“Mr. Fields! Mr. Fields, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s quite important.” There was something stilted in the way she delivered her lines, like a poor actress, and after a moment Forlesen realized that there was no telephone call, that she had been instructed by Fields to provide this interruption and thus give him an excuse for escaping the meeting while increasing the other participants’ estimate of his importance. After a moment more he understood that Franklin and the others knew this as well as he, and that the admiration they felt for Fields—and admiration was certainly there, surrounding the stocky man as he followed Miss Fawn out—had its root in the daring Fields had shown, and in the power implied by his securing the cooperation of Miss Fawn, Mr. Freeling’s secretary.
Someone had dimmed the lights. “CREATIVITY MEANS JOBS” flashed on the screen, then a group of men and women in what might have been a schoolroom in a very exclusive school. One waved his hand, stood up, and spoke. There was no sound, but his eyes flashed with enthusiasm; when he sat down, an impressive-looking woman in tweeds rose, and Forlesen felt that whatever she was saying must be unanswerable, the final word on the subject under discussion; she was polite and restrained and as firm as iron, and she clearly had every fact at her fingertips.
“I can’t get this damn sound working,” Franklin said. “Just a minute.”
“What are they talking about?” Forlesen asked.
“Huh?”
“In the picture. What are they discussing?”
“Oh, I got it,” Franklin said. “Wait a minute. They’re talking about promoting creativity in the educational system.”
“Are they teachers?”
“No, they’re actors—let me alone for a minute, will you? I want to get this sound going.”
The sound came on, almost coinciding with the end of the picture; while Franklin was rewinding the film Forlesen said, “I suppose actors would have a better understanding of creativity than teachers would at that.”
“It’s a re-creation of an actual meeting of real teachers,” Franklin explained. “They photographed it and taped it, then had the actors reproduce the debate.”
Forlesen decided to go home for lunch. Lunch ours were 120 to 141—twenty-one ours should be enough, he thought, for him to drive there and return, and to eat. He kept the pedal down all the way, and discovered that the signs with HIDDEN DRIVES on their faces had SLOW CHILDREN on their backs.
The brick house was just as he remembered it. He parked the car on the spot where he had first seen it (there was a black oil stain there) and knocked at the door. Edna answered it, looking not quite as he remembered her. “What do you want?” she said.
“Lunch.”
“Are you crazy? If you’re selling something, we don’t want it.”
Forlesen said, “Don’t you know who I am?”
She looked at him more closely. He said, “I’m your husband, Emanuel.”
She seemed uncertain, then smiled, kissed him, and said, “Yes you are, aren’t you. You look different. Tired.”
“I am tired,” he said, and realized that it was true.
“Is it lunchtime already? I don’t have a watch, you know. I haven’t been able to keep track. I thought it was only the middle of the morning.”
“It seemed long enough to me,” Forlesen said. He wondered where the children were, thinking that he would have liked to see them.
“What do you want for lunch?”
“Whatever you have.”
In the bedroom she got out bread and sliced meat, and plugged in the coffeepot. “How was work?”
“All right. Fine.”
“Did you get promoted? Or get a raise?”
He shook his head.
“After lunch,” she said. “You’ll get promoted after lunch.”
He laughed, thinking that she was joking.
“A woman knows.”
“Where are the kids?”
“At school. They eat their lunch at school. There’s a beautiful cafeteria—everything is stainless steel—and they have a dietician who thinks about the best possible lunch for each child and makes them eat it.”
“Did you see it?” he asked.
“No, I read about it. In here.” She tapped
“Oh.”
“They’ll be home at one hundred and thirty—that’s what the book says. Here’s your sandwich.” She poured him a cup of coffee. “What time is it now?”
He looked at the watch she had given him. “A hundred and twenty-nine thirty.”
“Eat. You ought to be going back soon.”
