The Twenty-Seventh City : A Novel

20

Probst had been black and white the last time he’d appeared in Time magazine; his lapels and necktie were narrow, and his hair was as short as an astronaut’s. For a caption the editors had paraphrased a line from the article: more than a monument. The St. Louis skyline then consisted of an Arch rising from a bald, bleached riverfront, a handful of high-rises surviving from the 1930s, and some low apartment buildings, dull fugues on a theme by Mies van der Rohe. The city looked to have awakened from the darker part of the century to find the hour not dawn but midday, with the Missouri sun beating mercilessly on the vacated areas, whiting out the faces of its structures. Under its crewcut and all around, the city’s scalp was pale.

Twenty years later, in the space of twelve months, the city had undergone a contemporary styling, become a shopper’s mecca and a commercial force rising and expanding in steel and stone. Color was making a comeback, and this apparently was pleasing to Time; it had chosen St. Louis as its cover-story subject for its April 2 issue.

With his electric Remington Probst shaved the evening shadows off his cheeks and neck. Red patches of irritation formed immediately. A Time reporter, Brett Stone, was coming to interview him at eight o’clock, which was less than an hour away. Stone hadn’t mentioned a photographer, but Probst expected one. He leaned close to the bathroom mirror, craning his neck and examining the line of his jaw with his fingers. Downstairs, the stereo boomed out a major-league symphony. He hadn’t had the stereo on since Barbara left, and the classical sounds that came out of its speakers now seemed to be picking up where they’d left off two months ago, when she had listened. Stringed instruments were sawing all over the house, cellos rumbling in the rafters, trumpets leading a charge up the stairs into the bathroom. Beethoven, if that was who it was, could make washing your face feel like a momentous act.

He dressed to the second movement, adagio, and descended the stairs under a full escort of minor chords and worried glissandi. Turning the music off, he inspected the living room. He moved the latest issue of Time to the top of the coffee-table reading pile but reconsidered, burying it again. He sat down on the sofa. He sprang to his feet energetically. He went to the kitchen and drank some bourbon. He went upstairs and brushed his teeth, came back down and had another drink and said, “To hell with it.” Brett Stone wasn’t going to write about how his breath smelled.

He’d been giving dozens of interviews, passing time with gentlemen and ladies from The New York Times, Newsweek, U.S. News, the Christian Science Monitor and all the lesser publications, but he hadn’t been this nervous since Christmas Day, when Luisa had brought Duane over for the first time. St. Louis was about to hit the cover of the magazine that had reserved the right to name the Man of the Year. Probst wanted to make the best possible impression. And, as always now, Jammu was on his mind. He hadn’t really enjoyed a calm moment in any of the eighteen days during which they’d socialized. The nervousness arose from the strain of waiting, each day, to see how long he would hold out without making contact with her. That he would make contact was inevitable. It was merely a matter of prolonging the suspense.

He sat down at the breakfast-room table and put his feet up on a neighboring chair, reached over his shoulder to the telephone, and dialed her number.

“Jammu.”

“Probst,” he said. “Do you want to have dinner?”

“I thought you were busy.”

“I should definitely be done by ten. I’ll make sure I’m done by ten. I have my lines all memorized.”

“‘It’s just not realistic.’”

“That’s right.” He smiled. She made these jokes without a trace of malice; they were even fortifying. “And I’d say the answer is emphatically less. And who stands to gain by this.”

“Seriously, Martin, you can say whatever you want about me. I won’t hold it against you if you feel you can’t contradict what you’ve said in the past.”

“That’s very generous of you. Considering you’re going to be the cover girl.”

She coughed. “Touché.”

The receiver was shaking in his right hand. He switched it to his left, which for some reason was rock steady. “Why is this such an event?” he said. “What is it about Time that makes this seem so important?”

“I think it’s the red border on their cover.”

“The—? Oh. Uh huh.”

“Congratulations, by the way, on your selection.”

“You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“It’s Chet Murphy who can’t keep a secret. But it is true, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I get to wear the veil and the crown, hold the scepter and ride in a convertible and review the debs. And make predictions, I guess, if I’m a Prophet. But it’s so unexpected. Most of the organization isn’t speaking to me. I haven’t even been going to the meetings.”

“It sounds like they want to make you feel guilty and change your tune on the merger.”

“They should know me better than that.” His right hand, recovered, took the receiver back. “Ess?”

“What.”

“Nothing.” He was just testing to see if her name worked. “I’m watching the second hand go around on the kitchen clock. We got four pages in Newsweek but not a cover. This will really do it for St. Louis. People are going to invest here like never before.”

“It’s interesting to see you appropriating my optimism. It’s just what your campaign needs, less defense, more offense. But I do wish you were on my side.”

“You want me to change my mind?” He asked because he had a peculiar feeling she didn’t. “You want me to make Stone’s day?”

“Yes.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it.”

“I just don’t want you giving me anything. But I say yes to be honest with you, because I don’t think you’d have had anything to do with me if your heart were really in the merger fight. And it’s been at least a week since you told me about your, quote, intuitive distrusts.”

For a while he’d been careful to keep in mind why he was seeing her: not to become friends with her, but to continue sounding her out, testing her story. But her story had passed the acid test. It was clear that if he’d been she he would have done almost exactly the same things in St. Louis. It made sense. And meanwhile, in a rush of mutual infatuation, they’d gotten to be friends.

“You could be county supervisor, Martin.”

“I’ve told you why that’s out.”

“Not very persuasively. And if you were supervisor, or even if you were plain Martin Probst, and if you’d thrown your weight behind the referendum, and if it became law, then the region would be reunited in more ways than one. Admit you’d like to see that happen.”

“I admit it. But what if I stick to my guns?”

“You know that won’t matter either.”

“Why not.”

“Because you’re special to me.”

He rested his head on the hard back of the chair and released the controls in his head, let it throb. The ceiling was a solid white but consisted of an infinity of points; without betraying their individuality, all of them began to glow. “What about dinner?” he said, with effort.

“Call me when you’re through with Stone. I’ll be here.”

It was somewhere between fifteen and ten before 8:00, a crooked time, the minute hand marking a fractional. Probst stood up and ate a handful of salted peanuts from a blue Planter’s can. He reached for the liquor cabinet but didn’t venture in. He understood her. She was in no more hurry to see him abandon John Holmes and Vote No than he was to see her undressed: all in good time.

Of course he didn’t trust her. He wasn’t born yesterday. He suspected that Quentin Spiegelman had been told he was special to her, that Ronald Struthers had been told he was special to her, and before that, Pete Wesley. That was how coalitions were formed. But now at least he had a sound alternative to General Norris’s theory of conspiracy. Jammu didn’t need to plant bugs or bomb cars when there was a handier point of access: she made people love her.

He could smell his peanut breath. Up the stairs he went again to brush his teeth. His gums were sore, it was ridiculous. Then again, an aura of peanut butter might easily have undermined his credibility with Brett Stone. He didn’t plan to get into a discussion of Jammu. He did, however, plan to hint that he wouldn’t actually be all that disappointed if the merger went through. He’d recently come up with a good new twist on his American Revolution analogy, just the sort of thing Time would go for. The doorbell was ringing as he came down the stairs.

On the doorstep stood a rosy-cheeked thirty-year-old whose head came up as far as Probst’s shoulders. The photographer? Wisps of vapor trailed away from his nose; the night was cold and wet. Probst didn’t see anyone else.

“Come in. You’re—”

“Brett Stone.” Nodding, Stone stepped inside. The hand he put out for Probst to shake had short black hairs on the knuckles, and puckered white palms. Apparently he hadn’t brought a photographer.

“Shall we get right to it?” Probst said.

“Sure.” Stone led him into the living room, nodding.

“Can I get you something?”

“Thanks, no.” Stone’s watch pipped eight o’clock. He had curly hair the color of motor oil, and pale green eyes. His nodding was rapid and barely perceptible, as though residual from some big bang earlier in his day or life.

Probst was fascinated. “Any trouble finding me?”

“Nope!” Stone had opened his briefcase on his knee and placed a microcassette recorder on the coffee table. Probst stationed himself at the fireplace, and Stone began to ask him questions. Why had Westhaven gone bankrupt? Of Municipal Growth’s members of a year ago, how many were still active in the group? Was Probst making any effort to expand it now? Apart from being a chief executive, what other criteria were there for membership? Had Probst been asked to join Urban Hope?

Probst fielded the questions thoughtfully, crafting his sentences with an eye to the tape recorder, and threw in as many interesting sidelights as he could before the next question arrived. Soon he was sweating with concentration. Yet there remained in his head a whispering voice. You’re special to me, Martin. You’re special to me…

At 8:25 Stone finished the lead-off factual questions and put away his pen and clipboard. Probst took a seat in the wing chair by the sofa, threw one leg over the other, and turned to Stone. It was time to get into the meaty issues. Stone stood up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Probst.”

“That’s all?”

“Sure.” Stone nodded. “Appreciate it. You’ve been very helpful.” He turned off the tape recorder. “Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”

“Well-no. No. I do have some thoughts on the city-county—”

“They’re well documented.” Stone locked his briefcase and spun the combination wheels. “And I had a very productive talk with John Holmes this afternoon. We hate to take your time when there’s already so much on the record. You’ve been very eloquent in the past.”

Very eloquent. Rabbits know instinctively the meaning of the shadow of a hawk; Probst felt the shadow of New York.

Stone was waiting for him to stand up. “But if there’s anything else you think might help us—”

“I had a question, actually.” He didn’t stand up.

Stone looked down at him patiently. “Sure.”

“What kind of story is this you’re writing?”

“Well.” Stone hitched his pants up over his hips. “You’d be surprised how many people have mentioned that CBS documentary ‘Sixteen in Webster Groves.’ I think CBS really traumatized this area. Everyone’s afraid we’re going to smear you. Don’t worry. None of the media are, not this time around. I myself have been uniformly impressed here.”

“That’s not exactly what I mean.” Probst made himself comfortable in his chair. “I mean more specifically. How you’re going to fill up the pages.”

“Sure.” Stone buried his hands in his pockets. “You never know what the editors will do, so I can’t really give you a point-by-point rundown, but you can expect to see, oh, the political dynamics of the region. Chief Jammu, of course, in many different contexts. The downtown redevelopment and the philosophy behind it. Crime, welfare, the new federalism. Possibly Municipal Growth, its demise. And you can’t run a story on St. Louis without the Arch. Within the rubric of St. Louis we’ll also do a spread on other up-and-comers. Knoxville, Winston-Salem, Salt Lake, Tampa.”

The Arch? Probst had built the Arch. Perhaps Stone was unaware of this. George Snell of Newsweek had been aware of it. He’d interviewed Probst for ninety minutes and cited him liberally in the article, calling attention to the key role he played in shaping public opinion.

Stone’s watch pipped again.

Probst stalled. “The special election?”

“The referendum, the Baltimore situation. Sure. It’s interesting. We’ll treat it. But at this point it’s mainly news because it’s divided the region, not because it’s united it. And what we’re interested in is the forces of unity.”

Probst stood up and walked to the fireplace. He was so in love with her he couldn’t see straight, but he could see how generous she’d been on the phone, talking like he mattered. “You want a scoop?” he said.

“A what?”

He raised his voice. “Do you want me to tell you something?”

Stone was listing slightly to the left, as if his nodding would eventually topple him. He grinned. “Sure.”

“I’m calling a press conference tomorrow.” Probst wet his lips. “I’m quitting Vote No and supporting the merger.”

“Really. That’s very interesting. Because of course you’ve been instrumental in opposing it.”

“Yes.”

“If it wasn’t clinched before, this should certainly do it.”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask if you’re planning to divorce your wife?”

“No comment.”

When Stone had gone, Probst began to pace the dining room and living room. Chief Jammu, of course. He could still renege. He could still vote no. If he didn’t follow through, Time wouldn’t tell. But having made his little declaration of love in Stone’s presence, as if by a slip of the tongue, a guilty blush, he was much less inclined to back out than to go on and shout the same declaration from every street corner in St. Louis County, so good did it feel to have the secret shared at last. In many different contexts. She was all over the living room. He threw himself onto the sofa and saw her in all the places she hadn’t ever been, stretched out on the window seat, leaning on the mantelpiece, standing on the arm of the sofa to inspect the three still lifes above him. She outnumbered him. He was very small. He let the telephone ring a long time before trudging to the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello,” he said.

“Martin.”

“What,” he said.

“Is Stone still with you?”

“Ah, no.” It was no accident she was calling now. She knew he couldn’t have called her himself. “Mr. Stone left. I didn’t have much to say to him, and he didn’t need much that he didn’t already have. Something like that.”

“The same thing happened to me. He took some quotes and a picture.”

“Oh really.”

“Yes.”

“If you lie to me,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Stone spent three hours with you if he spent half a minute.”

After a long, wounded pause, she said, “What’s the matter?”

“Read the paper on Friday.”

“What did you say about me?”

“You know what the matter is.”

“You changed your mind?”

“For the last time, Ess, don’t pretend. Of course I changed my mind.”

“And how, may I ask, was I supposed to know that?”

He sighed. She was still pretending. “How thrilled you sound,” he said.

“Just wait a minute. Let it register. This changes things.”

“No it doesn’t.” He began to speak with some authority, to save his pride. “If I quit Vote No tomorrow, I do it because I want to and because I think it’s right. I like you, but I would certainly never let a thing like that affect my decisions. I want that understood. The merger wasn’t the only obstacle between us. I’m also married. I have a wife. And I’ve changed my mind about dinner. It’s the price you pay. A lot of people love you, but not many of them trust you. I’d have to count myself among the majority there.”

Excessively pleased with having said he loved her without having to say it, he looked at the clock. For a moment he believed it was 9:00 in the morning. Jammu was speaking.

“My name is Susan, Martin. Susan Jammu. And I haven’t changed my mind about dinner. I know you aren’t going to work for the referendum on account of me. I thought that sort of thing was understood between us. I thought we respected each other more than you make it out we do. I know you’re married. I wish I didn’t have to be saying this on the telephone. If I don’t sound shocked that you’re planning to sell out John Holmes and the rest of them, it’s because I felt you never belonged there in the first place. Obviously it isn’t an easy thing to do, what you’ve done. I’ll understand if you want to cool it for a while, cool it for as long as you want, but I think you owe me a dinner, tonight of all nights.”

Susan. It was pathetic. A name was such a tiny thing — so tiny that she couldn’t have expected him to be impressed if she weren’t impressed herself already. She must have considered it her big secret, her ace in the hole. Probst felt sorry for her. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

The cabdriver tried to give her forty dollars back from her fifty, but she slammed the door and let him keep it as a tip. Maybe it was too big a tip. Was it too big? Her shoe heels conveyed the force of the ground pleasurably into the center of her foot heels as she ran up the pink sidewalk to the entrance of Rolf’s headquarters. It was noon. The lobby was empty. Was it too big? Four hundred percent! That was much too big. But no one would find out, and next time she’d make it up by not tipping at all. The lobby guard, who knew her, didn’t smile this time. He looked at her as men look at women who can’t manage money. The elevator came and she got on, but she had to get off because people wanted out. She got on. On the phone Rolf had called her — and then he’d called her Devi, but they’d quarreled before, but then the maid had said — and then the desk had said the bill wouldn’t be paid after 2:00 p.m., and then she’d hit an artery, and then Jammu had called and reasoned with her and told her the flight number and the gate number and the airline desk to get her ticket at, and she’d reasoned with Jammu. Everything was happening at once. Everything was the same when she went to bed and different in the morning. Jammu said Martin was on Rolf’s side. She said that wasn’t possible. Jammu said pack. The elevator door opened. Four hundred percent. That was four times everything! She ran down the hall and pushed open the glass doors.

“May I help you?”

She ran past the typewriter and the red nails of the woman’s outstretched hands and into his office and closed the door. She kneeled.

“Now, Devi—”

He didn’t understand. She couldn’t reason with him.

“I told you on the phone, now. You can’t deny I’ve been dashed square with you. Be a big girl.”

He pulled her to her feet. He pulled her to the door, and she said one last—

“All over, Devi.”

He didn’t understand. One last — Give me one last—

“The game is over. Wash your face, and do try and get that silly color out of your hair. You’ll feel ever so much better.”

One last — She was wearing his first present, and she guided his hand down under and then inside, using her nails to make sure he didn’t leave until he felt. The maid was nice. The maid asked about her things. The maid listened and said chippying, which meant economizing. She wished!

She locked the door with her other hand and went down to the floor. Martin always said Rolf was a prick. Rolf told her he always did. She could see it now. She hated it. She’d go back to Martin and apologize to him. Martin would be madder than ever when he found out that prick had done this to her on the floor even though its mind was made up and she knew it would call the police because it had said so on the phone. Its teeth unclenched.

“That was it, now. Happy?”

Yes happy. Good-bye forever! (She couldn’t wait to count it.) When she ran through the glass doors again the woman was gone and her red nails with her. It was still noon. This time she ran down the stairs. She lost a heel. She stopped to break the other heel and knock it off and ran the rest of the flights flatfooted. The guard said, You’ll never learn to manage. You should learn to drive your own car. His telephone rang as she revolved through the doors onto the pink sidewalk. She began to run.

“Stop right there, young lady!”

She heard the guard running, and she ran floating like a deer. The credit cards were perishable. He was gaining on her, and she didn’t see any cabs on the circular drive. For forty dollars he at least could have waited three minutes! Fortunately a white car pulled over and a back door opened. She got in and turned around in time to see the guard draw up and stick his hands on his hips and his chest heave and his cheeks scarlet and his mouth say, hoo boy, hoo boy. She knew the driver in the front seat. He had a friend she hadn’t met.

“We stopped and picked up your bags.”

He said in a foreign language she understood, catching her breath. They were driving her to the airport. Jammu had said. She hadn’t expected the royal service and she wouldn’t tip them. They drove on the freeway. They didn’t say anything except the friend was coming along with her. She looked in the wallet still warm from the seat of the only one besides Martin she’d done it with. In the front seat they were eating pills and they gave her one which she noticed was different from theirs. She smiled and put it in her mouth and took the can of Crush.

“Dramamine for your flight.”

“You’ll feel calmer.”

She put her compact up to her face to work on her personality and dropped the wet, crumbling pill in the compact. She snapped it shut. At the airport the driver and his friend got out and set her bags on the sidewalk. She got out. Her feet were flat! The driver tried to take her purse away from her, and somehow the strap broke and people were looking. The two friends looked at each other and tried to reason her back into the car for a minute.

“Do you know theeth men, young lady?”

One man was very interested. The two friends jumped in the car. She told the man they were harassing her, which was funny because the car drove away.

“Can I give you a lift thumplace?”

She read the chrome words COUNTRY SQUIRE. His car was older, a station wagon with weathered plastic wood siding. The Country Squire smiled and held the passenger door for her. They left the airport. The Squire was driving awfully fast.

“What’th your name?”

She wasn’t sure right now. She hadn’t ever met the Squire, and she was coming down with the afternoon flu. Wait a second. She opened her purse, zipped the wallet into a pocket and arranged things for the cure. On her right the Marriott disappeared. People didn’t understand Barbara, and when they gave her no credit there was no one left to turn to except Martin. She didn’t believe Martin was really on Rolf’s side.

Trying to reason with her the whole way, the Squire took her downtown. Was she cold? No, she said she only thought she might be coming down with something for the moment. He finally stopped for a light. His mouth widened, a smiling prick. She sprayed Mace in his face and kept spraying until the car behind them honked at the green light. She got out of the car and looked up the street for another cab. Get well soon! she told herself, hopeful even in her chills.

In the first light of Friday, before the city rose, Probst climbed the central staircase at his South Side headquarters. At two or three o’clock he’d stopped trying to sleep. At five he’d stopped trying to keep his eyes closed. He was behind even with his personal tasks at the office, and he knew that the phones at every place where he could conceivably be reached would start ringing at eight. He also felt he owed it to Cal and Bob, who of late had effectively been running the company for him, to come in and work some early mornings in the name of the team.

Mike Mansky, at his desk in Engineering, nodded to him and in the same motion leaned forward to kill a cigarette in the ashtray on his blotter. They had a night crew out rebuilding a bridge on Route 21, otherwise Mansky wouldn’t be here.

Probst negotiated the dark, windowless corridor to his office and opened the door. Carmen’s battened-down desk and typewriter were gray in the light of the new day. The same gray of imminence dwelt temporarily in walls soon to be white, carpeting soon to be blue, file cabinets soon to be more indigenously gray. Already some color was coming out — a spot of red enamel in the corner, a small electric coffeepot. Carmen liked a cup of instant soup on cold afternoons.

The door to his inner sanctum stood ajar, its polished surface reflecting the light rectangle of one of his windows. He pushed it open and walked in.

General Norris was sitting at his desk. He was reading some sort of large-format technical journal. He flipped it onto the desk and looked at Probst. Probst looked at the floor, but the General’s features, the grooves on his forehead, at his eyes and around his mouth, his disappointment, had left an imprint on his retinas. He sighed. “You have a thing about showing up on other people’s property, don’t you?”

“You mind?”

“No-o-o—” Probst set his briefcase on the floor. He wasn’t used to being received in his own office. He did mind that.

“You probably got work you want to do,” Norris said. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to ask why you done what you done.”

Probst looked out the window at the stark precinct house. “I think the papers will state my case pretty clearly.”

“Oh, your case, yes. Yes indeed. You’ve always got a case. You know something, Martin? I never seen anybody like you before. I’ve seen a lot of self-interest and a lot of cynicism and a lot of weakness, but you — you’re the feller with the finger in the dike who somebody offers you a sandwich and you take your finger out to eat it. And you know the water’s gonna drown you too. You’re really something.”

“Was there anything else?”

“Yes, there was. Like to give you a piece of good advice.” The General stood and rolled his magazine into a tube. “Call it a sixth sense, but I ain’t giving up on you just yet. I’d like you to stay in one piece for what’s gonna happen pretty soon.”

“The advice.”

“Don’t be snippy with me. I’m civil, you be civil. My advice is, do whatever you have to in private with that woman but don’t make it public.”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t make it public.” With his magazine Norris tapped a black plastic binder on Probst’s desk. “I’m leaving you a copy of the interim report we sent the IRS and FBI yesterday, and you can judge for yourself. Maybe you’ll get the idea of handing it over to her. I hope you don’t. But I can tell you we’ll find out if you do and it won’t hurt the investigation any but it’ll sure as hell hurt you. Don’t be any stupider than you been already.”

The General left.

Probst read the label on the binder. Preliminary Report on the Indian Presence in St. Louis. Commissioned by S. S. Norris. H. B. Pokorny & Sons. He riffled through the pages and saw lists, transcripts, financial breakdowns, in all about 250 pages, a bulk that scared him. If this was all make-believe, their imaginations must have been working in very high gear. He decided to read one page. He opened to what looked like a Who’s Who section.

MADAN, Bhikubai Devi, born 12/12/61, Bombay. Prostitute. Residing Airport Marriott Hotel, St. Louis, 9/19—present. Visa #3310984067 (tourist) exprd 11/14. Indian psprt #7826212M. Documented encounters: Jammu, 10/8, 10/22, 10/24, 11/6 (am & pm), 11/14, 11/24, 11/27, 12/2, 12/12, 12/14, 12/29, 1/17, 1/21, 2/20, 2/27, 3/15 (see chronology, Appendix C). Ripley, 50 + encounters beginning 9/19 through present. A probable heroin addict, Madan would appear to be the primary and perhaps sole liaison between Jammu and Ripley. (See Transcript 14, Appendix B.) Justiciable offenses: possession of Class 1 narcotics, violation of visa (Sec. 221 [c], Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. [c]), prostitution. Criminal record in India: not available.

The phone was ringing, and he read no more. He could guess who was calling.

“It takes guts to do what Martin did,” Buzz Wismer said.

Friday had passed without Martin’s having backed away at all from the severe pro-merger stance he’d adopted on Thursday. It was Saturday now, and Martin had been selected at the eleventh hour to deliver the keynote speech at the pro-merger rally to be held on the Mall downtown at three o’clock.

“It takes real guts,” Buzz repeated. With a spoon he depressed the cheese skin on the French onion soup Bev had taken out of the oven. He wanted lunch, but lunch was molten and dangerous. The single-serving earthenware crock was too hot to touch. “Yes sir,” he said, pinching his napkin in hungry frustration. “It takes real guts.”

Bev cut the cheese strands out from under her raised spoon with a stoned-wheat cracker and took her first bite. Her mouth slackened at the corners. He heard the unwillingness in her swallow. She coughed, explosively, and gagged. Something in her throat. He leaned across the table to slap her on the back but she waved him away, coughing and shaking her head. When she’d recovered, she picked up her crock with a pot holder and set it in the sink. She sat down and broke a cracker in two.

“You shouldn’t have made yourself any if you weren’t going to eat it,” Buzz said.

“It takes guts all right,” she said. “Now that he’s done it, you can do it too. Right? Now that he’s done the hard part. You can follow suit. It would take guts not to. Wouldn’t it.” She’d broken each half cracker into halves. Four equal squares lay on her placemat. She took another cracker from the basket. “You can follow suit. If he leads clubs, you play a club. Just follow suit. Except for the fun part. Barbara made that easier for him. Didn’t she.”

She swept the eight squares of cracker into a cupped hand and went and dropped them in the wastebasket. Buzz managed a bite of soup, shuttling it around inside his mouth before it could burn anything too badly. He took a gulp of Guinness. Bev sat. “I’d like to help you, Buzz, I honestly would. I’m your helpmeet. But there’s no one in sight to take me off your hands. Not for miles around.”

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I just got up.”

“Oh.”

Once he’d emptied the crock, he got hers from the sink and ate most of her soup, too. She served him a large slice of Grand Marnier-impregnated Bundt cake for dessert. (Her cooking was too rich for him, but it gave her something to do, measuring the substantial pounds of butter, the substantial cupfuls of grated cheese.) He put the crocks in the dishwasher, making a mental note to check after the dishwasher had run to see if it had actually cleaned the crusted cheese from the rims. (Their latest maid had quit after six days.) It was one o’clock. He gargled with Listerine and put on a leather jacket and called to Bev that he was leaving for the office. She came to the front door with a glass of sherry on ice.

“I guess I’ll see you when I see you,” she said. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around. Be seeing you. See you later.”

He smiled. “I won’t be gone that long.”

There was no practical reason for Buzz to copy Martin and make public statements in support of the referendum. The campaign had for all intents and purposes come to an end at noon on Thursday. It was now just a matter of waiting another nine days until it was official. Nevertheless, Buzz wanted to do something. In the first place, it never hurt one’s public image and executive credibility to be on the winning side. In the second place, Martin had done a brave thing, and Buzz felt that giving him his full support was the least he could do to make it up to him (“it” was a litany of shadowy, late-night offenses). In the third place, there was Asha. As he drove up the road to headquarters he saw a cream-colored Rolls-Royce idling in the middle of the vast empty parking lot, and as he coasted up to it he could almost hear the news: Edmund “Buzz” Wismer, chairman of the board of Wismer Aeronautics, today stunned the city by announcing his intention to move his operations, based for the last forty years in suburban St. Louis County, to downtown St. Louis. The announcement, following on the heels of a related announcement by Wismer’s longtime friend and confidant Martin Probst, comes at a time when Asha was growing impatient with him. Her engine was running, after all, and he wondered whether if he’d come a few minutes later she still would have been here. From the smile on her internationally renowned face, however, Wismer can tell she was glad she’d waited.

The countdown to Election Day had entered the single figures. On the whole, Probst’s former allies at Municipal Growth and Vote No had shown commendable understanding and patience with him, at least to judge by their silence. Partly, no doubt, they were recalling his refusal to sully himself with the practicalities of the campaign. They wouldn’t miss his labors, and he’d made himself so unlikable (he knew this) that not many would miss him personally either. Beyond that, St. Louisans naturally respected well-reasoned changes of heart, even surprising and hurtful changes, and perhaps especially in the case of a man with a reputation so unimpeachable. People were used to Probst by now. Their latest reaction, as he imagined it, amounted to an Oh jeez, Martin Probst, he’s done it again. As usual, events had conspired to keep his actions in character.

By Sunday night there remained only one last unpleasant task. He had to clean out his desk at Vote No headquarters and turn in his keys. He’d put it off as long as was seemly, and then a little longer still; it was midnight by the time he left the house on Sherwood Drive.

The night was warm. He pulled on a switch to lower all four of the Lincoln’s windows, allowing in air that had risen off soft, recuperating lawns and banks of daffodils and jonquils and snowdrops. Spring had come all at once and in full force, having sent no red herrings in February or January. This spring, the city had earned.

Probst had read Pokorny’s document cover to cover, and he hadn’t been afraid to test Jammu on every point. These were serious charges. She understood that she had to answer them, and she did, over IHOP pancakes Friday morning, over a dinner at Tony’s on Saturday. He studied her for the least sign of vagueness or bluff. He observed none.

“You have to understand the context, Martin. Devi Madan is a twenty-three-year-old who had the misfortune, sometime in September, of falling into the hands of a very experienced and unscrupulous abuser of young women. The first thing Ripley did was take away her passport, supposedly for safekeeping. He installed her in the Airport Marriott, and he left her there. Even after her passport stamp expired he wouldn’t let her go home to Bombay. That’s where I came in. As Joe Feig pointed out in his feature last month, a good many Indians have immigrated to St. Louis, and one of the reasons they’re coming here appears to be me. Families that want to leave India for America find out that St. Louis has welcomed at least one Indian, namely me, in a big way. So then they come here and immediately they find themselves in all sorts of trouble, some of it with the law but most of it with the customs and language and institutions and impersonality of the place. And in India there’s a very old tradition of intercession. At any agency you go to in Bombay you’ll find mediators who for a fee which is sometimes reasonable but usually not will fix things for you with the bureaucrats inside. That’s not how it works in St. Louis, though, so to all these Indians here, especially the ones like Devi who really are in bad shape, I’ve been the next best thing to a paid mediator. Not to compare myself to Mrs. Gandhi, but she also used to devote time every week to hearing the grievances of ordinary people. It was a Mogul tradition she reactivated, in her regal way. Devi certainly isn’t the only one I’ve had to take care of, although she is one of the ones I’ve seen the most of, up until a few weeks ago. I suppose Pokorny doesn’t mention that she’s finally been able to fly home to Bombay, after I did everything but have Ripley arrested as a thief.”

“Including blackmailing him?”

She took the question seriously. “I’m not a blackmailer, Martin. On the other hand I’m not as pure as you are. I can tell you exactly to what extent Devi figured in some of the moves Ripley made.”

“Save it.”

In deference to Norris, he hadn’t let her see the actual report. (Not that she’d shown any interest in seeing it.) He’d sliced it in two, lengthwise, with Carmen’s paper cutter, and disposed of the halves in two trash cans, one at work and one at home.

There were no lights in the windows of the office on Bonhomme Avenue. Probst parked, took the elevator, and let himself in, turning on the lights. The place was dead. It looked deserted for more than just the night.

He began to load sheaves of yellow legal-sized paper into his briefcase, the drafts of his old speeches. As souvenirs he took some Vote No pencils, an SX-70 snapshot of him at his desk (working hard, his head bowed), and a copy of every document he’d had a hand in writing. He took down the picture of Luisa Duane had given him. He left all the drawers half open as a sign. Then he sat down to write John Holmes a note to leave with the keys.

Dear John,

“Don’t bother.”

Probst jumped in his chair and turned to see Holmes himself, unshaven, in shirtsleeves, standing at his shoulder.

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“It’s all right,” Probst said. “I—”

“Yeah. I went out for a drink.” Holmes took a seat on his desk, leaving one foot on the floor. “Pretty quiet here, isn’t it?”

“It’s late.”

“A week ago there were still plenty of people around after midnight, even on a Sunday.” Holmes smiled. “We’ve lost a lot of volunteers in the last three days.”

“My fault?”

“Your fault. Evidently.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to lay any guilt trip on you. But in some way you might be pleased to know it meant a lot to have you in our corner here.”

“Thanks, John.”

“And for purely selfish reasons, I’m loath to complain. You and I are both off the hook now.”

“How so?”

“This should be the last campaign I’ll be asked to run, and the last one you’ll be asked to work for.”

Grateful for the joke, Probst said, “You think anyone suspects we planned it this way?”

Holmes looked into the fluorescent lights. “I’ll take your keys now, Martin.”

Soft snores made their way into Rolf’s ears from under the pillows to his right. An unfamiliar clock radio was blinking at him, and a framed photo of middle-aged parents cast its benignancy upon the bed. He’d surfaced suddenly, his blue somnolence vanishing like liquid oxygen as he shed it. He was wide awake. A divan and a love seat loomed beyond the bunched bedspread and its lacy fringe, in the living end of this living room-cum-bedroom. It was too dark to make out the words on the piece of embroidery hanging by the kitchenette door, but he remembered its message: Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life. That was the kind of girl Tammy was. Rolf had revealed to her that the feminine orgasm was a mere figment of fashion-magazine editors’ imaginations. True, perhaps a certain sort of woman did feel something like…Tammy wasn’t that sort of girl. She’d believed him. She’d found it to be true.

The air of the room tasted clear and clean. All things considered, Rolf was well pleased with his condition. Gelatron, and now Houstonics as well, were his. And the level of indebtedness was so low it made him blush. The Texas immovables of Gelatron and Houstonics had been sold in a highly favorable tax context, while the companies moved into Ripley-owned property in Saint Louis, thus avoiding any need to sell out in Saint Louis and take the tax punishment there. The corporation had grown painlessly. Even Martin Probst’s conversion to the pro-city point of view could not diminish Rolf’s pleasure in the maneuvers — because all at once, as if he’d awakened from deep sleep, Rolf didn’t care a jot about what Martin did. He could have his Barbie back now (if he could find her, tee hee). Rolf was well pleased. It was not just any man who could fund a sexual theme park and sample the wares of the man down the street. Nor could just any man have cut his losses so neatly when at length he grew sick of it and shut it down. Rolf was even more admired for his timely bailouts than for his shrewd acquisitions. Devi had left his life — at a cost to the contingencies fund of nothing but a few hundred dollars in cash and ten minutes of his secretary’s time spent reporting the theft of his plastic. And for once Jammu had been a dashed good sport about things, informing him on Wednesday that Devi was addicted to drugs and reminding him that as an illegal alien she had no rights. It was a likely thing, of course, that Jammu had finally realized Devi was stealing her secrets. Jammu wasn’t one to perform selfless favors.

Now Tammy, on the other hand…She stirred, rolling onto her side. A delectable boobie looked Rolf in the eye. She was a stewardess with Ozark. One of Rolf’s goals in life was to take a girl in the bathroom of a commercial airliner at 30,000 feet, and he was sure that he could now look forward to fulfilling that goal. There was much to look forward to in life, and little to regret. Ripleycorp today stood on the firmest financial footing it had known in twenty years, footing that would only get firmer in the future, now that Ripley had replaced Wismer and General Syn as the pacesetting industrial giant in Saint Louis. His profit motive had lost none of its potency. In fact, if he didn’t fall asleep soon he’d have to wake Tammy up; she’d be too impressed to be cranky.

The most splendid thing about making money, of course, was the leverage it gave a chap playing the morality market. Devi had lived high on the hog off Rolf’s munificence, and she knew it. He’d bought her many fine things. She could scarcely have done better, and ever so easily have done worse. It was a general phenomenon. When he looked back on all the dears he’d shared bliss with in forty years, he could say to himself, in full candor, that he’d been square with every one of them.

“Jack. How are you.”

“Pretty dang good.” It was Thursday evening, a week since Probst’s announcement. “Just got back from the Maundy Thursday service at our church. Beautiful service. The new choirmaster has a real sense of taste, you should come sometime. I was never much of a church booster really, but I tell you, in the last few years — Do you still go to that little Lutheran church there on — where was it?”

“No,” Probst said. “Not since I stopped living with my parents.”

“Oh, long time. Long time. Huh. Well, listen. You’re going to say here I go again with this late-notice business, but — do you have any Easter plans yet?”

“Ah.”

“See, Elaine and I were thinking you might be all alone there, or you and Luisa, and, Well, I don’t know, it’s a family holiday. It’s a quiet holiday. Let me just tell you what we’re thinking of. We are going to go to early church, darn it—if we can get the kids out of bed—and vee have vays, heh — which would get us home by 10:30 or so. Dinner would be around two, and in the meantime, heh, we’re going to have the old egg hunt on the lawn. Elaine and I, we tell the kids they’re getting way too old for it, but every year they insist on having it. It’s more of a game now, of course. Well, like bridge. They take it real seriously, and I’m usually out there half the night hiding eggs. There’s a strategy, you know, whether you’re going to psych ’em out by using some of the old standard places, or not. Anyway, if you think this is something Luisa would enjoy, she could—”

“I don’t know, Jack—”

“She could come early. Or both of you. Otherwise, about 12:30.”

Probst crossed his eyes until they hurt. “I probably should have stopped you sooner, Jack, because unfortunately I do have some—”

“Oh, OK,” Jack readily agreed.

Anger leapt in Probst. “I do have some plans. I’m having Chief Jammu here for dinner.”

“Hey! From the cover of Time magazine to the table of Martin Probst.”

Was Jack insulting him?

“I mean, that’s great! Two people like you with such a lot on the ball, it’s great to think about. We saw your name in that article, by the way. Still doin’ the old neighborhood proud. And it’s pretty neat, you abandoning ship like that at the last minute. Heckuva surprise. I think you did the right thing, getting on the winning side. I call it the winning side because — remember how I used to be pretty good at calling elections?”

“Yes,” Probst said. He had no memory of it.

“I’ve gotten even better in the last few years. Ninety, ninety-five percent accurate. Anyways, this referention looks like a cinch.”

“That’s what the surveys would indicate.”

“Yep, and you know what made my mind up? I and Elaine always look for you on TV, and we listen to what you say. I thought you had some good arguments — that’s Martin, we always say — but what you said on Thursday or whenever. I really liked that.”

“Thanks, Jack. I hope you’re not the only one.”

There was a pause. Probst still had to do the grocery shopping for Sunday before the last stores closed, because it didn’t look like his schedule would allow him any time for it in the next two days. “Well,” he said.

“You doing anything right now?” Jack said.

“Right now?”

“Sure. We were going to have some coffee and cake.”

“Unfortunately—” Probst felt his knees weakening. With sudden resolve, he said, “Listen, Jack. Have you noticed that I haven’t had time to accept a single one of your invitations this year?”

“No, Martin.” The reply came in a new, sarcastic package. “I hadn’t noticed.”

They could turn vicious on you, just like that. Jack had done it as a teenager, too, flashed the bitter superiority of the less advantaged.

“I’m just trying to be honest with you,” Probst said. “I don’t want to waste your time.”

“Didn’t seem wasted.”

“Well, I guess then I don’t want you to waste mine.”

“OK.”

I’m Martin Probst. I’m chairman of Municipal Growth. I’m the builder of the Arch. I’m the friend of Jammu, I’m the Veiled Prophet, and I might just be the new county supervisor if I feel like it. “I’m sorry, Jack. I just think it might be better for both of us. It’s no reflection on—”

A dial tone.

“Bastard!” Probst slammed the receiver onto its hook. He collected his keys, coat and shopping list and fled the house before the phone could ring again. You try to be the least bit nice and—

They know what the score is, and still they—

And Barbara thought him spineless, patted him on the cheek. He was going to make her damn sorry she left him. He was in good shape. He was in very good shape.

He was going to broil lamb chops, bake potatoes, make a green salad and use the bottle of balsamic vinegar he’d discovered a week ago in a silver-colored box in the cupboard. It was what his salads lacked which Barbara’s hadn’t. In the last few weeks he’d begun to eat salads again. His steady diet of restaurant food had been adding a pound to his weight every five or six days, and suddenly he’d run out of places to hide the extra pounds.

He pulled into the Schnucks parking lot, took a cart from the queue outside, and entered the temple of light. He’d been coming here so often that he could now arrange his shopping lists sequentially, according to the aisles in which the foods were shelved. Vegetables fruits deli coffee cereals sauces dressings meat. Was it too early to buy the lamb? Not at all! Meat was tenderized by aging, and besides, by Saturday night Schnucks might have run out. He chose two packages of the best. He thought of the irony of slaughtering innocent lambs to celebrate Easter. He remembered when he’d known Jammu so casually he’d been afraid she was a vegetarian.

The lines at the only two checkout lanes still open curved around an extensive candy display. Probst put a large, hollow chocolate egg in his cart, edible bric-a-brac for Jammu’s appreciation. (But who would be fooled by these hollow eggs? Kids, that was who. Kids were fooled. The economy was fueled by the stupidity of kids.) As usual, he’d gotten in the slower of the two lines. (That bastard Jack.) He took a closer look at the graphics in the candy display. The chocolate bunnies came in flimsy cardboard cartons, brightly colored, wrapped in cellophane. Somewhere on every box were the words hollow milk chocolate and a list of enes and benzos and phosphos and lactos. But these weren’t ordinary bunnies. They were individualized, the box illustrations picking up on the creations within. A bunny on a chocolate motorcycle was identified as Chopper Hopper. A bunny with a magnifying glass carried the moniker Inspector Hector. There was a Jollie Chollie and, with a tennis racket, a Willie Wacket. Manning a chocolate fire engine was a group of bunnies collectively known as Binksville Fire Control; its higher price reflected its greater net weight. There was a Rolly Roller on skates. (“Excuse me!”) Super Bunny with a cast brown cape. Busy Bigby. Peter Rabbit — so they remembered Peter Rabbit, did they? And they sold these things to children and did not go to jail. Little Traveler. Parsnip Pete. Horace H. Heffelflopper. (“Excuse me!”) McGregor, simply. Mr. Buttons…. Probst was pawing through the cartons, seeking out fresh slaps in the face. He found yet another: Timid Timmy. (We are the greatest nation on earth.)

“Excuse me!”

Probst turned towards the voice, which seemed to be addressing him. He saw no one. He looked down and saw a little boy, nine or ten years old. “Yes?” he said.

“Excuse me,” the boy said, “are you Mr. Probst?”

“Yes?”

The boy pushed a curling cash register receipt into his hands. “Can I have your autograph?”

Probst groped in his coat pocket for a pen.