Don't ask me why but it was time to approach the Magnan-Rockford Foundation. Mason wrote John Armegurn, Secretary: “… I am back from abroad and am staying at the Gramercy Park. Give me a call as soon as possible. I'm changing banks and want my monthly check to go to the new one, probably Chase-Manhattan. I hope we can make the necessary adjustments by phone. I won't be in New York long and my schedule is hectic.” He thought his own hokum pretty damn good. Maybe he wouldn't need any further eyewash, jive or stuffing for the goose. Armegurn had a sharp high-pitched voice and a dry chuckle. He clearly didn't know Mason's so-called Impostor too well because he didn't question Mason's voice. But he did insist that Mason come in. “It's easier.” A trap? Ambush? It was Wednesday at three. Mason pretended to check his hectic schedule. “I can see you between ten and eleven tomorrow. How's that for you?” Armegurn stood to shake his head as he approached the desk. His secretary was retreating. “You've changed a bit.” He was a handsome, big man, with ashy skin, ashy hair, freckles on his cheeks, even on his lips, thick red hair on the backs of his huge hands. His shake was more than firm: bone crushing. Armegurn's grin was plastic: fixed. “Yesterday, I didn't recognize your voice. But it happens all the time. People change so fast. Why, just yesterday, I walked by an old friend — I hadn't seen in two years — on Fifth Avenue. I looked right at him and he looked right at me. Of course, moments later, we turned and, well… Say, how was France?” And so Mason made small, awkward talk about a France he'd never known. Finally, after watching Mason frantically checking his watch every minute or so, Armegurn said, “I've had Jo Ann type up all the necessary papers for the transfer. All we'll need her to do is insert the bank of your choice and your account number. You sign it then take it out to one of our accounts clerks. They'll probably want to see some I.D. then you're set. Okay?” “Sounds fine.” Jo Ann came back when Armegurn buzzed for her then Mason gave her a piece of paper with his Chase account number and the branch address. He stood up and shook with Armegurn again then went out and had a seat while Jo Ann typed. Mason eyed a “battle axe”—his thought, folks, not mine — waiting to see Armegurn who momentarily came out. “Hi, Miss Bambosh — how are ya?” After she'd followed Armegurn into his office Jo Ann, fiftyish and square as a wooden door, said, “She's also a winner.” At that moment a trampy-looking young man shot into the office. He grabbed Jo Ann's arm and shouted insanely in her face: “Why is charity so fucking good but expecting mercy and begging are horrible?” then ran out before she could recover — let alone answer. Finally she said, “Every week he comes in here like that. He's a poet. Also one of our prize winners.” Her smile was glazed with the pain that comes from being hit below the belt. And she wasn't even an official entry.
A light drizzle in May: the morning smelled of pine: no Sherwood Anderson sky here over Seattle. Two cheery English professors picked him up in a monkeyshit-green Buick station wagon. The airport was the most untrustworthy he'd seen. Had it been constructed to trap him? And two weird professors? As they tried to engage him in a discussion of swindling in literature all he could think of was the new smackaroos going into his bank account at Chase. The two guys were drinking buddies. Mason agreed to stop with them for a short one. It was one thirty — the lecture wasn't till nine the next morning. That night: they'd take him to dinner at Professor Melvin Lester Bark's, their “most distinguished (ex-CIA) personage of historical literary scholarship.” Bob and Kit, these two, already slightly juiced-eyed, led Mason into a smelly pub on the secret end of North East One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Street, an old neighborhood bar, their favorite, complete with bar flies, stuck fan in ceiling, unearthly sawdust on floor. Good-Time Charlies, they joked about old ex-agent Bark and his fuddy-duddy fraudulent “historical scholarship.” They hadn't been able to get him to even read good Bellow let alone bad Barthelme. On the q.t., his wife was nice though and they were sure the dinner party would go well. Kit, the thinner, darker one, told Mason he'd tried to read one of his novels, but got confused. He couldn't tell what was going on. Mason smiled. Bob, with dimples and a twinkle, said, “I tried too, and I think I missed something.” Mason wasn't going to bite. This was a crow-hop. Take me to your leader, boys. That night they picked him up at the campus guest house. He was in the faculty club having a drink. Bark lived on Mercer Island so it would take awhile in the rush hour traffic. An early start was wise. The ferry boat was a twilight-lit sea dragon. After that, a short drive through a damp plush wooded area. Bark was a big man with a pumping handshake and a big smile. Mason didn't catch all the names though he was being told as he gripped one hand after another. A plump light-haired woman with tiny hands. One dark in a low-cut dress with a profusion of pimples all over her chest. A weasel guy. An old poet with yellow teeth and age spots on the backs of his hands. Mason got cornered by the tiny hands-woman. “You have children?” “Yes.” “How many?” “About, oh, thirty, maybe forty.” She gave him a look. Cocked her head. He could see she felt put on. She started to laugh, decided not to, then walked away. He was sick of these people who always wanted to talk about their children. The host had brought up good wine from his secret cellar and many were sampling various ones. Others worked on aperitifs and mixed drinks. Low chatter about deception in the department against subdued Mozart. Plush carpets beneath feet. Indirect lighting. Nothing blue or breezy. Tone: definitely not racy or risque: something almost “old family” British. The dark woman with pimples sat on one side of Mason at dinner and Kit on the other. Kit wanted to know what he thought of detective stories. Was Kit some sort of plotter? Sandra Pirsig, Miss Pimples, wanted to know how long he'd be in Seattle. His mouth was full of mystery steak: he couldn't answer either one. By the time Don Giovanni-Ellis was delivered back to the faculty club he was half drunk and suffering with acute sinusitis. Kit's tail lights finally vanished down the driveway. Mason thought of walking. But, The Impostor might be out there in the shadows! Yet lying down would only increase the congestion, the pain. The villainous damp night air had quickly gotten to him. He turned back. Slept poorly. But the coffee in the morning helped. He had a piece of toast with it. Then it was Sandra Pirsig, this time in a plain sweater and skirt, who came for him. He noticed something suggestive in her eye, a kind of nervous vibration from her body reached his. Funny business. Mason read to three hundred students in a lecture hall then talked half an hour. About? Literary snow jobs, blarney-festerings, writerly deception and the conflict and exchange between these states and the sacred grounds of truth. What else? Hum. Then they took him to lunch and he was, finally, at three-thirty free. Sandra asked him if he wanted to be driven anywhere special. No, he wanted to walk. She thought that interesting and decided to walk with him. She led him down to the shopping area near the university. A pleasant hocus pocus afternoon: an unclear tricky day, and green, green, green and gray, hard gray. The sky was, in part, swollen with dental cement — and sculptures of Presbyterian cows grazing on wet cotton. A mist hung low in the undergrowth as they cut through the park. She kept probing him about himself but his answers were cryptic. Mason tried to unscramble a mental poem buzzing in him but when he succeeded (as she talked on) it turned out to be a woodcut print of — of what? He wasn't sure. Somehow, though, this sadness of moss and lichen along the walkway, appealed to him: nature had declared martial law on civilization. Plush, damp, oozy stretches seemed to pull at his nerve endings. Mrs. Yznaga's seventh grade geography, her talks of the Pacific Northwest, the Olympia National Forest, hadn't prepared him for the sentimental fiddle music nature was coming on with here. Huh? Oh, yes Sandra was saying something about getting together tonight. Oh yes, why not… His flight wasn't till ten in the morning.