A Client Is Canceled

1

It was one of the more interesting murders of that summer and the Pooh and I almost did not attend. This, as the Pooh afterward told me when occasion arose, proved how foolish it is not to accept such invitations as are offered, including even those which do not promise highly. One, to quote Pooh, can never tell; a chance is always worth taking. Remember, the Pooh says, how nearly you talked us out of going to the Townsends’.

Certainly, I did my best, and certainly there was much to be said against going to the Townsends’ that hot July afternoon. It was not entirely cool at Mean Abode, but I saw no reason to think it would be much cooler on the Townsend terrace. At home, I could continue to wear shorts and so could the Pooh, or more or less as she chose. There was the matter of gin, but we happened to have gin; we had got some that morning, immediately after the check came. What, I asked her, had the Townsends that we didn’t have? Aside, of course, from a big house and a lot of money, neither of which we would be likely to get away from them by going there for cocktails.

Uncle Paul, apparently, Pooh said.

Uncle Paul, I told her was, if an asset at all, a frozen one, at least so far as we were concerned. There was slight probability he would leave her money when he died, and even less that he would die in the convenient future. She had not seen him for months, and both had borne the separation without strain. Also, Uncle Paul probably would want me to play tennis.

The Townsends haven’t a court, the Pooh said. And anyway, Oh-Oh, you wouldn’t have your things, so you could get out of that.

Uncle Tarzan will provide, I told her. If there wasn’t a court this morning, he’s had one put in by now. He will have several spare rackets, somebody will find shoes to fit me and Uncle Tarzan will beat my brains out. Also, we haven’t anything but It to go in. This thought brightened me. Which makes the whole discussion academic, I told Pooh. It won’t start. You don’t plan to walk.

It was a car we had borrowed from a friend named Sanderson, who would, we feared, refuse to take it back. We had borrowed it because the Pooh, having driven down to the Sound for a swim, had got stuck in sand and had rocked out our own car, itself markedly lacking in virility. She had also rocked the clutch out of the car. Cars take a dim view of the Pooh, differing in that from cats, dogs and even people.

I’ve got It backed up the hill, the Pooh said. It’ll start, all right. Of course, coming back, I suppose somebody will have to push. Oughtn’t the battery to get stronger when we drive places instead of weaker?

It was not like other cars, as I told her. Also, for what it was worth, I thought she over-choked it. But I had to admit, at least to myself, that if she had remembered to back it up the hill, there was a better than even chance of getting started, even with the Pooh driving. It was characteristic of the Pooh that she did not suggest I drive. She considers it very reasonable of me to have decided that, after driving a pursuit plane for two years during the Hitler war and a taxicab for six months after it, I would have no further contact with gasoline motors. I realize that some women might protest this decision as whimsical, but the Pooh is not any of those women.

I was, at that stage of the argument, so struck with the Pooh’s reasonable attitude toward life that I broke off to look at her, although holding one finger up to mark the place in our conversation, and to indicate that it was next my turn. The Pooh was particularly pleasant to look at that afternoon. She was wearing shorts, of course, which are always interesting on the Pooh and, since she had been lying face down on a cushion to cook her back, nothing else, which was interesting too. It is not often that anyone has the opportunity to look at a young woman of twenty-three, in all respects what a young woman of that age should be, and in addition possessed of perfectly white hair, particularly such a young woman wearing merely a pair of shorts. There are many advantages in being married to the Pooh. I asked her what we had been talking about.

Going to the Townsends’ for cocktails, she said. Whether you will have to play tennis with Uncle Paul. Whether It will start. Maybe I’d better put some clothes on.

Oh, I said. Yes. I remember. No, don’t. Well—are you particularly anxious to talk to Faye? To be hearty with Jovial George? To hear what a strenuous man Uncle Tarzan is at fifty-five?

I wonder, the Pooh said, if it isn’t very bad for his heart?

We had both wondered that from time to time—ever since, a year or so after we were married, she had happened to mention that Paul J. Barlow was her uncle, and that she supposed he had a great deal of money. It is the sort of thing that, under such circumstances, people do wonder about, and we did so without any sense of guilt. Uncle Paul had a daughter, to be sure, and to her most of his money undoubtedly would go when, and if, his heart went. But the Pooh was his only other relative, the daughter of a sister for whom, the Pooh thought, he had had as much affection as he had for most people, and he certainly knew that the Pooh and I were rather markedly broke. Pulp fiction sells—witness the check that very morning—but one has to pulp a lot of it.

I told the Pooh that playing tennis and golf and swimming in the summer, playing handball and squash and some indoor tennis in the winter, might well prove deleterious to a man of fifty-five.

The last time I saw him, the Pooh said, he looked extraordinarily well. She looked at me. Better than you do right now, she added. Not so nice, but better. Do you suppose we drink too much?

I said I had no doubt of it. I said, also, that she should not be confused by the fact that Uncle Tarzan was bigger than I was. I said he was bigger than most people.

I wasn’t looking for a giant, the Pooh said, sitting up again. Do we? For a moment, perhaps, I misunderstood her. Go to the Townsends’, she said, quickly. There might be somebody there interesting. Francis, maybe.

I didn’t, I said, find Francis Eldredge quite as interesting as all that. Not absorbing, not engrossing. He was a nice enough guy, who raised cows—milking cows. His occupation tended, I sometimes thought, to lessen the relish one took in his conversation. I am very fond of other men’s shop talk, but there is rather less to be said about cows than about some subjects.

I’d rather like to meet Paulie, my wife said. I haven’t since we were both—oh, seven or eight, I guess.

She and her mother, after her father’s death, had seen very little of Paul J. Barlow and his daughter. I had never known why, precisely—whether there had been some family disagreement (although the Pooh herself knew of none) or whether it was merely that the two families lived in different cities. The Pooh and her mother had lived, not quite precariously but with no money to throw around, in New York; Barlow had, until a couple of years previously, lived in Richmond, where his company had its central offices. During the past two years Uncle Paul and his daughter had been in New York, the Pooh and I had lived in a rented house, which we had decided to call Mean Abode after considering The Hovel, a few miles outside Mount Kisco. The Pooh’s mother had died the summer before.

The Townsends’, who lived in a very large house called Pinewood, were neighbors, although we didn’t see much of them. We had run into them in the early spring at one of those large cocktail parties to which a couple, overcome by galloping sociability, invites everybody they know, and it had been then discovered, by the Townsends, that the Pooh was Paul Barlow’s niece and, by us, that Barlow was extremely important to Townsend Associates, Jovial George’s advertising agency. Both the Townsends and we had been rather more impressed by this coincidence than was warranted; George Townsend had been trapped into mentioning the smallness of the world. (To which his wife said, Oh, my God!) Of course, we all—possibly excepting Faye Townsend, about whom it was difficult to be certain—had had quite a bit of the Staffners’ punch. Undoubtedly, however, the Pooh’s acceptable niecehood had made Winifred and Orson Otis rather more visible to George and Faye Townsend.

If the Pooh really wanted to meet her cousin there was, I told her, nothing for it. We would have to put on clothes and go, It permitting. I would not be trapped into playing tennis. I would not put on somebody else’s bathing trunks and race Uncle Tarzan three times around the Townsends’ swimming pool.

You could beat him, the Pooh said. You’re deceptive, Oh-Oh.

I admitted that, quite probably, I could beat Uncle Tarzan in a race three times around the Townsends’ swimming pool. I could also fly an old style pursuit plane better than he could, although I didn’t know about jets. I had got a check that morning for a story about a young couple who, the sole survivors of an interplanetary rocket wreck, had turned up on a small, apparently uninhabited, satellite of Venus. I was very deceptive. Also, if the subject came up, I was not going to play golf with Uncle Tarzan. I would, however, go to the Townsends’.

Pooh and I try, within reason, to be polite, particularly to inanimate objects. So, after we had dressed sufficiently for a terrace cocktail party in the country on an extremely hot afternoon, we were polite to It. It is rude to assume, in advance of proof, malicious recalcitrance in anything, so It was given the benefit of whatever doubt existed. The Pooh stepped on the starter, precisely as if It had been a motor car. It made the customary noises—a series of violent explosions—and then, as if to show us what deception can really be, started up. The Pooh shifted into second—there is something very peculiar about It’s low gear, which quite often proves to be reverse—and let in the clutch. It shuddered briefly and went forward. It went down the grade up which Pooh had backed it and on the level section of our narrow drive almost to the road. Then it stalled. Thought you had me, didn’t you? It inquired, with an evident sneer. It then exploded once more, in a kind of snort. Pooh tried the starter again and there was, after a few seconds, a pervasive odor of raw gasoline.

Choked again, I told her. The Pooh said choking was too good for It. She suggested flaying. I got out and pushed It around into the road. I then stood beside it and waved hopefully to a number of cars which went by hurriedly. The cars turned their eyes away from the sight, but the more friendly of the people in them shook their heads. There was, of course, no shade where It had decided to stop. The collins I had had while we were dressing boiled out of me. Then I realized the mistake I was making, explained what was wrong to the Pooh, and hid inside It.

Pooh stuck her white head out of the window on her side and made small, feeble waves. The next car slowed slightly but then winced away. The Pooh was, I told her, being too energetic by far. She must think herself into the part—a poor old lady in her late seventies—better make it eighties—feebly succumbing in a stalled car by the side of the road, weakening rapidly from the heat.

It’s too damn bad it isn’t snowing, the Pooh said, but then another car approached and she leaned out, keeping her face as much hidden as she could, and fluttered small, inept hands. It was quite a good performance. The car was a Chevvie convertible, not very young, but apparently strong. And—it stopped. It stopped a hundred feet or so up the road and then backed down to us. A young woman, tanned, dark-haired, with square shoulders—one of the several physical types I like, but my tastes are flexible and I try to keep them so—got out of the Chevvie and walked back to It, on the Pooh’s side. She was, I guessed, a year or two younger than I am, which is thirty, and she walked well.

In trouble? she asked Pooh, and then, looking at her, made a small, odd sound. Then she said, Oh!

It’s so sweet of you, dearie, the Pooh began. She had thought herself into the part, all right. Her voice shook with what she thought a quaver appropriate to the late eighties. I was getting so—

I pinched her. I said, Come off it, Grandma. I got out of It and walked around to the young woman. I told her that we’d be deeply indebted for a push. She continued to look at Pooh. Then she looked at me.

Grandma? she said.

It was, I told her, a manner of speech. I said we were named Otis, and that the Pooh’s name was Winifred. I said, because the tall young woman kept looking at the Pooh as if she did not quite believe her, that the Pooh’s hair had begun to turn white when she was eighteen and had been the way it was now by the time she was twenty-one. I said she had had a great-grandmother whose hair had turned white when she was sixteen. It is, the Pooh and I have found, easier to explain the whole thing at once, since we have to in the end, or be the death of people, who are at least as likely as cats to die of curiosity.

His name is Orson, the Pooh said, of course getting back at me for pinching her. Like Welles.

I said I was sorry. I added that I wasn’t in any other respect like Mr. Welles.

The square-shouldered girl looked as if she found it difficult to believe in either of us, as people now and then do. Neither of us has ever thought that we are particularly difficult to believe in, but it may be that we are prejudiced.

Well, she said, I’m Ann Dean. She looked at It. Will it start if I push? she asked.

It was an interesting question and I said, I’m very glad you asked that, Miss Dean. I haven’t the faintest idea.

It often does, the Pooh said. Of course, if nothing happens in a mile or so, we wouldn’t want to tie you up. (Also, as she didn’t mention, we’d be at Pinewood.)

Miss Dean sniffed a couple of times, and pointed out that we had been choking It.

Of course, the Pooh said. I kept telling you, Oh-Oh. She looked at Miss Dean. "You can’t call anybody Orson, she said. Not intentionally, I mean."

Miss Dean thought, momentarily, that we were both a little drunk. One could see the thought in her face. We weren’t, of course, although I, for one, hoped we would be before long. But, as I have said, almost everybody likes the Pooh, and the doubtful expression slid off Miss Dean’s face and she smiled. She said, all right, she’d push. She started back to her car. Then she stopped and came back.

Listen, she said to the Pooh, "are you the Winifred Otis, by any chance?"

It is a question to which, I should think, a sensible answer is almost impossible. Fortunately, it is not a question people ever ask me, but now and then the Pooh is confronted with it. She does very amusing light verse for The New Yorker and, when The New Yorker editors happen to be in a captious mood, other magazines. Even in The New Yorker it doesn’t pay excessively, but every little helps. Apparently Miss Dean read The New Yorker.

I guess so, the Pooh said. If you mean verse.

It’s swell, Ann Dean said. I’ll back around behind you.

She did. She began to push us up the road, in the general direction of the Townsends’. It began to do the usual kicking and screaming act, exploding indignantly and, of course, flaming at the exhaust pipe. It was a thoroughly nasty little car. It did not start while she pushed us up a moderate grade. At the top, where a fairly long down-grade began, Miss Dean sensibly eased off. It started and ran very satisfactorily all the way down the hill. It stalled about fifty feet up the next grade. Miss Dean bumped into us again and pushed us up. The road was level for a quarter of a mile or so then and she pushed us for the quarter of a mile, It exploding frantically and every now and then bucking. Then, just at the end of the level stretch, It gave up and started again. The Pooh and I were pretty sure It’s spirit was broken, for the moment, and the Pooh waved for Miss Dean to come on around and, rather recklessly I thought, tooted thanks on It’s horn. Sometimes when one did that, It stalled again. I suppose because of the strain on It’s battery.

It didn’t this time, although it backfired a few more times to prove it could if it wanted to. And Miss Dean’s Chevvie did not come around. We supposed, of course, that she was understandably without faith, and determined to finish the job she had started, which was uncommonly good of her. We both, however, felt that responsibility to speed up one feels when another car is immediately behind, and declines to pass, and It was already doing its full thirty. The Pooh motioned again and then, as had become necessary, waved her arm around in an effort to indicate that we were about to turn right into the Townsends’ drive. I held out a hand on my side, in case the Pooh’s gestures proved, as I thought they might, baffling.

We turned into the driveway waving goodbye—feeling we should stop and thank Miss Dean formally, and hoping she would realize that anybody who once had It going didn’t stop for anything. It was hard, at the moment, to tell what she thought we had meant, but what she did was to turn into the Townsend driveway after us, and follow us up to the turn-around, in which the Pooh did turn It around. She stopped It near Uncle Tarzan’s Rolls, which sneered, in a detached, British fashion. Miss Dean turned around behind us and, when the Pooh stopped, explosively, stopped behind us, apparently ready to push us right out again.

"I’m afraid she’s got an idee fixe," the Pooh said before we got out, on our respective sides, and walked back to the Chevvie. We paused, opposite each other, while each kicked the rear tire nearest him, which was all we could do to show It how we felt about things.

I hope we didn’t bring you out of your way, the Pooh said, when she got to the Chevvie, which Ann Dean was getting out of. I mean, this is where we were coming.

Ann Dean grinned. I think one would have to use that word to get anything like the real effect. She had a wide mouth and sometimes, apparently, she used it to grin with. The effect was entirely delightful.

I’d begun to guess that, Ann said—after the grin I quit thinking of her as Miss Dean, and didn’t again afterward. So was I.

Oh, the Pooh said. Well, then—

But by that time, Jovial George had come off the end of the terrace nearest the turnaround and was walking toward us, beaming. He was a man of about medium height, which I take to be two or three inches under six feet, and he was plump and pink. He radiated; at times he even effervesced. It always seemed to me that he was gay without sufficient reason most of the time, but he did surround himself with an atmosphere of gayety, and he was always glad to see everyone, or seemed to be. He was as apparently glad to see us now as he would have been to see—well, I guess, three new clients bringing big accounts. He was hearty. I’m afraid there’s no other word for that, either.

He said, Hiya, kids, to the Pooh and me, or perhaps to the three of us. But he included Ann in a general, somewhat impersonal, beam, and then looked at the Pooh quickly, in the way of a man who wonders why he doesn’t get introduced.

I’m Ann Dean, Ann said. From the Hibbards’? Mrs. Townsend said to come this afternoon around—

Of course! Jovial George said. Of course, Miss Dean. Wonderful of you to come. Faye’ll be out in a couple of minutes. Changing, you know. What are we standing here for?

It was a very nice question, since we were standing in the sun.

Waiting for you to quit talking, I told George, who laughed with animation and said, to Ann, What a guy! What a guy! Isn’t he?

I’m sure he is, Mr. Townsend, Ann said. We’ve just met.

Bumped into each other, the Pooh said. Off and on for about a mile.

She rescued us, I told George. Thought the Pooh was a poor, forsaken old lady, I’m afraid. She pushed It. I looked pointedly at the terrace, which was shady, which had chairs and a chaise for two, which would unquestionably have a bar.

Well, George said, no use standing here in the hot sun.

This time nobody said anything, and this time George did take us to the terrace.

Francis Eldredge was there, smoking a cigarette in a long holder, sitting near a pretty blond girl of about, I guessed, the Pooh’s age, and there was a dark, tall, rather thin man standing by the portable bar. He turned as we stepped up from the lawn to the