Free Institute by James M. Cain Page A

wasn’t asleep.
    “Lloyd, there’s just one thing.”
    “What is it, Hortense?”
    “Listen, do you or don’t you?”
    “Do I or don’t I what?”
    “Love me?”
    “You know I do.”
    I threw back the covers, flopped her over, and fanned her backside until it sounded like pistol shots in the dark. Then her arms were wrapped around my neck.
    “I’m a degenerate,” she said. “I love it when you bop me.”

10
    M Y FINDING A BUILDING was purely by accident, and I got credit for brains I didn’t have. One day I woke up with a drawstring on my stomach—from the fact that I had a job to do and no idea how to do it. Hortense gave me my breakfast, there-thered me, and promised between kisses that something was bound to turn up. I called her Mrs. Micawber. She said: “Instead of glooming about it and feeling sorry for yourself, you could make some use of the day, like paying a courtesy call on Ralph—Ralph Hood, the senator. Except for writing him a note, which really isn’t much, you’ve done nothing about him. Why don’t you take him to lunch? Or at least invite him?”
    So I called his office and a bit to my surprise got through to him at once. He said he’d check his calendar and see if he was free and call me back. He did, and he was free. I said I would pick him up in my car, as the only place I was known was at Harvey’s, and from his office, it would be too far to walk. He told me to put my car in a parking lot and he would “blow” me to the ride.
    At twelve I stopped by his office and for twenty minutes had to shake hands and chat with the administrative assistant, the assistant assistants, and the secretaries—all in the outer office. Then for ten minutes I was admitted to his private office where the decorations consisted of framed pictures of him shaking hands with presidents Kennedy and Johnson, with the Queen of England, and with Smokey the Bear. At last we went downstairs. The guard at the door said to him: “Your car is waiting, Senator.” And sure enough, it was—at the curb, a Chrysler limousine with uniformed driver. We chatted as we rode, and I gave him the big piece of news, that the Institute seemed to be set, “and it’s all due to you, Senator. I can’t thank you enough.”
    He held up a hand. “I like to be thanked, but it was due to you, not me. I’ve heard a little about it. Richard Garrett called me, and so did Hortense. You impressed him no end—and her even more, I suspect. Lloyd, I wasn’t surprised. You impressed me, too, in court that day. More important, you impressed the judge. I would even go so far as to say that you set him back on his heels somewhat.”
    This left me slightly crossed up, that this reaction to me, Mr. Garrett’s reaction, I mean, which he had passed on to her by phone, had now become official. So it was being passed on to everyone. But I began to realize that it was the only reaction that could be maintained. If I was a guy whose wife would shortly be paired more or less publicly with the head of an institute he was underwriting, the only way he could play it would be straight, make noises that this friend of his wife’s was really some kind of genius, that Dr. Palmer had the job for that reason and not for reasons that might be inferred. But, of course, I said nothing about this to the senator. I merely listened while he talked on.
    When we arrived at Harvey’s, which is a basement restaurant with underground parking for cars, I gave the driver ten dollars to go have his lunch. Then I led the way to my table which I had reserved by phone and which the girl, a rather good-looking maîtresse d’, had waiting when we got there. We ordered, and when Senator Hood asked for a martini, so did I. He resumed discussing the Institute and the future I could look forward to, “now that the Garretts have fallen for you.” But I must not have been paying attention, because he stopped in midsentence and asked: “What is it, Lloyd? What did I