Mitch was getting better and better with the dice. He was not nearly as good then as he eventually got to be, but he was good. He banked part of his winnings, contributing the rest to household expenses. That gave him some feeling of independence; at least, he was paying for his own keep. But he was far from satisfied.
Sure, he loved being with the baby, but he couldn't make a career of it. Sure, he was doing fairly good with the dice- but how was he doing it? By hanging out in the kind of places that had always been faintly repugnant to him. Cheap, shoddy places; the habitat, as a rule, of cheap shoddy people. Walk into one of those joints ten years from now, and you'd find pretty much the same people there.
They were pikers, bums, the small fry of the nowhere world. Stick around them long enough, and you became a permanent member of the family. If you ever wanted to be in the big time, you had to be where the big-timers were.
Still… what to do about Teddy? He loved Teddy; he wanted her to be happy. He wasn't afraid of her-not exactly, that is-but he shrank from the prospect of annoying her.
As it turned out, he didn't have to do anything about Teddy, because she had also become dissatisfied with the way they were living. She announced abruptly one morning that they were renting a house, and in that house there was going to be a housekeeper or a nurse- housekeeper or whatever the heck was necessary to allow Mitch to take a job.
"I mean it, Mitch!" she said crossly. "I don't care what kind of job it is, but by golly you get one and get it fast!"
"But-but that's what I've been wanting to do, all along!" Mitch exploded. "You're the one that insisted that I stay at home, and-"
"I did not! Anyway, what good is it having you stay at home if I never get to be with you? When I'm working, you're asleep, and when I'm ready for bed you're cleaning house or out walking with the baby or some other crazy thing!"
"I know, but-"
"You'd better stop arguing with me, Mitch Corley! Get yourself a night job like I've got. Then maybe we'll get to see each other from one week end to the next!"
Mitch did as he was told. The job he took-hotel doorman-was not something he would have bothered with ordinarily; it didn't pay enough money. But money wasn't the most important factor at the moment, and there were compensations for the lack of cash.
He wore the hotel's livery, but he was actually employed by the garage-taxi company which serviced the hotel. Thus, since the latter company could hardly hire a supervisor for one man, he was pretty much his own boss. Then (and this was more important to him than he had previously realized) he was no longer addressed as "boy." Lifted out of the category of faceless flunkies, he became a person-a man with a name, who was to be consulted with at least a measure of respect on the vital matters of transportation and the maintenance of ultra-expensive cars.
There was little if anything to do between two and six in the morning, and he could sit in his starter's cubicle and read or chat with the inevitable guests who were afflicted with insomnia. One of his most frequent visitors was an ageless little man, with eyes which bugged enormously behind his thick-lensed glasses and a great mop of wiry iron-gray hair. Early in Mitch's employment, he had introduced himself with a question:
"If you are a doorman," he said, in subtly accented English, "why are you called a starter?"
"I'll look it up," Mitch grinned. "Ask me tomorrow night."
"So." The man nodded, gravely approving, then leaned far over into the starter's cubicle. "Why do you read a book on modern art? Someone has asked you a question about it?"
Mitch said no, he was simply doing it on his own account. He'd heard some ostensibly important people talking about modern art, and he figured it was something he should know about.
"Then, you are not doing it on your own account. It is only a sop to others."
"We-ell, maybe. But not entirely. I mean, how am I going to know whether something interests me unless I'm informed on it?"
The man studied him intently; bobbed the bushy mass of his hair. "We," he said firmly, "shall talk again."
That was Mitch's first meeting with Fritz Steinhopf, M.D., ph.D. (psychiatry), ER.A.S.; Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, University College. It was fairly typical of the psychiatrist's introduction to other members of the hotel's staff. Indiscriminately and without apologetic preliminary he had quizzed the resident manager, the haughty head-housekeeper-very much an executive in the hotel world-the superintendent of service, the head chef (another important executive), and various bellboys and clean-up men.
His attitude was one which, in ordinary cases, would have elicited the chilly suggestion that he would be "happier" at some other hotel. But Fritz Steinhopf was very far from being an ordinary case. In addition to his living quarters, he maintained an elaborate professional suite on the mezzanine floor. His patients were among the southwest's most prominent and wealthy, including two of the hotel company's major stockholders.
Mitch wondered why a man of Steinhopf's importance didn't concentrate on his practice, instead of prying into the affairs of people like himself. When the answer finally dawned on him, it did much in the shaping of his own character. One could not, he came to realize, approach every person and situation with a view to immediate gain. To be effective subjectively, a broad objectivity was necessary. Interest and curiosity were not traits to be turned off and on at will. Nothing was ever lost. Knowledge gained at one time could be used at another.
With much idle time on his hands, Mitch was more and more the target of the apparently non-sleeping Steinhopf's insatiable curiosity. And the more that curiosity was exercised, the greater it became. The psychiatrist was completely uninhibited; he could not be brushed off. A little irritated with him one night, Mitch declared that he had to go to lunch. Steinhopf said that he would go also, and he trotted along at Mitch's side to the all-night lunch room.
They ate together almost nightly after that, the psychiatrist stuffing himself with whatever was put in front of him, blandly asking the most intimate questions, occasionally making some comment which by turns enlightened, frightened and infuriated Mitch.
"It is a substitute, this gambling," he said. "A compensatory drive. You are haunted by your father's impotence. He had no such compensating satisfaction. So you provide yourself with one."
"Oh, come off it, Doc," Mitch laughed. "If I was any better in bed, I'd need a harem."
"So. Perhaps. But the fear is still present. A man confident of his prowess, that he is a man, is not dominated by his wife. As you are by yours, my dear Mitch."
"It's not like that at all! I try to be reasonable, of course. She brings most of the money into the family, and she should have something to say about how it's run. But-"
"But she has always earned the major share of the income, has she not? There has been relatively no change. And money is obviously of no importance to her, something to be thrown away. How then does it justify her drive to make you less than a man?"
"Dammit, I told you it wasn't like that! I'm in love with my wife. I want to do everything I can to please her and make her happy."