Schmidt Delivered Read Online Free PDF Page A

console him. It wasn’t as though anyone at Wood & King might have suggested that he stay on past the mandatory retirement age. Had anyone thought of calling it the Drop Dead date? In fact, it was likely that the younger partners might have agitated to have him pushed out if he hadn’t made everybody’s life easy and negotiated his own departure. People’s lack of imagination was wonderfully surprising: these partners in their forties or early fifties, didn’t they foresee that what they did to their elders would be done to them in not so many years? More brutally, inall likelihood. Schmidt and his contemporaries had been brought up in a tradition of almost filial respect for their elders. If they had neglected to transmit a halfway effective simulacrum of those feelings to the next generation of partners, at least they hadn’t offered them the sordid spectacle of parricide. But the very bright youngsters in the firm today, the superstars said to be beating down the doors of the partnership, claiming admission as their birthright, would have received ample instruction in that blood sport, and from front-row seats. If he lived long enough, he would have fun watching them cut off the balls of the self-satisfied bastards who had been after his. Perhaps even Jon Riker’s—he didn’t care that it would be unseemly to sit there and laugh while one’s son-in-law was neutered.
    Enough sun. One more dive into the pool, five minutes of laps. Down, anger. He should learn to laugh and get rid of the scowl that etched the bitter lines framing his mouth. How lucky he was, in the end. He had plenty of money. Not for him one of those mail-order second marriages with a classmate’s widow or some divorcée with a surgically renewed face—certainly not the sourness of celibacy. “Black, but comely” his wild girl, his lily of the valley; each night he lies betwixt her perfumed breasts. But how long would it be before that wild girl told him she had had it with her old and limp lover?
    The telephone again. He was at the door of the screened porch. For Pete’s sake, Schmidtie, stop the doddering crackpot routine; cross the porch, go into the living room, and answer. Ah, it’s Charlotte. So rare that she called. Calling washis job. Stilted conversations; Schmidt timed them so that there was something he could do immediately afterward—take a stiff drink at the very least—to deaden the sense of desolation.
    The weather nice out there? she inquired. That’s good. The city’s miserable. Perfectly awful.
    A couple of similar observations later, Schmidt understood she was calling for a reason but needed to circle around before getting to the point. He waited for the “by the way.”
    Dad, do you have people coming out for this weekend?
    No, I don’t, nobody.
    I think I might want to come.
    The old but not yet forgotten feeling that he might melt, like a snowball, from complete happiness, leaving in the place where he stood only a wet puddle on the gleaming painted wood floor.
    That’s simply wonderful, he answered, I think I’ve heard on the radio that the weather will be fine. You and Jon aren’t going to Claverack?
    I’m not. I don’t know what he’s doing. If it’s OK, I’ll come alone.
    Sweetie, is something the matter?
    Plenty. I need to talk to you, but not from the office.
    All right, baby. Do you really want to wait until Friday evening? You could take Friday off and come out Thursday afternoon. Or I could go into the city tomorrow and have lunch with you.
    Thanks, Dad, it’s too complicated. Friday’s OK. I’ll take the six o’clock jitney after work. Is that girl still living there?
    Carrie. Yes, of course.
    Then I’d like to stay in the pool house.
    As you wish.
    Silence on the other end of the line. What to do?
    Sweetie, he ventured. Do let me know if you change your mind and want to come earlier. By the way, Carrie and I are going out to lunch on Saturday. At the house of a man called Mansour. Michael