Seven Seats to the Moon Page 22

“Oh, oh!”

  “You said it! Brains are valuable, but these characters are popular! I’m scared to get big help. Scares me—some innocent pilot minding his business, he’s shot down. So then they know, eh? I’m warning you, your Little man … You think he’s safe?”

  “So far,” said Tony. “Can I get big help and put him away?”

  “Don’t you open that can of worms! No, no. Play it by ear, Tony, and God help us all if your ear’s not good enough!”

  Mr. Smith had lost his cool! Tony hung up and took a good grasp on his own.

  On Friday morning J slipped into his smooth and well-worn groove, expecting that it would, as usual, be roughened here and there by small surprises. At ten o’clock there was a big surprise.

  Bringgold called him into his office, offered him a cigar, which J took although he didn’t want it, and then Bringgold confided that poor Tom must go. J didn’t argue. In fact, he agreed. He knew that the wheels—the dark-blue wheels—must roll.

  The thought of Amy crossed his mind. Was J coldhearted? Well, he didn’t know about that. There’s more than one person in a business. If one man’s very temperament constitutes sand in the gears, should even a warm heart let the whole machine grind to a halt? Probably J’s heart was somewhere in the middle, neither cold nor warm.

  But to J’s astonishment Bringgold began to praise his handling of the late emergency. “You’re damn good at this,” the boss said, “and it ain’t easy, as I should know.”

  “I guess it’s in how you look at it,” said J, who was feeling rather uncomfortable. “My gardener tells me all I do is sit on my fat can and get rich.”

  “Oh-ho, bo-hoy!” said Bringgold, looking startled. He was a man who never quite sat in a chair but used its seat as a base upon which to bounce slightly. Bringgold now suddenly acquired weight. “I’ll tell you, J,” he said, “my wife wants to travel. She’s got a few shekels tucked away.” He touched his glasses. “A man gets tired,” he said, “and you wonder.…”

  “Yes,” said J (to his surprise) affectionately.

  “Well, you’re in line for this position. You can handle it, eh? You think so, don’t you?”

  “I am inclined to think so,” said J slowly and judiciously.

  “Self-confidence,” said Bringgold heartily. “Doesn’t scare you, eh? Well, we’ll have to get Tom replaced. I think,” said Bringgold, returning to his normal bouncing tension, “you ought to get better acquainted with the Partners in the next few weeks.”

  J rose and said, “I would enjoy that, sir.”

  Back at his own desk J was glad he had not said a jubilant “Herman,” and also that his “sir” had not been too humble. What J really felt, he decided, was amusement. Bringgold’s job didn’t scare him. J was pretty sure he had been doing it for years. He would just be in the same middle, with a slightly different title and more salary. Humph!

  The other side of the middle now approached.

  “Sit down, Tom,” said J, reading by his face that the young man had had the bad news. “I don’t think,” said J kindly, “you have ever really enjoyed this kind of work. Isn’t that so?”

  “There’s too much in-fighting,” Tom said. “I don’t like disharmony. I’m too sensitive and aware,” he blurted. “I haven’t got your sangfroid.”

  “My what?” said J. (Ah, yes, the cold heart.)

  “Well, I can’t just ignore other people’s feelings,” said Tom.

  “I was going to hint around,” said J, “and suggest you look for a kind of work that suited you better.”

  “And you could care less that I got the ax,” Tom said, all hot-eyed and hurt.

  “You know what my sangfroid is asking me right now?” said J, leaning back. “Why in hell (it wants to know) should a man like you work where he feels so damned miserable day in and day out? You’ve got advantages. Some people may be trapped, but you mean to tell me you’re not free to go do something else for a living? What do you lack? The nerve?”

  Tom swallowed. “I’m pretty upset right now. I’m sorry. I mean you have always been a decent … I’m sorry, Mr. Little.” Tom rose and fled.

  J practiced raising only one eyebrow. He did feel sorry for Tom, although not because he had been fired. J couldn’t think offhand of a job where you’d never run into other people’s feelings. Yes, he could! How about Avery’s job?

  His thought veered away, turned back, swooped in on this. Okay, what if you cut off the horizontal, left off trying to relate to your contemporaries, and went inside? All alone, hard and deep. What if some men could do that? (J bet it wasn’t easy! Himself, he never got anywhere but all mixed up trying that.) But supposing a man could, should he not? Without thought of selling his work to other men, because he was doing it out of himself, vertically, alone? Yet might he not be speaking, whether he would or no, to men of the depths of a man?

  I’ll be damned, thought J. Am I understanding Avery?

  “Is this Sophia?” said the old gentleman on the phone with his usual air of surprise to find that his son’s wife lived in his son’s house. “May I speak to J, please?”

  “Why he’s at his office, Mr. Little. Is anything wrong?” Sophia had heard a trembling urgency in the voice.

  “I’m afraid so. I’m afraid so. Tell J that I must see him.”

  “But what’s the trouble?”

  “I am in a dilemma. I am at a loss as to what I ought to do.”

  “I’m sure J will help if he can,” said Sophia. “I know he is very, very busy. But I could come. Or could Win? He might help you, Mr. Little.”

  “No, no. It’s a moral dilemma, you see. I would very much like to talk to J. Fairly soon. Perhaps not today.”

  “You don’t feel ill?” (Sophia imagined herself hurrying down there.)

  “Oh, no, no, no. I see, I realize that I must compose myself. Do you think J could come tomorrow?”

  “Why, of course, if you need him.”

  “I wish that he would come,” said the old gentleman pathetically. He hung up. He had a son J, did he not? Had the woman said “Winnie”? But Winnie was dead, or so he believed. His son Willy? No, Willy was gone. He thought he would have a sip of sherry and lie down for a bit. Alice was gone.

  Cary caught Nanjo in the high school corridor. “Hey, how about tonight?”

  “Oh, gosh, Cary. I can’t.”

  “I want to talk. Why not tonight?”

  “Well, my folks … I’m not supposed to go out.”

  Cary made a rude noise. His hand tightened on her arm.

  “Cary, you’re hurting me!”

  “So what?” he said. “Come on, Nanjo. You can get out if you want.”

  Bells rang. They both began automatically to obey, moving toward their classrooms. Nanjo kept her head down. She had not pulled away from his hand and took note that he had slackened his grip.

  “Gosh, Cary, I don’t know what I can do. My—my Dad doesn’t want me to date for a while. So what can I—”

  Cary let her go. His hand came back to slap and sting her forearm.

  “Ouch!” she said. “Hey!”

  “Date me, eh? Your old man, yah! You should’ve seen what I saw, him and his girlfriend! Sure, he don’t want you going out with me. So what?”

  “I don’t believe …” Nanjo was rigid.

  “Tell him you’re going over to Debby’s. If I don’t see you on the way, I’ll honk my horn in front of your house and get some other guys and we’ll all honk and your old man’s going to love it.” Cary walked swiftly on, leaving her behind.

  Nanjo pulled wisdom out of her store.

  “It isn’t right not to listen,” she told herself (and her friend Debby, who had heard some of this). “You should always be willing to listen. Well, I’m not going out with him because I don’t want to, but it’s only fair to listen.”

  The truth was what Nanjo did not want was listening. For instance, J listening to Cary, who had been taught to believe that Nanjo kept in with her folks, quite cynically, because
she was smart enough to know where profit was. And she didn’t want Cary listening to J, who’d been taught to believe that Nanjo was no snob, but such as Cary didn’t mean a thing in her real life, of course.

  “There’s the masculine ego, too,” Debby said wisely.

  “I don’t want to hurt Cary,” said Nanjo, wondering if she really could.

  Marion was showing the man and his wife and the realtor around her house. “The view,” she said, “is really marvelous.”

  “Was that black algae in your pool?” the woman said.

  “The pool boy hasn’t been this week,” said Marion. “It’s a fairly new pool.”

  “You can see that by the planting,” said the man sourly. “I don’t like kidney shapes, myself.”

  “You can see by the walls that children have lived here,” the woman said.

  Marion said softly, “They have loved it, but they do grow. Excuse me?”

  As Marion fell behind, she heard the realtor say, “Definitely a prestige area.”

  The man in the living room, who had come to appraise the big painting that Avery had been about to throw away, said, “Mrs. Little, this artist, who is he? Not very well-known.”

  “We are sure,” she said dreamily, “that he will be.”

  “Maybe you’d better hold it for an investment,” he said contemptuously.

  “I would like very much to keep it,” said Marion quietly. “But it needs a huge wall. I suppose a private person can’t hope, really …”

  He glanced at her sharply and then back at the painting.

  Marion thought, I’m doing this quite well.

  Mrs. Arriola, leaning on her mop, said, “Oh, Miz Neeby, there’s bad trouble over there. As plain as plain to me.”

  “I heard they fired the gardener,” said Susie carelessly.

  “Oh, Miz Neeby, that Nancy Jo, she didn’t ought to go around the way she goes. She’s going to break her mama’s heart one of these days. And poor Mr. Little, he ain’t feeling right. Something happened to that man! Oh, something’s preying on him, all right! Oh, Miz Neeby, this fancy-looking girl, she turns up for lunch, and oh, Miz Neeby, I’m telling you—Miz Little, she wasn’t so crazy about her.”

  “I thought she was a cousin of Mr. Little’s.”

  “Oh, I dunno about that,” said Mrs. Arriola with dark looks. “You know Miz Thomas? Now, Miz Thomas, she don’t never want to face life. But oh, Miz Neeby, she seen something!”

  “What did she see?” said Susie helplessly.

  “I dunno what she seen,” said Mrs. Arriola, “but, oh, Miz Neeby, it was nothing good, I can tell you that.”

  The ghost of Marietta’s voice took brief possession.

  “But it’s a lovely home,” said Mrs. Arriola. “And a real nice family.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Friday Afternoon

  At one o’clock, as J had decreed on the telephone, they came, and J had them shown into his office.

  “This is Tony Thees, Mr. Little,” the girl said. “How are you, sir?”

  Gone was the turned-on allure, the little girl lost in the jungle of romance, the mischievous con woman. But J didn’t care who she was being today.

  “Miss Woods. Mr. Thees,” he said in his business voice, “sit down. Mr. Thees, mind telling me what you said to me on the phone the other night?”

  “I said I hadn’t seen you since Noah built the Ark,” said the young man quickly. “That’s pretty good, sir.”

  J said, “Don’t patronize me, please. Answer my questions.”

  “Sir, I—uh—don’t think we should be here long. Goodrick is downstairs right now. He’ll be wondering.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he’s wondering,” said J. “I am not going to lunch with you two unless and until I get some answers.”

  Annette opened her mouth. Tony said, “I’ll talk.” Then, to J, “All I can tell you, Mr. Little, is that you may be in physical danger.”

  “Is that so?” drawled J.

  “Tony—” the girl began.

  “Be quiet,” said Tony. “Mr. Little, I realize you are naturally bewildered. But it will soon be over. There’s a time limit. Only let us protect you for a few more days.”

  “Days? And the danger will be over?”

  “That’s right. And also, any need for you to keep your promise.”

  (Indulgence, condescension, comfort from the wise?)

  “How many days?” snapped J. (A week is only seven days, and what’s a day?)

  “Not many,” the wise young man evaded.

  “I’ll be released from my promise?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You will release me?”

  “That I will.”

  “But not now?”

  “Not now.”

  Annette said, “Mr. Little, please consider kind of … getting lost? Tony could fix it. It would be so much safer for you.”

  “Would my family know where I was, and why?” J was asking Tony.

  “They would not,” Tony said. “We’d tell them something, of course.”

  “Nothing doing,” said J.

  “But I would go to stay in your house,” said Annette. “I’m trained, sir. I could protect.…”

  J ignored her completely. (As if she’s a babbling infant, bothering grown-ups, Tony thought, amused.)

  “Tell me this,” said J, smiling because he and the young man were at least being crisp. “Is it true that some men are building an ark to go to the moon?”

  Tony hesitated. “That may be an allegorical way to put it,” he said. “Please listen. Goodrick is only going on some kind of very slim hunch. All he’s got is this. He heard you promise Doctor Willing, by way of a quotation, wasn’t it? that you would be silent. Is that so?”

  “Yes,” said J, feeling hit. “Yes, I guess that’s so.”

  “Doctor Willing told me about that,” said Tony. “You couldn’t have known, of course, who Goodrick …”

  “Don’t comfort me, please,” said J. “Who is Goodrick?”

  Tony shook his head. “Dangerous,” he said. “We hoped that his interest would fizzle out, but he’s still dogging you. Right now.”

  “What can he do to me?”

  Annette said, “We don’t want him to do anything! That’s the—”

  Tony stepped on her sentence with one of his own. “If you will just stay close to your own home, sir? In fact, stay right there over the weekend as well as this evening? That may be good enough. As long as Goodrick has nothing but a hunch, he may not risk … well … violence.”

  J said, “But I go it blind? I don’t even know the secret I’m supposed to be keeping. Do I?” He pounced.

  Tony said, “Believe in the danger. I’ll have someone riding your tail home tonight, as I have had since Monday. Believe we are on your side, Mr. Little.”

  “Mine and who else’s?” said J.

  Annette said, “You don’t understand, Tony.”

  Tony said, “Just a minute. I have a question. Do I take it that if Goodrick asks … in any uncomfortable way—you intend to answer?” He looked thoughtful.

  J said, “This is what I intend. It so happens that we have a bridge game on tonight at home. It so happens that I have yard work tomorrow, in my own yard. Now, I intend to keep my promise to the man I knew as Barkis. But I am promising you nothing. I’m giving you my schedule. What I think, you kids have been making this whole affair into something a lot sillier than it ever had to be.”

  “That may be true,” said Tony, seeming to be hit. “Thank you, Mr. Little.”

  Annette said, “Mr. Little, I think you are … I think you are being …”

  She seemed to be struggling for words of praise, so J said, “Some hero, I am! Not everybody is damn fool enough to keep a secret—he doesn’t even know what it is. But you know?” He looked at Tony steadily.

  Tony looked steadily back but didn’t answer.

  “And she knows, eh?” growled J. “How come Goodrick is bothering about a fell
ow like me when here’s a frail little female he could take and torture anytime he’d want?”

  Annette said quickly, “He doesn’t know I am connected.”

  “Watching me with blindfolds on, eh?” said J. “You say he’s downstairs? He knows now, doesn’t he?”

  “She doesn’t know a very important factor,” said Tony.

  “Ah,” said J, “but she knows that I do?”

  He saw the blood departing from under Tony’s tan.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” said Annette, becoming extremely practical. “Goodrick will listen in if he can, and he probably can. So Tony and I have this big act we can put on. It would muddle him, at least. Please, Mr. Little? Cousin J?”

  J, still looking steadily at Tony, said, “All right, Cousin Annie. You owe me a lunch, I guess.”

  He was thinking that this Tony seemed to believe in the danger. J wasn’t altogether sure that he did, yet. But the affair was certainly interesting; in fact, bizarre. It had cheered him up to hear that there was a time limit on it.

  In the lobby Tony argued for an excellent place he knew; he had a car. But J flatly said he hadn’t the time to go so far, and there was a fair place right across the street that would have to do. He sensed a faint air of dismay about the young people as they crossed over. He couldn’t figure why.

  The maître d’ came, bustling and bowing and calling J by name, to find them a table immediately. After all, J thought, amused, a regular customer is a valuable asset, and her looks don’t hurt, either. Their table was set into a semi-circle of soft bench.

  “Why don’t you,” said Annette prettily, “sit in the middle, Cousin J?”

  “Where else?” said J cheerfully and slid along the leather.

  The maître d’ inquired about cocktails. “Damn right,” said J.

  Tony said easily, “You’ll have the usual, sweetheart? What’s your fancy, Mr. Little?”

  J named his fancy and picked up the menu. Tony gave the drink orders. Annette had her lipstick out and was painting her mouth.

  Tony said, “At last, I’ve met the famous Cousin J!”

  “He’s going to be snide, Cousin J,” said Annette, being very feminine and coy. “He was all wrong about you, and that makes him furious.” She was testing her lipstick on a doily. No, she was printing.