Дональд Уэстлейк - Brothers Keepers

I couldn’t help thinking, as we closed the monastery door behind us once again, of Proverbs, XXVII, 8: “As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place.” Or, as Shakespeare put it in As You Like It , “When I was at home, I was in a better place.”

Well. At least the weather today was better than it had been recently. The clouds and clamminess had gone, leaving a royal blue sky and crisp sunlit air, the kind of weather still just possible now in mid-December. If one had to Travel, this was certainly the weather for it.

And the time of day. Yesterday we had started out during the morning rush hour, and so had been immersed from the outset in a whirlpool of rushing men and women. Today we were leaving at two in the afternoon, and the slackening in urgent energy was very noticeable. There were still far too many people and cars and cabs and buses and trucks, and most of them were still going too fast, but the desperate and terrifying edge was gone. The driver of a florist’s delivery truck parked in front of the monastery was actually nodding over a newspaper propped on his steering wheel, as though he were napping beside some rural stream, and the majority of his fellow citizens seemed to be rushing now out of habit rather than need.

Our journey today would be entirely on foot. We crossed Park Avenue at the corner and walked west on 51st Street. In the block between Madison and Fifth Avenues we walked with St. Patrick’s Cathedral on our left — definitely one of ours. Though in fact it is really more brave front than working church, since its parishioners total less than three hundred souls. No one lives in midtown Manhattan, you see; the people have all been driven away to make space for office buildings.

After Fifth Avenue we moved through Rockefeller Center, a cathedral to money containing many little chapels to Travel. At Sixth Avenue we turned left past the American Metal Climax Building — I’m not sure whether my finding that name funny is an offense against the Sixth Commandment or not — then walked three blocks past Radio City Music Hall, the Time-Life Building, the RCA Building, the Standard Oil Building and the U. S. Rubber Building to the Solinex Building. “What a lot of Buildings there are,” I said. “And yet they want more.”

“It’s an edifice complex,” Brother Oliver explained.

I pretended I hadn’t heard him.

The Solinex Building was one rectangle repeated seven million times. In glass, in chrome, and in what might have been but probably was not stone. It was set back from the public sidewalk, leaving space for a fountain with a statue in it. The statue was an abstract, but seemed to represent a one-winged airplane with measles which had just missed its landing on an aircraft carrier and was diving nose-first into the ocean. At least that’s the way it looked to me.

Apparently it looked otherwise to Brother Oliver. “Lot’s wife,” he commented as we went by.

Inside the building, different banks of elevators went to different groups of floors. “We want the fifty-seventh floor,” Brother Oliver said, and pointed. “One of those elevators over there.”

“That sounds very high,” I said, following him.

He frowned at me. “Do you get nosebleeds?”

“I have no idea.”

Bland music played in the elevator, which had imitation wood-grained walls and which we shared with several other people. The three chattering gum-chewing girls got off at 51, the bent old man carrying a manila envelope almost as big as himself got off at 54, and the two neat Japanese gentlemen got off at 56. At 57, Brother Oliver and I stepped out onto pale green carpeting defining a large space containing a receptionist’s desk and a waiting area with red leatherette sofas. Great red letters on the wall behind and above the receptionist spelled out DIMP.

Brother Oliver gave our names to the receptionist, who had a reserved manner and an English accent, and she did some things with a very complicated telephone console before telling us, “Have a seat over there. Mr. Snopes’ secretary will be right out.”

The red sofas were Danish in style, minimal in construction and uncomfortable to sit upon. White Formica tables amid them contained copies of Forbes magazine and Business Week and several real estate trade journals and something called Travel And Leisure , which turned out to be a magazine for American Express credit card users. The enjoyment and personal satisfaction to be found in such places as Bangkok was described. Brother Oliver chose that to leaf through — I made no comment — and I glanced at Business Week , a magazine I’d never seen before. I soon noticed they had a tendency to use the word “aggressive” to describe activity of which they approved. Another form of behavior they felt positive about was belt-tightening. As I continued to read, it seemed to me that all American business was divided into two camps, those who were aggressive and those who tightened their belts, and that Business Week , unable to choose the better from the worse, had given its unqualified blessing to both.

“Brother Oliver?” It was the same English accent as that of the receptionist, but here combined with a softer voice and a more friendly-seeming girl. At her call, we set aside our magazines, got to our feet, and followed her through a door, down a long cream corridor decorated with poster-size black-and-white photographs of tall buildings, and into a very large room dominated by two sweeping walls of windows. Outside the windows were the fifty-seventh floors of other buildings. Inside was a wood-veneered desk the size of a backyard swimming pool and the shape of a lima bean, along with a forest of potted plants ranging from one to four feet in height, two large building models on their own tables, and a thin swarthy hawk-faced man who came around the end of the desk and approached us with a facile smile and an outstretched hand. “Brother Oliver! And Brother Benedict!”

Brother Oliver shook hands for both of us. In the division of American business, this was clearly not a belt-tightener. Aggression poured from him in a gleaming oily river. “I’m Elroy Snopes,” he announced, still pumping Brother Oliver’s hand. “We’ve only met on the phone before this. Sit down, Brothers.” He released Brother Oliver in order to make a sweeping gesture at a pair of wooden-armed chairs with black leather seats and backs. “Coffee? A Coke? Anything at all?”

We both demurred.

“I’m having coffee myself,” Snopes insisted. We were all still standing, and he was leaning toward us, smiling, expectant, pushing his personality on us like a magician at a children’s party.

“Then I’ll have coffee with you,” Brother Oliver said. “Milk, no sugar.”

I understood his reasoning there. It was important to get into some sort of friendly relationship with this man, and throughout history the easiest way to do that kind of thing has been to break bread together. Or, in this case, to break coffee together. So I said, “Me, too. Regular, please.”

Snopes aimed his personality like a floodlight at the girl who had brought us in here. “Miss Flinter?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Right away.” And off she went, closing the door behind her.

Brother Oliver sat down, while Snopes strode away to the far side of his desk. Brother Oliver gave me a fast down-patting gesture, so I quickly sat in the other chair next to him, while Snopes settled himself behind his desk like a concert pianist at his Baldwin. He slapped his elbows onto the desktop, rubbed his hands together beneath his chin, beamed a smile at us, and said, “I’m glad you contacted us, Brother Oliver. We’d scheduled to contact you after the first of the year, but you can never have too much lead time in a situation like this.”