Jailbird - Kurt Vonnegut [87]
I tried to believe that he was being so attentive in order to soften the bad news he had to give me by and by: that I was simply not RAMJAC material, and that his limousine was waiting down below to take me back, still jobless, to the Arapahoe. But the messages in his eyes were more passionate than that. He was ravenous for my approval of everything he did.
He told me, and not Leland Clewes or Israel Edel, that he had just made Frank Ubriaco a vice-president of the McDonald’s Hamburgers Division of RAMJAC.
I nodded that I thought that was nice.
The nod was not enough for Leen. “I think it’s a wonderful example of putting the right man in the right job,” he said. “Don’t you? That’s what RAMJAC is all about, don’t you think—putting good people where they can use their talents to the fullest?”
The question was for me and nobody else, so I finally said, “Yes.”
I had to go through the same thing after he had interviewed and hired Clewes and Edel. Clewes was made a vice-president of the Diamond Match Division, presumably because he had been selling advertising matchbooks for so long. Edel was made a vice-president of the Hilton Department of the Hospitality Associates, Ltd., Division, presumably because of his three weeks of experience as a night clerk at the Arapahoe.
It was then my turn to go into the library with him. “Last but not least,” he said coyly. After he closed the door on the rest of the house, his flirtatiousness became even more outrageous. “Come into my parlor,” he murmured, “said the spider to the fly.” He winked at me broadly.
I hated this. I wondered what had happened to the others in here.
There was a Mussolini-style desk with a swivel chair behind it. “Perhaps you should sit there,” he said. He made his eyebrows go up and down. “Doesn’t that look like your kind of chair? Eh? Eh? Your kind of chair?”
This could only be mockery, I thought, I responded to it humbly. I had had no self-respect for years and years. “Sir,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Ah,” he said, holding up a finger, “that does happen sometimes.”
“I don’t know how you found me, or even if I’m who you think I am,” I said.
“I haven’t told you yet who I think you are,” he said.
“Walter F. Starbuck,” I said bleakly.
“If you say so,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “whoever I am, I’m not much anymore. If you’re really offering jobs, all I want is a little one.”
“I’m under orders to make you a vice-president,” he said, “orders from a person I respect very much. I intend to obey.”
“I want to be a bartender,” I said.
“Ah!” he said. “And mix pousse-cafés!”
“I can, if I have to,” I said. “I have a Doctor of Mixology degree.”
“You also have a lovely high voice when you want to,” he said.
“I think I had better go home now,” I said. “I can walk. It isn’t far from here.” It was only about forty blocks. I had no shoes; but who needed shoes? I would get home somehow without them.
“When it’s time to go home,” he said, “you shall have my limousine.”
“It’s time to go home now,” I said. “I don’t care how I get there. It has been a very tiring day for me. I don’t feel very clever. I just want to sleep. If you know anybody who needs a bartender, even part-time, I can be found at the Arapahoe.”
“What an actor you are!” he said.
I hung my head. I didn’t even want to look at him or at anybody anymore. “Not at all,” I said. “Never was.”
“I will tell you something strange,” he said.
“I won’t understand it,” I said.
“Everyone here tonight remembers having seen you, but they’ve never seen each other before,” he said. “How would you explain that?”
“I have no job,” I said. “I just got out of prison. I’ve been walking around town with nothing to do.”
“Such a complicated story,” he said. “You were in prison, you say?”
“It happens,” I said.
“I won’t ask what you were in prison for,” he said. What he meant, of course, was that I, and Mrs. Graham disguised as a man, did not have to go on telling taller and taller lies, unless it entertained me to do so.
“Watergate,” I said.