James Cain - The Institute

“Feel as I do,” she corrected me.

“But she let something drop as we were driving to Washington which put me on the track of a way to work things out so that she can have what she wants — except better and more of it—”

“I’m curious.”

“Mr. Garrett, it seems she’s a frog—”

“But a great big beautiful frog—”

“Yes sir, in the biggest puddle on earth.”

“My boy, Wilmington’s big, I promise you — bigger than I am by far. In some other place, I’d be quite a guy. Here I’m just a piker.”

“Dr. Palmer, he’s not telling the truth.”

“I know that, Mrs. Garrett.”

“Richard, when he and I are alone, he calls me Hortense. He’s a cheeky son of a bitch.”

“I like cheeky guys. They can sell.”

He motioned for me to go on. It didn’t help matters that she snuggled to him, responding to his pats. But I gritted my teeth and said as if by rote. “However, big as Wilmington is, it’s not as big as the earth, and that’s the side of the puddle I’m offering her — you and her, but mainly her.”

“The earth? What do you mean?”

“Biography is international. The subjects aren’t all American, not by any means. One man writes about Caesar, another chooses Napoleon, another Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Yesterday, when I spoke of the American preeminence in the field, I may have given the impression that it was a national thing. It isn’t. It’s international, just as the writers of it are. In other words, if Mrs. Garrett were to take charge of this thing, she would be not a more beautiful frog — as that, of course, is impossible — but a much bigger frog, provided, that is, that you take one obvious step. Provided that you name it for her.”

“But I intended to!”

He looked down at her and asked: “Dear? Does Dr. Palmer’s idea appeal to you?”

“Your idea, if it was your idea, does.”

“Well, I did intend to, Hortense.”

“Then I’m shook to my heels, Richard. Yes, it does appeal to me, that you lay this wreath at my feet.” She waited for a moment, while he waited, too, sensing that more was coming. “Richard, I’ll be in Who’s Who.”

“You are in Who’s Who.”

“Yes, but in my own right, not just as your wife.”

“You’ll be in Who’s Who in the World,” I said.

“I never heard of Who’s Who in the World.”

“You have now.”

She still hadn’t quite said yes but seemed about to, when she shied away all of a sudden, I suspected to torture me. Anyway, she did. “Oh, I don’t know,” she burst out. “Isn’t it going to look funny? I mean, queer the thing from the outset, to have a woman in charge? After all—”

“Why is it?” I asked in a hot, argumentative way. “Women are great in this field. Look at Fawn Brodie and her sensational biography of Jefferson. Look at Anita Leslie and the fresh stuff she dug up on the Edwardians. And Barbara Tuchman and her book on China, which is primarily a biography of Stillwell.”

“What was that name?” Mr. Garrett asked.

“Tuchman, Barbara Tuchman.”

“Hold everything.”

He got up and went out, leaving us alone for a few minutes.

“Lloyd,” she said cordially, “I can’t thank you enough for that idea you gave me. It’s going to work out fine — though, of course, not with you. That’s the part you forgot. It’s the kind of idea that’s not restricted at all in how it’s put into effect. So I’ll have that. I’ll be a still larger frog. I’ll swim in the puddle you found me — and then I’ll kick you out.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Bitch, I still have you over a barrel.”

“That’s what you think, Buster.”

“I knew I’d heard that name,” Mr. Garrett said as he came back in and sat down with a copy of Who’s Who in America in his lap. “Barbara Tuchman. Did you know, dear, that she was Maurice Wertheim’s daughter?”

“Who is Maurice Wertheim?”

“Banker, big shot. The main angel of the old New York Theatre Guild. But I knew him — not well, as a boy knows a man, but that well. He was a friend of my father’s, and I had enormous respect for him. Friendly, considerate, a little pompous, a bit overfond of the I-cap, but basically decent. And to think that his daughter—”

“She’s very eminent,” I put in.

“I can see she is. It’s in here.”

All of a sudden, we agreed that a woman in charge would help, rather than hinder, and he asked: “Well, dear? Is it settled?”

“Richard,” she said in a stage whisper, “do you know what we could do if Dr. Palmer weren’t here?”

“I guess that means me,” I gulped.

“I guess it does,” he said without looking up. “I’m due in London next week, but you’ll be hearing from me as soon as I get back.”

The horrible, jealous twinge that shot through me told me that if torture was her idea, it was working, and well. I was still atremble when I reached the street, walking along in the sunlight, wondering where I was. It was several minutes before I had it: I was on my way to the bus stop to ride back to Baltimore and then change for College Park. But I still wasn’t quite through. I was stumping along when I heard running footsteps behind me, and I realized that someone was calling me. I turned, and there was the secretary. Miss Immelman, she now said her name was. “I called as you went out the door,” she said breathlessly, “but when I went out in the hall, you were gone. I was to give you the apartment number, so you can call there in case. Mr. Garrett told me to when he came out to get that book.”

She handed me a card with a phone number written on it in a woman’s hand, area code 302. “He wasn’t sure you had it,” she said, still out of breath.

“Thanks ever so much. I didn’t.”

“The senator has, but—”

“I’m not the senator, am I?”

The next three days were bad, worse than I had thought they could be: I had what I wanted. I had used her to put it across, and I had put it across. That being the case, it didn’t seem inevitable that I would suffer much, after only one day with her, from the fact that he was back in her bed. I went through hell. I’d think of her eyes, her attachments and how they shook, the way her bottom twitched. A hundred times I owned up to the fact that it wasn’t an afternoon’s fun I could forget and go on with my life. It was as big as I’d told her it was. The worst of it was that even on fundamentals, I wasn’t sure it would stick, because there was that remark she’d made, that after becoming a frog in a larger puddle, she would throw me out. I kept telling myself that on that point, at least, I was safe, that she couldn’t throw me out without risking my revenge, which I could take any time simply by calling Mr. Garrett at the number Miss Immelman had given me and telling him. I thought, at least that stops her from talking; but then: if he charged her with what I said, she could simply say that I raped her, that she had meant to spare him the truth; but since I was playing dirty, the truth was all s he had left. When I got that far with the thought, I can tell you, it hurt.

On the third night I turned to misery’s companion, a deck of playing cards, and dealt them out on the cocktail table for a game of solitaire. I had been at it for some time when I heard the freight elevator. I wondered who would be using it at that hour of the night. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor. Then I heard footsteps on the other side of my door. A key clicked in the lock. My heart almost stopped beating. The only people who had ever had keys were my mother before she died, Eliza, the cleaning woman, and Hortense. For some reason, it was my mother I thought of now as the door began to open slowly.