Slob

Winslow Charles Maitland II

W. Charles Maitland of Symington, Maitland, Eaves, and Cox turned the page and scowled. Nobody called him Charlie anymore. He had outlived his only cronies, the one or two in the firm and at the club who had enjoyed that particular distinction. The article in a decidedly left-wing newspaper was a bit of blather on the Op Ed page and it was causing W. Charles Maitland to scowl and giving him just a touch of gas. Maitland scowling was a fearsome thing. Maitland scowling in court had been enough to send more than one young legal eagle nearly into a state of cardiac arrest.

The gist of the article was that the United States system of jurisprudence had become a sort of ultimate parasite, and the author of the piece was not the first to observe that the legal system seemed to view society as simply a food supply to keep the parasite alive. It was just this sort of irresponsible, crapulous—enough! He flung the paper as far from him as he could, which was about four and a half feet.

He tasted the claret and set the glass down, blotting his lips on his bedsheet. He had barely touched a swallow of the wine. Even that tasted bitter to him now. He removed his glasses and rubbed his sore, reddened eyes. He put his glasses back on and reached for the volume on the bedside table.

The old man held the rare book in his gnarled, arthritic fingers, caressing the raised gold binding and the beautifully embossed leather cover. He knew the volume the way you know your own children and he ran his hand across the smooth leather lovingly and quoted, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I. In a cowslip's bell I lie." And nothing. After something. On something. He felt a sharp pang of sorrow. An ineffable sadness of loss, mostly from losing his memory, which he had always prized, and from the impending loss of his life, which had become of surprisingly little consequence.

He trusted only one doctor, and the man was now near senile and at death's door himself. So he had gone to other, younger doctors whom he didn't like or respect and he learned nothing from the tiring tests that he couldn't have guessed in the first place. He was dying. It was a matter of time. A month. Two months. He was tired so much of the time now. The sickness did that to you.

These were only his reading books, the books he kept in his apartment in the penthouse the firm kept on Lake Shore Drive. His own main library was now a museum in another city. He had cased sets of every major rarity. He touched the book as you would stroke the hand of an old friend, thinking of the book in the manner of an antiquarian bookseller: Complete set. Bound in 22.24mo, full crimson, straight-grain morocco, gilt floral borders, back gilt with fleurons, leather label, inner dentelles gilt. A nothing little book, he thought, as he caressed its spine with his gnarled fingers. He opened the cover and read.

"Cum novo commentario ad mondu—" And his eyes ached with the effort. A nothing little book. With a great effort he managed to get out of bed and stand. He shrugged his expensive dressing gown off, letting it fall to the rich carpet, and hobbled over to the closet and got a black, cashmere coat. After some not inconsiderable struggles he got into the thing and padded across the room, out into the large penthouse apartment and over to the glass wall. One entire wall of the living-room area was floor-to-ceiling glass and it was a breathtaking view of the lake and the vista of Chicago after dark.

Seeing it wasn't raining or snowing or doing anything wretched, he padded back across the big room and went out his front door to the elevator. He liked to go for short walks and breathe the nice, nasty smell of the taxi fumes and the downtown as they came wafting through the high-rises of the lakefront's most prestigious executive residential neighborhood. In the elevator he placed an illegal cigar in his mouth and sighed.

His memory had slipped badly in these last years. He could no longer remember anything from one moment to the next, quite literally. The elevator purred to a stop and the door slid open almost soundlessly. He stepped out and walked through the lobby, exchanging nods with the moron doorman, and realizing as he was nearly run over by a woman walking her preposterous poodle that he was still in his bedroom slippers.

What the fuck is the difference? he thought to himself and began walking down the street, hobbling along with his walking stick, a rich, dying old man headed nowhere. And he was still walking five minutes later when he had the little feeling. He was not one to ignore feelings. He had parlayed hunches into a fortune. And he had the feeling that someone or something was following him, stalking him. It was just a feeling he had. He hadn't seen or heard anything.

The street was no more or less deserted than it usually was at this hour and he walked like this almost every night. He could no longer take more than four hours or so in bed each night. But something was different tonight. He detected a presence of something nearby and he couldn't quite place it but the feeling was unsettling.

His own nature had been predatory, and he himself had been a very dangerous man. If you are dangerous and you make enemies, you will often make very dangerous enemies. There were others like himself, powerful predators, who might still wish to do him ill. It was mildly upsetting but he was too far gone to be alarmed at anything.

Still and all, wouldn't that be the last straw? To be mugged out here on the street during his constitutional. Dying of goddamn cancer and get mugged. More than a body could stand. He decided he'd head back to the apartment and about that time a bright silver thing sliced out at him slashing out of nowhere and the phrase "nuncupative will and testament" darted past his consciousness as he tried to curse this thing but the blood from his severed throat stopped this last obloquy of thought in a bright red, surprisingly hot spurt as his heart pumped valiantly pumping his life force out into the darkened street.