The Twenty-Seventh City

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“I said you’re just the same.”

“No.”

“You always did have your head in the clouds.”

“What?”

“Excuse us,” Jack said. A young family in tartan stood up to let them by. Probst tried to keep his eyes on his feet, but the dark space beneath the bench reminded him uncomfortably of the heavy cream. He wondered how few minutes he could get away with staying before he left again. Would five suffice? Five minutes to atone for a decade of silence?

Jack stopped. “Martin, this is Billy Wonder, friend of mine. Bill-y, this is Martin Probst, a very old friend of mine. He, uh—”

“Sure!” A large-boned man with buck teeth sprang to his feet. “Sure. Sure! This is quite an honor!” He took Probst’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“Didn’t catch your name,” Probst said.

“Sure! Windell, Bill Windell. Glad to know you.”

Probst stared at the buck teeth.

“Can we make some room here?” Jack said. Windell pulled Probst into a narrow space on the bench. Jack sat down fussily on his right with an air of mission accomplished. Windell slapped a pocket flask in a leather case against Probst’s chest. “Never touch the stuff! A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” He drove his elbow into Probst’s left biceps.

“Bill’s my boss,” Jack explained.

“You’d never guess it to see us at work,” Windell said.

“Don’t you believe it.” Jack reached across Probst’s lap and unscrewed the cap of the pocket flask. “He’s done one-forty all by himself.”

“Hundred thirty maybe.” Windell gave Probst a big, practiced wink, and Probst, not bothering to wonder what in hell the two of them were talking about, was filled with the certainty that Windell was a scoutmaster. His eyes, which were blue, had a milkiness that often showed up in men charged with instilling moral values. Furthermore, he had a crewcut. “So: Martin Probst.” Windell sucked his teeth and nodded philosophically.

Probst had no place to put his elbows. He tilted the flask to his lips, intending to take a polite sip. He gagged. It was apricot brandy. Elbows almost knocking on his lap, he passed the flask to Jack, who shook his head. “Thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

He tried to return it to Windell, but Windell said, “No, be my guest.”

Probst took a long swig, wiped his mouth, and looked at Jack for the cap to the flask. Jack didn’t seem to have it. Probst noticed it below him at his feet and reached down, but his legs straightened as he bent, pushing it over the edge of their tier and underneath the bleacher in front of them. He dropped into a squat, groping down.

“Don’t. Here—no,” Jack said. “I’ll get it.”

“No, no. Here.” Probst stretched until his fingers reached the ground, then unexpectedly he tipped backwards, landing on his butt in the shade of the fans, who were leaping to their feet in response to something on the field. The cold penetrated his pants, but he was more comfortable down here. His hand traveled far, searching for the cap. It came upon a sneaker and backed away over the coarse, damp concrete, and then ran into something soft – an apple core. Screams rode the chafed air. The space was too narrow for him to see what he was doing. He groped further, sensing Windell’s scoutmasterly gaze. Probst and Jack had been Scouts together, often tentmates, all the way up through Eagledom.

Well hi! The cap. He’d found the cap. His hand closed around it. He struggled up. “I think I’d better be going,” he said.

A forlorn sound creaked out of Jack. “Nih.”

“At least stay for the half,” Windell said.

Probst remembered the peculiar power Jack could wield, the whirlpool of guilt into which he could drag his more successful friend. “How much time is left?” he asked.

“Four minutes,” Jack said reproachfully.

A messy running play expired in front of them. The score was still 13–0. Probst turned to Windell. “So, uh, where do you live, Bill?” He already knew roughly what Windell did, he being Jack’s boss and Jack being in middle management at Sears.

“We’ve been living in West County for six years.” Windell gave a laugh.

What was so funny about that?

“I see. Whereabouts?”

“Ballwin, Cedar Hill Drive. Not far from whatchamacallit. West—”

“Haven. Westhaven.”

“That’s the place. We’re about a mile east of there. I’m always driving by it. See your name a lot.”

“Yeah.” Probst sighed.

“It looks like some project.”

“The foundations alone are twenty-five acres.”

“Huh.” Windell stared at the field, where penalty flags had been dropped. Jack was sitting on his hands, apparently content to let Probst’s presence speak for itself. His nose was red. Small brushes of straight gray hair sheltered his ears.

“But it must be a long commute for you,” Probst said.

“Hm? Oh. Not too bad. It’s something you get used to.”

“Well, if we keep on building like this in West County, you’ll be sitting pretty. Who knows, maybe Sears will move its headquarters out there.”

“Sears?”

“I,” Probst said. “I thought you worked for Sears.”

“No. I’ve been with Penney since I was, God, twenty. But Jack worked for Sears. He came over to us five years ago.”

Jack sniffed and swallowed. He didn’t seem to be listening, but after a few seconds, without looking at them, he said, “That’s right,” in a loud, deep voice.

“We’ve—” Probst felt that he was going to pop like a balloon if he had to sit here a minute longer. “We’ve been pretty out of touch since Jack left Webster—”

“Oh! Way to go!” Windell shouted, interrupting him.

“What a game,” Jack agreed.

This was the moment Probst had been waiting for. He stood up quickly. “That’s it for me,” he said. “Bill, it’s nice meeting you. If you’re ever by Westhaven, one of my men will be glad to show you around. And Jack, you and I—” Escape was so close he could taste it. He looked down at Jack, who had raised his chin but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ll have to get together sometime.” He clapped Jack lightly on the shoulder and started moving away.

“Martin!” Jack said suddenly. “It looks like I’ve got an extra ticket to the Big Red game on Sunday. Next week. Bill here’s got a camp-out with his Scouts, and—”

Probst turned back, feeling his face light up. “You’re a scoutmaster?”

“It’s the very least an old sinner can do for the world,” said Bill, who was not old, and seemed sinless.

“—the Redskins,” Jack was saying. “We could catch up a little, get a bite to eat before—”

“Sure, yes, fine,” Probst said, still staring at Bill.

Rolf Ripley liked a girl with pluck, and Devi, his latest acquisition, had it. Last night in her suite at the airport Marriott, she’d told him his nose was redder than a souse’s.

“A souse’s, luv? Do let’s let Rolf give us a good spank.”

“And you’ll start to cough,” she said.

“That won’t happen, luv. I don’t get coughs.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve learned from decades of experimentation to sleep with my head flat on the mattress. That way, the what the devil d’you call it—the mucus—stays where it belongs. No cough.”

Devi laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“A cold doesn’t spread through mucus. It spreads through blood.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I heard it on the radio.”

“Then why, pray tell, do I not get coughs?”

“Your body must be as stupid as your brain!”

She was a gem, a gem. And when he wanted to change key, he simply pushed a pedal: “Take it back.”

“I take it back.”

He’d never had another quite like her. All the dishes in his past, the Tricias and Maudes and Amandas, the sex piglets and Dallas snobs and randy undergrads, the mute tarts, corporate wives and gold-digging salesclerks, banquet favors, cynical secretaries and door-to-door sluts: all paled before Devi. Even the few he’d had in London and New York were not the real item, but imports, farm-girls at heart, sinning venally, not mortally. Men from the capitals never shared their finest stock, and though Rolf was in all ways their superior, Fate had consigned him to Saint Louis. Oh, the Saint Louis girls! God knew, Rolf had tried his Pygmalion best to teach them; still they remained porcine and drawling. They couldn’t hold a candle to Devi. She was his aesthetic fulfillment, teachable and teaching, as sharp as the glitter city Bombay and, in her docility, older than the Old World, an object to rut on and an angel to frame. In fact, he damn near loved her, and if she weren’t an Indian he might have gone further and made himself her fool. But he was at pains to be careful. For not only was Devi in cahoots with S. Jammu and Princess Asha Hammaker but she was dreadfully indiscreet. Among the tidbits she had dropped were the facts that Jammu was angling for the affections of the mayor; that Asha, whose fortune was made now, was pursuing Buzz Wismer as well; and that both these South Asian lovelies were intent upon staging a real-estate panic in the ghetto. Interesting.