“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 a-gleam 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 behavior 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 favorite 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 brief or 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?”
I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again and stared at the ceiling. Did I want these men to murder my wife? No. Yes. No. Yes, but only after making sure that the unfaithful trollop understood exactly why she had to die. No, surely an extended term of excruciating torture would restore the world to proper balance. Yet I wanted the witch dead. But then I would be ordering these barnies to kill her. “At the moment I cannot make that decision,” I said. Irresistibly, my eyes found the bottom drawer containing the file of obscene photographs. “I’ll let you know my decision after we have begun.”
Mr Cuff dropped his hand, and Mr Clubb nodded with exaggerated, perhaps ironic slowness. “And what of your rival, the seducer, sir? Do we have any wishes in regard to that gentleman, sir?”
The way these fellows could sharpen one’s thinking was truly remarkable. “I most certainly do,” I said. “What she gets, he gets. Fair is fair.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “and, if you will permit me, sir, only fair is fair. And fairness demands that before we go any deeper into the particulars of the case we must examine the evidence as presented to yourself, and when I speak of fairness, sir, I refer to fairness particularly to yourself, for only the evidence seen by your own eyes can permit us to view this matter through them.”
Again, I looked helplessly down at the bottom drawer. “That will not be necessary. You will find my wife at our country estate, Green. ”
My voice trailed off as Mr Cuff’s hand ground into my shoulder while he bent down and opened the drawer.