The Last Gentleman

manners were good without being too ceremonial. There was a lightness in him: he knew how to fool with her. They could even have a fuss. “Now you listen to me, Billy Barrett, it’s time you buckled down,” etc. So acute was his radar that neither Mrs. Vaught nor her husband could quite get it into their heads that he did not know everything they knew. He sounded like he did. She would speak allusively of six people utterly unknown to him—“So I took one look at her when she got home from school and of course her face was allbroken out and, I said ho- ho —”
    â€œWho is that now?” asked the engineer, cupping a hand to his good ear and straining every nerve.
    â€œSally, Myra’s oldest.”
    â€œMyra?”
    â€œMy stepdaughter.”
    She was much as he remembered other ladies at home, companionable and funny, except when she got off on her pet subject, fluoridation or rather the evils of it, which had come in her mind to be connected with patriotic sentiments. Then her voice become sonorous and bell-like. She grew shorter than ever, drew into herself like a fort, and fired in all directions. She also spoke often of the “Bavarian Illuminate,” a group who, in her view, were responsible for the troubles of the South. They represented European and Jewish finance and had sold out the Confederacy.
    â€œYou know the real story of Judah P. Benjamin and John Slidell, don’t you?” she asked him, smiling.
    â€œNo ma’am,” he said, looking at her closely to see if she was serious. She was. In her smiling eyes he caught sight of fiery depths.
    Rita, however, paid no attention tohim. She looked through him.
    Kitty? Twice she was in Jamie’s room when he came up, but she seemed abstracted and indifferent. When he asked her if she wanted a Coke (as if they were back in high school in Atlanta), she put her head down and ducked away from him. He couldn’t understand it. Had he dreamed that he had eavesdropped?
    On his fourth visit to Jamie he had a small amnesic fit, the first in eighteen months.
    As he climbed into the thin watery sunlight of Washington Heights, the look and smell of the place threw him off and he slipped a cog. He couldn’t remember why he came. Yonder was a little flatiron of concrete planted with maybe linden trees like a park in Prague. Sad-looking Jewish men walked around with their hands in their pockets and hair growing down their necks. It was as far away as Lapland. A sign read: Washington Heights Bar and Grill. Could George Washington have set foot here? Which way is Virginia?
    He sat down under a billboard of Johnnie Walker whose legs were driven by a motor. He puts his hands on his knees and was careful not to turn his head. It would happen, he knew, that if he kept still for a while he could get his bearings like a man lost in the woods. There was no danger yet of slipping: jumping the tracks altogether and spending the next three months in Richmond.
    It was then that he caught sight of Kitty coming from the hospital, head down, bucking the eternal gale of the side streets. He knew only that he knew her. There were meltings of recognition about his flank and loin. He wished now that he had looked in his wallet, to make sure of his own name and maybe find hers.
    â€œWait,” he caught her four steps down the IRT.
    â€œWhat? Oh.” She smiled quickly and started down again.
    â€œWait a minute.”
    â€œI’ve got to go, ” she said, making a grimace by way of a joke.
    â€œPlease come over here for a moment. I have something to tell you.” He knew that he could speak to her if he did not think about it too much.
    She shrugged and let him guide her to the bench.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI, ah, thought you might do me a favor.” He looked at her hard, groping for himself in her eyes. If he could not help her, hide her in Central Park, then she could help him.
    â€œSure, what?”
    â€œYou’re going in the subway?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI just came out. To see, ah—” He knew he would know it as soon as she thought it. She thought it. “—Jamie.”
    â€œGood. He’ll be glad to see you.” She eyed him, smiling, not quite onto whatever roundabout joke he was playing and not liking it much.
    â€œI changed my mind and decided to go back downtown.”
    â€œAll right.” But it was not all right. She thought he was up to some boy-girl