About Schmidt - Louis Begley [102]
What do you mean? Sure, I’m having a fine time this evening.
I can see that. What I really meant is how do you do it, how do you get to enjoy this?
Tonight is special, because we like Ted and Mimi and the children so much. But generally? I don’t know. Parties are just for having a drink or two, talking to a couple of people, and soliciting clients! Right? I don’t take them seriously.
I suppose you’re right, Lew. But these things always leave me discombobulated.
You want to come and say hello to Tina?
In a moment, I should say hello to Mimi first. You’re a good man, Lew. I wish we had been closer during all those years.
It’s never too late!
Although it was past eleven, he was among the first to leave. The band had moved indoors and was working its way through “St. Louis Woman.” Through the frame of the tall windows, he could see the older set dancing 1950s style, women clinging to the men. No problem: he would be home before Carrie.
By the time he reached the end of the divided highway, the fog had thickened. That didn’t faze Schmidt. A man’s Saab is his castle. He turned on the fog lights, fixed his eyes on the freshly painted center line, and stepped on the gas. On the radio, a panel was discussing racial rage and violence: LA cops beating Rodney King and LA blacks beating Reginald Denny. Schmidt had seen both on television. No one was asking the crucial question: How does a man not get sick when he hears his stick go thwack on the head, the shoulders, the back of another man? Why doesn’t he feel the blows on his own squirming body and stop? Is it the adrenaline rush of rage? It was clear to him that he suffered from an adrenaline deficiency. Why else hadn’t he by now turned Sergeant Smith loose on the man without worrying about the old thwack? That’s because he wasn’t Sergeant Schmidt. Very funny! Meanwhile, the man was closing in. Cuckoo here and cuckoo there. One would think he was shacked up in the pool house! Perhaps he was: fed on the sly by Carrie.
He turned off Route 27 at the first opportunity, and before he had gone a half mile realized he had made a mistake. This was no fog; it was like driving through a cloud. What to do? To turn back to the highway wasn’t that simple, and in the end he would have to head toward the beach anyway. To hell with it! He knew every turn of these roads by heart. There weren’t any other cars to worry about. The panel of experts on human nature was getting under his skin. He fiddled with the radio knob looking for jazz. There wasn’t any; just talk or country music. To hell with that too. He would sing to himself. Full steam ahead to the tune of L’amour est enfant de Boheme. No humming: words please. Toreador, toreador, l’amour, l’amour t’attend. How apt! No, he wasn’t in a cloud; he was in a black Saab convertible inside an immense, unending bottle of milk. Schmidt’s excitement mounted. Was he a horse smelling the stable, or could it be, at last, an adrenaline rush? This was almost the end of the first straight segment of Mecox, he felt in his bones the turn was coming up, then another straight stretch, and then Ocean Avenue. A piece of cake. If he could only see, his own driveway would be in sight. Schmidt’s operatic repertoire was limited. He launched into Vivan le femine! Viva il buon vino! Sostegno e gloria d’umanità! The Walkers’ wine was not bad, and as for Carrie—brava! He could sing that aria all the way home. But then a thud like the whole percussion section gone mad fills the car, its force throws Schmidt forward until the belt across his shoulder bites, and Schmidt squints, trying to make out the intentions of the great white fish swimming gracefully in the milk over the hood of the Saab, the face coming to meet his face across the windshield. Of course, the man! Although Schmidt has stopped singing, the music continues. Two terrifyingly slow measures, a pause that’s even more frightening, then the strings play in unison for all they’re worth, and the brass supports them. It’s the “Theme of the Steps”!
The window