Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

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 not marrying anybody. That could come later. Three months ago, he had received an invitation to Julie’s wedding. She was marrying a man called Fitzgerald in New York. He had not gone to the wedding and he had felt the tears come to his eyes when he had composed the telegram of congratulations. He had despised himself for the weakness and had thrown himself more completely into his work and almost managed to forget Julie.

He was wary of all other girls. He could tell as he walked through the store that there were girls 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, blonde, and bosomy, 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 parties at Calderwood’s, so there was no occasion on which, with the excuse of liquor and celebration, any real approach could be made.

The night with Mary Jane in New York and the forlorn telephone call in the deserted lobby of the St. Moritz Hotel had steeled him against the pull of his own desire.

Of one thing he was certain—the next time he asked a girl to marry him, he was going to be damn sure she would say yes.

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 with Bergson, 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. Rudolph liked them and had approached him about a job as window designer for Calderwood’s during the winter. 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 any window besides their own. Bergson had changed all that. He was a small, sad young man who couldn’t get into the scene designers’ union in New York. He 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 art work 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 spent with the heads of departments and the head of Costs and Accounting. In an ideal scheme of things, he thought, he would never have to look at a balance sheet or go through a monthly inventory.

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 Calderwood’s 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 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. The Silent Generation, like they say in Time magazine. 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 a 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 been methodically picking Johnny Heath’s brain and that Johnny was responsible for the more involved sections of the overall 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.”

“Okay. 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. “I would bring in an assistant to help take over here when I’m otherwise occupied.” He had already written Brad Knight in Oklahoma about the job.

“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 among the counters, looking youthful and smiling benevolently as usual.

The plan that he had submitted to Calderwood was a complicated one and he had argued every point closely. The community was growing in the direction of the lake. What was more, the neighboring town of Cedarton, about ten miles away, was linked with Whitby by a new highway and 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 thirty 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 attract trade in the evenings as well. The theater, used for plays during the summer, could be turned into a movie house for the rest of the year. He also proposed building a middle-priced housing development along the lake, and suggested that the marshy and up to now unusable land at one end of Calderwood’s holdings could be used for light industry.

Coached by Johnny Heath, Rudolph had meticulously outlined all the benefits the law allowed on enterprises of this kind.

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 insure a high price of issue for the stock. When Calderwood died, his heirs, 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 were another set of rules you would abide by them.

Professor Denton was waiting for him, at the bar, uncomfortable and out of place among 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 don’t drink during the day,” Rudolph said, then was sorry he 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. 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 heritage. She was a woman of about sixty, 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 youthful America. Her ankles were swollen and she shuffled flatly as she went back toward the kitchen. Rudolph thought of his mother, of her dream of the neat little candlelit restaurant that had never materialized. Well, she had been spared the orange uniform.

“You’re doing well, Jordache,” Denton said, hunched over the table, his eyes worried and magnified behind the thick, steel-rimmed glasses. 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 at your success, and I’m sure that there was no compromise of principle involved, none whatsoever.”

The waitress appeared with their soup. Denton spooned it in. “Yes,” he said, “if I had it to do all over again, I’d avoid the ivy-covered walls like the plague. It has 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, surprised at Denton’s description of himself. Denton had always seemed to Rudolph to be pleased with himself, enjoying acting out his visions of economic villainy 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. 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.”

Denton finished his soup and the waitress came and put down their hamburger steaks and coffee.

“And you won’t do it by riding roughshod over your fellow men,” Denton went on, darting at his hamburger with his fork. “I know your mind, I know your character, I observed you through the years. You have a code, a sense of honor, a fastidiousness of mind and body. These eyes don’t miss much, Jordache, in class or out.”

Rudolph ate silently, waiting for the spate of approval to die down, knowing that Denton must have a great favor to ask to be so effusive before making his demand.

“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. This generation—” he shrugged despairingly. “Crafty, careful, looking to get something for nothing, hypocritical. You’d be astounded at the amount of cheating I find in each examination, term papers. 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 peered 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 were 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.

“When I was in school,” Rudolph said, “you seemed to be well liked everywhere.”

“There are currents, currents,” Denton said, “eddies and whirlpools that the undergraduate never has an inkling of. In the faculty rooms, in the offices of power. In the office of the President himself. I am too outspoken, it is a failing of mine. I am naive, I have believed in the myth of academic freedom. My enemies have bided their 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 able to judge if I could help.”

“Oh, you could help, all right, no doubt about that.” Denton pushed the half-eaten hamburger away from him. “They have found their witch,” he said. “Me.”

“I don’t quite understand …”

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

Rudolph laughed. “You’re no Red, Professor, you know that,” he said.

“Keep your voice low, boy.” Denton looked around worriedly. “One does not broadcast on this subject.”

“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, Professor,” Rudolph 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 nineteenth century without mentioning Karl Marx! An ironic joke about prevalent economic practices, 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 wind-bag 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 university, 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; contributions to Communist front organizations in the thirties, atheistic and radical utterances in the classroom, the recommendation of certain books for outside reading of a doubtful character. 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 university, 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 university 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 next Tuesday I’ll be there.” He dug into his pocket for his money clip. “Let me pay my share.”

Denton stopped him with a gesture. “I invited you. You’re my guest. Go ahead, boy, go ahead. I won’t keep you.” He stood up, looked around for a last time to see if anybody was making a point of watching them, then, satisfied, put out his hand and shook Rudolph’s hand fervently.

Rudolph got his coat and went out of the bar. Through the fogged window he saw Denton stop and order a drink at the bar.

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 Denton’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 fifty dollars 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 voices, breathed in the jumbled bouquet of perfumes, congratulated himself that he was not married and loved no one. He thought, I cannot spend my life serving these worthy women, paid for his malted milk, and went up to his office.

On his desk, there was a letter. It was a short one. “I hope you’re coming to New York soon. I’m in a mess and I have to talk to you. Love, Gretchen.”

He threw the letter in the wastebasket and said, “Oh, Christ,” for the second time in an hour.

It was raining when he left the store at six-fifteen. 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. He was almost home when he remembered that he had promised his mother that he would do the shopping for dinner. He cursed 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, potatoes, a can of peas, half an apple pie for dessert. As he pushed his way through the lines of housewives he remembered the interview with Calderwood and grinned sourly. The boy wonder financier, 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 whiskey.

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 with Quentin McGovern.

The week was routine. When he saw Calderwood at the store, Calderwood 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.

Rudolph had called Gretchen on the phone in New York (from a pay station—Calderwood did not take kindly to private calls on the store’s phones) and Gretchen had sounded disappointed when he told her he couldn’t get down to the city that week, but would try the following weekend. She had refused to tell him what the trouble was. It could wait, she said. If it could wait, he thought, it couldn’t be so bad.

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 next 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 the 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, worthwhile. He would have to go into the board as relaxed as possible, gauge the temper of the room and extemporaneously do the best he could for both Denton and himself. If Calderwood knew what he intended to do …

By the weekend he was sleeping badly, his dreams lascivious but unsatisfactory, images of Julie dancing naked before a body of water, Gretchen stretched out in a canoe, Mary Jane opening her legs in bed, then sitting up, her breasts bare, her face contorted, accusing him. 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 church bells ringing, he decided he couldn’t stay in the house 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. 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 department, 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 ski rack. He was no longer aimless.