About Schmidt - Louis Begley [26]
We’ll do the children in due course. You have a problem. Quite seriously, Schmidtie, isn’t there anything you want to do? How about a foundation? Even better, go on some boards. What’s the name of that lawyer with bad skin who raised money for Reagan? That’s what he has done.
You’ve put your finger on my problem! All I’ve done is work for W & K. I am a product nobody needs. That’s why you can’t get me back on the shelf. I have thought about foundations. And even if there were some harmless small outfit that would hire me, I am not sure I’d go for it! In the first place, there is the practical angle: it would cost me more to move back to the city and take such a job than it would pay. More important, I’ve always disliked charities and the sort of people who run them. It’s my vision of hell. You raise money and set aside a fat slice for salaries and overhead. The next thing you know, you have to invent programs so that what’s left can be spent on them. Then da capo! Jaw-breaking boredom!
Seeing Gil’s blond face darken, Schmidt added with alacrity: I don’t mean all not-for-profits, for instance not the home for actors with Alzheimer’s you support, that’s quite useful, and I don’t dislike all foundation presidents, just most of them. The simple truth is just as I said—nobody wants me. Not my firm and neither foundations nor boards. I haven’t had the right extracurricular activities, so I don’t have the right profile!
Schmidtie, what you don’t have is the right attitude!
Believe me. I am like some guy on a bus who got up to pee and comes back to find that his seat has been taken, along with every other one. What can he do? Get off? You know what that means in the case of the one and only bus ride. It’s better to look stupid and hang on to a strap. What do I care if I look stupid!
You certainly shouldn’t have gone to pee while your pal DeForrest was getting himself elected presiding partner of your firm. I’ve never understood it. You as much as told me the job could have been yours; all you had to do was to say you wanted it. Then you would be running the firm and asking your partners whether their clients or anybody else needs them!
Schmidt salted his French fries. He had been picking at them daintily, with his fingers, as though he really meant to leave them on his plate. They weren’t bad. To hell with abstinence. He decided he would eat them, down to the last one. What would he get in return for denying himself a little fat? Sometimes Gil’s memory was more irritating than charming. One could go for months without seeing him, and he would take the conversation up just where it had ended, remembering tidbits one wished had been forgotten or never mentioned.
That’s precisely it. DeForrest wanted the job. He wanted it more than I. In fact, I’m not sure I had a reason for wanting it. I might have only wanted to be sure I could get it. That’s not enough.
And DeForrest?
He had this ambition to be presiding partner for years; at times he seemed quite childish about it. Also, he had gotten rather tired of practicing law. It’s something that happens to lots of lawyers, but it hadn’t happened to me. So it was natural he should get the job. Besides, he had all sorts of ideas about what should be done—quite a manifesto. I had no program—I guess I would have just tried to keep things as they were.
What would have been wrong with that? You always liked that firm, and you seemed to make enough money. Do you wish now you had been less accommodating?
Not really. DeForrest might have put up a fight and won. That would have been very tough on me and bad for the firm. Anyway, I would have left just the same, at the same time, and I would be in the same spot now.
Schmidt was stuck with this answer. What was the use of admitting that he had stood aside because Jack DeForrest had