Player Piano Page 5

  5

  PAUL OVERTOOK ANITA in the garage, where she was starting the station wagon. Without looking directly at him, she waited for him to climb in beside her. They drove to the club in silence, with Paul feeling let down by the coarse, irrational reality of Finnerty. Over the years, he supposed bitterly, he must have created a wise and warm Finnerty in his imagination, an image that had little to do with the real man.

  At the club door, Anita straightened Paul's tie, pulled her cape down to bare her shoulders, smiled, and pushed into the brightly lighted foyer.

  The far end of the foyer opened into the bar, and there two dozen of the Ilium Works' bright young men, identical in their crew cuts and the tailoring of their tuxedos, surrounded two men in their middle fifties. One of the older men, Kroner, tall, heavy, and slow, listened to the youngsters with ponderous affectionateness. The other, Baer, slight and nervous, noisily and unconvincingly extroverted, laughed, nudged, and clapped shoulders, and maintained a continuous commentary on whatever was being said: "Fine, fine, right, sure, sure, wonderful, yes, yes, exactly, fine, good."

  Ilium was a training ground, where fresh graduates were sent to get the feel of industry and then moved on to bigger things. The staff was young, then, and constantly renewing itself. The oldest men were Paul, and his second-in-command, Lawson Shepherd. Shepherd, a bachelor, stood by the bar, somewhat apart from the rest, looking wise, and faintly amused by the naivete of some of the youngsters' remarks.

  The wives had congregated in two adjacent booths, and there spoke quietly and uneasily, and turned to look whenever the volume of voices rose above a certain level, or whenever the bass voice of Kroner rumbled through the haze of small talk with three or four short, wise, wonderfully pregnant words.

  The youngsters turned to greet Paul and Anita effusively, with playful obsequiousness, with the air of having proprietorship over all good times, which they generously encouraged their elders to share in.

  Baer waved and called to them in his high-pitched voice. Kroner nodded almost imperceptibly, and stood perfectly still, not looking directly at them, waiting for them to come up so that greetings could be exchanged quietly and with dignity.

  Kroner's enormous, hairy hand closed about Paul's, and Paul, in spite of himself, felt docile, and loving, and childlike. It was as though Paul stood in the enervating, emasculating presence of his father again. Kroner, his father's closest friend, had always made him feel that way, and seemingly wanted to make him feel that way. Paul had sworn a thousand times to keep his wits about him the next time he met Kroner. But it was a matter beyond his control, and at each meeting, as now, the power and resolve were all in the big hands of the older man.

  Though Paul was especially aware of the paternal aura about Kroner, the big man tried to make the feeling general. He spoke of himself as father to all of the men under him, and more vaguely, to their wives; and it was no pose. His administration of the Eastern Division had an emotional flavor about it, and it seemed unlikely that he could have run the Division any other way. He was cognizant of every birth or major illness, and heaped blame on himself in the rare instances that any of his men went wrong. He could also be stern--again, paternally.

  "How are you, Paul?" he said warmly. The quizzical set of his thick eyebrows indicated that this was a question, not a salutation. The tone was one Kroner used when inquiring into someone's condition after a siege of pneumonia or worse.

  "He's never been better," said Anita briskly.

  "Glad to hear it. That's fine, Paul." Kroner continued to hold onto his hand and to stare into his eyes.

  "Feel good, do you, eh? Good? Good, eh? Wonderful," said Baer, clapping him on the shoulder several times. "Wonderful." Baer, the Eastern Division's chief engineer, turned to Anita. "And, oh my! Don't you look nice. My, yes. Oh! I should say so." He grinned.

  Baer was a social cretin, apparently unaware that he was anything but suave and brilliant in company. Someone had once mentioned his running commentary on conversations to him, and he hadn't known what they were talking about. Technically, there wasn't a better engineer in the East, including Finnerty. There was little in the Division that hadn't been master-minded by Baer, who here seemed to Kroner what a fox terrier seems to a St. Bernard. Paul had thought often of the peculiar combination of Kroner and Baer, and wondered if, when they were gone, higher management could possibly duplicate it. Baer embodied the knowledge and technique of industry; Kroner personified the faith, the near-holiness, the spirit of the complicated venture. Kroner, in fact, had a poor record as an engineer and had surprised Paul from time to time with his ignorance or misunderstanding of technical matters; but he had the priceless quality of believing in the system, and of making others believe in it, too, and do as they were told.

  The two were inseparable, though their personalities met at almost no point. Together, they made an approximately whole man.

  "Did someone tell you Paul had been sick?" said Anita, laughing.

  "I'd heard Paul's nerves had been bothering him," said Kroner.

  "Not true," said Paul.

  Kroner smiled. "Glad to hear it, Paul. You're one of our best men." He looked at him fondly. "In the footsteps of your father, Paul."

  "Where did you hear about Paul's nerves?" said Anita.

  "Can't imagine," said Kroner.

  "Doctor Shepherd told us," said Baer brightly. "I was there this morning. Remember? It was Shepherd."

  "Now listen," said Kroner with unaccustomed quickness, "that was something else Shepherd was talking about. You know it was, if you'll just think back."

  "Oh sure, that's right, that's right; something else, something else," said Baer, looking puzzled. He clapped Paul on the shoulder again. "So you're feeling better, eh? Well, that's what counts. Wonderful, wonderful."

  Doctor Shepherd, his neck blazing red above his stiff collar, moved quietly away from the bar toward the French doors that opened onto the golf course.

  "By the way," said Kroner heartily, "where's your friend Finnerty? What does Ed look like? I imagine he's found life in Washington a little less--" he searched for a word "--informal than here."

  "If you mean, does he wash?--the answer is still no," said Anita.

  "That's what I meant," said Kroner. "Well, none of us are perfect, and darn few of us perfect enough to get a place on the National Industrial Planning Board. Where is he?"

  "He may be along later," said Paul. "He's a little tired from his trip."

  "Why, where's Mom?" said Anita, ditching the subject of Finnerty. Mom was Kroner's wife, whom he always brought to social functions, deposited with other wives, and ignored until the affectionate moment when it was time to retrieve her and cart her hundred and eighty pounds home.

  "That intestinal thing that's been making the rounds," said Kroner gravely.

  Everyone within hearing shook his or her head compassionately.

  "Dinner," said a Philippino waiter. There had once been a movement to have the service done by machines, but the extremists who'd proposed this had been voted down by an overwhelming majority.

  As Paul, Kroner, Baer, and Anita walked into the candlelit dining room, followed by the rest, four of the youngest engineers, the most recent arrivals, brushed past and turned to block the way.

  Fred Berringer, a short, heavy, slit-eyed blond, seemed to be their leader. He was a wealthy, extroverted, dull boy from a good family of engineers and managers in Minneapolis. He had squeaked through college, and was just barely acceptable to the personnel machines. Ordinarily, nobody would have hired him. But Kroner, who knew his bloodlines, had taken him on anyway and sent him to Ilium to be trained. The break had done anything but teach him humility. He took it as evidence that his money and name could beat the system any time and, paraphrased, he'd said as much. The hell of it was that his attitude won grudging admiration from his fellow engineers, who had got their jobs the hard way. Paul supposed, gloomily, that beaters of systems had always been admired by the conventional. At an
y rate, Kroner still believed in the boy, so Paul had no choice but to keep him on, and to pair a smarter man with him to backstop his mental apparatus.

  "What is this, Fred, a stickup?" said Paul.

  "Checker champion," said Fred, "I hereby challenge you for the championship immediately after dinner."

  Kroner and Baer seemed delighted. They were forever suggesting that teams be formed and games be played as a method for building morale in the Eastern Division's family.

  "Just you, or all four of you?" said Paul. He was in fact the club checker champion, though there had never been any sort of official playoff. No one could beat him, and, wearily as often as not, he had had to prove his invincibility to each new group of engineers--like these four. It was a custom, and the close little society on the north side of the river seemed to feel the need of customs, of private jokes, of building up social characteristics to distinguish themselves--in their own eyes--from the rest of society. The checker game of the new engineers with Paul was one of the hoariest traditions, now in its seventh year.

  "Me, mostly," said Berringer. "But all of us, in a way." The others laughed like conspirators. Apparently something special had been cooked up, and one or two of the older engineers seemed to be sharing in the high expectations.

  "All right," said Paul good-humoredly; "if there were ten of you, and each one blowing cigar smoke in my face, I'd still win."

  The four parted to let Paul, Anita, and the two guests of honor get to the table.

  "Oh," said Anita, studying the place cards at the head of the table, "there's been a mistake." She picked up the card to her left, wadded it up, and handed it to Paul. She moved another card into the vacant position and sat down, flanked by Kroner and Baer. She called a waiter to take away the now extra place setting. Paul looked at the card and saw it was Finnerty's.

  The assemblage was a practical, earthy one, and the shrimp cocktails, consomme, creamed chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes were enjoyed for their own sake. There was little talk, and much pantomimed savoring and beaming to show the hostess that everything tasted first rate.

  Periodically, Kroner would comment on this dish or that, and he would be echoed by Baer, and then by nods about the table. Once, an argument broke out in loud whispers at the far end of the table, among the four youngsters who had challenged Paul to the checker game. When all eyes turned in their direction, they shut up. Berringer frowned, sketched a diagram of some sort on a napkin, and thrust it at the other three. One of them made a slight correction and handed it back. Understanding, then admiration, showed on Berringer's face. He nodded vigorously and went back to eating.

  Paul counted around the table--twenty-seven managers and engineers, the staff of the Ilium Works and their wives, less the evening shift. There were two vacant places: one, the bare square of tablecloth once reserved for Finnerty; the other, the untouched setting for Shepherd, who had not come back from his hurried trip onto the golf course.

  Finnerty was probably still lying in the bedroom, staring at the ceiling, perhaps talking to himself. Maybe he'd left soon after they had and gone on a bender or whoring expedition in Homestead. Paul hoped they'd seen the last of him for another few years. The brilliant liberal, the iconoclast, the freethinker he had admired in his youth now proved to be no more than sick, repellent. The quitting, the uninvited attack on Anita, the glorying in neuroses--all had a frightening cast to them. It was an awful disappointment. Paul had expected that Finnerty would be able to give him something--what, he didn't know--to assuage the nameless, aching need that had been nagging him almost, as Shepherd had apparently told Kroner, to the point of distraction.

  As for Shepherd, Paul felt completely charitable, and even embarrassed that the man should be so upset at having been discovered as an informer. Paul stood.

  "Where are you going, dear?" said Anita.

  "To get Shepherd."

  "He didn't say you were having a breakdown," said Baer.

  Kroner frowned at Baer. "No, really he didn't, Paul. If you like, I'll go after him. It was my fault, bringing up the subject. It wasn't Shepherd, and the poor boy--"

  "I just thought it was Shepherd," said Baer.

  "I think it's up to me," said Paul.

  "I'll come, too," said Anita. There was a promise of vengeance in her voice.

  "No, I'd rather you wouldn't."

  Paul headed through the bar quickly, and heard her coming after him.

  "I wouldn't miss this for anything."

  "There isn't going to be anything to miss," said Paul. "I'm simply going to tell him everything's O.K., I understand. And I do understand."

  "He wants that Pittsburgh job, Paul. That's why he told Kroner you were having a breakdown. Now he's scared stiff for fear of losing his job. Good!"

  "I'm not going to get him fired."

  "You could keep him worrying for a while. It'd serve him right."

  "Please, Anita--this is between Shepherd and me."

  They stood on the turf of the golf course now, in a muffled world of blues and blacks under the frail light of a new moon. Seated on the bench by the first tee, his legs stretched out and far apart, was Shepherd, with three cocktail glasses lined up beside him.

  "Shep," called Paul softly.

  "Hello." It was flat, with nothing behind it.

  "Beat it," whispered Paul to Anita. She stayed, clenching and unclenching her hands.

  "Soup's getting cold," said Paul, as kindly as possible. He sat down on the bench, with the three glasses between them. "I don't give a damn whether you told them I was going to pieces or not." Anita stood a dozen yards away, silhouetted against the French doors.

  "I'd rather you'd get sore as hell about it," said Sheperd. "I told them, all right. Go ahead and can me."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake, Shep, nobody's going to can you."

  Paul had never known what to make of Shepherd, had found it hard to believe that any man really thought as Shepherd did. When Shepherd had first arrived in Ilium, he had announced to his fellow new arrivals, Paul and Finnerty, that he intended to compete with them. Baldly, ridiculously, he talked of competitiveness and rehashed with anyone who would listen various crises where there had been a showdown between his abilities and those of someone else, crises that the other participants had looked upon as being routine, unremarkable, and generally formless. But, to Shepherd, life seemed to be laid out like a golf course, with a series of beginnings, hazards, and ends, and with a definite summing up--for comparison with others scores--after each hole. He was variously grim or elated over triumphs or failures no one else seemed to notice, but always stoical about the laws that governed the game. He asked no quarter, gave no quarter, and made very little difference to Paul, Finnerty, or any of his other associates. He was a fine engineer, dull company, and doggedly master of his fate and not his brother's keeper.

  Paul, fidgeting silently on the bench, tried to put himself in Shepherd's place. Shepherd had lost a round, and now, grimly respectful of the mechanics of the competitive system, he wanted to pay the forfeit for losing and get on to the next episode, which he was, as always, determined to win. It was a hard world he lived in, but he wouldn't have it any other way. God knows why.

  "Wanted to do me out of the Pittsburgh job, eh?" said Paul.

  "I think I'm a better man for it," said Shepherd. "But what difference does that make now? I'm out of it."

  "You lost."

  "I tried and lost," said Shepherd. It was a vital distinction. "Go ahead and fire me."

  The surest way to needle Shepherd was to refuse to compete. "I don't know," said Paul, "I think you'd be a good man for the Pittsburgh spot. If you like, I'll write a recommendation."

  "Paul!" said Anita.

  "Go back in, Anita," said Paul. "We'll be back in a minute." Anita seemed to be itching to give Shepherd just what he wanted, a rousing fight, something he could use as a starting point for another, as he saw it, cycle of play.

  "I forgive you," said Paul. "I want you to g
o on working for me, if you will. There isn't a better man in the world for your job."

  "You'd like to keep me right under your thumb, wouldn't you?"

  Paul laughed bleakly. "No. It'd be just as before. Under my thumb? How could--"

  "If you won't fire me, I want a transfer."

  "All right. You know that isn't up to me. But let's go inside, shall we?" He held out his hand as Shepherd stood. Shepherd refused it, and brushed by.

  Anita stopped him. "If you have any opinions on my husband's health, perhaps he or his doctor should be the first to hear them," she said huskily.

  "Your husband and his doctor have known for months what I told Kroner and Baer. He isn't in any shape to be trusted with a foot-treadle sewing machine, let alone Pittsburgh." He was warming up now, getting his spirit back, and perhaps seeing the possibilities of having their voices carry into the dining room.

  Paul seized them both by their arms and propelled them into the bar and in view of the dinner party. All were looking questioningly in their direction. Paul, Anita, and Shepherd smiled, and crossed the bar to the dining room, arm in arm.

  "Under the weather?" said Kroner to Shepherd kindly.

  "Yessir. Scallops for lunch did it, I think."

  Kroner nodded sympathetically and turned to the waiter. "Could the boy have milk toast, do you suppose?" Kroner was willing to go to any lengths to preserve harmony in his family, to give a man in a tight spot a way out. For the rest of the evening, Paul supposed, Kroner would be keeping alive--as with the milk toast now--the polite fiction of Shepherd's illness.

  After coffee and a liqueur, Paul gave a brief talk on the integration of the Ilium Works with other industry under the National Manufacturing Council fourteen years before. And then he went into the more general subject of what he called the Second Industrial Revolution. He read the talk, rather, taking pains to look up from his manuscript at regular intervals. It was, as he had told Katharine Finch in the office that afternoon, old stuff--a progress report, a reaffirmation of faith in what they were doing and had done with industry. Machines were doing America's work far better than Americans had ever done it. There were better goods for more people at less cost, and who could deny that that was magnificent and gratifying? It was what everyone said when he had to make a talk.