So coincidence? Coincidence? You tell me, what’s more outrageous, that someone like myself should go along, la de da, minding what he’s still got left for business in what he’s still got left for life, doing, dum dum de dum dum, his job, suddenly stumbling over conditions’ cooked books, or that, as anyone with an ounce of sense will tell you, it’s in the nature of books to be cooked, the nature, Christ, maybe even the duty, like evolution or natural selection, for people to wear themselves down and wear themselves down to a point where they have an actual edge, some in-tooth-and-claw arrangement which not only enables them to pull the shit they pull but actually drives them to do it! What’s more outrageous, eh? That I should step in a mess in the street or that so many messes should be left in the street that I can’t help but step in one?
“Oh, Su’ad, oh oh! Su’ad, Su’ad oh,” conjured and softly moaned the City Commissioner of Streets, as unready and ill-prepared to step out of the holy sanctuary crapper as when he’d first stepped into it.
But determinations had been made.
He let himself out of the toilet. (Thinking precisely that way now — as one who “let himself out” of things, leaving bathrooms as you’d slip ropes, negotiating ordinary rooms as if they were obstacle courses, some land-mined aspect to the scenery, some scenery aspect to the scenery!), thinking of his life as having a “look” to it now, all the authentic fine detailing of a movie set, his clothes, Dan’s, Rector’s, Ham ‘n’ Eggs’, even the colored shammes’s, as real and up-to-date as on the first day of principal photography. It was, all of it, faithful to Druffs times and circumstances, everything le dernier cri, organized, arranged as an illusion of environment in a zoo, Druff preserved in the perfect poisoned amber of his ambience.
All right then, he had thought, upon unlocking the door to the W.C. and peering cautiously out. Action?
He moved to the desk and tapped Margaret Glorio’s number, which he had called only once before but hadn’t forgotten, into the phone. She picked up on the first ring.
“Margaret, darling, it’s Bob Druff. I have to talk fast because under certain circumstances a fellow in my position not only has to be on his toes at all times but has to have eyes practically in the back of his head. Without going into detail, suffice it to say this may be one of them.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to tell you I haven’t forgotten last night.”
“For a man your age you’ve a remarkable memory.”
“Ha ha, Margaret darling.”
“Where are you calling from? Are you calling from home?”
What was left of the decent man in him told him there was no harm in the question, but the fellow straining tiptoe with his eyes practically in the back of his head warned otherwise. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right.”
“I’m glad your wife gave you my message.”
“My wife?” Druff said, alarmed. “No no, my wife and son were out when I got back from my errands. We didn’t have an opportunity to speak. Er, what, um,” asked the City Commissioner of Streets, “was your message, Margaret dear?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you have crabs?”
“That was your message? You said I had crabs?”
“You don’t think she has a right to know?”
“Ha ha, Margaret Glorio, you had me going there for a minute. That’s probably one of the reasons I like you so much, you playful devil scamp, you. You didn’t even call my house, I betcha. Well well.”
“Look,” Margaret Glorio said, “I’m expecting a call. You said you’d make this fast.”
“You’re expecting a call? There’s someone else?” said Druff with great feeling. The City Commissioner of Streets was astonished. If he sounded even half as melodramatic to her as he did to himself he must indeed have seemed the fool. It was because she’d picked up on the first ring. Well, he’d been there, hadn’t he? Had seen all there was to see of her studio apartment, its cunning furniture and unusual lamps, all that experimental decor, her buyer’s bold environment, the strange matte finish of the furniture, of the walls and carpets, the drapes and slipcovers, the designer telephone on the designer table of exotic wood. He’d been there, knew she’d have to have been sitting with the phone practically in her lap to have answered so quickly. Was that kind of anticipation ever not love-related on a day not part of the workweek? “Not, I mean, that you haven’t every right, of course. Of course you have. Certainly. Hey, I don’t own you. What makes me think I own you? I don’t own anybody. I’m not some jerk who has it in his head that just because he sends a girl a bucket of flowers on the night of the big dance or shares a crown rack with her, that that gives him some right — Maybe the guy whose call you’re waiting for thinks that way, maybe he feels he owns a piece of you, but not me. I’m just a lowly public servant. Where would I ever get off?
“No no, I’m just calling to pass the time of day. As I might with any close personal friend I don’t particularly own. Hell no. You’re free, white and twenty-one, as we used to say in the old days. I just called because I promised I would after our one night of love, and to shoot the shit.”
“Well,” Margaret said, “it was good hearing from you.”
“Well,” said the City Commissioner of Streets, at a loss. “Look,” he said, “I know I caught you at a bad time. I just wanted to tell you what a swell time I had last night, and how much I admired your pad, how you fixed it up.”
“My ‘pad’?”
“Did I misspeak? You think I’m talking above my station, age-wise? No no, you misunderstand. I meant it as a compliment. You’ve your whole life ahead of you, young lady. You go call real estate whatever you please. But hey, I’m the old-timer in the outfit, what do I know? You don’t like ‘pad’? Showplace, then. How much I admired your showplace.”
“Thanks,” Margaret Glorio said, “I hope next time you see it you still like it.”
“Next time I see it,” Druff said. “Hubba hubba.”
“ ‘Hubba hubba,’ ” Miss Glorio said. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Me? This stuff? I’m a gentleman of the old school. I speak a sort of gabardine, like a man in a hat.”
“I don’t exactly understand why,” she told him, “but it’s kind of cute. Charming.”
“Like your lovely pad.”
“What’s with you, Commissioner? Why do you keep bringing the conversation around to my apartment? What are you enamored of, me, or the fact I’m convenient to the good schools, churches, transportation, water and shopping? It’s my business to have nice things.”
“That’s right,” said the man with the MacGuffin. “I forgot. You’re this buyer, you have important contacts with wholesale. You get the urge, you call you want the furniture moved, and interior designers do you for nothing. You don’t lift a finger.”
“More or less.”
“Boy oh boy,” he said, “what perks! Oh, hey,” he said, “would that go even for Oriental rugs?”
“Oriental rugs?”
Because he was trying to remember if he’d seen one last night. A little like the rabbi’s, bigger than a throw rug, smaller than a flying carpet.