The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [112]
And so Affenlight felt almost sorry for David when he found the latter in the hallway outside his office, fooling with his cell phone, looking forlorn and agitated. He naturally thought of Menelaus, come to reclaim Helen, but David suffered a bit in the comparison. It was pouring outside, and though he was wearing galoshes and a waterproof jacket, his head and trousers were soaked. Affenlight wondered what kind of man brought galoshes on a mission of this nature.
“David,” he said. “Guert Affenlight. You look like you could use some coffee.”
“Where’s my wife?” David said.
Affenlight felt suddenly calm. It was a situation he had often seen in dreams: his nemesis here, in his office, on his terms. But the desire to assert and avenge himself had subsided.
“Did you call the line upstairs?”
“Repeatedly.”
“She’s probably still at work.” Affenlight nodded toward his open office door. “Come in. Have a seat.”
In person, David looked less substantial than the fellow in the photo on his firm’s website, who wore a turtleneck beneath his sweater and leaned back from his drafting table, mechanical pencil in hand, smiling benevolently. He had, at least in the picture, the punctilious self-possession that Affenlight associated with a certain kind of evangelical Christian, tightly groomed beard and all. Today he looked significantly less composed.
“I suppose you’re pretty pleased about all this,” David said, his voice soft but strident, as Affenlight, having made the coffee whether David wanted it or not, handed him a steaming mug.
The room contained another Westish-crested chair of the sort David was sitting in; when Affenlight wanted to make a guest feel equal and at ease, he arranged himself in it. Now he slid behind his vast desk, which was cluttered with paper. His job performance lately had been decidedly second-rate. “Depends what you mean,” he said. “I’m worried about Pella.”
“She’s my wife,” David said, shivering and still dripping. He set the full mug of coffee down on the edge of Affenlight’s desk with an air of finality. Perhaps he was exercising his right to refuse hospitality, or maybe he took milk. “We’ve been married four years.”
“I know. Though of course I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”
“I have a right to speak to her.”
“She’ll be here,” Affenlight said.
Spring thunder grumbled softly, sans lighting, quite unlike the violent whipcracks of July and August. David lifted his mug from the corner of the desk, taking care not to slosh any coffee onto Affenlight’s papers, and took a tiny, temperature-gauging sip. It seemed to relax and compose him. He looked around the room, eyeing the framed diplomas and accolades, the spines of the books that lined the walnut shelves. “Nice woodwork,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“They don’t build them like this anymore. Too expensive. These shelves are from the twenties?”
“Twenty-two, I believe.”
David nodded. “The year Ulysses was published. And Moncrieff’s translation of Du côté de chez Swann. And The Waste Land, natch.”
Affenlight wasn’t sure whether this represented an attempt to engage him on his own terms, or was the way that David habitually talked. “Correct,” he said.
“Is she okay?” David asked, helping himself to another, fuller sip. “You said you were worried.”
“She’s fine,” Affenlight said. “Much better than when she arrived.”
“What was wrong when she arrived?”
Affenlight was surprised by