So, upper Mississippi River pragmatist that she still was indeed and withal, she no doubt thought of the people in his set, beginning that season at St. Moritz, as being dans le vrai precisely because they struck her as knowing so much more than she did about what to want.
Dans le vrai, dans le vrai, dans le vrai indeed, I went on thinking as I stood up and headed for the shelves and the books I needed for my winter term lesson plans. Wasn’t that what she also had in mind when she said what she said about magic keys when we said good-bye at the autobus station in Nice that afternoon? Some gold, some silver, some platinum. Or how about some sharp, some flat, some natural?
Why not? After all, had I not arrived in Hollywood, the land of lotus eaters, as a neophyte timekeeper in a notorious band of syncopated calypso vagabonds? Why not indeed, since they were not only keys that gave access to enchanted castles but also served as talismen in the pernicious passageways to the chambers with the chests of infinite treasure therein.
Not that the true storybook hero’s quest is ever likely to be for material riches as such except to pay off somebody else’s debt, otherwise his quest is likely to be for some magic means, not unlike the seed that became the beanstalk or the sporty limp stride of the seven league boots.
But old Flaubert was not talking about castles and the treasures and pleasures of court life when he said what he said. He was talking about the pastoral life of peasants, the blisses of the commonplace.
Creola Calloway herself would not have put it that way, I thought as I came along the aisle to the shelves from which I would select the books to be transferred to the reserve book room for supplemental reading for term papers, but the new friend of the Marquis de Chaumienne would have no problems pointing out that the blisses of the commonplace were precisely what nobody in Gasoline Point seemed to want Creola Calloway to want.
XXX
When I called Taft Edison that next weekend and told him about my arrival and about my dinner and informal but official orientation session out at the Poindexters’, he said, Man, as ready as I was to get the hell out of that goddamn place after the three years I spent down there, I have to admit that you make me realize that I do get little twitchings of nostalgia for the old place from time to time. After all, it was a beautiful campus, as I have had no trouble recording in print, and the standard of living in the surrounding neighborhood and even some of the outlying regions was also impressive. And as you know as well as my instructors down there did, I never had anything but enthusiasm for the library.
Me and you, man, I said, mimicking Joe States’s old catch-phrase. Me and you. And my old roommate and your old classmate Treemonisha Bradley. Which is when he also went on to say, Man, the truth of the matter is when I look back on the year-round time I spent down there maneuvering among that nationwide, and I mean coast-to-coast variety of thugs, in that student body in those days, I’m absolutely convinced that I was better prepared to cope with these Manhattan hip operators than I would have been had I come straight up here from my hometown, which, believe me, was no hick town by any measurement.
Then he said, So our very own bespoke Ivy League liberal arts–type professor is still also pulling his share of the mandatory freshman composition and intro lit courses required of ag and tech as well as gym and bowl types down there, is he?
And I said, As of old, and also as of now yclept campuswide as Prof Dex. I don’t know, man, maybe all those jocks don’t mind flocking to his lit classes because they are sure to be outnumbered by all of these high-grade-point-average females whose help with term papers they can pretend to be in urgent need of, and also because if they earn the kind of money and celebrity status they’re aiming at, a little spot of that belles lettres jive might come in handy in the high social circles they might move in. Not to mention jobs on a college coaching staff someday.
Then when I told him what Hortense Hightower had told me about her involvement in the Royal Highness proposal, he said, Man, like I told you when you told me what you told me when Joe States first brought up this thing in New York, bring this thing off and good-bye, academic gumshoe. Incidentally, the Pit and the Dolomite seem to have really come along since I was down there. But gigging in places like that as close to the campus as that was strictly off-limits for music majors in my day. The two campus dance bands used to play off-campus gigs, but that was mostly for high school hops and civic benefit socials. The Dolomite was off-limits for anything representing the school, especially music majors. Come to think of it, rules for members of the chapel orchestra and choir were pretty strict, too, even if you were a local resident. If you were a member of the chapel choir you had to get cleared by the dean of the Music Department to sing in the choir of
