“Your other experience?”
“That was with Mrs. Maddern too.”
“Have you ever had any homosexual experiences?”
“Well, I guess I know what you mean,” Coverly said. “I did plenty of that when I was young but I swore off it a long time ago. But it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of it around. There’s more around anyhow than I expected. There’s one in this place where I’m living now. He’s always asking me to come in and look at his pictures. I wish he’d leave me alone. You see, sir, if there’s one thing in the whole world that I wouldn’t want to be it’s a fruit.”
“Now would you like to tell me about your dreams?”
“I dream about all kinds of things,” Coverly said. “I dream about sailing and traveling and fishing but I guess mostly what you’re interested in is bad dreams, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean by bad dreams?”
“Well, I dream I do it with this woman,” Coverly said. “I never saw this woman in real life. She’s one of those beautiful women you see on calendars in barbershops. And sometimes,” Coverly said, blushing and hanging his head, “I dream that I do it with men. Once I dreamed I did it with a horse.”
“Do you dream in color?” the doctor asked.
“I’ve never noticed,” Coverly said.
“Well, I think our time is about up,” the doctor said.
“Well, you see, sir,” Coverly said, “I don’t want you to think that I’ve had an unhappy childhood. I guess what I’ve told you doesn’t give you a true picture but I’ve heard a little about psychology and I guessed what you wanted to know about were things like that. I’ve really had an awfully good time. We live on a farm and have a boat and plenty of hunting and fishing and just about the best food in the world. I’ve had a happy time.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Wapshot,” the doctor said, “and good-by.”
On Monday morning Coverly got up early and had his pants pressed as soon as the tailor shop opened. Then he walked to his cousin’s office in midtown. A receptionist asked if he had an appointment and when he said that he hadn’t she said that she couldn’t arrange one until Thursday. “But I’m Mr. Brewer’s cousin,” Coverly said. “I’m Coverly Wapshot.” The secretary only smiled and told him to come back on Thursday morning. Coverly was not worried. He knew that his cousin was occupied with many details and surrounded by executives and secretaries and that the problems of this distant Wapshot might have slipped his mind. His only problem was one of money. He didn’t have much left. He had a hamburger and a glass of milk for supper and gave the landlady the rent that night when he came in. On Tuesday he ate a box of raisins for breakfast, having heard somewhere that raisins were healthful and filling. For supper he had a bun and a glass of milk. On Wednesday morning he bought a paper, which left him with sixty cents. In the help-wanted advertisements there were some openings for stock clerks and he went to an employment agency and then crossed town to a department store and was told to return at the end of the week. He bought a quart of milk and marking the container off in three sections drank one section for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner.
The hunger pains of a young man are excruciating and when Coverly went to bed on Wednesday night he was doubled up with pain. On Thursday morning he had nothing to eat at all and spent the last of his money having his pants pressed. He walked to his cousin’s office and told the girl he had an appointment. She was cheerful and polite and asked him to sit down and wait. He waited for an hour. He was so hungry by this time that it was nearly impossible for him to sit up straight. Then the receptionist told him that no one in Mr. Brewer’s office knew about his appointment but that if he would return late in the afternoon she might be able to help him. He dozed on a park bench until four and returned to the office and while the receptionist’s manner remained cheerful her refusal this time was final. Mr. Brewer was out of town. From there Coverly went to Cousin Mildred’s apartment house but the doorman stopped him and telephoned upstairs and was told that Mrs. Brewer couldn’t see anyone; she was just leaving to keep an engagement. Coverly went outside the building and waited and in a few minutes Cousin Mildred came out and Coverly went up to her. “Oh yes, yes,” she said, when he told her what had happened. “Yes, of course. I thought Harry’s office must have told you. It’s something about your emotional picture. They think you’re unemployable. I’m so sorry but there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? Of course your grandfather was second crop.” She unfastened her purse and took out a bill and handed it to Coverly and got into a taxi and drove away. Coverly wandered over to the park.
It was dark then and he was tired, lost and despairing—no one in the city knew his name—and where was his home—the shawls from India and the crows winging their way up the river valley like businessmen with brief cases, off to catch a bus? This was on the Mall, the lights of the city burning through the trees and dimly lighting the air with the colors of reflected fire, and he saw the statues ranged along the broad walk like the tombs of kings—Columbus, Sir Walter Scott, Burns, Halleck and Morse—and he took from these dark shapes a faint comfort and hope. It was not their minds or their works he adored but the kindliness and warmth they must have possessed when they lived and so lonely and so bitter was he then that he would take those brasses and stones for company. Sir Walter Scott would be his friend, his Moses and Leander.
Then he got some supper—this friend of Sir Walter Scott—and in the morning went to work as a stock clerk for Warburton’s Department Store.
Chapter Eighteen
Moses’ work in Washington was highly secret—so secret that it can’t be discussed here. He was put to work the day after he arrived—a reflection perhaps of Mr. Boynton’s indebtedness to Honora or a recognition of Moses’ suitability, for with his plain and handsome face and his descendance from a man who had been offered a decoration by General Washington, he fitted into the scene well enough. He was not smooth—the Wapshots never were—and compared to Mr. Boynton he sometimes felt like a man who eats his peas off a knife. His boss was a man who seemed to have been conceived in the atmosphere of career diplomacy. His clothes, his manners, his speech and habits of thought all seemed so prescribed, so intricately connected to one another that they suggested a system of conduct. It was not, Moses guessed, a system evolved at any of the eastern colleges and may have been formed in some foreign-service school. Its rules were never shown to Moses, so he could not abide by them, but he knew that rules must underlie this sartorial and intellectual diffidence.
Moses was happy at the boardinghouse that he had picked by chance, and found it tenanted mostly by people of his own age: the sons and daughters of mayors and other politicians; the progeny of respectable ward heelers who were in Washington, like himself, as the result of some indebtedness. He did not spend much time at the boardinghouse for he found that much of his social, athletic and spiritual life was ordained by the agency where he worked. This included playing volleyball, taking communion and going to parties at the X Embassy and the Z Legation. He was up to all of this although he was not allowed to drink more than three cocktails at any party and was careful not to make eyes at any woman who was in government service or on the diplomatic list, for security regulations had clapped a lid on the natural concupiscence of a city with a large floating population. On the autumn week ends he sometimes drove with Mr. Boynton to Clark County, where they went riding and sometimes stayed for dinner with Mr. Boynton’s friends. Moses could stay on a horse, but this was not his favorite sport. It was a chance to see the countryside and the disappointing southern autumn with its fireflies and brumes, all of which stirred in him a longing for the brilliance of autumn at West Farm. Mr. Boynton’s friends were hospitable people who lived in splendid houses and who, without exception, had made or inherited their money from some distant source such as mouthwash, airplane engines or beer; but it was not in Moses to sit on some broad terrace and observe that the bills for this charming picture had been footed by some dead brewer; and as for brewing he had never drunk such good bourbon in his life. It was true that, having come from a small place where a man’s knowledge of his neighbors was intimate and thorough, Moses sometimes experienced the blues of uprootedness. His knowledge of his companions was no better than the knowledge travelers have of one another and he knew, by then, enough of the city to know that, waiting for a bus in the morning, the swarthy man with a beard and a turban might be an Indian prince in good standing or he might be a rooming-house eccentric. This theatrical atmosphere of impermanence—this latitude for imposture—impressed him one evening at an embassy concert. He was alone and had gone, at the intermission, out onto the steps of the building to get some air. As he pushed open the doors he noticed three old women on the steps. One was so fat, one so thin and haggard and one had such a foolish countenance that they looked like a representation of human folly. Their evening clothes reminded him of the raggle-taggle elegance of children on Halloween. They had shawls and fans and mantillas and brilliants and their shoes seemed to be killing them. When Moses opened the door they slipped into the embassy—the fat one, the thin one and the fool—so warry, so frightened and in such attitudes of wrongdoing that Moses watched. As soon as they got inside the building they fanned out and each of them seized a concert program that had been left on a chair or fallen to the floor. By this time a guard saw them and as soon as they were discovered they headed for the door and fled, but they were not disappointed, Moses noticed. The purpose of their expedition had been to get a program and they limped happily down the driveway in their finery. You wouldn’t see anything like that in St. Botolphs.