The Second Coming

Chester Morris in a blue Packard convertible. He was wearing a straw katy.
    After that, Ross Alexander killed himself.
    After that, he was standing smiling and nodding in Lower Pyne at Princeton, his hands thrust in his pockets in a certain way.
    Lindbergh shook hands with his grandfather and Eddie Stinson at the airport.
    Bobby Jones and Richard Halliburton and Johnny Mercer and Johnny Mack Brown came to dinner. D’Lo served Bobby Jones from the wrong side but Jones, a gentleman, didn’t let on that anything was wrong. What are you doing down here in the cold cold ground, massa?
    I don’t know, D’Lo. He turned to his father. What am I doing down here under the earth with you, old mole?
    Because there is no other place for you.
    The hell there isn’t.
    Name one.
    Atlanta?
    No.
    San Francisco?
    No.
    New Orleans?
    No.
    Santa Fe?
    No.
    Back home?
    No.
    Linwood in the beautiful fall?
    No.
    Israel?
    No.
    Portofino?
    No.
    La Jolla?
    No.
    Aix?
    No.
    Nantucket?
    No.
    Georgia?
    No.
    What’s wrong with these places?
    They’re all closed down.
    There must be a place.
    After the Spring Regatta picnic at the Northport Beach Club and during the award ceremony when he received his cup, walking up to get it, feet toed in, pants high and dry, right shoulder moving forward with right foot as if he had lived in Long Island all his life, he had caught the eye of Martha Stookey, only daughter and only offspring of Bryan A. Stookey, who owned Stookey Tidewater, which leased a fair portion of the continental shelf and whose business the firm had been after for years. The Lester Lanin orchestra was playing in the pavilion, but nobody was dancing. Martha, who was not good-looking tobegin with, had made a mistake. She had come dressed for a tea dance or maybe a garden party. She wore a big round off-the-face hat. Everyone else wore sports clothes or swimsuits.
    Even in the shadow of the hat, he could see that her face was blotched with unhappiness.
    Why did God make ugly girls? It is hard to say. That was God’s affair. But one thing he, Will Barrett, could do was make ugly girls happy. Then was that why God made ugly girls? So that selfish people like Will Barrett could make them happy and feel less selfish, do two things at once? No, three things. Make money too.
    He asked her to dance. Her hand, when he took it, was cold and trembling. She was a good dancer. Other people began to dance. He enjoyed dancing with her. She smiled. She was not ugly. Old man Peabody was looking at him. The look said: That’s my boy.
    Later, when the firm got the Tidewater business, Mr. Peabody said to him: “I’m putting you in charge of Trusts and Testaments. That includes widows and green goods.”
    The man found him sitting at a table on a little peninsula in a lake in the lobby of the Peachtree Plaza hotel. The lobby was a hundred feet high. Vines as big as snakes grew up and grew down like lianas. A waterfall fell a hundred feet. He was waiting for the first session of an ecumenical council on race relations. When he moved to Carolina, he thought for a while it would be a good idea to help out the South “in the area of race relations.”
    The man, who looked something like him except that he had a mustache and wore a white linen suit with vest, shook his hand and made a grimace. He was an Atlanta lawyer.
    â€œWell, the jury found you guilty as charged.”
    â€œGuilty of what?” Jesus, they found me out. Guilty!
    â€œOh, you know. Pandering and whorishness in the practice of law. But don’t feel bad.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s only for a year and at a minimal security place in Arizona. A very pleasant place, they tell me. Here’s your bus ticket.”
    As he entered the gate of the correctional facility, which was nestled in the desert foothills under the Ghost Range, he met John Ehrlichman coming out.
    â€œWhat was it like, John?”
    â€œNot bad, though there is no substitute for freedom. I had a clean cell, good food. My job was to read the dials in the boiler room from midnight to six. I wrote a book.”
    â€œIt sounds like a good place. You’re looking fine, John.”
    â€œYou don’t, Will. What have you been doing?”
    â€œI was sitting in the lobby of the Peachtree Plaza hotel when—”
    â€œThat’s amazing. It just so happens that I am on my way to the Peachtree Plaza, where I am going to push my book at a meeting