, this show must be in her honor. What’s become of her?”

But he didn’t get excited. He answered: “She was here a moment ago, as a matter of fact; but then she changed her mind and left. My wife doesn’t like cameras. They make her break out in a rash.”

“Mr. Garrett,” the woman said, “I know Mrs. Garrett quite well, and I’ve never noticed any allergy to cameras on her part. I would say she’s not only photogenic but photogenerous.”

“Then that’s what you would say.”

By this time three or four men were in front of us, sitting, standing, and kneeling, their cameras to their eyes, taking pictures of him. Instead of smiling, though, all he did was look peeved. There are times when a stuck-out jaw is the one thing that wins the ball game, but a press conference isn’t one of them. The woman smelled something peculiar about it, and she meant to get some answers. Suddenly she turned to me. “Mr. Palmer,” she began.

“Dr. Palmer,” Mr. Garrett corrected her.

“Dr. Palmer, in my paper’s bio morgue I find eight envelopes on you, all in connection with football, but none that mentions biography. May I ask why you were picked to direct this institute?”

“Mr. Garrett picked me. Ask him.”

“Mr. Garrett?”

“I picked him because he knows more about biography than anyone else,” Mr. Garrett said. “He knows so much that it makes my head swim.”

“Do you have a degree in biography?” she said to me.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Have you taken courses in biography?”

“There are no courses in biography.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She was obviously caught by surprise. Some of the other reporters suddenly began writing furiously.

“There is no course in biography, or discipline, as they call it, in any American university that I know of,” I said, “in spite of the fact that biography is the one literary field that Americans excel in. It was partly to fill this lacuna that I persuaded Mr. Garrett to endow the Hortense Garrett Institute of Biography.”

“She persuaded him, you mean.”

“I know what I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“You’ve seen a lot of her, then?”

“Naturally. It was necessary in setting up the Institute.”

“At her apartment, we would assume?”

“If you would disconnect your assumer and stop telling me what I mean, we’d get along a lot better.” That got a laugh, and I added: “I’ve never been to Mrs. Garrett’s apartment. We’ve met for lunch and once or twice for dinner.”

“How about your apartment?”

Well, how about my apartment? How much homework had this woman done before today? Hortense was practically living at my apartment. Had she been seen even once coming or going from there?

I had to take a chance. “She has never been there.”

“But I have!” Teddy chimed in.

“That’s right,” I said. “She’s my weakness now.”

“And mine, too,” Mr. Garrett said.

“I’m Dr. Palmer’s packhorse,” she explained, “because I’m as strong as a bull. I also do back handsprings.”

She did a back handspring in the space between the folding chairs and the door. There was a stampede by those with cameras to get a shot of her doing it. But as she straightened up, she shied off.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she called; “not so fast with them pop-ups. You take a picture of me, I must have my patches showing. It’s my sorority rule. Okay, on my face, if you want it — but the patches have to be in.”

“Darling,” said the woman who had been badgering me, “one earthshaking gadget has not been invented yet — one permitting the camera to take your front end, where your face is positioned, and your hind end, where your patches are, at one and the same time. Do—”

“Aw? Then earth, stand by to get shook.”

She turned to the table, moved piles of stuff to one side, then climbed on and did a hand stand, facing the cameras. But, of course, that put her shapely bottom just above her face.

“Okay,” she said calmly, “shoot!”

They shot.

She hopped down, telling them: “That’ll be fifty cents, please. Four bits from one and all.”

Nobody moved to pay her. “Well, there’s their trouble right there,” she announced with an airy wave of her hand. “The media, I’m talking about. They’re mean, they’re chincy, they’re cheap. Making cracks about a wife right in front of her husband, and on top of that, not paying the human packhorse who’s posing for her picture. I do a handstand and what do I get? Nothing!”

“Teddy.”

“Yes, Mr. Garrett?”

“Have a Kennedy half-dollar.”

“You mean, shut up?”

“I’m too polite to say it.”

“O.K.”

She was quite meek about it. She pulled his face down and kissed him. They seemed to get on very well.

When Mr. Garrett had returned to his chair and Teddy was tucked away at the end of the table, the same woman reporter resumed with me.

“Dr. Palmer,” she asked, “have you actually written a biography?”

“It so happens that I haven’t.”

“Aw!” Teddy yelped once more. “Dr. Palmer, why don’t you tell her? Why do you let her run over you?” Then to the reporter: “You’re damn right, he’s written a biography — William Shakespeare’s! He wrote his dissertation on Shakespeare for the Ph.D. he has. He gave us a free copy — some of us, anyway — in his English poetry class, and it’s wonderful to read! All about the sonnets! And the Dark Woman; he indemnifies her! It’s like a detective story, only real.”