You. You ’re out of the loop.
I’m out of the loop. What about you and your magic-carpet conspiracies? Connecting the dots — A goes with B goes with C goes with … Trying to get it all to spell mother. Trust me, these are MacGuffin sorts of things. It won’t wash, Druffish.
Why not?
Well, the coincidences for one thing, the things that don’t track.
What doesn’t track?
All right. Case in point. How could Hamilton Edgar know you were going to stroll past B’nai Beth Emeth? That you’d wake up this morning and, not realizing it’s Saturday, get all dressed up prepared to go to work? Yet he seemed to be right there waiting for you, didn’t he?
All right, that was accidental. I presented him with an opportunity and he took advantage of it. What’s wrong with that?
Pretty farfetched, if you ask me.
I am asking you. Ain’t that just what it says on your shingle? The MacGuffin: MacGimmicks Are Us. What else doesn’t track?
Well, you make an awful lot of Margaret’s seeming to know about your son and that Shiite character.
She did know about them.
Well, sure she did. In your sleep, in your sleep, didn’t you put him behind the wheel? Didn’t you keep her up half the night with your run-her-over discussions?
I don’t know I kept her up.
Ri-i-ght.
And I never mentioned rugs.
You made a point of mentioning rugs!
When?
When? When? When you called her from the rabbi’s crapper, that’s when. That’s one when.
Suddenly, he remembered. Just yesterday, Druff went, just yesterday my driver placed Margaret and my kid together! In the limo, after we dropped her off, Dick mentioned it!
But Dick’s nuts. Dick’s around the bend. He’s across the river and through the woods. He’s somewhere over the rainbow. Don’t you even know that much?
Doug, then. Doug said some stuff, too.
Doug? Doug’s nuttier than Dick is.
Gee, Druff went, no longer certain where he stood. Gosh.
I think my work here is finished.
You’re leaving? But why? Wait. You can’t. You mustn’t.
Listen, life is either mostly adventure or it’s mostly psychology. If you have enough of the one then you don’t need a lot of the other.
“Mom, Dad, I’m back,” Mikey called.
That’s it, goes MacGuffin. I’m gone.
“Mom? Dad? I’m back.”
“What? Who’s—Oh, Mikey. It’s you. You scared me.”
“You’re still dressed. What are you doing down here, Daddy? Is anything wrong?”
“What? No. I fell asleep on the couch.”
“Is Mom all right?”
“Of course she’s all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“She’s fine.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine and dandy.”
“Because you were gone all day. I was pretty worried.”
“No need.”
“Well, when you didn’t come back. And you’re fully dressed. You didn’t have chest pain, did you? You didn’t have to lie down on the couch till your pain went away?”
“I didn’t have pain. I’m fine. I was tired. As a matter of fact, I was waiting for you.”
“For me?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Did you want to tell me something? Is it about you and Mom? Because just because you had that little quarrel this morning, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Your parents don’t get divorced because they had a little quarrel.”
“Nobody’s getting divorced.”
Mikey actually said “Whew.” “Whew,” he said, “that’s a relief.”
“It’s about you,” Druff said.
His son closed his eyes, he did his disappearing act. Then, having found somewhere in his intimate, immediate dark the courage to face him again, he opened them. “Am I in trouble?” he asked his father.
“I don’t know,” Druff said. “You might be in trouble.”
“What did I do?”
“Do you remember all those times you used to ask if we were well off? What our financial condition would be if something happened to me?”
“Dad, I was a kid.”
“You were a teenager.”
“A preteen. Maybe a preteen.”
“Mikey, you were working out at the gym. You could have bench- pressed the dining room.”
“I was nervous.”
“I know you were nervous. You were scared I was going to die. You were terrified you wouldn’t be ready.”
“I had some stuff to work out.”
“Well, do you remember the time we got this annual report from a company I had some stock in and we went over it together?”
“Vaguely. I think I remember.”
“It was this Fortune 500 company, some utility, I think. I forget which one. They listed their assets down one column, their liabilities down another.”
“I think I remember.”
“The profits they made each quarter from the natural gas they sold to their residential customers? What they took in from their industrial customers? How the two were charged at different rates because their industrial clientele consumed the stuff in much greater quantities?”
“Yes?”
“The profits from fields they owned but had leased to other gas companies?”
“Oh yes,” Mikey said.
“Then there were the debits. Well,” Druff said, “you can imagine. Their terrific operating expenses.”
“Sure.”
“A big fire. Equipment that had to be replaced. Disappointing yields from new wells.”
“I remember.”
“Then there were the acts of God.”
“I don’t recall the acts of God, Dad.”
“The acts of God, the acts of God. You remember.”
“No I don’t. I don’t think so.”
“The exceptionally mild winter they had that year. The unusually cool summer.”
“Oh,” Mikey said. “Sure.”
“Sure,” Druff said, “what finally accounted for their slight net loss.”
“I remember.”
“This was when you were still working stuff out.”
“Yes.”
“So I sat down with you and drafted my own annual report. I listed my assets and liabilities. I put down our savings and investments. My insurance. What my pension could be expected to bring in. The couple hundred bucks Social Security gives to help bury you. I listed the probable resale value of our house. I even put down the approximate worth of our possessions. The furniture, our car, the TVs and appliances, the appraised valuation on your mother’s jewelry, everything I could think of. What I took in over and above my salary that didn’t get saved or invested but was lying around the house in cash. (This part wasn’t in the annual report. This part was off the record. I just mentioned it to you on the qt.) Then I put down my debits.”
“What were those, Dad?”
“The twelve hundred or so dollars we owed on our charge cards. Whatever it was I’d pledged that year but hadn’t yet paid to a couple of charities. Some bills, our monthly expenses. I don’t know, maybe four thousand, forty-five hundred bucks tops.”
“That wasn’t too bad.”
“Well,” Druff said, “the mild winter and cool summer worked in our favor.”
“That’s right.”
“But of course those weren’t my only debits.”
“No? What were the rest, Dad?”
“My heart attack, my bad circulation. Whatever it was going to cost you guys to bury me.”
“Oh Dad,” his son said.
“No no,” Druff said. “You don’t remember. I showed you. We went over it very carefully. It was actually a net gain overall. You just don’t remember. A slight net gain, but a net gain’s a net gain. I was helping you to work out your stuff. I showed you that even though I was only one small, sick human being, in certain respects I was better off than a great big Fortune 500 company, and that if you and your mom were careful you could be in the black for another fifteen years.”