Free About Schmidt by Louis Begley Page A

everything keeps going around and around.
    I told you to take a leave for as long as necessary to look after Mary, and not even think of retiring. There is a race of men—all federal and state and bank employees, and most dentists—who are born to retire. They aspire to retirement from the moment they are born. Youth, sex, work, are only the necessary intermediary states: the subject progresses from larva to pupa to nymph until, at last, the miracle of metamorphosis is complete and gives the world the retired butterfly. Golf clubs, funny shoes, and designer sunglasses for the dentist, campers and gas-fired barbecue sets for the employees at the low end of the pay scale! You and I belong to a grander race. We need to be kneaded by misfortune and modern medicine before we are ready. Praised be the Lord, I am happy to announce that you strike me as unripe for a living death. What you need is a job. I’m going to think one up for you.
    Schmidt felt his heart pound. Gil was going to offer himwork: ask that he negotiate the financing for his production company’s next movie deal. Or some sort of consultancy—if only it wasn’t a purely legal job. Then he could take it without running afoul of the no-practice rules of the W & K retirement plan!
    No dice. All Gil had to offer was advice to be endured patiently. Isn’t that man DeForrest who runs Wood & King your friend? Can’t you work something out with him? If they don’t want to redistribute partnership percentages, why shouldn’t you go back as a partner on salary? A sort of senior adviser?
    Schmidt laughed.
    It’s too late for that. Too many irreversible steps have been taken. I have bargained for a pretty decent deal by W & K standards, I have no clients left—they too have been redistributed and seem quite happy. Where would I live in the city? Let’s talk about something cheerful: like the Blackman children!
    We’ll do the children in due course. You have a problem.
Quite
seriously, Schmidtie, isn’t there anything you want to do? How about a foundation? Even better, go on some boards. What’s the name of that lawyer with bad skin who raised money for Reagan? That’s what he has done.
    You’ve put your finger on my problem! All I’ve done is work for W & K. I am a product nobody needs. That’s why you can’t get me back on the shelf. I have thought about foundations. And even if there were some harmless small outfit that would hire me, I am not sure I’d go for it! In the first place, there is the practical angle: it would cost me more to move back to the city and take such a job than it would pay. More important, I’ve always disliked charities and the sort ofpeople who run them. It’s my vision of hell. You raise money and set aside a fat slice for salaries and overhead. The next thing you know, you have to invent programs so that what’s left can be spent on them. Then da capo! Jaw-breaking boredom!
    Seeing Gil’s blond face darken, Schmidt added with alacrity: I don’t mean all not-for-profits, for instance not the home for actors with Alzheimer’s you support, that’s quite useful, and I don’t dislike all foundation presidents, just most of them. The simple truth is just as I said—nobody wants me. Not my firm and neither foundations nor boards. I haven’t had the right extracurricular activities, so I don’t have the right profile!
    Schmidtie, what you don’t have is the right attitude!
    Believe me. I am like some guy on a bus who got up to pee and comes back to find that his seat has been taken, along with every other one. What can he do? Get off? You know what that means in the case of the one and only bus ride. It’s better to look stupid and hang on to a strap. What do I care if I look stupid!
    You certainly shouldn’t have gone to pee while your pal DeForrest was getting himself elected presiding partner of your firm. I’ve never understood it. You as much as told me the job could have been yours; all you had to do was to say