“You prefer to move in with me,” I said, giving equal weight to every word.
“Prefer it to declining the offer of our help, thereby forcing you, sir, to seek the aid of less reliable individuals.”
Several factors, first among them being the combination of delay, difficulty, and risk involved in finding replacements for the pair before me, led me to give further thought to this absurdity. Charlie-Charlie, a fellow of wide acquaintance among society’s shadow-side, had sent me his best. Any others would be inferior. It was true that Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff could enter and leave my office unseen, granting us a greater degree of security possible in diners and public parks. There remained an insuperable problem.
“All you say may be true, but my partners and clients alike enter this office daily. How do I explain the presence of two strangers?”
“That is easily done, Mr. Cuff, is it not?” said Mr. Clubb.
“Indeed it is,” said his partner. “Our experience has given us two infallible and complementary methods. The first of these is the installation of a screen to shield us from the view of those who visit this office.”
I said, “You intend to hide behind a screen.”
“During those periods when it is necessary for us to be on-sit.”
“Are you and Mr. Clubb capable of perfect silence? Do you never shuffle your feet, do you never cough?”
“You could justify our presence within these sacrosanct confines by the single manner most calculated to draw over Mr. Clubb and myself a blanket of respectable, anonymous impersonality.”
“You wish to be introduced as my lawyers?” I asked.
“I invite you to consider a word,” said Mr. Cuff. “Hold it steadily in your mind. Remark the inviolability which distinguishes those it identifies, measure its effect upon those who hear it. The word of which I speak, sir, is this: ‘consultant?’”
I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.
Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts-consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments-consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs. Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.
Eyes agleam with approval, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff stepped forward to shake my hand.
“We are in business,” said Mr. Clubb.
“Which is by way of saying,” said Mr. Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”
Mrs. Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff clasped their hands before them and looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black and red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochres, teals, and taupes.”
My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs. Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”
“Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”
The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs. Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.
“We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every cooperation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”
She disappeared, no doubt on a beeline for her telephone.
Mr. Clubb stretched his arms above his head. “The preliminaries are out of the way, and we can move to the job at hand. You, sir, have been most exceedingly, most grievously wronged. Do I overstate?”
“You do not,” I said.
“Would I overstate to assert that you have been injured, that you have suffered a devastating wound?”
“No, you would not,” I responded, with some heat.
Mr. Clubb settled a broad haunch upon the surface of my desk. His face had taken on a grave, sweet serenity. “You seek redress. Redress, sir, is a correction, but it is nothing more. You imagine that it restores a lost balance, but it does nothing of the kind. A crack has appeared on the earth’s surface, causing widespread loss of life. From all sides are heard the cries of the wounded and dying. It is as though the earth itself has suffered an injury akin to yours, is it not?”
He had expressed a feeling I had not known to be mine until that moment, and my voice trembled as I said, “It is exactly.”
“Exactly,” he said. “For that reason I said correction rather than restoration. Restoration is never possible. Change is the first law of life.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to get down to brass tacks.
Mr. Clubb hitched his buttock more comprehensively onto the desk. “What will happen will indeed happen, but we prefer our clients to acknowledge from the first that, apart from human desires being a deep and messy business, outcomes are full of surprises. If you choose to repay one disaster with an equal and opposite disaster, we would reply, in our country fashion, there’s a calf that won’t suck milk.”
I said, “I know I can’t pay my wife back in kind, how could I?”
“Once we begin,” he said, “we cannot undo our actions.” “Why should I want them undone?” I asked. Mr. Clubb drew up his legs and sat cross-legged before me. Mr. Cuff placed a meaty hand on my shoulder. “I suppose there is no dispute,” said Mr. Clubb, “that the injury you seek to redress is the adulterous behaviour of your spouse.”
Mr. Cuff’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “You wish that my partner and myself punish your spouse.” “I didn’t hire you to read her bedtime stories,” I said. Mr. Cuff twice smacked my shoulder, painfully, in what I took to be approval.
“Are we assuming that her punishment is to be of a physical nature?” asked Mr. Clubb. His partner gave my shoulder another all-too-hearty squeeze.
“What other kind is there?” I asked, pulling away from Mr. Cuff’s hand.
The hand closed on me again, and Mr. Clubb said, “Punishment of a mental or psychological nature. We could, for example, torment her with mysterious telephone calls and anonymous letters. We could use any of a hundred devices to make it impossible for her to sleep. Threatening incidents could be staged so often as to put her in a permanent state of terror.”
“I want physical punishment,” I said. “That is our constant preference,” he said. “Results are swifter and more conclusive when physical punishment is used. But again, we have a wide spectrum from which to choose. Are we looking for mild physical pain, real suffering, or something in between, on the order of, say, broken arms or legs?”
I thought of the change in Marguerite’s eyes when I named the ____________________ Hotel. “Real suffering.”
Another bone-crunching blow to my shoulder from Mr. Cuff and a wide, gappy smile from Mr. Clubb greeted this remark. “You, sir, are our favourite type of client,” said Mr. Clubb. “A fellow who knows what he wants and is unafraid to put it into words. This suffering, now, did you wish it in briefer extended form?”
“Extended,” I said. “I must say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in consulting with me like this. I was not quite sure what I wanted of you when first I requested your services, but you have helped me become perfectly clear about it.”
“That is our function,” he said. “Now, sir. The extended form of real suffering permits two different conclusions, gradual cessation or termination. Which is your preference?”