‘Thank the Lord I have a partner with some culture,’ he said. ‘Take the old fellow to Chopin and impress him. Maybe he’ll throw some business our way if he thinks you and he have the same taste.’
I called up Mathison and asked him if he and his wife would care to join me and a friend for the concert, and he jumped at it.
As it worked out, it wasn’t Chopin nor I who impressed Mathison, it was Sarita. She made a big hit with him, and not only with him, but his wife as well.
The evening had been a success.
As we shook hands before parting, he said, ‘It’s time we saw something of you at the office, young man. Look in tomorrow. I want you to meet Merrill Webb.’
Webb was the City’s planning officer. He was the guy who handed out the jobs. Without his say-so, you got nowhere. I hadn’t even met him.
I was feeling on top of the world as I drove Sarita to her apartment. I knew I had her to thank for this opening, and I asked her if she would dine with me the night after next and she said she would.
The next morning I went to the City Hall and met Webb. He was a lean, dried up, stoop-shouldered man in his late fifties. He talked to me casually, asking about my training and Jack’s training, what we had done so far and stuff like that. He didn’t seem particularly interested. Finally, he shook hands and said that if he had something he thought we could handle he would let me know.
I was a little damped by this. I had had hopes that he would have given us something to work on right away.
Jack said he wasn’t surprised.
‘You keep after Mathison. He’s the guy who tel s Webb what to do. Keep after Mathison, and sooner or later, we’ll land in the gravy.’
From then on, I saw a lot of Sarita. We went out every other night, and after a couple of weeks I knew I was in love with her and wanted to marry her.
I was now making a reasonable living; not a great deal, but enough to support a wife. I saw no reason why we should wait, providing she was willing to throw her lot in with me, so I asked her.
There was no hesitation when she said yes.
When I told Jack he leaned back in his desk chair and beamed at me.
‘Boy! Am I glad! It’s high time one of us became respectable! And what a girl! I’ll tell you something: if you hadn’t got there first, I would have grabbed her. The best, Jeff. I’m not kidding. That girl’s solid gold right through. I know a sterling character when I see one: she’s it.’
Don’t imagine during these years I hadn’t thought of Rima nor of the guard she had murdered. Don’t imagine there weren’t times when I would wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare when I imagined Rima was in the room, looking at me. But as the years went by, and the thing became something in the dim past, I began to feel confident that it was in the past and would remain that way.
I had thought a lot about it before I had asked Sarita to be my wife. Finally, I decided it was a risk I could afford to take. No one knew me as Gordon. I had grown up and altered considerably since I was in Los Angeles, although the scar persisted and so did the drooping eyelid. I felt I had seen the last of Rima and the last of my past.
We were married towards the end of the year. As a wedding present we got the job of building the new wing to the State hospital. It was a nice job and it made us money. That was Mathison’s influence.
It enabled Jack to move into a three room penthouse and Sarita and I into a four-room, more modest apartment in the better district. It allowed both of us to buy better cars and we entertained more.
Life seemed pretty good. We felt we had at last arrived. Then one morning the telephone bell rang and Mathison came on the line.
‘Come over here right away, Jeff,’ he said. ‘Drop everything. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
This abrupt summons left me wondering, but I dropped everything, told Clara I’d be back when she saw me, told her to tell Jack who was out on a construction job where to find me, and hot footed over to City Hall.
Mathison and Webb were together in Mathison’s office.
‘Sit down, boy,’ Mathison said, waving me to a chair. ‘You’ve heard about the Hol and bridge?’
‘Why, sure.’
‘This morning we have got it fixed. We have the money, and now we’re going to build.’
This was a project that every construction engineer in the county and a lot outside the county had been waiting for. It was to take the up-town traffic out of Holland City across the river. This was the big job. The estimated cost ran into six million dollars.
My heart started to thump. Mathison wouldn’t have cal ed me just to tel me this piece of news. I waited, looking at him and then at Webb.
Mathison grinned at me.
‘Do you think you and Osborne could build it?’
‘We can build it.’
‘I’ve talked it over with Webb. Of course it’l have to go before the committee, but if you come up with the right figures and you can convince the bone heads you can build the bridge within a year, I think I can persuade them to let you go ahead. You’l have all the boys up against you, but I’m going to lean over backwards just a little and if your price isn’t right, I’m going to tell you so before the committee sees your estimates: that way you should get the job.’
For the next thirty days I scarcely saw Sarita.
Jack and I slaved in the office from eight o’clock in the morning until sometimes as late as three o’clock the next morning.
This was our big chance to break into Big-time and we weren’t taking any chances.
Finally, the pressure got so tough, I asked Sarita to come into the office to handle the typing so Clara could spend her time on the calculating machine, getting out figures for us.
The four of us slaved.
At the end of thirty days we had the estimates and the plan of operation ready.
I went around to Mathison and handed the document over. He said he would let me know, and that was that.
We waited three long, nerve-racking months, then he telephoned me and told me to come over.
‘It’s okay, boy,’ he said, coming over to shake me by the hand. ‘The job’s yours. I’m not saying I didn’t have a fight to convince some of them, but your figures were right, and you had half the committee on your side to start with. You can go right ahead. Talk to Webb. There’l be another meeting tomorrow. I want you and Osborne to be there.’
That happened exactly ten years, eleven months and two weeks since last I saw Rima.
II
I hadn’t considered what the building of a six mil ion dol ar bridge would mean until Joe Creedy, the City’s Public Relations Officer, breezed into our office and told me.
We had celebrated of course: just our own private celebration with Sarita, Jack, Clara and myself. We had gone to the best restaurant in Holland City and had had a champagne dinner. As far as I was concerned the celebrations were over and we had now to get down to the business of building the bridge, but Creedy had other ideas.
Creedy was a big, broad-shouldered man with a heavy, serious face and a likeable manner. He paced the office while Jack and I sat at our desks and listened to him.
‘There’ll be a civic banquet on Saturday,’ he told us. ‘You two wil be guests of honour. One of you will have to make a speech.’
Jack grinned broadly and jerked his thumb at me.
‘You’re the boy, Jeff. I wouldn’t know how to make a speech.’
