Authors: Louis Begley
No, it’s OK. Except that, can you believe it, Schmidtie, I’m pregnant! Hey, he heard the heartbeat!
Love, that is simply wonderful! He took her hand and kissed it. Congratulations to you and to Jason! What an absolutely fabulous event. Can I ask you a stupid question? How did it happen? I thought you were on the pill.
She turned red. I kind of lied to you. I took it like most of the time. This summer I thought I was getting a fat tummy! Hey, imagine the tummy I’m going to have. So I stopped. I figured nothing would happen. I didn’t take it with Bryan. Or with Mr. Wilson. Shit, was I scared then.
And what about the owner of O’Henry’s, the waiters, busboys, and everybody else, wondered Schmidt. Bodies are just bodies. No more questions for the moment, no more true confessions.
Well, you’ve been a very lucky young lady—from beginning to end! I guess the thing to do is to get right to work on your wedding. I want the bride to look like a bride when I dance with her.
She giggled and hid behind the napkin. Schmidtie, I want to put the wedding on hold. I didn’t want to talk about the baby until I was sure everything was OK. I guess it’s OK now, that’s what the doctor says. I’m past the third month.
You get it? It’s like this. Jason hit on me right after that time you got pissed off about Mike.
The dining room had been emptying. It was all right, although her voice carried. There was no one at the tables near them.
I went out dancing with him. Remember, you didn’t want to take me. I liked him all right, but I wasn’t sure. So I was laying the both of you. Then I missed my period and had the test. Boy, let me tell you, I was confused. It was getting real heavy with Jason, like I knew that this was really it for me, but I was still fooling around with you. God, Schmidtie, right now I wouldn’t know if I was getting married to the right guy. That’s why I didn’t talk to you yesterday.
Of course. Now he understood that too, her bewildering delicacy. She thought he should have every chance. Because certainly she was right about him; it was more than possible. Was Jason’s candidacy as strong? In novels he had read about such matters the girl always seemed to know, but they were just novels. One thing was clear to him. If he said one word, out of the boundless savoir faire he had acquired as a lifelong contributor to birth control causes, one word about how this was the time to act, she would go for his eyes with the dessert fork.
Love, he said, how absolutely extraordinary. I may need another glass of wine. To drink to you—and the baby. Have you told Jason?
Yeah, last night. When I saw him.
But I mean also about not knowing?
She shook her head. He’s not like you, he doesn’t carry
on about getting married. It’s not like his number-one priority. That’s OK with me. So I think I’ll kind of cool it until the kid is born. If you ask me, it’ll be beautiful and look like Jay. But if it has red hair and a big nose—jeez, I’ll have to say the stork brought it. Maybe Jason won’t care. Who knows?
He didn’t think he should tell her right then that more certain methods exist of discovering the answer to this particular riddle. There would be plenty of time for that. Besides, even on that subject he would probably be telling her nothing she didn’t already know. He had once fervently wished for grandchildren. If Charlotte and Jon really did get back together, and managed to keep their marriage going long enough, that wish might yet be fulfilled. He preferred not to ask himself whether the issue of their union would in fact give him the joys he used to imagine beyond the abstract satisfaction that Charlotte wasn’t at a dead end. It was easier to foresee the heartache and desolation of remaining on the outside of their lives. But a child of his own now, at his age—he would need more than the six months and then however long it took for the appearance of a definite family resemblance to get used to that idea.
You don’t think it would be more prudent to tell him you have this doubt? So he won’t feel later that he has been somehow misled? That he’s done things he might not have done if he had known? Like quitting his job with Mike and going into the marina business, to take one example, or the two of you living together? By the way, is that what you plan to do?
There was also the minor or perhaps not minor at all matter
of the visit to the seafarers in Nova Scotia. He decided he wouldn’t mention it.
Shit, Schmidtie, get off this. A baby is a baby. Jason knows about you. He loves me. So, big deal. If the kid isn’t his it’s mine, and he’s the stepfather.
Presented that way, the thought was intolerable to Schmidt, but he kept quiet. After all, he wasn’t likely to ask for custody.
Jason’s had it with running Mike’s security anyway, she continued. We want this marina. Come on, Schmidtie, relax. And listen, do you think we could live in your pool house when we get back from seeing Jason’s folks? Like while we’re looking for a place near Three Mile Harbor?
He smiled yes.
Oh, Schmidtie, I can’t wait to tell him. Can I call him on the car phone when we hit the road?
There was a message on the answering machine at home. Mr. Mansour’s Bernice wondered whether Mr. Schmidt could drop by the beach house at eleven the next morning, for coffee. Mr. Mansour was sorry not to invite Mr. Schmidt to stay to lunch. He would be flying back to the city. It was all right to call to confirm even if it was late. She or Vicky would be at the office. Seeing Mr. Mansour just then, coffee or no coffee, was not on Schmidt’s wish list. He was about to advise Bernice or Vicky, whichever one happened to answer, that he was busy for the rest of the day (he was wary of Mr. Mansour’s tendency to insist, and of his nocturnal habits) and would be busy all of the following morning, when consciousness
of a new reality intruded. Mike Mansour was no longer merely the eccentric billionaire with whom he hung out when he felt like it; he had become his prospective employer and could be summoning him as such. He called to say Mr. Mansour could count on his presence.
It was a cold and completely clear day. He drove to the main beach, left his car in the parking lot, and walked west on the sand which, close to the ocean’s edge, was as smooth and hard as the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue where Mary and he had had their apartment. There had been an elevator man in the building, a squat man with a Slavic-sounding accent, a bald head, bulging friendly eyes, and a lack of front teeth so complete that it made him drool when he talked—the sort of man, in brief, who could have emigrated to the United States under an assumed name after a career as a guard in Treblinka or Auschwitz or as an inmate there—with a particularly engaging habit of replying, when thanked for depositing you safely on the tenth floor, It is my pleasure and duty, and thank you gentleman—or thank you, lady, depending on the passenger. Oh, they had all made fun of John, the elevator man, and loved him, Mary, Charlotte, and Schmidt himself, and always remembered to have a small present for him at Christmas, a necktie or wool gloves, in addition to the cash distributed to him and the rest of the staff. One day there was a pimply replacement in the elevator cage, to whose smell they would have to become accustomed. Where is John? Today is his day on. Ah, John, he is dead. There was no one to whom they could offer condolences or a little sum of money.
An Orthodox church somewhere in Queens saw to the burial. That had been a model employee and an example for Schmidt to emulate and ponder.
Mr. Mansour, installed in an Eames chair in his study, telephones on a side table within the reach of his right hand, was all business once Manuel had served coffee and the pound cake cut into little cubes that accompanied the magnate from roost to roost between meals. Here it is, he said, your employment agreement. Holbein walked me through it. I’d like to sign you up before Christmas. The question is whether you want some lawyer to review it before you commit. We’ll pay the lawyer’s fee.
Give me a few minutes to read it and I’ll tell you.
Study, study. Take your time.
Unlike Mr. Mansour’s telephone conversations, the document wasn’t long. During a break that ensued between a call Mr. Mansour placed and a call he took, Schmidt said, Mike, this is very generous. I don’t need a lawyer to tell me that. I’ll sign now if you like.
Let’s go. You’re doing the right thing. Like they say,
merde!
I’ll be at your side all the way. You’ll have a great learning experience. We’ll have a drink to your success. Then I’ve got to leave. We’re closing a deal on a property down in Miami. A fabulous deal. I stole it from those guys.
Schmidtie, said Mr. Mansour after a pause, having looked around first, apparently to make sure Manuel had left the room, Jason’s told me you’re going to let him and Carrie stay in your pool house after Christmas while they’re looking for somewhere to live. I’m not going to say it’s none of my business,
because you need me to help you. Don’t let them stay there too long. Give them a deadline. Before Easter. Then if they’re still there, you can extend it for a month. They can find something they can pay for, but it won’t be as nice as your place. And—ha! ha!—it won’t be rent free. You’ve got to get them out of there before that baby is born or they’ll never leave.
Schmidt nodded.
It is no problem, but that’s not all. You should give that girl some money, so she’s independent. I don’t know for sure if you can afford that, but I think you can. The question is, Should Jason know about it? In my opinion, he shouldn’t. Among other things, he’ll start running the business like that money was his. It’s a good business, but he’s got to watch the margins, and that means he’s got to watch the overhead. The other aspect is right now he knows you two have been living together and he accepts that. You give her money, and it’s more than a couple of thousand dollars, right away he’ll start thinking maybe there’s something more to it. Once a cop always a cop. You can’t take the blue out of him!
Again, Schmidt nodded. It was nice to see that Carrie in her own way could keep up with the great tycoon. He said, Thank you. I’ve already taken care of this exactly as you recommend.
You see! You’re getting smart. That’s because you’re spending time with a smart Jew. By the way, do you think you can invite the Cannings to the Dominican Republic? Do it on my behalf? That Mrs. Canning—what’s her name, Caroline?—is one attractive woman. Brilliant too! That’s the kind of woman I could go for.
I
N MID-FEBRUARY
of the following year he began the tour Mike Mansour had asked him to make of the foundation’s offices in Central and Eastern Europe and the new republics that had detached themselves from the Soviet Union. As he got acquainted with the local staff and the Life Centers’ work in the field, no doubt remained in Schmidt’s mind: Mr. Mansour had hit the nail right on the head when he decided at the outset that the populations of these countries, given the nature of the catastrophes they had gone through since the Great War, needed better research and better teaching in the humanities even more urgently than new hospitals and orphanages, additions to housing stock, modern steel mills, personal computers, and improved telephone service. He couldn’t help though regretting a bias that came along with this call to life, one that he hoped might be attributable to Eric Holbein and the school of economics to whose drumbeat he marched. The failure of the Communist version was beyond dispute, the solutions of Holbein’s teachers might be sound, but Schmidt found himself
irritated by the slogans of market capitalism the centers were under instructions to repeat as part of otherwise commendable activities, and quite unable to share the conviction, put forth with such cheerful enthusiasm, that expelling everywhere the state as manager and owner and handing the keys over to newly minted local captains of finance were the necessary premises of a resurrection, let alone the good life. Sleeping badly, raiding the minibar of hotel after hotel, he wondered: Instead of worrying whether his new hire would quit, having become unused to work, should not Mr. Mansour have asked himself whether his protégé was still willing to espouse, with the requisite lawyer’s zeal, the positions of his employer? Had he become too independent? The question, Schmidt felt, didn’t require an immediate answer, and he couldn’t in any event give it, before figuring out where precisely Mr. Mansour himself stood—if indeed such a thing could be known.
His last port of call was Prague, the seat of the first of the European centers, established soon after the events that carried Václav Havel to the presidency. It had moved recently into new quarters on a steep historic street leading to the royal castle. Amid the smell of wet cement and the noise of sawing and hammering, the former dwellings of minor court functionaries that lined it were being converted into chic offices and residences for foreign businessmen and newly rich Czechs. In the countries he had already visited, he found that interviews he conducted during office hours with directors of the centers and their program officers quickly took on the character of a catechism—the questions and responses
equally predictable and monotonous. It was no different in Prague. If he was going to break through, he had better wait for the moment of relaxation—in his case, it may have been torpor—induced in equal measure by the meal of national delicacies and variants of vodka or plum brandy to which he treated them, and rapid exchanges on the subject of the American society and its failings. Only then was there a chance of penetrating the callus of evasiveness and suspicion built up over years of dodging informers and cajoling despotic superiors. There was a new barrier as well, a mixture of resentment of his undeserved good fortune, bestowed upon him simply by virtue of his being an American, and determination not to let him forget whose territory he was on and according to whose rules he would have to play. All the same, he took these people to be good, on the whole. They had hung on to as much decency as was consistent with not getting into really bad trouble and obtaining a modicum of comfort and pleasure: in fact, their readiness, once they had been loosened up, to argue into the night about any subject that did not put in question their performance and prerogatives made him think they bore a skewed resemblance to the hapless
intelligents
he used to encounter in Dostoyevsky and Gogol. Schmidt and the director of the Prague center were setting out on their way to just such a meal when Schmidt stumbled in the historic cobbled street and turned his ankle. The pain was so acute he thought it was broken. Many hours and X rays later, he found himself with a bandage wound around an ankle that had been officially pronounced only sprained. By the next morning, he was also in possession of a
carved walking stick that the director told him had been his father’s. He begged Schmidt, in the name of their newly formed friendship, to keep it.