The Last Gentleman

see there was something dreadfully wrong. The little cells were smudged—they looked for all the world like Japanese lanterns shining through a fog. That was over a year ago—”
    Instead he was thinking of wars and death at home. On the days of bad news there was the same clearing and sweetness in the air. Families drew closer. Azaleas could be seen. He remembered his father’s happiness when he spoke of Pearl Harbor—where he was when he heard it, how he had called the draft board the next morning. It was not hard to see him walking to work on that Monday. For once the houses, the trees, the very cracks in the sidewalk had not their usual minatory presence. The dreadful threat of weekday mornings was gone! War is better than Monday morning.
    As his sweat dried, the fleece began to sting his skin.
    â€œâ€”fact number two. Jamie has the best mind I ever encountered. Better even than Sutter, my charming ex-husband. It’s really quite funny. His math teacher in New Hampshire was glad to get rid of him. ‘Get him out of here,’ he told me. ‘He wants to argue about John von Neumann’s Theory of Games —’”
    It was her silences, when they came, that he attended.
    â€œSo what is the problem?” he asked.
    â€œHe’s remitted on prednisone. Poppy and Dolly refuse to admit that he is going to die. Why not give him another pill, they say. Well, there are no more pills. He’s been through them all.”
    He was silent.
    She regarded him with a fond bright eye.
    â€œSomehow you remind me of the lance corporal in Der Zauberberg. Do you mind if I call you lance corporal?”
    â€œNo ma’am.”
    â€œWhat would you like to do if you had your choice?”
    â€œI do have my choice. Go with Jamie.”
    â€œNo, I mean if Jamie hadn’t showed up.”
    â€œOh, I’d go see Kitty.”
    â€œLeave all of us out of it. And suppose, too, money is no object.”
    â€œI guess I’d finish my education.”
    â€œIn what?”
    â€œOh, metallurgy, I expect.”
    â€œWhat school would you pick?”
    â€œColorado School of Mines.”
    â€œYou’d like to go out there?”
    He shrugged. “Why not?”
    â€œSuppose Jamie would want to go too.”
    â€œThat’s up to him.”
    â€œTake a look at this.”
    He found himself gazing at a curled-up Polaroid snapshot of a little white truck fitted with a cabin in its bed. The truck was parked on a stretch of meager shingly beach. Kitty, in long shorts, leaned against the cabin, wide-brimmed hat in hand in a burlesque of American-lady-on-safari.
    â€œWhat is this?”
    â€œUlysses.”
    â€œUlysses?”
    â€œHe was meant to lead us beyond the borders of the Western world and bring us home.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œBut seriously now, here’s the proposition,” she said. And he found that when she gave him ordinary directions he could hear her. As of this moment you are working for me as well as for Poppy. Perhaps for both of us but at least for me. Keep Jamie up here long enough for Larry to give him a course of huamuratl. You two rascals take my apartment here in the city and here are the keys to the shack on Fire Island. Now when you get through with Larry, take Ulysses and take off. Go home. Go to Alaska. In any event, Ulysses is yours. He has been three hundred miles, cost me seven thousand dollars, and is as far as I’m concerned a total loss. Here is the certificate of ownership, which I’ve signed over to you and Jamie. It will cost you one dollar. Jamie has coughed up. She held out her hand. “I’ll take my money, please.”
    â€œI don’t have a dollar.”
    The articles, papers, keys, photograph she lined up on his thigh. He looked closely at the snapshot again.
    â€œWhat did you get it for?” he asked her.
    â€œTo camp in Europe. Isn’t that stupid? Considering that I’d have to buy gas for that monster Ulysses by the liter.”
    â€œYou’ve already told Jamie?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd Mr. Vaught agrees to this?”
    â€œHe will if you ask him.”
    â€œWhat about Kitty?”
    â€œMy friend, allow me to cue you in. Perhaps you have not noticed it, but our young friend Jamie is sick to death of the women in the family. Including me. Kitty and I made him the same deal: the three of us for Long Island and the camper (it sleeps three) and he