Collected Stories

“He disappeared.”

“More and more new kinds of crazies coming at you. How changed everything is!… It was women and children first when the Titanic went down. Middle-class gallantry is gone with the Biedermeier.”

“There’s no real damage. It just aches some. But, Vic, think of the time lost to eat bad food. Is there nothing we can do to get out of here?”

“I might try to telephone the guy in charge of tonight’s arrangements. Let me look in my wallet.” Hooking his cane over his shoulder, he examined his hip-pocket army-navy billfold. “Yes. Continental Bank. Horace Kinglake. Why don’t we phone him? If he wants me to speak tonight, he’d better organize our rescue. Why don’t you call him, Katrina?”

“You want me to do the talking?”

“Why not? He must have top-level contacts with United or American. I hope you brought your telephone credit card.”

“I did,” said Katrina.

“Airports used to have good central services. Even Grand Central had telephone operators. Let’s see if we can get hold of a phone.” They had just begun to move forward when Victor stopped Katrina, saying, “I see our buddy Wrangel. He’s coming toward us.”

“He’s sure to see us. You’re pretty conspicuous.”

“What if he does?… He did say he was flying to Detroit, didn’t he?”

“When you walked out, I was embarrassed,” said Katrina.

“He had no business to pursue me to the lounge.”

“A different way to view it is that he came all the way from California to hear your lecture and to engage in conversation.”

“To settle an old score, I think. This is a day when events have a dream tendency,” said Victor. “There’s a line about ‘les revenants qui vous raccrochent en plein jour.’”

“You’d better give me the card with that Kinglake’s number.”

Victor, curiously, didn’t try to avoid Wrangel, and Wrangel, to Katrina’s surprise, was terribly pleased to find them in the concourse. He might justifiably have been a little huffy. Not at all. In his own shy way he was delighted. “You didn’t say you were going to Detroit, too.”

“We weren’t. We’re grounded by the bad weather in Chicago.”

“Oh, you have to wait. In that case why don’t you have lunch with me?”

“I wish we could,” said Katrina. “But we have to get to a telephone. It’s urgent.”

“Phoning would be much easier from a restaurant. Just a minute ago I passed a decent-looking bar and grill.”

It was a big dark place, under a low ceiling, Tudor decor. As soon as the hostess appeared, Katrina saw money changing hands. It looked like a ten-dollar bill that Wrangel slipped the woman. Why not, if The Kronos Factor had grossed four hundred million? A leather booth was instantly available. Victor occupied the corner, laying his leg along the settee on the left. “Shall we drink?” said Wrangel. “Shall we order before you make your call? Miss,” he said to the hostess, “please let this lady use your telephone. What shall we get for you, my dear?”

“A turkey sandwich, white meat, on toast.”

“Duck р l’orange,” said Victor. In a lounge as dark as this, where you couldn’t see what you were eating, Katrina would have chosen a simpler meal for him as well. Amber light descended from a fixture upon Wrangel’s head and on the thick white furs.

“Better make that call person-to-person,” Victor advised Katrina.

It was good advice, for Horace Kinglake was hard to reach. The call went through many transfers. By his voice when he said “Kinglake,” she recognized that he was an adroit, managerial type. From Victor she had picked up a certain contempt for polished executives. Still, it was comforting to talk even to a man whose courtesies were artificial. “Stuck in Detroit? Oh, we can’t have that, can we? Some two hundred acceptances have come in. An audience from all parts of the country. It would be a disaster if Mr. Wulpy… I am really concerned. And so sorry. Wasn’t there an earlier flight?” Cursing Victor, probably, for this last-minute fuck-up.

“Is the Chicago weather so ferocious?” Katrina asked for facts to go with her forebodings.

But Mr. Kinglake was taking her call in a private dining room, and what would a senior executive in his seventieth-story offices know about weather in the streets? He had heard some reports of a freak storm. “We’ll get Mr. Wulpy here, regardless. I’ll put my ace troubleshooter on this. Give me about half an hour.”

“You can reach us at this number in Detroit…. I wonder, is O’Hare closed down for the day?”

“There is Midway and also Meigs Field.”

Half reassured, she went back to the booth. A woman in her position, taking chances, playing outlaw in order to be at Victor’s side—the big man’s consort; but when she had seen him in profile (just after the flight engineer had stomped her instep, and when she had felt that there were unsobbed sobs in her chest), she had had a new view of the deterioration he had suffered since he had taken up with her.

The double shot of booze he had drunk apparently had done him good. He held a thick wide glass in his hand—a refill. This was what his system needed, food and drink and a booth to rest in. He could well have afforded to bring her here himself, and to slip the hostess ten bucks and to have the use of the telephone. But he would never have done that. It would have been a sacrifice of principle. And this was why he had been glad to see Wrangel. Wrangel had got him off his feet. The duck р l’orange would be awful. A servitor, an aide, was necessary to satisfy his psyche. Also somebody to pick up the tab. She admitted that this was important to him.

Trina made her report, and Victor said, “Well, we can just take it easy until he calls back. I’ll talk to him myself, about tonight’s program. Sit down, kid, and have a drink.” Katrina shared the corner beside him. Vanessa’s fiddle stood upright behind them. Katrina was grateful to Wrangel just then. She needed help with Victor. He seemed to her unstable, off center. The term often used in Psychology Today was “labile.” He was labile. And he was more pleased than not to have Wrangel’s company now. He seemed to have forgotten the poisonous dig about Tchelitchew. Katrina thought it likely that Wrangel had never heard about Tchelitchew’s offensive statement. Of course, Victor believed that movies of the kind made by Wrangel infected the mental life of the country (and the international community), but they weren’t considering Wrangel’s movies just now. Evidently, though, they had been talking about erotic films, for Wrangel was saying that he hadn’t personally been involved in that business. “Productions ofthat kind don’t need scriptwriters.”

“No?” said Victor. “Just interracial couples balling away?”

“I wonder if you can get the waitress to bring me a Bloody Mary,” said Katrina.

“Certainly,” said Wrangel. “Now, to fill you in on my career since the Village days, I had many kinds of writing jobs. One of the more curious was with the crew in Texas that helped to put together the memoirs of President Johnson.

“How did that come about?” said Katrina.

“Out of the Bread Loaf Conference, where I met some Washington journalists. Also Robert Frost—and a few gentleman types from Harvard. And I was recommended by Dick Goodwin, so there I was in Austin on Johnson’s staff of writers. He had retired by then.”

“How was that done—the work?” said Victor.

“It began with a course of brainwashing. We used to gather atop the Federal Building in Austin built by LBJ toward the end of his administration. He had his own suite, and he landed by helicopter, from his ranch, and came down from the rooftop to spend the day with us. He repeated his version of every event until it was grafted on our minds. You often come across these legend builders who hypnotize you by repetition. You become the receptacle of their story. Robert Frost was another of those authorized-version fellows. They do all of the talking, and they repeat themselves until your mind begins to reject alternative versions. Johnson brought us to his ranch, too. He drove over the pastures in his Lincoln, and the bodyguards followed in their Lincoln. When he needed more to drink, he rolled down his window and the guards pulled up alongside and poured him more whiskey. Most of us were intimidated by him—easier to do with a person like me, Victor, than with you.”

“Oh, it’s been tried. Once at Berenson’s villa. The famous mummy was brought out—another Litvak, like myself. I was raised to respect my elders, but I didn’t care to have so many cultural flourishes made over me.”

“The Latin quotations…” Katrina reminded him.