Rudolph in Moneyland

Rudolph awoke exactly at a quarter to seven. He never set the alarm. There was no need to.

The usual erection. Forget it. He lay quietly in bed for a minute or two. His mother was snoring in the next room. The curtains at the open window were blowing a little and it was cold in the room. A pale wintry light came through the curtains, making a long dark blur of the books on the shelves on the wall across from the bed.

Then he remembered. This was not going to be an ordinary day. At closing the night before, he had gone into Calderwood's office and laid the thick manila envelope on Calderwood's desk. "I'd like you to read this," he had said to the old man, "when you find the time."

Calderwood had eyed the envelope suspiciously. "What's in there?" he had asked, pushing gingerly at the envelope with one blunt finger.

"It's complicated," Rudolph had said. "I'd rather we didn't discuss it until you've read it."

"This another of your crazy ideas?" Calderwood had asked. The bulk of the envelope had seemed to anger him. "Are you pushing me again?"

"Uh-uh," Rudolph had said and smiled.

"Do you know, young man," Calderwood had said, "my cholesterol count has gone up appreciably since I hired you? Way up."

"Mrs. Calderwood keeps asking me to try to make you take a vacation."

"Does she, now?" Calderwood had snorted. "What she doesn't know is that I wouldn't leave you alone in this store for ten consecutive minutes. Tell her that the next time she tells you to try to make me take a vacation." But he had carried the thick envelope, unopened, home with him when he left the store the night before. Once he started reading what was in it, Rudolph was sure he wouldn't stop until he had finished.

He lay still under the covers in the cold room, almost deciding not to get up promptly this morning but lie there and figure out what to say to the old man when he went into his office. But then he thought, The hell with it, play it cool, pretend it's just another morning.

He threw back the covers and crossed quickly and closed the window. He tried not to shiver as he took off his pajamas and pulled on his heavy track suit. He put on a pair of woolen socks and thick gum-soled tennis shoes. He got into a plaid Mackinaw, over the track suit, and went out of the apartment, closing the door softly, so as not to wake his mother.

He took his motorcycle from the garage where he rented space, pulled on a pair of wool-lined gloves and started off. It was only a few minutes to the college athletic field, where a thin, icy mist was ghosting up from the turf.

Rudolph jogged twice around the track, broke into a sprint for 100 yards, jogged two more laps, then went into the 440 at almost full speed. He enjoyed the feeling of being hard, but he also enjoyed the early-morning quiet, the smell of turf, the changing of the seasons and the pounding of his feet on the track.

His mother was awake when he got back to the apartment. "How is it out?" she called.

"Cold," he said. "You won't miss anything if you stay home today." They continued with the fiction that his mother normally went out every day, just like other women.

He went into the bathroom and stripped off his sweaty track suit and shaved and took a steaming-hot shower, soaping himself happily, then stood under an ice-cold stream for a minute and came out tingling. He heard his mother squeezing orange juice and making coffee in the kitchen as he toweled himself dry, the sound of her movements like somebody dragging a heavy sack across the kitchen floor. He remembered the long-paced sprinting on the frozen track and thought, If I'm ever like that, I'll ask somebody to knock me off.

He weighed himself on the bathroom scale. One hundred and sixty. Satisfactory. He despised fat people. At the store, without telling Calderwood his real reasons, he had tried to get rid of the clerks who were overweight.

He rubbed some deodorant on his armpits before dressing. It was a long day, without a chance for a shower, and the store was always too hot in winter and he couldn't take the chance of smelling from perspiration. He dressed in gray-flannel slacks, a soft-blue shirt with a dark-red tie, and put on a brown-tweed sports jacket, with no padding at the shoulders. For the first year at the store, he had dressed in sober dark business suits; but as he became more important in the company's hierarchy, he had switched to more informal clothes. He was young for his responsibilities and he had to make sure that he didn't appear pompous. The headwaiter complex. To be avoided at all costs. For the same reason, he had bought himself a motorcycle. Nobody could say, as the assistant manager came roaring up to work, bareheaded, on a motorcycle, in all weather, that the young man was taking himself too seriously. You had to be careful to keep the envy quotient down as low as possible. He could easily afford a car, but he preferred the motorcycle, anyway. It kept his complexion fresh and made him look as though he spent a good deal of his time outdoors.

He went into the kitchen and kissed his mother good morning. She smiled girlishly. If he forgot to kiss her, there would be a long monolog over the breakfast table about how badly she had slept and how the medicines the doctor prescribed for her were a waste of money. He did not tell his mother how much money he earned nor that he could very well afford to move them to a much better apartment. He didn't plan any entertainment at home and he had other uses for his money.

He sat down at the kitchen table and drank his orange juice and coffee and munched some toast. His mother, slack in the stained green dressing gown, with a cigarette already lit, just drank coffee. Her hair was lank and there were shocking huge rings of purple sag under her eyes. But with all that, she didn't seem any worse to him than she had been for the past three years. She would probably live to the age of 90. He did not begrudge her her longevity. She kept him out of the draft. Sole support of an invalid mother. Last and dearest maternal gift--she had spared him an icebound foxhole in Korea.

"I had a dream last night," she said. "About your brother Thomas. He looked the way he looked when he was eight years old. Like a choirboy at Easter. He came into my room and said, 'Forgive me, forgive me.'" She drank her coffee moodily. "I haven't dreamed about him in forever. Do you ever hear from him?"

"No," Rudolph said.

"I would like to see him once more before I die," she said. "After all, he is my own flesh and blood."

"You're not going to die."

"Maybe not," she said. "I have a feeling when spring comes, I'm going to feel much better. We can go for walks again."

"That's good news," Rudolph said, finishing his coffee and standing. He kissed her goodbye. "I'll fix dinner tonight," he said. "I'll shop on the way home."

"Don't tell me what it's going to be," she said coquettishly, "surprise me."

"OK," he said, "I'll surprise you."

• • •

The night watchman was still on duty at the employees' entrance when Rudolph got to the store, carrying the morning papers, which he had bought on the way over.

"You sure are an early bird," the night watchman said. "When I was your age, you couldn't drag me out of bed on a morning like this."

That's why you're a night watchman at your age, Sam, Rudolph thought; but he merely smiled and went on up to his office, through the dimly lit and sleeping store.

His office was neat and bare, with two desks, one for himself and one for Miss Giles, his secretary, a middle-aged, efficient spinster. There were piles of magazines geometrically stacked on wide shelves, Vogue, French Vogue, Seventeen, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire and House and Garden, which he combed for ideas for various departments of the store. The quality of the town was changing rapidly; the new people coming up from the city had money and spent it freely. The natives of the town were more prosperous than they had ever been and were beginning to imitate the tastes of the more sophisticated newer arrivals. Calderwood fought a stubborn rear-guard action against the transformation of his store from a solid, lower-middle-class establishment to what he called a grab bag of fads and fancy gewgaws; but the balance sheet could not be gainsaid as Rudolph pushed through one innovation after another, and it was becoming easier each month for Rudolph to put his ideas into practice. Calderwood had even agreed, after nearly a year of opposition, to wall oft part of what had been an unnecessarily capacious delivery room and turn it into a liquor store, with a line of fine French wines.

Rudolph spread the newspapers on his desk. There was the local sheet, the Whitby Record, and the edition of The New York Times that came up on the first train of the morning. The front page of the Times reported heavy fighting along the 38th Parallel and new accusations of treason and infiltration by Senator McCarthy in Washington. The Record's front page reported on a vote for new taxes for the school board (not passed) and on the number of skiers who had made use of the new ski area nearby since the season began.

Rudolph turned to the inside pages of the Record. The half-page two-color advertisement for a new line of wool dresses and sweaters was sloppily done, with the colors bleeding out of their margins, and Rudolph made a note on his desk pad to call the paper about it that morning.

Then he opened to the stock-exchange figures in the Times and studied them for 15 minutes. When he had saved $1000, he had gone to Johnny Heath and asked him, as a favor, to invest it for him. Johnny, who handled accounts in the millions of dollars, had gravely consented, and worried over Rudolph's transactions as though Rudolph were one of the most important of his firm's customers. Rudolph's holdings were still small, but they were growing steadily. Looking over the stock-exchange page, he was pleased to see that he was almost $300 richer this morning, on paper, than he had been the morning before. He breathed a quiet prayer of thanks to his friend Johnny Heath and turned to the crossword puzzle and got out his pen and started on it. It was one of the pleasantest moments of the day. If he managed to finish the puzzle before nine o'clock, when the store opened, he started off on the day's work with a faint sense of triumph.

Fourteen across. Heep. Uriah, he printed neatly and swiftly.

He was almost finished with the puzzle when the phone rang. He looked at his watch. The switchboard was open early, he noted approvingly. He picked up the phone with his left hand. "Yes?" he said, as he printed ubiquitous in one of the vertical columns.

"Jordache? That you?"

"Yes. Who's this?"

"Denton, Professor Denton."

"Oh, how are you, sir?" Rudolph said. He puzzled over sober in five letters, A the third letter.

"I hate to bother you," Denton said. His voice sounded peculiar, as though he were whispering and were afraid of being overheard. "But can I see you sometime today?"

"Of course," Rudolph said. He printed staid along the lowest line of the puzzle. He still thought of Denton as his best and most inspiring teacher. Rudolph saw him occasionally when he went to borrow books on business management and economics at the college. "I'm in the store all day."

Denton's voice made a funny, sliding sound in the phone. "I'd prefer it if we could meet somewhere besides the store. Are you free for lunch?"

"I take just forty-five minutes----"

"That's all right. We'll make it someplace near you." Denton sounded gaspy (continued on page 102) Rudolph in Moneyland (continued from page 86) and hurried. In class, he had been slow and sonorous. "How about Ripley's? That's just around the corner from you, isn't it? Is twelve-fifteen all right?"

"Yes," Rudolph said, surprised at Denton's choice of restaurant. Ripley's was more of a saloon than a restaurant and was frequented by workmen with a thirst rather than by anybody who was looking for a decent meal. It certainly wasn't the sort of place you'd think an aging professor of history and economics would seek out.

Rudolph frowned, wondering what was bothering Denton, then put the phone down. He looked at his watch. Nine o'clock. The doors were open. His secretary came into the office and said, "Good morning, Mr. Jordache."

"Good morning, Miss Giles," he said and tossed the Times into the wastebasket, annoyed. Because of Denton, he hadn't finished the puzzle before nine o'clock.

• • •

He made his first round of the store for the day, walking slowly, smiling at the clerks, not stopping nor seeming to notice when his eye caught something amiss. Later in the morning, back in his office, he would dictate polite memos to the appropriate department head that the neckties piled on the counter for a sale were not arranged neatly enough, that Miss Kale, in cosmetics, had on too much eye make-up, that the ventilation in the fountain and teashop was not sufficient.

He looked with special interest at the departments that had not been there until he had induced Calderwood to put them in--the little boutique, which sold junk jewelry and Italian sweaters and French scarves and fur hats and which did a surprising business; the fountain and teashop (it was amazing how women never stopped eating), which not only showed a solid profit on its own but which had become a meeting place for lunch for many of the housewives of the town, who then rarely got out of the store without buying something; the ski shop, in a corner of the old sporting-goods department, presided over by an athletically built young man called Larsen, who dazzled the local girls on the nearby slopes on winter Sundays and who was being criminally underpaid, considering how much trade he lured into the shop merely by sliding down a hill once a week. The young man had offered to teach Rudolph how to ski, but Rudolph had declined, with a smile. He couldn't afford to break a leg, he explained.

The record counter was his idea, too, and that brought in the young trade with its weirdly lavish allowances. Calderwood, who hated noise and who couldn't stand the way most young people behaved (his own three daughters, now young ladies, behaved with cowed Victorian decorum), had fought bitterly against the record counter. "I don't want to run a goddamn honky-tonk," he had said. "Deprave the youth of America with those barbaric noises that pass for music these days. Leave me in peace, Jordache, leave a poor old-fashioned merchant in peace."

But Rudolph had produced statistics on how much teenagers in America spent on records every year and had promised to have soundproof booths put in and Calderwood, as usual, had capitulated. He often seemed to be irritated with Rudolph, but Rudolph was unfailingly polite and patient with the old man and, in most things, had learned how to manage him. Privately, Calderwood boasted about his pip-squeak of an assistant manager and how clever he himself had been in picking the boy out of the herd. He had also doubled his salary, with no urging from Rudolph, and had given him a bonus at Christmas of $3000. "He is not only modernizing the store," Calderwood had been heard to say, although not in Rudolph's presence. "The son of a bitch is modernizing me. Well, when it comes down to it, that's what I hired a young man for."

Once a month, Rudolph was invited to dinner at the Calderwoods' house, grim puritanical affairs at which the daughters spoke only when spoken to and nothing stronger than apple juice was served. The oldest daughter, Prudence, who was also the prettiest, had asked Rudolph to escort her to several of the country-club dances, and Rudolph had done so. Once away from her father, Prudence did not behave with Victorian decorum, but Rudolph carefully kept his hands off her. He was not going to do anything as banal or as dangerous as marrying the boss's daughter.

He was wary of all girls. He could tell as he walked through the store that here and there, there was a girl who looked at him flirtatiously, who would be delighted to go out with him--Miss Sullivan, raven-haired, in the boutique; Miss Brandywine, tall and lithe, in the youth shop; Miss Soames, in the record shop, small and bosomy and blonde, jiggling to the music, smiling demurely as he passed; maybe six or seven others. He was tempted, of course, but he fought the temptation down and behaved with perfect impersonal courtesy to everybody. There were no office parties at Calderwood's, so there was no occasion on which, with the excuse of liquor and celebration, any real approach could be made.

All in good time, he told himself, all in good time. Meanwhile, while other young men squandered their energy and precious hours seducing, pampering, quarreling, intriguing and farewelling, he could work and study for more profitable ends.

As he repassed the record counter, he made a mental note to try to get some older woman in the store tactfully to suggest to Miss Soames that perhaps she ought to wear a brassiere under her sweater.

• • •

He was going over the drawings for the March window displays with Berg-son, the young man who prepared the displays, when the phone rang.

"Rudy," it was Calderwood, "can you come down to my office for a minute?" The voice was flat, giving nothing away.

"I'll be right there, Mr. Calderwood," Rudolph said. He hung up. "I'm afraid these'll have to wait a little while," he said to Bergson. Bergson was a find. He had done the sets for the summer theater in Whitby and Rudolph liked them and had asked Bergson to stay on through the winter. Calderwood had absolutely refused to pay for somebody to come up from New York and, until Bergson had come on the scene, the windows had been done haphazardly, with the different departments fighting for space and then doing their own displays, without any reference to what was being shown in the windows beside their own. Bergson had changed all that. He thought up a common theme that he carried through for every window and was ingenious about fitting things as different as ladies' nightgowns and garden tools into the same conception. He was a small, sad young man who couldn't get into the scene designers' union in New York and who was grateful for the winter's work and put all his considerable talent into it. Used to working on the cheap for summer-theater productions, he made use of all sorts of unlikely inexpensive materials and did the artwork himself. The plans laid out on Rudolph's desk were on the theme of spring in the country and Rudolph had already told Bergson that he thought they were going to be the best set of windows Calderwood's had ever had. Glum as Bergson was, Rudolph enjoyed the hours he spent working with him, as compared with the hours he had to spend with the heads of departments and the head of costs and accounting, who kept deluging him with figures about markups and acceptable margins of profit and inventory of stock that wasn't moving as it should. Rudolph was uneasy with figures and the actual financial side of the business bored him, both things he was careful to hide at all times. In an ideal scheme of things, he thought, he would never have to look at a balance sheet or go through a monthly inventory.

He left Bergson looking unhappily at a sketch of two mannequins, to be made out of straw, dressed in polka-dot bathing suits next to a painted pool, and (continued on page 199) Rudolph in Moneyland (continued from page 102) went downstairs toward Calderwood's office. His mouth was dry and he had to wipe the palms of his hands against his trousers to get the sweat off them, but he made himself walk slowly, as usual, and nod and smile to the people he knew in the store.

Calderwood's door was open and Calderwood saw him immediately and said, "Come in, Rudy, and close the door behind you." The papers that had been in the manila envelope were spread over the desk.

Rudolph sat down across from the old man and waited.

"Rudy," Calderwood said mildly, "you're the most astonishing young man I've ever come across."

Rudolph said nothing.

"Who else has seen all this?" Calderwood waved a hand over the papers on his desk.

"Nobody."

"Who typed them up? Miss Giles?"

"I did. At home."

"You think of everything, don't you?" It was not a reproach, but it wasn't a compliment, either.

Rudolph kept quiet.

"Who told you I owned thirty acres of land out near the lake?" Calderwood asked flatly.

The land was owned by a corporation with a New York City address. It had taken all of Johnny Heath's cleverness to find out that the real owner of the corporation was Duncan Calderwood. "I'm afraid I can't say, sir," Rudolph said.

"Can't say, can't say." Calderwood accepted it, with a touch of impatience. "The feller can't say. Rudy, I haven't caught you in a lie since the first day I set eyes on you and I don't expect you to lie to me now."

"I won't lie to you, sir," Rudolph said.

Calderwood pushed at the papers on his desk. "Is this some sort of trick to take me over?"

"No, sir," Rudolph said. "It's a suggestion as to how you can take advantage of your position and your various assets. To expand with the community and diversify your interests. To profit from the tax laws and, at the same time, protect your estate for your wife and children when you die."

"How many pages are there in this?" Calderwood said. "Fifty, sixty?"

"Fifty-three."

"Some suggestion." Calderwood snorted. "Did you think this up all by yourself?"

"Yes." Rudolph didn't feel he had to tell Calderwood that for months he had methodically picked Johnny Heath's brain and that Johnny's legal talent was responsible for the more involved sections of the over-all plan.

"All right, all right," Calderwood grumbled. "I'll look into it."

"If I may make the suggestion, sir," Rudolph said, "I think you should talk this over with your lawyers in New York and your bankers."

"What do you know about my lawyers in New York?" Calderwood asked suspiciously.

"Mr. Calderwood," Rudolph said, "I've been working for you for a long time."

"OK. Supposing, after studying this some more, I say yes and do the whole goddamn thing the way you outline it--go public, float a stock issue, borrow from the banks, build the goddamn shopping center near the lake, with a theater, too, like an idiot; supposing I do all that; what's in it for you?"

"I would expect to be made chairman of the board, with you as president of the company, at an appropriate salary," Rudolph said, "and an option to buy a certain amount of stock in the next five years." Good old Johnny Heath. Don't niggle. Think big.

"You've got everything figured out, haven't you, Rudy?" Now Calderwood was frankly hostile.

"I've been working on this plan for more than a year," Rudolph said mildly. "I've tried to face all the problems."

"And if I just say no," Calderwood said, "if I just put all this pile of papers in a file and forget it, then what would you do?"

"I'm afraid I'd have to tell you I'm leaving at the end of the year, Mr. Calderwood," Rudolph said. "I'm afraid I'd have to look for something with more of a future for me."

"I got along without you for a long time." Calderwood said. "I could get along without you now."

"Of course you could," Rudolph said.

Calderwood looked down morosely at his desk, flicked out a sheet of paper from a pile, glared at it with especial distaste. "A theater," he said angrily. "We already have a theater in town."

"They're tearing it down next year," Rudolph said.

"You sure do your homework, don't you?" Calderwood said. "They're not going to announce it until July."

"Somebody always talks," Rudolph said.

"So it seems. And somebody always listens, don't they, Rudy?"

"Yes, sir." Rudolph smiled.

Finally, Calderwood smiled, too. "What makes Rudy run, eh?" he said.

"That's not my style, at all," Rudolph said evenly. "You know that."

"Yes, I do," Calderwood admitted.

"I'm sorry I said it. All right. Get back to work. You'll be hearing from me."

He was staring down at the papers on his desk as Rudolph left his office. Rudolph walked, slowly, as usual, smiling benevolently and youthfully among the counters on the ground floor of the store.

The plan that he had submitted to Calderwood was a complicated one and he had argued every point closely. The community was growing and growing in the direction of the lake. What was more, the neighboring town of Cedarton, about ten miles away and linked with Whitby by a new highway, was also growing in the direction of the lake. Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America and people were becoming accustomed to doing the greater part of their shopping, for all sorts of things, in them. Calderwood's 30 acres were strategically placed for a market to siphon off trade from both towns and from the upper-middle-class homes that dotted the borders of the lake. If Calderwood didn't make the move himself, somebody or some corporation would undoubtedly seize the opportunity in the next year or two and, besides profiting from the new trade, would cut drastically into Calderwood's volume of business in the Whitby store. Rather than allow a competitor to undermine him, it was to Calderwood's advantage to compete, even partially, with himself.

In his plans, Rudolph had argued for a place for a good restaurant, as well as the theater, to make the center a place that people would go to not only during the day but in the evening as well. The theater, used for plays during the summer, could be turned into a movie-house the rest of the year. He also proposed building a middle-priced housing development along the lake, where business blocks were prohibited by the zoning laws, and suggested finding a light industry to contract for a factory to be constructed on the marshy and, up to now, unusable land at one end of Calderwood's holdings.

Coached by Johnny Heath, Rudolph had meticulously outlined all the benefits the law allowed on enterprises of this kind--low-rate, risk-free loans from the Federal Government, tax exemption on the interest on the loans, deduction for depreciation over a period of ten years on the value of the entire property, once it had been built, all of which could be applied on Calderwood's tax bill against the profits of the Whitby store, if the project was all incorporated into the one company.

He was sure that his arguments for making a public company out of the new Calderwood Association were bound to sway the old man. The real assets and the earning power, first of the store and then of the center, would ensure a high price of issue for the stock. By holding a comparatively small percentage of the stock, Calderwood would retain control, while paying only a 25-percent capital gain on the stock he sold. It would mean a huge influx of cash for Calderwood, cash that could be reinvested in its turn, to bring in more income. And when Calderwood died, his heirs--in this case, his wife and three daughters--would not be faced with the possibility of having to sell the business itself at emergency prices to pay the inheritance taxes, but could sell off blocks of stock while holding onto the controlling interest in the corporation.

In the year that Rudolph had been working on the plan and digging into corporation and tax and realty laws, he had been cynically amused by the manner in which money protected itself legally in the American system. He had no moral feeling about trying to turn the law to his own advantage. The game had rules. You learned the rules and abided by them. If there was another set of rules, you would abide by it.

• • •

Professor Demon was waiting for him at the bar, looking uncomfortable and out of place among the other patrons, none of whom looked as though he had ever been near a college.

"Good of you," Denton said in a low, hurried voice, "good of you to come, Jordache. I'm drinking bourbon. Can I order you something?"

"I almost never drink during the day," Rudolph said, then was sorry he had said it, because it sounded disapproving of Denton, who was drinking at a quarter past noon.

"Quite right," Denton said, "quite right. Keep the head clear. Ordinarily, I wait until the day's work is over myself, but. ..." He took Rudolph's arm. "Perhaps we can sit down." He waved toward the last booth of the row that lined the wall opposite the bar. "I know you have to get back." He left some change on the bar for his drink, carefully counting it out, and, still with his hand holding Rudolph's arm, guided him to the booth. He gave off a slight musty but not disagreeable odor of classroom. They sat down, facing each other. There were two greasy menus on the table and they studied them.

"I'll take the soup and the hamburger," Denton said to the waitress. "And a cup of coffee. How about you, Jordache?"

"The same," Rudolph said.

The waitress wrote the order down laboriously on her pad, illiteracy a family memory. She was a woman of about 60, gray-haired and shapeless in an incongruously pert, revealing orange uniform, with a coquettish small lace apron, age paying its iron debt to the ideal of America, that youthful country. Her ankles were swollen and she shuffled flatly as she went back toward the kitchen.

"You're doing well, Jordache," Denton said, hunched over the table, his eyes worried and magnified behind the thick steel-rimmed glasses, his tousled gray hair professorial. He waved his hand impatiently, to ward off any contradiction. "I hear, I hear," he said. "I get reports from many sources. Mrs. Denton, for one. Faithful customer. She must be in the store three times a week. You must see her from time to time."

"I ran into her only last week," Rudolph said.

"She tells me the store is booming, booming, a new lease on life, she says. Very big-city. All sorts of new things. Well, people like to buy things. And everybody seems to have money these days. Except college professors." Indigence creased Denton's forehead briefly. "No matter. I didn't come here to complain. No doubt about it, Jordache, you did well to turn down the job in the department. The academic world," he said bitterly. "Rife with jealousy, cabals, treachery, ingratitude; a man has to walk as if on eggs. Better the world of business. Give and take. Dog eat dog. Frankly. On the up and up."

"It isn't exactly like that," Rudolph said mildly. "Business."

"No, of course not," Denton said. "Everything is modified by character. It doesn't pay to ride a theory too hard; you lose sight of the reality, the living shape. At any rate, I'm gratified by your success and I'm sure that there was no compromise of principle involved, none whatsoever."

The waitress appeared with their soup. Denton spooned in his mournfully. "Yes," he said, "if I had it to do all over again, I'd avoid the ivy-covered walls like the plague. They have made me what you see today, a narrow man, an embittered man, a failure, a coward. ..."

"I wouldn't call you any of those things," Rudolph said. He was surprised at Demon's description of himself. Denton had always seemed to Rudolph to be pleased with himself, enjoying acting out his visions of economic villainy and the corruption of history in his classroom before a captive audience of young people.

"I live in fear and trembling," Denton said through the soup. "Fear and trembling."

"If I can help you in any way," Rudolph began. "I'd----"

"You're a good soul, Jordache, a good soul," Denton said. "I picked you out immediately. Serious among the frivolous. Thoughtful among the unthinking. Compassionate among the pitiless. On the search for knowledge, where others were merely searching for advancement. Oh, I've watched you carefully through the years, Jordache. You're going to go far. Mark my words. I have been teaching young men for over twenty years, thousands of young men; they have no secrets from me, their future has no mysteries for me. Mark my words, Jordache."

He finished his soup and the waitress came and removed the two bowls and put down their hamburgers and coffee.

"Before the war," Denton went on, chewing, "there were more young men of your mold, clear-seeing, dependable, honorable. Most of them are dead now, killed in places whose names we have almost forgotten. The best go first, of course. This generation"--he shrugged despairingly. "Crafty, careful, looking to get something for nothing, hypocritical. You'd be astounded by the amount of cheating, plagiarism, I find in each examination and term paper. Ah, if I had the money, I'd get away from it all, live on an island." He looked nervously at his watch. "Time, ever on the wing," he said. He looked around the dark bar conspiratorially. The booth next to theirs was empty and the four or five men hunched over the bar near the doorway were well out of earshot. "Might as well get to the nub of it." Denton dropped his voice and leaned forward over the table. "I'm in trouble, Jordache."

He's going to ask me for the name of an abortionist, Rudolph thought wildly, "Love On The Campus." He saw the headlines, "History Professor Makes History By Moonlight With Coed. Doctor In Jail." Rudolph tried to keep his face noncommittal and went on eating. The hamburger was gray and soggy and the potatoes oily.

"You heard what I said?" Denton whispered.

"You're in trouble, you said."

"Exactly." There was a professorial tone of approval--the student had been paying attention. "Bad trouble." Denton sipped at his coffee, Socrates and hemlock. "They're out to get me."

"Who's out to get you?"

"My enemies." Denton's eyes scanned the bar, searching out enemies disguised as workmen drinking beer. "There are currents, currents," Denton said, "ripples and eddies and whirlpools that the undergraduate never has an inkling of. In the faculty rooms, on the faculty boards, in the offices of power. In the office of the president himself. I am too outspoken, it is a failing of mine; I am naïve, I have believed in the myth of academic freedom. My enemies have bided my time; the vice-chairman of the department--I should have fired him years ago, a hopeless scholar, I restrained myself only out of pity, lamentable weakness. As I said, the vice-chairman, yearning for my job, has prepared a dossier, scraps of gossip over a drink, lines out of context, insinuations. They are preparing to offer me up as a sacrifice, Jordache."

"I think you'd better tell me specifically what's happening." Rudolph said. "Then perhaps I'd be better able to judge if I could help."

"The witch-hunt," Denton said. "You read the papers like everybody else. Throw the Reds out of our schools."

Rudolph laughed. "I'm sure you have nothing to worry about, Professor," he said. He decided to make it seem like a joke. "I was afraid it was something serious. I thought maybe you'd got a girl pregnant."

"You can laugh," Denton said. "At your age. Nobody laughs in a college or a university anymore. The wildest charges. A five-dollar contribution to an obscure charity in 1938, a reference to Karl Marx in a class; for God's sake, how is a man to teach the economic theories of the 19th Century without mentioning Karl Marx? An ironic joke, picked up by some Stone Age moron in a class in American history and repeated to the moron's father, who is the commander of the local American Legion post. Ah, you don't know, boy, you don't know. And Whitby gets a yearly grant from the state. For the school of agriculture. So some windbag of an Upstate legislator makes a speech, forms a committee, demands an investigation, gets his name in the newspaper--patriot, defender of the faith. A special board has been set up within the college, Jordache--don't mention it to a soul--headed by the president, to investigate charges against various members of the faculty. They hope to head off the state, throw them a few bodies, mine chief among them, not imperil the grant from the state; does the picture grow clearer, Jordache?"

"Oh, Christ!" Rudolph said.

"Exactly. 'Oh, Christ.' I don't know what your politics are----"

"I don't have any politics," Rudolph said. "I vote independently."

"Excellent, excellent," Denton said. "Although it would have been better if you were a registered Republican. And to think that I voted for Eisenhower." He laughed hollowly. "My son was in Korea and he promised to end the war. But how to prove it. There is much to be said for public balloting."

"What do you want me to do, Professor?" Rudolph asked. "Specifically?"

"Now we come to it," Denton said. He finished his coffee. "The board meets to consider my case one week from today. Tuesday at two p.m. Mark the hour. I have only been allowed to see a general outline of the charges against me--contribution to Communist front organizations in the Thirties, atheistic and radical utterances in the classroom, the recommendation of certain books of a doubtful character for outside reading. The usual academic hatchet job, Jordache, all too usual. With the temper of the country what it is, with that man Dulles roaring up and down the world, preaching nuclear destruction, with the most eminent men traduced and dismissed like errand boys in Washington, a poor teacher can be ruined by a whisper, the merest whisper. Luckily, they still have a sense of shame at the college, although I doubt it will last the year, and I am to have a chance to defend myself, bring in witnesses to vouch for me. ..."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Whatever you will, boy," Denton said, his voice broken. "I do not plan to coach you. Say what you think of me. You were in three of my classes, we had many instructive hours outside the courses, you have been to my house. You're a clever young man, you are not to be fooled. You know me as well as any man in this town. Say what you will. Your reputation is high, your record at the college was impeccable, not a blot on it, you are a rising young businessman, untainted, your testimony will be of the utmost value."

"Of course," Rudolph said, Premonitions of trouble. Attacks. Calderwood's attitude. Dragging the store into politics on the Communist issue. "Of course I'll testify," he said. This is the wrong day for something like this, he thought annoyedly. He suddenly and for the first time understood the exquisite pleasure that cowards must enjoy.

"I knew you would say that, Jordache." Denton gripped his hand emotionally across the table. "You'd be surprised at the refusals I've had from men who have been my friends for twenty years, the hedging, the pusillanimity. This country is becoming a haunt of whipped dogs, Jordache. Do you wish me to swear to you that I have never been a Communist?"

"Don't be absurd, Professor," Rudolph said. He looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I've got to get back to the store. When the board meets, I'll be there." He dug into his pocket for his money clip. "Let me pay my share."

• • •

Rudolph walked slowly back toward the store, leaving his coat open, although the wind was keen and the day raw. The street looked as it always looked and the people passing him did not seem like whipped dogs. Poor Denton. He remembered that it was in Demon's classes that he had been given the first glimmerings of how to make himself successfully into a capitalist. He laughed to himself. Denton, poor bastard, could not afford to laugh.

He was still hungry after the disastrous meal and, once in the store, he went to the fountain in the basement and ordered a malted milk and drank it among the soprano twitterings of the lady shoppers all around him. Their world was safe. They would buy dresses at $50 that afternoon and portable radios and television consoles and frying pans and living-room suites and creams for the skin and the profits would mount and they were happy over their club sandwiches and ice-cream sodas.

He looked over the calm, devouring, rouged, spending, acquiring faces--mothers, brides, virgins, spinsters, mistresses--listened to the conflicting, upper-octave fugues of the confident mid-century American female voices, breathed in the jumbled bouquet of perfumes, congratulated himself that he was not married and loved no one, thought, I cannot spend my life serving these worthy women, paid for his malted milk and went up to his office.

• • •

It was raining when he left the store at 6:15. Calderwood hadn't said a word since their talk in the morning. That's all I needed today, rain, he thought miserably as he made his way through the streaming traffic on the motorcycle, the rain seeming to gel into ice as it struck his face and went down past the raised collar of his Mackinaw. He was almost home when he remembered that he had promised his mother that he would do the shopping for dinner. He cursed under his breath and turned the machine back toward the business section, where the stores remained open until seven. A surprise, he remembered his mother saying. Your loving son may be out on his ass in two weeks, Mother; will that be surprise enough?

He did his shopping hastily--a small chicken for frying, potatoes, a can of peas, half an apple pie for dessert. As he pushed his way through the housewives making their last-minute purchases, he remembered the interview with Calderwood and grinned sourly. The boy-wonder financier, the juggler with millions, the tax wizard, surrounded by admiring beauties, on his way to one of his usual elegantly prepared repasts at the family mansion, so often photographed for Life and House and Garden. At the last minute, he bought a bottle of Scotch. This was going to be a night for whisky.

He went to bed early, a little drunk, thinking, just before he dropped off to sleep, The only satisfactory thing I did all day was run this morning.

• • •

The week was routine. When he saw Calderwood at the store, he made no mention of Rudolph's proposition but spoke to him of the ordinary business of the store in his usual slightly rasping and irritable tone. There was no hint, either in his manner or in what he said, of any ultimate decision.

Denton didn't call again. Perhaps he was afraid that if given a chance at further conversation, Rudolph would withdraw his offer to speak in his behalf before the board the following Tuesday afternoon. Rudolph found himself worrying about his appearance before the board. There was always the chance that some evidence would be produced against Denton that Denton didn't know about or had hidden that would make Rudolph seem like a confederate or a liar or a dupe. What worried him more, though, was that the board was bound to be hostile, prepared to do away with Denton and antagonistic to anyone who stood in its way. All his life, Rudolph had attempted to get people, especially older people in authority, to like him. The thought of facing a whole room full of disapproving academic faces disturbed him. Throughout the week, he found himself making silent speeches to those imagined, unrelenting faces, speeches in which he defended Denton honorably and well while, at the same time, charming his judges. None of the speeches he composed seemed, in the end, worth while. He would have to go into the board meeting as relaxed as possible, gauge the temper of the room and extemporaneously do the best he could for both Denton and himself. If Calderwood could be kept from hearing about his appearance, so much the better. There was also the nagging question of how he could absent himself from the store Tuesday afternoon, without lying but without letting Calderwood know what he intended to do.

By the weekend, he was sleeping badly, his dreams lascivious but unsatisfactory. A ship pulled away from a pier; a girl, her skirts blowing in the wind, smiled at him as he ran desperately down the pier to catch the ship; he was held back by unseen hands, the ship pulled away, open water. ...

Sunday morning, with the church bells ringing, he decided he couldn't stay in the apartment all day, although he had planned to go over a copy of the papers he had given Calderwood and make some corrections and additions that had occurred to him during the week. But his mother was at her worst on Sundays. The bells made her mournful about her lost religion and she was apt to say that if only Rudolph would go with her, she would attend Mass, confess, take Communion. "The fires of hell are waiting for me," she said over breakfast, "and the church and salvation are only three blocks away."

"Some other Sunday, Mom," Rudolph said. "I'm busy today."

"I may be dead and in hell by some other Sunday," she said.

"We'll just have to take that chance," he said, getting up from the table, and he left her weeping.

It was a cold, clear day, the sun a bright wafer in the pale winter sky. He dressed warmly in a fleece-lined surplus Air Force jacket, a knitted-wool cap and goggles, and took the motorcycle out of the garage. He hesitated about which direction to take. There was nobody he wanted to see that day, no destination that seemed promising. Leisure, the burden of modern man.

He got on the motorcycle, started it, hesitated. A car with skis on its roof sped down the street and he thought, Why not, that's as good a place as any, and followed the car. He remembered that Larsen, the young man in the ski shop, had told him that there was a barn near the bottom of the tow that could be converted into a shop for renting skis on the weekend. Larsen had said that there was a lot of money to be made there. Rudolph felt better as he followed the car with the ski rack. He was no longer aimless.

He was nearly frozen when he got to the slope. The sun, reflected off the snow, dazzled him and he squinted at the brightly colored figures swooping toward him down the hill. Everybody seemed young and vigorous and having a good time; and the girls, tight pants stretched over trim hips and round buttocks, made lust a healthy outdoor emotion for a Sunday morning.

He watched, enjoying the spectacle for a while, then turned melancholy. He felt old and clumsy, lonely and deprived amid all those athletes. He was about to turn away and get his machine and go back to town, when Larsen came skimming down off the hill and made a dashing, abrupt stop in front of him, in a cloud of snow.

"Hi, Mr. Jordache," Larsen said. He had two rows of great shining white teeth and he smiled widely. Behind him, two girls who had been following him came to a halt.

"Hello, Larsen," Rudolph said. "I came out to see that barn you told me about."

"Sure thing," Larsen said. Supple, in one easy movement, he bent over to free himself from his skis. He was bareheaded and his longish fine blond hair fell over his eyes as he bent over. Looking at him, in his red sweater, with the two girls behind him, Rudolph was sure that Larsen hadn't dreamed about any boat pulling away from a pier the night before.

"Hello, Mr. Jordache," one of the girls said. "I didn't know you were a skier."

He peered at her and she laughed. She was wearing big green-tinted snow goggles that covered most of her small face. She pushed the goggles up over her red-and-blue woolen ski cap. "I'm in disguise," she said.

Now Rudolph recognized her. It was Miss Soames, from the record shop. Jiggling, rounded, blonde, fed by music.

"Good morning, good morning," Rudolph said, somehow flustered, noticing how small Miss Soames' waist was and how well rounded her thighs and hips.

"No, I'm not a skier. I'm a voyeur."

Miss Soames laughed. "There's plenty to voyeur about up here, isn't there?"

"Mr. Jordache ..." Larsen was out of his skis by now, "may I present my fiancée. Miss Packard."

Miss Packard took off her goggles, too, and revealed herself to be as pretty as Miss Soames and about the same age. "Pleasure," she said. Fiancée. People were still marrying.

"Be back in a half hour or so, girls," Larsen said. "Mr. Jordache and I have some business to transact." He stuck his skis and poles upright in the snow, as the girls, with a wave of their hands, skied off to the bottom of the tow.

"They look like awfully good skiers," Rudolph said as he walked at Larsen's side back toward the road.

"Mediocre," Larsen said carelessly. "But they have other charms." He laughed, showing the magnificent teeth in the brown face. He made $65 a week, Rudolph knew. How could he be so happy on a Sunday morning on $65 a week?

The barn was about 200 yards away and on the road, a big, solid structure, protected from the weather. "All you'd need," Larsen said, "is a big iron stove and you'd be plenty warm. I bet you could rent a thousand pairs of skis and two to three hundred pairs of boots out of this place a weekend; and then there're the Christmas and Easter vacations and the other holidays. And you could get two college boys to run it for beans. It could be a gold mine. Next year, they're putting in a snow-making machine. If we don't do it, somebody else sure as hell will. This is only the second year for this area, but it's catching on and somebody's bound to see the opportunity."

Rudolph recognized the argument, so much like the one he had used that week on Calderwood, and smiled. In business, you sometimes were the pusher and sometimes the pushee. I'm a Sunday pushee, he thought. If we do it, I'll get Larsen a good hike in salary.

"Who owns this place?" Rudolph asked.

"Dunno," Larsen said. "It's easy enough to find out."

Poor Larsen, Rudolph thought, not made for business. If it had been my idea, I would have had an option to buy it before I said a word to anyone. "There's a job for you, Larsen," Rudolph said. "Find out who owns the barn, whether he'll rent it and for how much, or sell it and for how much. And don't mention the store. Say you're thinking of swinging it yourself."

"I get it, I get it," Larsen said, nodding seriously. "Keep 'em from asking too much."

"We can try," Rudolph said. "Let's get out of here. I'm freezing. Is there a place to get a cup of coffee near here?"

Larsen looked at his watch. "It's just about time for lunch. There's a place a mile down the road that's not bad. Why don't you join me and the girls for lunch, Mr. Jordache?"

Automatically, Rudolph almost said no. He had never been seen outside the store with any of the employees, except once in a while with one of the buyers or a head of a department. Then he shivered. He was awfully cold. He had to go in someplace. Dancy, dainty Miss Soames. What harm could it do? "Thanks, Larsen," he said. "I'd like that very much."

They walked back toward the ski tow. Larsen had a plowing, direct, uncomplicated kind of walk, in his heavy ski boots with their rubber bottoms. The soles of Rudolph's shoes were of leather and the way was icy and Rudolph had to walk delicately, almost mincingly, to keep from slipping, and he hoped the girls weren't watching him.

The girls were waiting, their skis off, and Miss Soames was saying, "We're starrrving; who's going to feed the orphans?" even before Larsen had a chance to say anything.

"OK, OK, girls," Larsen said commandingly, "we're going to feed you. Stop wailing."

"Oh, Mr. Jordache," Miss Soames said, "are you going to dine with us? What an honor." She dropped her lashes demurely over freckles, the mockery plain.

"I had an early breakfast," Rudolph said. Clumsy, he thought bitterly. "I could stand some food and drink." He turned to Larsen. "I'll follow you on the machine."

"Is that beautiful thing yours, Mr. Jordache?" Miss Soames waved toward where the motorcycle was parked.

"Yes," Rudolph said.

"I yearn for a ride," Miss Soames said. She had a gushy, cutup manner of talking, as though confidences were being unwillingly forced from her. "Do you think you could find it in your heart to let me hang on?"

"It's pretty cold," Rudolph said stiffly.

"I have two pairs of long woolen underwear on," Miss Soames said. "I guarantee I'll be toasty. Benny," she said to Larsen, as though the matter were settled, "put my skis on your car, like a pal. I'm going with Mr. Jordache."

There was nothing Rudolph could do about it and he led the way to the machine while Larsen fixed the three pairs of skis on the rack of his brand-new Ford. How does he do it on $65 a week? Rudolph thought. For an unworthy moment, he wondered if Larsen was honest with his accounts at the ski shop.

Rudolph got onto the motorcycle and Miss Soames swung lightly on behind him, putting her arms around his waist and holding on firmly, as though they did things like this every day. Rudolph adjusted his goggles and followed Larsen's Ford out of the parking lot. Larsen drove fast and Rudolph had to put on speed to keep up with him and the wind cut at his face. The sun was behind clouds now and the world was graying over and it was much colder than before, but Miss Soames, holding on tighter than ever, shouted in his ear, "Isn't this bliss?"

The restaurant was large and clean and noisy with skiers. They found a table near a window and Rudolph took off his Air Force jacket while the others stripped themselves of their parkas. Miss Soames was wearing a pale-blue cashmere sweater, delicately shaped over her small, full breasts. Rudolph was wearing a sweater over a wool shirt and a silk scarf, carefully arranged around his throat. Too fancy, he thought, and took it off, pretending it was warm in the restaurant.

The girls ordered Cokes and Larsen a beer. Rudolph felt he needed something more convincing and ordered an old fashioned, to take the chill out of his bones. When the drinks came, Miss Soames raised her glass and made a toast, clinking her glass against Rudolph's. "To Sunday," she said, "without which we'd all just die." She was sitting next to Rudolph on the banquette and he could feel the steady pressure of her knee against his. He pulled his knee away, slowly, so as to make it seem merely a natural movement, but Miss Soames' eyes, clear, cold blue, were amused and knowing over the rim of her glass as she looked at him. She had taken off her cap and her thick blonde hair hung loosely down to her shoulders and swung in front of her face every time she turned her head.

They all ordered steaks and Miss Soames asked for a dime for the jukebox and Larsen was faster out of his pocket than Rudolph and she took the dime from him and climbed over Rudolph to go to the machine, getting leverage by putting her hand on his shoulder and walking across the room, her tight lush bottom swinging and graceful, despite the clumsy boots on her feet.

The music blared out and Miss Soames came back to the table, doing little playful dance steps as she crossed the floor. This time, as she climbed over Rudolph to her place, there was no doubt about what she was doing; and when she sat down, she was closer than before and the pressure of her knee was unmistakable against his. If he tried to move away now, everybody would notice, so he remained as he was.

He wanted wine with his steak but hesitated to order a bottle, because he was afraid the others might think he was showing off or being superior. He looked at the menu. On the back were listed a California red and a California white. "Would anybody like some wine?" he asked, putting the decision elsewhere.

"I would," Miss Soames said.

"Honey?" Larsen turned to Miss Packard.

"If everybody else does," she said, being agreeable.

By the time the meal was over, they had drunk three bottles of red wine among them. Larsen had drunk the most, but the others had done their fair share.

"What a story I'll have to tell the girls tomorrow at the store," Miss Soames, flushed rosy now, was saying, her knee and thigh rubbing cozily against Rudolph's. "I have been led astray on a Sunday by the great, unapproachable Mr. Frigidaire himself."

"Oh, come on, now, Betsy," Larsen said uneasily, glancing at Rudolph to see how he had taken the Mr. Frigidaire. "Watch what you're saying."

Miss Soames ignored him, sweeping her blonde hair loosely back from her forehead, with a little, plump, cushiony hand. "With his big-city ways and his dirty California wine, the crown prince lured me on to drunkenness and loose behavior in public. Oh, he's a sly one, our Mr. Jordache." She put a finger up to the corner of her eye and winked. "When you look at him, you'd think he could cool a case of beer with one glance of his eyes. But come Sunday, aha, out comes the real Mr. Jordache. The corks pop, the wine flows, he drinks with the help, he laughs at Ben Larsen's corny old jokes, he plays footsie with the poor little shopgirls from the ground floor. My God, Mr. Jordache, you have bony knees."

Rudolph couldn't help laughing, and the others laughed with him. "Well, you don't, Miss Soames," he said. "I'm prepared to swear to that."

They all laughed again.

"Mr. Jordache, the daredevil motorcycle rider, the wall of death, sees all, knows all, feels all," Miss Soames said. "Oh, Christ, I can't keep on calling you Mr. Jordache. Can I call you the young master? Or will you settle for Rudy?"

"Rudy," he said. If there had been nobody else there, he would have grabbed her, kissed that flushed small tempting face, the glistening, half-mocking, half-inviting lips.

"Rudy it is," she said. "Call him Rudy, Benny."

"Hello, Rudy," Miss Packard said. It didn't mean anything to her. She didn't work at the store.

"Benny," Miss Soames commanded.

Larsen looked beseechingly at Rudolph. "She's loaded," he began.

"Don't be silly, Benny," Rudolph said.

"Rudy," Larsen said reluctantly.

"Rudy, the mystery man," Miss Soames went on, sipping from her wineglass. "They lock him away at closing time. Nobody sees him except at work, no man, no woman, no child. Especially no woman. There are twenty girls on the ground floor alone who weep into their pillows nightly for him, to say nothing of the ladies in the other departments, and he passes them by with a cold, heartless smile."

"Where the hell did you learn to talk like that?" Rudolph asked, embarrassed, amused and, he had to admit it to himself, at the same time, flattered.

"She is bookish," Miss Packard said. "She reads a book a day."

Miss Soames ignored her. "He is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as Mr. Churchill said on another occasion. He has been reported running at dawn. What is he running from? He is reported as having been seen in New York, in low neighborhoods. What sins does he commit in the big city? Why doesn't he commit his sins locally?"

"Betsy," Larsen said weakly. "Let's go skiing."

"Tune in on this same station next Sunday and perhaps all these questions will be answered," Miss Soames said. "You may now kiss my hand." She held out her hand, the wrist arched, and Rudolph kissed it, blushing a little.

"I've got to get back to town," he said. The check was on the table and he put down some bills. With the tip, it came to $15.

When they went outside, a light snow was falling. The mountain was bleak and dangerous-looking, its outlines only suggested in the light swirl of snow.

"Thanks for the lunch, Mr. Jordache," Larsen said. One "Rudy" a week was enough for him. "It was great."

"I really enjoyed it, Mr. Jordache," Miss Packard said, practicing to be Larsen's wife. "I mean, I really did."

"Come on, Betsy," Larsen said, "let's hit the slope, work off some of that wine."

"I am returning to town with my good and old friend, Rudy, on his death-defying machine," Miss Soames said. "Aren't I, Rudy?"

"It's an awfully cold ride," Rudolph said. She looked small and crushable in her parka, with the goggles oversized and incongruous strapped to her ski cap, pressing on her forehead. Her hair was bundled into her cap and made her head, especially with the goggles, seem very large, a weighty frame for the small, wicked face.

"I will ski no more today," Miss Soames said grandly. "I am in the mood for other sports." She went over to the motorcycle. "Let us mount," she said.

"You don't have to take her if you don't want to," Larsen said anxiously, responsible.

"Oh, let her come," Rudolph said. "I'll go slow and make sure she doesn't fall off."

"She's a funny girl," Larsen said, still worried. "She doesn't know how to drink. But she doesn't mean any harm."

"She hasn't done any harm, Benny." Rudolph patted Larsen's thick, sweatered shoulder. "Don't worry. And see what you can find out about that barn." Back in the safe world of business.

"Sure thing, Mr. Jordache," Larsen said. He and Miss Packard waved as Rudolph gunned the motorcycle out of the restaurant parking lot, with Miss Soames clinging on behind him, her arms around his waist.

The snow wasn't thick, but it was enough to make him drive carefully. Miss Soames' arms around him were surprisingly strong for a girl so slightly made; and while she had drunk enough wine to make her tongue loose, it hadn't affected her balance and she leaned easily with him as they swept around curves in the road. She sang from time to time, the songs that she heard all day in the record shop; but with the wind howling past, Rudolph could hear only little snatches, a few words here and there, a phrase of melody in a faraway voice, like a child singing fitfully to herself in a distant room.

He enjoyed the ride. The whole day, in fact. He was glad his mother's talk about church had driven him out of the apartment.

At the outskirts of Whitby, as they were passing the college, he slowed down to ask Miss Soames where she lived. It wasn't far from the college and he zoomed down the familiar streets. It was still fairly early in the afternoon, but the clouds overhead were black and it was quite dark and there were lights to be seen in the windows of the houses they passed. He had to slow down at a stop sign and as he did so, he felt Miss Soames' hand slide down from his waist, where she had been holding on, to his crotch. She stroked him there softly and he could hear her laughing in his ear.

"No disturbing the driver," he said. "State law."

But she only laughed and kept on doing what she had been doing.

They passed an elderly man walking a dog and Rudolph was sure the old man looked startled. He gunned the machine and it had some effect. Miss Soames held on, but she stopped her caressing.

He came to the address she had given him. It was an old one-family clapboard house set on a yellowed lawn. There were no lights on in the house.

"Home," Miss Soames said. She jumped off the pillion. "That was a nice ride, Rudy. Especially the last two minutes." She took off her goggles and cap and put her head to one side, letting her hair swing loose over her shoulders. "Want to come inside?" she asked. "There's nobody home. My mother and father are out visiting and my brother's at the movies. We can go on to the next chapter."

He hesitated, looked at the house, guessed what it was like inside. Poppa and Momma off on a visit but likely to return early. Brother perhaps bored with the movie and coming rattling in an hour earlier than expected. Miss Soames stood before him, one hand on her hip, smiling, swinging her goggles and ski cap in the other.

"Well?" she asked.

"Some other time, perhaps," he said.

"Scaredy-cat," she said and giggled. Then she ran up the front walk toward the house. At the door, she turned and stuck out her tongue at him. The dark building engulfed her.

Thoughtfully, he started the motorcycle and drove slowly toward the center of the town along the darkening streets. He didn't want to go home, so he parked the machine and went to a movie. He hardly saw the movie and would not have been able to tell what it was about when he got out.

He kept thinking about Miss Soames. Silly, cheap little girl, teasing, teasing, making fun of him. He didn't like the idea of seeing her in the store next morning. If it were possible, he would have had her fired. But she could go to the union and complain and he would have to explain the grounds on which he had had her fired. She called me Mr. Frigidaire, then she called me Rudy and, finally, she held my cock on a public thoroughfare.

He gave up the idea of firing Miss Soames. One thing it all proved--he had been right all along in having nothing to do with anybody from the store.

He had dinner alone in a restaurant and drank a whole bottle of wine by himself and nearly hit a lamppost on the way home.

He slept badly and he groaned at a quarter to seven Monday morning, when he knew he had to get up and run. But he got up and he ran.

• • •

When he made his morning round of the store, he was careful to avoid going near the record shop. He waved to Larsen in the ski shop and Larsen, red-sweatered, said, "Good morning, Mr. Jordache," as though they had not shared Sunday.

Calderwood called him into his office in the afternoon. "All right, Rudy," he said, "I've been thinking about your ideas and I've talked them over with some people down in New York. We're going down there tomorrow; we have a date at my lawyer's office on Wall Street at two o'clock. They want to ask you some questions. We'll take the 11:05 train down. I'm not promising anything, but the first time around, my people seem to think you got something there." Calderwood peered at him. "You don't seem particularly happy, Rudy," he said accusingly.

"Oh, I'm pleased, sir. Very pleased." He managed a smile. Two o'clock Tuesday, he was thinking; I promised Den ton I'd go before the board two o'clock Tuesday. "It's very good news, sir." He smiled again, trying to seem boyish and naïve. "I guess I just wasn't prepared for it--so soon, I mean."

"We'll have lunch on the train," Calderwood said, dismissing him.

Lunch on the train with the old man. That means no drink, Rudolph thought, as he went out of the office. He preferred to be gloomy about that than gloomy about Professor Denton.

Later in the afternoon, the phone rang in his office and Miss Giles answered. "I'll see if he's in," she said. "Who's calling, please?" She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Professor Denton."

Rudolph hesitated, then stretched out his hand for the phone. "Hello, Professor," he said heartily. "How're things?"

"Jordache," Denton said, his voice hoarse, "I'm at Ripley's. Can you come over for a few minutes? I've got to talk to you."

Just as well now as later. "Of course, Professor," he said. "I'll be right there." He got up from his desk. "If anybody wants me," he said to Miss Giles, "say I'll be back in a half hour."

When he went into the bar, he had to search to find Denton. Denton was in the last booth again, with his hat and coat on, hunched over the table, his hands cupped around his glass. He needed a shave and his clothes were rumpled and his spectacles clouded and smeared. It occurred to Rudolph that he looked like an old wino, waiting blearily on a park bench in the winter weather for a cop to come and move him on. The self-confident, loud, ironic man of Rudolph's classrooms, amused and amusing, had vanished.

"Hello, Professor." Rudolph slid into the booth opposite Denton. He hadn't bothered to put on a coat for the short walk from the store. "I'm glad to see you." He smiled, as though to reassure Denton that. Denton was the same man he had always known, to be greeted in the usual manner.

Denton looked up dully. He didn't offer to shake hands. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was gray. Even his blood has surrendered, Rudolph thought.

"Have a drink." Denton's voice was thick. He had obviously already had a drink. Or five. "Miss," he called loudly to the lady in the orange uniform, who was leaning, like an old mare in harness, against the end of the bar. "What'll you have?" he asked Rudolph.

"Scotch, please."

"Scotch and soda for my friend, miss," Denton said. "And another bourbon for me."

After that, he sat silently for a while, staring down at the glass between his hands. On the way over from the store, Rudolph had decided what he had to do. He would have to tell Denton that it was impossible for him to appear before the board the next day but that he would offer to do so any other day, if the board would postpone. Failing that, he would go to see the president that night and say what he had to say. Or, if Denton disapproved of that, he would write out his defense of Denton that night for Denton to read before the board when they considered his case. He dreaded the moment when he would have to make these proposals to Denton, but there was no question of not going down to New York with Calderwood on the 11:05 tomorrow morning. He was grateful that Denton kept silent, even for a moment, and he made a big business of stirring his drink when it came, the noise a little musical barrier against conversation for a few seconds.

"I hate to drag you away from your work like this, Jordache," Denton said, not lifting his eyes and mumbling now. "Trouble makes a man egotistic. I pass a movie theater and I see people lined up to go in, to laugh at a comedy, and I say, 'Don't they know what's happening to me, how can they go to the movies?'" He laughed sourly. "Absurd," he said. "Fifty million people were being killed in Europe alone between 1939 and 1945 and I went to the movies twice a week." He took a thirsty gulp of his drink, bending low over the table and holding the glass with his two hands. The glass rattled as he put it down.

"Tell me what's happening," Rudolph said soothingly.

"Nothing," Denton said. "Well, that's not true, either. A lot. It's over."

"What are you talking about?" Rudolph spoke calmly, but it was difficult to keep the excitement out of his voice. So it was nothing, he thought. A storm in a teacup. People finally couldn't be that idiotic. "You mean they've dropped the whole thing?"

"I mean I've dropped the whole thing," Denton said flatly, lifting his head and looking out from under the brim of his battered brown-felt hat at Rudolph. "I resigned today."

"Oh, no," Rudolph said.

"Oh, yes," Denton said. "After twelve years. They offered to accept my resignation and drop the proceedings. I couldn't face tomorrow. After twelve years. I'm too old, too old. Maybe if I were younger. When you're younger, you can face the irrational. Justice seems obtainable. My wife has been crying for a week. She says the disgrace would kill her. A figure of speech, of course, but a woman weeping seven days and seven nights erodes the will. So it's done. I just wanted to thank you and tell you you don't have to be there tomorrow at two P.M."

Rudolph swallowed. Carefully, he tried to keep the relief out of his voice. "I would have been happy to speak up," he said. He would not have been happy, but, one way or another, he had been prepared to do it, and a more exact description of his feelings would do no good at the moment. "What are you going to do now?" he asked.

"I have been thrown a life line," Denton said dully. "A friend of mine is on the faculty of the International School at Geneva. I've been offered a place. Less money, but a place. They are not as maniacal, it seems, in Geneva. They tell me the city is pretty."

"But it's just a high school," Rudolph said. "You've taught in colleges all your life."

"It's in Geneva," Denton said. "I want to get out of this goddamn country."

Rudolph had never heard anybody say "this goddamn country" about America and he was shocked at Denton's bitterness. As a boy in school, he had sung "God shed His grace on thee" about his native land, along with the 40 other boys and girls in the classroom; and now, he realized that what he had sung as a child, he still believed as a grown man. "It's not as bad as you think," he said.

"Worse," Denton said.

"It'll blow over. You'll be asked back."

"Never," Denton said. "I wouldn't come back if they begged me on their knees."

The Man Without a Country, Rudolph remembered from grade school, the poor exile being transferred from ship to ship, never to see the shores of the land where he was born, never to see the flag without tears. Geneva, that flagless vessel. He looked at Denton, exiled already in the back booth of Ripley's bar, and felt a confused mixture of emotions, pity, contempt. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked. "Money?"

Denton shook his head. "We're all right. For the time being. We're selling the house. Real-estate values have gone up since I bought it. The country is booming." He laughed dryly. He stood up abruptly. "I have to go home now," he said. "I'm giving my wife French lessons every afternoon."

He allowed Rudolph to pay for the drinks. Outside on the street, he put his collar up, looking more than ever like an old wino, and shook Rudolph's hand slackly. "I'll write you from Geneva," he said. "Noncommittal letters. God knows who opens mail these days."

He shuffled off, a bent, scholarly figure among the citizens of his goddamn country. Rudolph watched him for a moment, then walked back to the store. He breathed deeply, feeling young, lucky, lucky. He was in the line, waiting to laugh, while the sufferers shuffled past. Fifty million died, but the movies were always open. He felt sorry for Denton, but overriding that, he felt joyous for himself. Everything from now on was going to be all right, everything was going to go his way. The sign had been made clear that afternoon, the omens were plain.

• • •

He was on the 11:05 the next morning with Calderwood, composed and optimistic. When they went into the dining car for lunch, he didn't mind not being able to order a drink.