The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [40]
The Faubourg Marigny fellow leaves at last and we work steadily until seven. I dictate some very sincere letters. Dear Mr. Hebert: I happened to be looking over your portfolio this morning and it occurred to me that you might realize a substantial tax saving by unloading your holding of Studebaker-Packard. Naturally I am not acquainted with your overall tax picture, but if you do have a problem taxwise, I suggest taking a capital loss for the following reasons ...
It is good to have both Mr. Hebert and Sharon on my mind. To be thinking of only one of them would make me nervous.
We work hard and as comrades, swept along by a partnership so strong that the smallest overture of love would be brushed aside by either of us as foolishness. Peyton Place would embarrass both of us now.
By six o’clock I become aware that it is time to modulate the key ever so slightly. From now on everything I do must exhibit a certain value in her eyes, a value, moreover, which she must begin to recognize.
Thus we send out for sandwiches and drink coffee as we work. Already the silences between us have changed in character, become easier. It is possible to stand at the window, loosen my collar and rub the back of my neck like Dana Andrews. And to become irritable with her: “No no no no, Kincaid, that’s not what I meant to say. Take five.” I go to the cooler, take two aspirins, crumple the paper cup. Her friend, old “someone,” turns out to be invaluable. In my every tactic he is the known quantity. He is my triangulation point. I am all business to his monkey business.
Already she has rolled a fresh sheet into the platen. “Try it again,” and she looks at me ironically and with lights in her eyes.
I stretch out both hands to her desk, put my head down between my arms.
“All right. Take it this way ...” O Rory Rory Rory.
She is getting it. She is alert: there is something afoot. Now when she looks up between sentences, it is through her eyebrows and with her head cocked and still, still as a little partridge.
She watches closely now, her yellow agate-eyes snapping with interest. We are, all at once, on our way. We are like two children lost in a summer afternoon who, hardly aware of each other, find a door in a wall and enter an enchanted garden. Now we might join hands. She is watchful to see whether I see this too.
But this is no time to take chances. Although Baron Ochs’ waltz sings in my ears and although I could grab her up out of her chair and kiss her smack on the mouth—we go back to work.
“Dear Mr. Fontenot: Glancing over your portfolio, it struck me that you are not in the best position to take advantage of the dawning age of missiles ...”
The Faubourg Marigny fellow does not return and at seven thirty it seems natural for me to drive Sharon home.
A line of squalls is due from Texas and we drive down to Esplanade in a flicker of summer lightning. The air presses heavily over Elysian Fields; earlier in the evening lake swallows took alarm and went veering away to the swamps. The Quarter is teeming. It is good to put behind us the green fields and the wide sky of Gentilly and to come into a narrow place pressed in upon by decrepit buildings