“It pleases you to make fun of me,” she said with dignity, “and what you are, after all, is the shyster I called you.”
I chose to ignore both indictments, the latter because it didn’t logically follow, and the former because it wasn’t true. Whatever my status as a lawyer, I took no pleasure in giving Mrs. Burdock the treatment, and I did it only to expedite her departure. To this extent, at least, it was effective, and my pleasure, what little there was, was derived solely from watching her massive stern clear the doorframe by the merest margins, larboard and starboard, on the way out.
I had risen at the last moment in a tardy concession to courtesy, and before I could sit down and take sight again on the Rexall sign across the street, I was distracted by the red head of Millie Morgan, which appeared in the doorway and came into the room. Millie is my secretary, and her head was followed, naturally, by the rest of her. The rest of Millie happens to be even more distracting than her head, especially when she takes dictation with her knees crossed, and the fact that my wife tolerates her amiably is less a commentary on my stability than on my wife’s serene confidence in her own assets, which are, in fact, considerable.
“What was wrong with Mrs. Burdock?” Millie said.
“Roscoe belted her in the eye.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean when she came out just now. She looked as if you’d made improper advances or something.”
“Pleased and flattered, you mean?”
“Don’t be absurd. Offended, I mean. Like a haughty hippo.”
“Do you think Mrs. Burdock would actually be offended if I were to make improper advances? There’s a good chance, I think, that she might be receptive. Even enthusiastic.”
“That’s because you’re abnormally lewd and vain. Do you make salacious speculations about all your female clients?”
“Only when they’re exceptionally seductive, like Mrs. Burdock. Of course these good lookers are often disappointing when you put them to the test. I’ll let you know about Mrs. Burdock later. We have a date to go for a drive in the country tonight. We’re going to try sex.”
“You’d better watch out. You’re going to get sued some day.”
“That’s all right. I know a good lawyer.”
“Do you? I don’t. The only lawyer I know couldn’t crack a case of beer.”
“In that case, you’re fired. Go on home.”
“I’m not going home. I’ve got a date for cocktails and dinner with an engineer. We may try sex ourselves.”
“You’ll like it,” I said. “It’s fun.”
I watched her go through the doorway, as I had watched Mrs. Burdock go before her, but there was quite a difference. My pleasure was differently incited, for one thing, and the larboard and starboard clearance was much greater, for another. When she was gone, I sat down and submitted again to the abortive sorrows of the incipient evening, the elegiac contemplation of going and gone, and I sat there alone for about twenty or thirty minutes, I think, before looking at my watch and seeing that it was almost five-thirty and time to be starting home. I got up and went through the outer office, a matter of half a dozen steps, and on into the hall. I slammed the door behind me and turned to try it, to see if the lock had caught or not, and there on the frosted glass of the door in neat little gold letters was a name, W. Gideon Jones, which was mine, and a designation, attorney-at-law, which was what I had become and what I was.
It seemed to me that an attorney-at-law was something a man might be if he didn’t have the imagination or daring to be something else, and I stood there looking at the neat little gold letters and thinking of all the fine and exciting things I had never done and would never do because I was a picayune fellow who had lived all his life, time out for the university and a service hitch, in one small city of thirty thousand souls and a million cicadas. I might have gone to Florida and bought a boat and taken people deep sea fishing. I might have gone to Paris and lived on the Left Bank and had some Henry Miller experiences. I might have been a soldier of fortune in hot and gaudy tropic lands. At the very least, if I had to be a lawyer, I might have been, for God’s sake, Perry Mason instead of Gideon Jones.
But there I was for a fact. Gideon Jones and no escaping it. Although it was a grim and unsatisfactory state of affairs, it was something that had to be accepted and lived with, and it occurred to me that acceptance might be a hell of a lot easier if I were to go over to the Kiowa Room, which was the cocktail lounge in the Hotel Carson, and have a couple of gimlets before going home. The more I thought about it, the more the Kiowa Room seemed like a good place to go, and drinking gimlets a good thing to do, and so I went there and did that, and I would have been better off, as it turned out, if I hadn’t.
CHAPTER 2
The gimlet was good, the bartender was taciturn, and I was grateful for both of these conditions. The bartender’s name was Chauncy, and he had skin the color of Swiss chocolate surrounding large, limpid eyes that expressed mutely a legend of sorrow. On many occasions in the past we had settled issues of grave importance, Chauncy and I, but this evening he plainly preferred reflection to conversation, which suited me fine, and I think that he was probably anticipating the cicadas himself, and was maybe even listening to a private prelude by means of some kind of special sensual attunement peculiar to what he was.
I was sitting on a stool at the bar with my
