Authors: Stanley Elkin
“Go on up,” she said. “I still have a few things to do yet. I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
“No,” said Druff. “I have to see Mikey. I’ll just put my feet up on the couch in the living room.”
“Take your shoes off first, they’re filthy. My God, you really must have gone all over town to find those batteries.”
But Druff had already made it to the couch. He was already sleeping. Already deep into his rapid-mouth-motion version of REM sleep.
“I can place Su’ad with our Mikey. I can place Dick with our Mikey. I think I can place Mikey and Dick with the buyer,” he said aloud from the hustings of his dreamed oratory. “I think, from something Doug said, I can place Doug with all three of them. I can place Dan with the concierge, I can place him with the buyer,” he said, pleased how even in sleep he’d subsumed Margaret Glorio’s gender twice now under the neutral, asexual term. He smiled, proud of his presence of mind. “It’s all pretty much circumstantial, I guess, but the world’s pretty circumstantial, too.”
“Bob,” Rose Helen said.
“No,” he said, “I’m on a roll.”
“Bob,”
she said, and shook him.
“No,”
he said, “stop it! Do you know how frustrating it is when you do that, Rose Helen? Let me have my say, will you? It’s still America. We still have something called the First Amendment, if you want to know. Give a guy a break here a minute.
If
you’d be so kind. There, that’s better. Thank you. Now,” he said, “where was I? Dick with Mikey. Mikey with Dick with the buyer. The buyer with the concierge. The concierge with Dan. Dan with Ham ‘n’ Eggs and Jerry Rector. (I’m eyewitness to that part.) Ergo, by extension, all three of that lot with the buyer as well as with—as well as with—did I say Doug with Mrs. Macklin? Right then, Doug with Mrs. Macklin. Mrs. Mack with the mayor. And Doug with the mayor, too, of course. And obviously Doug with Dick. So Dick with the mayor. So Dick with Mrs. Macklin. Mrs. Mack with Mr. Mack. So why not Mr. Macklin with our Su’ad? Or our Mikey with Mr. Macklin? Or our Mr. Macklin with the little boy who lives down the lane? The cheese stands alone.
“Hey, is someone getting any of this down? Is anyone getting
some
of this down?
“No? Not? No? Maybe I’m talking in my sleep to the wrong party here. Maybe I ought to be sleeping with the buyer. With someone who takes me just a little more seriously, if you please.”
“Come on,” Rose Helen said, “wake up. Unless you’re already awake. You
are
awake, aren’t you? You do this on purpose. This is your way of making conversation. It’s your way of making conversation, isn’t it? Sure, you’re gone all day. Then, instead of explaining yourself, you do this song and dance. Well, I don’t have to listen to it. I
won’t
listen to it! I’m going upstairs. If you get tired of talking to yourself and want to come to bed and behave, you come up too. Don’t put the chain on the door; Michael isn’t home yet.”
“Rose Helen,” Druff said.
“What is it?”
“The chain isn’t on?”
“Mike hasn’t come back.”
“Please,” Druff pleaded, “put the chain on.”
“He isn’t home.”
“MacGuffin’s outside.”
“Does he have a key?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, there you are then.”
“Yes, but you don’t know my MacGuffin. He’s pretty slippery.”
“Good night,” Rose Helen told her sleeping husband.
“Sure,” he said, “run off just when I need you.”
“What do you need me for? I gave you your dinner.”
“I need you because.”
“I’m going up. Good night.”
“God damn it, Rose Helen, I’m not crazy. You think I talk to myself? I don’t talk to myself. I don’t talk to myself when I’m dreaming. I’m not sure I could do this if no one was there.”
“Good night,” she said, and Druff, in his sleep, could hear her going upstairs.
He was quiet. He felt as if the cat had his tongue. Well, he dreamed to himself, that’s that. That’s that, then. A politician to the last. He needed his audience, he supposed. With Rose Helen gone, there was no one to hear him. Now he’d never be able to work it out, all the linkages. All that complicated family tree of corruption and caper, the linchpin hidden in its leaves. Because I’m
not
crazy, he dreamed, thought, subconscioused—whatever. Because I’m
not
crazy. On the contrary, I’m a very decorumed, decorous guy. I have my flaws, I’d be the first to admit it. Oh, sure, he sleep-mulled, I’m no more perfect than the next fallen fellow. Well those surgeries. Well those collapsed lungs. Well that zippery leg where they took out my vein. Well that impotence. Well my itty-bitty paranoia, well my dreamspeak. But I have my principles. No talking aloud if no one’s in the forest to hear me. Mum’s the word, but you won’t catch
me
saying it!
In his sleep he heard a noise.
“MacMikey?” he mumbled.
MacGuffin.
You don’t have a key.
I have the key to your heart.
The chain’s up.
I’m pretty slippery. I’m slippery dickory dock.
Amscray, will you?
Otway orfay?
Who needs you?
Well, unless I’m much mistaken, you do.
Do not.
Do too.
This is ridiculous.
This is ridiculous?
This
is?
You
invoked me.
When did I do that?
Oh, please, Druff. You can fool some of the people some of the time and part of the people all of the time.
Druff waited for it to go on, but evidently it had finished.
Well, Druff went, as long as you’re here. This is my thinking on the thing. I can place Su’ad with our Mikey. I can place Dick with our Mikey. I think I can place MacMikey and Dick with MacMeg. I think, from something MacDoug said, I can place him with all three. I’ve got MacDan with the concierge, I’ve got him with MacGlorio. It’s all pretty circumstantial, but the world’s pretty circumstantial, too.
Now, MacDruff went, where was I? MacDick with MacMikey. MacMikey with Dick and the buyer. The buyer with the MacConcierge. The concierge with Dan. MacDan with Ham ‘n’ Eggs and MacRector. Did I say Doug with MacMacklin? Right then, Doug with MacMacklin. Mrs. MacMack with Mr. MacMayor. And Doug with the mayor, too, of course. And obviously MacDoug with MacDick. So MacDick with MacMayor. So Dick with Mrs. Macklin. So Mrs. MacMacklin with Mr. MacMacklin.
So why not Mr. MacMacklin with Su’ad? So why not MacMikey with Mr. Macklin?
Am I pulling it all together, or am I pulling it all together? Am I way ahead you? Are you eating my dust?
Hey, goes MacGuffin, I’ve been there and gone. Are you psycho, or what? You fair give me vertigo. Until you’ve walked thirty-nine steps in my macmoccasins, kiddo, don’t you go be comin’ up in my face like you be some man who know too much.
Why?
Cause it give me the frenzy.
It do, do it, Mr. Bones?
Without a shadow of a doubt, Rebecca.
Well, I’ll be spellbound, Druff went on.
You will, will you? goes MacGuffin.
Didn’t I say so?
Yeah, you said so all right, but between you, me and the lamppost
I
say you’re for the birds!
Oh yeah? Oh yeah? A bunch of rugs mysteriously shows up on a bunch of floors and the lady just vanishes?
I’d say so.
Su’ad and my son. That’s where they met, in that night-school art class.
Mnh hmn.
She was a Shiite Muslim. Do you know all the trouble they get into?
So?
So she used Mikey’s paints.
So?
Don’t you get it? She drew Oriental rugs. Iranian carpets, yes? The Iran-Lebanon nexus? The Iranian-Lebanese-Syrian one?
Mnh hmn.
Su’ad was a
smuggler!
She not only brought carpets out of her country but got commissions for designs she worked out in night school in to her weavers. She used the place as her studio. She used their light.
She used paints and swatches of canvases I paid for!
Ho hum.
What’s that, ho hum?
Come on, MacGuffin goes, you ain’t telling me nothing. Nothing. Zippo. Not a thing.
Wait up. Hold on. There were certain conversations in the synagogue. I’d made a reference to rugs. Dan, somebody, said I was warm. Other stuff was said. Double entendres, very cryptic shit about bankers. Macklin was a hardened banker. I asked MacMayor. He said it was none of my business.
Bankers.
And one of them said something about psychiatrists writing prescriptions for pianos, dinette sets. I don’t know, whatever the traffic will bear.
I put it to you again. So?
Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?
Whatever the traffic will bear!
I’m City Commissioner of Streets.
I’m
in traffic! Who more than? Traffic’s the key!
Again with the traffic, again with the key. Metaphors. Puns.
Have you got a better explanation?
What, are you kidding me?
There’s already a question on the floor.
All right then, yes. Sure. The little red dot in the middle of the Hindu woman’s forehead.
Little red dot? Hindu woman’s forehead? I don’t…
It’s a microchip, silly. With the plans.
The plans.
No? All right. Say it’s wartime. Say there’s this Lord Haw-Haw type with a slight but very distinct stammer who broadcasts this very seductive, very seditious, very traitorous garbage on the shortwave back to our boys in the foxholes. We’re losing the war. This is just insult to injury. Fucks morale on all fronts. A major puts a commando team together to take the son of a bitch out. Very do-or-die mission. We’re looking for a few good men. Montage of serious training. Cut to guy who splits his nuts open on the confidence course. To guy whose character ain’t in it and he loses it. Okay, commandos finally get through. Countercommandos go after them. Armageddon. Heavy losses all around…
Commandos? Countercommandos? What are you…
Jerk, the stammer was a
code!
A code.
Da dit dit dot. He was sending inside hush-hush on the enemy’s secret plans and high doings. The major was just out of the loop.
You.
You ’re
out of the loop.
I’m
out of the loop. What about you and your magic-carpet conspiracies? Connecting the dots—A goes with B goes with C goes with … Trying to get it all to spell mother. Trust me, these are MacGuffin sorts of things. It won’t wash, Druffish.
Why not?
Well, the coincidences for one thing, the things that don’t track.
What doesn’t track?
All right. Case in point. How could Hamilton Edgar know you were going to stroll past B’nai Beth Emeth? That you’d wake up this morning and, not realizing it’s Saturday, get all dressed up prepared to go to work? Yet he seemed to be right there waiting for you, didn’t he?
All right, that was accidental. I presented him with an opportunity and he took advantage of it. What’s wrong with that?
Pretty farfetched, if you ask me.
I
am
asking you. Ain’t that just what it says on your shingle? The MacGuffin: MacGimmicks Are Us. What else doesn’t track?
Well, you make an awful lot of Margaret’s seeming to know about your son and that Shiite character.
She did know about them.
Well, sure she did. In your sleep, in your sleep, didn’t you put him behind the wheel? Didn’t you keep her up half the night with your run-her-over discussions?
I don’t
know
I kept her up.
Ri-i-ght.
And I never mentioned rugs.
You made a
point
of mentioning rugs!
When?
When? When? When you called her from the rabbi’s crapper, that’s when. That’s one when.
Suddenly, he remembered. Just yesterday, Druff went, just yesterday my driver placed Margaret and my kid together! In the limo, after we dropped her off,
Dick
mentioned it!
But Dick’s nuts. Dick’s around the bend. He’s across the river and through the woods. He’s somewhere over the rainbow. Don’t you even know that much?
Doug, then. Doug said some stuff, too.
Doug? Doug’s nuttier than Dick is.
Gee, Druff went, no longer certain where he stood. Gosh.
I think my work here is finished.
You’re leaving? But why? Wait. You can’t. You mustn’t.
Listen, life is either mostly adventure or it’s mostly psychology. If you have enough of the one then you don’t need a lot of the other.
“Mom, Dad, I’m back,” Mikey called.
That’s it, goes MacGuffin. I’m gone.
“Mom? Dad? I’m back.”
“What? Who’s—
Oh, Mikey. It’s you. You scared me.”
“You’re still dressed. What are you doing down here, Daddy? Is anything wrong?”
“What? No. I fell asleep on the couch.”
“Is Mom all right?”
“Of course she’s all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“She’s fine.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine and dandy.”
“Because you were gone all day. I was pretty worried.”
“No need.”
“Well, when you didn’t come back. And you’re fully dressed. You didn’t have chest pain, did you? You didn’t have to lie down on the couch till your pain went away?”
“I didn’t have pain. I’m fine. I was tired. As a matter of fact, I was waiting for you.”
“For me?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Did you want to tell me something? Is it about you and Mom? Because just because you had that little quarrel this morning, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Your parents don’t get divorced because they had a little quarrel.”
“Nobody’s getting divorced.”
Mikey actually said “Whew.” “Whew,” he said, “that’s a relief.”
“It’s about you,” Druff said.
His son closed his eyes, he did his disappearing act. Then, having found somewhere in his intimate, immediate dark the courage to face him again, he opened them. “Am I in trouble?” he asked his father.
“I don’t know,” Druff said. “You might be in trouble.”
“What did
I
do?”
“Do you remember all those times you used to ask if we were well off? What our financial condition would be if something happened to me?”
“Dad, I was a
kid.
”
“You were a teenager.”