them

  “Keep the car?”

  “Yes. Overnight,” said Bernard. They were out on the street. He was both enthusiastic and worried. He kept glancing around over his shoulder, as if he expected someone to run up behind him and put an end to this folly. “Here’s my car,” he said as they approached a Lincoln parked at the curb, ticketed, “and here are my keys.”

  Jules saw that he tore up the ticket, very agitated, but probably without knowing what he was doing.

  “I live at a hotel downtown. It’s very convenient to Faye’s place but, you know, she rarely lets me see her. Her life is terribly simple and yet terribly complicated. You must tell me about her sometime, your subjects of conversation with her.”

  Jules drove to the hotel, and before Bernard got out he leaned forward against the seat and handed Jules something. “Here’s a check. Cash it in the morning and take care of yourself and come back to get me. We’ll take Faye out to lunch if she’s up. Get your hair cut. Get a new suit.”

  Jules looked at the check: it was made out to Jules Wendall for one hundred dollars.

  At ten the next morning Jules went to the National Bank of Detroit, and there he sweated out a teller’s suspicions for some fifteen minutes, though he had a driver’s license to show who he was. “Just a moment,” the girl said. Jules, so close to one hundred dollars that his stomach had begun to ache, lost himself in staring at the frizzy hair of a Negro teller at the next window, counting out bills. Endless bills. One hundred dollars was coming to him…a gift…an enchantment. His teller was making a telephone call. Jules tried not to hear what she said, for what if she were saying, Oh, the account has been closed? Oh? Jules thought of the one hundred dollars, which he needed. Bernard would be like a father to him. Already he had recognized Jules’s intelligence and was willing to invest in him and put him on his payroll….His teller was saying, “Thank you,” brightly, and, as if nothing had happened, as if she’d never been suspicious, she went to a money drawer and began taking out bills. Jules watched. She took out four bills, then two bills. She came to Jules and counted them onto the marble-topped counter, near Jules’s itchy hand.

  “…one hundred dollars!” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Jules hoarsely.

  He went out into the overcast Detroit morning. The hundred dollars was safe in his wallet. His wallet was safe in his back pocket, pressed against his body by the pressure of his tight trousers. He braced the wind across the way to the Sheraton-Cadillac, where he had his hair cut. It was important to him that he have it cut here, though it was an ordeal to sit in that perfumy, silent barbershop—too aware of himself, Jules Wendall getting his hair cut and worrying about how much to tip the barber—and, a while later, it was an ordeal to get himself out of his tight trousers in a fitting room, trying on new clothes. He needed a new suit. “This is exactly you, this is exactly right,” the salesman said solemnly.

  Jules believed anything. He was still in a daze, in love with Faye and with the promise of a new, chaotic, open future. “It’s obvious from your face that you’re intelligent,” Bernard had said. Jules wanted to be loved and prized for that, above all—his intelligence.

  He was very disappointed when the salesman said the suit would have to be altered; he couldn’t wear it out of the store! It wouldn’t be ready until Friday! So, clumsy and chagrined, he got back into his cheap trousers and coat, the back of his neck reddening.

  He went down to pick up Bernard. The ache that had begun in the bank had spread through his whole body; it wasn’t himself, Jules, who had quit one job for another, crazy job, an outlandish job, who was going to pick up someone named Bernard whom he wasn’t sure he would recognize. Luckily Bernard was out on the sidewalk waiting for him. Jules managed to get the car to the curb without running it up on the sidewalk, and his shakiness didn’t show when he leaned over to unlock the door to the back.

  The Negro doorman opened it with a flourish, and Bernard swung in, sighing. “Oh, this morning air! This smog!” he said. He tipped the doorman—Jules couldn’t see how much—and settled back onto the burned seat. “Drive straight ahead. I want to think. I have got to plan the rest of my life this morning,” Bernard said.

  A nerve in Jules was touched by that remark: planning the rest of his life that morning! He was sorry he had doubted Bernard. And why couldn’t Jules plan the rest of his life too that very morning? Wasn’t he free to make nearly anything happen?

  3

  When they called for Faye she wasn’t in, or wouldn’t answer her door. Bernard said sadly, “I don’t know how I met that woman or what she means to me.” He had a dramatic flair that would have been embarrassing in anyone else; but, sucking on his fingers in his nervousness, tugging at his collar, Bernard looked like a man involved in an invisible drama, helpless in his fate. They went back to the street. Bernard led the way, talking about the morning’s stock-market report, and about the weather predictions, and the stuffing that was stuck to the back of his coat, from the car.

  Jules felt a rush of affection for him, he was so unlike the men Jules knew.

  “Yes, I must plan everything. I must get everything straight,” Bernard said. “The trip to Toronto is off but the trip to St. Louis is more urgent than I’d thought. I have to make a connection there. And you, Jules, can you be ready to drive me in a few hours’ notice? Do you have any family, anyone to take care of? How much money do you need?”

  He got into the back seat. Jules, settling down behind the wheel, happened to glance into the rear-view mirror and saw the man’s gray, serious face. Bernard’s watery eyes were moving restlessly over the back of Jules’s head.

  “Money—do you need any? How much?”

  “I guess I don’t need any right now,” Jules said, embarrassed.

  “I’ll give you something for your mother. For groceries.” He made out a check, balancing the checkbook on his knee, and passed it up to Jules.

  It was for two hundred dollars. Jules, surprised, took it from him and stared at it. “But, for groceries…?”

  “And now we must get started. I have a busy schedule this morning.”

  Jules started the car off with an energetic jerk. But almost at once Bernard said, snapping his fingers, “Wait! I want to run in here for a minute.” He got out in front of a drugstore and motioned for Jules to drive around the block.

  Jules drove off. He felt giddy from the surprise of this second check. It lay beside him on the seat, and he glanced down at it to make sure it was real. He thought he saw a mistake—the “hundred” was spelled wrong, spelled “hunred”? And would a teller accept that mistake or would the check be worthless?

  He snatched up the check. No, “hundred” was spelled right. Someone honked at him angrily, a cab driver. Jules wrenched his car over to the right just in time. Yes, “hundred” was spelled right.

  The third time he circled the block Bernard came out of the store on the run, his jowls shaking. “Quick, get in the left-turn lane. We’ve got business to do!” he said.

  Jules had the idea that his driving was clumsy. He could not seem to calm himself. Out here in morning traffic and in an expensive car he hardly deserved, he was taking great risks—he might end up being worked over by some policemen, a punishment for his daring. But he guessed Bernard would notice nothing, not even a minor accident; and a minor accident wouldn’t matter much. Bernard was in a hurry, sitting in the back seat. He seemed to be straining forward. There was a damp, sad, doggish smell about him. “Jules,” he said dramatically, “something is going to happen within the next few hours that may change both our lives.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you but it has to do with currency. With the gold market. Now do you understand?”

  “I…I guess not.”

  “What day is it today, Jules?”

  “June 18, 1956.”

  “Now do you know?”

  “Know what?”

/>   “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Turn right here. No, watch out for the bus—yes, go ahead—get in the right lane.”

  Jules found himself swerving onto East Jefferson again.

  Bernard said petulantly, “This afternoon we’re getting a new car. I’m sick of this one! Look at this stuffing, it’s all over my coat and in my nose—I have asthma—waiting for the insurance will take years, I’d just as soon take a tax loss. We’ll get a new car this afternoon. A new Lincoln.”

  While Bernard talked Jules felt his heart swell with the idea of…something intangible and lovely…not just connected with money, but perfumed with the gray-green metallic odor of money, its power, and, more than that, its mysterious essence.

  “Turn in here and get gas, we need gas!” Bernard cried.

  The tank was nearly empty, and when it was filled Bernard cried, “How much is it? Who do I make the check out to?”

  “I don’t know if we take checks,” the attendant said sullenly.

  “Of course you take checks, nobody carries money today,” Bernard said. “Who do I make it out to?”

  “We just take cash.”

  “Jules, give him the money then. Hurry.”

  Jules paid for the gas, handing the boy a twenty-dollar bill. “That’s fine, keep the change,” Bernard said. “Let’s get going!”

  They drove out Lakeshore Drive and into the city of Grosse Pointe. Houses fell back from the street at once, brick homes uneasy in the gray light, their lawns blemished by scraps of newspapers blown over from Detroit. Everywhere scraps and strips and whole pages of newspapers blew. Dots of white danced in the eye. Bernard told him where to turn, and where to turn again, and Jules found himself moving slowly in a world of foliage and dark red brick; he had forgotten to eat that morning and such sights went to his head. Such lovely homes! Quiet, clean sidewalks and streets, with no one on them—that was always the surprising thing, this emptiness—as far as he could see no one was walking, no one existed!

  “Drive in here,” Bernard instructed, and Jules turned into a circular drive that led to a large, pale brick home, of an elegant style, with columns, far too big for an ordinary family. Jules would have thought it a funeral home or a fancy restaurant. His body began to tingle in the presence of such a sight. Bernard jumped out of the car as if he lived here. He bounded up to the door and rang the bell. Jules pretended not to be watching closely.

  Another car turned into the driveway behind Jules, a blue station wagon. It stopped to let a girl out, then the driver continued on past Jules and out to the street again. Jules admired all this movement. The girl who had gotten out of the car was about sixteen or seventeen, dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts, with long black hair that swung past her shoulders; she was carrying a straw purse. In no hurry, she strolled past Jules in the black Lincoln and gave not the slightest glance at the car, only at Jules, moving her dark, serious, critical eyes over him. He stared back at her. He felt that look of hers shoot to the very back of his head. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw her stroll on past and approach Bernard. The two of them began to talk. The girl lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. Bernard was insisting upon something—he made short, chopping motions, arguing. The door was opened by a Negro maid. Bernard moved to go inside, still arguing, and the maid hesitated, then let him in. The girl followed. She had not even glanced back at Jules.

  The house was closed behind them. It rose up pale and overwhelming, a small mountain of brick that set Jules’s teeth on edge with wonder. Who could bear to live in something so big? Wouldn’t the space make echoes? Wouldn’t the pressure be too much on one’s brain? And who had the money to build such a home? Agitated, a little resentful, he looked about and saw the precise look of a lawn no one ever bothered to walk across, hedges, small ornamental trees, flowers—everything was hazy as if under enchantment.

  Anyway he had another check. He picked it up. Two hundred dollars…

  Loretta had given him a few things for birthdays and Christmas, never much. Maureen had given him a few little things. But never had he really been given a gift, a surprising gift of the kind that stuns the heart, that lets you know why people keep on living—why else, except in anticipation of such gifts, such undeserved surprises?

  The girl who had gone into the house was like that too, a surprise. Jules could not stop thinking of her. Yet he could not quite remember her face. He remembered something curious and penetrating about her look, an idle scrupulosity, and a turning inward of the foot—she’d been wearing sneakers—and her slender pale-pink knees. She went with the house. It was no surprise that she lived there. She was someone’s daughter, unassailable.

  Jules stared at the big front door and waited. After fifteen minutes Bernard appeared again, alone, in a hurry. His coat was unbuttoned and flopped about him. Jules leaned around to get the back door open, responding as mechanically as if he’d been bred out of centuries of subordinate flesh, and he had time to take in his employer’s face: was that man crazy or not? “Those people! Those parasites, themselves, they are parasites, without imagination, people like that!” Bernard muttered. “As if I didn’t know they were home—she was home at least, my dear sister, hiding, so I wash my hands of them forever!”

  “Where do you want to go now?” Jules said humbly.

  “Drive on! Get out of here!”

  Bernard had an intelligent look but there was something jagged and glazed to it. His eyes wandered everywhere. His forehead, broad and sloping, seemed of paler skin than the rest of his face, skin not just lighter but somehow stretched thinner, of a different texture. It might have been that the upper part of his skull was swelling slowly out of shape. His jowls and jaw were flabby and on his cheeks tiny veins had worked their way to the surface, giving him the flushed surprised look of the many bums and rummies Jules saw every day of his life downtown.

  “Move!” Bernard said loudly.

  Where the night before he had been brotherly with Jules and almost intimate, in Faye’s apartment, now that they were alone he tended not to look at Jules and to draw himself back into a dignified and slightly absurd preoccupation with the buttons on his coat, or his long, unkempt fingernails, or the bits of singed white fluff that were coming out of the back seat’s holes. His voice, shaking and commanding, sounded to Jules like the voice of an actor, tuned up a little too high for personal contact.

  “They always took my wife’s part,” Bernard said. “No trust. I showed them the bills and the receipts from her doctors—twelve doctors, believe it or not, my boy!—and waved them in their faces. They imagine themselves American aristocrats because they work, but I, I deem myself of no class whatsoever…”

  Jules listened eagerly to all this, hoping for facts. He wanted to find out more about the girl. Finally, after about five minutes of it, Jules lost patience and said, “Who was that girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl who went in the house with you.”

  “Oh, that was my niece Nadine. She must be ten or twelve by now, no, she must be older than that—time goes by so quickly—I’d say she was fourteen, maybe fifteen.”

  “She’s older than that.”

  “Is she? I don’t know, I hadn’t noticed. A nice little girl, when you consider her parents—a successful but unhappy marriage, a very common kind of marriage…the girl nearly drowned in the club pool, I remember that as if it were yesterday, though she must have been about two or three. I really haven’t noticed her much since then. I was the one who rescued her.”

  “Did you rescue her? From drowning?”

  “Yes. It was the Yacht Club pool.”

  Jules was absurdly envious.

  “Now, Jules, let me tell you one thing I’d like you to remember all your life: never trust anyone. Will you remember that?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re too young to realiz
e how life is. At my age you’ll know.”

  “I know all about life,” Jules said cheerfully.

  “I have to make several telephone calls, I’d almost forgotten. I have to contact people who are difficult to contact, who are always on the move, like myself. Drive me back to the hotel now and you can go out by yourself and get a new car.”

  “Did you say…a new car?”

  “Yes, but not a Lincoln after all. I want a Cadillac.”

  “You want me to buy a new car?”

  “Leave them this one. They’ll give you a little money on this.”

  “But I don’t know how to buy a car, a car like that,” Jules said.

  “Then you’ll learn.”

  “They might not let me in.”

  “I like you, Jules, I like your face and your intelligence and a certain grace about you,” Bernard said. “To be frank, I wish I’d had a son like you. Men need sons, it has to do with genes, with the passing on of dreams. It isn’t just that you’ve been Faye’s lover, which is a miracle, but that I like you for your own sake—if I’d seen you out on the street I would have trusted you immediately, there’s something sympathetic about you, you have an intelligent victim’s face. When we’re finished with this project I’m working on, when all this pressure is off, I’ll finance your college career.”

  “College career?”

  “Yes, certainly. You can major in…in philosophy, or art, or anything you like.”

  “But I flunked out of high school.”

  “You really can’t get much out of life directly. That’s one of life’s ironies,” Bernard said quickly. “You have to learn about life out of books. I’ll send you to the East. You can compress centuries of wisdom in a few books. Turn left here. Watch out for that truck!”

  So this is the way life happens: a sudden ballooning upward. Jules swerved around the laundry truck in a dream, not even seeing the other driver’s sour face. He was on his way up and nothing could stop him. The fluttery sensation in his chest was his heart expanding, or maybe his lungs giddy with too much oxygen. Jules in college! “I’d like to go to college, sir, yes, I’d like that, I’d do anything for that,” he said excitedly.