knights and paladins.—Our town,” he said. He brought her to the curb where Dick, in his twin capacity of chauffeur and spy, was illegally parked in the limo, and waited while the man came out from behind his driver’s seat, touched his hand to his cap to the lady and held the door open for them, crisply shutting it when they were seated. “Women don’t usually go for a street commish,” Druff confided. “Nine times out of ten they’d rather have an alderman. Blunt, visible power’s the aphrodisiac in this trade.”
“I’d rather have an alderman,” Miss Glorio said.
“There’s a cellular telephone in this limo,” Druff said. “Want to call the dealer, see what’s what with your transmission?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. What do you mean you’re married, that I ought to know that going in? I’m not going in anywhere, you’re not sweeping anyone off her feet.”
“Look, I’ll show you.” He picked up the handset and called Time and Temperature. “It’s seventy-one degrees,” he reported to the woman, “it’s two-sixteen.” He proposed ringing it again and letting her hear for herself. “Boy that gives me a kick,” he said. “Look, I even have call waiting. I don’t care, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’m old enough to be from a generation that still marveled that there were car radios. The clarity of long-distance calls astonished us. ‘Gee,’ we’d say to the people of our time one and two thousand miles across the country, ‘you sound like you’re right next door.’ But this is even better. We’re in a moving car, for goodness sake. I can call long-distance, I can call long-distance to someone in another moving car.”
“Why? What would you say?”
“I don’t know, that they sound like they’re right next door. It’s the idea of the thing. I don’t know, maybe I just have a lower awe threshold than the next guy, maybe that’s what keeps me feeling young,” lied the City Commissioner of Streets, who felt neither awe nor youth, who’d heard—and at once had registered—Margaret Glorio’s remark that he wasn’t sweeping anyone off her feet, and whose insistent, meaningless, imperturbable charm rolled off his tongue as casually as a campaign promise and who, by engaging her in conversation in the restaurant in the first place, and paying her check, and by saying outlandish things to her and practically hijacking her into his municipal limousine, had merely meant to keep the MacGuffins coming, though he realized, of course, that it was alien to the form to volunteer, even to intercede, that one didn’t go prancing after a fate or it wasn’t a fate anymore, only one more misplaced obsession. Still, the commissioner reasoned, adding his driver’s admission earlier that morning that the city was talking about transferring him (and Dick’s being there, in the outer office, standing in for the regular security guy, soaking up Druff’s interoffice communications with Mrs. Norman) and the man’s unaccustomed solicitousness (the chauffeur’s buttered bushwah about Druff’s Fourteen Points) to the coincidence of his son’s having kept company with the hit-and-run-over Su’ad, and the city’s and university’s nervousness about the incident, even the usurpation of his table at Toober’s (what had he been, fifteen minutes late? twenty?), even the restaurateur’s little hesitation step when Druff had offered to sit at the bar and even (though here, Druff had to admit, he was probably stretching) the treatment he’d received when he went to claim his suit, there was enough circumstantial affront to warrant Druff’s aroused suspicions. Well, worse cases had been made. Though, if only to be fair to the rest of them—to Toober, to Dick, to Mrs. Norman, to Hamilton Edgar, to his son and the unnamed co- conspirator hustling alterations at Brooks Brothers—didn’t Druff have to wonder that if a little mid-life crisis might not be entirely
“I’d rather have an alderman,” Miss Glorio said.
“There’s a cellular telephone in this limo,” Druff said. “Want to call the dealer, see what’s what with your transmission?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. What do you mean you’re married, that I ought to know that going in? I’m not going in anywhere, you’re not sweeping anyone off her feet.”
“Look, I’ll show you.” He picked up the handset and called Time and Temperature. “It’s seventy-one degrees,” he reported to the woman, “it’s two-sixteen.” He proposed ringing it again and letting her hear for herself. “Boy that gives me a kick,” he said. “Look, I even have call waiting. I don’t care, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’m old enough to be from a generation that still marveled that there were car radios. The clarity of long-distance calls astonished us. ‘Gee,’ we’d say to the people of our time one and two thousand miles across the country, ‘you sound like you’re right next door.’ But this is even better. We’re in a moving car, for goodness sake. I can call long-distance, I can call long-distance to someone in another moving car.”
“Why? What would you say?”
“I don’t know, that they sound like they’re right next door. It’s the idea of the thing. I don’t know, maybe I just have a lower awe threshold than the next guy, maybe that’s what keeps me feeling young,” lied the City Commissioner of Streets, who felt neither awe nor youth, who’d heard—and at once had registered—Margaret Glorio’s remark that he wasn’t sweeping anyone off her feet, and whose insistent, meaningless, imperturbable charm rolled off his tongue as casually as a campaign promise and who, by engaging her in conversation in the restaurant in the first place, and paying her check, and by saying outlandish things to her and practically hijacking her into his municipal limousine, had merely meant to keep the MacGuffins coming, though he realized, of course, that it was alien to the form to volunteer, even to intercede, that one didn’t go prancing after a fate or it wasn’t a fate anymore, only one more misplaced obsession. Still, the commissioner reasoned, adding his driver’s admission earlier that morning that the city was talking about transferring him (and Dick’s being there, in the outer office, standing in for the regular security guy, soaking up Druff’s interoffice communications with Mrs. Norman) and the man’s unaccustomed solicitousness (the chauffeur’s buttered bushwah about Druff’s Fourteen Points) to the coincidence of his son’s having kept company with the hit-and-run-over Su’ad, and the city’s and university’s nervousness about the incident, even the usurpation of his table at Toober’s (what had he been, fifteen minutes late? twenty?), even the restaurateur’s little hesitation step when Druff had offered to sit at the bar and even (though here, Druff had to admit, he was probably stretching) the treatment he’d received when he went to claim his suit, there was enough circumstantial affront to warrant Druff’s aroused suspicions. Well, worse cases had been made. Though, if only to be fair to the rest of them—to Toober, to Dick, to Mrs. Norman, to Hamilton Edgar, to his son and the unnamed co- conspirator hustling alterations at Brooks Brothers—didn’t Druff have to wonder that if a little mid-life crisis might not be entirely
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