A Client Is Canceled Read online

  “I know,” the Pooh said. “Thought Mr. Townsend was slacking. Why counter-irritant, Mr. Craig?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Craig said, and drank scotch. “It’s a mixed-up afternoon, I guess.”

  I took a cigarette package out of my pocket and offered cigarettes to the Pooh and then to Craig. He started to take one and then looked at the package.

  “Look,” he said then, “would you just as soon have one of mine? Under the circumstances?”

  I didn’t get that, either. It seemed to be my afternoon not to get things. But I said, “Sure,” and put my cigarettes back, and waited while the Pooh took one from Craig’s pack. Craig was smoking Blends.

  “Your uncle’s brand,” he said to the Pooh, who said, “Oh, of course.”

  “Tact,” Craig said. “For what it’s worth.” He then finished his scotch and made himself another. It occurred to me that maybe Ann had had something. He handed me his pack and I took a Blends out of it and looked at the package. It didn’t say, on the outside, anything about Uncle Tarzan. It mentioned superlative mildness, and selected tobaccos and something called the Eldredge-Richmond Company. Under that, in smaller letters, were the words: “Blends Corporation, Successors.”

  I got the Eldredge by-play then or, at any rate, an inkling of it. I remembered having heard that Francis Eldredge’s father had been disappointed in business, which probably is worse for most people than being disappointed in love. (I speak here as an outsider, having never been enough in business—driving a hack isn’t so much a business as an obstacle race—to be disappointed in it, and having, I think, done fine in love, at least since I met the Pooh.) I remembered that the business which had disappointed the senior Eldredge had had to do with tobacco. I also remembered that some fellow I’d run into somewhere at a party, where Francis also was, had said that Francis’ father had died of a broken bank account. It appeared now that he had been succeeded, at least in part, by Uncle Tarzan.

  Craig had absently held out a hand to get his cigarettes back and, when he didn’t immediately, noticed that I was reading the package. I handed it to him, then, and said, “That Eldredge?”

  “His son,” Craig said. “The people P. J.’s with took over. The Eldredges said ‘we was robbed.’”

  “Was they?” I asked him.

  “Very probably,” Dwight Craig said. “I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Before we had the account. They could have been, of course. It happens, you know.”

  He said this in a tone which indicated doubt whether I did know, so I assumed George and Faye had filled him in. They share the general belief that people who write for a living are economic innocents, which most of them are. I know a few exceptions. I had, as a matter of fact, heard rumors that businessmen now and then did one another in, and not found them too hard to believe. I said “No!” in answer to Craig’s remark, and he laughed, briefly.

  “Anyway,” he said, “they made a fuss about it, in court and what not, and after the old man died this one”—he indicated Francis with a movement of his head—“kept on making a fuss. Still is, for all I know. P. J. doesn’t like it.”

  “Respects a good loser,” I told Craig. “Especially to him.”

  I thought Craig was about to agree, but he apparently thought better of it. He said, instead, that I had to admit P. J. was quite a guy. I didn’t have to admit anything of the sort about Uncle Tarzan, of course, but I did, to make Craig happy. I was tempted to add, since Craig had so obviously just remembered that my wife was Paul J. Barlow’s niece, that we would pass along Craig’s high opinion of him. I succumbed to the temptation. Craig looked at me pretty doubtfully for a moment, and I looked as guileless as I could which, I’ve been told, is reasonably guileless. Then Craig smiled and, for a second, I was reminded of Ann’s grin. Possibly she’d infected him with it in the two years three months and seven days; more probably, he’d had it to begin with, and they had been used to grin in rather the same way at pretty much the same things. All very touching, like “Auld Lang Syne” at New Year’s.

  “You do that,” Craig said. “Nothing’s too good for a client.”

  I said I doubted whether anything I said to Uncle Tarzan would have much influence, at any rate in the direction intended. I realized then, of course, why everybody—at least everybody connected with Townsend Associates, as Craig evidently was—had stood around and cheered when the Pooh’s uncle came out on the terrace. I’d known advertising agency people before. I wondered if Uncle Tarzan was about to pick up his marbles and go home, but that I didn’t ask. A client doesn’t need to hurl thunderbolts at an agency to be Jove. He merely needs to have a few millions to put into television and radio, and have a few more left over for big magazines and newspapers.

  The Pooh had wandered off during this, no doubt having heard enough of Uncle Tarzan, and was sitting on the edge of Pauline Barlow’s chaise, talking to her. Eldredge was standing near by, now and then, I gathered, dipping a toe into the conversation and George and P. J. were talking in what appeared to be a rather creaky fashion. Once P. J. waved a hand toward a level area and I assumed he was telling George that it was a likely place for a tennis court. Ann and Faye weren’t around, and neither was the bundle of samples. Apparently they had slipped away, as Faye had promised.

  I mentioned this to Craig, for want of anything better to mention. He said “Umm,” in a tone indicating he had noticed it. It seemed rather to depress him; he looked for a moment at the bar, thoughtfully, and then mixed himself a new drink. I poured what remained in the martini mixer into my glass and twisted a lemon peel over it so that there would be flavor of some sort. It wasn’t, I thought, like Jovial George to let martinis tire themselves On ice. Clearly, he was letting Uncle Tarzan obsess him.

  Craig and I stood there, rather listlessly, and drank what we had. I was about to tell him I’d be seeing him when, more or less into his glass, he said it was the damnedest thing. Then he said he was sorry, this time over his glass, and added that he’d probably acted like a damn fool. There wasn’t any particular answer to this, since I didn’t really know whether he had or not, so I said “Umm” in a tone to indicate he probably hadn’t. “Umm” is a very useful small sound; it will fill in any reasonably sized crack in communication.

  “Faye said something about a decorator coming to show fabrics,” he said. “Somebody from the Hibbards’, whoever they are. Nothing about its being Ann.”

  I said, “Oh, fabrics” and he said “yeah.” The conversation was as lacking in animation as the martinis. I told him the Hibbards ran an antique shop in the neighborhood and that I hadn’t known it was equipped with a decorator. I said Aaron Hibbard was quite an old boy; that his family had once owned pretty much everything around, and that Aaron and his wife still owned a good part of it. I said that, as a matter of fact, George’s property had been part of the “old Hibbard place” and was still called that by most of the old-timers. This did not appear to interest Craig particularly; it didn’t, as far as that went, interest me particularly. Craig kept looking at the french doors, pretty evidently to see Ann when, as presumably she eventually would, she came back through them. I finished the water in my glass. It wasn’t even cold any more. I looked reproachfully at George Townsend’s back. My reproach was evidently powerful; George turned around and looked at Craig and me. For an instant he didn’t appear jovial at all; then he did. He came over, beaming, and asked how we were making out. I showed him my glass.

  He made a sound with his tongue and teeth, said this would never do and filled the mixer with ice and measured two jiggers of gin and a very little vermouth over it. He stirred and I held out my glass and had it filled.

  “I tell you, old man,” George said, “how’s to see to the gin drinkers?”

  I took the mixer over to the Pooh and Pauline and filled the Pooh’s glass and looked around for more gin drinkers. There didn’t seem to be any more, so I put the mixer down on the terrace and sat down on the edge of the chaise by the Pooh and li
stened to some family talk. It seemed somebody named Agatha was in Europe and the Pooh, to bring me in, asked if that wasn’t wonderful. I said I hadn’t the faintest idea whether it was wonderful or not.

  “Cousin Agatha,” Pauline said, as if that would give me an idea. It didn’t, so I said “Umm.” Before very long, I thought, I was going either to be bored or slightly drunk—perhaps not so slightly drunk.

  I thought hard at the Pooh that, if we had any sense, we’d go home and drink our own gin, less diluted. Sometimes, when I think hard enough at the Pooh, it works. This time she said, “What ever happened to Janice?” It hadn’t worked.

  The trouble with the party then—and this I tried to explain later—was that it seemed to have no center, wasn’t pulled together around anything. The Pooh was talking to Pauline about things neither of them gave a damn about; Eldredge just stood near, as if he had forgotten why, and Faye and Ann Dean had taken themselves off. George had gone back to talk to Uncle Tarzan and now he had taken Dwight Craig with him, and the three looked as if they were talking business—earnest and a little sad. George seemed to be talking most of it, and Craig some and Uncle Tarzan very little. I heard George say, “Now listen, P. J.” in what seemed to me a tone of rather hollow cheer. I finished my drink and began to wonder how many I’d had. I couldn’t remember, exactly, so I poured myself another.

  It turned out to be just what I needed because, when I was halfway through it, I began to experience that sense of being in two—or perhaps several—places at once which now and then comes after a couple of drinks, and which I always find very pleasant. (Of course, following the trade I do, I am used to a certain degree of ambivalence even without martinis, but this comfortable pervasiveness has a special charm.) I was Orson Otis, watching Orson Otis—and the Pooh and Pauline and all the rest—from practically everywhere, as if I were a gas. All of us, of course including myself, were putting on a performance of which I was the omnipresent spectator. I was also, naturally, observing myself as a spectator observing myself (and the others) and so on for an infinite number of removes, but that becomes the picture of the baking powder can on the baking powder can, and eventually carries one down a long corridor to nothing at all. That afternoon I seldom got to be more than, at the most, three people, so I was able to say afterward, honestly, that I was not ever really intoxicated.

  I was also able to remember quite clearly what went on although—since time also becomes a little complex—not very clearly the chronological relationships between things. I think that I had just finished that first uncounted drink when Ann and Faye came back out, without the parcel of fabric samples, and I think it was shortly after that that I heard Uncle Tarzan say, “All right, after dinner. I don’t say I won’t listen.” He then walked away from George and Dwight Craig and went over to Faye, and Ann then—or perhaps a few minutes later (certainly she was for a while talking to Francis Eldredge) — came over to us and I stood up and collected more chairs.

  When Pauline left the group I’m not entirely clear; she was there and then she wasn’t there or, indeed, visible on the terrace. Then she was back, talking rather intently to Dwight Craig, and Ann Dean and the Pooh and I were sitting together talking about a marble-topped table. The Pooh had decided that we badly needed a marble-topped table, and Ann had admitted—without enthusiasm, it seemed to me—that the Hibbards had one for sale. We were in the middle of that when Pauline came back and, after looking at her, I said, “I’ll get you some nails.”

  She looked blank, in addition to the way she had been looking, so the Pooh said, “He means to bite” and then Pauline, who for several moments hadn’t looked at all like the pretty blond kitten I had taken her for—or been willing to take her for—said “Oh” and managed to smile.

  “Father’s being difficult,” she said. “Could I have a drink, Oh-Oh?”

  She wanted scotch, and so did Ann. I went over to the bar, taking along the little martini pitcher since I was going anyway, and arranged things, and Faye helped carry them back, although it is no trouble to handle two scotches and a cocktail shaker. I suppose Faye was circulating, as a hostess should. She wouldn’t sit down; she stood and smiled at us, and looked immaculate and said she thought it was cooling off a little, which I hadn’t noticed. Then she said, “Oh, they’re talking business again” as if “they” were out behind the bam telling dirty stories, and were very small boys, and turned to look at her husband and Dwight Craig and Uncle Tarzan. She patted Pauline absently and Pauline said, “I’m so sorry, Faye. Father— —”

  Faye merely smiled at her and shook her head slightly and then again patted Pauline’s blond head. Then Faye walked the few steps necessary to join Uncle Tarzan and her husband and Craig and made a point of breaking up the conversation about business. I can still see her doing it—bright and immaculate and shining, very charming to and very lightly firm with the naughty little boys. The scene had all the symmetry of something long planned, or often repeated; something done with precision along the lines of pattern. Each of the four knew his part, even Uncle Tarzan, who looked like a big little boy who had been caught misbehaving—although of course not seriously. He nodded and smiled and patted Faye’s shoulder, in apology and approval. George beamed (of course) and tapped Uncle Tarzan lightly on his arm and took Craig’s elbow and led him over to the bar. It was a nicely directed scene and well lighted, too, although it did occur to me that everybody was patting everybody else a good deal. I patted the Pooh on her nearest knee, just to get into the swing of things, and she said, “Please yes, Oh-Oh,” and held out her glass. I filled it and mine and then held out my hand for Ann’s.

  She hesitated a moment and then gave the smallest shrug, finished what she had and said, “All right, a short one.” I went over to the bar and interrupted George and Dwight Craig, who were talking rather more intently than one expects people to talk on a shady terrace of a hot afternoon. Just as I reached them, George said, “Whatever he—” and then broke off and beamed at me and asked how things were going and was I getting enough to drink. I said I had been lately and he, looking past me toward his wife and Uncle Tarzan said that that was fine and took Ann’s glass out of my hand. He put it down on the bar and continued to look at his wife and the Pooh’s uncle, so I looked too. They weren’t doing anything of much interest—merely talking. Faye was holding on to one of Uncle Tarzan’s arms, but she often did that with people, I always supposed to keep them from going away.

  “I’m filling that up for Miss Dean,” I told George, to bring him back. “Scotch, she’s drinking.”

  George said, “Sure. Sure,” and poured a good deal of scotch in the glass, and put in ice and hadn’t much room for soda. Craig looked at the glass and seemed about to say something but in the end didn’t. So I took the scotch back to Ann and sat down again, this time in a chair of my own. Pauline had gone again; now she was talking to Francis Eldredge, no doubt hearing about cows.

  It was about then, I think, that I looked at my watch and it was six-thirty. A couple of minutes later I looked at it again, and it was ten minutes of seven. Time was of any duration it chose, like a rubber band. And everything and everyone was at once more clearly visible and further away, as if my eyesight had improved and I had, at the same time, withdrawn fifty feet or so. But I hadn’t; I was still in a chair, drinking a martini, and talking about a marble-topped table with the Pooh and Ann Dean. The Pooh thought we needed it for the terrace and I thought we could use it in the living room and Ann was saying that the place for a marble-topped table was in an antique shop. She said they were made for antique shops.

  Then she looked up and said, “Aren’t they, Dwight?” and Dwight Craig was standing looking down at us. He had had another drink or two since I’d left him and George at the bar, but so had we all.

  “Look,” he said, “did you drink all of that last one, Vix?”

  She looked at her glass and then up at him and smiled and said, “I must have, mustn’t I? Is it any of your damn business?”
She said all this in the same tone, light and pleasant. Then she grinned. It had, I remembered, been an extremely strong scotch. She wasn’t, I thought, a particularly experienced drinker although I don’t know quite why I thought this, since she wasn’t showing what she’d drunk. None of us was; I don’t want this to sound as if any of us was falling down. It was just a weekend afternoon in the country, not building up to a brawl. It was building up to a murder, of course, but politely. Nobody would have dreamed of getting drunk, and certainly Ann was nowhere near it.

  Dwight Craig said he guessed it wasn’t any of his business.

  “People can talk about marble-topped tables without being intoxicated, Mr. Craig,” the Pooh said, in the neat, precise way she likes to talk sometimes. She paused. “Or can’t they?” she asked, with interest.

  “It’s easier if you’ve had a few,” I told her. “Much easier.”

  “I’m sorry,” Craig said. “I know it isn’t any of my business, Ann.”

  He looked down at her and she looked up at him and I thought, hell, they’re not done with each other yet. They’re nowhere near done. I wondered if they were going to admit that to themselves. Then I thought that it certainly wasn’t any of my damn business, and not a situation I could use for the pulps. We all merely looked up at Dwight Craig and waited, as if to go back to our talk about marble-topped tables. It was rude, but there’s always a time—and particularly after a drink or two—when one more or less unavoidably chooses up sides. Now the Pooh and I were on Ann’s side.

  “I’ll tell you,” Dwight Craig said, “I knew a marble-topped table once. It had red veins in it.”

  “That’s not the right kind, Dwight,” Ann said. “Ours is pure white. We don’t want to talk about red veins. We think it’s very anatomical.”

  Craig was pretty deeply tanned, but he got red under the tan. I suppose she might as well have slapped him. He said, “O.K., Vix.” He turned away and started off, going nowhere in particular.